The next morning dawned bright, clear, and hot.
The day started before true dawn, while it was still cool. It was a comfortable walk from the mansion that served as their base to the slightly singed clearing where they fought the corpsevine-infested animals the day before. They pulled the corpses together and Samuel set them on fire just before the day truly started to brighten. Sophia didn’t think bodies would burn well on their own, but this was magical fire; it didn’t have to be fed by what it consumed.
Pyre [https://i.imgur.com/uTsfgxm.jpeg]
According to Samuel, the reason they burned the bodies was that the corpsevines might not be quite dead. Most of the time, destroying the nexus was enough, but sometimes enough survived to reanimate the body in a few days. Burning the corpse completely prevented that. It also served as an excellent beacon to draw in corpsevines, since they would try to extinguish it.
Sophia’s first thought when she heard that was the arm they’d brought back to the Registry. It seemed both amusing and macabre that it might get up and move on its own, but it certainly explained why Rensyn insisted on burning it.
A chill ran down Sophia’s spine when she realized that it could have moved at any time; they hadn’t taken any precautions against that. Sophia hadn’t even watched it when it sat revealed on the table. The desire to burn the bodies was clearly a result of hard-won experience.
Not that Sophia was cold. If anything, she was far too warm. Was it the fire?
No, it couldn’t be. She wasn’t that close to the fire and she felt warm all over, not just on the side near the fire. Something strange was going on.
“Going to be a hot day today,” one of the guards muttered, then turned to Samuel. “Should a few of us run back to the base for more water?”
A hot day today? Sophia shook her head. “Does the weather usually change this quickly here?”
“It can,” Samuel admitted. “It usually takes a few days to move that much, but we were probably due for a hot spell anyway. As for water, no, I’m not sending anyone back to the camp. We’ll cut the day short instead. The corpsevines aren’t here yet, but they will be before you could get back with water.”
As if to underscore Samuel’s concern, a pair of oversized skunks charged towards the fire from the opposite side of the small clearing. They were confused enough that Sophia and Samuel quickly put them down before they reached the fire.
Samuel shook his head. “Normally, I’d say to add them to the fire, but I think not today. We can come back this afternoon after a water break and see if there’s enough left of the fire. If it’s going to stay hot, we’ll need to-”
Samuel was interrupted as a zombie deer bounded out of the forest and leapt at the fire. Wherever it stepped, the fire dimmed and started to smoke instead of burning cleanly. Samuel swore at it and threw fire at it, Sophia turned to the forest instead of the fire.
There were more deer zombies. They ranged from nearly skeletal with plants covering what should have been hide to partially skin-covered pale flesh with distorted bones. Or were those bones at all? Could they be solidified vines imitating bones? That seemed to fit the corpsevines’ motif all too well. It also explained why the spotted cat’s spots were being replaced with greenery; the vines knew something was different there but not what.
Zombie Deer [https://i.imgur.com/w4njhUb.jpeg]
Sophia started to direct her Animated Blade over to the deer, then realized that if they were going to head back to the mansion early, she didn’t have to be so careful with her mana. A pair of Force Bolts ripped through the air and impacted on the largest zombie deer’s skull.
It shuddered once and fell. Sophia wasn’t thrilled that they’d have to drag it over to the pyre later, but she was very happy to know that the zombies were weaker against her spells than the more intact creatures. It made sense, since there was less there to protect the plants, but somehow she’d expected the fact that they were farther along in the process to mean that the corpsevines were stronger and could resist magic at least enough to compensate.
This time, Samuel didn’t tell Sophia to save her magic, either.
The next few hours passed quickly as one group of corpsevine-infested animals after another charged towards the pyre. It made the fight a lot easier in some ways, but they all seemed to have a limited ability to douse the fire if they got too close. Samuel kept busy reinforcing the fire and dealing with any creatures that reached it while everyone else tried to stop them.
Most of the animals that day were nearly intact; only the deer and a single giant rat were in the advanced stage of zombification. Sophia noticed that there were no snakes, birds, or small creatures; the opossums were the smallest things the corpsevines appeared to be able to reanimate. She was happy about that, for as far as it went; smaller creatures could be more limited but they were also harder to spot and could get places larger animals simply couldn’t.
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Three hours into the fight, Sophia had to revise her estimation of the pyre’s usefulness. It split the enemies and delayed them, effectively asking as a wall that also hurt the zombies, but it also attracted far more corpsevines than Samuel’s spells had the previous day. There was no downtime to recover between waves; instead, they seemed to slowly lose ground until there were enough “small” enemies that Samuel blanketed the area with a wall of flame that barely avoided the Called. After that, there was a small breather before more came, but each wave seemed bigger than the previous one.
Sophia found herself standing with Dav near Essia, using both her Animated Blade and her sword, along with spells for the larger monsters. For once, she felt like she was more than holding up her end of the fight; a single good hit from Force Bolt or either of her weapons was enough to take down one of the squirrels, and with the Animated Blade she had a level of deadly reach across the battlefield that no one other than Samuel had. When she started to run lower on mana, she saved what she had left for big monsters or when she just couldn’t get there in time.
The worst times were when Essia moved to another injured person. Where possible Dav brought them to her, but it wasn’t always possible. After the second time, they found a standard plan that worked well. Amy led in her wolf form while Dav stayed close to Essia and killed anything that got past the others. Sophia brought up the rear and handled the widest area, with her spell and floating blade.
The Quinn twins did what they could, but they had to work for the entire group instead of just protecting Essia because of the way their abilities worked. There were several times where Sophia knew Rae or Moti did something because she felt a little better or saw an enemy hiding in the trees’ dappled shadows that she’d have sworn wasn’t there a moment earlier, but it was always small things. They weren’t flashy, but they were definitely useful.
Lady Essia had her hands full with a string of injuries. Twice, they were even injuries to herself. The first injury happened when another spotted cat managed to sneak past Sophia, Dav, and Amy and bit Essia before they knew it was there. The second was the result of a large wave of gigantic opossums. They seemed if anything less infested than the opossums of the previous day, but that made them faster and more dangerous.
Or maybe Sophia was just more tired. It was ridiculously hot.
Infested Opossums [https://i.imgur.com/vmfRoOS.jpeg]
The opossums seemed to be the last straw. Samuel smothered the area in fire that somehow managed to avoid the Called and most of the clearing’s greenery but still killed most of the zombies.
“Kill the rest as we back out,” was Samuel’s instruction. “I’m nearly out of mana, but I can’t attack unless we want to attract more corpsevines. Essia, how bad is it?”
“Hurts,” Essia gasped, “Didn’t break my shield but there’s venom. Can heal it. Need time.”
“I’ve got her,” Dav said as he knelt down in front of Essia, set her arms over his shoulders so that she was tight against his back, then picked her up by her thighs. He stood up smoothly and retrieved his sword as he stood. Despite her size, it looked almost like an adult carrying a child piggyback; she was simply not heavy enough to bother Dav.
Sophia knew it had to be because of his high Body score and that she could theoretically take hers just as high, but she also knew that she wasn’t going to do that. For all that she envied his strength, she was strong enough to do everything she needed to do and that was enough to make dedicating enough Wisps to catch up a waste. Her Core was far more important; she’d rather have more mana than more physical strength.
Some of the corpsevines ignored the group as they fled, but a lot of the smaller ones followed. It should have been easier than the fighting up to that point, except that Samuel did nothing. That left Sophia to take over Samuel’s role as well as her own. The retreat was a blur of reactions, listening to Rae for creatures she’d missed and narrowly killing them before they hurt anyone too much.
Sophia quickly dropped the Imbuement on her blade as well as Dav’s; only the one on her Animated Blade was left. Even with that, by the time they reached the wall filled with arches, Sophia was nearly out of mana. She felt relief as they stepped through the archway.
It was like a slap in the face when the zombie animals followed. Sophia stopped where she was and used the wall’s protection to catch the animals as they made it through the wall. Amy and Samuel’s guards helped, but Dav stayed back with Essia on his back.
It worked. She’d later find out that two zombie squirrels did use a different archway, but Rae saw both of them and Moti delayed them long enough for Samuel’s guards to kill them. Sophia didn’t notice at the time.
Sophia barely managed to get her Animated Blade back to herself and end its Imbuement. She was exhausted and she ached in a way she didn’t remember happening since she was a child and first learning magic. She’d strained something.
After that, all Sophia remembered was stumbling into the mansion, having Samuel push water on her, then making it to her tent and collapsing on the bed. She didn’t manage to strip out of her armor, much less get under the sheets.
Sophia knew nothing more until she woke up. She was sore and her armor and clothing was positively covered in leaves and dirt. Her mana wasn’t full, but it was well above halfway so she knew she’d slept for hours. The only good thing was that there was very little blood; corpsevine zombies didn’t seem to have any, and while her shield was repeatedly tested, she hadn’t taken any bad injuries.
She definitely needed to repair or replace her lower leg armor. Her shin and her kneecap armor seemed to be working, but the corpsevines really liked to attack the back of her leg. It was less protected to begin with and what material was there was shredding under the repeated assault. She didn’t think she’d be able to get dragonscale here, unfortunately, but surely there was something she could use.
Sophia stood and realized that she had a pounding headache and didn’t need to pee. As hot as it was outside, that meant she needed more water. She’d get some for Dav, as well; he was still asleep but she knew he’d need it when he woke.