Live and Let Drood

hide behind some other soldiers.
    The two soldiers with elven wands stepped forward to take his place, stabbing the wands at me while shouting something in badly accented elvish. Massive energies blasted me, burning so brightly in the space between us that my mask had to shut itself down for a moment to protect my eyes. I stood my ground in the dark, untouched and untouchable inside my armour, until the attack was over. My mask cleared, I looked around and discovered I was standing in a large circle of dead grass, surrounded by burning hedge creatures and shattered statues. I let the two soldiers with wands take a good look at all the destruction they’d caused and then at me, completely untouched; then I started purposefully towards them. They threw away their wands and turned and ran, and I let them go.
    Next up were a whole bunch of soldiers with futuristic high-energy weapons. You can get your hands on anything these days, if you know where to look. The soldiers hosed me down with all kinds of energy beams, some so powerful they left sparkling trails in the air behind them, but they still washed harmlessly over my armour. One bounced off and set fire to a hedge sculpture of a towering minotaur. It burnt fiercely, but didn’t move in the least, for which I was quietly grateful. Other soldiers hit me with sub- and supersonic frequencies, and I just stood there and let them do it, until they got a bit upset and gave up.
    I waited patiently while the soldiers shut down their various weapons and had a quiet but agitated discussion. I was fascinated to see what they’d do. Their next effort turned out to be a remote-control teleport device, which did its very best to send me somewhere else. But the process couldn’t get a hold on my armour, so it bounced back and sent the device’s owner somewhere else. Given the man’s brief anticipatory scream before he disappeared, I had to assume that wherever he’d intended to send me, it hadn’t been anywhere nice.
    I looked across at Molly. Soldiers were surrounding her from a distance, and using exotic tech weapons to form a cage of pulsing energies around her. Molly calmly took off the spangly earrings Patrick the Armourer had given her, primed them with a muttered Word and tossed them casually between the energy bars of her cage. Both earrings exploded noisily, generating big black clouds of smoke, through which soldiers were thrown screaming with their uniforms on fire. Surprised and caught off guard, most of the soldiers maintaining the cage were blown away in a moment, and the energy bars just collapsed. Molly stepped casually out of the fading trap and looked happily about her. The black smoke cleared to reveal two large charred craters in the lawns, and quite a lot of dazed and damaged mercenary soldiers. Half the soldiers who’d been standing there threatening her weren’t standing there anymore, and the rest were retreating for safer ground at quite a pace.
    More soldiers pressed forward, grim faced and determined, carrying a variety of impressive-looking weapons. Molly smiled and produced a flat box with a single button on the top. I winced just a bit as I recognised it. The protein exploder. Molly pointed the box at the soldiers advancing on her and pressed the button, and most of the soldiers just disappeared. A great cloud of pink mist rolled slowly through the air while bones clattered quietly to the grassy lawn.
    The surviving soldiers turned and ran, scattering across the grounds, presumably in the hope it would make them harder to hit. Molly picked them off with the box, one at a time, smiling reflectively. Her sharp-shooting skills were improving.
    With Crow Lee’s private army either dead or deserting, the grounds themselves took up the fight. Massive robotic guns rose from inside hidden bunkers, straight up through the flower displays, long barrels moving quickly to target Molly and me. I pointed an accusing golden finger at the gun positions.
    “That’s another thing he stole from my family!”
    All the robotic guns opened fire at once, pumping out bullets at a rapid rate of fire, raking me from head to foot. There was enoughfirepower to punch a hole through steel plating, but it was still no match for my armour. I walked deliberately forward into the bullets and then moved from one gun position to the next, ripping the robotic guns out of their housing and throwing them aside. Not because they posed me any real threat, but because I was