Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Nine – A Deadly Visitor

Hazé spun her short Staff around her hand. Being four years old was still a major pain, but not as bad as it used to be. The fact she knew some Cantrips was now common knowledge, but to be expected since her Mama knew magic and had been progressing nicely.

Getting a Staff of high enough quality had been difficult, and she'd actually had to get in contact with an elven Woodshaper to craft one good enough for what she needed. Even QL 35 wouldn't suffice for Casting stuff with Reserve bonuses stacking on her Star Mage bonuses, which also meant she needed special woods for such a thing.

She proved she needed it by providing a Delimited Fiery Ray scroll at Sixteen as part of the cost. It proved sufficient, as a year later she had received this staff in return.

There was no magic in it initially, but then, she had not asked for any. She had asked for a QL 40 Focus Staff, with Warcaster insets, that could be enhanced and enchanted by herself. Thus, this Staff had arrived, with the requisite inlays she had requested. It was made of weirwood, precious enough by itself that it would only be considered for a Caster as powerful as one who had made the request.

While she hadn't been granted the Ranks of Skill she needed to carve it on her own, Spellcrafting it was totally her thing with Fabricate and Wood Shape. She altered the symbols on it, eliminating some, changing and moving others, and altering things enough that no amount of scrying would be able to use it as a target lock for divination.

Wealth she had, and scrap Craft to pour into it. She began to burn gold and mana crystals, and finally power up a Staff of her own.

Of course, it didn't look like a staff. It looked more like a walking stick appropriate for a girl her age. Morphing was one of the first abilities she built into it, as she wasn't going to be lugging around a six-foot hunk of dense heartwood from a weirwood at her age.

She did pour some love into it. An ounce of noquar anointed the head with its resonance to force effects. Crushed black diamonds graced the runes that sank into the dense length of it, and of course she used Ironwood and Harden on it to make it more resistant to wear and tear and things like dragons chewing on it.

She didn't want to enchant it as a Weapon until she paid off her Karmic Debt and unlocked Soul Magic, but decided she needed it functional before then.

The Focus Core of it was a black star sapphire, which she Energized. With a thought, it radiated an aura that absolutely shut down all chronomancy in the area, which would doubtless come in very useful against things that thought futzing with space and time was the way to fight.

----

The woman was old, tall, and a little stooped, coming in with a couple of younger women as helpers, waiting on her deferentially. Hazé wouldn't have bothered to stay around after they came in, save for the sparkling on the door that closed behind them.

That particular combination of hues was a reaction from the Energized waterstones on the door to ambient magic. Specifically, it indicated something with active shape-changing magic had just passed through the door.

Shapechangers could come in many varieties. Her paranoia went through the roof instantly, and she stepped up next to Mama, looking on with a child's interest as the old woman came to bargain for some skin cream.

She looked them over, and instantly noticed the amulets of tchazy they were wearing by the way they were scattering her ability to read magic. A less astute Caster would simply assume there was nothing there, but the natural reaction of the waterstones couldn't be faked, so she noticed how distorted the magic was.

The hairs on the back of her neck told her that she shouldn't be seen Casting anything, the hooded lids of the old women were far sharper then they looked.

She said nothing to Mama, since any reaction would be read by this woman, whoever she was, and possibly result in an immediate fatal reaction.

The soft feather-touch of a mind-reading spell whispered past her mind, and she filled her thoughts with 'that frill needs to be mended', 'oh, I think that's the latest style out of Nourje, where is she from?', 'hee hee, her shoes look like Patch's feet!', and similar spur of the moment, free-flowing childish nonsense, insuring the spell didn't stay focused on her for very long.

"I've heard very good things of this cream," the old woman said, her thin lips forming a hard smile. "I imagine you have had to beat the alchemists off with a club!"

Mama smiled back with her normal cheerfulness. "Well, not recently, after they pulled some shenanigans and got burned for it, miss. Are you familiar with them?"

She waved long, spindly fingers with arching nails. "There are simply too many things that cannot be satisfied without them," she sniffed. "And, of course, they charge you your first-born for them."

"I see we share a similar opinion of them," Mama agreed. "Is there anything else you would like to look at?"

"I see you have a selection of fragrant soaps up there. Might I smell them? I've been searching for some variety in my bath."

"Of course!"

The two women who were inspecting the different sachets on display had drifted into two positions, one close to Haze, the other close to the door behind the counter. Mama's turn would take her across the path to the door, while the other could lunge at her.

Mama turned, and that waving hand distorted, turning midnight black and doubling in size, the nails looking like rusty cleavers, swiping for Mama's back.

Hazé unloaded everything.

There was no build-up, no alarm. She blew her daily Suddens as she briskly /ordered Mama to drop and roll, and shoot the Shapechanger on the left whose arms were beginning to lengthen.

Sudden Fastcast, Top, and Energize dropped onto her Shards. She Admixed in acid damage, always good for laughs, condensed the spell into a Ray, Split it while Delimit, Brutal, Purified, Sacred, and Blessed stacked on top, used the Improved Heighten to drive her Spell Penetration to the moon, and hit this Hag with everything.

There was no crash of impact blowing her out the wall. The energies simply drove into her, eight Rays of 10d8 +13+d6 damage +50%, Topped out for over a thousand points of damage slamming into her spindly chest and dumping their full load to the sound of eight ringing celestial bells.

Hazé felt the wall of an awesome amount of spell resistance shatter and crack under the impact of sacred force, and the woman screamed in horrible, disbelieving agony as massive holes drilled through a massive amount of Health Qi and ate away a huge part of her.

Distracted, the two shapeshifters looked at her, even as Mama fell to the floor and flung out her hand in the next moment.

A glass orb flared with light, and the not-woman there caught it full in the face. There was a massive discharge of electrical energy carried on the alchemical lightning there... and it blew her head into a charred mess. The scream she gave out was not human in the slightest as half her skull blackened instantly.

The Hag, an Annis, began to straighten as her eyes flared with yellow light, glaring at the child before her.

A double row of ten Shards, ROYGBIV + black, white and pearly grey, snapped into existence around Haze's slender arm, flared with light as they were Topped and heavenly hymns began to sound out, and she leveled her Staff at the Hag.

On her other hand, the same assortment of Shards snapped up.

The Hags eyes shifted in sudden panic, and she screamed out a Word.

A hurricane slammed through the room, and took the Hag with it, blowing the door off its hinges and hurling her far away in a mere second –

The first array of Shards didn't have time to be put into a Ray and Split, but they had auto-targeting and Distance, and found her unerringly before she could get out of spell range, following her right through the Air Burst and further ravaging her.

Haze's arm moved right, left as her Staff glowed, and she let loose both remaining flights of Shards.

The two dops had been flung against the walls like toys by the Hag's Airburst, half-stunned. The Shards drilled into them like knife-hammers, disrupting cell structures and ripping them apart internally. Nervous systems shredded, they both collapsed to the floor, already reverting to the near-featureless grayness of their basic forms, still clad in the final traveling robes of their disguises.

Mama spun to her feet with surprising agility, another globe in her hand. Juicing her alchemical bombs with spells gave her surprising punch for her Level, which was precisely the point of learning to do so. Furthermore, she could deliver them with pinpoint precision with the minor TK of a generalist wizard, and had done so. That dop would never have been able to hurt her.

Of course, now the shop was a total mess, since a literal hurricane wind had torn through it.

Hazé waved her hand, and Heightened Prestidigitation at IV surged out and began to put everything back precisely in place, even if was scattered over a quarter-mile out the front door. Herbs and their shattered containers zipped back into place, broken windows reformed, and even the busted door came back together and was set back on rebuilt hinges.

Leaving them two dops bleeding all over the floor with their viscous purple-blue blood.

The two of them looked at the dead shapechangers, then at one another.

"An Annis Hag? What was she doing here?" Mama asked somberly, looking in that direction, even as the door came up, fixed itself together from a thousand splinters, and sealed off the view.

"Kill and replace you. Us. Eat our brains and take our places, and do who knows what with our identities. After all, you're just a hedge witch, Mama."

"And now she knows that you are not." Hazé frowned at Mama's words. Of course, now the Annis had to wonder just what exactly she actually was. Showing ten Shards was definitely going to send all kinds of alarm bells ringing, especially laden down with holy magic. Given how individual Shards looked, they were a good indicator of identity, which was why Hazé never used them when out life-lining.

"Worse. That Hag was incredibly tough. I hit her for over a thousand points of damage, I'm sure of it. She also had over thirty points of Spell Resistance, too. If I hadn't juiced the heighten for Spell Penetration, it would have bounced off her."

"That... seems very out of line with what you've told me about Hags." Mama gestured, and a floating Disk snapped into existence next to her. A helpful Spirit Servant began to lift the first of the dops up onto it.

"Yes. And she not only took it, she took my follow-up." Hazé shook her head once, in mild disbelief. "That was not a Hag to mess around with. If she knew how hard I could hit her with Shards and prepped for it, we would have been dead without a doubt."

"Indeed. Mmmm, well, no worrying about it now. She also has to be thinking she just kicked a hornet's nest, and now we know she's out there, and what sort of delightful things we are going to have ready for her when she returns." She sent the Disk drifting over to collect the other corpse, waving her hand to clean up the blood. "What would you like to do with these?"

"Ah, dops render down into a bunch of useful comps." Haze's eyes were cold and heartless, looking at these things that had threatened them. "You've never processed a pair, so let's get you some experience in this..."

"Of course, dear. What should I put on?"

"Tough hide. We're going to need the saws to do it right. Prep for a mess."