Heart of Dorkness

Scourge Fifty-Seven - Gate

I’ve never seen a full-on battle like this, so I forgive myself for freezing a little.

Fortunately, my monsters are a bit more sanguine about this kind of thing and they don't hesitate to rush into the battle.

The mantises push in deep into the enemy lines, some of them charging right towards the necromancers who are operating within their own little circles in the undead horde. The majority of my monsters though just press up against the undead, attacking with tooth and claw and ripping through three undead for every monster lost.

Unfortunately, we’re outnumbered a whole lot more than just three to one.

Fortunately, the Templars and the few magical monsters we have on our side make up for that.

Waves of spikes rip from the earth, each one an orderly distance apart and set at precise angles to ensure that they’ll deliver maximum pain to the undead. I catch sight of Lily, arms waving around while huge gushes of fire turned the undead into unalived skeletons.

That’s the kick in the pants I need. I’m not about to let Lily be more useful than me. She’s so... so... frustrating. I can already imagine how smug she’ll look if she kills more undead than I have.

With that particular bit of disgust roiling in my tummy, I bring my arms up above my head, trusting that Felix will be able to hug me in place if I start to tip, and then I focus on weaving a powerful spell. This is a bit of dark magic that I’ve only ever cast in practice, but it should be effective here.

Darkness swells above me as a growing, barely contained cloud that keeps expanding and contracting in on itself. That’s the easy part. The tricky bit comes as I turn what’s basically an obscuring cloud of darkness into a miasma that reacts violently with any flesh it touches. It’s not an acid. Acids are chemicals. This is pure disgusting magic.

With a grunt of effort I press the spell down and let it splash down onto the backlines of the undead horde, right where a few wide-eyed necromancers are gathering next to some of the more impressive undead.

“Is that cloud kill?” Felix asks.

“Yup,” I say.

“Is it still in your control range?” she asks as the cloud starts to disperse, melting undead as it spreads.

“Nope,” I say.

“How are you going to move it?” Felix asks. “And how are you going to stop it from washing over our allies?”

“Uh.”

I may be a bit overzealous in wanting to use the cooler spells I have instead of the more effective ones. Felix laughs and gives me a quick squeeze. “Alright, I’ll try to push it backwards with some wind. That should work, right?”

“It should, yeah. Normal wind won’t do anything, but joy-tinted wind will work just fine,” I say.

“You concentrate on normal attacks then. Oh, and keep us shielded. I bet those neck fetishists down there will notice that we’re the ones causing them a bunch of trouble.”

“Got it!” I say. Two dark shields spring to life on either side of us. They’ll give away our position but I’d rather have them ready.

After that I start to ration my magic. I only have so much in me, and if I spend it all at once I might be in trouble later. So I start creating these long spears of dark magic, then with a powerful flick, I send them darting ahead and into the enemy.

The spears ram through entire rows of undead, pinning them together before the magic wears off and the spears dissipate. It even unalives a few of them properly.

The Templars keep up their advance. Their swords and spears flash out, dismembering any undead that comes too close while they continue to advance. Their warhorses crush the fallen under their hooves and the earth continues to churn and turn into a moving wall of spikes ahead of them.

They were chopping through a few of my smaller monsters too.

I focused, sending out a mental command that had the monsters turning and pushing diagonally away from the centre of the formation and towards the sides, with the split happening more or less in the middle.

That would open up a hole in the centre that the Templars would have to deal with, but maybe they’ll stop accidentally murdering my monsters so much.

With another bit of focus, I order the monsters straying behind to start helping.

The scorpions at the rear start to fling rocks ahead, big head-sized boulders that sail over the Templars and my monsters to crash into the undead with heavy splats. One rock nails an abomination in the face and it crumbles down, entirely dead.

A huge crack-boom has me flinching before I realise that it’s Esme. She’s casting a huge set of spells that are raining down bolts of electricity as thick around as my arm. They’re smashing into the walls of the city, right where a group of necromancers are gathering.

I didn’t even notice them.

Now they’ll be even harder to spot since they’re scattering away from Esme’s attack.

“To the doors!” Commander Nunez shouts.

I glance up and take in the walls which are really quite close. The gate’s not far now, though it’s entirely clogged by the undead and a number of abominations.

The wall has a small drawbridge which, I notice, is actually starting to rise despite the undead standing atop it.

“Oh no,” I say. “Felix, we’re going to cover the gate! We need to keep it open.”

“Right,” Felix says. With a tap to our bird friend’s neck, we shoot ahead and past the bulk of the battlefield. I fling down a few dark bolts, just to help a little, then we fly up and over the wall.

The gatehouse is a large, blocky building that encompases the entire gate. There’s a passageway above it, and two large sections on either side.

We land on the rooftop, where there’s a stairwell down to the lower floors of the gatehouse.

Felix jumps off first and retrieves her staff from a makeshift sling next to the bird’s chest. She stands guard while I climb off at a more sedate pace and brush off my dress. “Okay. I guess... well, we don’t have a plan, so let’s just kill everything and then sort things out after.”

“That sounds like a great plan. Three steps, impossible to mess up.”

I blink. “Wait, what are the three steps?”

Felix grins. “Step one: rekill the undead and the cultists. Step two: don’t get hurt. Step three: reward hugs.”

I laugh. “Alright, maybe it is a great plan!”

Felix walks over to the stairwell and drops to one knee with her eyes closed. “Hmm, it’s clear on the floor below. I think there’s something moving on the floor under that, but it’s hard to tell. Too many echoes.”

“Alright,” I say. I pull my shields around so that they’re ahead of us, just in case, then I rush down the staircase while creating dark bolts next to myself. They’re all ready to cast at a moment’s notice. The top floor of the gatehouse isn’t very impressive. There’s access to the balcony set over the gate itself and a few tables and chairs laid out across the room. It looks more like a break room than anything else.

There’s a hard rattle below us though, and the unmistakable sound of at least two people arguing.

“It won’t rise!”

“Of course it won’t! There’s like a hundred undead on the bridge and two of us. You can barely lift a full tankard and you think you can raise a hundred undead.”

“I’ve raised more than that.”

“I meant literally, you moron!”

Felix glances at me, then with a tap to her lips for silence, weaves a happy little spell around us. It muffles our steps as we approach the edge of the staircase leading down.

“We need more muscle,” the first voice says.

“I could have told you that before we came here.”

“Look, there’s pulleys and counter-balances. Normally one guard could raise the entire thing with ease, alright. It’s hardly my fault it’s not working!”

Taking the steps one at a time and very slowly so that they don’t creak, Felix and I climb down to the floor below.

There’s three figures in the room. Two necromancers in the robes of Altum’s cult, and a large, very muscular abomination that looks like it has the muscles of a horse stitched over the body of a man.

I mould the ends of my dark bolts so that they’re a little more blunt, then point to Felix and then the abomination. She nods.

“Maybe we can get-- wait, who are?” One of the guys spots us. So I take that as a signal to shoot and both of my bolts zip across the room and ram into the cultist’s chests. They fold over double before flying off, entirely winded.

Felix lets out a loud ‘hah!’ and a swipe of sharp air cuts across the room and slices the undead in half.

“I guess that does it for the bridge,” I say. That was surprisingly easy.

I hope that the rest of this thing will be just as easy too.

***