”If you tell them to fuck off, I swear to Sylvia I will drag you home by the ear.” Emilia whispered angrily to the necromancer.
Anastacia avoided looking her in the eyes. “I wasn’t going to.” She obviously lied. “What should we do then? Have the beefcake flex them away?”
“Nay, there’s too many. No way all of the ones in the back would see.” Young Gilbert assessed the situation while gazing over the army.
“That’s the problem with that plan?!” The priestess asked and rubbed her forehead, hanging out with young Gilbert had started to give her a headache. “No, we’ll go there, and Anna will apologize for everything she did, and we’ll offer our services for the good of this duke or whoever. If we’re lucky we might get off by just killing a few trolls or something.”
Anastacia frowned. “I have no clue what I did, and why should I apologize for something I can’t remember doing?” She asked. It was the first time she had heard anything about any duke and most definitely wasn’t feeling terribly apologetic.
Emilia grabbed the necromancer by the collar and almost lifted her from the ground. “They probably have a list to refresh your memory with, so either you march there on your own or I will carry you.” She threatened and pointed towards the army.
“I could carry you both, with only one arm.” Gilbert pointed out and posed.
“Shut the fuck up, Gilbert.” Emilia growled. “Can you please just go sit in a corner somewhere and try to grow old again?” She then released Anastacia and pushed her towards the commander and his army.
Seeing the adventurers approach, the commander pulled out his sword and told the two men accompanying him to do the same. He handed his beautifully made and polished helmet over to the man on his left and stared down at Anastacia as Emilia kept pushing her until she was only a couple of meters away.
“You have something to say before your demise, vile witch-queen?” The portly commander scoffed and twirled his waxed moustache.
The necromancer glared up, looking remarkably unapologetic. “I was just wondering what got you folk so upset. There’s a chance I was so very drunk earlier and can’t really remember any of it.” She said. “Maybe you could run me through things?”
“Preposterous! After everything you’ve done, you say it was nothing but a drunken bender to you?!” The commander asked, clearly furious about not being able to instill any fear or regret in his opponent. After considering whether he should just command his army to attack or not, he decided to humor the request and opened up a second scroll one of his aides had handed to him. “Your crimes are numerous and nothing short of disturbing, witch. We have recorded seventy-two counts of minor misdemeanor, including but not limited to: theft, slander, being a public nuisance and yelling inappropriate things at… pretty much everyone really. As for the more serious accusations, you burned down six storage buildings, caused a flood by freezing a river and blocking it, possessed six members of the guard through unknown means and forced them to stand still while you insulted them as well as broke into several residences to… eat coffee beans and threaten the citizens if they tried to stop you. And the reason for our well-justified retaliation: you declared the royal estate of Duke Filippos Beppo the Third to be yours, and broke into the palace grounds.”
“So I caused a bit of a ruckus? That doesn’t seem like worth risking the lives of your men over.” Anastacia commented.
“We are not risking anything, we know how to deal with witches.” The commander scoffed. “Besides, I wasn’t done. After letting yourself in the palace gardens, you caused several more fires to avoid being caught. After which you were caught-“ The commander stopped and squinted to make sure he was reading the report correctly. “-molesting a statue depicting her grace, the mother of Duke Filippos Beppo the Third…”
The necromancer blushed and glanced over at Emilia, who was now just blankly staring at the sky with the last remnants of her hope for a peaceful solution gone. The priestess had known some of what Anastacia had been up to, but that turned out to only be a fraction of the actual events that had transpired.
“…By then your actions had woken up the royal family, and as you broke into the palace itself, you ran into the Duke Filippos Beppo the Third; his wife, Lady Aurora and their son. You then told them to leave, and when they rightfully refused, you punched the royal heir – which is an act of war, in case you weren’t aware.” The portly commander finished reading and gave the scroll back to his aide.
Anastacia scratched her head and began trying to come up with anything that’d let her weasel out of something that might as well be an assassination attempt according to most kingdoms. “So I punched some dweeb of a prince, surely he’s had plenty of combat training and should’ve seen it coming? Besides, as far as things I could have done go, getting punched by me is in many ways a good thing.” She explained, obviously knowing how full of it she was.
“Earl Filippos Beppo the Fourth is five years old and has yet to begin martial training.” The commander stated coldly. Anastacia could feel him getting anxious as his pulse increased and he fiddled with the grip of his sword. “You then escaped capture by biting four members of the royal guard and disappeared into some nearby ancient ruins. We would have been unable to track you, but luckily your friends here came asking for you, and under the threat of life in dungeon, helped us find you.”
“Thanks guys. Really did a solid one for me there.” The necromancer sighed.
“Oh shut up, child-puncher. We needed to find you too.” Emilia snarled and placed her hand on her weapon’s handle, just in case the situation would escalate.
Anastacia peered at the army behind the commander and his lackeys. “So, do I just get rid of these things so we can go home?” She suggested.
Emilia went pale. “What?! NO! They’re in the right here. This isn’t a quest and those aren’t bandits, you can’t just kill them because you messed up!” She exclaimed worriedly. She wasn’t still quite sure what to expect from adult Anastacia, but the necromancer had clearly lost interest in going out of her way to preserve life when possible.
“Yeah… You’re right, aren’t you. I wasn’t going to kill most of them anyway, but that’d probably turn into a huge problem down the road. Diplomacy it is then. You two should probably take a step back, go through the gate and wait for me there.” Anastacia agreed and turned back to the commander, who was probably seconds away from ordering an attack by now.
Though a bit hesitant to leave Anastacia alone, Emilia and Gilbert retreated inside the keep’s walls to let her do whatever it was that she was planning.
The chubby commander let out a snorty laugh. “Valiant of you to try and spare your companions, witch, but ultimately pointless. By allying themselves with you, they have sealed their fates as well, and even though you somehow took control of the keep here, it’s all only delaying the inevitable.” He boasted, full of confidence, and put on his helmet. “It’s about time we get started, any last words before I order the first volley of arrows?”
“Give me your sword, aaand could you two make sure he stays still?” Anastacia demanded calmly and smiled when the pale horror spread to the faces of all three men as they realized they weren’t in control of their own bodies anymore.
The commander’s aides slowly lifted their swords and pointed their tips directly at the throat of their leader. Both tried insisting that they weren’t doing so willingly, but the words came out blurry and dragging. However, the stout officer was far too busy sweating and panicking to hear them, as his own shaky hand tossed the beautifully made blade onto the ground in front of Anastacia.
Anastacia picked up the sword and swung it around a few times before taking a better look at the jewel encrusted hilt and pommel. “You’re awfully arrogant for being nothing but a regular squishy human, did you know that? The thing is, I admit that I’m the bad guy here and I don’t particularly fancy killing anyone today, so how about you just leave this be and I won’t bother you people ever again, I’ll even swear to never drink again if this is what it leads to.” She offered and held the sword up. Not being much of a sword expert, Anastacia figured that it was some kind of a broadsword by its size and shape and felt like she could use it with two hands relatively effectively. “I’m keeping this by the way. Oh, and if you don’t feel like taking my offer, you can order all the arrow volleys you want, but keep in mind that I’ll just make your men shoot each other with my witch magics. Now, if you don’t mind, I have some catching up to do with my friends. I expect you to be gone in a few hours.” She shrugged and walked off with her new sword to see how Emilia and Gilbert were doing.
Leaving the soldiers under her influence for a while longer, the necromancer told the keep’s gate to close and pulled out the core that powered it, just in case. She found her friends looking at some of the grim statues in the courtyard and walked over to receive her well-earned praise for her peaceful conflict resolution.
“There you go, nothing died and we’re free to go in a while.” She declared and bowed slightly. “And I got a new sword.”
“What is this place?” Gilbert asked and scratched some rust off one of the statues.
“No idea, I just sort of woke up here. You’re the one who’s supposed to know these things.” Anastacia said. She hadn’t quite figured out how to carry the sword and simply decided to hand it over to Gilbert. “What do you think Emilia? I resolved that situation peacefully, like a totally normal human, didn’t I? Emilia?”
The priestess stared at the artwork on the gate, seemingly mesmerized. Anastacia had to push her a bit to get her attention, because repeatedly calling her name didn’t seem to do anything. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” She asked after finally snapping back to reality.
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“I didn’t kill anything.” Anastacia said proudly and grinned.
Still seeming a bit disoriented, Emilia patted her on the shoulder and stepped closer to the gate. Noticing the soldier who held the orb that functioned as a lock for the gate. Gently placing her hand on the picture, she smiled and whispered “Ferruya” while caressing the soldier. Suddenly she realized what she was doing and that both Gilbert and Anastacia were staring at her. “I… uh… Sorry, but Lady Sylvia is being weird. She says that there’s a friend here.” She explained.
Anastacia frowned. “A friend? I haven’t seen anyone.”
“I don’t know what she means either. Did you check out the entire place?” Emilia asked and suddenly appeared to be a lot more cheerful, almost like she had forgotten that she needed to scold Anastacia for committing acts of war.
“Nah, figured I’d make sure I can leave first, but it definitely seemed pretty abandoned.” Anastacia said. She had her doubts, but if the resident was a friend of a god, them being immune to her powers and undetectable was definitely possible. “We have a couple of hours before the coast is clear, so we might as well have a better look.”
While the two had been chatting, Gilbert had noticed something odd about the sky. The clouds above the keep had started to form a vortex and fuse into an ominous dark mass that seemed awfully lot like a storm cloud. Before he had the time to warn his party, the clouds let out a thundering crack and a lightning struck one of the taller statues near them. Instinctively, Gilbert grabbed his party mates by the shoulder and hid them behind himself before the barrage of lightning strikes pelted the courtyard behind him. Location wise, being surrounded by a tall metal wall and countless iron statues was more or less ideal for being stuck in a lightning storm aimed at them, and the party avoided being hit directly.
“What the fuck was that?!” Anastacia yelled once the clouds dispersed after twenty or so strikes. Though she didn’t mean to yell and had only failed to cover her ears fast enough.
Gilbert shook off the bits of rust and dirt that had rained on them from some of the closer strikes. “That’d be lightning mages, a popular choice in sieges. I don’t think they’re going anywhere anytime soon.” He explained, proving that all the knowledge accumulated over the years was still there, even if the years themselves had disappeared along with his shirt. “We should head inside, we’ll be safe there.”
Rather than brave through another artificial storm, the party heeded Gilbert’s advice and took shelter in the keep. They could hear a few boulders smash into the metal wall when the catapults on the other side tested its strength, which no doubt proved itself extremely futile in no time. Gilbert made some quick estimations on whether or not the catapults would be able to reach the keep itself in the case they somehow hurled a rock over the wall, but that seemed unlikely based on the size of the siege machines he had seen earlier.
Anastacia immediately headed back to sit on the throne she had woken up on. Even though the fresh air and the distracting declaration of war had helped, the ear shattering sound of thunder had reignited her headache and she needed to stay still for a while. “So how did you two find me anyway?” She asked.
“Started by simply following the fires you left behind, and after we were arrested for asking around to find you, we used this.” Gilbert explained and tossed a piece of bone at the necromancer.
Instead of moving to catch it, Anastacia simply stopped the bone in the air and held it still. She recognized the pattern carved on it as the one she usually kept in her crown and was impressed by how well it had been made. “Good job, meat.” She backhandedly complimented Gilbert and turned the piece of bone into dust.
“Thanks.” The beefy adventurer smiled and posed, knowing how it annoyed the necromancer. “Any idea if there’s a second exit?”
“Has to be, the gate doesn’t open from the outside, so I must have found my way inside elsewhere.” Anastacia said and pressed her forehead against the cold iron armrest of the throne.
Gilbert scratched his beard and looked around. “True. I have to say, adult Anastacia is surprisingly competent. Maybe my teachings have finally started to rub off on you.” He commented without really thinking about it.
“Let’s hope that’s the only thing she learned from you, that whole thing with the statue should be an interesting can of worms to open.” Emilia butted in and sat down on the altar with a grin on her face. “I don’t think anyone’s that surprised to hear that you’d cause some sort of calamity after drinking. I’d even say that punching a child is somewhat normal for you if they’re annoying, but what’s this business with molesting statues and what not?”
Anastacia blushed and avoided looking either of her friends in the eyes. “Or we could not go into that and just march on with that getting out of here line of thinking.” She said, trying to avoid the subject.
“No no, as a priestess of Sylvia, I have a duty to help people with this sort of matters. Especially when they’re my friends I have to trust with my life on quests. Can’t have you being all confused about these things on the field.” She said and smiled with her brightest priestess of joy-smile, which she used when actually acting as a priestess, and which both Anastacia and Gilbert found slightly creepy. “So fess up – this is a safe space.”
Gilbert perked up as well. “I’d also like to know what a statue has that this finely sculpted form doesn’t” He wondered and changed pose.
“Screw both of you. So what? Maybe my fucked-up cell-grown brain with a personality modifying curse on it can’t stop monitoring every disgusting wet piece of meat that’s flopping around me, and maybe during a particularly weak moment I might feel like being comforted by the company some cold, hard and completely unfloppy stone. Does that make me some kind of freak? Should I have gone into a brothel or drowned myself in some cat fur to not get bullied like this? Because if either of those things did anything for me, I would have!” She screamed at her friends without taking pauses to breathe before sinking into the throne to sulk and catch her breath.
Finding themselves with a bit more to unpack than what they had prepared for, Emilia and Gilbert looked at each other, trying to come up with anything to say.
“So, uh… Is this a recent development, or…” The priestess asked to break up the extremely awkward silence.
Anastacia glared at her from the throne, at least partly pleased that she had managed to ruin their fun. “Yes, no, maybe, I don’t know. It’s actually kind of freeing to know if I’m being honest. I’ve always kind of wondered how all of this worked, but if it’s just a matter of age, I don’t need to worry about it.” She shrugged. “You two are still massive dicks for making me say it though.”
”Oh, trust me, I feel like one. Good for King, I suppose…” Emilia mumbled awkwardly.
Gilbert on the other hand appeared to be deep in thought. “Em…” He finally whispered. “How does this affect the bets? No one guessed this. Do we have to extend the choices to cover inanimate things and however she chooses to refer to them, or do we just cancel everything? I mean couple of them can still be technically right and I have a ton of money riding on this, so-“ He continued until the priestess punched him to get him to shut him up, because Anastacia had obviously heard him and was absolutely fuming.
“YOU FUCKS BET ON THIS?!” The necromancer yelled and created a small puff of fire by hitting the throne’s armrest.
“It was only a small monthly thing until we’d figure it out.” Emilia tried to calm her down. “No one had any idea what was going on with you, so we started it as a joke.”
“A JOKE?!” Anastacia repeated and angrily stood up but ended up regretting it and sat back down to continue her outrage without moving too much as to not agitate her headache. “I should have known you assholes would do that. Come on then, tell me what you bet on and I’ll figure out if I’ll tell Rosie that you’re being wankers again.” She continued with a tone that was a strange mix of yelling and whispering.
“I had you end up going both ways.” Gilbert admitted without a hint of remorse. “Emilia figured that you’d just stick with King forever and that we’d never really figure out. As a side note, how do you feel about wood? Because there was one bet that’s still fully applicable.”
Their conversation was briefly interrupted by a second barrage of lightning strikes by the courtesy of the army waiting for them outside the keep’s walls. Though the strikes landed only a few meters away from the door, they were far less threatening thanks to the sturdy stone walls protecting the party. Nevertheless, it did remind the adventurers that they were supposed to leave before getting caught up in the mysteries that were Anastacia’s tastes.
“Lets just end this farce here and go. I’ll figure out if I want everyone’s money in return for mocking me or what later.” The necromancer sighed and slowly stood up before heading to the smaller door that led deeper into the mountain.
Though a lot smaller than the one leading outside, the door was still more fitting to someone considerably taller than a regular human. It didn’t appear to have a lock on it and opened so easily that it had to have been opened recently – presumably by a drunken necromancer that was looking for a sleeping spot.
As soon as the wooden door swung open, a smell of decay hit the noses of everyone in the room. It wasn’t the pungent odor of rotting flesh, but the moldy scent that lingered in every tomb that had been sealed for a few decades. In such places, the meatier bits of the corpse and the small critters that feasted on them had come and gone ages ago, and all that was left was a skeleton that slowly crumbled into dust.
Anastacia didn’t have her lantern on her, but both Emilia and Gilbert had come more prepared, and were able to shine some light into the dark room on the other side of the door.
“Well then. Let’s hope that no one here was the ‘friend’ we were looking for.” Gilbert said and covered his mouth to avoid breathing in the dust while shining the light from his lantern on a pile of skeletons not five metes away from the door. “Could’ve warned us, Anna.”
The necromancer stumbled into the dark room and kneeled to look at one of the remains. “I can’t feel them. Any of them…” She muttered. Gesturing for the other adventurers to give her some more light, she carefully touched a skull that had been nearest to the door. “It’s nowhere near decayed enough to be like that, and the features are kind of weird. Not a human I’d wager, but not any of the other races that I know of either; and considering how much stuff the folks at Mournvalley have dissected and archived over the years, I think it’s safe to assume these people either went extinct here or aren’t from anywhere we’ve been to.”
Emilia adjusted her lantern a bit and lifted it higher up to show the entire room. They appeared to be at the top end of a massive staircase that had been carved directly into the stone and continued so far down that their lights didn’t reach the bottom. The entire staircase was riddled with skeletons as far as they could see. Some had gotten the same treatment as the soldiers in the courtyard and had been sealed into molten metal, others had been speared into the walls and ceiling by massive iron lances and the rest were simply chopped apart and left on the floor in pieces. Their clothes had been eaten by moths and crumbled away over the years and only some bits and pieces of dry leather remained. Though it appeared to be a completely one-sided massacre, the dead littering every surface of the staircase had come in armed, and for every skeleton there was a sword, spear or an axe somewhere nearby – all rusted beyond any use, of course.
Gilbert kneeled to take a better look of the rusted equipment. He had raided his fair share of old tombs and to him, the weapons didn’t seem all that old. “Anna, any chance you can give some sort of estimate how long ago these people died?” He asked to confirm his suspicion.
“Well they’re fairly safe from the elements and the sunlight isn’t hitting them… maybe fifty years? Give or take ten.” Anastacia estimated and tossed the skull aside.
Next to one of the fallen soldiers was a large shield that had been partly shattered by an iron lance, which had ended the life of whoever the shield belonged to, as well as the two people behind them. Anastacia picked up the shield and looked at it under some better lighting. Its entire front side was painted bright violet and the color had been preserved miraculously well in the dark. In the middle of the shield, there was a black emblem that depicted a right side of a skull that had been merged with the left side of an eight-pointed star. Neither Gilbert or Emilia recognized the emblem, but Anastacia could have sworn she had seen it somewhere before, though she had no idea where.
Once their initial investigation was done, Gilbert took a few steps down the staircase. “Shall we go then? Anna already made it through here once and whatever killed these people is probably dead as well.” He encouraged the party to start descending deeper inside the mountain.