Heart of Dorkness

Scourge Fifty-Nine - Savage

“Let me get this straight,” Esme says.

“I doubt you are,” Felix quips. Esme and I just look at her, both of us obviously confused until she raises her hands in surrender. “Nevermind. Sorry. Go on, Esme.”

“As I was saying, you, Valeria, want to leave the Templars alone to rampage about the city while we run off to find Semper’s books?”

“Which all seem to be more or less in the direction of the temples, which is what I’m here to look at anyway,” I point out.

Esme considers it for a moment, then shrugs. “Yeah, alright. I’m okay with the idea.”

“Great!” I say with a bit of good cheer. The way I see it, this attack on the city’s probably not going to be as quick and easy as I had hoped. There’s a lot of undead to root out, and plenty of necromancers around to make more. I can imagine the city filling up with more as they range out and pick up people--or their bodies at least--from the countryside. “I think I’ll be leaving some of my monsters behind. Those that can’t be too sneaky, at least. They’ll make sure the area’s secured so we have a place to return to.”

“That’s probably clever,” Esme says. “If this attack’s going to last into the night, then we’re going to need a place to regroup and recuperate. I guess this spot is as good as any.”

The spot really isn’t too bad. Sure, it’s open, but the Templars are using that to their advantage. They’ve created walls in front of all the shops and homes around the square, blocking off doors and windows and walling off alleyways. Some have added spikes atop the surrounding rooftops and evened out the top of the temporary walls. Now, if an undead climbs over the wall, they’ll have to jump down three stories to reach the ground.

I don’t know if most zombies can survive that kind of fall. Well, maybe. Shattered legs won’t stop an undead as much as they would a living person. They’ll certainly be easier to deal with after the crash though.

Some of the other Templars are setting up stables. Literally stomping them out of the ground with careful applications of Vigilance magic. The horses seem used to it.

The commander, meanwhile, is gathering a group of Templars near one of the walls. I think that’s in the direction of the noble quarters. Is he going to push his assault already? Well, there’s not much to gain from waiting, I guess.

I think only half the Templars are going with him, the other half are taking care of the horses, reinforcing the walls, and one of them is heading our way with a heavy, stomping step. I stare at the last one for a second before there’s an uncomfortable feeling in my gut. “Oh no.”

Lily is coming towards us, and she doesn’t look happy about it. “This is going to be fun,” Felix mutters.

“Hey Lily!” I say while trying to put on some good cheer. Maybe, if I can’t reason with Lily, I can defeat her with niceness.

“Shut up,” Lily says. There wasn’t much heat to it. It sounded more petulant than anything else. For some reason that made me want to giggle. Wait, why would I not? I giggle and Lily glares at me. Screw niceness, this is way more fun.

“What are you doing here?” Felix asks. “I kind of had the impression that you hate us.”

“I don’t hate you,” Lily says. She takes a deep breath, as if to recentre herself. “I mostly just really don’t like you. Hate isn’t something Heroe encourages. It blinds you, and makes you ignore the truth that’s in front of you.”

I notice my friends glancing at each other from the corner of their eyes, but they don’t say anything, leaving it in my hands. “So, why’d you run over? Or stomp over, whatever. You obviously don’t like me.”

Lily’s eyes narrow. “It’s your face I don’t like,” she grumbles. “And I’m here because the Commander told me to watch over you. Somehow, Commander Nunez thinks that you’re important.”

“Well, I mean, not to be a narcissist or anything, but I did make all these monsters so that he could invade this city.”

She waves that off. “We could manage without them.”

“Wow, you’re confident,” Esme says. “And a little ungrateful. A lot of Valeria’s monsters died leading the charge. And Valeria is important. Just as like, a matter of history alone.”

“A matter of history?” I ask.

Esme shrugs. “I mean, the lineage of important people tend to be well-documented. Your mother’s literally one of the five big gods, arguably one of the strongest beings on Monsterra. The planet’s basically named after her. Being her kid’s historically noteworthy.”

“Yeah, if you marry someone and pop out a few babies of your own, they’ll be important too,” Felix says with a grin.

I shudder. I’ve read biology books. Giving birth is gross. “No thanks. I’d rather enter the history books on my own merits.”

“Like taking over the world?” Lily asks rather snidely.

“Like saving the city of Algecante from a massive undead invasion,” I say.

Lily blinks a couple of times and has the good graces to blush. “Oh. Yeah, I guess.”

“Why is it that you don’t like Valeria, anyway?” Felix asks. “We all like her here.”

Bianca raises a hand. “To be entirely clear, I like her as a newly acquired friend, nothing more.” I don’t have time to ask what she means by that, not without missing Lily’s response.

The Templar crosses her arms and glares at us. It’s easy to miss, what with her armour and the way she stands so proudly, but Lily’s not all that tall. She’s only barely taller than Esme, and Esme’s head comes up to my eyeline.

“It’s... it’s complicated,” Lily says.

“If we’re going to work together, you might as well come out and tell us,” I say.

Lily looks between my friends and I, then ploughs right past the question. “So, what are you lot planning? I don’t believe for a minute that you’ll sit back here like reasonable people and wait for the Commander to solve everything.”

“We’re going to go after the books that they stole,” I say. “Or some of them, at least. We know where they are within the city. Or which direction in any case, and Esme can point us to them if we need to. The undead don’t have need for books, so we’re probably going to run into some cultists. Or whoever takes care of a cult’s books.”

“No, the people who do the books for cultists are usually just more cultists. You can be religious and a librarian at the same time, it’s not mutually exclusive,” Esme says. “Usually you’d want to worship a nice, sensible god, like Semper, but what can you expect from necromancers?”

“Alright,” Lily says. “So what’s the plan here? Do you even have a plan?”

“Charge straight towards where the enemy is, killing everything that isn’t friendly along the way with overwhelming force?” I try.

Lily tilts her head a bit to the side, an oddly familiar gesture, then she nods. “Yeah, that sounds like a good plan to me.”

“Good, good. Do you think you can open a hole in one of those walls that’s big enough for my monsters to get through?” I ask while gesturing to one of the nearby walls of dirt and stone the Templars have made. It’s more or less in the direction we need to head in. From the looks of it, the books are somewhere towards the back of the city, towards the peninsula that the city closes off from the rest of the mainland.

Lily walks over to a few Templars on guard duty and gestures to the wall, which leaves me with little time to round up my monsters.

I’m leaving everything but the wolves and mantises behind. Mostly because it’ll be easier to deal with only two kinds of monsters at the same time, and also because it gives me an excuse to leave the pentagoose behind.

I’m not saying it scares me. But I have a healthy respect for the angry five-headed rage monster.

The Templars too, judging by the distance they keep from it.

“Alright, we’re going for a sort of shock and awe approach,” I say. “Move fast, kill as many undead as you can, but conserve your strength. We won’t be running, we’ll be walking fast. We don’t want to be winded if we run across someone actually dangerous.”

“But we also don’t want to stand still,” Felix says with a nod. “I think I get it.”

“Right,” I say. “Um, I guess no formation except the monsters in front and the rest of us behind. We can keep a few of the smarter wolves back too, just in case.”

“That works for me,” Esme says. “What do we do if there are too many undead?”

“Retreat,” I decide. “We can always fly out of the city and rebuild another army while the Templar hold their position. We have the advantage in a war of attrition, I think.”

“You girls coming?” Lily asks.

“Yeah!” I say. “Get ready to be amazed, Lily! You’re about to see what real fighting is like!”

***