TVisTV Book 3: Chapter 34 (RAW)

Chapter 34 - The Death of Death

The true ruler is one who is be able to fathom the hearts of his family, his people, and the will of the heavens.

- attributed to Emperor Erdian II.

Seraphina’s group prepared to do battle.

They hobbled and staked down the horses further down the hill; they would do little good in this terrain. Then they drove iron stakes and lashed tripods, hung hooded lanterns where the wind would not bite them; pale Zajasite cores woke one by one until a part of the hillside wore a chain of small blue. The light breathed over mail and plate, over buckles and the keen edges of solid steel. It would not banish the dark of the night, but between the lights and the almost full moon that had started to peek out, there was more than enough light.

“Get ready! They're coming just like the lady said they would!” Frest ordered. Although he hid it well, there was a small quaver in his voice toward the end. Were it not for Seraphina’s presence, he would have run long ago.

Sir Hadraine anchored the left of their group with a heater shield and a boar-spear; Sir Smith stood center-right, mace high and patient as an anvil; Sir Gascoigne next to him with a sword and heater shield; Sir Filippe ranged between them with a cruel Lucerne hammer, ready to catch anything that slipped through the gaps. Frest inspected each one of them, tapping shoulders, a word here and there to keep hearts steady—more himself than for the young boys under him. The blue light made them all look like armored statues dredged up from a drowned palace.

“Cornelia.” Seraphina knelt down and released the sleepy serpent to the ground. Three heads lifted—one curious, one hungry, one offended on principle. “Go to the tunnel entrance, the same one that I came out of earlier. It has my scent,” she murmured, rubbing her pet’s scales. “Wait there until I give a word, then grow to the big Cornelia, but not the really big Cornelia… the medium Cornelia. Do you understand? If some nasties throw themselves at you, you may eat them.” The offended head relaxed immediately. The hungry one grinned.

You are wearing me. I approve. It’s cold, I don’t like the cold, the Hydra sent across their bond. I will go.

The small serpent flowed toward the barrow mouth at a silent slither. Hard scales seemed to take the blue, making it opal-dark before disappearing out of view.

Night burned down to the color of coal. Frost started to whisper along the dead grass from the mouth of the entrance. Somewhere in the Palipula Barrow, Death remembered an anger it had not felt in centuries.

A tide of the unquiet, bone shoulders rubbing together, eyes like coin-gleam, jaws clacking in an eager hymn had come. Some wore scraps of memory—armor coated with ancient verdigris, an archaic pauldron with a stamped lily. Banners rose behind them on shafts of long femur and cursed wood: blasphemies knotted into cloth that billowed behind them.

The Master of the Barrow came after.

The Liche wore a crown of bronze and a mantle of stitched-together bones that clicked softly. Its eyes were dark lamps in its skull; the staff in its hand had been made from a spine plated in cold metal, primitive Runes crawling along it like frost at a window’s edge. It looked at the lights. It looked at the formation. It looked at Seraphina, and something old and annoyingly patient smiled without lips.

“Lady,” Frest murmured.

“I see him,” the girl replied, stoking an anger as bright as the camp’s fire.

“Hold the line,” she told her men, giving Frest a small wink. 

Then she stepped out of the circle of blue light.

“I see you,” the Liche rasped, the sound an echo of the grave. “You bear the mark of the Old Ones on your soul. You are worse even than the invaders that have come before. My time has finally come. I will fulfill my ancient oaths. I will end you here and now and protect this world.”

“I just had a bath, thank you very much,” Seraphina laughed. “Like all evil, misguided fools, you think yourself a hero.” In her green eyes was a raw malevolence that outdid the Undead creatures. “But, yes, your time has come. That is one way of putting it at least.”

The zweihander came off her shoulder like a declaration of war. The moon chose just that moment to set its light along the edge, lending it a cold glow. Lifting her helm’s visor, she walked not fast and not slow, but at a measured pace that spoke of her confidence. In reply, a wave of dead ran to meet her; her voice lifted, bright and terrible, and the world got briefly simpler.

Her Wail of Judgment tore into the first few ranks.

The Curse animating them did not die so much as it ceased to be relevant. The wave folded, did not break. But behind them, sigils on banners flared as they absorbed the brunt of the aural assault and continued. Weakened Undead met Seraphina’s small line of Knights and were met with mortal ferocity. The warriors’ maces lifted and fell in a measured thunder, pulping pelvis and spine; spears slid out and in; a sword flickered above a rim and took a wrist. They did not shout. They occupied the ground as if it had been written with their names.

The Liche raised its staff and invoked its ancient magics with a sibilant voice that seemed to have its own echo.

Cold bloomed at Seraphina like an inverted flame. The air around her flashed to hoarfrost, and for a few moments, a beard of ice grew from her gorget. But, the Hydra-scale armor drank it and let it go—the Runed bronze at its edges warmed, the sigils along the trim awakening with a soft gold light. 

The second spell came—shards of bone driven by evil thoughts, a hail of knives. This, too, her armor protected her against, for Hydra scales were tougher than mere bones, stronger than steel. Still, the force of the impacts was enough to jar, making her raise a gauntlet to shield the face of her helm. Seraphina finally suffered a sliver of loss, thirty-four points of Health. A drop in an ocean. 

Then the third spell of magic came—black cords that wanted to bind her heart to his, to lend the creature of darkness a portion of what she was. But such a spell required doubt in one’s cause and doubt in one’s self, but the Covenant that slept within her simply allowed no such thing and simply said No.

Seraphina de Sariens, heir to the Sariens duchy and once presumptive queen-in-waiting, sneered. “Is that it?” she asked, faintly disappointed. Then she used Dash and ran.

Her sword took three heads in a single windmilling pass, a strike from a surgeon working with a hammer. Bones collapsed to powder, her new Gift boosted by her Luck already starting to do its work. She did not look at her men. She trusted them. Trusted in their skill at arms and trusted in their faith in her, or at very least, trusted in the effect of her monstrous Charisma on them. 

The girl had brought a pearl of wisdom from her old world to this one. Men fought hard for their lives. They fought harder when they had something to protect. They fought harder still in the presence of a beautiful woman.

Seraphina danced through the press of dead things, her blades sending old spirits on to a better place. In her hands, the estoc became a mace and the zweihander an axe—-strikes caving skulls, thrusts prying through spell-hardened bone. She baited them closer, greedy for the harvest of experience, all cool precision and cruel grace.

The Liche glided forward and scythed its staff through the stale air. A word like frost on brittle iron left its teeth, and the spell hooked wandering souls back from the Shallow River’s pull. Unpurified skeletons and sodden corpses knit themselves together under a sickly green radiance, shuddering into a lesser unlife. They clawed at her with the idiot courage of the dead. She met them with contempt—short, armored kicks that shattered vessels of meat and bone—then laughed, a bright, impolite giggle that rang strangely pure amid the moaning gloom.

Against all reason, the Liche’s skull contrived an expression of anger. Amazing, what mere bone could convey. “So—the warriors of the Old Ones remain puissant even in this age,” it hissed. “Very well. Taste my true power.” Its mantle of bones rattled like a storm of teeth.

The Palipula Barrows answered its master. From the entrance, the last of their hoard spilled forth: a grinding tide of the dead filled with corroded mail, desiccated flesh and ancient bones crackling with necrotic light. 

With the aim of goading her opponent, Seraphina continued to laugh.

Its eye-fires flaring, the Liche swept its staff and a crescent of green force knifed behind Seraphina’s knee just as she launched a spinning backhand at one of its minions. The cut of magic bit deep; powerful as she was, even she was forced to one knee with a grunt.

Still, the girl smiled. Everything was proceeding to plan. Cornelia, now, she cried across their shared bond.

Though Seraphina had ordered Cornelia to keep her size modest, she had said nothing about the serpent’s power. The three-headed coils surged, swelling until she was as long and thick as the greatest anaconda—and then she breathed. The side heads jetted acid, a hissing rain that dissolved bone, cloth, and corroded mail, turning the proud banners of the Liche’s warband into dripping mulch. The central head drew Seraphina’s eye—and that heartbeat of distraction earned her a rattling blow to the helm that sang in her skull. The price of ten health points for looking was worth it: the middle maw vomited an inferno.

Common skeletons simply ceased to be. Wards on the more elite dead flared, faltered, and then failed under the naked heat of Dragonfire. Cornelia had tasted the flesh of Dragons, a True Dragon, and now a portion of their gifts had settled in her very being.

“You are an abomination—to shackle a God-beast so. You are anathema to all that is good and true,” the Liche accused, pointing a skeletal finger.

“Projection… how rich,” Seraphina answered, cleaving through two more thralls in a single, contemptuous arc. “The Divines themselves approve of my actions. Or are you so swollen with hubris you’d deny the will of Heaven?”

The Liche seemed to waver. “You are playing with powers—”

“Blah, blah. Yes, yes—spare me the clichés. Anything else?” laughed the girl, battle lust bright in her eyes as she prepared to end the conversation with steel.

Seraphina remembered her Ballista—the Dragon Slayer—remembered the way its powerful thrusters had corkscrewed it through the air, shredding an aerial swarm. If the game engine was as flexible as she’d intended, it would recognize what she was about to attempt.

She sank into her knees, coiling like a spring—then exploded forward, twisting. Steel drew a helix through the air. Her blades scythed the press of dead between her and the Liche, a cyclone of edge and impact that chewed all before it into ruin.

You have slain a Barrow Zombie. 15 experience gained.

You have slain a Barrow Skeleton. 19 experience gained.

…

You have gained 1 Dexterity.

You have learned Spiral Fury (lvl.1)

A flood of lesser notifications glossed past, but the last line made her grin. It seemed that the “game system” was flexible enough to birth new skills. More kudos to her and her vision.

An errant, lingering stab of regret filled her heart as she realized that even if she were able to return to her original world this instant, she would have probably missed the launch party.

Suddenly, her swords clanged against an invisible barrier with violent sparks. The Liche turned to her, hate fillings the orbs of ethereal light that served as its eyes.

“Foolish. I knew you would come,” the Liche intoned.

Stating the obvious, Seraphina thought.

The staff fell. Her sword rose. The two weapons met and kissed in a flare of light. The creature had successfully stopped her blow

Surely it isn’t stronger than me… 

The thought snapped as the Liche’s empty mouth opened, and a sound like the moan of the mountains came out. She felt it in her joints, in every fibre of her being. A ring around them darkened, as if a circle of the darkest night had been poured around them.

Runes along her armor flared—then burned—resisting the curse’s weight. The creature wasn’t overpowering her; the curse was.

Staff and sword locked; she levered, pivoted, and stabbed for the Liche’s left eye with her estoc. The skull twitched just out of line, the curse bleeding Strength and speed from her thrust. The square-sectioned point scraped the temple, etching a fine, ugly line. The air itself hissed as if offended.

“Again,” she said, scarcely louder than breath, and a Crystal Spear flowered at the tip of her slender blade—hard light given edge—then drove through the Liche’s chest in detonation of razor shards.

The thing only smiled. Its free hand crashed into her helm. The world rang like a bell. Pain flared white. Her vision tunneled as one hundred hard-won Health points were torn clean away.

She answered with a scream, a Wail of Judgment loosed at point-blank range. The force of it would have felled titans, but the unholy script etched along the Liche’s bones woke in amethyst fire and drank in the power.

It laughed back at her, the voice a corpse’s sigh. “Is that all?” the creature asked in mockery. “You thought me unready? I am not as my minions.” The mirth curdled into something worse. “Tell me, girl—did you truly reckon a stick of even blessed steel a match for the elder arts? You set your will against the aspect of Death itself. You fight that which cannot be slain.”

Tiā, Kiwi—now, Seraphina sent.

The raven answered with a tight, eager caw, murder-bright. Tia whooped into the wind. The sky tore—a starstone shouldered through the clouds like a falling ember.

They struck together. Kiwi raked past the skull in a blur of midnight; Tia’s lance speared the crown, the ancient bone parting like paper.

The Liche’s body slumped apart, collapsing like a very offended sack of potatoes. Around them, its minions toppled as if their strings had been cut.

Notifications cascaded across her vision, pushing her across the threshold to her next level. As expected, there was no message proclaiming the Liche’s “death.” Of course not. Not while its phylactery remained whole.

Angling toward a particular class path, she slotted her skill point into Blind Fighting, the skill ticking up to Improved Blind Fighting. An irksome sacrifice, but necessary—Blind Fighting was a miserable skill to grind. Still stung that the Liche had matched her strength—even if the curse had hobbled her—she placed all her free attribute points into Strength.

She allowed herself a small smile while she looked at her newest minions. 

Tia sat proudly in the saddle, lance at rest, breath fogging in the cold, cheeks bright with effort and delight. Kiwi fluttered down with irreverent hops to what remained of the Liche’s skull, pecked at the bone, and preened like a prince.

“Excellent work,” Seraphina said, steel sliding home with a satisfied whisper.

“I hope there will be cake!” Tia declared, as if it were the natural order of things. Perhaps it was.

Let there be cake, and there was cake, she thought with a wry smile.

One task remained. One last descent into the barrows to end the nightmare at its root. 

All Seraphina had to do now was find the Liche’s phylactery.