”Time to channel your inner Gil and come up with anything that might give us a fighting chance.” Anastacia said as the mother crept closer and closer. She went through the chapters of Ivory’s notes in her head, trying to find anything even remotely applicable, but for some reason a book about peaceful usages of necromancy didn’t cover the situation they were in. “Well, if it comes to it, I’ll just use the rings and see what happens.” She shrugged and looked at the ruby ring on her left thumb and the topaz ring on her left middle finger. “I just have to… have to… WHERE IS MY BELT?!” She screamed and started frantically look around for the pouch she kept the last ring in, even going as far as jumping back into the river to look for it.
King pulled her back out when the undead monstrosity started to get uncomfortably close.
Anastacia picked up some rocks and threw them into the river while cursing it. “Well guess we’re fucked then, huh? Or do you have some kind of brilliant plan?”
The simulacrum swung his sword through the air.
The necromancer sighed. “Great, you go ahead and do that. I’ll take apart that wing you brought and hopefully it’ll at least do something. Maybe we’ll come up with something while running around.”
As she finished her sentence, the gigantic undead creature suddenly let out a deafening scream lunged forwards and hit the ground right next to them with enough force to send both the necromancer and the simulacrum flying.
King picked himself up immediately and wasted no time before charging at the mother’s arm. Perhaps it was due to the poor condition of the bones or the sheer difficulty of effectively controlling the entire beast, but his swings actually managed to chip away bits of bone. Usually a piece of reasonably high-quality bone could have been hardened to a point where nothing short of a cannon shot would have made a mark, but this didn’t seem to be the case; and to Anastacia, it meant that there was a chance of actually surviving the fight.
Though having been blessed with only a fraction of the simulacrum’s mass, the shock had sent her tumbling across the dirt field uncontrollably and prevented her from joining the fight before the mother was able to rear up for a second swing. When the creature’s enormous fist darkened the sky above her, she was overcome by feeling she remembered all too well and was sure would never be able to fully forget. It was the same thing she felt on the steps of the temple in Crescent, as the crossbow released the bolt that would end up killing her. It wasn’t panic, fear or even anger, but something that could be summarized as a question: This was it? This was all there was to the life as Anastacia? Last time it was over before she could even really realize what was happening, but this time was different, time seemed to slow down as the mother’s fist slowly descended towards her.
Suddenly a second, far less familiar feeling sparked inside her: This wasn’t good enough! There had to be more! Self-pity and dwelling in the past would only get her killed, when all she needed was to take what she wanted, and no one would be there to stop her. At that time what she wanted more than anything was to see what else there was going to be in her life, and she wasn’t about to let some brittle old bones and an ancient crone of an inquisitor to be in her way.
With her thoughts now cleared, she was able to focus on the situation itself. The mother wasn’t anything like Coquelicot’s arms, Yulia’s prosthetic or even the wyvern skeleton from earlier, the bones hadn’t been prepared in almost any way to be controlled like that, so no matter how skilled the controller was, their grasp on the creature would be superficial at best. That said, Amaranth was still a nightmarish opponent, and wrestling away the control of even just the single arm would require some kind of defect or crack in the bone to start gaining a foothold, even for a second or two.
King was more than glad to provide such an opportunity, upon seeing Anastacia in trouble, he threw his sword at the palm of the creature with all his might and managed to sink it deep enough for it to get stuck in the bone.
The arm’s descend began slowing down as Anastacia utilized the crack to hinder the creature’s movements, though not able to entirely stop it, she bought enough time for King to swoop in, toss her out of harm’s way and retrieve his sword. Just before the inquisitor retaliated and pushed her back out, the simulacrum rolled out from under the gigantic fist. The force of the impact still shook the ground and created a small crater in the dry dirt.
Anastacia screamed and threw a fireball at the mother’s arm as some sort of pitiful attempt at revenge, it didn’t do anything to the creature, but it did make her feel slightly better.
“Okay, I think I’ve got a plan of sorts. We just need to avoid a couple more punches like that and use the time it needs to move its huge ass to our advantage. You just chop at its forearm and make some grooves with your sword, I’ll try to slow it down as much as I can but don’t count on it!” She advised the simulacrum and took off her boots, as that was still her preferred way to run around.
The mother’s next swing was more of a sweep to cover as much area as possible, but with their minds calm and collected, Anastacia and King were able to use their relative nimbleness to avoid it. For a few more attacks, they followed their plan: King got a few good swings in and tossed his necromancer out of the way whenever it seemed like she was too close.
“That’s great! Let’s move on with the plan now. What I need you to do now is distract it as much as possible. I’m clearly its main focus, but it can’t just let you run amok forever, or you’ll slowly whittle it down to bone shavings. Just make sure it isn’t paying attention to me and that its arm stays down.” Anastacia explained and cracked her fingers.
In a blink of an eye, King was already ready to grab on to the mother’s arm after her next swing and started climbing up by sinking his sword into it and using it as a handhold to pull himself higher.
By the time the massive undead horror took notice of him, it was far too late for him to be just slapped down, as he was running around on her back chopping away on its spine. Every time the mother tried to reach him, King would simply slip into the chest cavity and continue his work there.
The competence of her partner made Anastacia slightly worried about her own usefulness for a second, but it wasn’t like King could actually defeat the monstrosity on his own, he could whack away at it for days, but it wouldn’t cause too much meaningful damage; but that’s what she was there for. Every time the mother lowered the arm they had focused on to support itself while trying to get rid of the pest on its back, Anastacia rushed to it and started carving control patterns with her new knife, starting from the deeper cuts King had made earlier. She had always had a bit of a knack for making them but reading Ivory’s notes and seeing his solutions to some of the more difficult patterns – that would have been groundbreaking if anyone would have bothered to read the book before her, had given her some ideas. Perhaps that was part of Alabaster’s plan for finding a ‘successor’ for Ivory. Either way, it allowed Anastacia to carve relatively powerful patterns in a hurry, though the ancient necromancer she learned them from would have probably disapproved of her crooked lines and clunky curves.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“When trying to carve something on a gigantic skeleton that’s actively attacking you, you can’t always go for the maximum style points, okay?” She mumbled because she felt like she needed to give excuses for her shoddy handiwork.
Anastacia whistled and waved for King to get back down, and once regrouped, made sure he was still in once piece. His sword had dulled and had its edge rolled in many places, and the blue glowing lines on the simulacrum’s body were glowing brighter than ever. Even the supposedly tireless machine had clearly been pushed and probably couldn’t take too much more of the fight.
“You’re amazing, have I ever told you that? Anyway, time for the final part of the plan: I need you to throw me.” The necromancer said while breathing heavily, tired by the running as well. “Next time it punches down, throw me as high on its arm as you can, okay? Ideally around the elbow.”
After a couple more successful dodges, an opportunity presented itself and King grabbed Anastacia by the waist, tossing her high into the air.
The necromancer wasn’t in full control of her flight and laded a bit roughly on the side of the mother’s ulna bone. Despite that, she was able to take out her knife once more and drag it along the bone as she slid down, carving a deep groove stretching the entire way down and finally connecting to her earlier carving by the creature’s wrist.
Suddenly the mother lifted its arm and shook Anastacia off before she was able to prepare for it. She fell down with nothing resembling grace, but luckily broke nothing more than the skin on the knees and palms, yet that was the least of her worries; once again she was lying on the ground with the mother’s giant fist heading towards her. King was now a bit too far away to rush to her aid as well, but that was okay, Anastacia gestured for him to stay back and raised her hand at the incoming fist.
“This is more like it.” She laughed.
In the fraction of a split second that the mother’s arm connected with hers, she took control of her patterns and tore the entire arm apart with them. The bones large enough to support the roof of a cathedral exploded into fragments no bigger than a potato, and not a terribly big potato either.
The mother recoiled and screamed in apparent agony, holding the stump of its right arm with the other one, it rolled on its back and wept miserably.
Despite only moments ago being almost crushed by the creature, Anastacia couldn’t help but to feel bad for it. She ran over to King and hugged him. “There’s no way that’d work twice and I’m not going to stay anywhere near that thing when it’s flailing like that. Remember what Gil would always remind us about? We’re not heroes, we’re adventurers. So you know…” She hinted and together they fled towards the castle while the mother was still incapacitated.
After picking up her cloak from the ground and swimming across the river, Anastacia slowed down a bit. “I don’t think it can catch us with just one arm, it could barely move with two.” She said and laughed as much as she could while running some more despite being already exhausted. “If we just get to the castle, we should be safe, but for now keep an eye on the sky. I don’t think Amaranth would have thrown that thing at us if she had anything useable left though, but you never know.”
Parts of the road had been turned over by the mother dragging itself along the ground and it made running considerably more uncomfortable for Anastacia, but she felt it would have been rude to ask King to carry her after what they had just been through.
“Have you fought something like that before? You seemed like you knew what to do awfully well…” Anastacia asked to distract herself from her hurting knees and palms.
King nodded.
“Ah, cool. There’s so much about you I don’t know about. Either way, I think we did pretty well back there, Gil would be proud if he knew. Let’s not mention the part about me almost drowning and then almost getting crushed though, that was embarrassing.” She laughed. “Do you think Coquelicot would mind if I take a few things while we’re here? There are a couple of books I want to check out, I’ve got an idea about a place we should visit at some point and I think they have the location written down.”
The outer wall of the castle was built so that it didn’t actually surround the entire castle for some reason, instead it just walled off a huge area in front of it and then joined to the inner wall on both sides of the entrance, in a way that forced everyone who wanted to enter the castle to go through the walled off area. The outer wall itself was almost as magnificent as Valor’s, though not quite as high, it had more detail in some areas like the gate – or at least used to. Where there used to be a grand gate that would have stopped most regular armies to their tracks, there was now a pile of rubble and a massive gap in the wall, roughly the same size as a certain undead eldritch horror they met before.
“Well that sucks, I was kind of looking forwards to smashing them open.” Anastacia sighed and climbed over the rubble. “And I should’ve taken the boots with me.”
The trail of destruction continued after the wall all the way back to the storage building the mother had been kept in for hundreds of years. The creature, or its controller, hadn’t given a damn about the houses of the castle servants that had been in the way either, and what used to be almost like a small city full of servants and guards, was now mostly rubble as well.
“You know, there was a time where me getting this close to the outer wall from the inside caused an alarm. It’s pretty funny that me coming in does the same now – if you can call this an alarm, there’s literally no one here.” Anastacia said and looked around for any signs of people. “There are some folk inside the castle, but it’s only a fraction of the people that used to live here… And there’s Amaranth, on the roof, just like Coquelicot said.”
The walled off area was barely better than what was outside, equally lifeless and almost entirely paved, save for a few mangy bushes here and there. A smaller river ran thought a part of it and fed water to the moat around the castle but there was nothing special about it either. It really seemed like there was no point in walling the area at all, but the royals liked their privacy, so much so that it was surprising there weren’t more layers of walls around the castle. Something Anastacia noticed was that there wasn’t any material around. Usually the servant’s quarters would at least have a few thralls here and there and plenty of tools that had bone parts, but there didn’t seem to be anything left. It could have been that all possible material was converted to weaponry at the start of the rebellion, but even that seemed excessive. Another possible explanation was that they didn’t want to give Anastacia any more ammunition than she needed.
Unsurprisingly, the drawbridge to the castle itself was up, and they would have to break in.
“Well I don’t really have anything to throw at it. There are a bunch of people almost right behind it but none of them are strong enough for it to matter, nor do any of them have anything they could use. Maybe you can like throw your sword through it or whatever?” She suggested, but just as she said that, the bridge started to lower. Anastacia immediately moved behind King. “This seems like a job for you, I’ll just be here, where people can’t throw things at me.”
But no arrows or spears were flung as the bridge touched the ground. Instead, out came a group of maybe thirty or so weak necromancers that were all obviously servants with lower quality uniforms than what a royal would ever willingly wear. They seemed to be looking for something until a young man rushed from the group and pointed at Anastacia and King.
“There she is! It’s just like they said, The Anchor is back to save us all!” He yelled with tears of joy in his eyes and kneeled to greet Anastacia. The others followed his example and kneeled in from of The Anchor.