I shut up and let Anna deal with Captain Gurtz, the man giving me a glare that I did my best not to flinch at. His look summoned the sound of a slammed desk.
“Captain Gurtz, good to see you again,” Anna told him sweetly.
“Mynes.”
“What's wrong, captain? You sound like you don’t want to see me.”
“Last time I saw you, you and your little undead here had just struck a man with lightning and caused tens of gold in property damage,” he told her crossly, “Forgive me for not being excited to see you.”
“You seem to be better than me when it comes to property damage, captain, and in this case, I’m here to do something far more important for Moarn than strike a hunter team with lightning.”
The man grew weary of her then, staring at her as if she were to unleash something upon him that he just didn’t have the time, not stamina or will to deal with.
“Out with it, woman, I have no time for beating around the bush, time is of the essence. Why did you wish to see me?”
“I wished to see you, to know the most appropriate way to get to the center of the city. I’m here to call rain and put out the fire, but in order to do that successfully, I need to be in the right place. Is there anything between here and there?”
He made a noise that could have been a chuckle, but so tinged with disbelief was it that it sounded more like a cry for help a babe might make.
“Pandemonium is between here and the center, Miss Mage. We’re currently opening up the main road, but outside of any given four-way, there’s no way to tell. They’re everywhere.”
“The undead, I know, the [Guard] told me.”
“The undead, the normal ones, are the least of it, there are little monsters with them, too sick-looking goblin things.”
“Gremlins,” I told him, weighing in for the first time, not knowing for sure, but knowing enough to guess, “They’re Gremlins. Not Goblins.”
“Whatever…” he said uncaringly, “The point is that the city is crawling with them both, and everywhere has them unless you know they’re not there. We’re going street by street, fortifying the roads that lead off of them so we can continue opening the roads up,” he explained.
I didn’t get why they had to do that, but Anna seemed to understand, so I kept quiet and let her do her work while I struggled with the urge to move.
“So you can’t vouch for the road, and you can’t send anyone with us either, I take it. Fine, we’ll have to move on our own.”
“You will unless you have time to wait for us to put up some barricades,” he told her tersely.
“I can spend some mana to do that, so long as you can give me some [Guards] as an escort after it.”
That caught his obvious wavering attention. The idea that Anna could put up walls for them instead of needing to bring down buildings intrigued him.
“How quickly can you get them up, and how much control over them do you have?” he asked.
“I can choose how high and thick for walls, same for ramps. I can’t add details, but I can make them quickly and link them for some slapdash defensive structures. Give the wall a ramp, and you can walk up it and fight on it.”
“As long as you can set them up with a hole for people to get through, that will be fine. Can you set up a door of some kind? Maybe a moat with a drawbridge?” he asked disbelievingly.
“Sure, I’ll set you up with a castle and a few hundred bars of gold, too, while I’m at it.” She said sarcastically, “No, I can’t give you a drawbridge, but I can give you a hole with a few mounds to funnel through.”
“Good enough. Star-” he started talking, only for a flood of people to come through the closest open roads. Shouting amongst both the [Guards] and the civilians alike, drawing his attention from talking to listening.
“Start there,” he finished, quickly making his way to the closest group of guards before shouting, “Breach! [Guards] form up.”
I hefted my shovel and stepped back up to Anna, “Looks like you need to work quickly. I’ll keep whatever comes through back from you and step up if they need help. Let's get to it.”
She nodded and moved up behind me as we waited to let the people through. None of them paid me much attention, and as terrible as it was, I felt relieved that they had no time to pay me any mind.
They pushed, kicked and nearly trampled one another in their panic and confusion, woken from early bed or roused late by the clamour of fire. Carrying whatever they could on their backs. Most of them were women and children.
Where did the men go? Off to carry buckets?
I hoped I didn’t find them.
I did find them, though luckily, it was at the end of the line, a few [Guards] accompanying them. They carried wounded, but we couldn’t exactly tend to their wounds.
A man cried out in pain, a limp leg bent in the wrong direction, bounced as another man hefted him, not quite able to lift him off the ground.
I ignored them as best as I could, facing the street while the guards broke off from the group to tell the other guards something.
As the group made its way past, Anna moved up, and I flanked her.
“Clear the road!” Anna shouted, to no avail. Her words were sucked into the night and buried in the din of voices muttering and talking.
“Do you want me to?” I leaned over to ask her, only for her to raise her voice and cast a spell.
The mana in the ground beneath me was gripped almost instantly, Anna's skill at mana so potent that it felt like she held the world in the palm of her hand. The [Guards] felt the earth move and got out of the way with shouts of incredulity. The air shimmered with multiple spells, one after another.
“[Earthen Wall], [Earthen Ramp], [Pillar of Earth], [Pillar of Earth], [Pillar of Earth]!” Anna shouted.
She shouted, and the land itself moved. The paving stones shifted and buckled like the skin on the nape of some great living thing. For a moment, I watched the humans see the power of nature, though they quickly forgot that and grew mesmerized by the spectacle. The dark of the hard-packed earth was brought to light for the first time in a very long time as a rocky wall sprouted from the earth, thick enough to stand two men atop it side to side. A ramp surfaced, slamming into the wall in a knee-rattling display of power, and off to the side, three pillars, thick as tree trunks, popped out of the ground like a spring-loaded toy.
It happened in about a second.
It took me several to cast the most basic of spells, and I was once again shown just how much better Anna was at this than I was. A Mage, not just a mage.
Her words earlier were pulled through my head, rewound over and over to try and make sense of her comment on my ability as a mage, but I couldn’t see it.
The pillars crumpled a bit under the heavier brickwork of the roads, leaving a chest-high mound of dirt that could allow passage and work as a choke point.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Anna turned to face into the crowd of armed men and [Guard Captain] Gurtz.
“Fast enough for you, Captain?”
The man, to what little credit I would give him, took it in for a moment, then sped up, rapidly issuing orders.
“Bows, Crossbows, up on that wall! Shields over there… Pikes behind them! [Form Up!]”
I looked around, confused, at Crossbows because I hadn’t seen any, but sure enough, two men with clubs unslung two small crossbows. Freeing up a small boxy quiver and moving towards the walls.
A man with a comically sad-looking bow followed them up. It looked like it was made for a child to hunt squirrels in the dead of winter. I didn’t know how well those would work on undead, but power to them, I supposed.
The oldest of them among them seemed to take point.
I turned to Anna.
“Are we staying… or are we pushing on?” I asked Anna, turning to face her while she leaned on her staff like a wizened woman of lore.
“We can certainly help, it won’t do to take his troops for our defence when the enemy closes. I’ll go up the wall and gauge the issue; we can leave when the undead thin out. Shouldn’t take too long.”
I nodded to her and walked up the wall with her, the smooth incline of the ramp rivalling anything I could do by hand alone.
The unnatural paving stones, on the other hand, were uneven enough that I almost triped forward into Anna.
It bought me enough time to see a straggler limping towards us as I crested the slap-dash rampart. The [Guards] lined up as he limped forward, hand still holding a crimson-crusted blade.
One of the men in the line called out, “Garrette? Is that you?”
It wasn’t Garrette. Or it wasn’t anymore.
I could feel it as he stepped just close enough to properly make out the mana composition of the man. Anna was already aware, simply holding back her mana in case of catastrophe.
The man stepped forward as the corpse walked towards us, its body, divested of life, radiated darkness, flecked with a second black of death mana that pitted it like rust on a blade, eating away as much as it could before it inevitably succumbed to the plumb of empty darkness that moved it.
It was a zombie, though not one the likes of which I had seen. This one was far darker.
“Step back,” I called out to him, my body tensing as I reached out to it to try and discern more, much as one would squint to see something tiny.
The man turned and opened his mouth as he found my face. He was oblivious and obviously about to call something back to me as the corpse lurched towards him. It moved as if drawn by a terrible, invisible undercurrent. A rushing tide unseen by anyone, not even Anna or I.
One of the crossbowmen, likely sensing something was wrong, raised his crossbow to take a shot, but the corpse slammed into the guard, its head raised to show eyes marked by ephemeral flame, right before its maw opened.
Moved as if by raw force, its maw hung wide, dark magic hurling itself up into the jaw as it slammed its mouth through the lacklustre defence’s of his clothes and what little armour he had.
I felt it likely that it wouldn’t have mattered. The violence of it would likely be magical, enough to bore through un-magicked lesser metals. The teeth seemed to… extend, thin and sharp spear tips of dark magic, invisible to the naked eye, punched through skin and muscle before bursting, the magic held in its jaw forcing its way into the poor man's body.
The man began to thrash, instant un-honed, but could not shake it as it tried to grapple with him. He punched out, elbow going wide, twisting into the path of the older crossbowman’s shot.
The others drew back, first in incomprehension, then in a jolt of fear.
My body moved before my brain did, my senses snapping out sharply, [Marked by the long Road] reaching out through the immaterial fabric souls rested upon out towards the undead, through the dark of its body and inside.
It was hidden well, more like looking through a crack than when one sat free on the ground, but I could feel it. The soul was just right of the heart, about an inch from the back somewhere in the ribs.
My feet touched the ground, and I moved towards the man while he flailed and screamed. I planted my feet and thrust, curving up just above the man's shoulder. My skill-reinforced shovel hit its teeth and bit in slowly.
I changed my grip as the blade of the shovel slowed and doubled down, putting my back into it as I tried to force the shovel through to the jaw.
The dark magic in its body was toughening it; instead of the consistency of the flesh, it was more like a tough clay-like putty. I wiggled the shovel up and down, quickly levering it to let me dig the tip in deeper. It also let me get all the way past the teeth, each of them breaking off at the root.
The man pulled away from it, his shoulder freed from the maw of the undead. He didn’t get far, only a few feet before he fell to his knees, but it broke the flow of dark mana.
My ear twitched, picking up a noise, still distant but closing second by second. The clattering of mismatched footsteps.
I pushed the body back, tipping it over before pulling my shovel back, lining it up and thrusting down into the body towards the soul, seeking whatever foul artifice was inside the body that could be used to tie a soul to a corpse.
Pressed down first with only a little weight but then with increasing weight as the blade met the ribs. With a tiny bit of awareness, I put my foot on the base of the blade and used the flange, pressing my body weight against the bone.
The magical edge chewed its way down. To help it out, I tried to push some mana into the skill, and with little effort, I felt it take hold, mana flooding out of my body, down the shaft, and into the blade. The edge bit into the bone and chewed through it.
I gave it a little hop, and it sunk through the bone and into the meat.
The men behind me caught up with what was going on, several shouting. One of the men behind me, up near Anna, gave a shout. I ignored them, focusing on the feedback of the blade, trying to find something to shatter amongst the hardened meat within.
I felt Anna grip the mana in the air as she cast something, the noise of the approaching footsteps closer every second. It was a nightmare by the sound of it, but my focus paid off. The blade met something that was not bone, and I gave it another hop. It did not sound like the snap of a jade slip, but the crack of something like crystal, but the difference did not matter to me at the moment.
I quickly pulled my blade out and thrust my hand into the chest of the still writhing corpse, the arm gripping my leg and felt the soul find my finger.
He did not cry. He did not talk to me at all.
His final thoughts were, “Oh… I was dead after all…” before he passed from this world, pulled through me, and into the beyond.
A crossbow bolt slammed into the zombie’s left arm, glinting with mana, it pierced the cobbles, pinning it there.
There were no more flames in the body's eyes. They were simply lifeless, so it was time to go.
My focus shifted back, and I felt the pain of the hold the zombie had on me. Its fingers, much like the teeth had sharpened, punched through the skin and flooded my calf with void black mana.
Having lived through having dark tenebral magic inside of me before, I didn’t expect it to hurt as much as it did. It stung like fire, the mana naturally present in my calf draining as the dark soaked the energy in.
I gripped my shovel, pulling it in, then lifting it up and around to hack at the arm that held me. I brought it down from above my head, fueling my skills with mana to ensure a clean hit, I cleaved through the thin skin and chewed through the meat beneath, breaking bone with one hit.
[Rapid Action], blessedly, freed me from its grasp, or at least from the rest of the body.
The hand held true, but I could move back, and I did so, quickly hefting my shovel into one hand. I reached down to free myself manually of the cold dead hand while I did so.
I turned quickly and saw the wall of blades pulling their fallen comrade in, kicking and screaming as the higher quantity of dark magic burned through him like poison. I couldn’t properly see inside him, but I could now understand why he screamed.
I also turned to see how close the approaching footsteps were and was shocked to see them closing.
A wall of skeletons and zombies moved in disharmony. Only one or two in twenty had the glow of a soul, but they were legion. Most were zombies. Most were men.
And they were about 50 feet away, coming from an alleyway, smoke drifting above and behind them.
I didn’t recognize them, but I recognized an issue.
I turned around and gazed at the wall, both of swords and of compact earth.
The man had been dragged back, and with how close the undead were, they had formed ranks. The wall, on the other hand, wasn’t pointing weapons at me, and I was tall enough that I could jump up onto it.
I quickly made my way over, chucked my shovel up onto the battlement, and jumped, grabbing the ledge with my hands, and quickly pulled myself up.
I rolled onto my back, and took a deep breath, eyes closed.
I opened them to a worried Anna. Who was gazing at my left leg, no doubt at the blood which was probably ruining my clothes.
I rolled over, hitting my head on the shovel, cussed, and got up with it, one hand on my head.
“Gah… Don’t worry about me, it’s not that bad. My head hurts more than my leg,” I told Anna.
“You're still bleeding,” she told me tersely, “you could get an infection.”
“I don’t think I can get an infection… Or rather, it wouldn’t do anything, but I’ll get it covered when I can, just to make sure.”
“And clean it,” Anna said in a tone that was a suggestion so loaded with, ‘you will do it,’ that I nodded automatically.
“Mmhm. Hot water and a bit of unguent, then wrap it,” I told her.
She looked at me confused but nodded and moved her vision back to the horde. She looked around before looking at one in specific, muttering, “[Shotput],” which dragged a hunk of earth up before spinning it off into the crowd. It slammed into a glowing-eyed undead, pulverizing its gut and pelvis into so much worthless paste.
“Aim for the heart if you can,” I told her, “That’s where the souls seem to be located.”
“That won’t disable them, Saphine. I can’t waste too much mana, so the best thing I can do is disable them.”
“If you disable them, they’ll stay animate and can be recovered if we don’t destroy them all.”
I watched her think on it as she found her next target, “True, but that’s long term. In the short term, those ones are more dangerous. The guard can take care of them after… Assuming there aren’t too many, but if there were enough to outright overrun the city, even as is, I would be running for the hills. This feels like something else.”
“A raid,” Selly said thoughtfully.
I didn’t need to say it out loud. Anna was probably thinking the same thing, or she would be shortly.
I had never seen an undead horde; nonetheless a city-killing horde. The valley had been well and truly controlled territory, and normally, they would only pop up in ones and twos every so often. A natural undead. What kind of size would a raid even be? It couldn’t be too many… Right?