The fight started fast, and was easy enough to get going with, because the undead here wasn't nearly as talky. He just went straight to trying to kill us when we entered the chamber, having already long since left his coffin. Yvette was a big help. She was NOT, however, nearly as useful as we'd hoped. Specifically, she could stall the undead easy enough, but as a summoner, he had a bunch of storm hounds to harass us with, which made it harder for us to focus on him like we needed to do to take him down.

"How are CLOUD dogs a thing?" I snapped as I used the overlay to predict and attack and avoid it. Callie had a pair of shadow blades in hand she was trying to tear into our enemy with, but it wasn't really working. You can't stab clouds. Though apparently they CAN bite you. I had a wrenched shoulder to prove it. "Clouds are water vapor! Also that doesn't even look like a cloud. More like smoke."

Callie hissed, dancing back as her blades were consumed in sparks. "Smoke isn't full of lightning." She paused. "Most of the time. Someone probably has a lightning smoke power somewhere I guess."

"Probably." I agreed as I stepped off the air to avoid the jaws of the smoke dog. My staff lashed out and passed right through the damned thing. Despite the lack of contact, the monster whined and jerked back, clearly hurt by the high Impact weapon even if not severely.

It took a minute for me to realize what had happened. The life draining feature of my Stygian Branch. I looked around to check on the others. Abel was fighting a pair of the hounds, one made of water and one made of pure lightning, Gabriel was fighting one that seemed to be lightning and water, and Bethy...

My eyes landed on the Vampire and I flinched. Bethy was attacking the undead with a pair of stakes that I suspected were the special ones she got from her father. More than that though, she was...different. Gone were the smiles and the bubbly cheer. Bethany Lark wasn't a ditzy friendly airhead. She was a monster.

Her jaw was unhinged slightly, extending her face in an elongated silent scream, her eyes blazed with hellish light, and her teeth we bared in a rictus of anger. Her nails had lengthened into claws, chalk white skin paling even further, but despite all that, the most disturbing thing was the way she MOVED.

Ascendants have an inherent advantage in our movements. We have stats that make it easy to move fast, to calculate what we need to do beforehand, to pick up on minute changes in environment. Despite that though, the way we move, even if at a higher scale, is still HUMAN, at least all the Ascendants I'd ever seen.

Bethany didn't move like a human. She didn't even move like an animal. She moved like DEATH. Not like a predator, but like THE predator, like the force that comes for us all in the end. A sort of slithering, jerking, clipping movement that allowed her to cover ground in odd fits and starts that almost looked like stop motion. She would vanish and reappear, not just because of her speed, but because of a strange mental effect she didn't even seem to control.

The undead roared as he tried to get past Yvette to attack the Vampire, who had just tried to stake him and left a long shallow gash on his body. The golem stopped him in his tracks, but he flicked a hand and another pair of hounds manifested, one of whirling sleet and one of pure cycling wind. They dove forward to attack, and Bethy vanished like she had in her fight with me, into a cloud of bats.

It became clear as she reformed that she had NOT been taking that fight seriously. As she manifest, her mouth closed, her eyes still blazing like the embers of hell. Reaching up with a claw, she slit an arm open, dripping her blood onto the stakes, which began to sizzle and pop.

Another blurring jerking blink and she was on the monster again from behind, trying to jam a stake through his eye. Jainus snarled and leapt back, the wrinkled undead clearly genuinely worried about the monstrous girl.

I expected she had some multipliers on her stats like the wendigo had, but more than that, something about her blood struck me as profoundly WRONG. It looked unnatural. Too red, like melted rubies, and the thought of touching it made me sick. I was pretty sure Jainus felt the same. I didn't get to watch more because the smoke dog recovered and attacked again, and Callie had to tackle me out of the way so I didn't get disemboweled.

"Watch it!" She snapped. And I nodded, hopping back to my feet. "You ok? It's not like you to get so distracted."

Telling her I got distracted by cringing in terror from an an apex predator in a frilly goth ball gown seemed like it might be embarrassing, so I just shook my head. "I'm good, but we need to figure out how to kill these things. This guy is managing to hold off Bethy and Yvette both, apparently the last one she fought wasn't putting his back into it."

She snorted. "I feel so honored that he thinks we're worth it. Kill the minions then. Any ideas on HOW? Because I don't have any conceptual death abilities."

I paused. "I think I do. I'll have to check a few things, but I can think of a few ways we might be able to do it. Don't suppose you can capture one with shadows? Actually..." I turned my head. "Hey, Bethy! Let us borrow your cats!" I shouted at the Vampire.

She turned her blazing eyes on me, inspecting me for a second like I was a bug on a card. I could tell she took a second to process who and what I was...other than food. I felt my skin prickle as my whole body shuddered, but it passed quick. Between one breath and the next, something shifted in her face, and she gave me her usual big toothy grin, somehow less threatening despite the fangs still being there. "Okay!" She chirped, then flicked a finger.

A pair of cats made of pitch black shadows barreled from beneath her feet, one of them hitting our smoke dog while the other one attacked the wind dog that had come at her to keep her off the conduit.

I saw a burst of flame as Mel attacked the sleet hound from the side, a blast of flame consuming the animal as it dissolved into a puddle. The night pride seemed to be more than capable of damaging the summons, which was good, because it opened me up to try some of my ideas.

Glancing at the smoke dog, I used Marked for Death, then triggered Double Trouble, appearing behind it, swinging my staff down hard. The glowing green of poison fire didn't seem to do much, but when I triggered just a bit of the death energy inside, the staff made solid contact with the beast. I wasn't sure if it was the sure hit of Marked for Death or the death energy itself, but one of them made hitting the incorporeal monster completely possible.

Grinning, I turned to look for my next target...and my world went white. One of the summons, a lightning dog, had snuck up behind me and as I turned it went for my throat. As the teeth sank in, I triggered a heal burst, but unfortunately for me, that didn't really matter.

The monster, rather than tear out my throat, melted into me, slipping under my armor as the lightning funneled through my entire body. The charge raced down my limbs and through my chest, carried along my blood and muscle as it searched for an escape from the armor holding it in.

I dropped, screaming, as I felt my flesh cook only to be repaired by my supercharged Vitality and Jessie's stored heal. I dug my fingers into the stone floor under me as I heard Callie shout my name in panic as she raced to my side.

Despite that, she came to a stop standing over me, her face panicked as she tried to figure out what to do or how to help me.

Gritting my teeth, I stood. I triggered Double Trouble again, appearing behind a water dog that Mel had been dealing with, and I shoved my arm into it. The dog howled as the water picked up the charge, dispersing it to manageable levels even as it boiled the water, and the construct collapsed at the same time I did as the lightning grounded out.

I was breathing heavily as I lay there on the ground, smoking and smelling of charred meat as the heal burst continued trying to repair the damage.

"Shane?" I heard from what seemed like far away. "Honey are you with me?" Callie. I nodded jerkily, body still sore and burned.

"M'fine." I mumbled, trying to sit up. I triggered another heal burst, and grimaced as my head focused. "Get me one of those stakes." I said through what felt like a mouth full of cotton.

She didn't look convinced, but seeing the still filling room even now being stuffed with storm hounds she nodded, sending a shadow clone off towards Bethy. While we waited, she tried to give me a once over. "You doing OK? Where does it hurt?" I could see how scared she was, so I tried to be reassuring.

"It's not as bad as it could be. The pain is only everywhere." Judging by her worried expression my joke had fallen on deaf ears. I was confident that was just a side effect of the fear, I was definitely as funny as I thought I was.

The clone came back, and Callie held out a hand, the shadow construct slapped the stake down into her hand and she held it out to me. "What are you going to do with it?" I plucked it from her fingers, pushing to my feet as I tried to force my body to move properly, not that I managed to do so. Even with the healing my muscles were sore and damaged. Bruising, tearing, and plenty of other unpleasant things caused by rapid contraction from electrical damage.

"What are you doing?" She snapped. "You're not ok yet, give it at least a few minutes with the healing. You can't go into battle like that."

Cracking my neck, I rolled my shoulders painfully. "I know. But I've got the best shot at making this stick." I glanced at the undead, choosing not to think about how much this was going to suck. I needed a boost. Afterburner, Marked for Death, Mercy Kill, triple stack density shift, Flurry of Blows, Double Trouble. I vanished, leaving behind an illusion and knowing Callie was going to be pissed about me leaving mid conversation.

I was in too much pain to argue or slow down though. Afterburner filled me with energy and power, but it was going to end soon. Appearing behind the conduit I shoved the stake forward. Flurry of blows made it faster, the other abilities made it stronger, and the ten percent boost to armor penetration from Heavy Hands combined with the Marked for Death defense bypass allowed me to slam the thing home right in his heart. Perfect to soften him up for the finisher from our resident cavalry.

Of course, I burned an Afterburner charge on five of those abilities AND on the actual attack so that was half of my juice. As I felt the stake sink in and activate, I used Double Trouble again, slumping against the wall to catch my breath and using another three heal bursts to burn all the rest of my charges, flooding my body with superempowered healing as I watched the stunned conduit stare in horror at Gabriel's charge. I needed a break.