Very little rest was achieved on the night following the scuffle between necromancers. Anastacia had some serious troubles calming down with several inquisitors so near to her and her friends, and her shoulder kept aching despite the medication given to her by Emilia.
Whenever she found some comfort in the stony embrace of King and managed to drift asleep, she would wake up again less than an hour later to repeat the process of finding a nice cool part of the armor to rest her cheek on.
After countless brief naps, Anastacia could hear the inn’s owner start working downstairs and took it as a sign that it was morning already. Not even the slightest glimmer of sunrise was yet visible in the horizon, but it would have to do, as the necromancer was done laying down – she would rather spend the odd few hours looking for the Firstborn than doing nothing and being so near to the other necromancers.
She wrote a note to the priestess, telling her to just come look for her and King from somewhere between the town and the machine fortress when she was ready, and that there was no hurry, before quietly gearing up and leaving the room.
The coffee at the inn was rather bland for her tastes, so she didn’t spend too much time swirling it in her cup. The breakfast wasn’t much to write home about either, but it was cheap and did its job, so there really wasn’t much to complain about, or really anyone to complain to.
The small tavern-like part of the inn was understandably empty as it had only been a few minutes since even the owner had woken up.
The innkeeper kept staring at the adventurer and simulacrum from his post by the kitchen door, for what she thought was the annoyance over the hurried first order of the day. He was a rather portly fellow with a quickly receding hairline he clearly worked hard to hide, and a thick greying mustache on his upper lip. Whether he usually frowned as much was unclear, but there clearly was something irking him.
“You, girl, I heard you’re one of them necromancers too – that true?” He suddenly gruffly asked.
Anastacia placed down the last piece of bread she was nibbling on. “I prefer not to categorize myself as one, if that’s what you’re asking.” She warily answered.
“But you are one then? Let me just say that if it was up to me, you spooks would already be back on your way to Mirkvalley – with a mighty big stain from my boot on your behinds.” The innkeeper boasted, clearly awfully proud of himself for speaking up. “Nothing good comes from having you lot around.”
“Do… do you mean Mournvalley? I’m not from there, it’s just the other four.” The adventurer tried to explain, but it was very clear nothing she said mattered in the slightest. “Please don’t lump me with them.”
“Yeah! Murkvalley! That hole in the map that spews filth like you these days. Let me tell you, things were better when you just lurked in the shadows and didn’t bother good, honest, hardworking people like this!” The innkeeper continued before loading yet another barrage of rudeness to unleash, entirely in the wrong direction if one was to ask its receiver.
Anastacia was starting to get a bit annoyed by the innkeeper’s inability to differentiate between her and the inquisitors. “I’m not like those people! I do good…” She protested, again, to deaf ears.
“What are you even on about, child? All necromancers are the same, I’ve seen it with my own two eyes – or my brother’s cousin has. One day they opened their home to a traveler from your country and boom, the entire village was killed less than a week later. The graves were robbed and there was nothing but blood left of anyone else. That’s what your people do, and why you and your shady friends can’t leave us alone fast enough.” The innkeeper raved and slammed his hand on the counter. “Your friends already dug up our entire graveyard, so what’s next? Will you skin our animals alive?”
“Do you have any idea what’s out there?!” Anastacia slammed her own fists on the table in response.
The innkeeper mockingly laughed. “Ha! Whatever it is, it can’t be any worse than your kind!”
King’s hum flared up when he noticed Anastacia getting agitated, he was no doubt ready challenge the man’s claim. Luckily his better half hadn’t forgotten herself enough to let it happen, and quickly wrapped her arm around the simulacrum’s.
“Lets just go…” The adventurer whispered and started to lead King outside before things got even more heated.
Considering the exchange his victory, the insensitive innkeeper hurled one more line of mockery through the slowly closing door of the inn. “Try not to defile any corpses out there!” He hollered and snickered to himself before returning to his work of making mediocre meals.
The freezing air wasn’t enough to bother Anastacia after the disagreement, she couldn’t believe the audacity of the innkeeper for failing to differentiate between the different kinds of necromancers. She failed to understand the fact that the blue color of the inquisitors’ clothes, and her lack thereof, meant absolutely nothing to the vast majority of the world, whose only contact with Mournvalleyans was through likely exaggerated tales, which rarely mentioned the color-coding the necromancers enjoyed. To them, all necromancers were just necromancers, and necromancers were an affront to all things good.
She also failed to notice how identical her own views on the matter were, with only the small caveat of herself.
The sun had yet to rise and only a few houses had any signs of life in them, and instead of the usual noises of a town waking up for the day, in the quiet moments between the slight gusts of wind, the sound of bone hitting metal and stone echoed from the edges of Ruvenstead.
Anastacia couldn’t help but to wonder if the ruckus she and Maya had caused had started to attract hollow simulacra from a much wider area than before, and its effect just kept increasing as more machines were lured in by the call from the fortress and got distracted by the town and its defenses.
Deep in her thoughts, she unintentionally wandered towards the center of the town, where Cobalt had posted himself to have the best possible coverage.
The inquisitorial scribe sat on top of some crates that had been stacked by the side of a general store. To keep himself warm, he had lit a brazier and kept feeding it with planks salvaged from a recently collapsed warehouse.
With his face hidden by his blue hood, he calmly flipped pages of an awfully familiar-looking book, paying no mind to the adventurer or her simulacrum.
Anastacia cleared her throat to force some attention to herself.
“Leave, I’m busy.” Cobalt responded coldly and kept reading.
The adventurer stepped closer. “With what?”
“Ignoring you.” Sighed the scribe.
Already annoyed, Anastacia kicked the box under Cobalt. “Are you sure you should be acting like that towards me?” She hissed.
Not bothering to hide his own annoyance, Cobalt closed the book and belittlingly bonked Anastacia’s forehead with it. “Quit your boasting you obnoxious buffoon. I am not scared of you, so you’re just wasting your breath and my time trying to threaten me.”
The adventurer swatted away the book and it flew into the snow that had fallen overnight. “Maybe you should be, I don’t take it well when people try to kill me.”
Still more concerned with the book than the immensely powerful necromancer in front of him, Cobalt hopped down from his crate to swiftly grab it before it was damaged by the snow. He carefully wiped the tome clean with his sleeve and returned to his seat.
“Why?” He asked and opened the book again. “What are you going to do? Kill me? Your fatuities don’t concern me, and I’ll gladly die to prove a point. Besides, do enlighten me of when have I tried to kill you? What sort of delusion might you live in, where we are in the wrong on this conflict of ours in the first place? Because last time I checked, it was you who murdered Alice and started all of this.”
“That’s not fair! I was-“ Anastacia exclaimed but was interrupted.
“You were pseudo-possessed by a trinket. Trust me, we know, and it’s the main reason why we’re even having this conversation.” Cobalt finished the sentence for her. “Possessed or not, you murdered the one person, aside from Coquelicot, our group as a whole relied on. You took away a dear friend, a loved sister, a trusted person and perhaps the only one among us who thought you could be fought alongside of, when the times required it.
“You did all of that, and tell me, has it ever even crossed your mind to say you’re sorry to us? That you even slightly regret what happened? Or were you perhaps a self-centered little brat that just got over it in time and forgot what you did to us?”
Anastacia took a step back and stared at her own footprints in the snow. “I apologized to Coquelicot… I think.” She muttered.
“You think you apologized to the one person who blames herself for what happened, who most certainly did not hear a word of it, and not the ones it affected.” The inquisitor quickly responded, sounding agitated but still not looking at the one he was criticizing. “You very nearly ruined the new inquisition with what you did. Teal and Sapphire were on the verge of abandoning us, Maya has gone rabid, Periwinkle is just gone without a trace; Duke, Celeste and Cyan are still in shambles trying to keep elements within the borders of Mournvalley from rising up, and Iris… iris is trying her absolute best to keep the entire thread from unraveling in Alice and Coquelicot’s absence – that’s what you did to us. And meanwhile: you’re kind of sort of pretty sure you said sorry to someone at some point, maybe.
“No one is asking you to bury the hatchet with Mournvalley as a whole, we’re quite aware that you’re not able to, but accept your own failings and own up to your mistakes. Maybe then you can understand why we aren’t greeting you with smiles and embraces.”
“YOU PEOPLE TRIED TO KILL ME! TWICE NOW!” Anastacia yelled and slapped the book out of Cobalt’s hands again. This time it landed on top of the crates nearby and wasn’t in any immediate danger of being ruined.
Cobalt straightened the blue stole hanging from his neck and fixed his hood. “Three times, the second’s report on Vassund says he attacked you, at least try to be precise on your premises for hatred; but yes, and Phthalo lost his life over the first attempt, with none of us standing up to stop it. You yourself spared Teal for who knows what deluded reasons, and Maya is what she is because you ruined her life by killing Alice and getting Alizarin killed, whether or not that’s enough of an excuse for you is entirely up to you. For us, it isn’t, hence why we stopped her here, before making that big fellow stop you – something that put us in quite a lot of danger for no gain at all.”
The adventurer paced back and forth, stomping on the fresh snow and fuming from anger. The idea of anyone wronging a group of Mournvalleyans seemed ludicrous to her and being blamed for the frigid relations between her and the inquisition seemed almost incomprehensible.
“I’m not expecting you to grow as a person right here and now, but if by chance you one day wake up with a crumb of conscience on you, use it to apologize to Iris and Maya. Until then, cease your childish threats and infantile tantrums, because like I said, you do not scare me.” The inquisitor finished up his ruminations on who was to blame for what and went on to pick up his book again. “Now, please leave. I have actual work that needs to get done, and I do hope you have a pit of spikes to jump into, or whatever it is that you ‘adventurers’ do for money.”
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Not prepared to get talked down to twice so early in the morning, Anastacia angrily stomped away from the scene with King in tow and started heading for the outer edge of the town, partly to just get out in the open to clear her mind and partly to look for the Firstborn they were supposed to meet.
Despite their supposed, and oftentimes undisputable changes for the better in Mournvalley, she was absolutely unwilling to look past the crimes against the world, and her in particular, the necromancers had committed. Even if the new inquisitors were supposed to be the harbingers of a new, less blatantly evil age, they were still filed under the very same category as the previous ones in Anastacia’s mind, and she wasn’t going to take a lecture on conscience from one of them any time soon.
Preoccupied with angrily kicking a lump of ice along the road and actively refusing to see the obvious double standards she held for herself and other people failing to differentiate her from the other necromancers, Anastacia didn’t even notice Leggy landing from a nearby rooftop directly behind her, and only realized the cloaked simulacrum was there when they reached the defensive barrier surrounding the town.
The remains of hollow simulacra had multiplied tenfold overnight and were literally piling up by the outer edge of the field of bones, having gotten through maybe a tenth of its width. While the defenses would have no issues holding for maybe even a few more days, it became clear that the adventurers were definitely working on a timer – the duration of which may have been limited by Cobalt’s ability to stay awake as well.
Maya must have been holding the town for a couple of days without rest at least and was now severely injured thanks to Anastacia, so whether she could take over once more quickly enough was impossible to tell. Iris’ powers had severely waned after she lost her wings and she may not have been up for the task either.
The adventurer peered into the distance and could still see several lights slowly moving in random directions, but not enough to cause much of a threat by her estimations, so she began planning to cross the barrier.
Surprisingly, as she stepped closer, a path opened up by the courtesy of the inquisitor controlling the field.
After a careful pondering and weighing the likelihoods of Cobalt trying to trap them in the bones versus how much he just wanted Anastacia to leave, she warily took a few steps along the path. With no signs of ill intent, she told the simulacra to stay close to her and began pressing onwards, while still preparing to counteract any foul play, of course.
With a bit more haste in their steps than usual, the three made it to the other side, and the path behind them grew shut immediately. However, their sudden appearance attracted the attention of the simulacra prowling the area, and the nearby ones changed their course towards the adventurer and her companions.
“How do you want to do this?” Anastacia asked from King and took a step back. “I take it that they’re not the kind to be talked out of this.”
As three comparably lightweight simulacra rushed towards them in a hunched over poses, somehow looking like they barely had the power to move, the lights on King’s armor turned bright and the churning hum within him intensified.
He walked out a few meters to have a bit of space and prepared to greet the incoming simulacra. As a final warning for his kin, he let out a mechanical screech as steam escaped from the gaps in his armor. This, however, did very little to persuade his hollow brethren, who didn’t appear too interested in the knight of stone in the first place – instead, their aim appeared to be the necromancer behind him.
Though supposedly mindless, the purpose of fighting one of their ancient enemies must have been hardwired into their structure itself, though there was no way to tell if it that was the case, or if the only needed qualifier was that Anastacia was made from flesh and bone.
When the first of the three finally made its way to within arm’s reach of King, the difference in quality between the two simulacra became apparent; King’s fist cleaved through the slab of stone on the hollow simulacrum’s chest, which held the core powering the entire machine. The metal frame holding it together bent from the sheer power of the blow and the few lines of light on the poor automaton flickered out.
The next two seemed to learn nothing of their friend’s demise, as they tried to rush past King all the same and paid for it with their ‘lives’. King calmly proceeded to tear out the vital parts on their chests to deactivate them both without breaking a metaphorical sweat and stomped on one to further warp its frame to be sure.
Anastacia had honestly expected a bit more of a struggle, but maybe having King as the baseline for all simulacra wasn’t all that accurate. After all, while the occasional skirmishes between living people and the ancient machines tended to end in the latter one’s favor, it wasn’t impossible for a group of well-trained soldiers to successfully go toe to toe with numerous average-sized simulacra.
“Uh… Good job, I guess?” The necromancer shrugged and kneeled to get a better look of one of the deactivated simulacra in the sparse light of the still nightly sky.
To remedy the poor visibility, she took out her lantern and twisted its metal cover open. As she poked and prodded, the light blue lights in the edges of her field of vision began steadily multiplying. By the time she noticed it, the light from her lantern had gathered the attention of almost every simulacrum in the area, still outnumbering the trio more than ten to one.
“Uh oh.” Anastacia realized and slowly slid her lantern’s cover shut again. “Think they noticed?”
The thirty or so simulacra swarmed together and began approaching the adventurer with various different gaits, depending on the damage they had suffered so far. Something about the sight was eerily reminiscent of goblins and their ineptitude in locomotion.
Leggy wasted no time pulling the necromancer up and hiding her under the metallic cloak, only leaving a small gap Anastacia could see through.
Unsurprisingly, King saw no issues with holding his ground and simply attempt going hand to hand with the small horde of machines. The frozen grass under his feet had begun to melt from the heat and was now steaming noticeably. Combined with the steam rising from his body and being lit by the brightly burning lines of light on his body, it gave him an almost magical-looking aura.
While King could have no doubt torn his way through all the lesser simulacra, their target not being him made it more than a bit difficult to do so before they would have gotten their hands on Anastacia. Leggy was still a head and shoulders above them, and could have likely kicked a few, but she was not a pattern designed for combat and couldn’t have defended the necromancer at the same time.
This made Anastacia consider tearing away part of the defensive field for her own purposes, but before she had the chance to act on it, a bright light flickered on in the distance and a searchlight, just like the ones that had scanned the goblin castle’s surroundings before the appearance of the Firstborn. It began sweeping across the area from the edge of the field until it found the group of simulacra and focused on it.
Strangely enough, the bright light made the simulacra stall their approach as they squirmed and writhed trying to shield themselves from it – as if the beacon was scorching their surfaces.
The tall form working as the source of the light appeared to be about as tall as the trees it used to hide most of its shape, even though it was clearly hunched over and what was probably its back arched over the treetops behind the light. Whatever pattern it was, it was massive.
As the adventurer sighed in relief, three smaller simulacra dashed from the large one’s feet towards Anastacia, King and Leggy. These three appeared identical with each other but weren’t of any of the types Anastacia had seen before.
Their basic framework appeared similar to Leggy’s flexible and thin metallic build, with sturdy, pointed feet and very little armor, but instead of the cloak, their spines had been reinforced with a series of stone plates to help carry the heavy and round stone pauldrons on their shoulders.
About as big as their heads, the pauldrons appeared to contain dozens of sockets for cores, though only some of them filled with the stone cylinders that powered most simulacra. Hanging from these shoulder guards were a pair of disproportionally long arms, both with at least ten finger-like metal spikes on them, the tips of which almost reached the ground.
Between them was a head, donning a single large unblinking eye that appeared to have a lens attached to it. The faintly glowing optics rotated and moved back and forth, attempting to focus on whatever it was the simulacra eerily stared at.
However, the most eye-catching feature on the trio were the countless loops of brightly glowing threads that dangled from the pieces of armor on their hips. By the looks of it, they had once been simple coils, but had over time broken off the loops holding them and after millennia of tangling, appeared like fancy puffed up skirts on their carriers.
Though otherwise arriving emptyhanded, one of the three carried a familiar lump of fabric wrapped around something.
They stopped a fair distance from King but as close to Anastacia as possible before the one holding the lump, presented it to the necromancer.
“Belated greeting. Apologizing delay. It is good to see you have arrived, child of death – with the knight no less. I trust Sister Pyrus guided you true?” Spoke the many voices of Brother Malus from under the covers.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe we should handle the hollow simulacra before anything else?” Anastacia pointed out and nodded towards the swarm when Leggy revealed her head from under the cloak.
“Understanding acceptance. Dispensing orders. Fair enough, that’s why I brought Sister Limon, Sister Maxima and Sister Reticulata here in the first place. Sister Maxima, if you would be so kind as to handle the issue at hand.” The concealed lump of flesh and stone said as the simulacrum carrying it began unravelling the cloth.
The leftmost of the three identical Firstborns, identifiable only through a crack in its faceplate, calmly walked towards the swarm cowering in the light. She took great care to not get closer to King at all, and had to take a detour because of it – whatever awe the firstborn had towards the knight, was now matched with an equal amount of fear, and for a good reason, since King did not care for them in the slightest.
Having gotten within ten meters of the hollow simulacra, Sister Maxima pointed both of her hands and their much too many fingers at her opponents. With a series of pops in quick succession, the tip of each finger launched at the crowd, latching on to whichever of the simulacra they hit. Once the pops died down, lines of light between the detached fingertips and Sister Maxima’s hands suddenly flickered on, connecting her with the entire swarm by the means of threads not unlike the ones hanging from her hips.
Within seconds, the hollow simulacra began to collapse one by one as the threads sucked the life from them and directed it to Sister Maxima, whose arms and pauldrons had gained several more glowing lines during the operation and began to steam much in the same way as King.
Once the entire group had been dealt with, the Firstborn flicked her wrists and the spikes retreated back to her hands. Her arms kept glowing for a while longer, but the lines of light slowly coalesced into her shoulder guards and a few cores slotted into them. The procedure finished by three of the cores popping up and sticking out with an audible hiss to them.
The searchlight moved its focus to the treelines by the sides of the field, no doubt looking for more threats.
As per usual, before saying anything or even really thinking, Anastacia wriggled around until Leggy released her and immediately darted to the rightmost of the three sisters, to gleefully poke and inspect the new type of simulacra.
“Delighted revelation. Disclosing information. I see the marioneta patterns have piqued your interest! Though their original purpose was rather sinister, we have found their talents useful for pacifying our hollow brethren. Which is why a detour to find them was required.” Brother Malus explained once the first few mouths and eyes were revealed.
Anastacia fiddled with the tangled mess of glowing threads hanging from the marioneta simulacrum’s hips, and quickly found there was nothing she could do for them without several days of untangling and straightening them. “Yeah, about that; why are there so damn many of them? You said there would be ‘a few’” She asked and moved on to inspecting the arms.
“Shameful confession. Explaining altered situation. To our shame, we failed to realize that one of the nearby great ones, going by the name of Obsessive Care, still continues their duty of producing countless run-of-the-mill brothers, even after running out of minds to give to them. The great one must have heard Erratic Judgement’s pleas and sent out everything they had in reserves to aid. Unbeknownst to them, it hinders our efforts, but I assure you, it is not malicious at heart.” The leader of the Firstborn admitted as the simulacrum carrying him held him closer to Anastacia. The several eyes stared at the necromancer’s hands expectantly to see if she was about to perform yet another miracle. “Genuine praise. Rewarding successful protection. Though I do see that you had no issues holding back the tide. Truly, it was the correct decision to contact you!”
The adventurer glanced at the piles of destroyed simulacra around the town and was reminded of the infuriating conversations from earlier. “That’s not my work. There are other necromancers here, but they are nothing like me, so absolutely do not try to go into the town or contact them.” She explained, perhaps putting a bit too much weight on the unimportant distinction rather than just explaining the situation. She then demonstrated the function of the town’s defenses by tossing a small stone or a piece of a broken simulacra on it.
The giant beacon of light turned to inspect the field of bones for a while, as Brother Malus curiously stared at the town of Ruvenstead. “Surprised delight. Asking for a favor. Well, if these other necromancers are defending the people of this town, I would very much like to meet them to coordinate our efforts. I believe our cooperation would save resources for both of us and allow them to be used where they are needed more.”
“No!” Anastacia exclaimed even before thinking. “They’ll kill you without hesitation, you can’t meet with any of them! For your own safety…” She said what felt like a lie even to her. She was almost certain that Cobalt and Iris would gladly work together with the Firstborn but couldn’t bring herself to trust the inquisitors while she wasn’t around to keep them in check. It made no sense at all, but she simply couldn’t.
Brother Malus could obviously sense something being off. Half of his eyes were focused on the alarmed and confused necromancer and the other half to Leggy, the Firstborn that had already been in the town to no cost to her at all. “Unsure acceptance. Answering inconclusively. I see…” He muttered a response.