Grobert let out a satisfied grunt as he cut through a section of the thick jungle and finally spotted the tall towers of Grothlosburg in the distance.
A ragged-looking Anna was only a few steps behind him. He probably didn’t look much better. The last two weeks they had been forced to travel through a section of swampy jungle.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the creatures that inhabited those brackish waters were very aggressive and very territorial. And there were no longer any convenient rock outcroppings to use as rest stops.
The pair had been forced to spend their nights hiding in the insect-infested trees. It was a good thing Anna was undead now, she would not have survived the trip otherwise. Because Grobert would have killed her instead of listening to her constant complaining. He knew she would have complained constantly because even now she complained every few hours even as an undead. Grobert lost count of the number of times he wanted to strangle the life out of the whiny human.
But the homestretch was finally in sight. “Pick up the pace, we are almost there.”
Anna produced another whiny groan that made Grobert grind his teeth. He decided to ignore the woman and focus his mind on another problem.
With the swamp covering a significant distance, his crude telepads would not be sufficient. He would either need to find a point of dry land that butted up against Grothlosburg or trek back to his last telepad and upgrade it to a teleporter.
The ideal option would be dry land but he wasn’t holding his breath on that one. When they first ran into the changing terrain, they tried going around. For two days' travel in either direction, it was just more swamp. And it was so thick and dense with hanging vines and plants that Grobert couldn’t teleport more than ten feet at a time. Which meant he couldn’t survey the area quickly.
Neither option was good and it would be a slow trek back through the swamp no matter what he chose to do.
As they grew closer to the city, Grobert could make out the top of an enormous wall. This also told Grobert that the easy part of the journey was complete. The wall was new but he wasn’t surprised. The gron may not be quick to change but they weren’t stupid. A wall would be the most expedient action against a hostile biome appearing next to their border.
The gron were also stubborn. Grobert stopped at the bottom of the wall. The mages had stuck the wall exactly on the border of the zone and fetid water lapped against the grey surface.
Despite the wall being made out of groncrete, Grobert could see deep claw marks left behind by the predators from the jungle.
He looked up and down the wall but saw no entrance. That wasn’t surprising. The gron would have quickly discarded this zone as habitable. They wouldn’t need to have any door or gate.
“How are we getting in?” Anna asked as she trudged up next to him, sloshing dirty water against the wall in small waves.
Grobert glanced up. The wall was at least a hundred feet tall. And now that his senses weren’t being suppressed by the jungle, he could feel the wall was over a hundred feet thick. He had already tried his rock trick but the magitech enchantments built into the wall easily resisted his efforts.
“The hard way,” he grunted.
Anna groaned. “Can’t we just yell until someone comes to help us?”
“No. You would sooner bring down the guardians on top of us than any rescue party.”
“What guardians?” she complained. “I don’t see anything but this stupid wall.”
Grobert smirked. “Oh, they’re around. Just because you can’t see them, doesn’t mean they don’t see you.”
“Well, why can’t they help us?”
Grobert ignored her question as he glanced around. Eventually, he spotted what he was looking for. “They are automated defenders. They aren’t programmed to care about some whiny human and undead gron.”
Grobert smirked as his statement finally shut the woman up. He could still feel her angry gaze boring into his back as he teleported into a tree and cut off some vines.
He would need to make a rope for Anna to climb up. While he could teleport to the top of the wall, he couldn’t do it with her. He had tried. But it seems sapient life simply couldn’t be teleported with his skill. It was a pity. It would have made the last part of their trip far shorter.
Anna watched him silently as he tied the vines together to form a long rope. She didn’t once offer to help, which just strengthened Grobert’s desire to rid himself of the bothersome human woman. As soon as he got into the city, he was going to collect enough rodents to restore her to life, then he was done. And hopefully for good.
He slung the heavy coil over his shoulder and looked up again, judging the distance. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”
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Before she could respond, he vanished. He undershot the distance by a few feet and was forced to cling to the edge of the wall and pull himself up. His deteriorating eyesight had caused him to miscalculate. He had only packed enough potion for himself for a month, but he had been forced to share it with Anna to keep them both going. By the time he realized they would run out, they were already far into the swamp, and returning to get more would have cost too much time.
Rationing the potion had worked but it still ran out a week ago. And now the effects of decomposition were taking their toll on his body. Grobert wasn’t too worried about that. Grothlosburg had the required ingredients to craft up more. He might even find ready-made ones for sale if any undead still resided inside the city. He knew of at least one that should still be around.
He quickly pulled himself on top of the wall and scanned it. It was featureless and flat. He had suspected as much but he still cursed his luck. He dumped the rope onto the roof and quickly tied one end around his waist. There wasn’t much time.
They had to move quickly because he could already feel the golems starting to activate from his intrusion onto the wall.
After securing the rope to himself, he kicked the coil off the roof. He knew it reached the ground when he heard a loud splash and angry spluttering.
He looked over the side and yelled down. “Hurry up and tie the end around you, we need to be off the wall before the guardians wake up!”
Anna scrambled through the water until she got to the rope. Grobert waited for her to tie it around her waist and cut off the excess before he began to haul it up. His dense muscles made easy work of the girl’s light frame, but it still took time for even him to yank a rope up a hundred feet.
There was a cracking sound off to his left and Grobert risked a glance. An enchanted stone arm had broken free of the wall and was pushing against the surface to help free the rest of its twenty-foot frame.
He cursed and redoubled his efforts at pulling the rope. He really hoped it didn’t snap.
Grobert felt the build-up of magic and jerked back a moment before a violet beam of energy punched through the space he had been standing in.
While the golem had missed him, it hadn’t missed the rope. He lunged to grab the end of it, just barely managing to snag it before it went off the edge of the roof.
While the semi-intelligent golems were a defensive miracle, he was really hating them right now. It wasn’t an accident that the thing had struck the rope after missing him. Some calculation in the things mind had processed that if he dodged the shot, it could hit the rope. The automaton had figured out that Grobert was trying to bring in reinforcements. It was a simple calculation for the defender. Kill one or kill both.
And now that Grobert was lying prone on the wall, he was also open to additional attacks. Grobert certainly wasn’t going to wait around for the golem to recharge its disintegrator though. He leaped to his feet and yanked on the rope as hard as he could.
There was a scream as Anna sailed past him overhead, but Grobert ignored the woman as he teleported toward the golem. It was already charging another shot, only this time it was aiming toward a spot in the air where Anna would pass through on her way down. There was no way she could dodge it. As Grobert appeared, he shoved the heavy stone arm of the golem with all of his strength.
The bump was just enough to throw off the things aim and the violet beam missed the woman. Grobert teleported, avoiding the golem's other arm as it tried to crush him. He appeared beneath Anna and caught her a moment before she hit the ground, then he began to run. There were a hundred feet of wall to cover and at least two more golems breaking free on the wall.
“What the fuck is that thing!” Anna screamed as she held to Grobert for dear life.
“The defenders.”
While he was carrying Anna, He had to rely on his senses. He shifted left when he felt the next magical buildup. The golem had compensated though and Grobert took a glancing blow to his arm.
He ignored the sensation of part of his body just vanishing as he ran for all he was worth. He took three more hits as the constructs started networking and adjusting to his movements. He was ten feet from the edge of the wall when everything went blank.
***
This was too much for Anna. But her flight through the jungle and swamp was nearly over. She ran over and quickly tied herself to the vine that Grobert had formed into a rope.
The jerky movement up the wall was unsettling but she didn’t complain. She already felt bad for refusing to help the man make the rope. And for being a whiny insufferable person over the last few weeks. She couldn’t help it, she needed to vent her frustration at her situation somehow.
There was suddenly a violent jerk upward a moment before she experienced a sense of weightlessness. Then she started to fall. She screamed, but that was cut short as she was jerked to a halt. But her wild trip wasn’t over yet. Before she could recover her bearings, there was a massive jerking motion that made her legs tingle uncomfortably and she started screaming again as she shot upward and sailed over the wall.
Her eyes spotted Grobert and a massive stone man that was aiming something in her direction.
Since she was already screaming, all she could do was stare in horror as a beam of light flew at her. It missed, but Anna saw a chunk of her hair fall away. She didn’t have time to contemplate how close she had just come to death again as she saw the ground approaching very rapidly.
Just before she would have impacted the ground, Grobert appeared and caught her. It was not a gentle motion and her body flopped about unnaturally. All of the rough treatment left her legs feeling completely numb. She suspected her spine was damaged or broken from the rough handling. But she clung to Grobert as tightly as her arms would allow as the man raced across the top of the wall.
She hated the fact that the man had saved her yet again. She didn’t want to owe him anything. But with the threat of the defenders and the lack of feeling in her legs, she could only watch helplessly as Grobert took shot after shot from the violet beams as he raced to bring them to safety. The man didn’t even grunt as he was struck multiple times by the beams.
A shot finally struck Grobert in the head, and a baseball-sized hole was drilled straight through his skull. His lifeless body dropped to the ground, dumping her as well. There was no time to think. She scrabbled over to his body and quickly grabbed the man’s case that held his phylactery. Then she crawled to the edge of the wall using her arms and hurled herself off.
Anna had seen at least two blasts of purple light reflected off the surface of the wall and she could feel a ragged opening where her heart should be, but she was somehow still alive. At least until she impacted the ground below. She was handling her imminent death much better than the first time. Death the second time around just didn’t have the same impact. It was a bad choice of words, but they fit the situation. As she neared the ground Anna made sure to close her eyes. She didn’t want to remember this experience if she could avoid it.