Emilia grasped the ends of the transilluminator, ready to give them a twist and activate it. She and unit twelve shared a look that gave away the priestess’ intentions without words being needed. The custodian dashed away as fast as she could while whistling a couple of times and gesturing for the knights to not engage.
For the entire time, Pyria screamed for her scion to hurry. Her words felt like hot nails piercing Emilia’s skull, painful to a point where it was hard to tell if it was unintentional side-effect of the situation’s urgency or if the fiend was trying to force her hand regardless of the custodian’s life. Gritting her teeth and almost crushing the artifact in her hands, Emilia waited until unit twelve stopped a fair distance away and gave her the all clear. She twisted the transilluminator’s mechanism and the brief high-pitched noise ramped up for maybe half a second before the priestess was engulfed in a bright wave of light. She could feel it ripple through her like the shockwave of an explosion, mostly passing through without resistance, but still partly colliding with something inside her. Though most of the energy simply shone directly through her and dissipated after a few meters, the portion that didn’t cast a shadow behind her. By the time the light died down, the shadow had taken form in two beings; one tall, bloody and clad in iron, and the other, as tall as the priestess herself, covered in smoldering embers and kneeling in agony. The first one Emilia and King had briefly met and knew her to be Pyria, but the other one they had yet to get acquainted with.
Without wasting time, the fiend given form stepped forwards and started walking towards the man in white. With each step, dozens of the soldiers and paladins the knights had kept at bay fell down, their helmets were fractured and punctured by iron spikes that had suddenly grown outwards from inside of their heads. The bodies that had already been felled or had yet to rise and fight were torn apart by long metal spikes that quickly spread from even the tiniest drops of blood until the entire dreamscape of Trauma’s illusion had turned into a forest of gore and ruined armor, with an undergrowth of whatever bits and giblets that had fallen from to inside the mangled bodies.
“A mere imitation, scraped together from a half-forgotten bad memory, formed inside an illusion and controlled by someone else’s subconsciousness… Oh how insulted The Great King Alabaster would be to see this! Though, speaking as the physical manifestation of an unfit fragment of what I once was, perhaps this does bring us to an equal footing?” The fiend sang out and snapped her fingers, causing coils of wire to spring up from the blood surrounding the giant hand crushing the captured knight. The wires tightened around the fleshy fingers and pried them open, freeing the knight.
Not giving the white necromancer a chance to react, Pyria tugged one of the iron lances from the ground and threw it at him. In the split second that it took for the projectile to reach the mock Alabaster, countless fragments of bone tore themselves from the bodies in the area and gathered to protect him. The casing of bone managed to stop the lance, but the force of the impact pushed the necromancer back a few meters. Unfortunately for him, this was just a warning shot from the fiend. Only a split second later, a massive iron spike thrust up from the bloody mess under his feet and sent the necromancer high up into the air, only to get hit with yet another lance Pyria chucked at him. The power behind the hit was enough to launch the shell of bone well into the distance.
“That was quick…” Emilia commented while the knights rushed to rescue their injured brethren.
“And far from over. It may be a flimsy replication, but The Great King does not suffer defeat so easily, I am merely relocating our tussle for the sake of our allies. Trauma’s subconsciousness should now know who here represents the greatest threat and will focus on me, for the moment at least – I implore you, scion, to use the time I buy well, for there is no guarantees to be made when facing King Alabaster in any capacity.” Pyria explained and started running in the direction she had launched her opponent into.
Only seconds later bone and flesh from the corpses everywhere started flying across the air as if stormy winds had caught them, slowly gathering speed. At first getting hit with one was mainly gross, but soon they were fast enough to cause bruises if they landed somewhere unarmored. Eventually their speed grew to a point where even armor started to provide questionable protection. They tore apart what remained of the dangling corpses and created even more fragments and created a chain reaction that very quickly got out of hand. In the distance, Emilia could see a tornado of flesh and bone build up roughly where the necromancer had landed.
Luckily, they were just far enough for the knights to not be in all that much danger from the fleshy winds, so they could provide some shelter to the custodian as she retuned to the priestess. King slammed the bottom of his shield into the ground and twisted one of its handles, which seemed to drain a bit of power through his arm and used it to move a few of the shield’s parts and expand it sideways to about twice its original width. He and the archer knight then braced themselves against it and created a shelter for the priestess, the custodian, the injured knight and the charred splinter of Emilia’s being that seemed to be slowly coming to its senses.
“Bringer of Joy, have you ever considered therapy, or just maybe speaking to someone? I think it’s mostly waste of good anger and time, but that is not something that’s just supposed to come out of someone when they use a transilluminator – not to mention the chunk of charcoal over there.” Unit twelve commented while kneeling to work on the broken knight.
“She is right, you know, all is not well in here. Deities can not comprehend the nuances of mortal mindsets, so even if you have one listening to you at all times, her answers may not sate the needs you possess. Confide with your mortal menagerie of accomplices more.” The fiend in Emilia’s head agreed and predicted her next question before she even had the chance to think it. “The trinket merely created a copy of yours truly, an impression, but a competent one. Our bond is much too strong for me to simply get extracted regardless, much less by a shabby bauble from those tunneling fools.”
On one hand it was a relief for Emilia that she hadn’t just unleashed Pyria on the world, but on the other it meant that she was still stuck with the fiend, which she didn’t want to get used to. Ignoring the life advice from both the anger-fueled custodian and the personification of torment, she turned her attention from her problems to the other person the transilluminator had created. The kneeling person coughed and whined in agony as the smoldering embers on their skin, clothes and armor slowly cooled down and turned more ashen in color. The priestess could immediately see that the design of the sooty and blackened armor was identical to hers, but with some additional metal plates in places hers didn’t. In fact, it seemed to be a complete suit of plate armor without all the white cloth her uniform had – including a helmet that covered their entire face. She tried to touch the person’s shoulder to see if she could help, but all that did was cause a rapidly spreading fracture on the charred surface along the person’s back and arm. Before she could do anything about it, the fracture turned into ten and then into hundred, and in a blink of an eye, the person collapsed into a pile of ash and coal, only sighing in relief in the process.
“What…” Emilia muttered and grasped a handful of embers from the pile that was left behind. The blood on her hand sizzled faintly and the chunks of coal quickly became too hot hold, even through her gauntlets.
A tremor and a blast wave from the direction Pyria and Alabaster were having their fight snapped her back into the moment at hand. They needed to break the illusion as quickly as possible and could figure out the implications of what had just happened later.
“Well, you’re just kind of royally fucked.” Unit twelve said to the moderately mangled knight, who wasn’t quite immobile but definitely not in any shape to effectively fight. She spent a while making sure no broken bits would further break anything and salvaging what she could before making her prognosis. “It’ll take me at least a couple of weeks to get the parts done, but the more important bits seem to all be there…”
“Twelve, we need a new plan.” The priestess reminded her ally about the moderate hurry they were in.
The custodian glanced at the pile of ash next to Emilia let out a muffled chuckle so derisive that it made the priestess consider just trying and seeing if she could throw her over the gorge. “Have you considered jumping?”
“I am entirely convinced that I can throw you further than I can jump. So just take off your armor and let me grab your ankles.” The priestess snarked back at the unhelpful suggestion. “What about the knights, can they jump?”
“Can hundreds of kilograms of stone and metal jump? Why yes, about as well as most boulders!” Unit twelve answered in a mocking tone.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
While it was true that King had a tendency to go through things rather than jump over or across them, the priestess knew he was in no way bound to the ground. That said, the tad over ten meters of gorge was no small leap.
“Well what if they take off the armor? That should shed some weight, right? And you have the tool for that as well.” The priestess suggested.
The custodian frowned and seemed to run some rough calculations in her head. Her gaze bounced between the knights and the gap they needed to cross until a second tremor that marked a stark increase in the speed of the flying bits of bone interrupted her. The iron spikes started to bend and snap when hit, perhaps giving some hints on how the fight in the distance was going. One of the spikes bounced off the shield they were hiding behind, pushing it back just a couple of centimeters.
“Mmmmaybe, but the blood is smeared across their armors and they need it to keep the corruption out.” She partly agreed but pointed out the problem with the plan. It had taken quite some time to prepare the ‘blessings’ last time, and judging by the growing power of the white necromancer, they likely didn’t have time to spare for fingerpainting with blood.
“A painful admission on my part as well, my hands are quite full with the illusion as well as the corruption. Providing further assistance bears a chance of hindering my current works.” Pyria pitched in, sounding somewhat labored now that attention was being drawn to it. “But… There may yet be an option. You see, scion of mine, what makes one vulnerable to these whispers from the dark, is lack of purpose. The little one lives for an ambiguous purpose of war, but her original enemies are long defeated and there is no direction to her hate. These dolls of clay are lost sheep, following orders they barely care for, but… there is one who does not share their weakness. There is one who has found something – or someone, I should say, to fight for. Play to these emotions and rile up the king among knights and his purpose might drive him long enough to achieve the task required even without my mark.”
Emilia glanced at King, who was holding up the shield and keeping an eye on the other knights. His chest plate had a slab of flesh attached to it from the pact he and Pyria had made, but inconveniently it was also the heaviest part of armor and would without a doubt need to go if he was going to be the one who needed to try and jump across.
“So you’re saying a knight could make the jump without armor.” She asked for a confirmation from the custodian.
“Well, probably. Not all the way across of course, but I’d bet they could slam into the cliffside a couple of meters down. From there it’s just a matter of climbing.” Unit twelve shrugged.
Emilia took a moment to choose her words before moving closer to King. She found no enjoyment in manipulating her friends, but if getting him motivated was what they needed to dispel the illusion, it was fairly benign as far as ulterior motives went. The simulacra would probably try their plan if she simply asked him to, but to ward of the corruption long enough, his mechanical heart needed to be pumping full of purpose, and luckily, motivating King to do anything was not a complex task that required much finesse with words, all that was needed was the mention of a single name.
“King, my fellow, this is quite a pickle we’ve gotten ourselves into, isn’t it? But we can’t let ourselves get bogged down like this, we need hurry and save Anastacia! Who knows what trouble she might be in without you?” She spoke in a very suggestive manner despite knowing that the necromancer was supposed to be in someone’s custody at the time.
As soon as Anastacia’s name was spoken, the lights on King’s armor grew bright and the heat from his internal mechanisms could easily be felt over a meter away.
“I’m quite concerned indeed! Without her bulky protector, she might be in more trouble than she can handle…” The priestess continued. “Poor tiny thing, I hope we’ll make it in time.”
Unit twelve was beyond confused at what was going on, while she did understand that the priestess was coaxing the knight for the jump, she had never seen a simulacrum be so utterly riled up over nothing but a few words.
“What I need you to do, is let twelve here take off your armor, jump across that gap, climb up and use a transilluminator on Trauma. The faster we get this done, the faster you’ll get back to saving Anna.” Emilia explained the idea to King, who simply nodded without a moment of hesitation or doubt that he wouldn’t manage what was asked. She gestured for the baffled custodian to start ridding the knight of his armor while King relinquished his spot supporting the shield to the knight behind him.
Unit twelve worked at an amazing speed, carefully laying down the heated pieces of stone armor while the priestess kept reminding King what he was working towards. Despite the haste, the velocity of the bone debris flying around kept increasing from second to second and soon a third knight needed to lean on the shield to keep it from being flung away. Finally, down to only the piece of chest armor, King took a few steps to recalibrate his movements and attached the transilluminator to a piece of metal on his thigh, which seemed to be designed for such purpose. He took his spear and counted the steps he would take before leaping, all the while visibly fuming and humming loudly enough that Emilia almost had to yell over the noise at times.
Right as unit twelve laboriously heaved off the final armor piece and separated King from Pyria’s pact, the priestess whispered something to him, which turned the hum into a scream and made the knight launch off towards the gorge. He leaped off in a perfectly calculated point and flew towards the other edge in a beautiful arch that landed him only a few meters below the edge on the other side. Slamming into the cliff face with his entire mass caused a fair bit of it to collapse, but the spot he had plunged his spear into held and gave him a solid grip to avoid falling into the magma below.
“What’d you tell him to get him that furious?” Unit twelve asked as they watched King slowly start making his way up.
Emilia smirked. “That is not for you to know… But he’s not angry – quite the opposite really. There are better ways to go about this life than wrath, and you’d do well to remember that.”
“Learn more of the world and you’ll see that wrath is what got us here.” The custodian scoffed at the remark. “I don’t know what surface-magics you’ve used to muddle his head, but it’s obviously working, I’ll give you that much.”
Finding purchase in the cliff face turned out to be more difficult than King had predicted and his progress slowed down almost immediately. He could already hear whispers in the back of his head and see violet streaks in the light patterns on his hands, both encouraging him to just let go and fall. But he was nothing if not a man on a mission, there was a necromancer to save and all else was irrelevant. This stubbornness quickly burned away the stains of violet on his body and made him carry on.
Suddenly, something struck the stone directly above him with an incredible force, shooting a ton of rubble and dust into the air. Only a couple of seconds later, before the dust was even settled, it happened again, though this time a fair bit higher, and soon after that, for the third and final time. Shielding his face from the falling rocks, King turned towards the side he had leaped from and could see his fellow knight, with a bow in hand, getting pelted with shards of bone that chipped away at their armor. They shared a quick hand gesture before the archer knight retreated back behind the shield.
When the dust settled, King could see three metal rods, firmly embedded into the stone just barely within reach from each other. He reached up, grabbed the first one and was able to pull his spear free thanks to the new foothold. His almost halted progress sped up greatly, but still, each step became heavier and heavier. His strength was draining quickly and every second the whispers became more and more convincing. His parts ceased together and needed to be forced to move again. Part of him wanted to tear off the pieces that hindered his progress, but he knew that to just be another trick being played on him by the corruption that gained more and more control over his body.
From the third arrow, he could reach the edge and only needed to lever himself up, which was far easier said than done. The whispers were turning into screamed commands to give up, and any absence of thought or control was immediately utilized against him. For a few times, his arm moved to his core on its own and attempted to pull it out, but luckily, he noticed this in time. As he stabbed his spear into the ground over the edge of the cliff, the corruption gained control of his eyes, and everything turned dark. With the last ounces of his strength, he pulled himself up and rolled over the edge.
Blinded, deaf to everything but the voices in his head and barely able to move, but none of that mattered to him in the slightest – he had a necromancer to save. King reached to the stone cylinder on his leg, pulled it up to his chest and twisted the ends.
Seconds later, the entire world of illusion was engulfed by a white flash of light.
Deeper down in the fortress, a similar, though more precisely aimed flash of light died down and revealed three necromancers where there had only a moment earlier been just one.
The first one with a glimmer of madness in her eyes, barely clothed and donning a mess of equipment cobbled together from goblin trash and simulacra armor. The second one blinded after staring directly at a flashing obelisk and the third one completely devoid of happiness and wearing a white Mournvalleyan garb.
“What pointless trickery. I expected more from both The Great Commander and you, necromancer.” Eminence spoke from the shadows and sighed.
The first of the three necromancers seemed to ignore the threat in the room and turned to the third one. “Oh pasty sister of mine, whilst the middle path gathers her strength, might us engage in merriment in turns? Dost thine fine self know of the sport of pebble parchment and shears? To see whom might earn the right for the first strike?” She spoke in an obviously faked and clumsy accent, likely trying to seem like a royal despite her rather tribal look.
The third necromancer rolled her eyes as one of the spears on her back suddenly shot directly at Eminence at an incredible speed. This clearly caught the sage unaware as it scored an uninterrupted hit, sending the entire being flying far into the darkness behind it. The eventual thud from that direction was likely him hitting the net of light patterns that imprisoned them. Without missing a beat, the third necromancer launched four more spears in the direction of the sound, each one letting out a loud bang as it ripped through air.
“I see sportsmanship weighs naught on thine shoulders…” The first necromancer commented and peered into the dark.