V3Ch23-Fort Hadrian
Tybalt spent the next full day raising the dead.
There were hundreds of bodies in the crypt, counting the complete skeletons there along with the comparatively scarce fleshed out corpses.
Most of those who had died for Fort Hadrian over the centuries were moldering or piles of organic dust that could not be recognized as a human being. Still, there were many relatively intact bodies or skeletons that could be raised as undead.
Even the corpses that had been reduced to complete dust would be helpful later, but Tybalt couldn’t use the corpse residue for anything now, so he ignored it.
The necromancer’s power began to permeate the area as he worked. This space was already corrupted holy ground, particularly ripe for his art.
Now that energy began to penetrate deeper and wider through the ground, all while the soldiers went about their daily business. There was chatter about the previous night’s deaths and about the strange, unpleasant wailing the watchmen had heard, as Tybalt’s banshee gleefully reported back to him.
But no one had the senses the chaplain had possessed, the capacity to observe the holy powers of a hostile god at work.
Without him, the garrison was blind to their death being sown just yards away from where soldiers patrolled.
The bodies of the crippled and muted but still living soldiers lay on the ground like lumps. They hadn’t moved much immediately following Tybalt’s removal of their limbs. They didn’t start now. Their breathing and heartbeats were shallow and unsteady, so he imagined that not having those body parts was having some negative effects besides the simple distress of their removal.
It was probably more damaging because they were relatively low level, he guessed. Or humans have a lower base health than beastfolk do. When I did that to the conspirators trying to kill me, they still managed to say a word or two afterward. Including full pre-mortem confessions in detail. Then again, maybe having their mouths sealed shut is just as distressing as losing the limbs.
Victoria prayed for hours, first around the chaplain’s body and then slowly walking rounds by the walls of the crypt, before she told Tybalt in her soft, gentle voice that she felt she was done.
“Thank you for your help, Vicky,” he replied, and kissed her.
Then Edgard took them out of the fortress, Tybalt teleported her safely back to Humun, and he returned to plotting the soldiers’ doom from under their noses. For a few hours, the necromancer slept, until at sunset, Stanislaw gently shook him awake.
Then Tybalt set his banshee to shrieking again.
This time, Saoirse unleashed her full volume, hovering right over the center of Fort Hadrian so that none could sleep. It rattled even Tybalt’s teeth, despite the fact that he was naturally somewhat resistant to the power of his own undead.
She did this for hours, taking short breaks as men tried to shoot arrows at her or stab her with swords, just to laugh at and mock their efforts. Out of this group, only the chaplain could have done something to her, just as only he would have noticed and investigated Tybalt’s activities in the crypt.
The banshee kept the men on edge and prevented them from sleeping. Many of them had already slept poorly the previous night, either owing to her efforts or the murder that had taken place.
Tybalt waited until it was so deep into the night, and the wailing had continued for so long, that men’s nerves were clearly fraying before he began his next move.
He pushed mana into his Undead Storage seal, and the last monster he’d brought with him emerged: the gashadokuro.
The giant hulking skeleton barely fit inside the crypt, folded into a pretzel-like shape, and Edgard quickly used Underworld Motion to take the creature just outside to guard the door.
Then Edgard moved to just below the entrance of the fortress. He used Pillars of Earth to produce walls on both sides of the gate in and out of Fort Hadrian, then shot pillars out of the top of Fort Hadrian’s exterior wall, knocking the men positioned there backward into the fortress.
Finally, he used a last set of pillars to block off the stairs leading to the top of the wall.
Now every soldier was trapped inside the fortifications meant to protect them.
The mummy sent Tybalt word that he had completed his task, and the necromancer used Chthonic Consecration, dedicating the entire fortress to Lord Mudo.
This mostly relied on the Death God’s power, and Tybalt’s authority as his High Priest, but even so, affecting such a large area was draining physically and mentally.
And it broke stealth.
That was why he had waited to do it until near the end. His legs shook as the energy flowed out of him.
But the reward was more than worth the exhaustion.
Every undead was instantly strengthened, but every living human felt a pall suddenly overtake them. They didn’t know why. They lacked the sophistication for that. But they could instinctively piece together that some power hostile to them was at work, and they could feel the general direction it had come from.
Some of them blamed the banshee and hurled curses at her. She had already been weakening their souls with her song, so she was not blameless. Others were focused on the practical problems of the suddenly sealed areas. Only a few headed in the direction of the crypts.
Edgard finally popped out of the ground beside Tybalt and Stanislaw.
Then Stanislaw led them in song.
The chanting they engaged in combined the powers of several of the former High Priest’s skills that Tybalt did not yet possess: Blight, Bone Puppetry, Impure Resurrection, Soul Bind, and the Undeath Ritual.
As they sang, the area that had been covered by Chthonic Consecration began to change. Rather than simply being full of underworld energy, it became a conduit for underworld forces to flow through. Instead of mainly enhancing Tybalt’s magic and the strength of the existing undead, it allowed other entities to rise and take shape - entities that had either not inhabited this land before or had given up on their lives long ago.
Enemies who had died attacking Fort Hadrian, including ancient elves and beastfolk, took shadowy form to harass and disturb the living.
Their old opponents, fallen soldiers of the Kingdom, rose again, too.
But they were no help to the garrison now. They returned incomplete, crude fragments of themselves mingled with the soil and the spirits of their brother soldiers. They didn’t remember who they had been, only that they were angry and bitter at the loss of their flesh.
The weeds that grew around Fort Hadrian despite the best efforts of the men to keep them under control began to sicken, yellow, and emit foul odors.
The soil grew polluted with necromantic energy and began passively perverting everything in contact with it.
Some men began to vomit from the combination of noxious gases and spiritual corruption.
The bone dust from the crypt swirled in the air around Tybalt and the others, making improbable patterns as it moved with the energy emitted by the three spellcasters - taking clear shapes one moment, then shifting to constellations in the next, before finally returning to simple dust clouds drifting along the ground a few seconds later.
The men who had been blaming the banshee now fled from her. The song that had merely disturbed them and put them on edge now caused those nearest to her to drop dead, without any additional effort on her part.
Men who had been trying to maintain calm lost their courage and began pounding at the earthen barriers Edgard had erected to keep them from leaving.
“Let me out!” some screamed.
“Vika, help us!” shouted others.
There were an increasing number, though, who marched toward the crypt. They had either kept some shred of their sanity or were driven there by sheer survival instinct.
Spears and daggers drawn, whatever came to hand, they could sense that reaching the source of the contagion affecting them and the dark energy warping everything was an emergency. If they didn’t destroy this threat now, it would end them.
The sound of chanting as the soldiers approached only confirmed that the unassuming stone structure where they kept their dead was the center of all this skullduggery.
The first man stepped up to the entrance and reached for the door’s handle - and promptly disintegrated.
Then the first row of men behind him turned to dust too.
The invisible gashadokuro did its work, its Reaper’s Scythe cutting through the soldiers as they tried to investigate the nefarious force at work.
The monster swung in wide arcs, a lethal but predictable pattern. The giant reaper quickly slew all those who had initially appeared. But as the screaming of those about to fall spread throughout the fortress, more soldiers were drawn to the site of slaughter.
“Fight for your lives, men!” shouted one of the surviving sergeants.
“It’s that way!” yelled another.
Some fragment of their fear transformed into anger at the vague idea of an enemy to fight.
“Kill! Kill!”
They shouted, trying to boost themselves as they charged through the halls toward where the dark magic continued to strengthen.
The first row of this renewed group to meet the gashadokuro’s scythe met the same fate as the previous group, but there were too many bodies pressing forward for the others to turn back.
Dozens died every minute at the hands of the great monster, but eventually, some managed to press in close enough around it, without being able to see it properly, that they could get in contact with the crypt door.
Neither Tybalt nor Edgard had bothered to block or lock that entryway.
During the day, no one had any business that would bring them into the crypt.
Now, as the first men to survive the gashadokuro and rush past it discovered, the mages’ other layer of defense came forward to slay the intruders.
Scores of zombies and skeletons crowded to meet the enemy. The soldiers, at last faced with opponents they could see and understand, struck blows against them almost eagerly. At first, they did well, hacking bodies to pieces and shattering skulls into splinters.
But with the gashadokuro still swinging its Reaper’s Scythe invisibly, turning the living to dust without warning, and with the undead enemies fearless and as numerous as the soldiers, the tide quickly began to turn against them.
It only grew worse when the fallen soldiers began to rise again and attack their comrades from the back or to the sides.
The soil, steeped in Tybalt’s power, was doing his work for him now.
The tide of undead rolled forward, spreading throughout the fortress along with the gashadokuro and banshee, killing and tormenting all who met them until there was no sound throughout the structure but the banshee’s ghastly singing.
The massacre of Fort Hadrian would be one of the bloodiest and most one-sided defeats in Nietian military history, but no one would live to tell the tale.
No one except the victor.
An hour in, the fighting was done, and Stanislaw broke off singing. Tybalt and Edgard stopped instantly too.
Thank Lord Mudo, Tybalt thought. I won’t have my voice tomorrow as it is.
“You have won, master,” Stanislaw pronounced.
“It is a great victory for our side,” the necromancer agreed.
Before them rose a creature of mingled flesh and bone, spirit and corrupted divine energy, malice and hunger.
One of the two major focuses of the ritual.
The chaplain.