Interlude - Vae Victus 2 (2/2)

She reached into a pocket, pulled out a mechanical bird. “Animus.” It wound within seconds, key turning in it, then it fluttered up into the sky. “Dollseye,” Amelia said. Then she nodded. “It’s there. It’s… huh. I think it’s stable.”

“So he succeeded!”

“Maybe. We need a closer look. Come on, it’ll only be up an hour.”

“That’s a pretty steep slope.”

“Yeah, we’d probably better leave Emmet here. Agility isn’t his forte.”

“I was more worried about me. Agility isn’t mine.”

“Oh don’t be a baby. C’mon. Animate your own armor if you get tired.”

“Fine, fine.”

They made it in about fifteen minutes. It was a rough climb, but Melos had spent so long building his constitution that it scarcely mattered. Amelia actually had it rougher than he did, and though wisdom had never been a priority, he was wise enough to keep his mouth shut as he gave her a hand up the last few feet.

And there it was… A rippling black curtain that filled the sky, filled the world, stretching up beyond sight, and to both sides. It was, simply, nothing.

Amelia’s animated bird sat on a boulder, observing it.

There wasn’t much else up here, on this little plateau. A few trees, a few rocks, a small pond that wasn’t much more than a collection of puddles with delusions of grandeur.

“Well, it’s here.” Melos scooped up a rock, hucked it in. It disappeared soundlessly.

Amelia scooped up the bird, hesitated. “I don’t want to lose it. Let’s see…” She dug in her pack, pulled out a little black bear. “Whoa no. No, you stay right here, Fluffly.”

“Fluffy?”

“One of my old toys. Dad wanted to give her back to me.”

“Fluffy.”

“Shut up! I was like two!”

“I wasn’t laughing. It’s cute.”

“Damn straight she’s cute. Ah, here we go.” Amelia pulled out a straw mannequin, tossed it to the ground. “Animus. Dollseye.” She blinked a few times. “Always weird shifting sight from one to another. Okay, dolly. March!” The little toy went in, and Melos watched it vanish just like the rock had.

“Nothing. Nothing… whoa,” Amelia gasped. “Numbers. Green numbers.”

“Above you?”

“No, It’s like it’s in them, they’re all around.“ she shut up. “The link is gone.”

Melos looked at his party screen. Himself, Amelia, Emmet… “You invited the doll before you sent it in there, right?”

“Of course I did.”

“Got any more of those?”

“Nope, but those trees have deadwood and I’ve got Carpenter. Give me a few.”

Every experiment ended the same way. The animi went in, and the ones who didn’t encounter the numbers managed to return intact. The ones who did, disappeared entirely.

“It’s almost like it’s moving, too. The numbers aren’t always in the same place. And with no frame of reference, it’s hard as hell to avoid running into them.” Amelia shook her head. “Once you do you’ve got like a split second to back off, but if you get in among them you’re gone. That’s what it looks like to me, anyway. You want to give it a whirl?”

“I don’t have Dollseye yet. It’d be pointless.”

“Oh, right, right, we can work on that.”

“Should we head back?”

“Mmm.” Amelia debated, then shook her head. “It’s only got about twenty minutes left. Let’s wait to see what things look like when it goes down.”

But it didn’t go down. Not twenty minutes later, not an hour later, and not two hours later.

“Something’s wrong,” Amelia said.

“We need to get back to the Castle,” Melos said, feeling a premonition stir in the back of his mind. “And we need to go prepared for trouble.”

She bit her lips. “Cecelia…”

“We can leave her with your Grandfather.”

“No. This is too close to the… whatever that is. If it shifts a few miles, it could take them.” Her face set into hard lines. “We’ll teleport to the townhouse. Drop Cecelia with Betsy, then go to the castle on foot. And hope that the others did the same…”

*****

Chaos reigned.

The city rotted, as dead things stalked the night, mist filled its streets, and sane people hid indoors to try and survive the nightmare.

And Melos and Amelia carved a path through it, braving the choking fog that filled the air, battering through the glazed-eyed zombie dwarves that filled the street, all wearing miniskirts and looking fabulous. Even while they were hunched around the bodies of the fallen, eating their brains, they somehow managed to do it with dignity and poise.

They were too late to save the people who’d died at the city gate, or in the market, or in the thoroughfare leading up to the castle, without seeing a single living soul.

But when Melos hammered his gauntlet against the siege door, his heart lifted when it opened, revealing a ring of pale palace guards… and a familiar figure. “Rezzak!”

“This is the gladdest I’ve ever been to see you,” the Invoker said, hands full with a mug of something bubbly. “Everything’s fucked.”

“Can you be more concise?” Amelia entered, collecting her daggers from the air, as the guards slammed the door behind her and barred it.

“I can’t. He can,” Rezzak pointed to a shivering dwarf, in a torn blue robe.

“You’re…” Melos squinted. He’d forgotten the dwarf’s name.

“Ragnor. Sir.” The dwarf stared past him, unseeing. Melos knew that look.

“It’s all right, you’re safe,” Melos lied, kneeling down to look the little guy in the eyes. “Tell us what happened.”

“I… it… Grissle, sir. We fired up the Throne, the dungeons integrated fine, then Brin collapsed. Grissle yelled at me to get her clear, and I did, then he shifted the column control to the main runic integration console, and, and, and…”

“He collapsed too,” Melos said.

“Yes. But… he, he got… he…”

“He stood back up.” Melos said. “But it wasn’t him anymore, was it?”

“At first I thought it was all right,” Ragnor babbled. “I thought ah, he’s got this. And he did. He sat back down in the chair, and remodulated the arrays until they balanced. But he left them on. He just sat there, blue light glowing out his eyes, in the throne, looking at everything.”

“What did you do then?”

“I tried to pull Brin toward the entrance. Get her some help, once I was sure things were stable. And he said no. I asked him why the hell not? He said he didn’t want any interruptions until his research was done.”

“Damn it all.” Melos closed his eyes. “I warned him.”

“I kept on dragging her, and he looked at me, and I thought he was blinking until the smoke goes up, and no, it’s his eyes. His eyes are bubbling out of his head. Bubbling away until the only thing left there is the light, that blue light…”

“Oh gods,” Amelia whispered. “Blue eyes. Hot blue eyes.”

“The eyes of a lich,” Melos said.

“I asked him when his research would be done,” Ragnor whispered. “He said, a few decades, maybe. I said no, Brin wouldn’t survive that long, she needed help now, and he said that was easy to fix.” Ragnor swallowed. “He killed her. And told me to keep taking notes.”

“You ran,” Melos said.

“I’m sorry.”

“No. You did the smart thing.” Melos felt his guts clench. “Rezzak? Where are the others?”

“Combing the city, getting everyone inside.” Rezzak took a long swallow of wine. “I’m only back because my pools are down. It’s all zombies out there. To us they’re nothing, but there’s a lot of them.”

“He animated her and put her in a mob pillar,” Melos shook his head. “Just to buy himself time.”

“There are dozens dead because of this.” Amelia’s face hardened. “How could he do this?”

“It’s not them he cares about. It’s us.” Melos took a breath. “He’s a creature of pure logic and pure obsession now. I warned him. I feared this. But not enough.” He reached back, felt the hilts of the blades on his back. “We have to stop him. We have to make this right. And we have to save our kingdom, bring down this thing he’s built without destroying it. Ragnor? Do you know how to do that?”

“No. I’m sorry. No, I don’t. I don’t have the first clue how to undo this.” The little wizard’s bearded face scrunched up into a mask of sorrow.

Amelia squatted down next to him. “Will you come with us, then? Will you help fix this?”

Ragnor shook. “I can’t. I can’t go back there. I’m… no. I’m sorry. I’d be of no use to you.”

“But I will.” The heroes looked up, as Ambersand entered through the castle door, axe bloody, shield battered, and armor gleaming in the light. “Halls are clear. For now.”

The guards around them relaxed. “Thank you, sir. We’ll get out there and secure the way down!” Their captain saluted, then got them moving.

“Welcome, then. Let’s go save the world,” Melos offered a gauntlet, and with some hesitation, Ambersand stowed his axe and gave it a shake.

“Just keep yer demons to yerself, lad. I’m lawful.”

“I… am too?” Melos squinted.

“Pfft. Yer alignment's chaotic if I’ve ever seen it.”

“Okay.” Melos had no clue what the old dwarf meant, but at least he wasn’t giving him dirty looks every damned minute.

“I’ll call them in,” Rezzak said. “I hate this, but we’ve got no other choice-“

Melos woke up.

Green light filled his vision, and he sobbed, as the chamber, his own personal hell, swam back into view. Grissle’s shattered husk on his broken throne, the shredded pipes leaking green zeroes and ones, and the columns, the columns full of burnt cores. Broken magic, broken artifacts, as broken as the numbers that swirled overhead, half of them vanishing or shattering when they hit the hole in the center, the hole that kept growing.

A mighty engine, a triumph, a proper wizard’s legacy… all in ruins, and threatening to take everything he had left into the void, should Melos falter. Should he ever be weak.

Like he had just a bit ago.

He’d slept, even though he hadn’t planned to. Melos pushed his mind into his dungeon master’s projection-

-and found himself inches away from his High Knight’s pale, frightened face, as she scooted back in her chair, eyes wide with surprise and mouth open.

What did I do now? He pulled back from General Mastoya, and looked down at himself. Still armored. Still clad. Sword sheathed. He was in… he was in the war room, he saw. The maps. He recognized the maps.

“Sir?” She whispered, and the uncertainty in her voice shook him. He needed her. Needed her trust. She was loyal, he’d tested her so often, and she was one of the last balances against… against Anise. Against his first mistake.

No, he thought, remembering the wails as the babes fell one by one into the fire, remembering how the children smelled as they cooked. Remembering how his cult leader had smiled. Not my first mistake. Not by a long shot.

“Did you understand me?” He said, gambling. “Tell me what I just said to you.” He’d done this in similar situations in the past, and it worked about half the time, usually.

Some color returned to Mastoya’s face. Green, naturally. “You ordered me to begin the assault, sir. Even though we’ve only got half the siege engines replaced and repaired. To… kill them all. Down to the last dwarven child.”

“Then we understand each other,” Melos said, turning his back and folding his hands behind him. He closed his eyes, as he let his face fall into a mask of sorrow. It hadn’t been him. Hadn’t been his orders.

Well. Maybe it wasn’t too late. “That was, of course, a test.”

“Sir?”

“If you’d objected, I would have thought you too weak to handle the assault. I don’t want every child dead. We don’t make war on children.”

“No sir,” something in her voice caught his attention, but he was too tired to focus on it, to catch the hints. No, this was going well enough, she could have her doubts.

“Just win the war, so we can have our long-deserved peace, General.” He said, smiling, turning to face her again. “That’s all I ask.”

The half-orc’s face was unreadable, as she stood and saluted. “Sir. I’ll see to that immediately.”

And then she was gone, gone to the Waymark Station, down to collect her waystone and return to the front. Melos sagged into the chair in the war room, and put his head in his hands.

“We can do this.” He told himself. “It’s not too late,” He said. “There is a way to fix everything. We just need to hang on a little longer.”

They were very pretty lies.

Perhaps if he kept saying them, he’d believe them.