“I must meet with the general of this army.” Silenos declared, as he looked up from his maps. It hadn’t taken long to have them assembled, to the savages’ credit, and they appeared relatively recent. He’d spent the better part of a half hour studying them, committing the etched lines detailing fortifications, street paths and bridges to memory.
“What for?” Ensharia asked, face a canvas upon which her confusion was scrawled with excruciating clarity. “They’re undead!”
Silenos did not roll his eyes, but it was a near thing.
“Undead are limited.” He explained. “Particularly the varieties congealing outside, I would wager they are being controlled by officers or generals of more…Sapience.”
It was an understatement, Necromancy capable of leaving the subject’s mind even mostly intact was of the highest order. Silenos himself could barely manage it, and he had no doubt that anyone inept enough to create the army now threatening him would find it beyond their scope entirely.
He turned back to the maps. The major weakness of Equiscia, the city in which he now found himself, was its river-entrances. The waters that fed them had long since diminished in the centuries since their construction, and though they still boasted strong currents, he suspected an undead could easily crawl through. The lack of need for air meant being swept under would be no threat to them, and if they were damaged somewhat in the bludgeoning effects of being carried along, their combat effectiveness would remain at a large fraction of its norm.
Yes, the river ways. Send larger reanimates in first to break apart the aged iron bars keeping them blocked off, then allow the masses to swarm in along with the waters. That’s what Silenos would do, if he were attacking. That’s what any competent General would do. Anything else would be a mere distraction from the infiltration force.
“Are you listening?” Ensharia demanded, glaring at him. Silenos raised his head, frowning.
“Of course not.” He replied. “I was busy thinking, my genius is far more demanding of attention than your babbling.”
She glared at him. The woman’s veneration remained, but had been quickly cut by irritable impatience as she’d gotten to know Silenos. Apparently she was a Paladin, a holy knight of her kingdom. Such things had not existed in House Shaiagrazni, but he was familiar with the concept. An odious one, in his opinion.
“I was saying that the Dark Lord’s Generals might simply take the chance to kill you if you go out to meet them.”
Silenos sighed.
“They might try, but I am not unaccustomed to assassination attempts. I suspect I will withstand any they might employ, and will gain far more from this than we stand to lose.”
A closer look at whatever elites would doubtless be present, for one.
“You’re…Our only hope.” Ensharia said after a moment, not meeting his eye, face aimed pointedly at her own feet and pale skin flushed pinkish. “Please, don’t do this, if we lose you we’re doomed. I’m…Not even sure we aren’t doomed already.”
Silenos studied the woman, seeing the emotion clear as day across her features and feeling an undeniable wave of…Utter revulsion. What petty mental conditioning had this warrior experienced, to be left so volatile? It was like conversing with an open wound. Pathetic.
He set off soon after, though the woman insisted on accompanying him. Silenos found himself half tempted to kill the idiot as punishment for insulting his powers when she claimed to be capable of defending him with her divine magic, but more pragmatic heads prevailed.
The two of them exited the city shortly, travelling by horse- Silenos decided it was worth accepting the sub-par mechanisms of natural selection rather than tip his hand by Biomantically crafting a superior vehicle- and headed for the head of the enemy’s forces. He weathered the slow, drawn-out travel with eyes kept ahead and open.
A large mass of infantry seemed to be the major core of the enemy army, though Silenos caught other facets to it, as well. Dullahan had been gathered in the thousands, their black horses standing twenty hands high, putrefying flesh bloated and writhing with dense musculature almost as much as the maggots laying within. Their armour was dark, but, he knew from experience, strong. Headless riders were a higher order of undead than the zombies making up most of the enemy, but they would not be of the most use in a siege. Sieges were the order of footmen, not cavaliers.
Which meant he couldn’t be certain that the enemy’s forces hadn’t been tailor-made for just such an attack, he made a mental note to study them further before an open battle when he got the chance, it would be a useful point of comparison.
“Black riders.” He heard Ensharia whisper, and turned to see the woman glaring at them. “Fallen Knights, I’ve seen those creatures walk through hails of arrows, split men fully in half from crown to groin. Even withstand a ballista bolt, once.”
Silenos had seen much the same sort of prowess demonstrated from the creatures, though it had never inspired the awe he now heard in the Paladin’s voice. He supposed that was consequential of his own world’s technology. Dullahan were rather less impressive seen through the sights of a musket than they were from those of a bow.
“Let us continue.” He said instead.
The Dullahan had been placed around the army’s head, Silenos soon found, and he knew which of the numerous undead shielded by their ranks was in charge at but a single glance. The Belladonnan Puppeteer was a thing of magic powerful enough to register in his vision even without his actively looking for it.
It was not a large thing, which made it uncharacteristic for the stronger undead. The Beladonnan Puppeteer was perhaps the same height as most men, with any of the surrounding Dullahan towering over it by easily two feet or more. Its frame was slender, its body near a state of total desiccation, preserved from rot, yet dehydrated into a withered husk by the very processes that left it free of the decay plaguing its lesser kin. Silenos caught Ensharia covering her nose in disgust from the corner of his eye.
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“This is the first time an emissary has been sent by the people of Elkatin.” The Beladonnan Puppeteer observed, speaking with the same, emotionally vacant tone that most sapient undead did. “Are you here to surrender?”
An idiotic guess, from what Silenos had seen this new world’s residents were as superstitious of Necromancy as his own. They would sooner kill themselves than be at the mercy of such beings. A lot was common between Elkitan and his world, in fact, including the undead. Dullahan and Beladonnan Puppeteers, two higher-grade constructs he recognised on sight. That was interesting.
“I am here to see if I might deter you from this trivial conflict.” Silenos replied.
“Your accent is different from any I have heard.” The Puppeteer noted, without even acknowledging his words. “And I have heard thousands, am I to take it you are the “Saviour” spoken of in Elkitanian prophecy?”
The Paladin stepped forwards behind Silenos at that, her voice cutting out.
“How could you possibly know about that?”
Silenos spoke over her, before the idiot could have the chance to realise the obvious, that the enemy had informants within their walls, and vocalise the fact in her stupidity.
“I am.” He replied. “And I am familiar with your reason for being here, leave now and there is no need for conflict.”
Puppeteers were sapient. Like all undead they were compelled to obey their creators, but that was nothing more than an impulse. The eternal danger of creating cognitive beings was that their intellect might prove stronger than their instinct. It would not be impossible to reason such a thing out of following its orders.
“That is not an option.” The Puppeteer replied, and Silenos cut in quickly.
“Yes it is, you know it is, you have, doubtless, been considering the very fact that it is. You are not forced to obey, you choose to. You can choose not to obey just as easily as you can choose to fart or hold your breath.”
A moment passed, but no gesticulation came from the Puppeteer. It was to be expected. Though not actively rotting, the being’s dead nerves were no more capable of transmitting the spasms of unconscious thought and body language. Silenos watched it more from habit than anything.
“You have two hours to surrender.” The undead said, at last. He knew then that there would be no reaching it. Though unemotional as any, Beladonnan Puppeteers had cognition enough that tone could inflect their voices, at least in some small part. He could hear clear as day that its mind had been made up. Silenos nodded.
“Very well then, Ensharia, let us leave.” He began walking, and spent the first few moments anticipating an attack. None came. The two of them were allowed to take their leave, breathing in air that grew less clotted with the scent of decay with each step away from the army they took. Soon enough they were back at the walls.
“I warned you.” The Paladin sighed. SIlenos glanced at her. She was becoming too comfortable by far around him, but this wasn’t the time to correct her, he had more pressing concerns.
“Guard the waterways.” He instructed. “The enemy will attempt to enter through there, where are the city’s graveyards?”
She stared at him. “Graveyards? You’re worried about them…Reanimating our dead?”
“That.” Silenos confirmed. “And I wish to pay my respects to our fallen.”
The woman’s face lit up at that, like some simpering dog, and she was quick in directing him. Silenos wasted no time following the path.
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Ensharia had watched the Saviour leave close to an hour ago, and she was eagerly aware that their time was running short. It had been noon when they first summoned him, and, not coincidentally, merely two hours from sunset when they met the enemy’s army. Undead were weakened by the light, the weakest of them at least. When it was fully dark, the attack would come.
She trembled, feeling the familiar convulsions of adrenaline racking her muscles, fighting to remain still where she stood vigil. Her body was encased in moonplate, pale and harder than steel, her fists closed tight about the handle of her shield and mace, her body coiled and ready to loose the strength of fifty men. Still, her mouth was dry, her nostrils stinging with the unmistakable scent of rotted meat as it grew ever stronger on the wind.
Where is he?
The enemy was closing in, she could see now, heading for the city’s walls like a giant swarm of cockroaches, crawling over each other, blotting out the floor, moving on inexorably as a wave of pitch. They were on the walls before long.
Arrows flitted down to strike, broadheads and bluntheads to split wide gashes in enemy bodies and break bone. Stones were cast from walls, burning oils poured over, and the waterways turned to a massacre as men stood behind the reinforcements hastily added to their barricades and ruined necrotic flesh from getting through. It was all professional, experienced, well done. All carried out with the hard-earned skill of men who had fought undead many times. And all pointless.
The enemy were too numerous, and their advantage grew by the moment. Even as Ensharia fought, rupturing heads and tearing off limbs with each swing of her mace, she could feel the battle’s inevitable end drawing near. A Dullahan beheaded a man with one swing, coming for her wordlessly. Its black blade missed her head by an inch, and her mace missed its chest by a hand. They encircled, trading swings and swipes, thrusts and deathblows, then Ensharia broke the deadlock with a flash of holy light. Smoke wisped from the enemy, its flesh burned, but not charred, by her eviscerating magic, and Ensharia struck whilst it was distracted. An unguarded blow to the neck, snapping the spine and leaving the horseman to fall.
But there were more. Unmounted, not as deadly on foot as on horseback, but each the equal of a hundred men on their own. Even with the defensive advantage of a fortress, there would be no victory.
The ground trembled, and Ensharia turned to see a horror. It was enormous, towering easily sixty feet high, taller than the walls themselves. Its body was a bloated, bulbous thing, and it reeked of necromantic magic. Its flesh was black, coated in some form of scales, and its strength was palpable in every move, body driven by musculature sufficient to send its hundred-foot limbs darting around with the speed of sling bullets. It crossed the city within a minute, falling upon the defenders at the wall, and Ensharia awaited her death. There would be no fighting such a thing, not even any trying. One swipe of one limb and they would die. She doubted her body would even register as more difficult to crush than any other.
Saviour, where are you?
But its swipe didn’t come. Not for the humans, at least. Instead the creature stepped cleanly over the walls, its krakenous tendrils swinging along the enemy’s army. Hundreds were obliterated. Zombies popped like grapes, Dullahan tossed skyward and sent spinning a dozen times before they landed, broken like dolls in spite of their dark plate. Arrows and sling bullets hit it, even artillery, wherever the monsters had salvaged such things. It simply powered through, cutting a path through the enemy’s forces and crippling their advance. Ensharia could only watch in awe.
The ruin did not take long to finish. A few minutes, perhaps, then the enemy was retreating. Undead felt no fear, but their leaders were rational, if they fled it was because they knew there would be no realistic chance of winning. The creature turned its focus onto the city as the horizon grew black with flesh, moving swiftly back to the wall.
Ensharia saw him then, standing atop the stony fortification. Tall, bronze-skinned and with hair as black as any Dullahan’s armour. He awaited the monster, watching fearlessly as it came before him and lowered itself into a bow, inky tendrils bent beneath it, stone-hard body glinting in the moonlight. Silenos the Saviour watched the thing impassively, merely nodding once at its bow, then turned to head her way.