Things were rather crowded in the throne room once Lieze and the others returned. Thralls of every persuasion congested the fortress halls and filled the area with an imperishable stench of rot. In Lieze’s absence, Lüngen had taken up the task of accommodating the Deathguards as best he could, exchanging words with Roland, who had been elected as the remnants’ leader.
When Lieze made her appearance known, the blonde-haired necromancer faced her like a statue, his expression a maelstrom of wounded pride and reluctant acceptance. With both hands by his side, he bowed, and Lieze was forced to avert her gaze to avoid any secondhand embarrassment.
“...We’ll follow you.” Roland declared, “It’s been decided. I apologise for my behaviour earlier.”
“Every last one of you?” Lieze asked, “I find that hard to believe.”
“Well…” He straightened himself out, “A few of us deserted, yes. They’re returning to the Deadlands. But all of us who are present are willing to join you.”
Lieze took a head count. Sokalar had entered the city with around 45 Deathguards, but only 17 were standing in the throne room. She would have preferred to selectively spare any talented necromancers during the war, but most of them had been killed either through her own efforts or during the final battle.
“Remaining here is our best chance of survival.” Roland continued, “A few of us wanted to remain at the gates to see if Master Sokalar would appear. I was a little hopeful myself, to tell the truth, but… the longer we waited, the more obvious it became that you weren’t bluffing.”
“I can’t blame them.” Drayya shrugged her shoulders, “Lying about that really does sound like the sort of thing you would try, Lieze.”
In short, the remaining Deathguards had joined the cult out of desperation rather than true loyalty. Lieze wouldn’t have expected anything less from a group she had been murdering just days ago, but the question of their allegiance weighed at the back of her mind.
“Fine.” She said, “I won’t turn down extra manpower. But the others will be keeping a close eye on you all for quite a while. We can’t risk the possibility of betrayal when I’ve already come this far.”
“...Thank you.” Roland bowed again, “It’s a shame we can’t conduct the ritual of ascension so far from home, but perhaps if we-”
“No.” Lieze interrupted, “No rituals. No ascension. I don’t want to see any thoughtless bootlicking or subservience. You will all learn to act on your own initiative. I have no interest in dominating my allies with fear. All I demand from you is respect and results.”
It would take months of effort to shape the Deathguards from obedient husks into a force capable of fulfilling her extraordinary demands. Thankfully, with Sokalar’s death, she now had nothing but time.
“Listen to me.” She wandered into the centre of the group, “Sokalar was weak. Despite practising the Order’s faith, he submitted himself to the limitations of humanity and tempered his ambitions to suit that weakness.”
The throne of Tonberg was nothing but a suggestion of its former self. The golden-black sheet of cloth draping its crumbled spine had been torn to ribbons. In all honesty, Lieze preferred it that way. She nestled herself onto the uncomfortable slab of stone before continuing her speech.
“-In doing so, his inadequacy tainted the Order. He ruled us with pain and despair. But my travels have revealed to me the depths of his stupidity, and the sin he has committed by preventing the Order from taking hold of its true destiny. I will not allow myself to be dissuaded by the scope of our cause, and neither will any of you allow yourselves to be guided by fear.”
She threw her arms out, “Tonberg only marks the beginning of our journey to true enlightenment. Today marks the beginning of the Order’s rebirth - of our rebirth. Not as slaves to a greater will, but as the seekers of our own destinies. That is our way.”
For the first time in her life, Lieze spoke without restraint. Everything she had ever believed in had been torn down, and all that remained was to pick up the pieces and create an Order of her own design.
The room fell silent sans the thoughtless groaning of innumerable thralls. Somewhere, a pair of hands collided. Then another. Within seconds, the chamber roared with boisterous applause, heralding Lieze not only as the herald of their beliefs, but as the Order’s new leader.
Quest “Herald of Darkness” Complete! Reward - 5,000xp
Level Up! You are now level [43] HP + 10 MP + 45 MIND + 1
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With Lieze’s ascension, the Order became more than an ambitious enclave of plotters. Tonberg was hers to control, and though she had no citizens within her domain, she remained personally responsible for the continued survival of her followers.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Her evenings became swamped with the horrors of sovereignty. Tonberg’s dwindling stockpiles of food and clean water served to ease Lieze’s takeover of the city, but now that she was in charge of it, the deficit had transformed into a problem in desperate need of fixing.
There were only so many mouths to feed, but few of the cultists had any experience with hunting and trapping beyond chasing frogs. The city’s farmsteads had been burned to cinders and its mills thoroughly dismantled. Between available stocks of dried and smoked goods, Lieze estimated that the Order would only be able to sustain itself for a few months with careful rationing.
There would be no marching north without the supplies to make such a trip. But there was no reason why Lieze would have to divert cultists away from furthering the war effort when she had perfectly good thralls to accomplish the task for her.
A simple injection of intelligence using [Necromantic Alchemy] was all it took to fix the problem. The Briarknights were capable of leading and raising Gravewalkers all on their own, making them tantalising subjects for such an enhancement.
Once it had been firmly established that the castle was no longer in danger of collapsing any further, Lieze claimed the destroyed fortress as her new base of operations, moving the alchemy table and reliable blood-barrel into its throne room.
With the aid of her cultists, empowering a handful of Briarknights was no great feat. She was pleased to see that none of the corpses’ former personalities carried into their undead vocabularies. The last thing she wanted was to share another conversation with Helmach.
A matter of days following her ascension, she was staring at the balding heads of three Briarknights kneeling on the throne room’s torn carpet.
“What is your desire, my mistress?” The middlemost thrall asked.
“Okay - none of that. ‘Lieze’ is more than appropriate.” She waved her hand to dispel the title, “You seem far more intelligent than the Dark Caster I uplifted during the siege…”
“Yes. By your grace, much of our former intelligence has been retained.” It replied.
“I suppose Briarknights are already rather intelligent by the standards of a thrall.” She thought, “It only makes sense that [Greater Intelligence] would have a more profound effect on them.”
“What are your orders, Lieze?” The Briarknight did not raise its head, “We would gladly risk these imperfect bodies in your name.”
“Hunting.” She crossed her arms.
A beat passed.
“...Hunting?” The Briarknight repeated.
“The woods surrounding Tonberg are rife with game, and we’re in dire need of a reliable source of food. I don’t plan on moving on from Tonberg anytime soon, so it’s necessary to establish these sorts of policies.”
The Briarknight paused, “Even so…”
“I didn’t grant you a conscience so that you could complain about the mundanity of your orders.” She snapped, “Set traps, use magic - I don’t care. Just ensure that a steady supply of fresh meat is making its way into the city. I’ll entrust a Deathguard or two with preserving it.”
“...Of course.” The thrall’s joints cracked as it rose from the floor - a movement performed in unison with its fellows, “Your will be done.”
Lieze allowed the Briarknights free reign to bring as many Gravewalkers as they could manage along for their hunting trips. With no resistance left to oppose her rule, she would need to find methods of applying her thralls elsewhere, and entrusting them with the responsibility of simple tasks was an excellent way of doing it.
Her perch atop Tonberg’s throne, to reveal the embarrassing truth, was merely a decision made in the moment to lend some legitimacy to Lieze’s claim on the Order. She hadn’t expected the gesture to have been met with any sort of expectation, but in the resultant days, she found herself spending more time on that uncomfortable chair than she would have liked.
Still - it was useful to have her followers congregating in a single place, especially when they had something to request. She developed an understanding of why monarchs held court so often. In her spare time - or whenever she felt like it - Drayya served as the girl’s advisor, poised to crush any criticisms levied against Lieze’s leadership.
There came the problems of accommodation. Sanitisation. One Deathguard even had the heart to demand that Lieze instate some kind of entertainment for those who had spent their days strengthening and reinforcing thralls with bloodied hands. She was about to dismiss the request with a targeted and thinly-veiled threat when Drayya spoke up to concur.
“That’s not a bad idea. What about an arena?” She proposed, “We’re already killing the weaker Gravewalkers for blood, so why not eliminate them in a way everyone can enjoy? Pit them against one-another on the streets and let the cultists watch blood fly for a few hours.”
“If it keeps a dagger from finding its way into my back, then by all means.” Lieze caved, “-But don’t get caught up in the rush of it all. I want every litre of blood from these battles salvaged and put to use elsewhere.”
Then it was so. The Order’s nights became filled with the hollow timbre of thralls rending flesh and spilling blood. One look at the ecstatic grins plastered across the battles’ spectators was all it took to convince Lieze that a little bit of entertainment was worth the effort to keep her cultists satisfied.
During the evenings, Briarknights returned to the city with prey in tow. They killed anything they came across whilst stalking the countryside - deer, rabbits, poultry, as well as less desirable quarries; slimes, giant spiders, goblins, and kobolds to name a few. The former were moved to the city’s butchers and smokehouses to be preserved, while the latter were risen from the dead as fresh thralls to reinforce Lieze’s army.
All the while, she developed plans of her own. Namely, plans to realise the same ritual her father had performed to attain an imperfect state of immortality - [Gain Forbidden Knowledge].
Technique - [Gain Forbidden Knowledge] Type: [Ritual] Description - Spend 24 continuous hours and at least 1000 levels’ worth of [Undead] thralls to discover the most powerful techniques of the [Necromancy] school. Upon its completion, this ritual reduces the caster’s MP to 0. Additionally, any HP damage sustained by the caster during the ritual will force it to fail (lost thralls will not be refunded). Successfully completing this ritual will unlock another technique.
1000 levels.
If Lieze gathered up every single thrall under her command, she could more than likely meet that ridiculous requirement. However, she would need to sacrifice the Manticore, as well as a number of her Briarknights and Rot Behemoths. There was no better time to be making such a sacrifice, but the accidental acquisition of monster corpses during the Briarknights’ hunting expeditions gave her an idea.
“Why waste my own precious thralls when I could make use of someone else’s?” She thought, “After all, the nearby cities are practically flooded with them…”