Chapter Forty-Five - Cultivator's Collapse

Things went from not so great to definitely worse the moment the cultivators leading the enemy army remembered where they were from.

Fenfang was almost ready to start chewing on her knuckles when a rain started from nowhere.

This was the far eastern reach of the Flaming Steppes. It didn't rain here. Not outside of a few seasons every year, and even then, when it rained it was supposed to come down in massive storms from the south.

This rain was a light pitter-patter. Something she would have expected in a more temperate part of the Empire. A quick cast of Detect Magic was enough to let her know that it wasn't natural. She didn't have her Master's ability to tell what kind of spell was cast by the glint of a raindrop in the air, but she knew enough to tell that there was something magical creating this rain.

And then the reason for it became clear, and she was glad for the rain. It hid her desperate tears well.

The ditches that Seventeen had painstakingly laid out as fortifications outside of the city weren't designed to last more than a season. They were definitely not meant to endure any amount of rainfall.

The undead were soon splashing around in ankle-deep water. Not enough to truly slow them down, but it was going to turn into mud and she could already see some parts of the ditch walls threatening to sag as the first hours of constant rainfall continued.

They weren't done, either.

The army pulled up to the first set of exterior walls, then simply... occupied them. A few cultivators sat on the walls and shot down any approaching artillery from their trebuchets, and the army itself gathered into tight formations covered by the wall.

She was starting to wonder what they were up to when a misty fog rolled in. It slowly crept down the hillside towards the valley next to Yu Xiang. Everything it covered disappeared under a thin white veil.

The undead army continued to fling rocks over and at the wall, but Seventeen called a halt and pulled all of the bow-skeletons back to the wall. By the time they'd climbed up, they had mud up to their hip bones.

The undead below were in a worse state. The ground was getting trampled as they moved around, sloshing mud about. Most of the undead didn't have boots on, and their skeletal feet tended to sink into the mud. The undead didn't normally weigh much, but theirs were armed and armoured, and they weren't buoyant.

The army's next push came suddenly. The wall collapsed explosively in a few places, and soldiers rushed through the gaps.

Makeshift bridges were laid out over the ditches, and the undead below could barely react as they were stuck in the mud and muck. The fog rolled forwards as well, somehow hanging above the army without hiding their own feet.

Seventeen barked orders and the undead army shifted and moved. It was quick, the orders were sensible, and they took a hefty toll on the enemy soldiers. But it wasn't enough to stop the full brunt of the push.

The mantises were ordered forwards, and they leapt off the wall and into the fog. She couldn't see how well they were doing, but the surprised screams of men below suggested that the fog turned them into true nightmares to fight.

Still, now they couldn't help each other as readily and they couldn't pick off cultivators.

Seventeen relayed another order, a final one. The ground shook and the air trembled as massive, hulking undead were let loose for the first time since the war began. These were the same massive monsters that had done so much in the battle that let her conquer Yu Xiang to begin with.

They were the equal to an entire platoon of enemies, and could lay waste to lesser cultivators with impunity... if they could find them.

The undead charged forwards and their roars were swallowed by the thickening fog.

Sometimes a cultivator went down. It was obvious by the way the fog cleared in some spaces. That allowed the archers on the wall to fire down with greater accuracy, but the gaps were quickly covered.

"Ma'am," Seventeen said. "It seems as though we may be losing."

"I see that," she said.

"We will have to retreat into the city and invite the enemy within. The streets will give us many avenues, heh, to attack from different angles. And we have a multitude of traps waiting for the adversary to run into." Seventeen adjusted his tie. "We will bleed them for every street they take."

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She understood, logically, that the battle wasn't lost until one side was wiped out or the other surrendered. The undead didn't have as many worries about morale as the human army. They'd fight to the last.

She wasn't sure if she'd be the last, however.

"Mem thinks it's time to go? Mem's sisters are having lots of fun, but Mem thinks maybe we won't have as much if we stay up here," Mem said with a wiggle of her scythe arms.

She had a point, Fenfang conceded. "Alright, let's--"

A man landed on the parapet a few necrometres away, then two more appeared next to him. They wore the silky blue robes of Mist Gate cultivators, and the air around them swirled with foggy condensation.

"There you are, heathen," the oldest among them said.

She raised a hand and cast. It came out faster than she'd ever managed it during her practice. First, a quick "Prestidigitation!"

The air between them filled with crackles and sparks, electric snaps that flew towards the cultivators. All three disappeared and reappeared on the wall, avoiding the illusion entirely.

"Eldritch Blast!" she shouted next even as she split her focus three ways.

Three jagged bolts of necrotic-feeling energy zipped out towards the cultivators.

Two sidestepped them with ease. The third lanced into one of the younger cultivator's arms and he hissed.

"Kill her!" their leader snapped before he rushed forwards.

Seventeen stepped up to intercept, but he was just one lone skeleton. The cultivator he faced tried to bat him aside only for his attack to meet a hastily cast shield. Then Seventeen was up close and personal, casting necrotic spells faster than Fenfang could think of their names.

The other was coming right for her.

Mem sliced the air, but the cultivator ducked under her cut, then bounced up, only gaining speed as she shot towards her.

She raised her arms to protect her face, the last thing she saw was a glowing knife being levelled at her heart before her eye squeezed shut.

It stabbed her with a dull gong.

Only... she didn't feel any pain. And on further consideration, she was pretty sure stabbing didn't make gonging noises.

Fenfang carefully opened her eyes to discover a wall of steel held just before her. An arm, fitted through well-tended leather straps, was holding that wall in place. A shield?

She looked up, and into the helmeted face of a knight. A proper knight, one who wore shining armour that was resplendent and glowing. The constant rain washed over polished steel that reflected the cold grey of the skies above.

"Pardon me, young Empress," the knight said with a voice that could have enraptured a crowd by reading a dictionary. "But it seems as though these men have ill-intent towards you."

"Um," she managed to articulate.

Fenfang fell back a little, coincidentally pressing her back into his chestpiece. He was quite tall, she noted.

Another knight stepped around them, then immediately engaged with the cultivator that had almost killed her. In moments, he was fending off both the older cultivator, and the one she'd managed to injure slightly while Seventeen held his own.

She twisted around, then looked down the side of the wall and immediately noted two things.

First, there was a large portal open next to the gate into the city, one from which a small army of undead were pouring. These undead wore uniforms, and were all armed identically.

More impressively, there were several more knights down below, as well as some tall undead in... butler's uniforms? Oftentimes those uniforms had armoured segments to them, as though they couldn't decide what to wear.

These undead moved with grace and finality. They immediately reminded her of Alex, though they didn't quite attack with the same level of acrobaticness and instead relied on brute strength and was looked like devastatingly overpowered necromantic spells.

The tides were turning, hard.

"Who... who are you?" she asked her saviour.

It didn't go amiss to her that this was very much a scene out of some of her more... interesting and romantic reads.

The knight stood tall, then removed his helmet.

She expected long, luxurious hair and a handsome chin.

Instead she received melted flesh and bald spots. "I am Sir Cophagus, my lady, Death Butler. At your service."

***