V3Ch90-A Simple Plan

The Charnel Fortress watched.

The spirit was waiting for its moment to act, and it had a good idea of when that moment might come, but for now, it was a while away. For the moment, it simply paid close attention, provided occasional support with its own powers, and watched everything as it happened.

“It’s a simple plan,” the necromancer was saying from within its walls, accompanied by most of his strongest assets, all of whom Tybalt had identified to the Fortress earlier. “Vidalia puts him to sleep, and Dero kills him. Instant death. Should prevent him from using his powers at all.”

“That sounds effective,” the paladin said slowly. Tybalt could tell she had some other thoughts on it - perhaps that it was dishonorable - but she kept that to herself.

“He’s an undefeated general for a reason,” Vidalia replied in a grim voice, picking up on the same thing the necromancer had. “Don’t underestimate the enemy. Don’t think about what’s ‘sporting’ or who has the numbers advantage right now. We could all die tonight. Surviving is more important.”

Samara swallowed, her eyes darting to the foxgirl’s stomach. “Right. Of course.”

“Just focus on the mission,” Tybalt said. “You’re learning a new way of behaving. The old honor code isn’t what holds here. This is war. War on behalf of the gods. You have a great, world-altering purpose now, my paladin.”

She just bit her lip and nodded.

“If that doesn’t work…” The necromancer began describing his few contingency plans for dealing with the General, which the Charnel Fortress was already familiar with.

Tybalt conjured a set of chains from his mana as he was speaking, then handed them to the dark elf. The paladin, the spirit noted, had a much stronger reaction to seeing them. She looked at the chains with a strange expression on her face that the Charnel Fortress did not understand.

Then the necromancer continued his explanation.

He certainly likes to hear himself talk, the spirit thought.

The Fortress watched as the mummy controlling their movement through the walls brought them skillfully to the wall opposite the entrance to the enemy General’s chamber.

They positioned themselves directly behind General Caracalla’s guards. Two sets of arms emerged from the stone, grabbed the two guards around the necks, and jerked them backward into the wall itself. There was hardly a sound.

Then the men were inside the wall, and the necromancer and his comrades dispatched them quickly before stepping out into the hall outside the General’s room themselves.

It was a slightly out of the way section of the fortress, the level above the old officers’ quarters, where the fortress’s commanders had resided over the centuries.

***

“Leaves from the vine, falling so slow…”

Caracalla shook his head, wiped his nose, and coughed to clear his throat again. He was tempted to put his lute down. This cold was ruining his singing in addition to slowing the flow of his mana. Even if it was only for his own entertainment, he preferred to have a good voice and a clear throat at all times.

And this entertainment was part of how he was keeping himself awake.

Like his advisors, he sensed that Fort Hadrian might have been left vacant as a trap. The force of undead there had been subdued too easily, the evil in the fortress banished too quickly, for him to feel truly secure. Surely, the Trust and the paladin had done their best… but this place still gave him a bad feeling.

The General had long ago learned to trust those feelings.

More than that, since he was multiple loops into this conflict with the necromancer, he had something of a feel for the man’s methods by now. Caracalla’s opponent was not above attempting the underhanded.

Half of him expected that some trap would spring tonight. If not tonight, it would be early the next morning as they were moving out. Certainly not long after that. There was no way the necromancer would let this go to an ordinary field battle, not after going to all the trouble of slaughtering the entire garrison and cursing Fort Hadrian with his dark powers.

Tonight, I won’t sleep, he thought with determination. Whatever nonsense my son might be up to, I will stand guard for all of us. Nothing will happen on my watch.

A slight noise carried through the wall outside his room. At that sound, Caracalla started.

It sounded like a small cry of alarm from two voices that were suddenly silenced.

That was exactly what he’d expect if some killers were taking his guards out.

He sighed. It was probably nothing.

“Gaufridus!” Caracalla called out finally. “Show yourself!”

He waited, but there was nothing from the guard.

Shit.

He rose and calmly belted his sword at his waist - fortunately, he was fully armored, in anticipation of some trick - then reached out with his mana, extending it in the form of tendrils through the floor and past the wall that led out of his chambers.

What the fuck?

He sensed the presence of around eight people there. It was hard to be certain of the number, since he was just approximating by how much of an impression they made on the ground outside the room - their weight, essentially.

How could that many people have snuck up without the guards sounding the alarm? Even if Gaufridus and Strabo couldn’t win against whoever had accompanied the necromancer, it was disturbing to think they’d been incapacitated so quickly that they were unable to even shout a warning.

Caracalla felt a sense of real conflict. He didn’t have nearly enough information yet, but his long-honed instincts told him he needed to make his escape from this loop.

He was preparing mentally to use his power, gathering his mana to reverse the flow of time, when he felt it.

A hit of magical power aimed at his brain.

It was only his superior Advanced Magic Sense that allowed him to detect it. Whoever was doing it was subtle, skilled with their power.

Whatever it was, it didn’t strike like a hammer. It was more like a chisel, searching him, trying to find a weak point wherever it could. Hitting him whisper-quiet, a suggestion more than a command.

He knew what the person was trying to do to him a moment later. He yawned.

“Sleep, huh?” he muttered aloud. “A very useful skill this person has.”

But that yawn was all it would do.

He raised his voice. “Do you think I’ve lasted all these years as the Kingdom’s most valuable mage without acquiring some magic resistance?”

Caracalla had two Rings of Magic Resistance, one of which he’d passed on to his son. It wasn’t impenetrable, if a mage more powerful than himself tried to attack him, and if someone hit him with an area of effect skill, it was actually weaker compared with more conventional defenses. But it didn’t feel like a waste just then. That was in addition to his personal magic resistance, honed through years off training.

I wonder if the sleep power has something to do with the way this necromancer and I seem to be playing hide and go seek with different futures. I change my strategy, he changes his. Maybe this sleep wizard who serves him is going into my mind before battle and discerning my strategies somehow.

He put some mana into his voice to make it ring in the listeners’ ears “Come on. I know you’re out there. Let’s have this showdown already!”

The only answer was a deafening silence.

Caracalla sensed a lack of confidence in that stillness.

He started shifting his mana, preparing not to reverse time just yet but to fight. The flow of energy within him was noticeably slower than usual - this damned cold, weakening him at exactly the wrong time - but he was still a powerful mage. Undoubtedly higher level than any new-minted necromancer who’d been doing this for a year or two, perhaps less.

If those outside his room were this afraid of him, he wouldn’t bother reversing time now, when he had hardly any information on the situation. He’d draw them out first, fight with them a little, and learn their powers, so he could make a better plan for next time. So he could avoid wasting more of his limited lifespan.

As Caracalla formed that resolve, he felt a surge of mana from outside the room. The presences there seemed to multiply.

The necromancer had summoned reinforcements.

It was time for the General to take the initiative, before he had a literal army outside his door. He reached for his power, preparing to hurl a Mystic Blast through the stone wall.

Then the door knob started to turn.

Caracalla waited a moment, sensing a malevolent power there, balancing between the desire to take the offense and his habitual caution.

A tall, pale young man stood there in gray-white armor covered in spikes. It appeared to be made of bone.

The newcomer raised his hands as if in a gesture of peace - or surrender.

“Ah, you must be him, then,” Caracalla said, allowing a smile to spread across his face. “We meet at last.”

“Yeah,” the figure replied, a scowl brewing on his face. “I’m the necromancer.”

Finally, I know his face.

Power gathered around the pale man, but the necromancer seemed hesitant to make a move. Something about the moment had taken him by surprise, and he was still reckoning with that.

“You were so sure you’d assassinate me in my sleep, eh?” Caracalla said.

The necromancer gritted his teeth and nodded.

“You can’t always get what you want,” he said.

“Well, don’t feel bad. It wasn’t a bad plan,” the General said amiably. “It’s just that better men than you have already tried it. Even if I didn’t have a means of magic resistance, I have a contingency for this sort of thing.”

“You mean your son?”

Caracalla tried not to let his surprise show on his face.

It doesn’t matter. If you don’t kill him here, you’ll loop back, and he won’t remember this conversation anyway. There’s no way someone else with your power exists, so he won’t benefit at all from hearing the truth.

Still, he hesitated. Explaining one’s weaknesses to the enemy was a rookie mistake. Let the necromancer stew in the uncertainty.

“Well, my son is very important to me,” Caracalla said noncommittally after a moment. “You’ll understand if - do you have kids?”

“Not yet.”

Not ever, unfortunately, now that we’ve met, the General thought.

“If I did, I wouldn’t bring them into a battlefield before they were ready,” the necromancer added.

Caracalla opened his mouth to speak again when two small violet streaks shot through the walls.

They entered a five foot radius around Caracalla’s body and slowed visibly, to a crawl. He raised an eyebrow, smirked, and stepped to the side. Then he watched as the two glowing projectiles moved slowly past him, through the place where he’d been standing.

I sense old concepts at work. The void…? Isn’t that an extinct affinity? Who are these people the necromancer has surrounded himself with? I thought I was going after one forbidden class, and now it feels more like at least three.

“I supposed that was the backup plan,” Caracalla said, looking back at the necromancer. The man hadn’t moved apart from tightening his jaw a little. Of course, Caracalla would have sensed it if he had tried to flee and stopped him. Now that they were in the same room, there was no escape for the weaker mage. “That makes two failed assassination attempts tonight. But you shouldn’t feel too badly about it. As I’ve said, I’m a difficult man to kill. Why don’t you sit down and tell me a little about yourself?”

“I don’t think that benefits me,” the necromancer said slowly. “It just feeds you, right? You’re just gathering information for next time?”

Caracalla reached out instantly and grabbed the necromancer in a tight, almost crushing grip with a giant hand made of concentrated mana. It was not a skill granted by the system, simply something one could do with will and raw power. With his years of experience, it was a task the General performed casually.

He lifted the young man and moved him closer to where Caracalla stood beside the bed. He was very young, now that the General looked at him closely. Younger than Caracalla’s own son.

Just a boy, really. He felt a little twinge of sympathy before he quashed it.

“I don’t think you quite understood the nature of the question,” Caracalla said in a jovial but still firm voice. With another effort of will, he levitated a bottle of wine from his bedside table and began pouring himself a cup of red. The necromancer struggled slightly, but only slightly, against the General’s grip. It held firm, as Caracalla knew it would. This was the difference between a veteran mage and a man who had held his class for so short a time.

Certainly, the necromancer seemed promising. He still had a dense aura of mana around him that had been there since he entered the room, and he hadn’t lost any control of it after being grabbed. But talent and skill were worlds apart. The skill that came from experience was the definitive difference between an old, wily fox and a young pup that didn’t even really know how to use its fangs yet.

“Every moment you spend willingly talking to me and providing information is a moment in which I have a reason to keep you alive,” Caracalla continued. “A moment in which you have some small chance at changing your fate, however remote.” He lowered his voice threateningly. “Now, tell me about your little army, about yourself, about your friends in the hall… Tell me anything I would want to know, so I can make the next loop perfect. If you want to be stubborn we could always make this a more decisive loop, one in which you die right here and now. I could squeeze a bit tighter and see if some bones start cracking. So, would you prefer this turn into a final confrontation, or would you rather talk to me?”

A wave of power washed off of the necromancer. The energy he’d had gathered around him finally burst and filled the room. Caracalla’s instincts made him act more quickly than his conscious mind would have made the choice. He started initiating the new loop. Even as he questioned the decision - surely whatever power the necromancer was using would not kill him - his body was already implementing the solution.

But the cold he’d been suffering from slowed the flow of his mana marginally. This was his most powerful skill. For Geta, using it consumed all of his mana. Even for Caracalla, it was no mean feat to reverse the flow of time.

The energy from the necromancer struck the General a split-second before he’d gathered all the mana he needed to send himself back. As the pale man’s power struck him, Caracalla felt himself lose control, not just of the power he’d been gathering, but also of the mana he had wrapped around the necromancer.

Caracalla’s eyes widened in disbelief. The young man dropped to the floor, landing on his feet.

“You were saying?” he said with a cocky smirk.

The General kept his own smile in place, though inside, he felt a flicker of trepidation.

It was the first time in his life something like this had happened.

My power isn’t working?

“You’ve chosen the hard way, then,” Caracalla said with a shrug.

The General drew his sword and shifted into a well practiced fighting stance.