Chapter 64 - Time To Finish This

All I could do was plant my shield in front of my face and hope for the best as the fireball shot toward me. This was going to hurt, no matter what I did.

My undead had other plans, though. Two of the skeleton warriors in my front row saw the spell and took their ‘guard’ orders literally. They stepped in front of the blast, raising their shields and quickly locking them together.

The fireball struck their conjoined shields head on, detonating with a burst that sent both warriors flying backward into me. They crashed into my shield in turn, and all of us ended up in a heap on the ground. On the plus side, we were all mostly in one piece, anyway, although the skeletons had seen better days. Their bones were scorched and brittle. One had all the ribs on one side staved in. It wasn’t great.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t afford the mana to heal them right away. Sue had to take priority. They were still surrounded by goblins, and as deadly as the titan was, damage was still stacking up. I cast as soon as I had myself back to my feet, the black fire from Heal Undead shooting across the way to sink into Sue’s bones. They roared as the magic healed their wounds, and goblins cowered.

It was past time to finish this. In the wake of Sue’s roar, about half of the goblins still within the walls were rushing us, the gap being the only way out. I wasn’t planning to let them out, though. They’d started this war. I intended to finish it so completely that the goblins wouldn’t be a threat for a long time to come. I ordered my warriors to stay close with me, pinning shut the gap in the walls.

The wave of goblins smacked into my front row, but the skeletons held them off. I cast a pair of quick Heal Undead spells, restoring health to the two badly damaged ones. I needed those warriors intact! Even without the gear I’d gotten them from the Guard, my skeleton warriors were worth maybe two goblins each. They were tough, strong, and fought well. They were also pretty difficult to kill, as spears and arrows just didn’t do all that much damage to them. Not the way they would to a fleshy creature, anyway.

With the Guard gear, those warriors were tough as nails. The aluminum shields were massive, and once they locked them together it was damned hard to get around them. I had the warriors play full defense, not worrying about fighting back. All they really had to do was keep the goblins penned in, while my other undead got to work.

I had my goblin zombie archers climb atop some of the fallen logs, using them as vantage points from which to pepper the oncoming swarm with arrows. They fired as quickly as they could, mostly because it was impossible to miss. There were just too many goblins rushing us—any arrow they fired hit something!

Meanwhile, I was working to make life more difficult for the goblin mage. First, I dropped another Heal on Sue, because that asshole goblin hit my dino with yet another fireball! How many of those things could he cast, anyway? I had limits. Surely, he did, too? But when he cast, it did the same thing to him that my spells did to me: exposed him. I saw where the blast of fire came from and was able to pick the green-skinned mage out of the crowd quickly.

So I dropped another Drain Life on him.

He staggered, dropping to his knees. He’d seen me again, and was working up the energy for another spell. The ball of glowing fire appeared in his hands, and I knew there was no way I was going to be able to cast another Drain before he threw it my way.

Fortunately, Sue also spotted the glowing ball of light, especially when I gave the titan a mental nudge in that direction. As soon as they saw the mage, they went right for him, crossing the distance in three astonishingly fast bounds. One quick snap, and Sue had the top half of the goblin mage between their teeth, shaking it back and forth before swallowing it down.

I wasn’t sure where the upper part of that body went. Logic said it should have fallen to the ground once Sue swallowed, but…nope. No sign of it at all. I chalked it up to more magical weirdness.

Just like that, the fight was over. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I’d wanted revenge for Kat. Ever since finding out she was gone, there’d been no space in my head for much else. She was a friend, if not a close one, and now she was gone. Because of them.

That anger and fury had left me driven. With it gone, I felt sort of hollow, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Nothing I’d done would bring Kat or any of the others who’d died back to life. But maybe it would make a difference for those of us still alive. I had to hope so, anyway.

With the mage down, the rest of the fight was basically mopping up. Sue had already slaughtered scores of goblins during the initial attack. Now I ordered them to turn back toward the entrance and the last couple dozen goblins desperately trying to fight their way past my tiny shield wall. One actually did manage to dive out between the legs of my skeleton warriors, but an archer picked it off before I could even cast Drain Life on it.

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Sue’s arrival finished that fight very quickly.

All that was left was the looting. I went from goblin to goblin, touching each one. There were a lot of goblins, so this was going to take more than a little while, but we had time, now. With the fortress taken, as soon as Alfred and his people made it inside the walls, they’d be safe from the few goblins remaining outside. Besides, I’d seen a few goblins manage to climb out over the walls, so word of the fort’s fall would undoubtedly spread fast.

There was one goblin I especially wanted to tap, so I headed straight toward what was left of the mage. I touched each goblin body I saw as I moved that way, but my focus was on the remains of their leader. When I reached what was left of him, I couldn’t help but make a face. Sue really had eaten the entire top half, and I was hoping that wouldn’t mess up the way looting worked.

What was left was gross, even for me. I gingerly tapped the goblin mage’s foot. To my surprise, three crystals popped out into my hand, not one.

He’d been tier five, which surprised me. The first time we met, I was sure he was at least tier two, but that fireball spell hadn’t felt like a tier five spell. Now I knew why. One of the crystals was a bright red tier three fireball spell. That was awesome; I wasn’t sure if I’d use it, but it was an excellent find. I felt sure that had to be a rare, so even if I just traded it to the Guard it would be worth a fortune.

The second crystal was tier five, though. I’d never seen a tier five stone drop before. That was amazing! Better still, it was tier five Will. That explained how he’d been able to cast so many spells back to back. He’d been using an underpowered spell with an overpowered Will score. The goblin mage must have had all his minions out gathering Will crystals for him, the same way Colonel Turner had his people collecting Charisma for him. It made perfect sense, when I was able to see all the details. I put both of those stones away in my pouch with the others.

The third stone, however, was something I’d never seen before.

Where the spell and skill crystals were some variation on transparent to translucent, this rock was opaque. It was carefully carved from a dark gray stone shot through with bits of green and red. The thing had a shape something like a rook piece from a chess board, looking something like a tower about the size of a smartphone.

As I held it, the colors shifted. The overall gray tone remained, but the splashes of color shifted to pure black as the mana of my spells supplanted that of the prior owner. The longer I held the thing, the more I understood how it worked and what it was. I’d beaten a tier five monster, leader of an entire force of monsters. When I won, I earned the right to own their home. The ‘chess piece’ was sort of a control stone for the fort. I held it and memories of how to use the thing filled my mind, telling me how to take control, maintain control, and use the new fortress I’d earned.

This was something new and incredibly cool. I’d have to explore it in a lot more depth—but later, once I had Alfred’s people to safety. Already he and Kara were at the gap in the walls, coming through with Henry and Samson. It looked like we’d made it through with zero human casualties, although the last of my tier one skeletons seemed to have gone down somewhere along the way. I was better off building up more quality anyway. Monsters weren’t going to get easier to face with time; if anything, it was obvious the opposite was happening. I needed my minions’ power level to climb as well if I was going to keep up.

“Selena! You okay?” Alfred called out.

I nodded. “We have the fort. What’s the situation outside?”

“What’s left of them are running like all the demons of hell are chasing them,” Kara replied. “I don’t think the goblins are going to be an issue anytime soon.”

“Should we tear down the walls here, just to be sure?” Alfred asked.

I walked over, crossing the distance between us. “Don’t need to. I got a magic stone from their mage that gives me control over this place. I’ll take care of it. But first, we need to get you and your people somewhere safer than the library annex.”

“Good call. Samson, Kara, you mind?” Alfred asked.

Both of them agreed to go, and I sent two warriors and two archers with them, just to make sure they weren’t ambushed by lingering goblins. The woods would clear out, in time, but there was no sense taking chances.

Once they were gone, I went back to work collecting as many stones as I could from the dead. Alfred saw what I was about and joined in, and I really couldn’t complain. He and his people had helped, after all. But then he came over and handed me the ten stones he’d collected.

“You sure?” I asked.

“Yeah. This one was all you, Selena. You saved us. You took the goblins on pretty much solo. You deserve this.”

I appreciated the thought, but didn’t want to be a jerk about it, ether. “I’ll make sure each of you who came along for the fight get something out of the loot anyway. No arguments. Henry healed me, Kara’s vision was clutch, and you and Samson were fighting and risking your lives, too.”

“I won’t argue, then,” Alfred replied, flashing me a grin.

“Good.”

I ordered the undead still with me to begin digging a massive grave. While I didn’t need any extra undead right now—my Animate Dead spell was still maxed out—it occurred to me that having a reservoir of bodies nearby might be useful in the future. By the time Samson and Kara were back with the rest of Alfred’s refugees, the grave was dug and my undead were dragging goblins into it one after another.

The process went much quicker with my other undead back, and even some of the refugees helped, pitching in to clean up the inside of the walls once they heard we’d be resting here for a bit. I’d been up all night. So had Kara, and some of Alfred’s fighters were almost as exhausted as us. Getting a few hours of rest in a secure place before we tried punching through the bird-peoples’ domain just made sense.

I set my undead on guard duty so the humans could all rest, and in a very short time they were all finding relatively clean spots within the walls to bed down. I joined them, Hope staying close to me to ensure I was undisturbed, and fell almost instantly to sleep.