Suggested By Guardianangel1911
Scenario 1:
Chichago during the full moon. Gunfire fills the streets of downtown Chicago drawing the attention of Harry Dresden. He comes across fleeing Police as a Black Templar marches down the street. Dresden looks at the armored warrior as he continues attacking whom he believes to be hostiles after the police opened fire on the obviously heavily armed and armored guy walking down the middle of the streets. Dresden uses a hex and the Templars gun jams up. The Templar turns towards Dresden with a cold fury. Dresden brings up his shield and starts drawing on his power. The Templar drops his guns and draws his knife and charges forward. The Templar will not go back for his guns in this scenario.
Scenario 2: The Black Templar doesn’t drop his guns and they aren’t hexed.
Who wins?
What all can a Black Templar do? Without guns, I’m thinking Dresden can just gravity up the place pretty easily.
Oh look, Cross’ butthurt revenge thread got posted
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Meh
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Either way what are Dresden’s speed and reflexes like? Because Space Marines are bullet timers who can move at 45kmh (technically 15 km in 20 minutes, but seeing as 20 minutes is a third of an hour then, yeah) in brutal terrain
Dresden’s reflexes are pretty standard as far as I can tell. Or just not anything too impressive. his shield is thought activated though, but I don’t know that it’d stand up to a proper hit from a BT, just from what I’ve seen posted about it.
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But, he’s got gravity altering AoEs and what not, and he starts the match already shielded and charging up. He could probably get the spell out depending on far away they are I’d guess, unless the BT is comic book fast.
Why doesn’t the BT get his gun though if it could just be hexed in the fight? Also, how quick is the hex — could Dresden hex the armor too?
Honestly, unless dresdan was fighting a space marine with guns or a psyker, he wins this. It’s a stomp as long as dresdan has time to react.
Oh, just read the scenario completely. Classic Spite thread successful
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Mission Accomplished I guess *smirk*
@Stealth
In that case I will change the OP to make it more fairer, but I need your help for that.
These spite battles need to be stopped, I will be having to make some thread on the Topia now.
yep, not even a chance for the black templar. Maybe if he was a blood angel with slight psyking ability.
The next thread will be Mephiston vs, Harry Dresdan
><
“In that case I will change the OP to make it more fairer, but I need your help for that”
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Well you could allow Mr Marine his guns and other such weapons and not make Dresden already having his shields up and powering up and such
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Until someone decides to overwrite said ‘creative liberties’ like with Xeelee vs Stargate, given this is an oh so very obvious spite thread, you guys have fun, im out
Hitman if you want to make this fair, you can do an average space marine librarian with no guns vs dresdan or a space marine with a bolt pistol.
Although any scenario in which a space marines raw reflexes come into play, he’ll have dresdan beat.
@Crimson
Looks like the spitejacking is over, I see.
Good.
Although last I checked…Black Templars don’t have psykers in their ranks, and its up to the Admiral to make sure its decided on HOW to make a match like this fairer, actually.
Either way, you live and kill by Power Armor, be very prepared to die by Power Armor, including your own.
Well if the BT only has melee, why does Dresden need the shield? The force rings should keep the marine at a distance. Can Dresden hex out the armor? Seems unlikely due to BT being specifically against spellcasters. Will spirItfire get through the marines armor? I’m two books behind so I don’t know what kind of punch it packs
@Admiral
Quick, suggest Super Dimentio vs Overlord Zetta, we must starve and weed this nutcasery out before it spreads like weeds.
@Itis
I thought the Bog-Standard Templar was meant to lack immunities to supernatural powers being a direct threat to them.
Or is that the wanking of a spitejacker talking?
Or is it even something else going on that I’m unaware of?
“Either way, you live and kill by Power Armor, be very prepared to die by Power Armor, including your own.”
Nice.
@Lightning
Its part of a newfound Badass Creed I decided to consider weaving together, such as ‘you live and kill by magic, be very prepared to die by magic, including your own,’ you get what I’m saying?
Why would the black templar throw away his weapon, and not un jam it, it wasnt destroyed, even if he decided he wasn’t going to use it, he would just mag seal it to his armour, not throw it away.
Why even give him a bolt gun, in the first place if he wasn’t going to use it.
@Shaun
Trust me, the Admiral is willing to find a way to make sure the match is fairer, he strives for fairness every now and then, plus he taught me how to control my grief along with Corpsman Dualgunner.
When he gets back to us, he’ll see to it on how the match can be fairer, alright?
I promise.
What can Dresden actually do? Marine still has all his physical prowess to him that will no doubt be of advantage.
@Soldier’s Shadow
Quite true, quite true, Watcher of factpile, but it doesn’t change the fact that Dresden’s been used to fighting off beings with far superior physical prowess to himself, to begin with, since they weren’t FTL, either.
Its gonna be just another day in Dresden’s world either way, regardless on if the Admiral shows up or not, alright?
Also, S.J is trying to suggest Dresden vs Overlord Zetta, shall we throw Zetta against Super Dimentio, please?
Chichago during the full moon.
Holy shit this Desden guy is getting a lot of attention. Seems to be awfully well known and I have no clue who he is..
First this was not intended to be spite I started planning this before Potter vs Space Marine was posted, I only took away the guns because they made the Potter fight practically impossible for Potter, but if its a stomp without them thats fine and they are allowed back, we could say the Templar can go back for them or if that won’t make it fair would making the Templar unarmored work?
I don’t know if the armor has tech that will be messed up or not, but if it does then any spell getting too close will start making things get a little wonky, full on hex makes the worst possible thing happen. Computers basically die if Dresden walks in the room, and he once set off a car bomb by being near it, on that note the Templar doesn’t carry any explosives with a detonator does he?
“Quite true, quite true, Watcher of factpile, but it doesn’t change the fact that Dresden’s been used to fighting off beings with far superior physical prowess to himself, to begin with, since they weren’t FTL, either.”
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And how much of this could have been due to PIS?
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“Chichago during the full moon.
”
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I don’t follow.
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@Guardian
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What can Dresden do? I’m in the dark about his powers.
Just sounded funny with the extra h in there.
@Soldier’s Shadow
Let me go gather some quotes from the respect thread
Added a second scenario to make it more fair.
Dresden being attacked by Ghouls
” I raised my staff in my fist, baring the rings to the ghoul, and as I triggered the first ring snarled, “See
ya!”
Raw force lashed out at the ghoul, flung him off the end of the Water Beetle, and slammed him against
the front of the ship blocking us in with enough force to break his back. There was a rippling crack, the
ghoul’s battle cry turned into an agonized scream, and he vanished into the cold waters of Lake Michigan.
The first of his buddies was already in the air, boarding the Water Beetle just as the first had. I waited a
half second, timing the arc of his jump, and before his feet touched down, I hit him just as I had the first
one. This time, the ghoul flew back into a pair of its buddies, already in the air behind him, and dropped all
three of them into the drink. Ghouls five and six were female, about which I did not care in the least, and I
swatted them into the lake with two more blasts.
So far, so good, but then four of them all leaped together— probably by chance, rather than design—
and I knocked down only two of them. The other two hit the deck of the Water Beetle and flung
themselves at me, claws extended.
No time for any tricks. I whirled my staff, planted the back end against the wheelhouse wall, and
aimed the other at the nearest ghoul’s teeth. It hit the ghoul with the tremendous power provided by his
own supernatural strength and speed. Shattered bits of yellow fangs showered the deck as the ghoul
rebounded. The second ghoul leaped straight over his buddy—
—and got a really nice view of the barrel of the .44 revolver I’d pulled from my duster’s pocket with
my left hand. The hand cannon roared, snapping the ghoul’s head back, and it slammed into me. My back
hit the wheelhouse hard enough to knock the breath from me, but the ghoul fell to the deck, writhing and
screaming madly.
I put two more shots into the ghoul’s head from two feet away, and emptied the revolver into the skull
of the one I’d stunned with my staff. Watery, brownish blood splattered the deck.
By then, three more ghouls were on the deck, and I heard thunk-ing sounds of impact over the side of
the ship as two of the ghouls I’d knocked into the water sank their claws into the Water Beetle’s planks and
began swarming over the sides.
I hit the nearest ghoul with another blast from one of my rings, sending it flying into its companions,
but it bought me only enough time to raise my shield into a shimmering quarter-dome of silver light. Two
ghouls slammed against it, claws raking, and bounced off.
Then the ghouls coming up the sides of the ship gained the deck, behind the edge of my shield, and hit
me from the side. Claws raked at me. I felt a hot pain on my chin, and then heavy impacts as the talons
struck my duster. They couldn’t pierce it, but hit with considerable force, a sensation like being jabbed
hard in the side with the rounded ends of multiple broom handles.
I went down and kicked at a knee. It snapped, crackled, and popped, drawing a scream of rage from
the ghoul, ”
————–
Gravity spell once
” At the very last second, the vampire seemed to sense something. It turned its head toward me.
I clenched my fist as I released my will and snarled, “Gravitus!”
The magic lashed out into the ground beneath the vampire’s feet, and the steady, slow, immovable power of the earth suddenly stirred, concentrating, reaching up for the vampire standing upon it. In technical terms, I didn’t actually increase the gravity of the earth beneath it. I only concentrated it a little. In a circle fifty yards across, for just a fraction of a second, gravity vanished. The cars all surged up against their shock absorbers and settled again. The thin coat of snow leapt several inches off the parking lot and fell back.
In that same fraction of a second, all of that gravity from all of that area concentrated itself into a circle, maybe eighteen inches across, directly at the vampire’s feet.
There was no explosion, no flash of light—and no scream. The vampire just went down, slammed to the earth as suddenly and violently as if I’d dropped an anvil on it. There was a rippling, crackling sound as hundreds of bones shattered all together, and a splatter of sludgy liquid that splashed all over the cars around the vampire—mostly upon the Beetle, really. ”
Side Jobs: IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, TOO
———-
and a second time
” “Gravitus!” I thundered, releasing a second earthcrafting.
Once again, everything jumped up—but this time, it wasn’t quiet. The circle of nullified gravity embraced every shop nearby in the mall, sending merchandise and shelves and dishes and furniture and cash registers and dressing dummies and God knew what other sundry objects flying up, to come crashing back down to the floor again. A great uproar of hundreds of impacts came down from the floors above us as well.
Once again, the circle of supergravity crushed a brown-shirted vampire flat to the floor—only I’d forgotten about the levels above. There was a shriek of tortured metal, and a great crashing rain of debris came down in a nearly solid column as floors and ceilings gave way under the sudden, enormous stress. It all thundered down on the pulped vampire.
There was a second of shocked silence, while objects continued falling from their shelves and bins and who knew what else. Evidently, the damage to the ceiling had torn through some plumbing; a steady stream of water began to patter down from overhead onto the mound of rubble, along with occasional bits of still-falling material. ”
Side Jobs: IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, TOO
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just a couple of samples of him fighting stronger faster opponents and the gravity spell against stronger faster vampires.
Some of Dresdens fire spell feats
Fuego spell
After pulling off a spell that soul fucked with his bare hands and throwing it out the window
“I snarled, jabbed a finger at it, took all the anger and fear and sent it coursing out of me, toward the dark spell. “Fuego!”
Fire came to my call, roared forth from my fingertips and engulfed the wire. It writhed and then vanished in a detonation that rattled the house around me and sent me tumbling back to the floor.
…..
Outside, dog were barking all over the place, and I could hear several car alarms whooping, touched off by the force of the blast.
Grave peril, pg 97
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Kinetic Ring
I lifted my right hand, thesilver ring there gleaming, and cried, “Assantius!”
The energy stored in the ring, all kinetic stuff that is saved back a little every time I moved my arm, unloaded in a flood, right in the vampire’s face, an unseen fury of motion. The raw force split his lip—but no blood flowed out. It dug into the corners of his eyes and tore the skin away, but there was still no blood. It ripped the skin from his cheekbones, all rubbery black beneath the Anglo-Saxon pink, strips of flesh flapping back in the wave of force like flags in a high wind.
The vampire’s body flew back and up. It thudded hard against the ceiling and then fell to the floor with a thump
Grave Peril, pg 119
————
Fuego with Blasting Rod
I saw Kyle move out of the corner of my eye. lifted the shield bracelet toward him, transferred my will to it, but in time only to partially deflect the broken chip of concrete that he threw at my head. It slammed against my temple and sent me spinning. I saw Kelly blur towards me, white cape flying, and I lifted the blasting rod toward her, shouting, “Fuego!”
Fire slammed out the end of the rod, missing Kelly by at least a foot, but still hot enough to set the hem of her cloak ablaze. The flame slewed in an arch across the ceiling and down the wall as I started falling, cutting though wood and brick and stone like an enormous arc wielder.
-after effect to the building-
Then there was a roaring sound, and I dimly perceived the west wall of building collapsing, falling away in great, flaming sections of wood and brick. The blast I had sent spewing at Kelly had sliced through the ceiling, walls, and support beams. It must have weakend the structure of the eniter building as it had.
Oops.
Grave Peril. page 121-122
Harry + Magnatism
I lifted the cane, it’s runes shimmering blue abd white, and snapped. “Venteferro!”
The magic whispered silently out through the runes on the cane. Earth magic ins’t really my forte, but I like to keep my hand in. The runes and the power I willed into the staff reached out and caught the gun in invisible waves of magnetism. I had been worried that the spells I’d laid on the cane might have gone stale, but they were still hanging in there. The gun flew from Kyle’s hands.
I whipped it through the air, into the face another vampire coming toward Justine. It hit at something just this side if the speed of sound, and it sent the thing flying back into the darkness.
Grave Peril, Chap 30, pg.251
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Dresden doing one of the biggest fire spells he’s ever done
Dresden & Pryofuego(Fire)
I think Michael sensde something and taken the girl from my arms, because the next thing I remember is thrusting my hands toward the nightsky and screaming, “Fuego! Pyrofuego! Burn you greasy bat-faced bastards! Burn!”
I reached for fire—and fire answered me.
The tree-towers of the topiary castle exploded into blazes of light, and the hedge-walls, complete with their crenelated tops, went up with them. Fire leapt up into the air, forty, fifity feet, and the sudden explosion of it lifted everyone but me up and off the ground, sent wind roaring around us in a gale.
I stood amidst it, my mind brilliantly lit by the power coursing through me. It burned me, and some part of me screamed out in joy that it did. My cloak flapped and danced in the gale, spreading out around me in a scarlet and sable cloud.
——–
The fury in me grew. It swelled and burned and reached out to the fire again. Flames flew out, caught one of the more cowardly of the vampires, huddled at the back, scrabbling to slip his flesh mask back over his squashed bat face. The fire touched him and then twined about him, searing and blackening his skin, then dragging him back, winding and rolling him toward the blaze.
The magic danced in my eyes, my head, my chest, flying wild and out of control. I couldn’t follow everything that happened. more vampires got too close to the flames, and began screaming. Tendrils of fire rose up from the ground and began to slither over the courtyard like serpents. Everything exploded into motion, shadows flashing through the brightness, seeking escape screaming.
Grave Peril, Chap 30: pg. 257 -258
Does the BT start off with hexed weapons in #2 as well?
No, I will edit that asap.
Dresden fighting an extremely powerful magic throwing protogod shapeshifter
” I felt my hands clench as a hot and hungry anger suddenly burned through me. I hadn’t
planned on trying to take the naagloshii alone. I’d wanted Lara and her people and every member
of the Council present to be there, too. That had been part of the plan: establish a common
interest by showing them that they had a common enemy. Then take the naagloshii on with
overwhelming force and force it to flee, at the very least, so that we could recover Thomas. I just
hadn’t counted on the traitor showing up in such numerical strength.
Taking the naagloshii on alone would be a fool’s mistake. Anger might make a man bolder
than he would be otherwise. It was possible that I could use it to help fuel my magic, as well—
but anger alone wouldn’t give a man skill or strength that he didn’t have already, and it wouldn’t
grant a mortal wizard undeniable power.
All it could do was get me killed if I let it control me. I swallowed down my outrage and
forced myself to watch the naagloshii with cold, dispassionate eyes. Once I had a better
opportunity, once I had spotted something that might give me a real chance at victory, I would
strike, I promised my rage. I’d hit it with the best sucker punch of my life, backed by the ambient
energy of Demonreach.
I focused my whole concentration on the skinwalker, and waited.
The skinwalker, I realized a moment later, was enormously powerful. I’d known that already,
of course, but I hadn’t been able to appreciate the threat it represented beyond the purely
physical, even though I’d viewed it through my Sight.
(That memory welled up again, trying to club me unconscious as it had before. It was difficult,
but I shoved it away and ignored it.)
Through Demonreach, I could appreciate its presence in a more tactile sense. The skinwalker
was virtually its own ley line, its own well of power. It had so much metaphysical mass that the
dark river of energy flowing up from beneath the tower was partially disrupted by its presence, in
much the same way as the moon causes tidal shifts. The island reflected that disruption in many
subtle ways. Animals fled from the naagloshii as they might from the scent of a forest fire.
Insects fell silent. Even the trees themselves seemed to grow hushed and quiet, despite the cold
wind that should have been causing their branches to creak, their leaves to whisper.
It paced up to the cottage, where Morgan and my apprentice were hiding, and something odd
happened.
The stones of the cottage began to glimmer with streamers of fox fire. It wasn’t a lot of light,
only enough to be noticeable in the darkness, but as the naagloshii took another step forward, the
fox fire brightened and resolved itself into symbols, written on each stone in gentle fire. I had no
idea what script it was written in. I had never seen the symbols before.
The naagloshii stopped in its tracks, and another flicker of moonlight showed me that it had
bared its teeth. It took another step forward, and the symbols brightened even more. It let out a
low, snarling noise, and tried to take another step. Suddenly, its wiry fur was plastered tight to the front of its body, and it seemed unable to take
another step forward. It stood there with one leg lifted and let out a spitting curse in a language I
did not know. Then it retreated several steps, snarling, and turned to the tower. It approached the
ruined tower a bit more warily than it had the cottage, and once again those flowing sigils
appeared upon the stones, somehow seeming to repulse the naagloshii before it could get closer
than eight or ten feet to it.
It let out a frustrated sound, muttered something to itself, and flicked out a hand, sending
unseen streamers of power fluttering toward the tower. The symbols only seemed to glow
brighter for a moment, as if absorbing the magic that the skinwalker had presumably meant to
disrupt them.
It cursed again, and then lifted Thomas idly, as though it planned on smashing its way through
the stones using Thomas’s skull. Then it glanced at my brother, cursed some more, and shook its
head, muttering darkly to itself. It fell back from the tower, clearly frustrated, and just as clearly
familiar with the symbols that allowed the stones to shed the power of a skinwalker as swiftly
and as easily as they shed rainwater.
Demonreach’s alien presence rarely seemed to convey anything understandable about itself—
but for a few instants it did. As the skinwalker retreated, the island’s spirit allowed itself a brief
moment of smug satisfaction.
What the hell was that stuff?
Never mind. It didn’t matter. Or, rather, it could wait for further investigation. The important
thing was that the game had just changed.
I no longer had to get Thomas away from the skinwalker and then find a way to defeat it. All I
had to do was get Thomas away. If I could grab my brother and drag him into the circle of the
broken tower or into the sheltering walls of the cottage, it seemed as though we would be fine. If
the very stones of the cottage repulsed the skinwalker’s presence, then all we’d need to do is let
Molly activate the crystal and wait the naagloshii out. Regardless of the outcome of this night’s
battle, the Council would win the day, eventually—and even the worst thing they might do to us
would be a better fate than the skinwalker would mete out.
In an instant of rational clarity, I acknowledged to myself that there were about a million
things that could go wrong with that plan. On the other hand, that plan had a significant
advantage—there was at least one thing that could go right, which was exactly one more right
thing than the previous “take back my brother away and beat the skinwalker up” plan could
produce if I tried it unassisted.
I might actually pull this one off.
“Wizard,” the skinwalker called. It faced the cottage and began walking in a slow circle
around it. “Wizard. Come forth. Give me the doomed warrior.”
I didn’t answer him, naturally. I was busy changing position. If he kept pacing a circle around
the cottage, he would walk between me and the empty doorway. If I timed it right, I might be able to unleash a kinetic blast that would rip Thomas out of its grip and throw him into the
cottage.
Of course, it might also fail to rip Thomas out of the skinwalker’s grip, in which case it might
whiplash his limp body severely enough to break his neck. Or it might succeed and hit him hard
enough to stop his heart or collapse a lung. And if my aim was off, I might be blasting Thomas
out of the skinwalker’s hands and into a stone wall. Given how badly off he looked at the
moment, that might well kill him.
Of course, the skinwalker would kill him if I did nothing.
So. I would just have to be perfect.
I got into position and licked my lips nervously. It was harder to work with pure, raw kinetic
energy, with force, than almost any other kind of magic. Unlike using fire or lightning,
summoning up pure force required that everything in the spell had to come from the wizard’s
mind and will. Fire, once called, would behave exactly like fire unless you worked to make it
otherwise. Ditto lightning. But raw will had no basis in the natural order, so the visualization of it
had to be particularly vivid and intent in the mind of the wizard using it.
That was one reason I usually used my staff, or another article, to help focus my concentration
when I worked with force. But my staff was several minutes away, and my kinetic energy rings,
while powerful enough to handle the job, were essentially designed to send out lances of
destructive energy—to hurt things. And I hadn’t designed the magic that supported them with
on-the-fly modifications in mind. I couldn’t soften the blow, so to speak, if I worked with the
rings. I could kill Thomas if I used them.
“Wizard!” the naagloshii growled. “I grow weary of this! I have come to honor the exchange
of prisoners! Do not force me to take what I want!”
Just a few more steps, and it would be in position.
My legs were shaking. My hands were shaking.
I stared at them in shock for a second, and realized that I was terrified. The mind specter of the
skinwalker hammered at the doors of my thoughts and raked savagely at my concentration. I
remembered the havoc it had wrought, the lives it had taken, and how easily it had avoided or
overcome every threat that had been sent its way.
Anything less than a flawless execution of the spell could cost my brother his life. What if the
skinwalker was good enough to sense it coming? What if I misjudged the amount of force I
needed to use? What if I missed? I wasn’t even using a tool to help me focus the power—and my
control was a little shaky on the best of days.
What about the seconds after the spell? Even if I managed to do it right, it would leave me out
in the open, with a vengeful and enraged naagloshii to keep me company. What would it do to
me? The image of the half-cooked Lara ripping out Madeline’s intestines burned in my thoughts.
Somehow I knew that the naagloshii would do worse. A lot worse. Then came the nastiest doubt of all: what if this had all been for nothing? What if the traitor
escaped while I flailed around here? What if the politics of power meant that Morgan would pay
the price for LaFortier’s death despite everything?
God. I really wanted that cold beer and a good book.
“Don’t screw this up,” I whispered to myself. “Don’t screw it up.”
The skinwalker passed in front of the empty cottage doorway.
And, a second later, he dragged Thomas into line between the doorway and me.
I lifted my right hand, focusing my will and aligning my thoughts, while the constantly
shifting numbers and formulae of force calculation went spinning through my head.
I suddenly spread my fingers and called, “Forzare!”
Something approximately the same size and shape as the blade of a bulldozer went rushing
across the ground between my brother and me, tearing up earth and gravel, root and plant. The
unseen force dug into the earth an inch beneath Thomas, hammered into his unmoving form, and
ripped him free of the naagloshii’s grip. He went tumbling over ten feet of ground to the
doorway—and struck his head savagely on the stone wall framing the door as he went through.
Had his head flopped about with a lethally rubbery fluidity after the impact? Had I just broken
my brother’s neck?
I let out a cry of agony and chagrin. At the same time, the skinwalker whirled to face me,
crouched, and let out a furious roar that shook the air all around, sending drops of water that had
beaded upon the leaves of the trees raining to the earth in a fresh shower. That roar held all the
fury of a mortally offended, maniacal ego and promised a death that could only be described
with the assistance of an encyclopedia of torments, a thesaurus, and a copy of Gray’s Anatomy.
The naagloshii in my crystalline memory of the recent past and the one standing in front of me
in the here-and-now both rushed at me, huge and unstoppable, determined to hit me from either
side and rip me to shreds.
And suddenly I did not care that this creature was a foe on par with any number of nightmares
I would never dare to trade blows with. I did not care that I was probably about to die.
I saw Kirby’s still form in my head. I saw the small, broken figure of Andi in her hospital
room. I saw my brother’s wounds, remembered the agony the thing had caused me when I had
seen it through my Sight. This creature had no place here. And if I was to die, I was not going to
go out in a gibbering heap of terror. If I was to die, it wouldn’t happen because I was half
crippled with fear and Sight trauma.
If I was to die, it was going to be a bloody and spectacular mess. “Bring it!” I screamed back at the naagloshii, my terror and rage making my voice sharp and
high and rough. I cupped my right hand as if preparing to throw a baseball, drew up my will, and
filled my palm with scarlet fire. I thrust out my left hand and ran my will through the shield
bracelet hanging there, preparing a defense, and as I did I felt the power of the land beneath my
feet, felt it spreading out around me, drawing in supportive energy. “Bring it! Bring it, you
dickless freak!”
The naagloshii’s form shifted from something almost human to a shape that was more like that
of a gorilla, its arms lengthening, its legs shortening. It rushed forward, bounding over the
distance between us with terrifying speed, grace, and power, roaring as it came. It was also
vanishing from sight, becoming one with the darkness as its veil closed around it, utterly
invisible to the human eye.
But Demonreach knew where Shagnasty was. And so did I.
In some distant corner of my mind, where my common sense apparently had some kind of
vacation home, my brain noted with dismay that I had broken into a sprint of my own. I don’t
remember making the decision, but I was charging out to meet the skinwalker, screaming out a
challenge in reply. I ran, embracing a rage that was very nearly madness, filling the fire in my
hand with more and more power that surged higher every time one of my feet hit the ground,
until it was blazing as bright as an acetylene torch.
The naagloshi leapt at me, horrible eyes burning and visible from within the veil, its clawed
arms reaching out.
I dropped into a baseball player’s slide on my right hip, and brought my shield up at an angle
oblique to the skinwalker’s motion. The creature hit the shield like a load of bricks and bounced
up to continue in the same direction it had been leaping. The instant the naagloshii had
rebounded, I dropped the shield, screaming, “Andi!” and hurled a miniature sun up at the
skinwalker’s belly.
Fire erupted in an explosion that lifted the skinwalker another dozen feet into the air, tumbling
it tail over teakettle—an expression that makes no goddamned sense whatsoever yet seemed
oddly appropriate to the moment. My nose filled with the hideous scent of burning hair and
scorched meat, and the naagloshii howled in savage ecstasy or agony as it came tumbling down,
bounced hard a couple of times, and then rolled to its feet.
It came streaking toward me, its body shifting again behind its concealing veil, becoming
something else, something more feline, maybe. It didn’t matter to me. I reached out to the wind
and rain and rumbling thunder around us and gathered a levy of lightning into my cupped hand.
Then, instead of waiting for its charge, I turned my left hand over and triggered every charged
energy ring I had left, unleashing their deadly force in a single salvo.
The naagloshii howled something in a tongue I didn’t know, and the lances of force glanced
off of his veil, leaving concentric rings of spreading color where they struck. A bare second later,
I lifted my cupped had and screamed, “Thomas! Fulminas!” Thunder loud enough to knock several stones loose from the tower shook the hilltop, and the
blue-white flash of light was physically painful to the eyes. A thorny network of lightning leapt
to the naagloshii, whose defenses had not yet recovered from deflecting the blasts of the force
rings. The deadly-delicate tracery of lightning hammered into the exact center of its chest,
stopping its charge in its tracks. Smaller strikes, spreading out from the main bolt like the
branches of a tree, snapped into the rocky ground in half a dozen places, digging red-hot, skullsized divots into the granite and flint.
Exhaustion hit me like a hammer, and stars swam in my vision. I had never thrown punches
that hard before, and even with the assistance of Demonreach, the expenditure of energy needed
to do so was literally staggering. I knew that if I pushed too hard, I’d collapse—but the
skinwalker was still standing.
It stumbled to one side, its veil faltering for a second, its eyes wide with surprise. I could just
see it going through the naagloshii’s head: how in the world was I hitting him so accurately when
it knew that its veil rendered it all but perfectly invisible?
For one quick fraction of a second, I saw fear in its eyes, and triumphant fury roared through
my weary body.
The skinwalker recovered itself, changing again. With what looked like trivial effort, it
reached down and ripped a section of rock shelf the size of a sidewalk paving stone from the
rock. It flung the stone at me, three or four hundred pounds coming at me like a major-league
fastball.
I dove to the side, slowed by exhaustion, but fast enough to get out of the way, and as I went, I
gathered my will. This time the silver-white streamers of soulfire danced and glittered around my
right hand. I lay on the ground, too tired to get back up, and ground my teeth in determination as
it charged me for what would, one way or another, be the last time.
I didn’t have the breath to scream, but I could snarl. “And this,” I spat, “is for Kirby, you son
of a bitch.” I unleashed my will and screamed, “Laqueus!”
A cord of pure force, glittering and flashing with soulfire, leapt out at the skinwalker. It
attempted to deflect it, but it clearly hadn’t been expecting me to turbocharge the spell. The
naagloshii’s defenses barely slowed it, and the cord whipped three times around its throat and
tightened savagely.
The skinwalker’s charge faltered and it staggered to one side, its veil falling to shreds by
degrees. It started shifting form wildly, struggling to get loose of the supernatural garrote—and
failing. The edges of my vision were blurry and darkening, but I kept my will on him, drawing
the noose tighter and tighter.
It kicked and struggled wildly—and then changed tactics. It rolled up to a desperate crouch,
extended a single talon, and swept it around in a circle, carving a furrow into the rock. It touched
the circle with its will, and I felt it when the simple magical construct sprang up and cut off the
noose spell from its source of power: me. The silver cord shimmered and vanished. I lay there on the ground, barely able to lift my head. I looked toward the cottage and the
safety it represented, standing only forty feet away. It might as well have been forty miles.
The naagloshii ran its talons along the fur at its throat and made a satisfied, growling noise.
Then its eyes moved to me. Its mouth spread into a carnivorous smile. Then it stepped out of the
circle and began to stalk nearer.
One bloody and spectacular mess, coming up. ”
yes by the last few blows Dresden is barely standing, but there are non relavent to the skinwalker proving point before that. Dresden made a creature that it takes a nuke to kill scared, a creature that feeds on fear felt it because of him. He hurt a semidivine immortal beastie that is far more powerful than him
^You trying to break a record or something with that wall of text?
Please, we’ve had much longer…
yea mike has done longer than that
He’s being powered up by Demonreach in that post?
@Teal
slightly yes but in the next book he is given a far larger boost in power that is permanent when he becomes the Winter Knight.
@Guys up there
I know. My eyes still hurt from trying to read the god awful sentence structure.
Dresden against the Loup Garou a nigh invulnerable Wolf demon
” There was a snarl, and then the creature that had been Harley MacFinn came through the doorway. The loup-garou was a wolf, in the same way that a velociraptor is a bird—same basic design, vastly different outcome. It must have been five or five and a half feet tall at the tip of its hunched shoulders. It was wider than a wolf, as though a wolf had been squashed down with an extra five or six hundred pounds of muscle. Its pelt was shaggy, jet-black and matte, except where fresh blood was making it glisten. Its ears were ragged, upright, focused forward. It had a muzzle that was too wide to belong to anything natural, a mouthful of teeth, and MacFinn’s blazing eyes done in monochrome grey, the whole stained with blood that looked black beneath the influence of the blending potion. Its limbs were disproportionate, though I couldn’t say whether they looked too long or too short—justwrong. Everything about it was wrong, screamed with malice and hate and anger, and it carried a cloak of supernatural power with it that made my teeth hurt and my hair stand on end. ”
that is the Loup Garou the beast that Dresden faces in the second book
this is what a weaker than what Shang is facing and half conscious half alive Dresden did to said wolf beast that weighs a lot more than Shangy
“From out in the hallway, there came a scream that no human throat could have made, a sound of such fury and insane anger that it made my stomach roil and my guts shake. Gunfire erupted, not in a rattling series of individual detonations, but in a roar of furious thunder. Bullets shot through the wall, somewhere near me, and smashed out a couple of windows in the special investigations office.
I was on my last legs, exhausted, and terrified half crazy. I hurt, all over. There was no way I was going to have the focus, the strength I needed to go up against that monster. Easier to run, to plan something out, to come back when I was stronger. I could win a rematch. It’s tough to beat a wizard who knows his enemy, who comes prepared to deal with it. It was the smart thing to do.
But I’ve never been known for my rational snap judgment. I gripped the blasting rod and started sucking in all the power I could reach, scooping up my recent terror, reaching down into the giggling madness, scraping up all the courage I had left, and pouring it into the kettle with everything else. The power came rushing into me, purity of emotion, complex energies of will, and raw hardheadedness, all combining into a field, an aura of tingling, invisible energy that I could feel enveloping my skin. Shivers ran over me, overriding the pain of my injuries, the ecstasy of power gathering my sensations into its heady embrace. I was pumped. I was charged. I was more than human, and God help anyone who got in my way, because he would need it. I drew in a deep, steadying breath.
And then I simply turned to the wall, pointed my rod at it, and snarled, “Fuego.”
Power lanced out through the rod in a flood of scarlet light that charred a six-foot circle of wall into powder and ash and sent it flying. I stepped through it, wishing for my duster, for a second, just for the cool effect it would have.
The hallway was a scene out of hell. Two officers were hauling a third down the hall toward me, while three more with shotguns fired wildly around the corner. I don’t think the rescuers had taken the time to note that the body they were dragging away from the combat had no head attached to it.
One of the cops screamed as the riot gun he held ran empty, and something I could not see jerked him forward, around the corner and out of my vision. There was a horrible shriek, a splash of blood, and the two remaining shooters panicked and fled up the hall and toward me.
The loup-garou came around the corner after them, hauling one of the men down and ripping its claws across his spine with a simple, savage motion that left the man quivering on the bloody tiles and hardly made the beast miss a step. It set its eyes on the next man, one of the plainclothes SI detectives, and hamstrung him with a slash of its jaws. The beast left him howling on the tiles and hurtled toward the retreating pair, still frantically dragging their corpse away.
I stepped forward, between the fleeing men and the beast, and lifted the blasting rod. “I don’t think so, bub.”
The loup-garou crouched down, its massive body moving with unholy grace, its head and forequarters soaked in blood. I saw its eyes widen, and its muscles bunch beneath its dark brown pelt. Power gathered at my fist, red and brilliant, and the length of my blasting rod turned an incandescent white. Energy seethed through me as I prepared to release hell on earth at the monster. My teeth ached and my hair stood on end. I tensed every muscle I had, holding it all back until I could put every scrap of strength I had into the strike.
twitched and threw out little bursts of blood. Its head whipped to one side, back down the short hallway, and its body followed suit, faster than a serpent. There was a surge of enormous muscles, a howl of rage, and then the thing was gone.
I spat a curse and ran down the hall after it. The hamstrung officer lay on the floor screaming, and the other man, the one who’d had his spine ripped out, was choking and twitching, unable to draw in a breath. Red anger flooded me, rage that I realized with some dim part of my mind was as much a part of the beast and its blood-maddened frenzy as it was of me.
I rounded the corner in time to see Murphy, standing in front of a litter of bodies, take a last shot at the loup-garou. And then it snarled and she vanished underneath its bulk.
“No!” I screamed and ran forward.
Carmichael beat me to it. His round belly had been ripped open. There was blood all over his cheap suit, though his food-stained tie had somehow remained untainted. His face was grave pale and set with the sort of intensity that only a dying man can have. He held a bent and twisted riot gun in his hands and he hurled himself onto the loup-garou’s back as though he weren’t sixty pounds overweight and long past his agile years. He wedged the riot gun between the loup-garou’s jaws, but the beast turned and slammed Carmichael into the wall with a sickening crunch of bone and a gout of blood from the man’s mouth.
Murphy slithered out from between the beast’s paws on her shoulder blades and buttocks, her cute little cheerleader’s face set in a berserker’s fury. She jammed the end of her little gun beneath the thing’s chin. I saw her hands convulse on the trigger. But instead of a flash of light and a dead loup-garou, there was only the whooping of the alarm and a look of shocked surprise on Murphy’s face. The gun had run empty.
“Murphy!” I shouted. “Roll!”
She saw me with the blasting rod and her eyes flew wide. The loup-garou shook its shoulders free of Carmichael’s corpse and bit completely through the riot gun, thrashing its head left and right. Murphy scuttled sideways across the tiles and through the hole in the wall the beast had made earlier.
It took one snap at her and then whipped its head around to snarl at me. I saw the crimson light reflected in its eyes as I focused every bit of fury in the world on the tip of my rod, and shouted, “Fuego!” I saw the reflected image in the beast’s eyes brighten to nuclear-white in front of a tall, lean figure of black shadow, saw the flood of energy as big around as my hips rush down the hall like a lance of red lightning and hammer into the beast. Sound rushed along with it, a mountain’s roar that made the gunshots and screams of the evening seem like a child’s whispers in comparison.
The power lifted the loup-garou, hurtling it over the wounded figures moaning on the floor, down the hall, into holding, through the security door, through the cell door immediately across from it, then through the brick exterior wall of the building and out into the Chicago night. But it wasn’t over yet. The lance of power carried the loup-garou across the street, through the windows of the condemned building across from the station, and through a series of walls within, each one shattering with a redbrick roar. Before the red fire died away, I could see the far side of the building across the street, and the lights of the next block over through the hole the loup-garou had made.”
Dresden against a high tier Red Court Vampire Sorceress
” “I know them,” he said levelly. “None of us are leaving this place alive.”
His words had an instant effect on everyone. They hit Molly the hardest. She was already
pale. I saw her swallow nervously.
“Maybe you know the monsters, Martin,” Murphy said quietly. “But I know the guy who
stops them. And if they don’t return the girl, we’ll make them regret it.” She nodded at me and
said, “Let’s go. We can watch Dresden kill the bitch.”
I found myself smiling. Murphy was good people.
Once the last of the half-mortal jaguar warriors had departed, we fell into step behind
them, and followed them toward what looked like another temple, on the north end of the ruins.
As we went beneath the temple doorway, though, we found ourselves passing through it
into the open space beyond—a swath of green grass at least a hundred and fifty yards long
and seventy or eighty yards wide. Stone walls about thirty feet high lined the long sides of the
rectangle, while the far end boasted a temple like the one we’d just entered.
“It’s a stadium,” I murmured, looking around the place.
“Ugh,” Molly said. “There are some pretty horrific stories about the Mayans’ spectator
sports, boss.”
“Indeed.” Lea sighed happily. “They knew well how to motivate their athletes.”
Alamaya turned to me and said, “Lord, your retainers may wait here. Please come with
me.”
“Keep your eyes open, folks,” I said. Then I nodded to Alamaya and followed her onto the
field. Even as I started out, a woman began walking toward me from the opposite end. As she
approached, I saw that Arianna had the same facial features, more or less, but she had
traded in her pale skin for red-brown, her icy eyes for vampire black, and she’d dropped six
inches from her height. She wore a simple buckskin shift and more gold jewelry than a Mr. T
look- alike convention. Her nose was a little sharper, a little longer, but as we stopped and
faced each other from about ten feet away, I could see the hate boiling behind her eyes. I had
no doubt that this was the duchess.
I smiled at her and said, “I gotcha now.”
“Yes,” Arianna replied. Her eyes flicked up and around us in a quick circle, taking in the
thousands of members of the Red Court and their retainers. “I may faint with the terror.”
“Why?” I demanded of her. “Why bring the child into this? Why not just come straight to
me?”
“Does it matter at this point?”
I shrugged. “Not really. I’m curious.”
She stared at me for a moment and then she smiled. “You don’t know.”
I eyed her warily. “Don’t know what?”
“Dear boy,” she said. “This was never about you.”
I scowled. “I don’t understand.”
“Obviously,” Arianna said, and gave me a stunning smile. “Die confused.”
A conch horn moaned and Alamaya turned to bow toward the temple I’d just come
through. I could see the Red King seated upon a throne made of dark, richly polished wood,
decorated with golden filigree and designs.
Alamaya rose and turned to us. “Lord and lady, these are the limits within which you must
do battle. First . . .”
I scowled. “Hey. This is an Accords matter. We abide by the Code Duello.”
The Red King spoke, and though he was more than two hundred feet away, I heard him
clearly. Alamaya listened and bowed. “My lord replies that this is a holy time and holy ground
to our people, and has been from time immemorial. If you do not wish to respect the traditions
of our people, he invites you to return tomorrow night. Unfortunately, he can make no promises
about the fate of his newest chattel should you choose to do so.”
I eyed the Red King. Then I snorted. “Fine,” I said.
Alamaya nodded and continued. “First,” she said. “As you are both wielders of Power, you
will duel with Power and Power alone. Physical contact of any kind is forbidden.”
Arianna’s eyes narrowed.
Mine did, too. I knew that the Red Court had dabblers in magic—hell, the first Red Court
vampire I’d ever met had been a full-blown sorceress by the time she’d been elevated to the
Red Court’s nobility. Judging by Arianna’s jewelry, her proper place had been on the eleventh
tier of the pyramid—the one directly below the Lords of Outer Night themselves. It stood to
reason that even a dabbler could have accrued way too much experience and skill over the
course of millennia.
“Second,” the mortal priestess said, “your persons and whatsoever power you use must
be contained within the walls of this court. Should either of you violate that proscription, you
will be slain out of hand by the wills of my lord and the Lords of Outer Night.”
“I have this problem with buildings,” I said. “Maybe you noticed the columns back the other
way . . . ?”
Alamaya gave me a blank look.
I sighed. Nobody appreciates levity when they’re in the middle of their traditional mumbo
jumbo, I guess. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“Third,” Alamaya said. “The duel will begin at the next sounding of the conch. It will end
only when one of you is no more. Do you understand the rules as I have given them to you?”
“Yep,” I said.
“Yes,” said Arianna.
“Have you anything else to say?”
“Always,” I said. “But it can wait.”
Arianna smiled slightly at me. “Give my father my thanks, and tell him that I will join him in
the temple momentarily.”
Alamaya bowed to us both. Then she retreated from the field and back over to her boss.
The night grew silent. Down in the stadium, there wasn’t even the sound of wind. The silence
gnawed at me, though Arianna looked relaxed.
“So,” I said, “your dad is the Red King.”
“Indeed. He created me, as he created all of the Thirteen and the better part of our nobility.”
“One big bloodsucking Brady Bunch, huh? But I’ll bet he missed all the PTA meetings.”
The duchess studied me and shook her head. “I shall never understand why someone
hasn’t killed you before now.”
“Wasn’t for lack of trying,” I said. “Hey, why do you suppose he set up the rules the way he
did? If we’d gone by the Code Duello, there’s a chance it could have been limited to a physical
confrontation. Really seems to be taking away most of your advantages, doesn’t he?”
She smiled. “A jaded person might consider it a sign of his weakness.”
“Nice spin on that one. Purely out of curiosity, though: Once you kill me, what comes
next?”
She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I continue to serve the Red Court to the best of my
ability.”
I showed her my teeth. “Meaning you’re going to knock Big Red out of that chair, right?”
“That is more ambitious than reasonable,” she said. “One of the Thirteen, I should think,
will ascend to become Kukulcan.”
“Creating an opening in the Lords of Outer Night,” I said, getting it. “Murdering your father
to get a promotion. You’re all class.”
“Cattle couldn’t possibly understand.”
“Couldn’t understand that Daddy’s losing it?” I asked. “That he’s reverting into one of your
blood slaves?”
Her mouth twitched, as if she were restraining it from twisting into a snarl. “It happens, betimes,
to the aged,” Arianna said. “I love and revere my father. But his time is done.”
“Unless you lose,” I said.
“I find that unlikely.” She looked me up and down. “What a . . . novel outfit.”
“I wore it especially for you,” I said, and fluttered my eyelashes at her.
She didn’t look amused. “Most of what I do is business. Impersonal. But I’m going to enjoy
this.”
I dropped the wiseacre attitude. The growing force of my anger burned it away. “Taking
my kid isn’t impersonal,” I said. “It’s a Kevorkianesque cry for help.”
“Such moral outrage. Yet you are as guilty as I. Did you not slay Paolo’s child, Bianca?”
“Bianca was trying to kill me at the time,” I said. “Maggie is an innocent. She couldn’t possibly
hurt you.”
“Then you should have considered that before you insulted me by murdering my grandchild,”
she hissed, her voice suddenly tight and cold. “I am patient, wizard. More patient than
you could imagine. And I have looked forward to this day, when the consequences of your arrogance
shall fall upon both you and all who love you.”
The threat lit a fire in my brain, and I thought the anger was going to tear its way free of
my chest and go after her without me.
“Bitch,” I spat. “Come get some.”
The horn blew.
Changes
45
Both of us had been gathering up our wills during the snark-off, and the first instant of the duel
nearly killed us both.
I called forth force and fire, both laced with the soulfire that would help reinforce its reality,
making the attack more difficult to negate or withstand. It took the shape of a sphere of bluewhite
fire the size of an inflatable exercise ball.
Meanwhile, Arianna fluttered her hands in an odd, twisting gesture and a geyser of water
erupted from the soil with bone-crushing force.
The two attacks met halfway between us, with results neither of us could prevent. Fire and
water turned to scalding-hot steam in a detonation that instantly washed back over us both.
My shield bracelet was ready to go, and a situation something like this one that had rendered
my left hand into a horror prop had inspired me to be sure I could protect myself from this kind
of heat in the future.
I leapt back and landed in a crouch, raising the shield into a complete dome around me as
the cloud of steam swept down, its heat boiling the grass as it came. It stayed there for several
seconds before beginning to disperse, and when it finally did, I couldn’t see Arianna anywhere
on the field.
I kept the all-around shield in place for a moment, and rapidly focused upon a point a little
bit above and midway between my eyebrows. I called up my Sight and swept my gaze around
the stadium, to see Arianna, forty yards away and running to put herself in position to shoot
me in the back. A layer of greasy black magic seemed to infest the air around her—the veil
that my physical eyes hadn’t been able to see. To my Sight, she was a Red Court vampire in
its true form, only even more flabby and greasy than the normal vamp, a creature ancient in
power and darkness.
I tried not to see anything else, but there was only so much I could do. I could see the
deaths that had been heaped upon this field over centuries, lingering in a layer of translucent
bones that covered the ground to a depth of three or four feet. In the edges of my vision, I
could see the grotesqueries that were the true appearance of the Red Court, every one of
them a unique and hideous monster, according to his particular madness. I didn’t dare look
directly up at the spectators, and especially not those gathered on the second floor of the little
temple at the end of the stadium. I didn’t want to look at the Red King and his Lords unveiled.
I kept my gaze moving, as if I hadn’t spotted Arianna on the prowl, and kept turning in a
circle, timing when my back was going to be exposed to her before I dropped the shield and
rose, panting, as if I couldn’t have held it any longer than that. I kept on turning, and an instant
before she would have released her spell, I whirled on her, pointed a finger, and snarled,
“Forzare!”
Raw will lashed out and exploded against her chest just before the flickers of electricity
she’d gathered could congeal into a real stroke of lightning. It threw her twenty feet back and
slammed her against the ancient rock wall along the side of the ball court.
Before she could fall, I looked up at the top of the wall, seized a section of large stones in
fingers of unseen will, and raked them out of their resting places, so that they plunged thirty
feet down toward Arianna.
She was superhumanly quick, of course. Anyone mortal would have been crushed. She
got away with only a glancing blow from one of the smaller stones and darted to the side,
rolling a sphere of lurid red light into a ball between her hands as she went.
I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of that, whatever it was. So I kept raking at the
wall, over and over again, bringing down dozens of the stones and forcing her to keep moving,
while I ran parallel to her and kept our spacing static.
We were both slinging magic on the run, but she had more one-on-one experience than
me. Like a veteran gunslinger in the Old West, she took her time lining up her shot while I
flailed away at her with rushed actions that had little chance to succeed. All told, I must have
dropped several dozen tons of rock down onto her as we ran, inflicting nothing worse than a
few abrasions and heavy bruises.
She threw lightning at me once.
The world flashed red-white and something hard hit me in the back. My legs went wobbly
and I sat there for a subjective hour, stunned, and realized that whatever she had packed her
lightning bolt with, it had been sufficient to throw me twice as far as my heavy punch had
thrown her. I’d bounced off the opposite wall. I looked down at myself, expecting to see a
huge hole with burned edges—and instead found a black smudge on my overdone breastplate,
and a couple of flaws in the gold filigree where the metal had partially melted.
I was alive.
My head came back together in a sudden rush, and I knew what was coming. I flung up
my shield, shaping it not into a portion of a sphere, as I usually did, but into a lengthy triangle
in the shape of a pup tent. I crouched beneath it and no sooner had I done so than stones
from the wall above me, torn free by Arianna’s will, began to slam into the shield. I crouched
there, rapidly being buried in grey stone, and tried desperately to get my impact-dizzied brain
to think of a plan.
The best I came up with under the circumstances was this: What would Yoda do?
There was a tiny moment between one rock falling and the next and I dropped the shield.
As the next rock began to fall, I stretched out my hand and my will, catching it before gravity
could give it much velocity. Again I screamed, “Forzare!” and with an enormous effort of will I
altered the course of the stone’s fall, flinging it as hard as I could at Arianna, abetted by gravity
and the remnants of her own magic.
She saw it coming, but not until it was too late. She lifted her hands, her fingers making
warding gestures as she brought her own defensive magic to bear. The stone smashed
through it in a flash of reddish light, and then struck her in the hip, spinning her about wildly
and sending her to the ground.
“Harry Dresden, human catapult!” I screamed drunkenly.
Arianna was back on her feet again in an instant: Her shield had bled enough of the energy
from the stone to prevent it from smashing into her with lethal force, but it had bought me
enough time to get out of the pile of rocks around me and away from the stadium wall. I
smashed at her with more fire, and she parried each shaft deftly, congealing water out of the
air into wobbling spheres that intercepted the bolts of flame and exploded into concealing
steam. By the fifth or sixth bolt, I couldn’t see her with my physical eyes, but I did see energies
in motion behind the steam as she pulled another dark sheath of veiling energy around
her, and I saw her take off into an animal-swift sprint, again circling me to attack me from behind.
No. She couldn’t be trying the same thing twice.
Duels between wizards are about more than swatting each other with various forms of energy,
just as boxing is about more than throwing hard punches. There is an art to it, a science
to it, in which one attempts to predict the other’s attack and counter it effectively. You have to
imagine a counter to what the opponent might do, and have it ready to fly at an instant’s notice.
Similarly, you have to imagine your way around the strength of his defenses. A duel of
magic is determined almost purely by the imaginations and raw power of those involved.
Arianna had obviously prepared against my favorite weapon—fire—which was only intelligent.
But she had tried this backstabbing ploy on me once before, and nearly got burned doing
it. A wizard of any experience would tell you that she would never have tried that one
again, for fear that the enemy would exploit it even further.
Arianna was an experienced killer, but she hadn’t done a lot of dueling with nothing to rely
on except her magic. She’d always had the cushion of her extraordinary strength and speed
to fall back upon. Hell, it would have been the smart way to kill me—come straight in, shedding
attacks and maybe taking some hits to get close enough to end it decisively.
Except here, she couldn’t. And she wasn’t adjusting well to the handicap. Flexibility of
thought is almost never a strength of the truly ancient monsters of the world.
Instead of obliging her by standing in place, as I had last time she’d tried to give me the
runaround, I darted forward, into the edges of the concealing steam. I got burned, and accepted
it as the price of doing business. I clenched my teeth, focusing past my pain, and tracked
Arianna’s energy with my Sight, waiting for my shot and hoping that she didn’t have the Sight
as well.
Apparently she didn’t, or wasn’t bothering to use it, relying upon her superior senses instead.
She got into position and seemed to realize that I’d gone into the steam. She began to
advance cautiously, gathering more lightning to her cupped hands. I saw the instant in which
she began to spot my outline, the way she drew a breath to speak the word to unleash the
lightning upon me.
“Infriga,” I hissed, and threw both hands forward. “Infriga forzare!”
And the entire cloud bank of steam in the air around me congealed into needle-pointed
spears of ice that flew at her as if fired from a gun.
They struck her just as she unleashed her lightning bolt, which shattered one of the
spears and tore a two-foot furrow in the dirt some twenty feet to my side.
Arianna stood still for a moment, her black eyes wide with disbelief, staring down at the
spears and shards of ice that had slammed deep into her flesh. She looked up at me for a
second and opened her mouth.
A blob of black blood burst out and spilled down over her chin. Then she shuddered and
fell, simply limp, to the ground.
From the far end of the ball court, I heard my godmother throw back her head and let out
an eerie howl of excitement and triumph, bubbling with laughter and scorn.
I watched Arianna twisting upon the spears of ice. She’d been pierced in dozens of
places. The worst hit came from an icicle as thick as my forearm, which had impaled her
through the belly and come out the back, bursting the blood reservoir of the creature beneath
Arianna’s flesh mask. The pure, crystalline-clear ice showed a glimpse of her insides, as if
seen through a prism.
She gasped a word I didn’t recognize, again and again. I didn’t know what language it
was, but I knew what it meant: No, no, no, no.
I stood over her for a moment. She struggled to bring some other form of magic to bear
against me, but the cruel torment of those frozen spears was a pain she had never experienced
and did not know how to fight. I stared down at the creature that had taken my daughter
and felt . . .
I felt only a cold, calm satisfaction, whirling like a blizzard of snow and sleet in the storm of
my wrath.
She stared up at me with uncomprehending eyes, black blood staining her mouth. “Cattle.
You are c-cattle.”
“Moo,” I said. And I lifted my right hand.
Her eyes widened further. She gasped a word I didn’t know.
From the corner of my eye, I saw the Red King rise from his distant throne.
I poured all that was left of my fury into my hand and snarled, “No one touches my little
girl.”
The explosion of force and fire tore a crater in the ground seven feet across and half as
deep.
Arianna’s broken, headless corpse lay sprawled within it. “
The Templar is in power armor. To the best of my knowledge, Black Templars don’t have any inherent resistances to powers other than their native willpower, and their armor normally lacks such capabilities as well.
Therefore, all Dresden needs to do is drop a tech-hex on the Templar, and the armor dies. Space Marines are badasses, with or without their armor on, but when their armor dies on them while they’re wearing it, they get boned over hard – they’re practically immobilized when that happens.
After that, it’s simply a matter of time before Dresden finishes the Templar off, since, well, taking off Mark VII Aquila power armor isn’t a quick or easy process at the best of times.
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Dresden completely assrapes basically anyone who is heavily tech-based if he has even the slightest bit of time to act/react in.
“Oh look, Cross’ butthurt revenge thread got posted”
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“Suggested By Guardianangel1911″
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………………
I think Justicar Alaric of the Grey Knights would have been a better pairing. Grey Knights are trained to fight ‘magic’. Templars are just another chapter.
heh. heh.
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well, for one, the power armor is useless.
two, harry is really really tough. like beyond gandalf tough.
Proof Dresden’s Hexes work on something like Power Armour?
I’m assuming he does better then that other harry.
I don’t see why a hex wouldn’t work on the armor unless BTs have magic resistance.
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But for scenario 2 we’d need feats of the hex to see if he could do it before a couple of bolt rounds get fired.
I’ll have to dig around for it but Dresden doesn’t go out of his way to hex that often.
Wouldn’t the Templars suit, weapons, and anything tech be fucked up just by Dresden being around?
Does the Temp rely or any cybernetics or anything other then the armor?
@Lowk
I would think it would, like I said a carbomb was set off by his presence and computers and other tech generally die around him
@Mister Teal
3. Burden of proof fallacy
This is when someone attempts to make someone else prove a claim when the burden of proof is really on them to prove it. The burden of proof is always on the positive claim, and the person who makes the claim.
What?
I just said I wanted to see the speed feats of the hex, because if it can’t get anything done before the marine draws and fires, the bolts are going to kill him.
Burden of Proof. You must support your claims.
Which one, the bolts killing him?
Yeah I can’t find any instances of Dresden hexing in mid combat.
@Mad-Eye Morgan/Officer N.Z
I know S.J’s butthurt over how much badassery it took to call him out on the rampant idiocy, we don’t need to make it more obvious in here, I hope.
@Lizard God
Didn’t I tell you that Dresden’s a Badass Cousa-Frakka(last part is figuratively speaking, I know guys who are a lot more literal!) who’d pretty much give Haseo of all people fits and make Potter look like a Muppet version of MegaMan Classic?
Everyone quit with the butthurt comments. Its so puerile and pointless.
@Cap Epic
You win, Let’s all agree to end this case before I confess how Grief-Stricken I can get at times, or how Bloodlusted I can be, for that matter, alright?
How about Justicar Alaric(WH40k GK) vs. Sauron(LOTR) and Harry Potter(HP)?
@Murderer
How about a Big Fat No???
Or better yet, how about Alaric vs a Dresdenverse Skinwalker?
@Admiral
Speaking of Skinwalker, care to toss a Sorcerer-Type Skinwalker up Alaric’s way, Admiral?
I’m sadly unaware of the BT and their power armor and weapons. I’m assuming the armor is run off of some sort of power source but what about the gun? Are we talking your standard shell/firing mechanism gun or is it some manner of Pew Pew laser?
I’m not sure Dresden being able to hex out a gun is anything more than PIS, He drives a car after all.
@GrinningDemon
I can’t say we met before until now, I’m Commander Cross of factpile, an honor to meet you, sir. (goes to raise hand for a handshake)
@Cross
You haven’t been to your site in a while.
@Cross
The honor is all mine and I am pleased to make your acquaintance.
“I’m not sure Dresden being able to hex out a gun is anything more than PIS, He drives a car after all.”
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Wasn’t his car old. I know it anything made after ww2 gets messed up when around him. Also iirc he can’t use the air conditioning in the car or a radio, it’s to high tech. AC and a radio is to high tech, lol.
@Mad-Eye Morgan/Officer N.Z
Because the main computer’s not working, actually.
Besides, I fear if I get back, I’d wind up revoking someone’s factpiler honors for 3 months straight, NQA, so its a case of enjoying the time for them while it lasts, more or less.
Also, care to get back to Hawke vs Haseo to make it clear that I intend to expand discussions for both sides, or are you liking this match just fine for us to get back to it?
P.S: the above-mentioned idea is more or less akin to getting Gannondorf and N64!-Link against Alaric, and I want my receptions for Alaric to remain at least fairly decent and untainted!
@GrinningDemon
So what brought you to the site, may I ask?
Is it the new influx in Dresdenverse fights pouring in, as of late?
Yeah, it was an old beetle. That being said, it’s still more mechanically complex than your standard gun. If the BT lugs around some high tech particle accelerator then yes, Harry should be able to disable. If it’s just a bigger, meaner version of a pistol, I don’t see why it wouldn’t still function.
@Cross
Just wondering when you’d get back there. I had a PM sent to you there.
@ cross.
I was a casual observer for a long while. I decided to make an account on the off chance that I could contribute something, Now that we’re into something I know. I’m speaking up.
@GrinningDemon
When I can get to a Main Computer, IF I can do that, I intend to join the Admiral and MessMaker to see to it we suggest a 3-vs-3 fight with another trio from the Dresdenverse up against a trio from the dot.hack universe(because let’s face it, neither Dresden nor Haseo can afford to be the only AmBadAssadors for their worlds, right?) and I’d hope you’d be there for that match, too, alright?
@ Cross.
I would love to.
Thank you for the invite.
@Officer N.Z/Mad-Eye Morgan
I promise you that at earliest is this friday if the Monitor’s up and ready by then, and at the latest is next Thursday, alright?
@GrinningDemon
Well that makes two of us, in fact, and I’m hoping while Dresden will get a fairly decent challenge in this match, that he’s not gonna start losing a factpile fight in here until he can fight either Skulduggery Pleasant or Haseo, to be honest, alright?
@Cross
I think this fight is all going to come down to the mechanics of the BT gear.
That being said, Harry is a tough customer and has come back from a lot, BT better make sure the job is done before walking away. =)
@GrinningDemon
From one would-be worthy opponent to another, that makes the two of us in here.
Plus, the guys who raised Dresden actually remembered to Field-Test the living Tartarus/Warp out of him until there’s undeniability that he’s fight-worthy, so that’s another thing going for Dresden, right?
Also care to join the topia?
@Cross
Alright, thanks.
its how old the tech is more than the complexity, and if not the guns it would screw up the armor.
@Cross
Indeed. I would imagine that shielding against baseballs at such a young age would make you pretty excellent at it.
Forgive my ignorance, what is this “topia” you speak of?
@GuardianAngel
Newer tech = more complex.
The reason his car runs is because it’s not controlled by a motherboard, governors and various other computerized parts that our cars are reliant on today.
You take an original colt peacemaker and a reproduction from today, no difference in mechanics.
@Cross, if you think Alaric is too OP then he could fight them with no armor or weapons.
true, complexity is part of it. But magic changes throughout time in the Dresdenverse, in the past it put weird marks on livestock and made fire burn different colors, now it messes with tech. especially any made after world war two, the actual tech itself I meant not the weapon, rebuild the Blue Beetle as it was with no modern addons and it would probably still run moderately good, don’t forget even it broke down just from him riding in it sometimes. Even if the BT’s guns don’t jam his power armor is probably a bit more advanced than the Blue Beetle was
86 is at Grinningdemon
Questions I need to ask.
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1: Maximum Force his shields have been observed tanking.
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2. How many Gs his Gravity alteration Spells change the locale in either direction.
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3. Most Durable Substance his flame Spells have compromised/recorded temp for such.
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4. His best Durability feats unrelated to magic that doesn’t directly produce physical effects.
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5. Reaction Feats.
@GrinningDemon
Factpiletopia.com is meant to be a place where badass fight plans are often made, normally in public since secrecy in general’s frowned on, in fact.
@Admiral
Can you please throw Grey Knight Justicar Alaric against a Sorcerer-Type Skinwalker, please?
@Murderer
Please have Alaric vs Edward Cullen instead, or even Ed Cullen and Eragon at the same time.
I’m not having a legend like Alaric face some emo-vegan-Jersey-reject. Sauron or Mr Sinister is the best I can do.
Factpiletopia.com, isn’t just match planning, it’s the forum based sister site to this one, you will find its where most of the veterans of factpile, mostly reside now.
Alaric vs Pyramid Head + God Enel, then?
@Shaun
You thinking the match is shaping up to be somewhat better, so far?
@guardianangel
I am under the impression that any time it’s mentioned that “tech after wwII” is affected is a reference to the complexity of the item, not the era it was built in. I’m assuming that BT’s gun is simply a larger, more powerful version of a gun (I.E. it still operates on the same principle as a standard gun from today.) If time of manufacture mattered in relation to magic messing with basic mechanisms then Harry wouldn’t be able to carry his revolver. All in all I think we’re splitting semantic hairs and for all intents and purposes, we’re on the same side.
I think the adding of the second scenario helped even things out.
Pyramid head? Pyramid HEAD!!! What kind of travesty are you trying to summon here!? Alaric has defeated greater deamons so powerful they could wipe out the Imperium. He’s defeated the best fighters a chaos world stuck in the warp could muster and turned that world into a civil war. He’s taken the best Titans the Dark Mechanicum can build and destroyed them in droves. You want him to fight a demi-boss that a little girl could kill? For shame.. Alaric has to be introduced in a legendary fight, such as Alaric vs. Starkiller, En Sabah Nur, Hellboy, Sinsiter, Sauron, Gandalph or some other popular, magic based entity.
@Shaun
Which in turn leaves room for contentment for most to have in here, right?
Also, mind helping to get Alaric a decent enough fight around here before he gets introduced in bad tastes?
I’m thinking Alaric vs a Dresdenverse Skinwalker, but leave it to the Admiral to decide which type of Skinwalker would be best for Alaric to face, agreed?
@Murderer
Alright.
Here’s an Idea for you:
Care to try to toss Alaric against a Dresdenverse Skinwalker, but let the Admiral GuardianAngel1911 dictate which exact Skinwalker type will Alaric face?
You asking for a Sorcerer, try a Sorcerer Type Skinwalker, then.
The SM’s bolt weapon is devasting in firepower, but relatively simple in mechanics, it uses current means of firing.
The more complex aspect of the weapons is its munitions.
wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Boltgun#.T4dVWhB5mSM
@GB
Well the Skinwalker was in the form of a gorilla like beast and is supernaturally fast so whenever it hit him it was like a charging silverback moving at high speed. It helps that the Skinwalker is close to Kratos in strength
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Its never really stated how many G’s Dresden’s spell puts out.
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recorded temp…..can’t really think of anything. Where would you rate Fallen Angels on durability? Dresden has regularly burned buildings down.
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have to look for them on the last two
@Grinning Demon
Good point.