Chapter 81 - Three Domains

We swung back through the mall’s parking lot again before taking off for the evening. Didn’t spend a lot of time there. Just enough to give me some more fodder for Animate Dead. It had been a while since I first found out the spell could create tier two skeleton mages, and I hadn’t taken the time to try doing that.

After seeing them in action against Sue and I, I was a convert. They took damage about the same as any other tier two skeleton, and traded off magical skill with weapons for magical attacks, like a tier two Harm spell. Given the rate of fire they put out, plus how quick my goblin archers had run out of arrows, I was veering hard toward skeleton mages for my ranged support in the future.

We recovered most of the arrows when we looted the dead, but not all of them. Getting more meant trading with the Guard base again, and there was only one thing they really wanted: more crystals. Each one I traded away was one I wouldn’t have to grow, myself, and there were a lot of things I wanted to trade for. Being as self-sufficient as possible was just good sense.

It turned out I’d killed ten of the tier two skeleton mages, which was more than I had the points to Animate, anyway. Each body could be Animated back into a tier two skeleton, with the spell giving me options for skeleton warriors or skeleton mages.

By the time I was done, I’d Animated eight skeleton mages, enough to fill the entire Animate Dead spell. That added a ton of firepower to my band, although I wanted to get some more tank-type undead. The goblin archers weren’t really needed, so I dropped them. That was as simple as withdrawing my mana from their bodies; they collapsed where they were into a heap.

That gave me eight points back, and I looked at the zombie bodies all over the lot—that was more raw materials than any necromancer could ask for. Animate Dead gave me three options now. I could create a tier one regular zombie, a tier two zombie bruiser, or a tier three zombie elite.

I only had eight points to spend, so as interesting as the tier three was, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. I could only do two elites and one bruiser. On the other hand, was that actually worse than four bruisers? One extra zombie might matter less at this point than the oomph from a higher tier.

If there was one thing I’d learned from fighting alongside Sue, it was that tier mattered. Sue was much stronger than a stack of tier twos.

In the end, I went for the elites. I Animated two zombie elites and one zombie bruiser. Then I handed off the equipment from the goblin archers to the new guys. The goblins had shields and short spears, in addition to their bows. The spare gear, I bundled up and tied to Sue’s back for the return trip.

It was moving into early evening as we entered the woods, climbing the hill toward home. It wasn’t going to take us much longer to get there, which was good. Neither of us wanted to be out after dark, with the way the undead grew more active at night.

“Hey, Selena, what’re you thinking about doing with the ratkin?” Kara asked. “And the fort, too. You gonna use the control stone?”

“I—“ My mouth opened, I got one word out, and then I froze. There was a burst of magical energy from the northwest. Someone nearby had used a control stone. Now there was a Domain nearby. “Well, shit.”

“What? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine. Just…I guess because I own a control stone, I can feel when stuff happens nearby that involves them?” At least, that was my guess. It seemed to pass the logic test, anyway.

“Did someone just use one?”

I nodded and pointed toward where I’d felt it. “Out that way. Not too far, though. I’m pretty sure it was somewhere in the city.”

“Can you still use it? With another one so close?”

I pulled the control stone from my pouch, holding it in my hand as I reached out to it with my feelings. The stone felt hungry, like it wanted my mana. It would be so easy—I intuitively understood what needed to be done. I’d just hold the stone and pour mana into it, just like that, and…

But not right now. I shook my head to clear it, and put the stone back away. “I can, yeah.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I guess the radius on those things isn’t too big, then. A mile, maybe less?”

I pulled out my map, peering at it, measuring distances with my eyes. “Depending on exactly where it was set up, the Domains could be a little over a mile in radius. Pretty sure it’s less than two miles, but I can’t be sure. I only got a direction and a general sense of distance.”

Before I could say anything else, a second wave of magical force hit me. Another one! A second Domain went live. This one was almost due west, and was even further away. Definitely over a mile. It had to be right near Lake Champlain.

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“Another one?” Kara asked, seeing my eyes.

I nodded. “Wow. That was wild. I wonder—“

Another one hit.

This Domain was east of me, and based on the distance and direction I knew precisely who that had to be. There was no question in my mind: Colonel Turner had acquired a control stone. He’d already tightly controlled the base. Now it would be locked to him more tightly than ever. I needed to watch that man carefully. My gut said he was going to be trouble.

“And that was Turner,” I told Kara. “I’m guessing the first one used it which spooked the other two into jumping in as well. Thing is, I can now feel roughly where each of those Domains are. As I get closer, I’ll definitely be able to find them. Anyone else holding one of these can, too.”

I pulled the stone back out, hefting it in my hand. “I couldn’t sense the other control stones until they were used, so I think they won’t sense this one until I use it. But once I do, it’s like putting out our home address for everyone to see.”

“And if they kill you, they get your stone, same as you did from the goblin?”

I nodded. That was the core of why I hadn’t used the thing yet. I wasn’t shocked that Turner felt confident enough to go for it. He had his unit backing him up. Lots of people there, very well organized. That there were two other groups out there with similar confidence was jarring, though. My feeling was that folks would tend to wait longer, build themselves stronger first, before opening up a whole new pile of risk.

But maybe that wasn’t how leaders thought? I didn’t know. Leading people had never been a goal, for me, which was part of why I wondered if I was really the best person to have this control stone. I was willing to bet Turner would pay me a pretty penny for it. Probably even order his people to go hunt specific trait crystals, if I asked. It was worth a lot, I knew that much.

I just didn’t trust Turner, though. For all I knew, the man was perfectly honorable. He certainly hadn’t done anything bad to me, or anyone else that I knew about. He was bringing in refugees, leading probably a thousand people at this point. In spite of all of that, his Charisma power gave me the creeps, and something about the man felt off.

Giving him the stone wasn’t in the cards. But neither was using it, at least not today. Waiting a little longer wasn’t going to hurt me. Watching the others to see how Domain owners were going to act toward one another would only help.

Keeping my focus on growing stronger would benefit me most of all.

I put the control stone back in my bag with my other crystals. “For another day. We have enough to worry about with this mall problem. If I use the stone now, we’re probably picking up three additional enemies. Let’s deal with the one we have first.”

“Makes sense to me!”

We pushed on as the sun gradually moved toward setting, and soon reached the forest fort. The ratkin had been busy while we were away. All of the broken timbers had been repaired. You couldn’t just walk through the hole in the wall anymore. Now you had to use the gate. The ratkin had two guards on the gate, and they opened it as we approached.

Patches met us as we rode in. He eyed my undead a bit nervously. “You have some new ones?”

“Yeah. One of my spells got stronger. They work for us, don’t worry,” I told him. “Everything quiet while we were gone?”

“Yes. We repaired the wall and cleaned out the huts. I also took the liberty of asking some of my people to expand the little shelf you and your friend slept on last night. Since you seemed comfortable there, we made it larger and more secure,” Patches added.

I glanced that way, and he wasn’t kidding! What had been a tiny lookout platform was now about three times the size, with cute little sidewalls. “Thanks. That looks great.”

Then he asked the question I knew he’d wanted to since we arrived. “Did you defeat the dead?”

“We made a start,” I told him. “We killed over a hundred of them.”

That was followed by my having to explain what a hundred of something was. Once he grasped the scale, he seemed impressed.

“That is not enough?”

I shook my head. “We saw several times that number. They withdrew into the mall, though, and we needed time to plan and prepare before going back in after them. Kara and I will return there tomorrow to hit them again. We’ll keep doing it until they run out of undead to fight.”

“The battle may take many more days, then.”

I nodded. “Yeah, most likely.”

Dinner was something we all did together, that night. The ratkin had cooking fires set up, and they shared from what foodstuff they’d brought or gathered over the day. I pulled some food from the stores I’d bought at the Guard base and shared those out as well.

It wasn’t fancy, but it was a step toward building trust and cooperation. That felt like a strong win, to me.

By the time dinner was done, it was full dark and I was getting sleepy. I ordered a quartet of skeleton mages into the newly expanded lookout post. I set them along the wall, facing out. They’d watch for anything coming our way. The other undead, I spread out to various watch platforms on the walls, except for Hope and Sue. Both of them slept at the base of the ladder up to Kara and my suite.

Well, they didn’t sleep. But they lay down there, on guard.

Kara was asleep faster than me. Her light snores carried on the night air and made me chuckle. I hoped I didn’t sound like that!

I was way more worried about the control stones than I’d let on earlier. I’d come so close to using it earlier. Back when the Domains were going active, I’d felt an almost overpowering urge to use my stone, too. Was that why there’d been three so close together? The second and third found their Will wasn’t up to passing the test, so they lost control?

Will was one of my strongest crystals. It wouldn’t shock me if it had just saved me from making a shitty, potentially fatal mistake.

Eventually I drifted off to sleep, but I tossed and turned a lot, my dreams filled with flight from a zombie horde, like in a bad movie. Before I’d slept more than a couple of hours, though, a flash of alarm shot through me like a jolt of adrenaline. Something was wrong.

I blinked away sleep, trying to find the source of the threat. It was my skeleton mages, the ones up here with me. They’d seen something dangerous. I rushed to the wall to peer out into the forest beyond.

It didn’t take more than a couple of seconds to spot what my guards already had. The forest crawled with movement. It was like a wave of ants from some nature video, except these weren’t ants.

They were zombies.