Published at 3rd of October 2023 12:05 pm

Chapter 4.40 In Which the Dark Lord Returns

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

“We’re just about set,” Aster reported as soon as I rejoined her on the ground, without waiting to be asked. “The engineers are even more efficient than I anticipated, so the defensive barricades are fully in place now. Reinforcements in the tunnel are prepared to move forward and hold this position once the rest of us advance. We can stand here and keep whittling at them as long as you wish, but we’re ready to move on your command, Lord Seiji.”

I nodded, taking a quick visual survey of our fortifications and the troops manning them. Everything was exactly as she’d said, of course; I was more trying to center my own mind than verifying Aster’s report. I couldn’t really blame Velaven for my unsettled state, having been the one who initiated the conversation, but this was no time for me to be distracted with philosophy.

“’And thus be it ever, when free men shall stand between their loved home and the war’s desolation,’” I quoted softly, not sure why that of all things had suddenly sprung to mind. Existential doubt is a hell of a drug.

“I like that,” Aster said, giving me a small smile.

“I memorized all four verses when I was a kid,” I murmured. “Just to flex on Americans—well, I mean, mainland Americans. Most of them don’t even know it has more than one. That was the plan, anyway, but it turned out actual opportunities to do the flexing were…nonexistent. I can’t remember most of it at this point, just a few lines that stuck with me.”

“It tickles me how I don’t need to have the faintest idea what you’re talking about to recognize something wee Seiji would absolutely do.”

“’Then conquer we must,’” I sang sotto voce, “’when our cause it is just…’ Damn. Can’t remember what’s next.”

“Ugh.” She wrinkled her nose.

“Yeah, I know. Trust me, in the original English it rhymes. In Fflyr it doesn’t even scan properly.”

“No amount of poetic flourishes would make that less horrifying,” Aster retorted, her lip still curled. “The noise of violent people justifying their own bullshit is universal, I guess.”

“And speaking of that.”

I took a step forward, toward the center of our small secured area, raised my head, and raised my voice. Not the pitch, but the volume; straight from the diaphragm. I was competing with the wet gurgles of the occasional zombie and the noises that ensued from putting them down, but I could do that. Nothing overcomes my showtime.

“Damn fine work, all of you,” I declared, and in putting out the performance of calm and confidence, I found it in myself. “There are few things more impressive than doing excellent work fast while under ridiculous pressures, and that’s what I see here. I’m proud of all of you, and I hope you’re as proud of yourselves.”

This was still an active battlefield, despite how much the actual fighting had trailed off, and my people were too professional to take their eyes off the front while enemies continued to trickle out of the forest, so only a few were able to look at me. But I saw a lot of spines straighten up, which was what I wanted. Now, what with the active battlefield thing and all, to move this along; it was no time for a long or sentimental speech.

“I know you’ve been told the plan. There’s been one change to it: I will be taking point on the push to the wall. Those of you assigned to the advance party will form up on me; I’m the tip of the spear and you will fan out in my trail to clear us a decently wide avenue to that breach for the engineers and archers to establish a supply train. I will be using primarily electrical attacks, which means I’ll be striking at my maximum range; lightning tends to arc toward warm bodies and I do not want any friendly fire incidents. Also, I can only look in one direction at a time and may not see them all coming. Because of that, and because I won’t risk lightning too close to any of you, any zombie that gets within range of your spears is your job to dispatch. Clear?”

Fourteen hulking wolves had formed up with spears and shields made of leather and shells, paying close attention to me with their ears fully upright, and at this they all nodded, several striking their own chests with a fist. I noted a fairly even mix of males and females among them; true to Biribo’s explanation down in Kzidnak, the beast tribes didn’t seem to have much in the way of gender roles.

“Remember your main focus is clearing a path; you will destroy any stragglers that go for the rest of the force after I’ve gone through the main mob. Aster, I want you on my left; Rath Kadora, on my right. Keep ‘em off me.”

That was a bit of politics, at which I thought I was getting better. Aster had to come because she would have regardless of anything I said, and I didn’t need her undermining me in front of the troops; Rath Kadora because giving him that position of honor helped cement his authority among the wolves, and among the rest of the Crusade. Also, they were both Blessed with Might and each had a melee weapon with a long reach and the Mastery enchantment. I was actually looking forward to seeing what a guy with a Spear of Mastery could do.

“You’ve all seen Biribo,” I continued. “Biribo, say hi to everybody.”

“Hi to everybody!” he complied, zooming in a complete loop around my head.

“As you have now seen, he has a small squeaky kind of voice. Since there will be thunder among other loud noises, you may not be able to hear him, so watch for him to fly in front of you. If Biribo tries to get your attention, that means you have an enemy trying to sneak up on you. I know zombies are dumb as rocks but there’s a lot of obstructions out there and they like to pop up from behind stuff. Biribo will give you as much forewarning as he can if anything slips through our perimeter.

“Everybody fully briefed and ready to go?”

Another round of nods and verbal assents, as well as some spears thumped against hide shields.

“That’s what I like to hear.”

I turned to face forward, surveying the path. Up ahead the walls loomed past a dense screen of khora, the break an easy landmark. Our path was obscured by the intervening forest, as well as smaller outcroppings of rock not unlike the big one protecting the tunnel entrance. All around us were corpses in various stages of desiccation, bristling with heavy crossbow bolts and many hacked apart.

Rather than anything as comforting as blood, neon green slime oozed from them, mostly puddling on the ground under the felled zombies but still, if you watched closely, moving with a bit more impetus than gravity accounted for. Once their host body was too damaged to function, it seemed the undeath slimes reverted to normal slime behavior, which consisted of sloughing around looking for biological matter to digest. Eating their own former bodies should keep them occupied for the time being, but I had given orders that corpses and slimes alike should be doused with asauthec and burned once we had the opportunity to move them away from the barricades so the fires wouldn’t threaten the defenders. Slimes were magical bullshit rather than real organisms: they didn’t need to eat to live, they ate to increase their mass and ultimately divide. Last thing I needed was slimes of undeath propagating through the forest.

I could see movement, too. We had indeed done a lot of damage to the numbers of undead outside the walls, but isolated shamblers were visibly tottering about beyond the radius where they evidently felt compelled to charge at the barricades.

Perfect. I love it when the opposition just hands me a showtime.

Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!

They’d all seen me use the spell today, of course; I had been assisting from my vantage above, but I’d done so with restraint, only hitting clusters of several zombies and only if they were far enough back that I judged the lightning not a threat to my own people. This was, admittedly, purely gratuitous. A pillar of fire from heaven called down on every source of movement in my field of view.

I turned my head and grinned at my advance team, who all looked visibly impressed—except Aster, of course, but at least she was smiling rather than silently mocking me for once.

I strode out through the gap between two barricades, the only one the engineers had left in order for us to advance. Immediately I had to clamber over a pile of slimy corpses; my Surestep Boots rendered that a non-issue, but I slowed my pace to let my backup proceed with more care. None of them lacked physical ability, though, and in seconds we were formed up outside the defenses.

“Welcome to the jungle,” I said cheerfully, and set out toward the village with a long stride.

It was a relatively clear path to the wall; zombies continued to stumble out of the shadows, but so far none even got close enough to be a threat. The defenses had mowed down most of those in the vicinity already, and of the stragglers, the only ones I didn’t personally fell with lightning strikes at maximum range were sent slamming to the ground by pinpoint headshots from Velaven.

Fine, she could have that much. My Queens would give me no end of shit if I tried to prevent anyone else in this organization from showing off.

The wall was where we ran into a real roadblock. I still didn’t know how the undead worked, mentally; they didn’t appear to communicate with each other and would only attack the living, but something about our approach prompted a mass reaction like I hadn’t seen since Rhydion’s party had scythed our way out of the village. A few of them were ambling about around the breach, but upon seeing us, they not only turned and began charging in our direction, but a sudden press of more occurred behind them.

Zombies began pouring through the gap in the walls, bottlenecking themselves in the fissure so badly that they were forced to clamber bodily over one another. We were looking at dozens, easily; likely hundreds. We’d have been swiftly surrounded had they not been forced to push through a gap big enough for three people at the most.

“Somebody’s hungry,” Rath Kadora grunted, hefting his spear.

“Them, or you?” Aster asked.

“Them, for meat,” he said, showing off all his teeth in a grin. “Me, for revenge.”

“The sweetest dessert,” I agreed.

Storm! Storm! Storm!

I hammered the area right in front of the gap with three Storms stacked right on top of each other to give nearly total coverage. And indeed, there were no misses; seconds later every zombie that had made it through was on the ground, smoking.

That bought only seconds. They continued to pour out, ravenous and relentless.

“Everyone’s getting Healed after this,” I announced. “Your ears are gonna need it.”

Current! Current!

I threw out both hands, doubling the spell and blasting pure electricity right into the gap. Torrents of lightning at maximum voltage, blackening limbs and frying their half-mummified nervous systems, arcing from one target to the next and scoring black lines across the crumbling akorthist masonry to either side. Fragments of brick flew as zombies fell, and I was just getting started.

Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!

Thunder cracked almost continuously across the forest as I pounded the gap with Strike after Strike. Between the constant torrent of electricity pouring forth from my hands and the destructive impacts from the sky, it was an absolute slaughter. Not just of the undead; one side of the gap crumbled under the onslaught of repeated lightning, toppling outward with a rumbling crash that would have been the loudest thing anywhere that wasn’t being blasted by constant thunderclaps.

And I pressed forward. Not fast; one deliberate step at a time toward the breach, which may not have been the wisest thing considering what was happening there, but I wouldn’t reach it soon at this pace and it was important to project a certain image to my followers here. From my peripheral vision I occasionally saw spears rise and fall as my escorts took out stragglers which came at us from out of the forest to either side.

It took a few minutes, but eventually I let up, having noticed a cessation of movement from the now-charred break in the walls. In the aftermath of all the lightning, the silence had an oppressive weight; I was surely not the only one whose ears were ringing.

True to my word, I turned and cast a round of Heals on everyone.

“Damn,” Drun Kadora commented from her position just on the other side of Aster. “Now that’s a man. It’s a shame you’re so tiny and bald, Dark Lord.”

“We’re at war, girl,” her father rumbled. “Be a pest on your own time.”

“Hey, I’m just—”

“Focus,” Aster barked, and Drun subsided, her ears lowering.

“I could do without the smell,” I observed, waving a hand in front of my face. “Phew. It’s like somebody threw bacon in a chemical fire. All right, pinch your noses and keep up, people, we’re going in. Aster, signal the defenders.”

She let out a piercing whistle and waved her greatsword overhead, the prearranged sign for the next wave to advance behind us. I led the way into the gap, into and then up onto the heap of rotted, slimy, lightning-charred human bodies which by then was tall enough I couldn’t see over it, and oh if only that could have been the most disgusting experience of my life, or even in the top five.

I paused at the top, surveying. On the other side of the breach was a large structure with a collapsed roof but evidently sturdy walls, and an alley stretching away to both sides along the outer wall itself. I had clearly taken out the bulk of the targets in this vicinity, but as I now took stock, more zombies tottered out of alleys and around corners.

Throwing my arms to either side, I cast a double Current in both directions at full blast, scoring more damage along the already-dilapidated masonry but, more importantly, taking out every undead in my line of sight. Whatever it was that signaled them to go on the attack, apparently electric death upon their comrades wasn’t it. No others emerged once I brought down the initial few.

Aster clambered carefully up to join me as soon as the lightning stopped, grimacing and placing her feet with great care.

“This is a good spot,” she declared, surveying the flat area beyond the breach. “An open area would be hell to hold, but we can defend the alley in both directions easily and erect another barricade perimeter around the breach on the other side. I’d recommend walling off one side completely and keeping open the one facing the manor.”

“Then it’s a plan,” I agreed, then turned back and raised my voice. “All right! Advance team, with us; we’re gonna clear out and hold this street while the rest of these bodies are pulled out of the gap and burned. Second wave, secure our supply lines and bring up the engineers. Let’s get this position locked down.”

War is boring. It’s not any less scary or horrible or generally traumatic for that, but in addition to all those things it is dull.

Still, better dull than lethal. I didn’t lose anybody that day; we didn’t even have more than a handful of serious injuries. There was no way you could ask for better from a battlefield, and I was grateful for the opportunity to let my people practice once such stupid, disorganized, weak enemies. It was not always going to be this easy. It would probably never be this bloodless again.

Mopping up the village took most of the day, as morning stretched out into afternoon. We cleared out bodies and set them to burn in neat rows in the forest outside, then goblin engineers came up and secured our beachhead, from which we launched the remainder of the campaign. The streets of the village made for a methodical, easily organized procedure. We went street by street and house by house. One at a time, we cleared out zombies, barricaded off alleys, turned the most collapsed houses into pyres full of burning corpses and boiled slimes.

Aster had settled on a plan to spread out along the outer perimeter for the walls and push inward, erecting defenses across the gates and every point where the walls had failed, leaving our captured breach the only way into the village. This took longer and stretched us thin, but as she explained to me, there were still about a third of the zombies that had been tightly packed into the manor grounds still there, which meant the manor gate itself would be our biggest threat and something we couldn’t afford to have at our backs. Better to make it the last point secured in the village, so we could move in with our full force and wipe out the biggest concentration of enemies still there.

I’d agreed and authorized the plan, and what followed was…work. It was violent and dangerous, but it was also methodical, systematic. Boring.

Zombies didn’t really have any surprises to give us. They were ideal opponents for neophyte commanders like me and Aster.

By midafternoon we had pushed to the central square around which the village was built; in the middle was an old stone basin full of sludge and debris that I gathered had been a pond or maybe fountain originally. The far side opposite the village’s outer gate was the gate into the manor grounds, now standing open and emitting a constant trickle of undead. They were still in there and pushing steadily out, causing me to regret not having gone through and wiped them all out when I was in there casting my shiny new spells initially, but in fairness, I had had other things on my mind at the time.

The one thing that had surprised me was that my people had battle music. It had surprised them, too.

It was the wolves who started it; whenever they fell into a rhythm of battle, they would start a kind of chant that consisted of rhythmic, wordless humming, punctuated by drumming spear hafts against hide shields, or spear butts against the ground. It was all percussion, even the vocals; they hummed very simple harmonies, in a steady pattern of emphatic bursts that helped them keep the rhythm of combat.

They had faltered from sheer surprise the first time the highborn joined in; so did I. Nazralind, Twigs, and Ismreth were along on this venture, and at one point all three launched into vocals in harmony with the wolves’ chanting. They were obviously well-practiced in traditional Fflyr sianadh and that was what they gave us, the unique musical form practiced by highborn women. The singing was wordless, just holding the notes without vibrato and high in the throat to give it a nasal quality, smoothly shifting between major and minor harmonies to make an overall unearthly, ethereal sound. I didn’t know if they were singing some established piece they knew or just harmonizing with the wolves’ chant, but it gave me chills to listen to.

And that wasn’t even the peak, because the goblins hadn’t gotten involved yet.

Once they recognized the music being used, every engineer and laborer who had a break or a hand free from working on the barricades joined in with whatever instruments they had, and to wonder what the hell they were doing with musical instruments in the middle of a battle was to fail to understand goblins. Traditional Kzidnak instruments were originally fashioned out of scraps of whatever they had lying around, which meant various winds and percussion made from repurposed lengths of metal pipe which were easy to carry. And being goblins, they did carry them, always ready to paint the walls or pipe a tune whenever they had some space and/or time to fill.

It was a mingled sound of three different musical traditions which had existed a right under each other’s noses for all these years, but until now it would have been unimaginable for them to join together.

It was the sound of the Dark Crusade, and it lifted me up the way only music can. Hearing them play and sing as we fought made me dare to imagine that just maybe, at the end of all this, we would be okay. That of course was wildly irrational, but that’s what music is for. You need something to keep you going when all sense and reason tells you to give up.

By the time I stood tired and sweaty at the gates to the manor grounds, my entourage had cycled a few times, with some constants. Aster was still with me, of course, and Rath Kadora had stuck close as well. I had allowed this without comment; it suited both his and my political needs, and he actually was a terror with that spear. We had been backed by a new squad of wolves on the push across the courtyard, and were engaged in the last round of putting down the zombies who were clustered around Truck-kun, clawing at it but too inept to figure out the doors.

Nazralind sat smugly in the driver’s seat with the vehicle blocking off the gate, right where she’d parked it after mowing down the emergent zombies. The truck was an imperfect barricade, leaving plenty of room for zombies to crawl under it, but very few of them seemed to think of that. For the most part, she had them bottled.

I reached up to rap on the window and gestured her out. She pouted, but as I’d recently mentioned to Aster, Nazralind knew better than to cause actual problems when real stakes were on the line. Leaving the engine on, she pushed the door open and hopped down.

“Lord Seiji, I officially request official truck duty when you’re not using it! Officially!”

“There’s a long line, Naz; everybody likes a big truck. We’ll see.” I ruffled her hair, which had no visible effect on it. “Aster, assemble the diplomatic team you selected and have the engineers ready to bring up the ramp. Everyone else, stay behind me and well outside this gate until I call for you. I’m going to finish cleaning this up myself.”

“You need not fight alone, Dark Lord,” Rath Kadora rumbled, thumping the butt of his spear against the broken pavement for emphasis. “My people, and all your people, stand ready to serve.”

“There are times when I will need to fight alone, and this is one. I’ve been alone in that courtyard with the undead hordes before, and the only thing that went wrong was my failure to finish the job. With the rest of you out of the way, I can really cut loose. Stand your ground. Everybody in position?”

I glanced back, verifying that my people had cleared space as ordered, then turned to face the idling truck parked across the gateway.

Banish Delivery Truck.

Windburst, Windburst, Windburst!

Arc Arc Arc Strike Arc Strike Storm.

The front wave of zombies had been trying to claw their way into the truck and collapsed as soon as it vanished, but the rest behind them tried to surge forward over their backs. Obviously that gained them nothing but their final, long-delayed death.

Once I’d blunted their attempted advance with a few Windbursts it was nothing but systematically dispensing hot, electric destruction. I paced steadily forward, unleashing spells every second in every direction once I passed through the gates and found the undead having spread from their remaining third wing of the courtyard through the entire space. The ground was also still strewn with the refuse of my previous path of destruction, the walls still marred by black streaks of melted akorthist; fortunately the winter cold had prevented putrefaction from setting in and seemed to have put the surviving slimes into a dormant state.

It wasn’t like last time. It had been another long day and I was tired as before, but far less stressed, and having spent the last few hours methodically felling zombies like I was harvesting corn it was easy enough to keep up that rhythm. Probably for the best that I didn’t show my troops the sight of myself losing my grip the way I had then, too.

The final purge took only a few minutes. I paced carefully from one side of the courtyard to the next, making sure to look down both side wings and calling down the lightning upon anything that had the temerity to move. None of them even got close enough to me to be a threat; most were destroyed before they realized they were under attack.

Funny how constant nearby thunder wasn’t among the things that triggered a reaction from the undead. I was real curious about their senses and drives. With any luck, I’d soon have Khariss in hand to explain everything to me.

Everyone was still ringed around the gate on its other side, watching with a variety of expressions. Nervous, awed, avid, wary—how specifically they felt about the sight of me singlehandledly blasting apart a horde was up to the individual, but everyone was clearly impressed.

Good.

“All clear,” I announced.

“Cleanup team forward!” Aster ordered in a ringing voice. “Get that path cleared for the ramp.”

I stepped over to one side of the gate, joining her as a squad with catchpoles and ropes trotted through to begin dragging corpses out of the way. Among the general throng ringing the square outside, there was one specific knot of people who had to be Aster’s designated entry team. The choices were…interesting.

Nazralind and Velaven were obvious, they were the only elves we had and the only representatives of their respective kinds; I had specifically asked for diversity, after all. And Zui, sure, the Goblin Queen was a reasonable choice for goblin representative, since my Chancellor would’ve bitten somebody’s kneecaps off if they suggested she sully her pink suit in a place like this. Zhylvren… I guess she was one of only two squirrel people Aster knew, and it couldn’t hurt to have another Blessed with Wisdom on hand to gather info. I still didn’t know what kind of perks she had, but they didn’t call her Seer for nothing.

But the others…

“Really?” I murmured very quietly.

Aster shot me a little sidelong smile, leaning her head closer to whisper back. “Most are here for good and specific reason I hopefully don’t need to explain, but to fill in the gaps… Jessak and Drun Kadora are both smart enough to behave in public, and have enough status in their tribes to be solid representatives. Also capable in a fight, in case our attempt to talk sense to the vampire goes like the last one did.”

“I could almost suspect you chose entirely women on purpose.”

“I may be making assumptions,” she muttered, “but considering what little we do know about Khariss… Yeah, I’ve got a feeling she’ll respond better to women. Shame we can’t do anything about you.”

“That’s more or less everyone’s reaction to me, isn’t it?”

A whistle went up from within, indicating job done, and a team of wolves trotted through next, carrying the akorshil-and-iron ramp the goblins had made in preparation for this. I stepped forward less hastily, pacing along after them with a measured stride. Taking this as a signal, Aster and the rest of the team chosen to confront Khariss trailed in after me.

“Thanks, good job,” I complimented the bearers as soon as they had the ramp in place where the melted stairs used to be. With no further delay I stepped onto it, masterfully—if I do say so myself—repressing any outward sign of unease at the way it shifted under my feet. The thing held, though; they’d braced it well and the engineers hadn’t cut any corners. I did lower my voice as I ascended. “Biribo, what am I walking into?”

“Exactly what you expected to, boss. So congrats on that, by the way; I figured if we kept at this long enough you’d eventually start developing a knack for understanding what other people might do.”

“I didn’t ask for color commentary,” I muttered. At the top I paused, half-turning to watch over my shoulder with an aloof smile as the rest of the team ascended to the wide stoop alongside me. Zui gave me a sardonic look and Zhylvren could nevernot look smugly knowing, but everyone else seemed to have caught the solemnity of the occasion.

Once everyone was assembled, I turned back to the great double doors of the manor, raised my hand, and knocked twice.

After a pause of two seconds, the door creaked open.

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