There was no time to hesitate. Roland launched up the rocky incline, intent on breaking out into the wide shaft for a chance at outmanoeuvring the Dwarves. His hope was little more than a pipe dream, however, as the warriors gathered near the landing above to cut off his escape route. He must have seemed so pathetic in their eyes - panting, slick with sweat, and unaccompanied by any of his beloved thralls.
"The poor sod's only gone and trapped himself!" A soldier's pearly grin was reflected in his torchlight as he drew a blade from his waist, "Stay here and keep and keep your heads on a swivel, boys. I'll have this fool's heart out in just a moment."
Roland stopped in his tracks as the Dwarf descended. One would think he was at a superb disadvantage thanks to their difference in elevation, but Roland could meet the man at eye level before he'd even wandered into range.
"Typical fuckin' necromancer." The Dwarf taunted, "Confident for as long as he's hidin' behind a line of corpses, but freezes up once there's nothing but steel and fire in play."
"I wouldn't take the time to gloat." Roland smirked, "Pride goeth before a fall, and all that."
"Aye - right you are." With a fierce nod, the soldier's visor fell down over his eyes, "So if you don't mind, I'll get right to the guttin' and quarterin' to save everyone the time."
He took a messy swing at Roland, who took a step back to avoid the blow. They began a kind of morbid dance. The Dwarf stepped forward to tread on his footfalls, slashing and stabbing with relaxed impunity. Frankly, he couldn't have been playing the encounter more intelligently. Sooner or later, Roland would run out of steps to take, and once he was cornered, ending his life would be a simple matter.
But it took a while - and in that prickly, volatile situation, 'a while' was represented by a few minutes. In that time, Roland formed something dangerously close to a prayer in his mind, not to any particular God, but to the possibility of a miraculous rescue plucking him from the jaws of defeat. He had half a mind to consider himself insane for hoping. But perhaps it was that insanity, or the sheer comedy of his struggle against the void, that convinced some fickle reaper of the heavens to spare him - on that day, at least.
A Dwarf observing the execution from above turned his head, "Shh! You hear that!?"
They did. His comrades, that was to say. They heard the thundering footsteps, the charge, the moaning, and knew in an instant that trouble was on its way. Roland's prospective killer allowed himself for the briefest of moments to commit the cardinal sin of peeling one's eyes off their enemy as he turned to see what the ruckus was all about.
Roland shelved his consciousness and leapt into communion. The very last of the blood sloshing within a tiny vial at his hip levitated into the palm of his hand. His formation of the [Blood Spike] was sloppy and rushed, creating something akin to a crimson club rather than a javelin.
Roland's MP - 1,369 / 1,819
Flecks were dashed from the sculpture as the Dwarf resumed his assault, forcing Roland's concentration to wane as he took a deep step in and sliced his blade through the necromancer's face.
Roland's HP - 377 / 520
The malformed [Blood Spike] launched in the next moment. The impact wasn't deadly enough to harm, but certainly large enough to knock the Dwarf off-balance as it collided with his armoured solar plexus, coating the railway passage with a fresh coat of scarlet paint as it splattered into droplets. He fell onto his back with a grunt. Roland could taste fresh blood on his upper lip. The bridge of his nose across to the tops of his cheeks seared with unimaginable pain.
His visions returned - thorny briars in a sea of ink, inviting him into the beautiful garden of rot and decay that awaited beyond death. Blood flew from his newly-acquired wound into the palm of his hand. A worrying light-headedness was beginning to set in.
Roland's MP - 1,119 / 1,819
The Dwarf attempted to stand, but his armour made the prospect more of a challenge than it ought to have been. Roland's [Blood Spike] was cleaner than time. Faster. He didn't allow the soldier a chance to meet his fate with any dignity, sending the spike on its way to piercing straight through the Dwarf's armour.
A hole was carved into the space just to the left of his heart, rending flesh, bone, and organs. Roland didn't have the energy to watch the soldier's exquisite expression of agony - he was too busy clutching his temple and trying to stay upright on the slope as a terrible headache began to set in. He stumbled his way up the passage with one hand on the wall, flinching whenever a scream battered his eardrums.
He could hear them - the reliable groans of Gravewalkers from above. Marché had arrived just in time to spare him from a pitiful death. The thought spurred him to join the fight. Roland shook his head to dispel some of his dizziness and sprinted the rest of the way, scrambling to the slope's exit where the ground levelled out into a wider chamber.
Marché and his thralls were outnumbered, but with Roland added to the equation, they stood a chance. While the Dwarves were distracted by their skirmish, he approached the corpse of the only Dwarf who had fallen, placing his hand on the victim's chest and gritting his teeth to distract from the pain of attempting communion with a splitting headache.
Roland's MP - 1,074 / 1,819
Unlife was breathed into the cadaver's veins. Roland hauled the Gravewalker up by its shoulders and pushed it towards the skirmish, reaching forward to unsheathe the shortsword from its waist before it could stumble off. Marché was attempting to endure the onslaught of trained soldiers with nothing but a sword and shield, ducking behind his thralls and using them as meat shields to buy a few precious seconds.
With Roland's arrival, their numbers evened out. The sheer tenacity of the Gravewalkers coupled with their heavy armour made for an enemy that couldn't be faced down honourably. An axe through the head or into the waist was only an opportunity to find one's weapon stuck without hope of retrieval. When one Dwarf bit off more than he could chew and suffered the consequences, Marché or Roland would drag the corpse away only to revive it as a Gravewalker seconds later, ebbing the tide of battle in their favour.
"To the fire with this! It's a fool's errand tryin' to kill these sorcerers!" One Dwarf screamed, "Get back to the entrance, you lot! Let Mime take care of 'em."
What the soldiers lacked in constitution, they more than made up for in dexterity. Weaving their way through the glacial movements of the Gravewalkers was a simple matter for anything with a brain that hadn't been reduced to a cancerous lump. They fled to the mine's upper levels, leaving Marché and Roland panting and exhausted, but somehow - against all odds - alive.
"Roland…" Marché said, "Your face."
"Is it that bad?" He flinched while running a finger over the gash running from one cheek to the other, drawing back fresh blood that glistened in his palm, "You don't look too fresh yourself."
Marché's face was swollen with bruises. His empty eyelid was grown over and purple, lending him the appearance of a boxer rounds deep into his latest bout. The two of them, in that fleeting moment, couldn't have seemed any less like necromancers.
Marché looked over the armour-clad Gravewalker standing next to Roland, "I see you've lost your thralls."
"I won't lie and say I used them wisely." He replied, "You have me beat in that regard."
"I would rather have mana to spare than a handful of stinking corpses following me around." Marché sniffed as a trickle of blood escaped from his nostril, "We need to move. Those weren't the last of the Dwarves, and Mime still has us boxed in."
A gruff, commanding voice caught their attention, "How very carefree, to exchange pleasantries in the shadow of death."
Mime wandered into the chamber with all the nonchalance of someone returning home after a harsh day's work. He was joined by exactly zero of his comrades, though his presence alone was enough to stir Marché and Roland into action. "The two of you have been skulking these mountains for longer than you deserve." He continued, "Indeed, it was only until very recently that I was made aware of the necromancers in our midst."
Marché took a step forward, "It was Baccharum, wasn't it? He had every reason to sell us out."
"Oh… I wasn't aware your relationship with the Star-Eater was so strained." Mime replied, "But no - he wasn't so foolish as to reveal his alliance with the Order. I imagine he's dead by now. I sent a small party in his direction to excise the tumour in our parliament before it could develop into something troublesome."
"...Then how did you know?" Marché tilted his head, "I'd say we played our cards just about as carefully as we could, barring a few exceptions."
"Must you really know?" Mime asked, "Surely you've been under the heel of your leader long enough to notice the secret behind her meteoric rise to power?"
Marché paused, "...You're a Scion. Like Alberich."
"Do you have any idea of the guilt that weighed upon my heart when we exchanged glances on that day?" Mime furrowed his brow, "To parse your intentions - your evil - in a mere instant, only to find myself forced into inaction by a lack of evidence to suggest the truth? How many lives could have been saved if I had crushed your skull right then and there? Too many to count."
"-But you didn't?" Marché shrugged his shoulders, "For fear of what? Retribution from your own people? Injustice? How deep does your 'love' for this country run if you aren't willing to place your own reputation on the line to defend it? The truth you don't want to hear is that you should have killed us back then."
Mime clutched his mace with both hands, "You are correct. I was foolish. Too careful. Cowardly, perhaps. Let that be my final mercy. But know that history cares only for victories of the physical variety, rather than the emotional sort."
He swung. His target was nothing more complicated than the air in front of him, but that simple movement was enough to blow Marché and Roland clean off their feet as a burst of divine energy tore through the stale air, causing their fragile Gravewalkers to crumble into dust, leaving only their hollow shells of armour behind.
"Hah… he's got you there, Marché." Roland scrambled to his feet with a reluctant smile, "What does it matter in the end? We're still going to die…"
The time for conversation was over, Mime had decided. While the dexterity of his comrades was sorely lacking, his was on another level entirely. Marché didn't have time to leap back before Mime closed the gap between them, bringing his mace up in both hands with every intention of crushing the boy in one fell blow.
-But just before the pivotal swing, Mime's attention was diverted by a dagger thrown from the darkness with deadly precision. He brought his shoulder down to deflect the blade off his armour, allowing Marché to scramble away. "Who goes there!?" He screamed.
From the unlit shaft Marché had first traversed, a figure emerged that couldn't be described as entirely humanoid. Its head was hunched down to avoid scraping against the low ceiling, wrapped with countless lengths of cloth to obscure the enormous eyeballs lingering beneath.
"...Impossible." Mime dismissed the silhouette as if it was a spectre, "I dispatched 30 of my best men to kill you, Star-Eater."
"Oh. Those were your best, were they?" Baccharum replied, his gangly limbs wandering into the flickering lamplight, "That's very worrying."