Cecilia, mistress of the cliffs, and lady of the storm, just shook her head as she watched her forces shamble towards the gate. Agatha, that know-it-all troll, had assigned her three squads of restless dead to help push through the Wailing Manor’s opening floor. The skeletons were immune to most of the poisons, and diseases, that the forest threw at intruders and, as long as a single squad member survived, the rest could reform after a short time.
The problem was, they were relatively weak, and frankly stupid. It wasn’t their fault, when they literally fell apart, and put themselves back together, they lost a little bit of themselves. It was a slow process but, over the years, they just degraded. Thankfully projection booths didn’t have the same side effects as real life, so when Beckett rescued them everyone benefited. It didn’t make it any less frustrating when she had to watch one spend two or three minutes looking for their skull because they saluted too hard.
“Do we really need to take the boneheads with us?” Zara, her daughter, asked. The young harpy was bouncing back and forth from one talon to the other on the nearby mast, rocking rigging and annoying her teammates.
“We’ve been over this, little one. Although throwing a wave of harpies at them would be more effective, we would take losses. We need to fight smarter, not harder. You need to learn that if I’m ever going to turn over my job to you.” The girl pouted a little, but didn’t reply.
As the last bonehead finally shambled through the portal, Cecilia nodded to the other harpies, spread her wings, then took to the skies. She needed to dive fairly low to get through the portal, and the area on the other side wasn’t exactly what she’d call hospitable. Or even livable for that matter. At least the undead didn’t mind.
Cecilia landed in front of the skeletons, “You all know the plan, right?” The skeletons stared at her, blankly, so she just sighed. “One skeleton out of every group stays behind, so you can reform… remember?” They continued to stare at her. “Forget remembering, I want the leader of each squad to find a place to hide. The rest of you, advance slowly and swarm any enemy you encounter, the other harpies and I will support you from the air.” Finally, three of the skeletons split off, hiding in the bushes, while the others slowly made their way up the path.
Since Zara and her squad had settled onto the nearest trees, Cecilia turned to address them next. “We take no chances here, so only engage those mushroom skirmishers if you think you can get away clean. Zara can provide some minor healing to you, and I’ll provide support. Whatever you do, don’t rush ahead. We don’t know if Wailing Manor has reorganized their defenses at all, and I don’t want to lose anyone un-necessarily.” The entire group nodded. “Good, then follow me, ladies.”
As Cecilia once again took to the sky she could see the skeletons hadn’t managed to get too far ahead. Their slow, shambling gait wasn’t great for advancing, but the surprising thing was they still hadn’t encountered any enemies. As she circled around the skeletons, watching the trees, Zara spoke up. “It’s too quiet. Yes, our enemies have limited numbers, but shouldn’t they have engaged us already?” she asked.
“They’re afraid of us!” one of the other girls replied with a giggle.
“They’re up to something, that’s for sure,” Cecilia said, shooting an angry look at the squad, silencing them. The group continued circling for several minutes, watching the skeletons advance until they were right outside the boss arena.
Only when the end was in sight did the mycelium men show up. The tall mushroom men stood in the middle of the path, blocking the skeletons' advance, clubs in hand. Cecilia just narrowed her eyes, “Just one squad? Unlikely.” She was about to swoop down to get a closer look, when a tree behind the skeletons moved. Before she could warn anyone a large amorphous blob flew up and smashed into one of the harpies, Ariel. The girl screamed, thrashing about, as the ooze clung to her chest and wings, slowly burning her as they both plummeted.
Cecilia twisted around, just in time to see Voss step out of the treeline, pull one of the oozes that were swarming his bark off, and launch the blob upwards. This one struck a different girl, Heather, in the wing, causing her to spiral downwards, out of control. “Scatter! Get to cover!” she yelled, diving for the woods. The rest of the harpies were only a second or two behind her.
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“What the hell was that?” Zara asked, the instant they hit the treeline.
“We were expecting Voss to be in the boss area, which was a stupid oversight. The best place to hide a tree is the woods after all.” She glanced back at her daughter, “Did you see where Ariel and Heather went down?”
“I did,” Zara replied, with a shake of her head. “They hit too hard and instantly derezed. I think the oozes survived though.”
“Of course they fucking did. Those puddles are easy to kill if you crush the core, but massive blunt trauma? They’ll shrug that off.” Cecilia carefully glanced around the tree, checking to see what Voss was doing. The ent had turned his back on them, and was absolutely destroying the skeletons. Each swipe of his massive hand crushed multiple skeletons, spewing bones into the underbrush.
“Fall back for now,” Cecilia growled. “We might have been blindsided, but the skeletons will just get back up again, given some time. We’ll just regroup and come back again, wear them down just like we planned.” She shooed the other harpies away, but Zara stayed.
“You never give up that easily,” the younger harpy whispered. “What are you up to?”
“I just want to leave our host something to remember me by.” Cecilia leaned out of cover, just a little bit more, and started pulling power from the surrounding area. She could feel the static electricity collect in her feathers, course through her body, before she released the energy, creating a lightning bolt that arced between herself and Voss. The bolt struck the ent right in the middle of his back, causing him to catch fire. Cecilia let herself feel a moment of satisfaction, before realizing the tree wasn’t panicking, or even reacting that much, he just continued crushing skeletons.
Even though he didn’t react, something else did. The oozes, which had been crawling all over his upper half, converged on the fire, and attempted to smother it with their bodies. As they slid onto the fire their bodies started vaporizing, creating a massive cloud of poisonous gas in the area, putting out the fire at the cost of their lives.
“Well, that backfired,” Zara quipped, earning an angry glance from her mother. She shrugged, “At least we know now, so we can plan better for round two. Do you want to continue?”
Cecilia took one last look at Voss, who had just finished destroying their front line and turned back towards her location, and shook her head. “I really want to go talon to root with him, and prove I’m stronger, but we stick to the plan. We fly low until we lose sight of Voss, then gain altitude, head back and rendezvous with the others.”
Zara nodded, then the pair took off, slowly maneuvering through the tree line until they were clear of the area. Since they didn’t have to wait for the skeletons, the way back was much faster.
They arrived just in time to see the rest of their skeletons get derezed.
It happened fast, a squad of dryads just phased out of the trees right next to the portal, ripped the skeletons to shreds with magic, then sprinted into the woods, giggling.
The remaining harpies immediately took off in pursuit. “DON’T FOLLOW THEM!” Cecilia yelled, but she was still too far away for them to hear, and by the time she and Zara closed in, it was already too late.
A few seconds after the harpies started flying over the woods, they were intercepted. Bolas and crossbow bolts flew out of the canopy, knocking the girls out of the sky. Cecilia briefly considered flying over the area, and frying whatever was down there, but held back. Instead, she flew towards the portal, her daughter at her back. She did get close enough to catch snippets of conversation though.
“See… just like Talia said, boneheads first, and something we can field test our weapons on. Repeater crossbow is a success! Well, at least as long as we only need to fire five shots or less, reloading five shots manually takes a while.”
“It might not be great for sustained fights, but still good for skirmishes, Jenkins.”
“True. Hand me the notebook so I can write an after action report…”
Cecilia gritted her teeth, and swooped through the portal. She’d heard enough technical talk to recognize an engineer when she heard one, apparently Talia had anticipated their opening moves. It wasn’t worth the loss, but it was something. At least she knew who to concentrate on once she broke through the forest.