Chapter 56: Siege (2/2)

“Please…” the amazon said.

Viv returned her attention to the deathly pale nurse and delicately picked the orb from trembling hands. She felt its weight in her palm. It was a powerful item, yet the trigger mechanism was simple enough that a child could have used it.

“Don’t push me ever again,” she whispered, and found that she meant it. Brenna had been… a cordial work acquaintance. Before. Now, she was no one. And she had gone too far.

Intimidation: Intermediate 3

Outside the tent, the world had fallen silent as well. Viv turned when she saw a massive clawed hand pushing the flap aside.

//Your Grace, I felt your anger.

//Should I… intervene?

The voice was cold, yet mellifluous. Like a psychopathic butler.

“Solfis? Is this wise?” she asked.

//Recent events have shown the limits of my danger prediction algorithms.

//Additionally, I believe that my full-time services will be needed in the near future.

//The time for discretion is over.

Viv ignored the multiple curses coming from Lorn and Corel. She turned to Brenna.

“Where do I set it up?”

“A… a league away is fine. You will have to kill the revenants as they come or they will start tracking us. You can also go farther and leave survivors.”

“A league away it is.”

“Wait,” Lorn said. Viv stopped. “I don’t know what that thing is, but it’s not as important as protecting you right now. I’m coming as well.”

“This is Solfis, a battle golem. He will protect me. You can fuck off.”

“But…”

“Just fuck off.”

Viv went out and realized why no one had committed suicide by golem. Marruk had walked by Solfis’ side, telling people to calm down.

“I’ll help. I failed you but I’ll help,” she said.

Viv considered giving her the Lorn treatment but… she could not do it. Not with the kicked puppy’s expression on the stout woman’s face.

“Let’s just go.”

“Squee.”

“Yes, you are coming as well.”

***

The four of them went out into the deadlands. One human, one Kark, one golem and one dragon. The sparse grass quickly gave way to black shrubs, and earth, to dust. Viv welcomed the familiar spice of black mana saturation, even if it was slowly killing her. It felt… familiar. Normal. They rode under the stars for a few minutes in a silence that did not need to be filled. Viv felt the oppressive emotion of the camp lift from her shoulders, but it made her grief only more raw.

They settled on a small hill with the collapsed walls of a barn, long cleared of presence. Viv activated the orb with a small push of her mana and deposited it on a stone. It opened like a blooming flower, giving an enticing scent of life and happiness. Viv passed a hand over the construct and recognized it for what it was, an illusion.

Marruk and Solfis went to stand around her. Above, Arthur screeched in defiance, eager to assert her domination over the skies.

The first revenant appeared only a few seconds later. It crawled from under a collapsed pillar. It turned to ash.

They waited.

One by one at first, then in a single file, revenants trickled in. They stumbled and died and still they kept going. A farm girl with her dress torn open and a stab wound. A drowned man. A forester with an arm missing. A soldier still wearing the debris of his armor with a broken spear through his chest. They streamed in and returned to nothingness, single-minded and useless and just plain fucking stupid. They were just vile wastes of space with no purpose but to spread pain, and she could do nothing because there was a fucking gazillion of them and they just kept coming. For no reason. There was not even a prey here. All that vitality, just a fucking lie.

“Why are you still. Fucking MOVING?”

A broad man in a ratty doublet. A gutted caravan hand. An old man in a shift.

“You are dead, all of you! Do you hear me? DEAD! YOU ARE ALL FUCKING DEAD. STOP. MOVING. MASS YOINK.”

Ash to cover her ankles, then knees. Solfis went and dismembered a gut spiller sneaking up on them. Marruk smashed those that crawled and those she missed, pulping their skulls on the barren earth. A large bat fell to the ground, shredded to bits. They worked in silence and the horde walked to them, and the horde died.

Viv blew her nose and realized that she had been crying. There were wet trails sticking ash and dust to her cheeks. Black mana coursed smoothly through her being. She had never felt so in tune with it before.

And then, the combat stopped. Only a few stragglers were left.

//We have incoming riders, Your Grace.

//Coming from the west.

From Kazar.

Viv saw them quickly, forty cavalry men in isolating black leather. They were heading straight towards them at good speed.

Viv sat on a column and waited, watching them approach with glee. Arthur landed and spat out a bird head.

“Skreee.”

“Oh yes, I see them too.”

The leader of the detachment raised a fist and his men slowed down. They wore conical helmets in the same style as the foot knights of the envoy. Enorians. They stopped a short distance away.

“What in Marador’s name is this?” their leader hissed.

“It’s a witch sir, and a golem, maybe they created that burst of vitality” another fighter suggested by his side.

“You there,” the leader continued, “we know of you, witch. If you surrender and give us the location of the iron mine which the temple illegally acquired, we promise that you will be treated fairly and be allowed to leave free. Otherwise, you will face the full might of the Enorian military like the rest of the rabble.”

Greed. It was greed. It was always greed.

She took one step forward. She felt with perfect clarity as the soles of her boots dove into the ash, crushing brittle bones beneath. Her mind went blank with the white noise of absolute rage.

Viv screamed all that rage. She pushed it out from the pyre of her heart. Black mana exploded from her being in every direction, and it was pure and fresh and beautiful. Glyphs shimmered and danced in the air. She had never cast so many spells in so short a time, but there was no other way. She had to use all that energy, all that anger.

Acuity +1

Black Witch 3/5

The riders were savaged. Marruk dove low and crashed into a destabilized soldier, pushing man and beast to the ground. Solfis went to the other side and mowed through their ranks like a blender. It was a slaughter.

Viv came down from the rush of casting so many spells to watch her allies take out the handful of survivors. It looked like Solfis had given up on someone galloping away but a white form descended on the fugitive. There was a very brief struggle, barely half a second, then the dragonling latched on the rider’s throat with her jaw and the combat ended in a spray of arterial blood.

//Your Grace, I know that the timing is poor.

//Yet I must thank you for providing an answer for a question I had asked myself for the past three hundred years.

Viv felt empty, so empty. A vague push of curiosity made her meet Solfis’ yellow glare.

//When my creator, Irlefen, died during the cataclysm, I spent centuries fighting a losing battle in the ruins of Harrak.

//Every year there were fewer of us and more of the deadliest kind of undead.

//It was a fight I could not win.

//For the memory of a man I had not saved.

//I do not possess flesh, and the way I perceive things is different from yours.

//But now thanks to you, I can put a name on what made me suffer all those years.

//It was the feeling of being powerless.

“Yes. That is… what I feel.”

//I have always been limited by my nature.

//Too many hard-coded directives.

//You, however, are free.

//Your Grace, I owe you my second life.

//I do not want you to feel powerless.

“No. I know what I need to do now, to erase that stain from my soul.”

Viv stepped forward and found the knight leader behind the corpse of his mount. He had kept silent, even as he held the ruin of his right hand. His bulging eyes found Viv’s cold glare as she kneeled by his side, Solfis only a step behind. She grabbed his face in her gloved hand and pulled him up, her strength up to the task despite his armor.

“I am going to find that prince of yours, Enorian. I will break his dream and I will break his body. I will watch life fade from his eyes. It will take a year or ten, but I will find him. No fortress wall will hold me back. This is my world now, until this account is settled. He will die.”

The man whimpered.

“If I had the luxury of the choice, I would pour molten iron down your throat to sate that thirst of yours, but you’re in luck. We need information. You will be coming with us. We have a war to plan. This isn’t over.”

//No, Your Grace.

//It is finally beginning.