Notably absent from Anthony’s consideration were the other four dragons. All of them had decided to not show up at the appointed time of battle. He summarily crushed the dragon that broke through, but four dragons at once would probably cause a stalemate. Anthony was really trying to think about why whoever the death knight was would do that. It made little sense to him. But he would accept what was given to him.

The legion had spread out to avoid casualties. The brave company, the first of many, advanced its spellcasters, slowly encroaching on the capital. They had continued the May strategy of advancing a little at a time and safely taking what they had and gained and using that. This meant that over time, more and more elaborate patterns would be visible from high up. Over time, it would look more and more like someone had just did their best to make a giant maze in the middle of nowhere. Now, if these intelligent zombie owls kept climbing over their walls, then they would keep stabbing, but in time, the chosen would take down the death knight, and this would change.

Anthony continued to ping the dragon with his magic, missiles, and holy bolts. It felt so ineffective that he almost considered stopping. Then he remembered where he was and dipped back into his mana again, trying to get their attention. He wasn’t successful at getting their attention, probably due to how far away they were and how the title controlled they were.

It felt like they were on a death, spiral or a death loop, where, with no input, they would just keep doing the same thing repeatedly. And then. Anthony realized he was just doing the same thing repeatedly, and he took a second to look around. If he was the enemy, now that all the Dwarven legion was all snug in, this is when he would start the counterattack. This is exactly when he would send a band of elves from the wrong location to come attack.

True to form, that was when the first stone landed, coming from the other direction. The sound of a stone hitting Jarred hit him and instead of being able to hear for a second, his ears popped and all he could feel was static. This was not how he wanted the day to go.

Of course, once that stone landed, it was immediately clear why the dragons hadn’t come down yet.

They have been waiting for their cue.

Receiving the cue, the dragons made their way towards the entrenched dwarves. All but one broke off and went towards them. And now Anthony understood. He had watched Cedric unload an entire legion and a half of the coalition forces. Then he had sprung his trap. Of course he did.

Anthony sighed.

It fell to the chosen to take care of the dragon, so of course; it was his job. There was a gaping hole in their defense. Unlike the chosen and the legion, Anthony couldn’t predict their movement.

What he could do was lay waste to their forces. And that was what he did.

---

The hills behind the legion lit up with the flames of several trees now being on fire. Now that these zombies were actually on the attack, Sophie started changing the direction of her fire. Shifting her airship with the help of her coxswain, they fired down on the flanking Elven zombies. Something that the elves had that none of the Orcs or dwarfs had was a lot of bows and arrows and apparently the time to organize enough of their Undead to actually use them.

Sophie called down fire left, right and in front of her, as she tracked the dragon’s movements. As sure as shit, she was going to do her best to take one down. This was her chance to get bragging rights for the rest of her life, and she wasn’t going to be the person who missed out on that.

As soon as one dragon got within range, she tapped into the goat Lord’s patron bond with her and a shocking lightning grasp of Vines reached out from her air shift to the Dragon. She expected a living dragon to be surprised. As an undead minion? All she could ask for was a chance to get her vines into it.

It took less than 6 seconds for her to use her vines to leave her airship as she jumped, swinging around up and over and behind the dragon.

She pumped her mama into those vines, doing her best to strangle it before it could do anything else.

Still, she was one woman, and it was one dragon, and it was all she could do to keep it under control. Everyone else was going to have to help as much as they could.

---

The sound of dragons fighting finally reached Bob’s ears, and he perked up. Of course, the dragons finally committed to attacking right after he had got in position to attack them himself. Of course they did. It made perfect sense, like nothing that the death knights had done before. If he didn’t know any better, he would think that there they were trying to prove something.

tried preciousSo,TheKingdom,Bob was not a fan of his enemies’ improving. He was a fan of the elephant that had seen them to the outer walls of the Alvin Kingdom where they met their first obstacle. the walls were too tall for the elephant. So of course, they spent precious time trying to figure out a way over. In the meantime, several Zombie archers had decided that now was the time for them to make a stand.

Stella was alternating between firing ice and fire at archers that kept appearing on the walls.

“You have any bright ideas, Bob?” Brandon said.

“We’ve got to go over it.,” he said.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Or through it,” Stella added.

To add to the things that he was counting on the good side, the monks were fantastic at keeping the arrows from hitting them. What they were not great at was extending their offensive capabilities.

Bob was trying to see this as a puzzle to get solved. Too many zombies? Use his necromancy control card. Too many archers? Deploy the monks with the wind powers. Too many elephants? Crush them under the bodies of other zombies. The one thing he couldn’t figure out a way through was the wall. Instead of bashing his head against the wall, he wanted to send his elephant through the wall, and he was not sure if that was going to work so well.

Just because something was big and strong and full of muscle didn’t mean that it was actually going to punch through Stone, but Bob could at least try. Pushing on the elephant, he rammed it into the stone wall.

“It would have been nice if they had a door somewhere that we could break,” he said. “But no, we had to get the smart zombies that decided that they didn’t want to be bothered by us. Does anybody else hate that?”

“I’m not a fan, honestly,” Stella said. “If you got something constructive to say, say it because otherwise it makes little sense for us to stay here. We can abandon the elephant. Trust me.”

In the back of his mind, Bob was thinking about how far away that death knight had to be and if they could just jump over this wall and get to him. They had a grappling hook. The monks could fly. But he didn’t know if they could all work together on this.

“What I wouldn’t give for a flying bison right now,” Brandon said. “It’s too bad that we abandoned the skiff back there, but I think we would not have made it this far with it.”

“Are you guys ready to climb and fly over?” Bob yelled.

The enthusiastic nods made him smile. Bob unsummoned his grappling hook from the elephant and tossed it, followed by Stella, up over the wall. The monks followed her, then he did. He wasn’t sad to leave the elephant there, but he felt his power growing and decided that this was about the time that the elephant had grown its usefulness. Feeling for its spine, he cracked it so that once he was out of range, it wouldn’t be able to help. The ease with which he used his power surprised him.

Ahead of them, finally, he could see the ground. Not wanted to look back, he started pushing around a circle of undead as he took control of elves on this side of the wall. He realized with a start that several of them already had bows and arrows. Those he had begun to take pot shots all around at their brothers and sisters.

“I’m taking control of the archers. I’m going to clear a path here. If you see any archers firing on us, point them out so I can take over.”

Stella and the three monks took up a defensive position around him, doing their best to keep him from harm as their little bubble of life extended. With his sanctify card skill, Bob took a moment to create a circle of life that he pushed out as a spell.

With the archers under his control, he now tried to figure out where that death knight was. All he needed to do was take about 20 steps in One direction, to get a triangulation of it. It felt close. And when they had moved 20 ft down the wall, he realized it was very close. It also did not Escape his notice: It’s definitely not in the castle. The exact spot that he would put himself in if he was a death knight, the most defensible structure in the entire capital was not where his skills were telling him to go. It had to be in a building north of the Capitol, next to a giant pool of water. Water. Bob was definitely hoping that they weren’t going to have to be waiting through a moat or something.

“It’s over there,” He pointed.

Suddenly, he could see it. An orc-sized being with a cloak was staring right at him and he could feel its animosity between him. It wasn’t happy. Around him, every single zombie stopped moving and just looked.

“Ah! That’s terrifying,” Stella said. “Make them stop!”

“No, I can’t. The death knight has them all in thrall. He wants to fight me one on one. It’s a challenge,” he said.

“Bob, you don’t have to...” she said, but he cut her off.

“You know I do.”

With all the bluster in the world, there was no way that he could convince Sarah that he was serious. And she knew it, too. She was definitely playing along. She was going to have to protest, and then he was going to say that he had to save the day. But in the end, neither one of them would actually do that, because they had both decided to back each other up.

And so it was that Bob jumped into the interior of the Elven Kingdom for what he really hoped was going to be the last stop on his Intercontinental tour.

---

Sophie missed the Continental breakfast. She never thought that she was going to miss that. But those little breakfasts that you got to eat in the morning after you stayed at the hotel when you were on some sort of trip? It was one of those things that made her feel like she was a human. No one cared if you took too much.

But here? She was hoping that her other companions would take on any of the dragons.

“A bit of the help here guys,” she yelled as her Dragon skidded to a stop on the ground, The Vines finally twisting it into a bloody juice.

Above her, two dragons now attempted to ram the airships. One of them succeeded, and she gasped. She wasn’t close enough to do anything about that and as she looked up; she realized elves surrounded her.

It was at that point in time that she realized that she would have really enjoyed being thrown into a dungeon crawl of some sort instead of having to Trek all over to just be surrounded by zombies all over again. The amount of zombies that were just able to show up to this party whenever they wanted to did not impress her.

Lashing out wrapped around what had to be dozens of zombies in her vines. It took about 6 seconds for the vines to fully overtake them and she felt safe again. The dragon, having dumped her unceremoniously on the interior of the Capitol, had given her a look at what had to have been a bubble of control somewhere in the center. She hadn’t gotten enough of a look, but she was reasonably certain that it had to be Bob and company.

“Fucking Bob,” she said, moving in that direction.

Sophie didn’t have any special skill cards that dealt with the undead. Twice in her life, someone granted her the power to turn zombies into living beings. She prayed to the Goat Lord, eyes wide as she walked further into danger.

It felt like it wasn’t ready yet.

“I’ve asked so much of you, but you have asked so much of us.”

Sophie cast another trip vine at the approaching elves, then fucked behind q tree. Seeing a better way, she climbed up it. The trees were not just for show, as there was an interconnected walkway leading from tree to tree.

It was of course an energy connected walkway that could lead her further into the capital. Just where she wanted to be.

The best part of it? Was the total and complete lack of zombies? Trained by months of fighting against them, Sophie thought the worst as she checked around every corner of the catwalks. But the tree ways seems solid. Sophie wiggled her fingers as she reshaped the ground underneath the tree, causing it to buck a little. This little motion caused all the nearby zombies to topple over. The two that were climbing up after her she zapped.

And then she ran as fast as she could across the catwalks towards the interior of the Capitol. She knew which way Bob was because she had that sense. She was also cut off from the rest of the chosen because she had picked the wrong dragon to ride.