“There’s no reason for us to be pushing out further than we are,” Anthony said. “We have to support the front line efforts, yes, but we need to take down towns and clearing them. Then we can move on. Sanctify will have to be a secondary objective.”
Anthony, former midwife from Brooklyn, was arguing with Bob, the former d list celebrity chef from Hoboken. Both men had something to gain and as the caravans commander and scout leader, respectively, they had butted heads a lot. But now they needed to make peace together, by force. We jump.
“Yes, boss. I understand. I just need to know when to come in and do it. If we jump from place to place, then we might forget to sanctify a town that we already passed through. Plus, if the legion wants to do its own thing, it’s a bit beyond my control.”
The seventy-sixth legion had sent a mere two companies through to reclaim the lands of their kingdom from the zombie hordes. Save for a few casualties, they were in good spirits.
“They’re using our tactics to whittle down the horde. Sophie and Sonya have been worked to the bone,” Anthony said. “You can join them on the front line, more often if you’re feeling like you haven’t been doing enough.”
“I’m busy as shit myself. I have to scout out the next places with the monks so we can direct the legion. Plus, there is the whole sanctification ritual that only the two of us can do.”
Anthony pounded the ornate desk lightly, just enough to make a noise.
“You trained the scouts. You don’t need to be on every scouting mission. Valerie needs you as well. Cedric needs you. Maybe you need to do something behind the scenes? We need a spy master, not just a great scout. Delegate, motherfucker.”
Their talk before the actual council was one thing that Bob had man handled Anthony into having. Anthony was against having a meeting about a meeting, but Bob had insisted. Cedric would be there shortly with Valerie.
“I’m... yeah... okay... Point made,” Bob said. “I will consider it.”
Anthony was concerned that Bob wasn’t getting the message, but he was more concerned that Bob was going to go rogue. None of the chosen has a better suite of powers to deal with the zombies as a whole. Bob could detect any zombies within three miles and he knew the locations of the three higher tier death knights.
Mork, the god that summoned Bob, had really put a hefty investment in him. It was as if his company had offered him a golden parachute into the new world. Yil, the good that had summoned Anthony, by comparison, had made him a powerful healer. Anthony got the company match. He also picked up the job of the group’s healer because everyone everyone else had picked an offense based class. Now they were all running things.
Anthony was already a leader. Both men had run businesses before. Anthony’s more personal business as a midwife with his two sons helping him meant he had to have a strong relationship with whoever he worked for. Bob baked the cakes and then had someone else sell them most of the time.
They clashed the most on Bobs expressed deep-seated desire to just go and murder the death knights personally. Anthony could wait.
Valerie opened the cabin door.
“Anthony, Bob, good to see you both,” she said. “I’ve got Cedric and Duchess Gigi here.”
The young dwarf girl wore a uniform that looked a size too big. She had gone from being a military cadet to Anthony’s adjutant to the Princess General of the Irumian military.
Behind her, the commander of the seventy-sixth dwarven legion walked in casually. He wore a gambeson, even in this heat, a small crest the only adornment on his chest. Despite his youthful appearance, gray hairs dotted his black beard and hair. A short sword, a representation of his office, hung on one side.
Behind him, a goat wandered in. She bleated at them.
“She’s feeling a bit off today,” Cedric said of the goat. “We let her stay that way for a bit.”
Gigi, the pygmy goat, bleated.
“Welcome back,” he said. “We’re only missing our elf companion now.”
Anthony itched to pet the dwarf, but seeing as how she was a duchess in charge of a large swathe of land that they were currently reclaiming, he waited for her to approach. She had been turned into a zombie and later turned into a goat because of the external pressure of a powerful single use card. Someone gave her, along with over two dozen dwarf zombies, a second chance at life. She was making the most of it.
“Let me just grab a robe for... oh, you’re already wild shaping, aren’t you?”
Where the pygmy goat had once been, a taller dwarf woman in her mid thirties now stood. She was, as he had worried, completely naked and totally distracting.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Anthony said, holding out a white robe. “Otherwise people are going to say something.”
“They’re already talking about your girlfriend and you,” Gigi said, extending to her full height. “Also, you chose...”
“They are strange,” Cedric said. “But rather than gawk at the gorgeous lady dwarf, why don’t we get down to business? Daylight is burning, and the legion is going to want to hear from me after this. But not too fast because I don’t want to go down that rope ladder again soon. Whoever designed it, making it human sized, maliciously complied with the order.”
“I’ll talk to Andrew later,” Bob said. “He’ll appreciate the compliment to his work.”
Cedric raised a hand to say something, but must have immediately thought better of it.
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The door opened, and everyone turned. Finley and Zan stood tall at the entrance.
“Ah, fair elf!” Gigi said, running to hit him with a pint-sized hug.
“Gigi! Good to see you,” Finley said.
“Zan!” Gigi said, throwing herself at the next person to walk through the door.
“What is that about?” Anthony asked Cedric.
“She said something about living life to its fullest and giving the people she cares about big hugs when she sees them,” Cedric said. “But she hasn’t given me a hug despite my attempts to court her.”
“Yeah, good luck with that. She can only keep dwarf form for half of the day,” Anthony said. “Maybe a bit more. She didn’t run and sprint and hg me either-”
The breath got knocked out of him as Gigi bowled him over.
“I didn’t have any clothes on, you jack wagon,” she said. “Now, I do.”
Once the rabble died down, they all took seats around the large table. Valerie made a magical image of the new duchy of Gloucester. The top-down image of showed the towns that the seventy-sixth legion had already reclaimed. From the seaside port city, they had driven in to over twenty towns, clearing the dead as they went. Caravan practice was to have a druid or warlock of the Goat Lord to perform the last rites.
“Are the amount of goats sufficient for your needs, Commander Cedric?” Gigi said.
“Four per company is currently sufficient. My apologies that it is taking longer for us to wrap up our commitment to the Peace Turtles. Their clear-cutting efforts in Sunderland still occupy the remaining eight infantry companies. I expect we will detach two more this week and another two next month, then we will reassess.”
“Well, that answers that,” Anthony said. “One chosen per company works out well then, I take it?”
“One chosen and two goats? I guess we can make it work if we have to, but the current situation works exceedingly well.”
Cedric pointed to the capital city.
“Moving on, unless there are any more questions about troop movements or exchanges? No? We need to talk about this next part of the campaign then. Chosen Bob, please tell me your thoughts here,” Cedric said.
Bob stepped forward.
“There is a death knight there. I have spoken with Anthony. I would like to take it on. We don’t know this what talent this chosen has, but seeing as one had the pathfinder ability, one had the gate skill and the third that we have met so far has been the entity we are calling the flesh weaver...”
“We are all concerned with whatever ability has caused it to stay in place. Clearly something is going on and no one thinks it is good,” Anthony said. “There are a lot of possibilities, and no one thinks you should go in and recon the situation personally.”
Bob clapped his hands together.
“But it would be for the glory of Noveria!” Bob said.
“We know about your quest skill, Bob,” Gigi said. “We all know. Please stick to the plan, chosen.”
The sass dripped off of her in waves. Anthony smirked. She had definitely taken a page from his girlfriend. He was proud of how she had grown up, even though he knew they were roughly that same age, just raised up on different planets.
“I think we can all agree that Bob is far too useful to the war effort helping to direct the legion,” Anthony said.
“Thanks to him, we have been easily able to counter anything that has appeared. Luckily, we didn’t really need to worry about that as they’re all well. Let’s talk about the other problem I have. Yesterday, what am I advanced scouting platoons went up against something that resembled fortified positions?”
A gasp went over the group.
“We were about twenty spans away from the Kingdom? A real tough shot leads this squad. This leads me to believe that the fighting closer to the kingdom may become more difficult.”
“If you ran into intelligent zombies that far up away from the capital, then maybe we need to speed up our movements. Nobody knows the range of the chosen control but-” Anthony said, turning to Bob.
“Sorry guys, I didn’t get a quest,” he said.
“This is worrying. The last time we had to fight intelligent undead, they actually had a game plan coming in to attack us. Now? We’re coming to attack them,” Finley said. “If they had time to set up fortifications, then we might face some resistance.”
“We’re going to need siege weapons,” Valerie said. “If we have to go through fortifications. If I was this death knight, I would use the walls and structures that the capital already had.”
Anthony considered her words. There hadn’t been a time at which they had had to fight the zombies as a group in a while. All the fighting that they had to do now involved a group of dwarves fighting a single undead one at a time. The legion repeatedly crushed them because of their lack of organization.
This fresh development changed things. Now they would have to consider what the enemy knew and how to get around his fortifications. They had a lot going on in terms of raw firepower and they now had some manpower. They had judged that the capitol had at least hundreds of thousands of dwarfs, if not millions.
If they could set up a roadblock or fortification twenty leagues away from the city, all the zombies inside that radius were under the thrall of that death knight. That was a lot of concentrated death and destruction.
“What do you think about setting up a network of fortifications starting?” Cedric pointed to a city just south of the place where the fortifications were up.
“Hey not for nothing, Commander Cedric, but how do you know exactly where this scouting party went?” Valerie said. “This is a gigantic map.”
“The scout was a local, and he mentioned a tavern that I know. They passed by it and yeah, that is why I have them write this stuff down.”
Cedric traced a line back from the spot to where one of his companies was operating. Those companies were to know that Charlie’s been further from the capitol. If they had wanted to, they could have sent a portal from there back to the promontory staging area or all the way back to Sunderland where the rest of the legion were. It felt like a waste when there was a well-established system of delivering notes and supplies between the two places.
“You want us to get the early earth shaping extended all the way up there? We can do it. I mean, as long as you can support the two of them. Sonya and Sophie are glass cannons,” Bob said. “They’ll do it, but you better be damn sure. But you’re ready to commit to this. Can we head around the Capitol region and see if there’s another way in?”
“There are always the airships,” Finley said. “Drop exploding stuff on them. Clear them out.”
“He is talking about bombing the city,” Bob said. “Well done, Finley. You are officially over this as much as we are.”
“I’m just saying that we have the airships now. Besides this one, the fleet is over there,” Finley said. “When are you heading back to join us?”
Anthony could feel Finleys gaze upon him. Someone had to work with the lizard folk tribes to recruit more people for the cause. There were other continents for them to visit. If this war continued on for much longer, they would be stretched too thin. They needed more, otherwise they would have a bit more than a thousand defenders trying to steamroll an entire continent. It was possible, but highly improbable.
“How goes the recruiting efforts, then?” Cedric said, turning to the elf. “I don’t suppose we can look to elvish communities abroad for help?”
“I honestly don’t know of any,” Finley said sheepishly. “But if I did, I would...”
Anthony watched as the elf’s expression went through a rage.
“You know where there are more elves?” Finley said.
“You might be surprised to know that it was going to be our next stop,” Cedric said. “I have a full dossier on the dark elves?”
“How far are they from here?” Anthony said.
“They have an island that they operate out of, several hundred span away from here. They work closely with one of the tribes. I think they wanted us to quell a population of monsters on the interior of their island so that they could change some things. I’ll have my historian look into it.”
“If we can capture the interest of another group, then we will be well on our way to reclaiming Noveria. I don’t suppose you know any human or orc settlements, do you? No matter.”
Anthony scanned the room.
“We are going to need to push on all fronts here,” he said. “To that end, who wants some coffee?”