V2Ch103-One Surprise After Another
Tybalt was quick enough to react to the sounds of arrows being loosed, and he moved as soon as he heard them.
He seized Sirena and pulled her in between himself and the arrows, and two iron arrowheads buried themselves into her waist and chest.
With a cry of pain, she dropped.
Tybalt let her go. He moved one hand, clad in mana, to his shoulder. The others were rushing at him already, daggers in hand.
But it was futile. In the tight confines of the underground tunnel, only two could move in at once without tripping over the others.
Selvig and another foxman were the two who had happened to be closest at the moment the arrows failed.
As they tried to aim their tips for gaps in Tybalt’s armor, the guardian spirit of Sergeant Remus materialized. Turning instantly as solid as he had been in life, he knocked the blades away with a single swing of his spear. Despite the tight confines, he moved with the same martial skill he had always possessed.
“Sloppy,” Remus said. “That’s no way to hold a blade.”
The two beastmen were paralyzed for a moment, and in that instant, the Sergeant surged forward.
As he fended off the other beastman with his spear, he grabbed Selvig by the throat and slammed him head first into the stone wall. The dagger clattered to the ground as Selvig’s weak grip on the blade released completely.
Then Tybalt’s mana reached his Undead Storage seal. A single undead reappeared from within it, and the tunnel became very tightly packed very suddenly. Every beastman was slammed into the walls by the bulk of Tybalt’s human centipede.
The necromancer himself crouched beside a wall, with barely enough room to remain standing.
It was just fortunate that the creature was far longer than it was wide. Still the right dimensions to be maneuverable in a space like this.
“Don’t kill them,” Tybalt said. “Just make them all a little bit shorter.”
The bone scythe limbs jutting out of the monstrous amalgamation’s every component body flashed in the torchlight, and then the tunnel was filled with the sound of screams as the centipede chopped through legs, ankles, feet - different body parts selected seemingly at random - anything that would make the enemies “a little bit shorter.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck…”
A minute later, one of the beastmen moaned in pain while others wept wordlessly, some sank into unconsciousness from shock, and a couple of desperate ones attempted to drag themselves back the way they had come up the tunnel.
There would be no escape for any, of course.
“You’re going to give me some answers, now,” Tybalt said, picking the moaner up with one hand and lifting him off the ground.
“Fuck you,” the beastman whimpered.
Tybalt flicked one of the foxman’s stump legs with the tip of a finger, and he let out a little, pained cry.
“You can give me answers now, or you can do it later, after suffering more first,” the necromancer said. “Those are the options available to you. I prefer not to hurt you more than necessary, but if it’s the only choice I have…”
Tybalt trailed off, then used Fleshcraft to quickly pinch the leg wounds shut. He didn’t want the foxman bleeding to death, and he wanted the beastman to know there would be no escape.
“Am I still needed here… master?” asked Sergeant Remus, raising an eyebrow at the scene before him: the beastfolk bleeding everywhere and the necromancer issuing threats, while the human centipede waited, still as a giant invertebrate, for another command.
“No, please return to protecting Victoria,” Tybalt said.
He had borrowed the guardian spirit from her, but it might actually be encoded into the Sergeant now, the need to protect his new charge.
And Tybalt didn’t anticipate any further danger from this group of crippled and, in some cases, fatally wounded beastfolk.
Sergeant Remus simply nodded and faded from translucence into invisibility.
The foxman Tybalt was holding began to babble, trying to make sense of the situation.
“How - you brought undead - how did you know we would - we told you the tunnel might go under consecrated ground- ”
The necromancer walked further down the tunnel, away from the others. He didn’t want any one beastman to hear his conversation with another and be able to synchronize stories. He was prepared to perform marathon interrogation sessions, if he had to, to get all the answers these people had. They should be down deep enough that no one would hear the screams.
“You told your share of lies, and so did I,” Tybalt replied once they were distant enough. “Now I’m the only one who gets to ask the questions. Tell me the truth, or my monster’s going to sharpen its scythes by peeling your skin off, one layer at a time.”
Despite how far the necromancer had walked to be out of hearing range, his human centipede still extended far enough down the tunnel to be visible. As the foxman stared at it, the abomination clicked its bone scythes together menacingly.
Tybalt could feel that the creature actually wanted to get the chance to tear into these victims further. It was slowly becoming something more than a mere amalgamation of flesh and bones. The shape of the tool - its limbs were all bladed weapons, and many of its teeth had been sharpened by hand - was influencing its deeper nature. When it eventually got enough experience and evolved, it would probably become something naturally sadistic, perhaps a ghoul centipede.
The foxman swallowed. “I was - I was just following orders.”
“Good. Exactly. Tell me about that. Whose orders? And what were they specifically?”
The necromancer and the foxman had a brief but very informative conversation before he decided to move on to the next beastman.
He was carrying the foxman back to the rest of the group when a voice reached out to him.
“Master, there’s something alarming happening in Whadesport.”
It was Baldwin.
“Is it urgent?” Tybalt replied. “If the town has gone on alert, just tell the others I want you to move a bit further back. I doubt they would come out and confront our army, anyway, Remember, the number of able-bodied men they still have- ”
“I’m not concerned about the town watch right now, master,” the revenant sent bluntly. “None of us are. What we’re all seeing right now… It’s a massive fucking monster. A creature flying in toward the town, keeping low to the horizon. It’s just a shape against the darkness right now, and it’s hard to make out exactly what it is, but the thing’s the size of a fucking mountain! I really think you need to see this, or maybe we need to reevaluate the plan for now. Come back and take the town another day.”
Tybalt quietly swore.
“Just wait for me before you do anything unless the situation becomes an emergency,” Tybalt said. “You can tell the others to be ready, though. To attack or to flee, as necessary.”
The necromancer sent similar orders to all of his undead who had the capacity to speak.
At least I’m as prepared as I can be for this situation, he told himself. I chose my new skills. I’ve already caught the conspirators. I have the information I wanted.
But all the self-reassurance in the world could do nothing to diminish the pit in his stomach.
He quickly went around, sealing up the remaining beastmen’s wounds with Fleshcraft - he wasn’t done with them yet - and he pushed a little burst of mana into Undead Storage, releasing one of the Beastkings.
“How may I be of service, master?” asked Edwig, one of Edgard’s kin and a chthonic mage.
“I want you to bring me to the surface, into the port town over our heads,” Tybalt replied through their bond.
“Centipede, if any of them get any cute ideas and try escaping, I want you to kill whoever does it,” Tybalt said aloud. “Slowly, so the others can see.”
The creature nodded its many heads.
“Yes, master.”
“All right, take me up, Edwig,” Tybalt finally said, unable to think of another move he needed to make to prepare.
The mummy grasped hold of the necromancer and activated the skill Underworld Motion, and then Edwig pulled Tybalt up through the earth, toward the ground level of the town.
Tybalt and Edwig emerged from the ground in an alleyway between two buildings.
That’s interesting, the necromancer thought. I understand what Edwig did.
Being within Underworld Motion when one of the chthonic mages used it had always been an interesting experience for Tybalt. But with his new Magic Sense, he seemed to have a heightened sense of how magical abilities worked. This was the first time that he considered that, with practice, he could probably replicate Underworld Motion.
The necromancer left Edwig - the mummy would obviously draw attention if he was seen - and poked his head out of the alley, looking out onto a proper street.
His eyes widened immediately.
Despite the hour - a little over an hour or so past sunset - what felt like the entire population of the port town stood out in the streets, gawking up at the still darkening sky. Normally, that would have frustrated the necromancer, as it indicated that his planned surprise attack on their settlement would find the town anything but asleep.
Unfortunately, he had bigger problems to worry about.
The sight the townsfolk stared at, a creature the size of a mountain, instantly dominated both Tybalt’s field of view and his thoughts.
It might have been difficult for Baldwin and the others to identify before, owing to the distance and the creature keeping relatively close to the horizon. But there could be no doubt about what it was now.
A great purple dragon loomed over Whadesport, wings flapping slowly, its eyes flicking over the town as if scanning for something.