hotmtlnovel Chapter 129: Necromancer
Chapter 129: Necromancer
Chapter 129: NecromancerCalenCalen hovered high over the northern battlements, watching the Torian army finish encamping in the early twilight. The details stood out, clearly visible with his enhanced vision.
He continued taking mental notes as he studied their deployment. After about ten minutes, when he began to run low on mana, he spiraled downward to land behind the thick, magically reinforced stone walls. Retrieving some paper, he quickly drew out a detailed map of the enemy camp from memory.
He knew he wasn’t the only scout observing the enemy position, but there was significant value in multiple reports, many of the scouts had different perception abilities after all. After handing his report to an officer, he once again took to the air. His wings of light shone brightly in the fading light.
He didn’t mind though, he loved flying. Besides, his Eyes of the Archon allowed him to observe from much further than the longest range of the Torian archers and mages. His graceful sweep through the air took him over the town, which rapidly shrunk as he gained height, and out past the south wall.
None of the other scouts had found anything to the south, but after several trips in various directions, he began to understand why. It was easy to see the destruction the undead had left, from blighted areas to felled trees and destroyed farmhouses. But he could not find a single skeleton or zombie. Each time he thought he saw a sign, he would fly in for closer examination, but nothing conclusive could be found.
He puzzled over the problem of the missing enemy as he flew east to check on the Myrin River, but found no signs that it had been forded or had been used for rapid transport.
Frustrated, Calen finally gave up. With the last of his mana, he powered his wings, accelerating his flight to the fastest he could go. He shot upward, enjoying the rush of air on his face and the sight of the world rapidly receding beneath him.
Myrin’s Keep had been reduced to a tiny circle beside the glistening thread of the Myrin River. He circled idly and his thoughts drifted to Ali’s dilemma. He had been excited about the possibility that his magic could help her – could give her the edge she needed to counter the stealth of the assassin that had so shaken her. But in the end, it seemed it simply wouldn’t work. It had been a great idea, but mana incompatibility was notoriously hard to overcome. He was certain she would be able to solve it, given time – she was one of the smartest people he had ever met when it came to understanding magic. He just hoped it would be soon so she could return to her typical happy self, brimming with curiosity about the world and magic around her.
In his distraction, his eyes picked up an unnatural and subtle pattern. From this height, he could see a roughly straight line running from the far south all the way to near the town. Something he hadn’t noticed from closer. Quickly, he downed a mana potion to give him more time to study the strange phenomenon.
He studied it for a while. His brain suddenly recalled the skeletons from the logging town they had raided. Some of them had been cutting the wood of the giant trees and making something, and now they were approaching a town protected by walls…
Quickly, he dove toward the town, gathering speed as he
“Usual formation. Ready?” Aiden asked.
Havok answered by activating his glowing Holy Shield, reinforcing his wooden buckler with his magic, and nodded along with the others. “Havok smash!”
“Ok, smash… attack!” Aiden yelled.
Havok’s Shield Rush flooded his body with the energy of his stamina, accelerating him to a blur of speed as he charged across the stone pavement. Shield Rush was one of his favorite skills to bash things with. His charge caused him to zoom past the two struggling survivors. In the blink of an eye, he crashed into the group of skeletons, knocking one of them flying. He drew his sword, lighting it up with Smite as he swept it in an outward, gleaming arc. The holy magic lit up the full length of the bone sword and, with a satisfying humming crash, it bit through the arm of the skeleton closest to him, severing the bones completely. The impact of his magic on undead bones triggered a brilliant flash and the cobblestones at his feet erupted in a carpet of the warm, ghostly flickering white flames of Consecrated Ground. Flames that would heal his allies and burn his enemies.
“Rargh! Die, skeletons!” he yelled.
Suddenly, Aiden was beside him swinging his icy swords, his magic spreading frost along the ground. Devan’s Wind Cutter flashed past his left side, almost invisible, felt like a gust of wind, and the rest of his friends engaged in battle. The street flashed brightly as Kaitlyn fired arrows dripping with lightning and sparks. Flynn conjured an enormous rock and dropped it on the skeleton Havok had sent sprawling.
“Was Havok’s next!” he yelled.
Flynn called, “Pick another!”
Havok sized up their remaining foes in an instant and swung his sword again, unleashing his pent-up fury at a stocky Dwarf skeleton. Once again, his holy magic bit deep, severing bones. He set his feet in a wide stance and smashed forward with his glowing Holy Shield, knocking the skeleton to the ground, where Devan and Aiden pinned it under a flurry of blows.
Breaking off, Havok glanced to the left and right, searching for more skeletons, but all he found were the twitching piles of broken bone and smashed skeletons, some still trying to drag themselves toward his friends, but quickly succumbing to his consecrated fire.
“Devan, can you scout for more skeletons? Let’s make sure this area is secure,” Aiden asked. In response, she scampered up the side of an intact house and disappeared over the roof.
“Havok, your Smite did some epic damage to that skeleton,” Kaitlyn complimented him.
“Of course. Smite is smite!” Havok grinned, bending down to heal the man and his injured companion, savoring the respect with which his companions treated him.
“Thank you! You saved us!” the man gushed, tears running tracks down his soot-stained face.
It felt odd receiving thanks from the injured humans but, seeing the genuine gratitude on their faces as they realized they had survived the deadly encounter, he began to understand Miss Malika’s words from back then.
At that moment, Devan came barreling around the corner with a group of rickety skeletons close behind. She yelped, “Help… uh, anytime, guys?”
Havok lit his sword with his magic again and charged. “Havok make skeleton toast!”
Lirasia
Lira’s mind floated within the awareness of the enormous oak that towered up and out of the ancient library, her body melded completely with the wood and sap, its mana and hers indistinguishable, pulsing vibrantly from the roots through the branches and into the leaves and out into the cavern beyond.
The potency of the mana flowing through the giant tree still exhilarated her – for somehow, little Aliandra had managed the unthinkable, completely restructuring the mana of her domain till it combined with her own, amplifying both and producing something greater and more powerful than should even have been possible. It was not her forest, but with just this tree, some small measure of her magic had been restored.
Yet the calm that she sought within the embrace of the tree eluded her. The fact that she was alive at all was entirely due to Aliandra and her friends and she felt the huge burden of her obligation towards them weighing down on her heart. But her fight was not over. With her senses heightened by the potent magic flowing through her, she could easily sense the vile corruption of that filthy necromancer and his despised mana flowing with unrestrained power just outside the town. Aliandra once again faced what should have been her responsibility.
There were very few times over the millennia that she regretted taking the more passive and reclusive path of her non-combat class choices, but this was certainly one of them. It should be her facing Alexander Gray, and not Aliandra and her friends risking their lives on her behalf.
The dagger of his betrayal still twisted in her heart. She hated herself for the moment of weakness and loneliness that had opened her up to his exploitation and cost her the beautiful forest that was as much part of her as it had been a home for the last several thousand years. Even in the calm embrace of the tree, she grimaced. Aliandra’s generosity had set her on the path to healing, but it would be decades before she fully recovered.
Her senses flowed through the branches and along the crackling energy of the domain mana, bringing her information, visions, and impressions from the town above via the plants and roots her mana was connected to. She saw the rubble in the streets from collapsed houses. A Goblin charging a skeleton in a back alley, supported by friends. Surges of necromantic energy and blight from outside the town walls, and small voices raised in terror.
Her attention snapped sharply to the wails.
Without thought or hesitation, she transferred her awareness into a tree within the cavern above, reaching out with her senses, and honing her focus. The plants sent her the cries of children and the stench of necromancy. She transferred again, this time into a small tree in the town above.
She was always uncomfortable in the habitations of stone and dead wood that the humans crafted, but she found herself in a small park, one seemingly carefully crafted amid the stone streets and brick houses. The tree that had accepted her awareness was fitted with a rope swing that swayed as if it had just been vacated. Off to the side, in the shadows, a small group of children huddled, clutching each other and crying, their eyes wide with fear.
In a loose circle around the children, Lira could feel the necromantic energy pouring from the creaking bones of the skeletons menacing the children with their rusty swords, clacking jawbones, and the malevolent red glow from their eye sockets. One of the skeletons took an unstable step forward with an audible grinding of bone on bone and a little girl screamed.
She flowed out of the tree, forming her body as she took two steps forward, the little roots in her feet sinking into the unfamiliar dirt of the park. The little girl’s scream cut off instantly as she brought her hands to her mouth, eyes wide as she caught sight of Lira. Lira gave her a small smile and unleashed her mana.
She was not familiar with these trees, having not incorporated them into her domain, so her magic took far more effort than she would have liked. But she could feel the depth of the hatred they harbored for the undead, and the eagerness with which they offered her their branches, roots, their very sap. Her spell surged through the trees, making their roots burst writhing from the ground, binding the sluggish skeletons’ ankles and rapidly growing up their leg bones and into their ribcages. Deeper and deeper she reached, throwing more and more magic through the trees. They responded eagerly, committing themselves entirely to being her tools to destroy the hated undead. As the roots grew thick, brimming with vitality and nature, the sounds of creaking, crushing wood, and the sharp reports of bone snapping filled the park. She didn’t stop until the unearthly glow from their eyes was snuffed, and she heard the chimes in her mind.
An eerie silence descended on the park as the children stared at her, seemingly unsure if they were saved or about to be killed in the same gruesome fashion as the skeletons.
“Hi, my name is Lira,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm and soothing. “Is anyone hurt?”
There was a brief pause followed by the nervous shaking of heads when suddenly, one brown-haired boy wearing a muddy shirt broke the silence.
“That was awesome!”
As if his voice was the crack that broke the dam, suddenly the air was filled with excited and awed chatter.
“Yay!”
“Are you a tree lady?”
“How did you do that?”
“Can you show us some more magic?”
Lira smiled at their excitement, such a sudden contrast from their terror only moments ago.
“Yes, I’m a tree lady,” she answered. “I’m called a Dryad.”
“A Dryad?”
“That’s what tree-people like me are called. Why don’t we all sit over here by the tree? I would be happy to show you some more magic while we wait for your parents to return.”
She sat down among the group and began to grow some moss and flowers on the ground for them, her heart happy to hear their exclamations of delight and curious questions, comforted by the fact that these children, at least, would not be further victims to Alexander Gray’s vile purposes.