Book of The Dead

Chapter B5: Roll Back the Darkness

A sighting of the Necromancer didn’t interest General Crow as much as she thought it might have.

“We were already fairly sure he was in there,” he told her, brows raised as he and his officers continued to pore over maps of the region and debate strategy. “Go and get some sleep. We’ll have more to say in the morning. I’m not sending my men out there at night, so nothing is going to happen until the sun is back in the sky.”

“Very well, General. I will speak to you in the morning.”

She offered her best curtsey, which wasn’t much by court standards, but she felt she managed not to disgrace herself, then turned to leave these obviously busy men to their work.

“I believe he has achieved platinum rank,” Honoured Stennis stated evenly.

Silence fell like a hammer, smashing all conversation to dust. Although the officers were experts at keeping their emotions from their face, she could tell that this was news they hadn’t wanted to hear.

Merigold was stunned.

Why hadn’t she asked for ten thousand? Or twenty? It would have been even harder to get approval, and taken twice as long, but it would have been worth it! At the same time, she cursed the fools who wanted to only send a thousand. Those men and women would have died horrible deaths and suffered an even worse fate after.

Platinum? Already? She knew his age down to the day, and no matter how she tried, it simply didn’t seem possible. That would be one of, if not the fastest ascension to platinum in the history of the Empire!

“A-are you sure?” she stammered.

Everyone ignored her, which was a good thing. Honoured Stennis, trusted hand of the Emperor himself, was sure. Otherwise he wouldn’t have said anything.

“We will need to adjust our approach, but nothing will fundamentally change,” General Crow cut through the silence, his tone firm and unwavering. “One platinum ranked Necromancer is not a match for five thousand members of the Emperor's finest.”

He stared down his own officers.

“Get back to it,” he said, and they did.

With nothing else to say, Stennis fell in behind Merigold, who hastily escaped the suffocating atmosphere within the command tent and sought the safety of her own. She didn’t say anything to Stennis, she felt too on edge to try and discuss what had been revealed, nor did she have much success engaging him in conversation to start with.

“I will stand guard over your tent tonight,” he told her as she moved to duck inside. “Although I am confident in the abilities of the Golden Legion...”

He paused, reminding her the issue with General Crow's troops wasn’t their competence, but their susceptibility to the court’s interference.

“... with the possibility of an attack by ghosts in the night, I deem it to be better if I keep watch personally. You may sleep without fear.”

Not giving her a chance to say anything in reply, he merely ducked his head in a short bow then turned his back to her and spread his feet, taking up his post.

Although he couldn’t say as much, he had essentially spelled out exactly what he feared: sentries allowing ghosts to penetrate the camp on purpose. Either the undead could kill her in her sleep, or they could take advantage of the chaos to do the job themselves.

She shouldn’t find the callous threats to her life so chilling at this point, but she still did. At times it was enough to bring her to tears. All she’d ever wanted was to serve as a nameless lower noble in the bowels of the administration. Now she was here, far from home and constantly afraid of being killed. What had she done to deserve this other than work to the best of her ability on behalf of the Empire?

It was at moments like these she drew comfort from the hidden insignia within the lining of her coat. She knew she was in the right, and she had that to prove it.

Despite the assurances of Stennis and the absolute safety they represented, Merigold did not sleep that night and staggered out of her bedroll dishevelled and groggy once light touched the eastern horizon. All night, she’d tossed and turned, thinking of what would happen the next day, worried that people would lose their lives on this quest that she had sent them on. Of course, she had always known that would be the case, but it was so different to be present in the moment as opposed to reading about it afterwards. These weren’t lines in a table to her anymore, they were human beings that she had travelled with for weeks.

And the Necromancer. Something about that visage had stayed with her. Why had Tyron Steelarm shown himself? To try and bait them to attack? To reveal he had reached platinum and cause them to hesitate? Despite knowing there was no point in questioning the motives of a madman, trying to stop the thoughts from spinning through her head had been a futile endeavour.

Getting herself ready for the day was a relatively simple process, and in ten minutes she was leaving the tent, her unruly hair pulled back in a tight bun.

Of course, once she stepped outside, she was greeted by Honoured Stennis, who it appeared had not moved a muscle since the previous night. Likely he hadn’t. As someone whose Class and abilities related to memory and information processing, the physical capacity of a soldier who had advanced all the way to platinum rank was something she couldn’t possibly imagine.

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“Good morning, Honoured Stennis,” she greeted him, stifling a yawn.

She thought she saw the slightest hint of a smile on his face as he turned slightly to see her emerge like a squirrel leaving its den at the end of winter.

“It didn’t sound like you rested well, Lady Herimar,” he said, nodding his head towards her in a slight bow.

“Who can sleep right now?” she grumbled. “A battle could take place today, people will die.”

“Unlikely to be today,” Stennis judged, falling in beside her as she began to make her way to the general’s tent. “General Crow has earned his reputation as a cautious and effective commander. He won’t commit his troops without uncovering more information unless he sees a clear advantage.”

Of all the things she had expected to hear today, Honoured Stennis offering compliments to the General wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t that the two men didn’t get along, not exactly, they just seemed to rub each other the wrong way.

“So what are they going to do today? Send scouts into the darkness to see what’s inside?”

Walking into the dome that covered Foxbridge seemed absolutely terrifying to her. Even for someone with gold ranked abilities, she couldn’t imagine they would be able to emerge unscathed.

“Most likely, the General is planning to use his mages to try and destroy the mist, or dislodge it in some way. That would be the simplest and most effective way to look inside the town under the cold light of day.”

“And then?”

Getting this many words out of Stennis was a rarity indeed. Merigold was keen to keep him talking.

“Depends on what they see,” he said, and then clamped his mouth shut as they drew near the command tent.

When she was eventually seen inside, the General and his officers were still in place, discussing their plan for the day around the table, a map of the surrounding area laid flat upon the surface.

“Nice to see you bright and early, Lady Herimar,” General Crow greeted her without looking up. “If you’ll give me a moment, I will detail our intentions for the day. Can’t leave the Imperial Court in the dark, now can we?”

Merigold was quite confident his deference had more to do with the Imperial Mandate she secretly carried rather than her position in the administration. Nevertheless, she was more than happy to listen as the General outlined an almost identical strategy to what Stennis had predicted, though with more detail.

There were four hundred Battle Mages and one hundred archmages among the five thousand members of the Golden Legion dispatched with this expedition, more than enough to establish magickal superiority against any foe.

Although the exact details of the deployment were unexpectedly complex, the strategy itself was simple. Move scouts within a kilometre of the town to take advantage of their enhanced senses, gather the mages and conjure a wind to blow back the miasma that hung over the town.

After getting a good look at the state of Foxbridge under that shroud, and having seen what the Necromancer has been up to inside, General Crow would feel more confident planning his subsequent assault.

A straightforward plan with a straightforward objective, even Merigold was able to comprehend it. Of course, the specifics as to which squad went where, the fallback positions and layered failsafes in the event of something unexpected happening quickly became tangled in her head.

With the plan set, it took a few hours to brief the troops and another to prepare everything. By the time they were marching out of the camp, the sun was already high overhead.

Riding in their midst, she couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the burnished might of the Empire. Every soldier was resplendent in their gleaming armour, silver and gold positively glowing under the midday sun. In neat and ordered ranks they marched or rode, heads held high, fighting spirit burning in their eyes.

To someone who had spent all of her days with her head in a book, it was all rather intimidating. She couldn’t help but feel increasingly squeamish about the conflict soon to erupt.

When they reached the outskirts of Foxbridge, confronted with that wall of shifting darkness, Merigold was quite relieved when Honoured Stennis asked her to move with him to the rear of the formation.

“Ghosts are swarming around us,” he told her, “keeping their distance. Make sure you stay by my side.”

Well, that was comforting.

From the rearguard atop her ill-tempered mount, Merigold watched as the Golden Legion fanned out around the edges of the cloud, careful and deliberate in their motions. Tension was thick in the air as the mages began to prepare, chanting Words of Power in unison as they wove magick together, conjuring a great wind.

It was gentle at first, a whisper that brushed against her face and set the loose red hairs on her head to stirring. Gradually it grew, from a whisper, to a spoken word, to a shout, then to a roar.

Overhead, great gusts rattled the trees and shook the leaves, blowing towards Foxbridge. Merigold watched, transfixed, as the miasma stubbornly refused to move at first, but over time, as the wind grew stronger, began to shift.

For the next few minutes, a silent sort of war was fought between the conjured wind and the dark cloud, a losing one for the darkness. Bit by bit, it was pushed back, revealing more of the town that had been hidden beneath.

Revealing the horde of undead who waited inside.

When the first skeletons were revealed, Merigold could only gasp at the sight of them. Of course, she had been expecting to see them, but as always, the difference between reading about something and seeing it for herself was shocking.

Blackened to the point of being perfectly dark, dark mist rising from their bones and purple light glowing in the sockets of their skulls, the skeletons stood perfectly still, ranks upon ranks of them. The more the darkness was pushed back, the more skeletons were revealed. Wicked blades of equally black bone in their hands and thick shields on their arms, they remained unmoved and unmoving as the cloud that had concealed them yielded to the wind.

General Crow and his officers were talking, making note of things they saw, details of the terrain, or of the dead, but Merigold wasn’t listening, she was only looking.

Great cauldrons were revealed, spewing thick clouds of miasma into the air. Seemingly carved from skulls that had been fused together, they were ghastly and macabre, horrifying to witness.

When finally the miasma was peeled back from the centre of the town, the Necromancer himself was revealed. A great doorway of arched bone rose in the centre of the marketplace while Tyron Steelarm stood atop a platform held aloft by six legs.

He didn’t even acknowledge them, didn’t seem to be doing anything at all, but all around him was a hive of activity. Dark magick swirled around him in a vortex as floating undead with black staves made from spines and topped with leering skulls worked to create more undead.

Looming over all of it, a giant skeleton the size of three men stood, black mist pouring off it as if it were burning.

Merigold couldn’t help but think this was going to be more difficult than they had expected.