They had made their way to the keep the same way that Zalia did last time, sneaking over the rooftops until they got to the keep. Entering the same way as before, Zalia closed the keep tower door behind her, breathing out a sigh of relief. She felt some of the background tension leave her as she entered what she knew to be a space safe from whatever vision that monster had.
“Do you have any memories of this place?” Zalia asked.
“I do not, though the architecture is something I recognise. From where I do not know, I will have to ask the collective,” Delphi replied.
Zalia thought about that as explained to Delphi what she knew about the keep so far, where guards were waiting and their ranks. She felt confident in being able to take down the Bronze ranked ones, knowing their strength. Though, the ones she had fought outside were only civilians, maybe these ones having been guards in life would mean they retained some form of skill or ability. Either way she couldn’t fight them in groups of one or two anyways due to the sound that would be made. She thought about the little addition to Herbal magic’s Bronze effect, the ability to create new base effects from some herbs. She kind of knew what that meant but would need to do some experimentation to figure out which herbs she could actually do that with.
The thought only came to mind because she wanted to see if she could make some kind of sound dampening ritual. That would allow her to fight some of the enemies without potentially alerting the entire keep. Maybe she wouldn't need to go so far as using sound dampening and her vine-like structure creation would be able to block the sound well enough.
“Hmm,” Zalia hummed.
“Speak your memories Zalia,” Delphi said.
“Thoughts,” Zalia corrected.
“Thoughts are just memories of the present are they not?” Delphi asked.
“No,” Zalia said, “I might be able to create a space quiet enough to fight the Bronze undead in but being limited to such a small area might get me killed.”
She summoned a section of viney wall, pressing her hand against it. Strangely, her hand passed straight through.
“I thought I couldn’t pass my body through magical structure,” Zalia murmured.
Maybe because the structure was made by her it didn't have any type of protection against her. That was definitely something she could use. She formed a large dome over and around herself, trying to make the surface as bumpy as she could. She knew a little bit about how sound worked from her education and was hoping that this would be enough to stop the sound travelling through the entire keep.
She stepped through the dome.
“Hey Boreal, Delphi, let me know if you can hear anything ok?” Zalia asked.
She stepped back into the dome, trying to get used to the odd experience of walking through a wall and summoned her sword. She raised it up and slapped the flat of the blade against the floor. It produced a loud ringing sound as the metal vibrated slightly.
“Heard the ringing,” Delphi said.
“Hmm,” Zalia said.
She thickened the walls a bit until she thought they might be good enough and tried again.
“Barely heard it that time,” Delphi said.
She tried stepping through the wall and found it was still thin enough, barely.
“It will have to do,” she said.
“Loud,” Boreal said in her mind.
‘You just have really good hearing,” Zalia replied, “and besides, the undead have terrible hearing, they are still asleep even though we walked straight past them.”
Zalia let the dome disintegrate, not bothering to renew it now that she had done her testing. She made her way down the stairs to the little bedroom and study combination that made up the room holding the first Bronze rank undead she had found. She walked through the jammed door and inspected the space inside. The undead was still unconscious with their head on the desk so Zalia began building a dome there.
She wouldn't be able to kill the Bathar instantly but with some good set up she might be able to seriously injure it before the fight even began. Once the dome was up, she stepped inside and very carefully set up a few traps around it. The put spring loaded spikes in the floor all around it, a few tripwires across the length of the dome that it would get caught in and even went so far as to summon a bear trap to put on the floor. Once that was all done she summoned her sword and swung it down on the leant over undead’s neck. It was as good a strike as you could ask for but she still didn't manage to cut all the way through.
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The undead woke up and burst into motion with a screech. It instantly got caught as three tripwires jumped on contact, wrapping around its body at speed, spikes appearing along their length. The undead managed to take one stumbling step as its head wobbled around in its last part of neck. It stepped onto one of the spikes that stabbed straight through its foot into its lower torso a bit. Zalia took one last swing, taking off its head before it tumbled to the ground, landing on a few more spikes with half its torso in the bear trap activating the flesh melting acid it held.
“Hear anything?” Zalia asked Delphi
The frog was waiting outside the door with Boreal.
“A very faint screech, barely audible even to us,” Delphi replied.
Breathing out in relief Zalia stepped out of the room, straight through the door.
“That worked a dream!” she whispered excitedly.
It wouldn't work so well when she was facing two of the guards at once but it was a pretty well done job so far. She only had to take down two sets of the Bronze guards before finding some way around the Silver ones. She mostly wanted to get these Bronze ones gone so she didn't have to worry about having them in the way on her path of escape, if it came to that.
She carefully made her way down the second stairwell towards the lower floor. She skipped past the door she knew to hold two Silver ranked guards behind it and arrived at the bottom. Peeking around the corner of the doorway to the stairwell, Zalia could see the two Bronze ranked guards slumped against the wall opposite the keeps entrance.
“Wanna help me with these two Boreal?” Zalia asked in a whisper.
“Help,” Boreal confirmed.
Zalia very, very slowly began building the vine dome around them, making sure to block off the entrance to the keep as well. She had to build this one much bigger and by the end it was a strain to keep the entire structure together without the magic collapsing. She walked into the dome, Boreal following with a short shadow teleport. Then she began setting up her traps, Boreal doing the same.
Before long, they had a maze of dangerous traps from tripwires to icy Boreal clones. To start the fight off, Zalia marked both undead and then started using rituals, unhesitant now that she could duplicate all her Iron ranked herbs now. She started with the spreading ice curse that used Bitterbalm and Snow-leaf. That was quickly followed by an attack slowing debuff ritual using Dodge-vine and Snow-leaf, an attack magnet debuff using Bitterbalm major and Dodge-vine additive and finally a vulnerability debuff using Dodge-vine major and Bitterbalm minor.
The last two rituals she discovered were actually different things, her deep study into how the Herbal magic ability actually worked coming up with them. Applying a herb as an additive to another as the major element in a ritual brought out a different effect to doing the opposite combination. In this case, the attack magnet debuff brought attacks towards the affected individual, where the vulnerability debuff made them more susceptible to damage.
After the onslaught of ritual debuffs being applied to them, they finally began to wake up. Boreal wasted no time in pouncing on the first enemy while Zalia finished applying the beneficial rituals to herself and Boreal, the same ones she used most fights. She quickly summoned her bow and got to work but the undead were faster. She was definitely right about the guards being stronger or more skilled than the undead civilians outside the keep as they immediately split into two, one keeping Boreal busy while the other charged Zalia.
She got off one shot as the undead weaved between the traps laid out for it towards her, the arrow striking it in the shoulder and passing straight through the armour without resistance. It seemed surprised at the ineffectiveness of its armour, the impact pushing it slightly off balance as it stumbled into a tripwire. The tripwire wrapped around its legs, making it fall sideways where a Boreal clone jumped on its shoulder, freezing it to the floor.
Taking the brief moment of respite, Zalia shot an arrow at Boreal's enemy, the arrow slamming into its head as it tried to strike Boreal. For her part, Boreal was running circles around the guard, slashing out and teleporting between shadows, leading the enemy into various traps laid about the place.
Zalia had to focus back on her own enemy as it finally broke the ice holding it to the floor. She shot it once in the chest as it got up but had to quickly switch to her sword as it reached her.
She was barely able to keep its sword from impaling her on the first strike, its speed uncanny compared to the others she had fought. Quickly she had to start backing up, blocking strikes and trying to get a few back of her own. It seemed unable to figure out how she was striking straight through its armour and she was able to get off a few lucky hits due to that, thankfully. She received a stinging blow to her arm as she barely managed to deflect a blow and swung wildly in its direction.
As she managed to push the creature back for a moment with the swing, she summoned an icy wall using an ice creation ritual, Manifest major with Snow-leaf additive. The undead paused for a moment as if considering what to do but Zalia didn't hesitate, running straight through the wall and slashing at its neck. Surprised by the move, the undead only managed to get its sword up in time to deflect the blow, having its shoulder severed rather than its neck.
Seeing an advantage and having taken back the momentum, Zalia pushed forwards. She got in a smash with the pommel of her sword that had the undead stumble backwards. Zalia took advantage and swung low as she ducked its wild swing, taking its foot off. As it tried to put its leg back down it fell once more, landing on a spring loaded spike that impaled it, holding it to the floor. It managed to block two of Zalia's strikes before she severed its arm at the elbow and finished the fight with a sword through the head.
She stood up as she summoned her bow, the sword vanishing as she did so. Boreal currently had the other undead with its leg stuck to the ground. She was on the undead's back, mauling it with her claws as her jaws were clamped onto its spine. Using its immobility, Zalia let off three silent shots that hit it with force one after the other. Two more arrows to the head and one to the chest seemed to finally do the trick as undead fell. Boreal didn't let go, ripping a piece of its spine out as it fell and throwing it across the space with a toss of her head.
Zalia let out a few panting breaths as she relaxed from the fight, dropping all her concentration on the magical constructions she was focusing on. The dome, armour and traps all began disintegrating into dust as she did.
“Two down, two to go,” Zalia mentally said to Boreal.
“Mreow!” Boreal replied in excitement.
“Little murder paws,” Zalia thought.