V3Ch97-Battle of the Charnel Fortress Part 2

The necromancer looked upon his works through the Charnel Fortress’s eyes.

He saw how the spiritual possession in barracks one was wreaking havoc there. Even as the soldiers were slaughtered by the huntsmasters’ relentless arrows - and forced to slaughter each other by the spirits that possessed some of them - no one came to their aid. That room’s inhabitants appeared set to be lost to the Royal Army completely in another few minutes.

It was not only because Edgard had sealed the entrance to that bunk hall with Pillars of Earth, but also because the soldiers in the hall and the courtyard had been distracted by the battle being joined in barracks two and three, where the doors weren’t blocked.

Zombies, skeletons, wendigos, ghouls, and ghasts rampaged in those two rooms, though they had not been as successful as Tybalt had hoped. The creatures required his direct guidance to be effective beyond engaging in random violence, and even with his help, they were less skillful fighters than their opponents, experienced soldiers.

They had slain dozens, perhaps fifty or sixty, in the two rooms together, but the number was a fraction of the five hundred or so in barracks two and three.

I need to do something there, the necromancer assessed. The Army’s numbers should be whittled down a bit further before the main attack was joined. The rank and file needed to see a large quantity of their own dead so they would break more easily.

His consciousness flickered to upstairs, where the hundred high elves he’d sent to the hospital there had moved into the hall and begun invading the officers’ quarters. Already, a half dozen officers lay dead on the ground - and four of the elves, despite the advantage of surprise.

The remaining officers were acquitting themselves well against the high elves, fighting in the hallways with powerful ranged magic and skills. One had a shovel and was magically ripping chunks of stone and earth from the walls with it and hurling them into the ranks of the high elves. Another was throwing balls of lightning. And there was one, young-looking - barely an adult - who lashed out at the invaders with tongues of white-hot fire.

Oh, shit.

As if to confirm his suspicions, one of the officers spoke up, glaring at the boy as he hurled a mana-coated javelin at the elves.

“Back behind me, Sevenhills, I won’t tell you again!”

***

Samara felt her heart warm slightly as Mariella smiled at her. The paladin was a little bit heartened just by that simple gesture as she tried to make herself do something she wasn’t sure she wanted to do.

But what did the fire mage want from her?

“You don’t need to call me ‘ma’am,’” Mariella said, visibly trying not to laugh.

Well, you’re the wife of a ruler, of noble blood yourself, and clearly just weeks away from giving birth to a potential heir to the throne, and I’m a mistress, of common blood, who calls your husband “master” when we’re in bed, Samara thought. Why wouldn’t I call you “ma’am?” I’m just glad you tolerate being in the same room as me. Most wives would not tolerate their husband’s mistress lingering nearby.

“I’ll call you whatever you like, ma’am,” the paladin replied deferentially after a moment.

“Hm.” Mariella’s eyes noticeably darted to Vidalia’s. Samara didn’t see what gesture the foxgirl might have made or what words she might have mouthed, but Mariella just nodded. “Forget about formalities for now. You’re part of the family. Why don’t you come over here and feel my baby? He’s kicking.”

“Oh, uh, sure.”

As the sound of screaming echoed through the air, the paladin walked over to Mariella and then carefully, timidly placed a hand on the fire mage’s belly.

The child really was moving in there. Samara thought the movements she felt - like little drumbeats coming from inside - were strong for one who must be so small.

It reminded her of what the necromancer had promised her. Affection, the possibility of love… and children.

Someday, I’ll have that inside of me, she thought, swallowing.

Samara and Mariella’s eyes met, and they exchanged a smile.

There was still a massacre happening in the next room - priests and holy knights fighting against an enemy they were not specialized for, with experience to match or surpass theirs - but somehow the carnage and screaming felt quieter with Samara’s hand on the fire mage’s stomach. Her racing heart had calmed. She took a few deep breaths on top of that and felt significantly better.

“Hey, Samara, Dero, I think I need help.” That broke the slight trance. It was her master’s voice.

Their eyes all turned to Tybalt.

“What do you need from me, master?” Samara asked, turning, sheathing her sword, and falling gracefully to her knees almost in a single motion.

“Yeah, what requires both of us?” Dero asked, eyebrows raised.

“I didn’t notice him when I was scanning through the Fortress’s vision earlier,” Tybalt said. “Well, there are thousands of soldiers and mages here. I wasn’t really looking out for individuals. But Mariella’s brother Dominic is upstairs. I recognize him from dreams. He’s just older now. The high elves were supposed to take care of the officers up there, but now that I’ve heard the name Sevenhills, and I recognized his face, Edgard got them to stop. The surviving officers are trying to break through the stairwell barricades now, and Edgard barely has them penned in. I need you to extract Dominic and bring him here, unharmed. The unharmed part is the priority. If he gets away, we can always capture him later.” His eyes looked to Samara’s left - at Mariella - and gave what was obviously meant to be a comforting look. But there was a nervousness at the edges of his smile that gave away his tension, even to Samara, who had never seen her master rattled by anything before.

“Let me go,” Mariella said.

Samara turned to look up at the fire mage and saw that the very pregnant woman had gone deathly pale. Out of the corner of her eye, the paladin caught a flicker of motion. The necromancer was shaking his head.

“Let me go,” she repeated, her voice taking on an edge. “He’s my brother, Tybalt.”

“No,” he said firmly. “I’ve already thought about it. You’re not going anywhere. You promised me you weren’t going near anything dangerous right now, as long as I would keep out of unnecessary danger too. You’re a woman of your word, aren’t you?”

“The upstairs people think they’re fighting elves,” Mariella said, ignoring most of what he’d said. “That was where you sent the other high elves, right? Well, I’m human. The soldiers are human. No pointy ears. So… So they won’t attack me! You just have to get the high elves to stop fighting, and—”

“No! My decision is final. You’d be relying on luck that the officers don’t obliterate you on sight. You’re letting the situation cloud your judgment. Samara and Dero are more equipped for this than you. Samara’s armor and magic resistance are stronger than yours, and Dero’s agility is better.”

“But I can talk him down,” the fire mage objected. “If he’s up there, he’ll be fighting too. How are they supposed to get him to stop? I—”

“Sorry,” Tybalt said, cutting her off. “This isn’t a situation where you’re going to have time for lengthy negotiations. And I’m more worried about you and our child than I am about anyone else. I know he’s family, but your safety has to remain my priority.”

“Tybalt, he’s my little brother. If Dom dies—” Her voice was breaking midsentence.

Samara spoke before she was even aware of what she wanted to say.

“He won’t,” the paladin said. “I’ll make sure of it, ma’am.”

“Same,” Dero said quietly. Samara saw the dark elf’s expression was grave, but she quickly shifted to a cocky smirk when Mariella turned to face her. “We’ll be making jokes about this for years, how you freaked out. All right?”

Mariella seemed to calm down a little and nodded. “I’m trusting you.”

“Send me, too,” Vidalia said quietly. “If she’s Mariella’s family, then she’s all of ours.”

“No—” Tybalt began.

“I can just put him to sleep,” the foxgirl promised. “It won’t be a long, drawn out negotiation if I’m there. We won’t have to fight him at all. Instant sleep. He won’t know what hit him.”

She was just as heavily pregnant as Mariella, but the obvious efficacy of her plan seemed to sway the necromancer. He gave a reluctant nod.

“Go, then,” he said. “Stay behind Samara at all times.”

He gave the paladin a look that said, I’m trusting you to protect her.

Samara nodded. Of course, master.

Dero grabbed Samara and Vidalia’s shoulders, and they were gone.

***

Tybalt closed his eyes again.

“Charnel Fortress, let me look through your eyes again.”

The necromancer’s consciousness soared, and this time, he floated into the courtyard.

He heard exclamations from atop the wall. The watchmen could see the Grand Beastfolk Army, with its undead and elven components, finally advancing.

I need to take advantage of this confusion, he decided instantly.

Tybalt teleported into the courtyard, to a corner he had identified where no one was paying any particular attention. They were all looking toward the southern walls - from which side Tybalt’s forces were approaching - or trying to get into barracks one, two, or three to help the people in there. It was the first he’d noticed of anyone trying to assist the unlucky barracks one residents, and they were only now barely attempting to break through the Pillars of Earth.

It’s far too late.

He pressed his hand to his Undead Storage seal and pushed a small amount of mana in.

A dozen undead appeared around him, most of them large and intimidating, one of them entirely invisible. These were his shock troops.

Then the necromancer was gone, teleported back into the crypt.

As he reappeared, he could tell the screams of the holy men and women in the crypt were finally dying down as the last of them choked on his own blood.

Good, now we can attack the courtyard through the chapel too.

His overall plan was a simple one. He was aiming to whittle the enemy force down and then surround them. Once they were surrounded, destroying the majority and turning the rest into the fuel for a massive undeath ritual should be easy enough. The appropriate mystic runes were already in place, buried under the courtyard, and if he and Stanislaw together lacked sufficient power to sacrifice so many at once, he would try to borrow some from the Charnel Fortress.

Whatever would come of a ritual on that scale, it would undoubtedly make even the spirit of the Charnel Fortress look tame by comparison.

“What did you see?” Mariella’s voice, urgent and close beside his ear, almost made him jump.

His senses were still connected with the Charnel Fortress’s awareness, so he could tell her what she wanted to know.

“They’re working on it.”

***

Dero, Samara, and Vidalia emerged at the end of the long hallway, right beside General Caracalla’s room.

Instantly, Dero’s Perfect Spatial Awareness detected multiple projectiles incoming. Her instincts screamed at her to move out of the way, but of course, she couldn’t. Vidalia was right behind her.

Dark Hole.

The arrows that had been headed their way vanished into an opening in space that appeared just in front of the trio of women. Dero felt a surprising prickle of fear at noticing that one of the arrows would have gone straight into Vidalia if she hadn’t intercepted it.

Or maybe Samara would have stopped it. The paladin already had her sword out again.

“Stop shooting, fuckface!” Dero demanded. “We’re on the same side!” She had detected what the people loosing arrows at them looked like, even before she actually saw them. It was the high elves.

“Princess Dero?” one of them asked. “Uh, I mean Queen!”

“I don’t give a shit about titles right now!”

“Sorry, we thought you were the enemy, sneaking up on us with some magic,” explained Commander Shalott, finally coming into view as Dero’s conjured Black Hole vanished. “You have our sincerest—”

“No time. Where’s the enemy?”

Shalott pointed down at the end of the hall. Dero couldn’t see them, but from the sounds of frantic hammering and blasts of magic, followed by moving earth, it seemed that they were trying to get through the barricaded stairs. There was hammering happening on the other side, too, but so far, the blockage held.

The chthonic mages must be somewhere in the floors, repeatedly reinforcing their barriers.

“All right,” Dero said. “We’re here to extract a single individual, Tybalt’s orders. Stay the fuck out of our way unless you want to answer to him.” She took a step forward, then stopped. “Is there anything I should know about these enemies?”

“They give as good as they get,” the Commander replied. “A variety of useful abilities on their side. We have a handful of our own dead to match theirs. If we pressed our advantage, our numbers would crush them, but Tybalt ordered us to hold back just now.” He frowned. “I suppose so you can extract your special person.”

“He’s the brother of one of the Queens,” Vidalia said from the side.

Shalott’s eyes widened, and then he nodded. “That makes more sense.”

Fucking stupid blue blooded logic, but all right. It made no sense whatsoever to pause a battle to rescue a single person, but Dero hadn’t been about to tell Mariella that. The dark elf would have acted the same if it was her family on the line, frantic and a little unreasonable.

We’ll get him back to you safe, she thought. We just have to get around one or two dozen of the Kingdom’s toughest officers. No big deal. We just… All right, stop thinking about it.

Dero grabbed the other two.

“I’m going to jump us close to the end of the hall,” she said quickly. “Then you, Samara, protect Vidalia while I go in and try to grab the boy.”

Fuck, this is insane. She felt nervous looking at the foxgirl’s swollen belly. Why did we agree to let Vidalia come? No, no, she’ll be useful… if the boy’s really stupid enough to resist us trying to take him out of danger. What am I saying, he’s human, of course he is…

She used Teleport.

Dero emerged almost by the stairs, and she found herself under fire a second later.

A long, whip-like pink object lashed out at her, and Dero instantly conjured and threw a void dagger at it. There was a hiss of pain as what the dark elf only now recognized was an almost reptilian tongue dropped to the ground, twitching, severed from its owner - an otherwise normal-looking human soldier.

Behind her, Dero sensed that Samara had quickly drawn back, pressing Vidalia behind her up against a wall to keep her entire surface area hidden behind the paladin.

Good, Dero thought as another dozen projectiles flew in her direction. I think she’ll need the protection.