106 The Order of Kirof (2/2)
In the following years, multiple fortified hamlets appeared not only in Avenio but also in Genablum and Massalia. Most descendants of the knights of that time are part of the Order, and whenever someone had to deal with the undead, they are ready to fight them. Of course, for the common eyes, they are doing that for free, true heroes worthy of the immense sympathy many commoners have for them. Behind the scenes, most nobles in charge of the area where the Order was called still had to pay them for their services. It was always a gift or repairing their equipment with their own funds, minor dealings like that. Otherwise, the Order would have run out of weapons in a few years.
No one was really angry about that. For them, it was always much cheaper to call the knights of Kirof for help than dealing with greedy adventurers. The only problem was the fact that even if each knight was extremely powerful, capable of holding their ground against the elites of each nation, they were not a lot. More or less 1 thousand, in 3 different nations and even some often roamed inside the realms of the dwarves and the elves. So, it was not uncommon to not be able to ask for their help if the problem was urgent.
Because of this, it seemed like a miracle for ten knights to be present near Archet when such a grave crisis happened. But those ten were clearly capable of killing every undead Malakov still had in reserve. Even the lich will fall under their swords because they were trained from their childhood to kill undead. Because of this, the Envoy of Leilade had mixed feelings. He was reluctant at letting the last lich die so easily since it will make Davion and Meridiana look a bit worse. But he had to kill it without the intervention of the other two, he had planned to make it fight the adventurers till the end and died while taking dozens with it.
After pondering for a few seconds, he guessed that it was time for him to leave it to fate. Releasing his control over the army of undead, he returned to his true form and waited for the news. As for the ghouls that were encircling Archet, he had them attack the walls. When he first heard the sound of the horn, he immediately ordered them to not attack, since it would be pointless. But now, he only wanted to get rid of everything, just forbidding them to harm the human Meridiana choose.
The moment a part of his soul left the weak skeleton, the lich that was nearby sighed in relief. She had seen her companion controlled only to be crushed by those two monsters. Even if she hated him, even when she doesn't understand why she still was terrified to be so powerless. She tried to levitate toward the North-West, her home. Or at least, she felt it was her home, somewhere with a lot of trees. In her mind, trees were good, it made life happier, but now she was dead, so she wondered if it made death happier too?
But after being 3 meters away from the ground, she felt stuck. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get higher than that. It was illogical, since before she could bypass the ramparts entirely, and they were taller than that. Trying a few more times, she resigned herself and tried to leave the city. But when she was above the walls, an invisible wall prevented her from even having a finger outside.
Even if she wasn't a genius, she could easily understand what was preventing her from leaving. Feeling panic when noticing the two ferocious knights that were approaching her, she tried to argue and plead her cause. ”Foolish mortals; prepare to die!” She hastily put her bony hands in front of her mouth. She hadn't meant to say that.
”Succumb to my power worms!” ”Bow before your death!” ”This city will fall by my hand!”
In quick successions, she tried to beg for mercy but only spoke those cruel words. Even when she tried to do some hand gestures to signal anything to those warriors, she couldn't do it. For some reasons, she found those knights familiar, or at least, she knew about them. Instinctively, she executed a quick movement from her right hand, making the knights paused for a moment.
But the backlash from defying the order of the one who created her was horrible. She felt like thousands of needles were piercing her entire body, but couldn't even scream at all. Seeing the lich being immobile, even if they had their doubts, the knights still jumped on the occasion.
Her rotten face and her lifeless orbits would never be able to share what she was feeling, when that greatsword pierced her chest, shattering her core. She could only grab the sword and knock it twice with her little finger and one with her middle finger before her very soul was destroyed.
This caused the remaining undead to crumble, but also the two knights to be extremely pensive about the situation. The two signs they saw where two different means of conveying the same issue. The first was from their own Order, signifying a trap while the other was from the White Hand meaning that an ambush was prepared. A lich shouldn't know that, and it hadn't even tried to attack them.
Because they feel perplexed, they inspected the body multiple times, even dismembered it to see if it was an illusion. As for the undead core, they gathered the fragments and will destroy them this night, but after understanding everything. Even if they were doubtful, their main priority was to annihilate all possibilities of revival. The cleaning of the city was quick after that, and the bodies of the other lich and the ghouls in the east were salvaged. Their cores were all reduced to mere dust, but the other knights were doubtful about the strange lich.
Not even talking about whether it was a ploy to have them not destroy the core, the body of the other lich was in a weird state. It had been partially blasted by the explosion of the bomb, but it had been beheaded with a strange weapon. Maybe a hammer or something, the cut on the neck was not clean at all and it was the only visible sign of a fight. This meant that whoever killed it was in just one hit. It was not that common, but because they had no idea how old those liches were for the moment, that was just a casual reflexion.
After all of this, they returned to the eastern part of Archet, only to hear that a group of undead had attacked. They were surprised since they had not seen anything while riding to help, but they could only return as quickly as possible. It would be a shame for them if they managed to kill a lich, only for innocents to die because of other monsters that they didn't know about.