When the pylons barring the entrance fizzled out, a horde was unleashed upon the checkpoint. Rallied by Alberich’s show of strength, the Dwarven defenders leaped into the fray, and soon, one could barely tell apart friend from foe in the storm of violence that ensued.
Mime crushed, pelted, and disembowelled more of his undead kin than he cared to recount. Whenever a thrall landed a lucky blow on him, his overwhelming powers of restoration knitted each and every wound. The mana potions he’d borrowed from Alberich served to fortify him against blows of every nature. He and his brother, standing back-to-back, formed the spine of that final effort to repel the Order.
“Haha! I haven’t felt this alive in years!” Alberich grinned with delight as droves of Gravewalkers disintegrated under the weight of his holy warhammer, “This reminds me of that time - the beating of my heart when we faced down that Amber Dragon together, Mime!”
He was glowing - both literally and figuratively. Alberich’s innate affinity for enchantment allowed him to bestow blessings upon every inch of his equipment. From his hammer to his fists to his boots, every stray blow sent thralls packing by the dozens, but the most favoured of his enchantments by far was the fortifying spell cast upon his armour. It was the most powerful boon mortals could ever hope to bestow - a [Blessing of Invulnerability].
“Where is that pitiful daughter of the Lich!?” He yelled, “I’ll see to it personally that her head is mounted on a spear! Blast these necromancers and their cowardice! A warrior should face his enemies head on instead of hiding behind a horde of his victims!”
“The more we kill, the less she’ll have to work with!” Mime charged forward with his shield to knock a thrall off-balance, “Oi! Stop those thralls from reaching the arbalests! We need all the support we can get!”
Bonecrawlers slid in from behind the main force, attempting to flank the Dwarves’ vulnerable rear guard. Warriors attempting to break off from the front line quickly found themselves assailed by the insatiable tide of Gravewalkers. Stealing a glance towards the ballistae, Mime swallowed his pride as he crushed the skull of yet another thrall.
“We need to retreat!” He said, “If we linger here, our men will suffer!”
“Whatever do you mean!? I could do this all day!” Alberich replied.
“Not every soldier is invincible, brother!” He pleaded, “If we’re not fighting to preserve our manpower, then who’s going to be left when the battle ends!?”
Alberich’s elation melted away. He couldn’t argue the point in good faith. “...Fine!” He shouted, “We can use the time to fortify the siege weapons at the third checkpoint! But we won’t have another chance to back down! We need to stop them there, Mime! With the fortress at our backs, we won’t have anywhere else to run!”
How many more thralls stood between them and the Order’s masters? From Mime’s perspective, they seemed to be endless, and only increasing in strength as their numbers thinned. He couldn’t help but worry that the worst had yet to come.
“...Let’s go.” He exploited a gap in the horde’s offence to back away, “Let’s go! We won’t have much time to prepare! All of you - retreat to the third checkpoint! Join the others in preparing the final defences!”
By the time they were well on their way through the tunnels, the checkpoint had already been overrun. Lieze came rushing through the thralls on the lookout for either of her targets and found herself disappointed by the lack of a welcome party to greet her.
“This is infuriating… eliminating either Alberich or Mime would make this a lot easier, but they’re being surprisingly conservative with their tactics.” She muttered, “Conquering the fortress with two Scions stacked against us will end up creating a lot of trouble for the army.”
Drayya wandered into the cavern with both hands folded behind her head. “They’re really trying to save every last soldier, aren’t they? We’ve raised barely 10 corpses since we began the attack.” She pouted, “I wonder what their plan is once there’s nowhere left to run?”
“We won’t give them the opportunity.” Lieze replied, “I’m sending in the Briarknights and Flesh Elementals first this time. We’ll storm the checkpoint faster than they can possibly react. Drayya, you and Baccharum will be accompanying me on the front lines.”
“Wha- you want us to lead the charge!?” Drayya’s bravado vanished in a blink, “Did you fall and hit your head? Necromancers aren’t exactly skilled warriors, you know.”
“Did I hear my name being called?” Baccharum waded through rotting, waist-high scalps to meet them, “Gods, my eyes are starting to ache… I haven’t been out in the light for this long since the day I left Akzhem…”
Lieze unsheathed the dagger from her waist and held it out. Baccharum felt around with his bony fingers and lifted it after a fashion, pressing the blade against his pallid skin to test its sharpness, “Dear oh dear… you couldn’t slice bread with these Sovereign weapons.”
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“My apologies if it’s not to your liking.” Lieze frowned, “You lost one during your encounter with Mime, so I figured you would want another. You’re going to be defending me and Drayya during our next attack, so I’ll be expecting you to put them to good use.”
“Do you know what? I’ve never participated in open conflict before. Every kill to my name was earned in shadow or solace.” With remarkable ease, Baccharum twirled the dagger between his fingers, “I’m not sure how I feel about taking the lives of nameless soldiers.”
“Don’t test me. How you feel about it doesn’t mean a thing to you.” Lieze retorted, “If you’re going to call yourself a member of the Order without practising necromancy, then you’d better get to proving yourself in other fields. It’s about time I witnessed how deadly a career assassin is with his blade.”
“Well… if I must.” He sighed, “Do try to keep yourselves out of harm’s way, mind. I can’t be expected to defend the two of you if we’re surrounded on all sides.”
“Ah… we’re really about to do this, aren’t we?” Drayya scratched the back of her head, “Should I offer a prayer for our health…? Or, since we’ve now firmly established our opposition to the Gods themselves, maybe that would just do more harm than good?”
“We need no prayers to find victory this day.” Lieze replied, “Focus your mind, rely on your thralls to protect you, and show no mercy to the enemy. We are of a different fold compared to these life-cursed fools. Our goals are beyond their ability to understand.”
She focused. Visions flashed through her mind in an instant; mountains of corpses, lifeless wastelands, the sensation of her own flesh scabbing and peeling. The act of communion, once forbidden to her, had become so common a sensation that the sudden rush of power was beginning to bore her.
[Strengthen Undead] Activated
Remaining Heavenly Favours - 2
Her thralls quickened. Horrors, once slow as glaciers, sprinted with enough speed to outrun even the quickest soldiers. Lieze had always been reluctant to make use of the favour due to its restrictive time limit, but the overwhelming number of thralls she could now command at once meant that it was possible to bestow the boon upon a generous percentage of her army.
“We’re moving out!” She shouted, “This is the final stretch! The Dwarves might think of their fortress as impenetrable, but they’re in for a terrible surprise once we push them back from this checkpoint! Drayya! Baccharum!”
“Yes, yes… there’s no need to shout.” The Elf muttered, “No Dwarf will lay a hand upon either of you - provided this isn’t an elaborate excuse to get yourselves killed.”
The horde worked itself into a semi-cohesive line at Lieze’s command. She moved her Briarknights and Flesh Elementals to the front line, ordering them to defend her at any cost. The blazing heat of the magma chamber rose up from the final stretch of labyrinthine tunnels as she, Drayya, and Baccharum took point and marched into the depths.
“Drayya.” She placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder, “Once we send the thralls in, they’ll try to block off the entrance with those electrical pylons again. I’ll handle them, and I want you to prepare an invisibility spell to obscure us three for the first few moments. That should allow time for us to meld with the chaos once the battle begins and draw less attention.”
“Technically, it’s not an invisibility spell.” Drayya pressed a finger against her palm, “Transmutation actually relies on the refraction of light in the environment and a precise alteration of the body’s superficial chemistry to-”
“-Can you do it?”
“Of course I can!” She puffed out her cheeks, “I was just trying to educate you, is all. You wouldn’t want me claiming that necromancers use puppet strings to control thralls, would you?”
“Well… that’s not entirely incorrect…”
“No, no, no - I’m not arguing semantics with you when there’s a battle to be fought.” Drayya shook her head, “Let’s just call it invisibility and be done with it.”
“You two are certainly getting along.” Baccharum said, “Very strange. In Tonberg, you always seemed to be at each other’s throats in one way or another.”
Drayya smirked, “Don’t get it mixed up. I still want to kill her sometimes.”
“How flattering. The feeling is mutual.” Lieze placed her hand on Drayya’s head and forced her head to turn, “Now - eyes forward. We’re almost there.”
Baccharum rasped his daggers against one-another fast enough to send sparks flying. Lieze yanked a Briarknight by the arm and forced it to remain by her side while the others charged forward, accompanied by small groups of Gravewalkers. As soon as they crossed the passage into the third checkpoint, another pair of electrical pylons created a field of electricity which broke them off from the main force.
“Are you ready, Drayya?” She asked.
The girl smirked, “Just say the word.”
Lieze channelled mana into the Briarknight’s body, transforming it into a volatile mass of bubbling blood.
Staff of Thraldom’s MP - 3,398 / 3,417
She gave the thrall’s exposed spine a good kick, sending it sprawling towards the static field. As soon as the barest spark made contact with its flesh, there was a grand explosion of gristle and crimson, impactful enough to carve into the checkpoint’s entrance and dislodge the pylons from its walls.
Lieze placed her palm on Drayya’s back, “Now!”
Their bodies glossed over with incandescence as Drayya’s spell took shape. She reached out to grab Baccharum’s wrist, shivering at the deathly coolness of his skin, dragging the Elf into her once-forbidden sorcery. Within seconds, the three of them could only be perceived by a translucent haze lingering in the air.
“Hah… that really takes it out of me.” Lieze couldn’t see her expression, but she assumed it was displeased, “This won’t last for long. Barely a minute. And it should go without saying that casting any spells is a good way of revealing exactly where you are, so try to be a little careful, at least.”
“Enough talk. Let’s go.” Lieze turned her head, “Baccharum?”
“Don’t make it sound like I’m about to run away, now.” The light of a nearby sconce was dappled through his lanky, shimmering silhouette, “I’ll be very selective with my kills, so don’t worry about being spotted early.”
“Don’t attack Alberich or Mime just yet.” She warned, “I want to thin their numbers and work our way to their flank. If those two are isolated, we’ll stand a better chance of taking them both on at once.”