The Calamitous Bob

The horde traveled south. It wasn’t moving very quickly, but it was moving, and it never slowed down. By day or night, the dead shuffled in a great tide that climbed over hills and valleys, pouring over the land in a great plague. The horde always made for the next settlement after reaching the previous one. Fortunately, Viv had all of them evacuated in the great flight.

News traveled to Sinur’s Gate and beyond. Fortunately, though, people didn’t seem too worried. Viv’s reputation was such that people were absolutely confident she would find a solution to stop enough undead to film a zombie apocalypse trilogy (plus prequel). It was nuts.

As for Viv, she had no idea. While her people evacuated, Arthur had consented to flying her closer to the horde to test for more Storms of Zamhareer. They’d barely made a dent. Worse, the horde tended to scatter as long as there were no obvious targets in sight, so the spells ended up being much less effective.

And then there were the necrarchs. Viv could spot some of them, sometimes, skulking around in the shadows behind the thick ranks of other undead. Very few of her elites could stop a necrarch without risking death. None of them could stop a hundred. Even she wouldn’t manage.

There had to be more than two thousand in Old Harrak, crawling over the epicenter like flies over a corpse. How many of them had joined the tide? She had no idea.

“We should head back,” Viv said, watching the last of her third spell peter out.

Agreed.

The evacuation should be over by now.

I never knew there could be so many humans.

And those are all dead!

“Yea…”

And not just humans, but animals, monsters, flying things to darken the sky. It was then she realized that she had received an option to become a ritualist back when she pathed up, and she’d picked something else. A ritualist could have cooked up a titanic undead-slaying spell that fed on itself without issue.

Yeah, that was coming back to bite her in the ass right now. Hindsight was 20/20 etc. It was ok though, she was going to find a solution. Surely there was one.

***

The mood in the council room was dark. For once, everyone had showed up, even Irao. Sahin sat next to Viv, seemingly meditating in his seat while the windows showed a mercifully undead-less scenery. For now. They would be coming soon enough.

The place was packed.

“Right. I think we can begin,” Viv began, rather unceremoniously.

She tended to be more casual behind closed doors.

“As you know, an unprecedented number of undead is coming right for us. They will be here in…”

She turned to Sahin.

“Eleven days at this speed. Eight days if they reach a frenzy level. I do not know enough to surmise if it is likely or not,” he replied without opening his eyes.

“We obviously need to stop it, however I’ll tell those who haven’t seen it now that they are beyond number and that even by doing it around the clock, I won’t be able to destroy all of them before they reach the city. Worse, they have necrarchs.”

Rakan and Irao shifted. They hadn’t been part of the earlier expedition but they knew the power of a single necrarch.

“How many?”

“We don’t know for sure, but at least dozens. It could be hundreds.”

“Hundreds?” Lady Azar blurted.

She made the protective sign of Enttiku with her hands. Viv didn’t do it because you couldn’t count on the gods to save you when those bastards couldn’t save themselves without her help.

“Are you saying that there is no way for us to stop them all?” Ban asked from the sidelines.

//THERE IS ALWAYS A WAY.

Most people turned to the window, from whence a cold mask had spoken.

//It is merely a matter of strategy.

//The undead are numerous and relentless.

//But fortunately, they are quite dumb.

//Even should we be dealing with the actions of an intelligent being.

//There are ways to trick them.

“An entity powerful enough to control so many undead would be nigh unstoppable.”

//The undead are significantly harder to control with my claws around their throats.

“A fair point. This isn’t a normal migration though. It cannot be,” Lady Azar continued.

She turned to Abe for confirmation. As the resident undead and expert, he was the most qualified to know.

“Indeed not. The undead do consume some measure of black mana though they emit it back. They tend to scatter unless something starts a stampede, or a migration, which is just the equivalent of enough grains of sand rolling to collapse a dune.”

“What’s a dune?” Ban asked.

Abe stopped and blinked. Viv resisted the urge to chuckle. Maybe she should find a sand beach somewhere off the coast. In summer. It would be nice.

“It’s a very big pile of sand,” she said to move the discussion forward. “There’s also the necrarchs.”

Abe nodded again.

“It is as the Empress says. Necrarchs are territorial. They would never remain side by side without some measure of contest unless the circumstances were special. Your Majesty, the mana concentration was nowhere close to that of the epicenter, am I correct?”

“No way, although they were at levels close to that of the capital by the end of the battle. The… mana was acting weird though. Something pulled at the threads before I could properly weave them, before the cast but after the core extraction.”

Most of the council appeared perplexed. She had to remember that only a few of them were casters, like Sidjin and Abe slowly nodding to themselves.

“Imagine you’re drawing a sword. Every time you do so, some invisible hand grabs the handle to contest you. You can still draw and fight if you’re much stronger, but it’s a bother. Not to mention, it happened every time I got close to the horde.”

“It must be a sign of something new. I have no recollection of anything similar ever happening.”

“Can Enttiku help us explain what is happening?” Viv asked.

“I will offer prayers. We will get guidance in these trying times.”

“Right,” Viv said. “Ok so, before we think about solutions, let’s list what we know and what that means.”

“We know it’s not natural,” Ban proudly said.

At least he’d been paying attention.

“Ok good. We also know it relates to something that can affect black mana on a very wide scale. Having said that, I doubt it’s a necromancer. Efestar was the best at providing this sort of power, and we flipped him to our side.”

The rest of the council looked distinctly uncomfortable. Viv sighed, then sent a massive amount of mana Efestar’s way.

“WHAT IS IT?” a voice roared in her soul.

“I just kind of belittled you. Sorry,” she whispered.

“AGAIN?”

“I’m under a lot of stress. There is a titanic horde of undead heading my way.”

“IT’S NOT MY FAULT.”

“I know, I know.”

“ENTTIKU WILL HELP. IT’S THEIR DOMAIN.”

“Thanks, on it.”

Viv returned to the present to realize everyone was now looking at her.

//Were you communing with the divine?

“Yes and he said that was fine and to ask Enttiku. Counting on you, Abe.”

The living lich gave Viv a thumbs up. She knew she shouldn’t have let Solfis show him Terminator. Now both of them were getting insufferable with random quotes.

“So it’s most likely not a necromancer, but could it be a lich?”

Nobody commented. In fact, everyone's attention was on her.

“What?”

//Your Imperial Majesty.

//The continental expert on black mana and undead disposal…

//Is you.

Viv hated being the most qualified person in the room. Wait, no, she hated being the most qualified and having no idea what the fuck was going on. Maybe it was all part of being an adult.

She missed the days where fucking up just meant she’d lose grades on a school project.

“I didn’t feel any presence controlling the undead, but there has to be one, somehow. I just don’t feel like it’s a lich due to the presence of necrarchs. There was something weird happening in the previous battle: the necrarchs didn’t appear until I did. I don’t think it was a coincidence because… they appeared all at once.”

“I share this opinion,” Sahin added. “We were fighting for hours. Any necrarch in the horde would have had ample time to come. If they are indeed spread out, they would have come one after the other. Instead, they came all at once almost immediately after the Empress arrived. This might have been a trap.”

“Do you mean that the necrarchs were held back?” Ban asked with clear worry.

“Not just them,” Sahin added.

He finally opened his eyes. Reclining in his chair, he placed a long finger under his chin. He was almost talking to himself.

“The undead we fought did so with all their might. Given the size of the horde, however, the assaults should have been more dense. I fully expected to lose an entire company.”

Viv was aghast. She hadn’t been aware of that.

“Instead, they came piecemeal. It was as if we were being kept alive on purpose.”

A chill crawled up Viv’s spine.

“You were… bait? For me?”

“But then why not immediately surround you? All of the necrarchs came from the front. It would have been easier to have a few of them hide on the other side of the shelter. And why keep the fliers over the city instead of having enough overhead to block your avenue of retreat? I find it all very confusing.”

“There is also the matter of necrarch control,” Viv continued. “Necrarchs are the hardest creature to affect since their reserves of black mana is massive, yet when I used yoink on one of them, I didn’t feel any foreign presence at all.”

Never had the occurrence of such a silly word been received with such gravitas. It made Viv so happy she’d switched to edgier names for her spells, as befit her evil witch queen aura.

“So to summarize, we are facing an unknown intelligence that pursues less-than-optimal strategies for dubious purposes, and that isn’t a lich, or a necromancer,” she finished.

Irao raised his hand. It was so unusual for him to participate that everyone turned to him

“So. We don’t know shit.”

“That’s it, yeah,” Viv freely admitted.

“Our first priority shall henceforth be to learn more,” Sahin said, unamused. “I propose that our most proficient casters work on it. Meanwhile, I have work to do for your apprentices, if you will allow it. After all, even if we do manage to find out and stop whatever intelligence moves the creatures, they themselves will remain a problem for the foreseeable future. Now that they have been moved so close to us, we must thin the herd.”

“You have an idea on how to deal with that many creatures?” Viv asked, a little surprised.

“I wouldn’t be much of a strategist if I did not. I shall require the entire army, all the mages you can spare, about five thousand laborers, and the help of my dear friend Lak-Tak.”

Sir Warcrime’s ears twitched with excitement. Viv wasn’t surprised. Once again, mankind would suggest to him more exciting ways to kill stuff in great numbers.

“I mean, sure. It’s kind of important.”

“One last thing,” Lady Azar said. “We should call upon the Paramese alliance.”

“They’ll never get here in time,” Viv said, but she realized that wasn’t entirely true. “But their elites might.”

“Yes. I will also personally request the help of the Golden Order. The sisters of Enttiku will surely be of help in this grand endeavor.”

Viv nodded. After ironing out a few more details, the meeting was adjourned.

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It was remarkable how everybody was still mostly calm. Viv certainly felt like screaming. The Spark of Luck was working overtime to make her life interesting even when it looked like she’d erased every major threat in the continent by cautious application of overwhelming violence. Why couldn’t it be finding a buried treasure though? Or secret spells written on an ancient wall by mysterious precursors? Or her favorite sock? Why did it have to be zombies and spiders? With a series of uttered curses and complaints to fate in general, Viv gathered Sidjin, Rakan, Lana, and Frosthawk for a brain-storming session. She made sure to have cups of warm kava on hand. This was going to be a long week.

“I suggest we go to the site of the old capital,” Frosthawk began. “It is a blight upon the surface of Nyil, an abomination. If anything cursed and unnatural occurred, it must have originated from that gods-forsaken shithole.”

Viv tried not to think about the fact she was a cursed and unnatural creature originating from that gods-forsaken shithole. Frosthawk didn’t mean it like that

Wait, was she some sort of fated calamity? Surely not.

“I agree with Froshawk,” Sidjin said, “especially considering the presence of necrarchs. They were all inside or around the city, therefore the likelihood that something started there is rather high.”

“Ok, let’s add exploring Harrak to the list. There’s still the matter of the horde though. The magical power required to keep a working spell increases with the distance. The distance between Harrak and the horde right now is about four to five times the maximum distance for portals — and those are specialized spells. That means either the horde is bringing what’s making it move, or there is some sort of relay. Yeah… Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The black mana tug must have an origin.”

“What if it’s an all-encompassing cloud of things?” Rakan asks.

“That’s a good point,” Viv replied, “but I would have felt it as a presence. Anything with true intent, such as was displayed by the horde, must have a soul of sorts. Not necessarily a human one but an imprint.”

“Golems have intent though,” Frosthawk said.

“And they have an artificial soul. It says so when you inspect Solfis,” Viv insisted.

A few of the mages around the room shivered.

“It’s never a good idea to inspect Solfis,” Sidjin said.

“Last time it told me my chances of success were in the negatives. What does that even mean?” Lana complained.

“The interface called me a meatbag,” Frosthawk added.

“It asked me if I wanted to meet Enttiku in person,” Abe commented. “I am not particularly in a hurry.”

“What?” Viv exclaimed. “Is it working weirdly with everyone? Why am I getting normal feedback?”

“Because,” Sidjin patiently explained, “you are one of the only entities Solfis actually respects.”

It didn’t make sense unless Nous was in on it as well.

Actually, he probably was.

“Looks like being dead makes gods really bored huh.”