Hecate was scrambling. An army of ant monsters had come out of nowhere and flooded her undead, crashing into them like a giant wave made of insects and pain. They vastly outnumbered her forces, and only Dave’s rapid and effective response kept them from being crushed instantly.

Now, it was crunch time, and she’d been blindsided. This event had been a complete pushover so far; she wasn’t expecting such an overwhelming force to come out of nowhere like this. Hecate immediately hopped on the Death Link, Dave having taught her the spell that let her mimic the undead’s natural telepathic communication.

“Dave, what’s going on? What do you need from me?” She deferred to her professional war winner.

The answer came back after a long moment. Hecate could understand why. She was still watching the fight through Dave’s familiar bond with her, and she could see him carving a path of devastation through the endless wave, alleviating some of the pressure on her overwhelmed forces.

“Bulwarks. We need big undead with shields and hard defenses. A couple Death Counts and even a Skeletal Horror would work. Beyond that, more archers. Even an Undead Engine if you can manage it. Ants rely on numbers to crush all resistance. They aren’t a tactical enemy, just vast. I’m limiting the current wave, but if their initial assault was this large, whatever comes next will be even larger.”

“Right, on it.” Hecate left the War Wight to his own devices and got to work. She had nearly all of her shroud right now, having used very little to call up their current forces. Her increased reserves from having her shroud evolved, combined with Dave teaching her more efficient summoning spells, meant that the current army had cost her practically nothing. The past hour of fighting had cost her nothing, so she was topped up. Only the sliver of Mana needed to maintain her forces in the Starry Sea were pulling her down.

With that in mind, Hecate planned on giving Dave everything he asked for and more. If the Spirit of War thought he could win with just that much, she would double it and watch him crush the ants as fast as possible. Words and symbols flowed through her mind; the odd art of spellcasting refined by her practice with Dave had summoning circles appearing near the back of her undead’s formation.

The ants were working to surround the Undead Soldiers, trying to flank them on the open ground of the grassy field. They were paying for it. The lesser undead were holding the front of the formation, a shield wall with short swords, while those with spears struck from behind the defenders. Enhanced by Dave’s spell, they were holding out but slowly giving ground against the wave.

The flanks were where the power was at. Three Death Knights and the Lesser Lich were obliterating waves of flanking ants with Necroflame, the Lesser Lich’s spellcasting orders of magnitude more potent than the Death Knights’. But what they lacked in magical power, they made up for in raw might. Together, the four mid-rank undead held the right flank.

The weaker left was Dave’s sole domain. He carried the weight of four mid-rank undead on his own while also remotely commanding his arsenal to carve swathes through the insect wave and take some of the weight off the lesser undead. From what Hecate could see, he was accounting for a least a third of the kills, and his tactical use of his abilities made the ants he slayed far more impactful than that number alone could indicate.

When a lesser undead was about to be pulled from the line by pincers gripping its shield, a flaming dagger would rip through its head, dropping it. Ants that slipped past the mid-rank undead on the right flank or went wide to slide by their Necroflame would find themselves cleaved in two by a rapidly spinning greatsword.

Despite his absolute command of the battlefield, Dave and the undead army were still slowly losing ground. They simply couldn’t keep up with the pressure from thousands of five-foot-long, two-and-a-half-foot-tall ants climbing over each other to rip them apart. The line was losing lesser undead, despite all of Dave’s best efforts. He only had control of so many weapons, and the line was fifty soldiers across. Those that fell were replaced, but the gaps were costing the army ground and stability, and the reserves would run dry. Likely before, the endless wave of ants ran out of members to throw at them.

Just as Hecate was thinking about it, a gap formed in the formation, two undead dragged out of place practically at the same time right next to each other. The loss of one had opened the path for another to fall with it. She cursed internally as ants rushed through the gap. The undead that Dave asked for were solidly in mid-rank, and their summonings were more complex and took more time than calling up hordes of lesser undead. She briefly wondered if summoning another hundred Undead Soldiers would have been a better decision, but she scolded herself for second-guessing Dave. He was an experienced tactician. No doubt more numbers would have just become more fodder for the ants. They needed those stronger undead to hold out.

Dave plugged the gap before too many ants could pass by, but almost a dozen slipped past the front line. They immediately attacked the spear-wielding undead, who had to drop their long spears to draw short swords and cull the ant monsters. The loss of attack power along that section of the line rippled across the entire formation, and the undead army had to fall back even faster lest they be swallowed whole under the insect wave.

Hecate almost cheered as her summons finally completed. It was time to strike back.

{}

Derestra was torn between joy and fury. Never before had she been so pressed in a mass combat setting. It was her pride and joy, her main point of excellence. Both in tactics and raw power, she trounced shrouded hundreds of years her senior across the entire Wild Queendom. It was equally frustrating and humiliating to have her flanking and breaching maneuvers so handily dealt with.

Every time she was about to flank, or breach the line of shield-bearing walking corpses, another one of those infernal flying weapons would appear and sever the opportunity. Almost like they expected her assaults. And how was the enemy even holding up against so many ants anyway? Their lacking numbers should have seen them washed away in chitin and carapace within moments of contact. Her ants were in optimal positions to strike down hard until suddenly they weren’t, the undead moving perfectly to match the ever-shifting insect horde and counter her offensives.

And why was she smiling?! This was humiliating, degrading! She was being stymied by some stinking corpses in armor! So why was her heart singing in joy? She was having fun. Never had she met an opponent so thoroughly capable of fending her off with such casual indifference. Sure, they were losing both ground and soldiers, she was slowly winning. But that wasn’t the point. They should not have lasted this long. She should have won already. The composition of forces and their capabilities should not have held against her ants.

A less experienced tactician might not have seen it. They might have assumed that the strength of arms on part of the undead was enough to hold on. Derestra knew better. Their continued resistance was nothing short of tactical brilliance on the part of the enemy commander. Someone on the corpse’s side was pulling miracles from thin air with startling regularity.

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Shaking herself and centering her thoughts, Derestra turned her focus from the enemy commander to her own efforts. A flexing of her fingers triggered a series of mnemonics, calling several more Queen Layers into existence within her ant nest’s royal chamber. Her ants’ best quality was their endless numbers. Something she had always capitalized on. Now was not the time for fancy tricks.

She was not so prideful that she could not admit it. Derestra was tactically outmatched. Whoever controlled the undead was just better than her. She’d tried using the terrain, driving the force back between to steeper hills so her ants could take the battle three-dimensional, climbing the hills and striking from above. The enemy hadn’t fallen for it.

Conventional wisdom would have dictated that the more enclosed space would have limited a numerically superior attacking force. The small valley, against a normal army, would have been a boon most commanders would pray for against a force that so vastly outnumbered them. Even a decent tactician might have fallen into that mindset and sprung her trap. Instead, the undead angled around the hills as they continued their steady retreat.

She’d been stunned. Such a trick had won her many mock battles against powerful opponents. Some of them she respected for their own tactical acumen. Derestra could only imagine that the enemy commander had experience facing ants or ant-like monsters and had the experience to see the narrow space between the hills as the trap it was.

They were dangerous. Clever and calm in the face of her horde. So, Derestra would do the only thing she could think of in the face of a foe that was consistently outmaneuvering her. Fight them in a way that made their tactics moot. Of course, proper tactics could never be truly nullified. But if Derestra ignored tactics herself and simply tried to drown the enemy army in numbers, it would give them less recourse.

So, Derestra doubled the number of Queen Layers she had, amping up her ant output to a new level. This was a loss on her part, or at least, that is how she saw it. Derestra bit her lip, holding in her disappointment. She was admitting, to herself and anyone watching knowledgeable enough to see, that she was tactically her opponent’s inferior. It stung. Yet, at the same time, it was exhilarating. Those in this event were somewhere near her own age. Derestra had never thought she would meet anyone as young as her that could surpass her mind. It seems her horizons had been broadened this day.

The undead were still slaying her ants by the hundreds, but that was barely enough to keep up with the rate her queens produced them. With these new queens, they would be completely overwhelmed.

Or so she thought. Before animated nightmares joined the fight.

{}

Dave was having fun. He’d fought desperate, no-win situations against millions of ants before. They were a problem in a lot of universes. Anyone looking for a universal constant? Well, ants were up there. This was not that. In those situations, he was usually strategizing with a horde numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands. Not the tiny force of three hundred he was working with now.

The ants weren’t all that numerous either. Dave doubted they’d slain twenty thousand at this point, and they were almost ten minutes into this slow retreat. This was practically a relaxing stroll compared to those desperate battles. It was about time for his boss to finish those summons. He could have had her double their force of lesser undead in a few minutes, but that was an inferior play. Dave was aware that there was another shrouded controlling these ants. Revealing Hecate’s summoning capacity off the bat might have encouraged them to take a more cautious strategy.

Now, Dave was almost certain he had them fully invested in this engagement. When the heavy-hitting mid-rank undead joined in, they wouldn’t know what to do. Hesitation was the enemy of victory, and Dave planned on making the enemy commander real hesitant.

“Dave, the summons are finished. Sorry it took so long. I’m handing over command.” Hecate’s voice reached him through the Death Link just as he felt the nod-rank undead join them in this universe. Now, it was time to push back. And not a moment too soon, as Dave noted a significant uptick in the number of ants coming at them.

“Huh,” He mumbled to himself. “It seems they want to abandon tactics altogether. Maybe I pushed them too hard? They should be around the boss’s age.” Dave contemplated. He’d been holding back somewhat with his War Wight abilities, as it was never a good idea to play your entire hand unless you absolutely had to. But he’d been leveraging his tactical acumen to the maximum degree, countering every offensive he could find. It seems he’d driven the opponent to simply attempting a mass attack with no subtlety. Or maybe there was some hidden stratagem he was missing.

But no, all the minor divergent attacks he’d fended off had vanished. The ants had simply devolved into a mass and charge approach. The lowest level of strategy. Run at the enemy and hit them ‘til they die. It really did seem like the enemy had given up on tactics entirely.

“Well, now I just feel bad.” Dave sighed. “I’ve been handing it to a kid. Damn, I saw ants and forgot where I was. Well, let's get this over with.”

Boom Boom Boom sounded out as the reinforcements parted the ranks of lesser undead. That noise was coming from two Skeletal Horrors and three Undead Engines as they took the field. With them were five Death Counts. Hecate had over-delivered, not that Dave was surprised. His boss was nothing if not ambitious.

A Death Count was simply a more powerful version of a Death Knight. The same basic format, corpse wrapped in deathsteel armor, still applied. A Death Count was made with additional effort and care, necromantic reagents, and specially treated corpses. By comparison, you could throw any body into a suite of armor and make a basic Death Knight with a simple spell. Not so for a Death Count. They required more and produced more in turn.

Previously, Dave had had a hard time working with his Death Count and other superior Death Knight-based coworkers. They would look down on him as a simple Death Knight. Not so anymore. A War Wight was orders of magnitude more powerful than any Count.

These five bore tower shields and morningstar on long hafts. Perfect for smashing exoskeletons. Hecate had selected well. Dave telepathically commanded them to the front line. The flanks were reinforced by the Skeletal Horrors, hulking masses of bone forged into living walls. Each one was twenty feet tall, five feet thick, and forty feet across. All gripped dozens of weapons of all varieties in skeletal hands as they swung out like gates, funneling ants into the Death Counts.

All of them were supported from behind by the three Undead Engines. If the Skeletal Horrors were walls, then the Undead Engines were siege towers of necrotized flesh. All the Undead Archers Hecate had already summoned stepped up, and tendrils of muscular flesh gripped them, pulling them up the towers to better firing positions. But it was the burning pyre at the peak of each tower mass that gave them their name. A disturbing whooooom grew before beams of highly intensified Necroflame blasted down, tracking through the oncoming ants and turning them into desiccated husks.

Despite the massive increase in firepower, the uptick in ants hadn’t stopped. In fact, it continued to grow at an alarming rate. That was the problem with magical ants. Each one was weak because, more often than not, all the magic went to making their queens egg-laying machines.

Still, the undead horde had managed to pull even, stopping their retreat. Plus, between the Skeletal Horrors and Death Counts, they weren’t losing any frontline undead anymore. The only thing stopping them from advancing was the sheer weight of ants crashing down on them.

At this point, they were nearing the number of ants that would start making Dave worried. Just in front of them, there had to be tens of thousands. And the wave never stopped. He would guess that the enemy had fielded a hundred thousand ants with more coming.

But it was almost time to push.

Ten minutes passed.

Almost.

Twenty. The ants were walking over each other and piles of their dead to reach the frontlines.

Almost.

The number of dead ants was starting to surpass the living as they threw themselves against the wall of undead.

Now.

“Boss, raise all the ants.”