From Milynine to Namelle

“Hey.” Lyndross said as she caught up to June. All of the women were walking to Namelle, the sun was out, and there were few clouds in the sky. Those clouds were white and rounded all around like pieces of popcorn. Nobody was sweating yet, though some would start. The pace of the walk was not fast, but heat and movement share familiar consequences.

“What’s up?” June replied. She used her right hand to flick black strands of straight hair out of her eyes.

“I’m bored.” -Lyndross

“Already?” -June

“Yes.” -Ly

“But we just started walking!” -J

“And?” -Ly

“You have to be exceptionally gifted at being bored if you’re bored this fast.” -J

“I think I’m exceptionally gifted at getting you to c-” Lyndross started, but June leaned in and shut her up with a kiss. It was slow and juicy. A heavy mango falling, rolling away from the tree over wispy grass. “Yum.” Lyndross finished with an alternative rhetorical path. A short path, the path of one word. Path.

P a t h.

“How is your mana today?” June asked.

Lyndross thought for a moment with her pointer finger on the side of her chin. “I am pretty well recovered. Holding the shield beneath the rubble put me through a great deal of strain. I feel like my mana has recovered quickly though.” Lyndross ended with a smile.

The women would all have time to recover their mana before the final confrontation. The last fight. A fight against those they had already defeated. A shuffling, half marching army of the undead was closing in on the location of the witches. They had walked almost all the way to Namelle. Namelle. The last city of the old guard. The last place a king could feel safe, though the two living kings did not feel safe. They felt worried; anxious, dark black hands wringing as they sweat into their robes from the obscene heat. Millions of zombies swarmed on Inella and her witches, but all the kings could think of was themselves, selfishly.

The zombies moaned, shuffled. They grabbed at women and ate them, tearing flesh from bone in gross chewing. Had Blair not given Inella the perfect counter spell, the zombies would have killed every last witch.

The queen stood behind a distant tree, but Inella could feel where she was in her gut. Too many had died in Luzan for Inella to let more women die here at the hands of the queen of Luzan. Godoro concealed himself with a spell of invisibility. As Lyndross unleashed a 500 foot wide spray of flames, Godoro was caught off guard and fried alive. When Godoro died the zombies became solely controlled by the queen of Luzan.

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The stress of control erupted in physical pimples over her face, neck, and chest. Inella teleported to the queen. Inella manifested a sword and cut the left arm off of the queen. Each zombie had an arm fall off in a stinking thud of rotting flesh. Now that Inella had blood from a queen she spoke the words Blair had told her to. “Return to eternal slumber, unturned is the soil, my turn it will be to rule.” The zombies fell to the ground lifeless. There were heaps of them. Wide piles. An unimaginable stink. The queen slowly bled to death as she begged for her life. Inella ignored her. She deserved no mercy. Inella had less than 1% of her mana left.

“Lyndross, June. I trust that you can teleport all the women into Namelle.” Inella said as she fell flat on her face, thoroughly exhausted. “We have killed one of the last three rulers. It is time to kill three birds with one stone, all in the same day.” Inella said with a mouthful of dirt and grass.

“I suppose so.” Lyndross said, looking expectantly at June. June took the lead and the two worked together to get all the living women into Namelle. The kings were waiting. Inella was standing now. Lyndross snapped her fingers and two guillotines appeared out of thin air.

“Any last words?” Inella asked the king of Namelle. His mouth quirked up in the beginning of speech, then stopped. The blade of the guillotine had separated him from himself. He was out of his mind now, if you will.

“Wait, wait. Don’t kill me. Please.” The king of Milynine begged. His knees were splintered, pressed into the wood paneling of the lower portion of the guillotine.

“Why would I ever spare you?” Inella asked with a hectic laugh.

“Because-

A Ruler Dies in Namelle (as it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end)

The king had to think for a long moment. Inella thought she was actively challenging his intelligence, but the king was secretly buying time, waiting for his trap to spring.

Inella had been searching for Addimar for over a month, and she finally found him halfway up a grassy hill. He was looking back on Namelle from his elevated position. The tall white stone spires of a recently demolished, but now rebuilt city.

A horror scape for tyrants and despots to look at.

“You can’t kill me.” The king said.

“I can do whatever I want whenever I want to. You cannot stop me.” Inella replied back.

“Oh, but I don’t have to stop you.” The king replied.

“What do you mean? You’ve got it all backwards, you prune. For it is I that is stopping you.” Inella radiated confidence.

“The ghost of my brother will crawl into your throat and suffocate you.”

“Wildly specific, but I doubt it will work… whatever trap you have set.” Inella said scrutinously.

“Well, I guess we will just have to see.” The king sounded smooth, but he was just as nervous as he was defiant.

“I bet I could guess what spell you’re using.”

This surprised the king.

“No! It is the most ancient magic of this planet! The act of blood soul curse sealing… sharing... Addimar brought it to my distant ancestors. There’s no way you know it!” The king cried defiance.

Inella, cool as a trough of water, pulled a book on ancient magics from out of the cold blue aether that separated the living from the resting dead. “I know the exact spell.” She took a blade and sliced the paper thin ghost. As soon as it ripped in half the spell was done. The plan of the two kings was to distract Inella while the king of Namelle bartered his soul for a wish. He was going to put his ghost on a piece of paper in a tome in exchange for killing Inella. Inell had found that exact paper and shaved it to bits before anything happened to her. The second king had thought to sacrifice his soul for eternity, but even that did not work.

Yikes.