Heart of Dorkness

Scourge Fifty-Eight - Ropes

Felix runs over to the two cultists and kicks one of them in the chest as he tries to rise up. “Nuh-uh,” she says chidingly. “You’re staying down.”

“Can you tie them up?” I ask while I look around the room. The two of them were clearly working on raising the draw-bridge via the big wheel in the centre of the room. It’s got chains wrapped around it, and long arms for extra leverage. A block on a hinge is preventing the chain from unwinding.

So of course, I shoot it with a dark bolt.

I jump back as the bit of wood flies off with a crack and the entire mechanism unwinds like a spinning top with a clatter of chains so loud I can barely hear anything else. It stops a split second before there’s a big ‘boom’ from outside.

I run to one of the narrow windows looking out of the walls. The drawbridge has dropped back down, and all the undead on it have crashed to the ground too. I guess having it drop out from under their feet surprised them, and zombies don’t exactly have cat-like reflexes.

Well, unless they’ve made cat zombies.

I shake the thought off and glance further out. The Templars and my monster army are rushing closer. The undead are trying to stop them, but they’ve shoved through the majority of the undead group already, so there’s very little keeping them from reaching us.

Good! We’ll be able to regroup in a few minutes then.

“They’re tied up!” Felix says.

I turn to find Felix standing over the two necromancers who are both tied back-to-back with their arms criss-crossed in a way that can’t possibly be comfortable. They’re also both wearing long strips of cloth over their upper faces. Clever.

My friends and I are pretty decent cultivators, and mom’s training methods are great, so we don’t need to look at what we’re doing too much to cast spells. Felix is great at that, obviously. Most cultivators aren’t though. They’ll either need to move while casting, or see what they’re doing.

I watch as the first Templar crosses the drawbridge, a brace of flying stones knocking the remaining undead into the moat. Then my monsters and the rest of the Templar charge across the bridge and into the courtyard just beyond it.

“Alright,” I say. “Hey, you two, was there anyone else in this tower?”

“We won’t betray Lord Tritus!” one of them shouts. He doesn’t need to shout, the room’s hardly all that big.

“Okay, I don’t know who that is, and I don’t really care, so can you answer my question?”

“We are the proud servants of Altum! We won’t fold to some upstart child!” he shouts back.

I shrug. “Felix, throw him off the tower.”

“Okay,” Felix says.

“Wait! I’ve changed my mind!” he says.

“Wow,” the other one says.

“Shut up, you. Uh, yes, we’re alone here. Please don’t throw me off the tower.”

Shaking my head, I gesture for Felix to grab the boys and keep an eye on them, then I lead our group down.

There are only a couple more floors to the gatehouse and they’re both taken up by offices and a small prison with some iron-barred cells. That's actually rather convenient, but I guess it makes sense to have the gatehouse double as a sort of guardhouse.

So we toss the two idiots in the room after making sure there’s no water around, then I place a small friend on their foreheads and instruct them (the monsters) to burrow into the skulls of the necromancers if they so much as hint at cultivating.

On exiting on the ground floor, we find the area past the drawbridge entirely cleared of undead.

My monsters are all grouped up to one side where Esme and Bianca have landed. Esme’s handling them for now. She doesn’t exactly have a lot of authority with my monsters, but when they don’t have any other orders to follow, they’ll listen to her.

The Templars, meanwhile, are securing the area. Huge spells are cast that create walls of stone and earth, each one metres thick and blocking the roads leading into the square. Another group runs over to the edge of the drawbridge and with a few stomps, rips it apart.

Commander Nunez climbs off his horse and comes to stand in the middle of the yard. I can’t see his face properly with his helmet on, but his eyes are hard to miss as they glare across the courtyard.

“That went well, I hope,” I say as I walk over.

The commander nods. “It could have gone better, but then, I’ve never been in a situation that couldn’t have been improved. Your monsters proved quite valuable in clearing the way.”

I puff my chest out a bit. It’s hard not to feel proud. There’s something about the Commander that’s very... fatherly, I guess. Not that I need that kind of thing, but it’s still nice to get a compliment or two.

Still, I glance over to my monsters and can’t help but notice that about half of them are missing. Some are probably still out there, unable to reach us now that the drawbridge was taken out and the entrance is being walled off with earth magic.

We took the bulk of the damage. Some of the Templars are injured too, but mostly it looks like scratches and a few nasty scrapes, nothing immediately lethal.

I still have plenty of monsters, but not enough to swarm the city.

“What now?” I ask the commander.

Commander Nunez considers the question. “A small pause. We need to catch our breath, refocus our cultivation, and perhaps pray to our lord for further guidance.”

“You’re going to lead a big prayer or something?” I ask.

“We did before this battle,” he says.

Huh. I don’t know what to think about that. “What did Heroe have to say?” I ask. “Wait, can he communicate back through prayer?”

Mom’s never mentioned being able to do that. She mostly just sends her monsters out when she feels that kind of thing. I guess I could ask Aunt Semper, she’s a bit more traditional as far as gods go.

“Of course,” the commander says. “He told us that the Dark Lady’s disgust trumped her anger in this case, and that as long as we had a common foe the monsters she has might be trusted to eat them first.” He seems pretty amused for someone talking about being eaten.

“Huh. Well alright then. So after the praying and all that, what’s the plan? Should we run around and hunt for necromancers?”

“That might not be the best way to apply the forces we have. Though I suppose your monsters might be more capable than us in that regard,” he says. “No, I think the best course of action might be a proper assault against the enemy’s primary housing location. A group of Templars this large can bring down entire mansions in short order. If we remain mobile the city itself may serve to keep us safe.”

I nod along. It makes sense to me. “And what about my group?” I ask. My monster can’t be directed as carefully.

“Either mop up pockets of undead and lone necromancers, or perhaps you might rather chase down secondary targets?” He frowns. “You can also stay here and protect the courtyard. We might have to launch several assaults across the city, and if that’s the case, then we’ll need a place we can return to.”

I nod, but I have no intention of standing back and doing nothing. “I’m going to talk to Esme. She still wants to find those books, so maybe we’ll go with you if you’re heading towards those.”

“Our first target will be the noble quarter,” the commander says. “If our goals align once more, then I see no reason for us not to work together.”

“Alright, cool! I’m going to go tell my friends. Give us a head’s up when you’re ready to go... oh! And Esme discovered something that I forgot to mention.”

“Oh?” he asks.

“Yeah, they might be making these big undead that can make more undead. So if you re-kill anything, make sure it’s really, really dead. You don’t want to have to fight the same thing over and over again, you know? Oh, and we captured a pair of necromancers in the tower. You might want to have someone look at them.”

“I will keep that in mind. Thank you.” The commander dismisses me with a nod, then starts barking orders. A pair of Templars run off towards the gatehouse, so that’s taken care of, at least.

With that said and done, I run over to my friends and find that Felix is tying some bandages to the forepaw of a wolf monster while Esme sets up her book-finder on a clear patch of ground. Bianca is standing nearby. I think if she were less poised she’d be fidgeting awkwardly.

“Hey guys. So, I kinda know what’s going to happen next. Don’t worry, it’ll be fun!”

***