Book 6: Chapter 32
The thing swept Martha’s eyes back and forth across the battlefield, internally fuming that the defenders were holding their own against the undead it was throwing at them. It had gathered so many corpses from the departed that littered the land after multiple wars had brewed and then the vampyr had massacred so many of those who’d been left, and it had been sure that it’s unending horde would defeat anything it brought them to destroy.
Martha laughed at it’s displeasure and kept looking for an opportunity to strike. The was no such thing as an unending horde, which the thing would have known if it had actually tried to learn anything about necromancy. It had never truly learned her art, to it necromancy was just another tool. It was true that quantity had a quality all it’s own, but quality was quality and the thing had made such poor servants that most of them started falling apart as soon as they’d risen. It was a waste of bodies and a waste of their deaths, and it made Martha rage more than any other time the thing had defiled those who had passed. True necromancy was to use what the dead had left behind in service to the living, not this mockery and disgrace to their memories!
The thing sent the twisted abominations made from the corpses of the vampyr it had been studying forward as shock troops, but most of them fell apart before reaching the wall. They were either trampled beneath other marching undead, fell apart when their own movements tore the combined bodies apart, or were blown to bits by incoming fire. Only the worst monstrosities actually made it into the fray, but both were quickly engaged by the defender’s elites. The twisted centipede made form hundreds of vampyr bodies was attacked by a wielder of gray dust while a woman was punching the gold limbed creature repeatedly in the face. Neither would last long and Martha laughed at the thing’s attack falling apart.
Seething with rage, the thing gathered up Martha’s body and started lumbering forward. Martha forced the cells and strands of muscles she inhabited to stop vibrating with laughter so she could focus on her goal. It was difficult to stop, the madness pulling at her was so tempting to dive into so that she could forget the horror that was her existence, but she managed it. She kept repeating her oldest mantra to herself over and over while she waited for her moment.
This fight might kill her. Oh, how she prayed that this fight would be the one that killed her.
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The trees to the rear of the the undead army began to shake and bend. Kay braced himself, ready to jump into the fight. A hunched shape, taller than the abomination that had been made with Glowl’s body shuffled into sight. A thin cloak draped over the figure’s body, obscuring most of their features. A thin, disjointed arm held onto a towering white staff topped with a bulbous skull that was too large to be natural. Either that or it had belonged to a giant. A single clouded eye peered out form under the cloak’s hood and the empty hand of the being swung up to point in Meten’s direction.
From the other side of the battlefield a deep purplish-black beam of energy erupted from the hunched creatures hand and speared at Meten’s side. A ripple in the air intercepted the beam and the purplish energy splashed against a glowing orange rune made of ash that appeared from inside the ripple. Meten glanced to the side as the hidden rune protected him, then vaulted over the crawling vampyr centipede monstrosity, pushing it into the path of the attack as the rune buckled and failed. The bar of energy broke through and impacted the side of the undead abomination, sending it tumbling. It crawled back to it’s many feet a moment later, looking slightly dented on the side it had been hit but otherwise unharmed by the necromantic energy.
Kay had already leapt off the wall and was charging forward. He extruded thin platforms from the soles of his boots in midair less than a second before each step which let him run through the sky at full speed. He reached the oversized figure as the beam stopped. He threw himself down at highs speed as a halberd formed in his hands, the hardened blade of blood aimed directly at where the figure’s neck should be. The cloak covering the thing rustled and a third arm sprang from inside it to intercept the attack. Kay’s blade pierced the palm of the hand twice as tall as Kay was and sliced down through the arm, stopping at the elbow as it jarred against the bone there.