Two men closed the distance quickly, swords held high and armored pieces whipping around their body with the heavy charge. Dei dodged around the first downward swing, but the second man adjusted his run to clip her with his shoulder as he ran by her. The blow knocked her off course and spun her around to watch as Xei dropped from the hole above to land on one of the guard's backs.
The sudden weight forced the guard onto the ground with a startled grunt even as Xei threw his fist downward into the back of the man's skull. Trapped in a close quarters melee, the guard's sword did him no good as Xei repeatedly bashed his head into the hard packed floor, drawing more and more blood onto his hands with every blow.
The other man had course corrected after his charge and swung around to attack Xei’s back as he pounded into the guard's friend. His sword flashed in the dull firelight, making a clean cut into the attackers back as he heard bones crack under his swing, but the skeleton barely paid him any mind as he continued his assault. The guard hesitated for a moment, obviously expecting some sort of reaction out of the man he had just injured when another flash of metal careened into his sight from the corner of his eye. He couldn't move away in time as a small dagger embedded itself in his throat then quickly ripped forward to open his airways. The guard spun as he fell to the ground, legs suddenly giving out, and took in the sight of a small masked creature standing over him with a bloody dagger held in her hands.
A heavy metal ball crashed into the ground beside them, causing the entire room to shake as it rolled to a stop several paces from the hole above them. Major Connely stood quickly on her feet, her massive armored form rising steadily above the carnage around her as she withdrew a small bundle of sticks tipped with iron caps on either end from her belt. A few clicks came from the weapon as the Major unfolded the sticks into a six foot long spear with a well practiced motion, the iron tips seeming to fuse together as the weapon opened up.
She looked down on Xei as he slowly stood up from the corpse underneath him, the unarmored head of the guard now resembling some sort of ugly red fruit that had been smashed into the ground. Dei meanwhile had already taken control of the other guard’s body. The corpse writhed in place with several bones visibly breaking every moment under his rippling skin. The man’s body resembled a mass of fish struggling within a net as a fisherman brought them out of the water, skin bulging and breaking into horrendous open wounds that left the floor drenched in blood. The other corpse quickly joined him in the same disturbing reanimation process while the skeletons merely turned around to continue further into the cave complex.
Major Connely stayed behind, her placcid face turning to horror as she took in the transformation happening before her. She wasn't outright attacking the new skeletons, but she still held her spear warily in their direction as her eyes darted back and forth between the corpses and the masked duo that was walking away from her.
Dei didn't really care whether Connely joined them; she hadn't intended for her to come on this expedition in the first place, and as time went by she only felt slightly less like a babysitter set to watch over Dei as she went into enemy lands. The small troop of well trained soldiers would certainly be useful, but it hadn't been quite what Dei was expecting when Matthew had told her to seek support. Still, she would accept what help she could get at the moment, even if it wasn't entirely loyal to her.
The dirt floor ended shortly ahead, turning into a well worn stone floor made up of what looked like massive stone blocks five feet wide on all sides. The walls were also made up of the same style of blocks stacked upon one another to form the perfectly ten foot tall entrance to an impressive looking corridor leading to some downward steps. Thick metal braziers were connected directly to the stone walls, one of which was currently burning as the sole illumination for the area. A metallic covering over the brazier included a small pipe running into the wall, catching the majority of the smoke coming off of the underground fire and sending it somewhere out of sight.
Dei tried to stay quiet, creeping down the hall until she realized that the guards would have likely allerted the rest of the group already. A quick check with her spectral sight confirmed it well enough since none of the skeletal bodies below remained sleeping any longer. Several bodies stood in the open, while most appeared to be crouched down in various positions with their backs to some object she supposed meant that they must be trying to hide as she approached. With this in mind she stopped bothering to stay quiet, casually striding forward and down the massive stone steps that led to the second underground level.
As she made it down the stairs she started to see several men standing boldly in the middle of the room, most of which had weapons pulled out and at the ready while a single man stood with his hands in his pockets in the center of the room. If his demeanor didn't give him away, the fact that he was the only man wearing fine clothing did, as gold colored detailing wound its way up and down a vibrant red vest under which he wore a clean white dress shirt.
The men around him relaxed a bit as Dei and Xei made it down to their level, confident in their ability to deal with any two random individuals that found their lair in the middle of the night. Dei decided to stop shortly before reaching the men, leaving a ten foot gap between the two groups as their leader decided to start speaking.
“Which house do you work for?”
Dei cocked her head, reaching down to unhook her slate board but not yet writing on it.
“I'll pay you double whatever your going rate is if you join my crew. I have the feeling I just got two unexpected openings in my ranks.”
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Dei decided to respond this time, “And just who do you think I work for?”
The finely dressed man seemed confused as he read the black slate in her hands via the ambient light from several braziers lit around the room.
“Oh, are you just trying to fish for information now? What kind of idiot doesn't even know who they're attacking?”
Dei shrugged in response.
“Well, if you're really so nosey then house Brent sends its regards.”
Several thunks echoed in tandem with the end of the man's sentence as a dozen metal tipped bolts shot through the air at the two skeletons. Dei felt like a mule had just kicked her in the chest as 5 of the bolts struck her body at the same time, lifting her from the ground. She flew at least five feet backwards to slide across the stoney ground until her shoulder rammed into the bottom of the stone steps leading upwards. Several thick wooden bolt shafts implanted deep into the layers of clothes robe and chain mail she kept covering her hollow insides, sticking out at strange angles where they caught on her ribs. She rolled her head over to look at Xei who had taken his half of the barrage slightly better, one foot back as the sheer force of the shots had pushed him back over the open ground but not entirely airborne as it had done to Dei.
An idea occurred to Dei as she looked at her skeletal guard and the heavy bolts that protruded from his thick cuirass making him appear like a man made porcupine. She sent a silent message to Xei not to attack, and slowly started to get up to her feet. As she stood up, Dei realized that one of the bolts had implanted itself directly into the forehead of her wooden mask, nearly splitting the wood in two as it punctured through the other side and slightly into her skull.
She picked up the discarded slate board that had fallen from her hands when she was pushed back. Then she reached up to grip the bolt piercing her forehead and pulled it out, taking the mask with it as her fiery eyes looked out on the startled men all around her.
A layer of men stood up from behind their barricades of wooden crates and large barrels, behind which they had been hiding the heavy crossbows in their hands. Behind them another group of men held up bows, arrows nocked back as they stared fiercely at Dei in between the shoulders of the crossbow group.
“Loose!” the leader cried, and this time a barrage of arrow shafts flew through the air to embed themselves in the two skeletons. Neither so much as budged this time under the second wave of projectiles as the arrows carried much less weight to their attack than the crossbows had.
Dei walked forward casually through the onslaught, a scattering of crossbow men suddenly realizing that they weren't quite done yet as cranking noises started to echo throughout the stoney cavern. As for the archers, they managed to nock back and release two more quick waves of arrows before Dei reached the nobleman. He had turned around as she got closer, yelling at his men to protect him as the formerly brave looking men at his left and right took short steps backward, out of the line of fire of the archers behind them.
He was clutching the shoulders of a large man weilding a two handed axe when Dei finally reached him, silently taking her dagger and ramming it upward into the man's back and under his rib cage. He screamed and turned around, looking at her with crazed eyes as she kept a firm grip of her dagger, letting him use his own momentum to open a large red gash that matched the fabric of his vest.
She caught him by the collar of his shirt and promptly slashed across his open arms as he reached for the arms she was holding him with. The man clutched his arms to his stomach trying to keep the wounds closed, blood seeping out onto his fine woven vest. Dei casually switched her grip on the dagger and punched it up through the underside of his jaw and into his head, stopping the screaming all at once.
The nobleman went limp immediately, falling into a heap on the ground as the men surrounding Dei looked wildly at one another, unsure of what to do. Xei came up from behind Dei, holding up his own slate sign for all the men to see.
“Bend the knee, and serve.”
An arrow fell out of Dei's leg as she moved a step back, only one of the several dozen missiles that were sticking out from her ruined robe all around her body. Behind her the sounds of heavy footsteps echoed down the steps as she felt the twin bodies of the skeletal guardsmen approach. The men shifted their gaze from Xei's slate board to take in the bloody corpses of the men she had risen less than two minutes ago, slowly making their way down the steps like struggling automatons. Fei now set to work on the newly lifeless corpse ahead of her as she turned the nobleman into a similar sight of awkwardly bent limbs and muffled cracks punctuated by the spray of blood across the ground. To the men around her however, the sight was anything but familiar.
By the time the guards behind her had caught up to stand by Dei's side, the sellswords had started to kneel before her. The echo of cranking crossbows settled down as the marksmen took a knee, heads barely visible as they stared awkwardly into the backs of the men in front of them. Then the soldiers in the front began to kneel as well, faces turned to watch the corpse of the nobleman as his white shirt turned a deep red color under his freely flowing blood. Finally, the large brute with the two handed axe knelt as well, speaking aloud for the group as the well dressed corpse rose next to Dei, walking back to stand with the other guardsmen.
“We will serve.”
Twenty-six motes of green fire suddenly burst to life within Dei while she took in the men ahead of her. A chorus of voices flooded her head all at once, singing a scattered song that reminded her of a long lost melody despite the uncharacteristically droll words that came with the song.
“Twenty-Five Followers gained. Ascension complete. Followers found lacking. Solution, Scions of Death.”
Green light blazed from within Dei's body, shooting out of her clothes through the many holes left by arrows still drooping from her chest and arms. Ahead of her, the large man's eyes reflected the same eerie green light that fell upon his soldiers as he took in their new master.
Up the stone steps, still standing uncomfortably by a massive blood stain in the dirt, Major Connely looked down the hall. A sickeningly green light that had no business coming from an underground building crept into view from down below. Her mind was elsewhere as she easily started folding up her retractable spear, somehow sure of the fact she wasn't going to fight that night. Instead, she thought of ocean waves passing beneath her, and hoped with all her heart that she would be able to see something so beautiful once again.