[WP] There are over 100 billion dead people. If there is a skeleton war, the living don't stand a chance.
...
Avin looked up, setting down the stone with a careful hand to throw water and paste by thin spade. Even blindfolded him might be capable of such work by now, but as the builders around him worked and slaved beneath the watchful eyes of the Royal Guard team dispatched to the breach, only a rare few seemed to have the courage to look up at the figures who observed them from above.
For the simple layman of block and mortar, there were few things of significant interest to waste one's thoughts and time on, so Avin always found this to be rather strange of them not to look. There was no harm in it, honestly. Perhaps the occasional shout, but they were under contract- not whip. The job was not one of slavery, just labor for coin. Beyond the drafted priests of faith magic, blessing the stones with alternating circuits of four bodies a shift (and varying constitutions and efficiency) or the men who worked with keen eyes to level the layers upon each finished row: There was little else to do.
Fighting boredom, as he often found need to do, Avin had come to terms with the fact that he much enjoyed watching those Royal Guards. So much so, that it was perhaps turning to be something of an obsession, as much as it was a benefit.
This wasn't simply because he greatly fancied the Woman-Mage in her black robes (though he did fancy her, regardless of whether he'd ever admit such a lustful thing without being held to oath) but because the Guards were the first warning sign of trouble. Between his blocks, passing on stone or laying it down with practiced motion, if the Guards were moving it meant that the stoneworkers below would soon also need to be doing the same. Evacuation to the battlements above.
There was a very good reason for the wall, after all. Just as there was a very good reason to rebuild it. For Avin to be laying block after block of thick quarried stone, he supposed there were probably fewer tasks of such importance anywhere in all of the Territories.
Block, after block, after block: incredibly important work for someone as ordinary as Avin happened to be in the grander scheme of things. How many men had lived and died without such a critical role to play? If he traced back upon his family lineage, should he find the magic to do so, Avin had to wonder.
How many had lived and died before him anyways? There was the real question. Hundreds? No, perhaps thousands- just in his own bloodline. The Church said that the First of Man came from the gods, and Avin believed them, but he also acknowledged that the sermons never said quite specified when those divine actions occurred.
Block after block, after block... At the very least it gave him something to consider with his wandering thoughts.
Like most men in Dotera, Avin was devout as appearances forced him to be. He attended the sermons, he prayed to the gods and the light, and he offered up his coin to the church coffers from time to time. He'd heard the stories of the terror which lurked to the West, but until the Crusade had gone dark, he'd rarely considered the consequences of such things. Or, that is to say much more accurately: Up until about two seasons ago, he was rare to think of them.
The Crusades fading off into distant memory hadn't been enough of a shock for most folk. Soldiering types were lessened, surely, but craftsmen were still about- if only wondering when their sons might return with stories of battle and glory in combat. It was only after a full season of silence, from the scribes, from the Guilds, from the Church or Mercenary benefactors, that worry even touched the minds of most folk.
Watch the Guard, lay the block, wait for another stone to come his way. The Mage who had caught his fancy was off in the far edges of his vision now, making her rounds on the Northern Edge of the breached stone battlements. With nothing left to look at, and nothing to do but continue on waiting for the poor sod below to carry another block up along the stairs, in times like this, Avin was prone to think on the past.
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Avin couldn't read much. He knew his numbers, but scripts were always trouble. Still, he knew how to puzzle out the barest minimum of words from time to time, and he knew when the Mercenary and Adventuring Guilds were posting for recruitment. He knew when the family down the block over walked toward the postings for news every morning, and came back with grief on their faces.
Two and two together, it became clear as the days turned to weeks, turned to months, turned to seasons: no one was coming back from that Western War. Come day of Sun, Avin listened to the preaching and zealous sermons of "Victory!" and "Justice!" falter towards more stoic reflections on the power of unity. Of Faith in the Church, in the Wall, in the Holy City of the Capital.
Only a fool believed no trouble would come of that, and Avin was no fool. He still remembered what his Grandfather told him of his Great-grandfather, and those men who came before. Tales of tales, legends of times back when men were built of grit and scars, and a rounded belly was rarer than the fae and sight. Stories of when the Great and unbreakable Holy wall was sometimes anything but against the darkness of the West. Tales and quiet recounted adventures, the likes of which no church might recall.
Most of all, Avin remembered his Grandfather tell him of Ghouls.
Things that were once men, once living, but no longer. Creatures made of corpses, that rose up on the Dark Lord of the West's own commands to seek battle against the light. Horrible beasts of bone more than flesh, with magic in place of blood- lest they take such of the last from the men who must fight them. A man unlucky enough to fall and meet death by a ghoul's own doing, will soon find themselves no better. His Grandfather had always said that it was this very reason that they burned their dead.
Block by block, in the heat of mid-afternoon Avin himself felt much like such a beast. Though his bones might not yet be bleached, such sun would do little better to living folk such as himself. The temptation to take the pale of water meant for the muck and lather of the stones and use it for himself, was most certainly growing.
But the Guards above were as relaxed as they'd been when he last looked, and that beautiful figure of the mage in black robes was yet to make her rounds near Avin's line of sight, so his thoughts once again wandered.
From time to time, Avin might hear of such creatures in the Taverns after a hard days work. Over a mug of chilled ale and a plate of food, it was common to sit among others and listen to the Mercenaries and Adventuring folk. Reckless or professional sorts paid by contract of the local guilds for hunts on Ghouls, Goblins, Orcs. Still, it always came down to the distance. Stories from a far-away place: Creatures existed (in some sense) towards the background of life. Things other folk might have to deal with, those not fortunate enough to be living in the center-lands of the country, not lucky enough to be places beside the protection of both the Holy wall and the Capital.
Of course, that logic held much less weight when the Holy Wall had a giant hole in it, and the country-side was filling up with Ghouls. Even less so, when there was a massive Skeleton-Dragon that was well on it's way to rotting along the Western-side of the Capital city (so large five teams of Church Mages were on rotation to burn and bury it.) Avin had a very nagging suspicion recently, that his Grandfather's stories were much more than just stories.
"One approaching! Western-Side!"
A holler rose up over-head to the South, and Avin turned his head just in time to watch several bows drawn back and loosed. From where he worked between the two side of structure, he had no clean line of sight, but he could imagine it simple enough as the second volley followed. Soon all was normal once more, Royal Guards once again standing in armor or attention as usual.
Brick by brick, Avin pushed the stone into place that would keep such things out. His hands, along with all the others, were what would fill in the broken gates, and the crumbled foundations to shut out the west. Each and every block that fit into place, imbued and strengthened with the magics of faith, would hold back Ghouls for centuries.
But again, as Avin had always been good with numbers, he had to wonder.
If he had a thousand ancestors who had passed beyond the realm of the living to join again with the gods above, so did everyone else. If only half of those were getting up and walking about with hungry clacks of bone, the living were outnumbered by rather unsettling odds- even without the Ghouls of fallen Orcs and Goblins considered.
Avin very seriously doubted he could kill five hundred Ghouls alone, or even one hundred. In fact, ten might very well be pushing it, even if they lined up all pleasant-like, and came at him one at a time. For that matter, what about all the women and Children with no capacity to fight? In such hypothetical, it seemed reasonable to expect that the men-folk like Avin have to take a portion of their shares as well.
No, Avin decided he would most certainly end up dead. Dead, and then walking around craving flesh with all the rest of the horde: Part of the problem not the solution.
"This wall better work." Avin mumbled, picking up the next block.