It isn’t any one thing. The Bones never swarm. It’s isn’t like the tunnels. They come and go in waves. Frank, his party, everyone, they have all the advantages. Skulls break, arms are severed. The Bones fall back.
That’s the thing. They’re were holding the dead back at roofs and across wide streets, they have every advantage. The Bones still come.
The dead aren’t trying to beat them, or bring down individual fighters. They fight, but only if cornered. No, the Bones were making the living run around, to defend the full spread of the barricades. If any of the Bones got through, they’d be in the back. While the civilians should be safe from them inside, who knew what kind of mischief the dead could cause behind the lines.
Brar was their bulwark, tirelessly stomping around with his Body four Stamina. Lilijah hunted, going after Bones nearby that managed to get past Brar and Frank. What Brar did with Stamina, Frank did with focus. By using his stupid, migraine inducing attack with every breath, the Bones he hit never got to run away. Which most of them were doing. Between that and the reach of his staff, he could block out most of a side on his own.
Lilijah and the hunters were chatting as they worked. The majority opinion seemed to be the Bones must have been stockpiling dead bones, somewhere deeper within. The second most popular theory was the idea the various damaged Bones would go back, fight it out amongst themselves. Four damaged Bones go in, three repaired ones go out. That kind of thing.
As far as Frank understood it, this was not the plan. The spread our formation had been adopted to entice the quick but weak dead to mass and force a breakthrough somewhere. It invited a hammer in, so Elites could swoop in and slaughter them en masse.
The dead were not cooperating, instead coming and going like waves on an ocean shore. Relentlessly pounding against the spread out defenders.
Deli was their last reserve. As the only person with Agility four, she was the only one that could catch up to a Bones that got past the rest of them.
They were taking very little Health harm and Brar and Lilijah could keep this up all night, with their Stamina. Deli and Frank couldn’t. It was humbling, to see all his Mana made useless. Sure, he could blast several Bones to bits. But they’d learned from the first time. They weren’t grouping up anymore, which meant some kind of higher dead, a Skeleton, or worse, was out there, directing them.
“Well, with the Miasma, the Skeletons are a definite yes.”
What was missing was…
“Where are all the Demons?” Frank called out. Much like other questions, nearby voices took it up. It was like the rumor mill, but live, in battles. The Ilvir warriors did not send messengers to be picked off by the dead. They shouted. Loudly, the longest game of telephone Frank had seen on a battlefield. Each of his party would sound out as a repeater for different messages. Lilijah for Hunters and Scouts, Brar for Shield Guards and Deli for Axe Breakers.
It was not how Frank would have done it, but it seemed to work for them.
The response wasn’t long in coming, and it was a cheerful one, as a wave of laughter came before it.
“The Demons pushed the main lines back behind the walls, but once they got to the wall breaches, they couldn’t decide who’d go first, and who last! They’ve fallen to infighting!”
Which was great news.
If all they had to deal with was Bones, and the occasional Skeleton, they should be fine.
***
Frank took it back. He fucking hated Bones. And Snow Shades. Thrown rocks, snow balls, all of this. He hated all of it. His staff had been replaced with a lead pipe.
Deli was trying to recover, saving herself for one last fight. She was spent. Frank wasn’t feeling great himself. Brar, that asshole, still looked like he’d just gotten out of bed. At least Lilijah was sweating it.
The line had fallen back, twice, constricting the battle lines. Trading space for concentration of force. Which made them sitting ducks for spellfire, if the demons suddenly showed up. If they fell back one more time, they’d be fighting a single barricade away from the barracks and winter food supplies, with their backs against the walls.
The good news was that over time, a lot of the front line had showed up, either on the walls, defending those, or in the back lines, letting Deli catch some rest. And every single one of them could not only fight, but carried a ranged weapon as well, if only a sling.
If the defences had been murder before, they’d traded in height and space for more axes and a rain of stones.
Frank had a permanent migraine by now. “A hundred and sixty nine Bones in the snow, a hundred and sixty nine Bones, you smack one down, toss it around, a hundred and seventy Bones in the snow.”
Ok, he hadn’t actually put down that many Bones. He’d lost count around forty. It was still ridiculous. If they’d all come as one massive wave, they would have won, right?
“Nah.” Brar told Frank. “If they’d turned, our men and woman would have had time to reposition as well. And we don’t need to go around the walls. What we’re seeing is the trickle leaking in through the breaches. Most of them are still probably trying to break through, at the gates. There’ll be ugly tunnel fighting, beneath the walls, and dead climbers, on them.“
“If they put their minds to it, the dead can dig right through them with the right beasty. Not that our Master Hunters would let them bring one up to the walls!”
Frank hadn’t heard anything about any of that, in the shouted messages. But then, the Reclaimers probably didn’t need to tell the defences on this side, what was happening over there. Not as long as they were holding.
From how steady the beat of the company drums was, they were holding.
***
It was as midnight approached that they heard the screams. A sudden, disorienting burst of wails came from behind them. While Brar and Lilijah were a part of the second line, Frank and Deli had been resting, a few steps further back.
“On me!” Frank shouted, aware part of his responsibilities as reserve was to respond to anything behind the lines. A Wailing Woman suddenly rising up inside any of the civilian Barracks could lead to a massacre if the armed servants couldn’t deal with her.
They ran, Brar cursing as they left him behind. He’d catch up. They practically flew over the rooftops.
Within two breaths, they’d reached the square the screams were coming from. It was a crossroads, one block over from the crowded barracks. A small open Ancestor shrine was in the middle of it, with warriors sprawled in the snow or fighting for their lives all over the open square structure. In the very middle, Frank saw Katri, bleeding from her forehead and wrists, struggling against a dark cloaked form that kept her pinned atop the altar.
There were a dozen spectral shapes among the fighters. In fact, apart from the hooded form, they were all some kind of ghost or spirit. The fight was hard to make out, as some kind of veil hung over the whole place, like a layer of distorted air, or an illusion.
Deli, Frank and Lilijah all jumped down. As they did, they passed through the distortion. The wind utterly cut off and nearly all sound disappeared. Only the disorienting, sickening wails of the dead went on.
They weren’t the only party arriving as reinforcements, but Frank didn’t have time for the others. He got a clear look at the spectral forms.
These were not Wailing Women. They were Wailing Men. “Oh shit.”
The winds were gone and there was no sound, because the very air was still.
Frank caught sight of a single Wailing Man, holding a staff towards the barrier above them, silently chanting. Two Wailing Men, one with a spear and shield, the other with axe and shield, all spectral weapons and partially transparent, advanced on them. They wore no armour and barely had a loincloth to hide their genitals. If Frank wasn’t mistaken, one of them was covered in glistening, spectral oil and both were well muscled.
Deli leapt forward to meet them, locking axes with one and twisting past the blow of the other. She barely managed the second part, as her usually graceful form was disturbed by a random moment of imbalance. Frank could feel it himself. Both his senses and his awareness of his own body were shot to hell.
Deli’s intervention bought Frank all the time he needed to call up a line of fire and send it at the mage, through one of the guard apparitions. Lilijah’s sparking arrow got there first. Though engulfed in flames twice over, the spectral man didn’t react, remaining right where he was. The response came from the hooded form, which Frank now understood was toying with Katri.
It turned to face them and Frank saw the most heavenly woman he had ever seen. The sight of her utterly captivated him, from her fanged smile, to her brilliant shining eyes, glossy raven hair and delicate button nose. The poor, innocent woman asked him, nay begged Frank, pleaded with her Hero: to protect her from all these assailants that had beset her in her home.
For a moment Frank almost believed her. Lost track of where he was and what he was doing. Who and what she was. He stumbled and his ongoing migraine grew threefold, but Frank managed to shake the literally enchanting image off.
He blasted the mage again, which made the Stillwalker scowl, then grin.
Frank barely had time to realise that was a bad thing, when an arrow took him in the back. Then exploded.
That hurt. A lot.
Frank rolled forward as the flames pushed him, cursing Lilijah as he did. He rolled into the space his lines of fire had cleared and stabbed the mage with his Eternal Tree staff. He didn’t like that, the ghost mage scowling at him, while still keeping up the spell.
Another fighter, an Axe Breaker from a different reinforcement party broke through the dead and came down on the mage like a meteor, his axestaff bisecting it from head to groin. Or he would have, if the Mage didn’t step to the side, only getting caught by the tip of the axe.
So instead of cutting the apparition in half, the Axe Breaker only carved a line of sparking pain in it.
Frank didn’t blink. The Stillwalker was just suddenly there. She buried a blade in his gut and carved it out the side before he could so much as scream. Kicked him in the head somehow in the same twirling motion, all so fast and at once Frank barely managed to duck and roll, instead of hitting the ground face first.
He’d been thrown like a discarded doll, his health tanking. He was the lucky one. When he got back to his feet, the other man, the Axe Breaker? He was reduced to bloody ruin in a few short seconds, cut to ribbons, before the Sillwalker simply ripped his head off and feasted on the blood that came out.
Frank got a better look at her then. Her cloak was a deep purple, hanging halfway to mid-thigh. She had black leather boots that went up to her knees, with brown fur pants tucked into them.
While the Stillwalker was distracted by her meal, another arrow hit the mage. Lines of fire erupted from inside him, as the spectral Mage seemed to shift into becoming fully solid: solid ice.
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Ice that cracked and exploded from the steam the magefire formed in it.
The moment the Mage shattered, the silence dropped. The distortion above was collapsing. The Stillwalker flashed towards Lilijah and Deli, nothing but a blur to Frank, only to run into a falling Brar. She blew him out of her way as if he was a pin and her a bowling ball, and did the same to both Deli and Lilijah, stabbing and kicking both as she passed.
Leaving his party sprawling in the snow.
The Sillwalker was gone and most of her spectral men followed, as if fish reeled in on a line, as the distorted roof came down and the wind blew again.
The first fear that gripped Frank was snuffed out, when all of his party got up after being cut down.
“What in the hells was that? And why are you here?” Frank asked, as people all around the crossroad groaned, and began tending to the wounded. At least five bodies lay on the ground, unmoving.
“What it was,” an important sounding man told him, “was a trap for any demons that got clever, built around our Demonspawn bait.” Scowling, the large Shield Guard in Heavy furs rested his axe on his shoulder, holding the shield in a limp arm. “What we got was a Stillwalker.” He spat to the side.
“A new one.” He gave a nod to the woman by his side, and she immediately shouted out, using the same beat the Hunters did: “Stillwalker in the back lines, open the WINDOWS!”
Frank grimaced. The civilians couldn’t bottle up, if it meant letting that thing attack them freely. This just got harder.
Katri blearily got up, by the altar. Her face was clouded, like she’d been concussed. Frank wondered if she’d volunteered, or “volunteered” for this.
***
The “Demonspawn” was sent back the Barracks, over protests of some of the warriors here.
As it turned out, it wasn’t that much harder, with the civilians somewhat exposed. With armed servants guarding the windows, they fell back for the last time.
Once the news spread, Deathless and the Reclaimers made more adjustments, at the final line of defence. In it, Frank’s party was placed to defend a house along the wall. He was just about close enough to lob spellfire into the distant open space before the tower entrance, where another, much more powerful party was holding the line, while the Master Hunter worked his trade from above.
Lilijah also had plenty of targets for her sling and bow, though she was saving the second and what runestones she still had. He’d only given her four, today. Frank wasn’t sure if she saved any from the previous batch.
The dead were pressing in much harder now. Coming in lumps and clumps. They were also dealing with a solid wall of shields all around, with axestaffs swinging above or between them to reap Bones by the dozens.
From where they were standing, Frank could see Captain Ilias go into another of his rages, red light streaming off him as he bashed his way through a wall of Bones to reach a mounted Skeleton and reduce him to dust with his warhammer. His party came behind him, a mix of Shield Guards and Axe Breakers, keeping the hole in the dead lines open. Once the Captain ran out of his Skill, he retreated with them, back behind the lines.
His sally had reduced the overall Miasma levels and every now and again, it dropped further. The Skeletons were dying, one by one. To Elites and Hunters, picking them off. As the dead Commanders fell, their troops, the Bones, were losing cohesion, direction, discipline. Breaking down back into pairs, smaller parties. Something they could deal with, since without a Skeleton driving them, the Bones weren’t willing to throw themselves at a shieldwall.
While the night was only about halfway done…
“Looks like the wave is breaking.” Frank announced. The dead were retreating.
All three members of his party hissed. “Don’t say that.” Frank rolled his eyes. Jinxes weren’t real. If they were, his Lifecord would show them.
Still, he kept his peace. Waiting for the midnight bell to sound. They were still being pressed and probed in turn, and Deli was almost fully out of it. But the defenders on the walls were directing murderously accurate fire back into the street level defences, from their high perches. As long as the gate barracks and towers held, they couldn't be dislodged without climbing sheer walls, a losing proposition.
Frank had nearly ordered Deli to go back to the Barracks and rest. Only the fact she would not obey that order stopped him from issuing it.
“Where are we at?” Frank asked.
“41 Health. My Stamina is good. I’m fine.” Brar the Stout replied, shrugging his shoulders to limber them. He’d been pelted by rocks and snow for hours, but between the armour and shield, most had done nothing. The Stillwalker probably hurt him more than all of the rest combined. That thing was what worried Frank most. They had a habit of attacking weak spots, backlines, carrying off people.
Lilijah scowled at him, but reported in anyway. She was not happy, being side-lined like this. Forced on guard duty, instead of being one of the Hunter or Skirmish teams. With Deli and her Stamina and Brar and his speed, they simply didn’t qualify for either.
“34 Health. I’m about half spent. I’ll make it to dawn.” She stated with confidence. Dawn was when, by all accounts, the attack would break. If midnight didn’t end it.
Frank himself wasn’t great.
Health = 14/50
Mana = 4
He’d spent more mana fighting the Stillwalker and her slaves, and taken 25 from one passing strike and an arrow to the back. An attack Lilijah still hadn’t apologized for. “On the other hand, I don’t have a massive hole in my stomach and ribs. So go, Health!”
“14 Health. And I’m flagging.”
Deli didn’t respond. After all her training, it was paying off, somewhat. She was napping, even as her body softly huffed, trying to recover Stamina.
Frank kept one eye on her. At all times.
She trusted him to wake her up, if she was needed.
***
Midnight came, while they were fighting another four Bones. The bell on top of the gate rang, as it had, since they’d come to Blighttown.
Another, deeper, harsher bell answered it, and Frank nearly shat himself. Wails erupted from the Barracks but Frank couldn’t turn to them, couldn’t run. Couldn’t look away.
There was a wall between him and the snow lake, but he still saw them all clearly.
Frank could see It through the wall, through the snow and forest, through everything. A deep pool of purple congealed blood and umbral black ink stained the snow, eating away at the white pool, spreading from the shoreline of the snow lake.
Spreading from a circle of four Stillwalkers, standing in the open, all shining with malevolent, sickly purple light, which spread around them in some kind of ritual circle.
They were mere shadows before the real horror. Clad in dark, flowing robes that hung about it like a cloud of shadow, a thing of metal and bone hovered in the middle of the circle. Black and purple gunk flopped out of that cloud, falling into the circle and melting into the snow, staining the lake. In its Presence, wind, snow, trees, Shades, Bones, everything died.
The hood was thrown back, showing off a skull of mixed bone and purple metal, with glowing purple eyes and more than sixteen long, bony clawed limbs and metallic chains with hooks on the end. All hovering around it, stretching out of the folds in its robes.
The edge of the lake was at least eight kilometres out. Frank could see the Horror as if it was right in front of him, such was its Presence. Utterly suffocating, like Death itself, it demanded his heart stop by its mere Presence.
Three things happened, near at the same time. Far above, the heavens cleared, every single cloud parting as the Snow King roared its answer to the Challenge polluting its lake. All the wind and snow, coming to its command, as its dead Court marched to war.
The dead all around them were instilled with unnatural power, Bones swelling with purple, acrid energy that burned at the touch. Most of them. The rest were possessed by snow and wind, forming pale white auras as Bones started fighting other Bones, and the Snow Shades joined in on the side of the pale auras. Each of the Shades gaining definition and speed from the snow and wind the Snow King was calling down.
That was the first, for as the two sides went to war, so did their auras. Frank could barely breathe or think under them. One a cold, cruel call for him to “Die, insignificant insect.” and the other a scream in the very air he had to breathe, freezing his throat and lungs as the air temperature suddenly plunged.
The second thing that happened was that, in the suddenly clear sky, the Pale Gate stuttered. Its silver light suddenly waned, became polluted. Veins of purple cut across the sky and everything they touched warped. A few fell on Blighttown, but struck something in the air above it, like a raised, invisible dome over their heads.
In the wake of those corrupted, sickening lights, tiny purple drops separated from the Pale Gate. Started, ever so slowly, growing. Frank had heard about this. They came down every decade or two.
“VOID BLOOM!” The call went out, all over town, as those able to think, fight, move, called out a warning. A rhythmic thumping started echoing through the stone beneath their feet.
The third thing that happened was that the mountains began rumbling. Beams of pale blue light reached out into the sky all around the valley from every peak, cutting apart and fighting the purple light from above. Forming glacial barriers that broke the nearly living, malevolent shine. Everything they touched froze, completely, and like lighthouses, they swept the hills and forest.
Then unleashed several avalanches to bury it all, alongside a lot of new Snow and Ice Shades, emerging from all that moving material.
Not that Frank could see them. All he saw was the sudden, intensely cold lightshow, followed by the nasty rumbling of multiple avalanches. That, and the Snow King marching to war, for, much like the Hooked Horror, its Presence unleashed for war was such that it cut through base matter. It was visible from anywhere on the field of battle, now.
It was a giant of ice, armed with a heavy spiked club, dressed in barbarian furs of woven ice and snow and as big as a tower. The Snow King carried the storm on its brow as a crown.
…
The Hooked Horror was no bigger than a human.
It was just as, if not more dangerous than the Snow King.
Not to mention that when a Void Bloom came, it would be sending out droplets, all falling to the earth. Droplets heavy with monsters, outsiders, invaders.
The reason Frank knew about Hooked Horrors and all the varied ways it could obliterate him with a look was that they had a tendency to call said voidings to them and use them for their own plans.
It was also why he nearly shat himself seeing one just pop up suddenly, even kilometres away.
Using Void Blooms like that made them near universally hated. Even the Empire stopped fighting everyone, and itself, when one of those came down.
The hate, apparently, extended to other dead, since Frank was witnessing a civil war between the Snow King and the Hooked Horror. “Good to know.” At least as the two Greater Dead focused on each other, it got easier to think, move.
“Merciful Ancestors. They’re coming here.” Lilijah gasped, bone white, eyes locked on the sky. On the purple drops. Brar wasn’t much better, looking deeply disturbed himself.
Deli had woken up and she looked shaken as well.
Frank looked at them all. Looked at the forces fighting it out, out there, on the lake. Forces far beyond them. Leisurely, relaxed, because soldiers should never see a Commander sweat something like this, he told them:
“Don’t worry about it. They aren’t our problem. With a Void Bloom involved we should be seeing-“
He was cut off mid word.
A third bell rang as a tree ripped its way out of the ground next to the sealed main gates. Its arrival so sudden and violent paving rocks from the road flew away from it, as if they’d been thrown by a catapult. It climbed up the wall, birthing a single massive fruit in fast forward. The ripe peach burst and out of it stepped a form in green robes, holding a living staff that was mid bloom.
The aura of the Hooked Horror tried to choke everyone and the Snow King lashed out with cold winds threatening to rip all the heat and life from every living being.
The third aura? This one?
It was mushrooms and woodsmoke, the gnashing of teeth and the screech of a Skydancer. The presence was primal, making some part of Frank stand up at attention and want to fight, fuck. His heart beat like a steady drum under it, helping him fight back the other two oppressive auras. Hell, his Stamina started rapidly climbing and Frank could feel his Health regenerate.
Only a single point, for now, but wide area regeneration effects were incredibly potent.
“Rejoice, Humans!” The man shouted. His voice was musical, with a foreign accent Frank couldn’t quite place. His hood was blasted back in the harsh winds, revealing a hawk like, sharp face with a pointed nose and slanted, bird like eyes. He had long green-blue hair and pointed ears.
“The Void beckons, and all the Kindred of Ilura shall give answer!”
The Elf threw a massive scroll case into the sky and struck the gate beneath his feet with the verdant green staff. Green lightning crawled up the walls, all of them and jumped up, reaching for the spinning scroll case.
Out of the corner of his eye, Frank saw the Hooked Horror gesture and unleash an ocean of darkness, a dead swarm of living shadows that jumped the distance in an instant. They were intercepted, dragged down and away by the very winds, heavy with the spectral forms of Snow Shades, but couldn’t be fully stopped.
That privilege was stolen by Deathless himself, who did something to make the dark beam twist mid-air and come down on top of him. His arms, his armour, everything on him, and the wall beneath Deathless, turned to dust.
“Gods damn it!” Frank heard the Captain of the Reclaimers shout, as he plummeted out of sight. Into a new hole in the walls.
Even busy fighting each other, the empowered dead poured in through the breach.
Frank had no time to consider them, as a lot of the people in his area turned to rush over, to help close that breach.
Their party had their own pile of Aura empowered Bones to deal with. From the very first exchange, it was clear this wouldn’t be easy. Not only was every Bones strengthened by dark tendrils winding their ways around the bones that made up their skeletal forms, the Aura also made them much tougher.
On the other hand… As Frank finished the next breath, another point of Health regenerated. And Deli went sprinting past him, fighting all out, her breathing steady as the drums.
Frank felt like he’d taken two dozen energy drinks and couldn’t run out. Vibrant, fully alive. He started putting his all in each swing that felt like it would hit, sparing no Stamina for any later. It was now, do or die. It’s not like he would run out. Not as long as the Elf stood.
Where the green lightning had struck the Scroll case, some massive conjuration was forming. The kind that reminded him of the Fires. The Elf held his place beneath it, singing a song that made Frank think of a jungle full of birds and beasts, all calling out in harmony.
Everywhere Frank looked dead and dead and living were brawling as the servants began pouring out of the barracks, to help contain the breach.
In the distance, Frank could hear what sounded like dozens of Sticks, uprooting themselves. Trees, coming to fight.
“Or would they be Ents, since they’re with an elf?” Frank wondered, as he jammed his staff into the pelvis of another Bones.
Thing was, even with their Aura gifts, they were still unskilled and unarmed. More of a threat, yes, especially with their numbers. Deadly, if they could keep pressuring them.
But as more and more Snow Shades formed into better defined forms, almost like Warriors of Snow, the numbers game was turning.
It didn’t hurt that every now and again, a living serpent of snow and ice, made of harsh arctic winds, would sweep down and clear a whole street of Bones and Skeletons.
It was pandemonium and Frank loved it.