Chapter 215 - The Wichts (Part 3)
"Come on! Come on! Get those barrels out here! Our front line is being torn to shreds!" Drayya barked orders into the darkness, "Move those Dark Casters up to the top of those roots to get a better angle on the enemy!"
Marché and Roland came hobbling over, performing some kind of crab-walk as they hefted a barrel down the hill, "Put your back into it, man! I'm doing all of the work here!"
"Just- just drop it here! Let it roll down to the others!" Marché loosened his grip, and Roland was forced to follow, allowing the barrel to careen down the slope. Before they could charge back to the army's rear guard, Drayya stepped forward to halt their enthusiasm.
"Have either of you two seen Lieze!?" She yelled.
"Well… based on the-" Marché took a moment to readjust his footing as a great tremor ran along the ground, "...Based on the noise, I think it's fair to say she's around here somewhere."
"What are we fighting!?" She asked another question, "I haven't been able to get a good look at them!"
"S-Something…?" Roland shrugged, "Whatever they are, they're plentiful and ravenous. We're wanting for sight at the moment, so it can't be said whether we're putting a dent in their numbers or not."
"Pull the thralls back. We've got space to work with in this meadow." She replied, "Toss one of your lanterns close to those blastpowder barrels so we'll know when to detonate them."
At her request, Marché took his light and bowled it down the hill, where the barrels in question had been placed into a haphazard line. Roland sprinted off to alert the others while Deathguards manning the hilltop filled the air with [Blood Spikes]. Drayya squinted her eyes to spot fallen torches in the grass, where the silhouettes of thrall and Rootborne alike clashed in the endless gloom.
Under Roland's guidance, the Deathguards and undead retreated up the hill. Corpses lined the grass as yet more lanterns were dropped to ease Drayya's timing, allowing her to catch sight of the petulant Rootborne for the first time. Under ordinary circumstances, they appeared very much like thralls - abstractions of humanity stripped to their base components. But there was no lingering humanity in their twisted faces - only perpetual grins.
"...Who's got a fire?" She turned her head, "A torch? A lantern? Anyone?"
Marché shrugged, "You told me to throw mine down."
"Hah…" She sighed, "Sod it."
Retrieving her own lantern, she waited for the Rootborne to gather near the bottom of the hill before tossing the light as hard as she possibly could. The glass frame shattered on impact against the iron rung of a barrel, and in the next instant, Drayya was thrown off her feet as Akzhem experienced the light of a temporary sun for the first time in millennia.
High above the chaos, where bat-like, perforated wings soared between the Great Oaks, Lieze shielded her eyes from the fireball with one arm. The Manticore was startled enough by the deafening explosion to lose its grip on a portly Rootborne dangling in its claws.
The dry grass caught fire instantly. A ring of flame was soon wreathing the battlefield in a welcome light, exposing the malformed corpses of Rootborne seared and pierced by the blast. Drayya waved one arm over her head, "Now! While they're decimated - attack!"
The conjoined will of the Order's necromancers saw the quickest thralls charging first: Stalkers, Briarknights, Bonecrawlers; followed swiftly by the Horrors and Flesh Elementals, and finally the Rot Behemoths. Specks of fire and lightning arced over the advancing force - the practised volleys of Dark Casters - suppressing what few survivors remained and preventing a swift retreat.
Any Rootborne attempting to flee were inevitably caught beneath the lumbering steps of the Flesh Golem. To drive the point home, Lieze provided the titan with a simple but easily-followed command: Fall.
One could have sworn a Great Oak had been cleaved in the ensuing moments, for the quake that trembled the earth upon the Flesh Golem's graceless impact against the soil could have felled a city. Its body landed face-first right in the path of those fleeing Rootborne, whose shared desperation remained unseen in their wicked, smiling faces.
The rest was history - a performance Lieze had witnessed too often for it to remain satisfying. The end of the battle was remarkably bloodless given the creatures' strange physiologies, though their screams and wails were about as convincing as any human's. The humanoid doll composed of dead insects remained in Lieze's grasp, once animated with the magic of the forest.
"I didn't think we would be battling creatures straight out of a fairy tale today, but I suppose stranger things have happened." She muttered, "At least now we know what to expect."
Battle Report:
Rootborne Scout (x233)
Rootborne Warrior (x150)
Rootborne Blighter (x105)
Rootborne Behemoth (x79)
Total XP Earned - 12,116
Secret Quest 'The Forest's Wrath' Complete!
Description - Fend off an attack from the Rootborne
Reward - 3,500xp
Heightened Potential Progress - 50,000 / 50,000
Milestone Reached!
Master Necromancy (lvl. 2)
has been upgraded to
Peerless Necromancy
Description - Use 10MP to reanimate a creature of any level. The creature's level as an undead thrall equals 4x its original level, rounded down. You can maintain a number of thralls equal to 25x your level, rounded down.
Level Up!
You are now level [58]
HP+ MP+55
MIND + 1
A proud, uncharacteristic smile broke through Lieze's apathy. A matter of months ago, she was a sorcerer without talent, desperately seeking the approval of those who only wished to manipulate her. Now, she was a greater necromancer than Sokalar could have ever hoped to become - greater than even Kazor Nict, in all likelihood. There was no higher perch to seek.
"To think I would make it this far…" She muttered, "Granted, I did die once along the way."
The Manticore came to a soft landing in the meadow amidst the camouflaged corpses. A healthy fire continued to spread towards the undergrowth, and soon, embers and smoke were rich in the air. Lieze and the rest of her allies took refuge within the singed grasses, where Drayya stood with arms folded and a displeased expression on her face.
"Hm…" She tilted her head, "You look awfully pleased about something."
"Don't worry about that for now." Lieze replied, "How are we looking after the battle?"
"If I had to take a guess, I'd say we lost a few hundred thralls in the initial chaos." She pursed her lips, "What did you and Baccharum get up to in those roots that caused the forest to treat us like some kind of unwelcome foreign body?"
"It was this little bastard who caused the attack." Lieze held out the Corpse Eater's body.
Drayya reached out to take it, only to retract her arm once she noticed that its body was formed of twitching, bulbous insects, "Ew! What is that!?"
"Baccharum called it a Wicht. Those creatures that attacked us - the Rootborne - were also Wichts. Based on what I've been told, they're sprites created from Elven superstitions. Fears made manifest, essentially."
"Why is it dead?" Drayya grimaced.
"It cursed me with its words." Lieze could still taste the blood at the back of her throat, "-So I killed it. The woods didn't take too kindly to that, but it mentioned something about the Head Shaman requesting aid from the Wichts in halting our advance."
"That's… bad? No, wait - surely that's a good thing?" She wondered, "We can raise these abominations as thralls."
"I don't know about that…"
Lieze peered over her shoulder towards the corpses lingering near the developing inferno. Without the unspeakable will of the forest to bind their bodies of bark, it was difficult to tell where one Rootborne ended and the other began. One-by-one, they were collapsing, disassembling, disintegrating, until the only trace that they ever existed was the adrenaline running through Lieze's body.
"An enemy that vanishes upon death…" She muttered, "This might be a problem. If there's no body to animate, we can't recoup our losses from the battle. No - this might have been the Elves' plan all along…"
"Sound judgement, Lieze." Baccharum tiptoed across the wasting sea of bark as if afraid of triggering another attack with a misplaced step, "A disposable enemy must be a necromancer's worst nightmare. Nothing to claim or turn, forced into a war of pure attrition… with this, the Elv have a fighting chance at putting down the Order for good."
It was a dire declaration, but Lieze couldn't bring herself to be intimidated by the fact. The epiphany she'd experienced during the battle lingered at the back of her mind, desperate to be freed, "Drayya."
"Mhm?" The girl flashed a quick smile at hearing her name spoken aloud, "I recognise that look on your face, Lieze. There's something mad but strangely ingenious eating away at your patience."
"Gather our most powerful necromancers around one of the Great Oaks." Lieze ordered, "I want to test something."
Faces were twisted into that behemoth of wood; wailing, laughing, weeping… Lieze ran her hand over the rough surface and imagined the nymphs slumbering within, awaiting the esoteric alarm of the woods to awaken them from a centuries-long slumber. The oaks, she thought, had to own a will all of their own. That was as far as her theory went before it descended into madness - a madness she was all too eager to indulge.
"Peerless Necromancy…" Her mind raced, "No limit… I wonder - could something like this really work?"
The Deathguards were assembled, spread around the oak's perimeter as thinly as they could possibly manage while retaining the ability to communicate, unable to cover even a tenth of the trunk's bumpy circumference.
"What are we doing, exactly?" Drayya asked.
"You'll see. All I need from you and the rest of the Deathguards is mana." Lieze replied, "We're going to commune with the Blackbriar simultaneously. I'm hoping that will be enough to create the desired effect. If not, we could end up wasting a lot of our mana potions, so pour as much into the tree as you possibly can when I give the word."
"Focusing mana into a tree… I have to admit that I'm stumped this time - no pun intended." She snorted at her own unintentional joke, "Just give the word. I'll make sure the others know."
"Let's not waste any time, then."
The two of them placed a hand each against the bark. Drayya called out to the others, who followed in turn, and for a blissful moment, the forest was silent. As soon as Lieze focused her mind, she could feel the mana being drained from the focus atop her staff. She took that to mean her theory was correct.
Staff of Thraldom's MP - 3,102 / 3,417
Baccharum watched from the sidelines. It was he who first enlightened Lieze to the idea, claiming that the woods of Akzhem were 'alive' in much the same way they were. If there was even an inkling of truth to his words, then it was theoretically, optimistically possible that Lieze could find some way of controlling them.
Closing her eyes, she could feel the tides of mana flowing through the Great Oak, pooling into the cavities of its innards, overflowing with sorcerous potential. In much the same way she normally channelled necromancy, her mind drifted towards the Blackbriar's domain, assaulted with premonitions and delusions of death spreading across the world.
Staff of Thraldom's MP - 2,121 / 3,417
Staff of Thraldom's MP - 1,199 / 3,417
Staff of Thraldom's MP - 439 / 3,417
Lieze's MP - 2,310 / 2,605
Minutes passed, and soon, the Deathguards had no more mana left to give. Only Lieze had the sheer capacity to press onwards, funnelling her mana into the surface of the tree until even its roots were suffused with potential. She focused on Akzhem's whimsical nature; its legends, its inhabitants, its magic, and forced the Blackbriar's cruel influence into those unearthly concepts.
The soil trembled beneath her feet, growing into a quake that shook the gargantuan leaves down from the distant canopy. The Deathguards retreated from the oak's perimeter, convinced that some gaping chasm was about to open in the earth and swallow them whole.
"What is she doing…?" Drayya backed away.
"Oh dear…" Baccharum folded his arms, "That girl's power is really starting to get out of control, isn't it?"