Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

I pinged for the undead thing with Detect immediately, didn’t even bother with an Assay. “It’s true undead,” I confirmed quietly. “Not a Summons. Radiates Evil.” Undead could be raised by other than necromancy, although any using negative energy almost always ended up Evil vivivores, destroying the life and light of anything around them.

“It’s acting with purpose and intelligence.” It also probably wasn’t ready for things with much better night vision than it had. “Might be attracted to the smell of death.”

She had opened up the reedshark carcasses and sent them into the water. The corpses were bobbing out there now in the very slow current as some of the fish and other critters in the water had their way with them, but the smell of blood was still in the air.

“It shouldn’t be alone if it has intelligence...” I murmured as it turned and called out in an incoherent garbled language. “It’s also not using Necrus...”

“Its skin is blue,” murmured Kris. I shot her a look. “And it’s tall, and armored like a warrior...”

“Seriously? You’re thinking that’s a Viamontian Ancestor?” I had to ask.

“I’d know taking a whiff of it. Viamontians with the Blood don’t smell like normal humans,” Princess Kristie stated with certainty.

“Well,” I started to say, and paused as I saw more motion through the trees. “It’s got a company with it.”

“Pointing this way. It smells the blood about the entryway to the lair.” She glanced at me, and I backed away the Wagon from the site, rendering it just a floating shadow in the night as we distanced ourselves further from the site of the bloodletting, content to watch.

It looked like a patrol, with six ‘normal’ undead, two in finer armor with swords and shields, and one in green carrying a staff, moving with more purpose and awareness than the others, who seemed primed to follow its lead and not think much themselves.

Still, they were all obviously sapient, even if the simpler and weaker ones had probably given up on most anything resembling innovative thought some time ago.

We watched as they moved to the reedshark’s lair, inspecting the surroundings, even bending down to scoop at the dirt and taste it. One of the scouts called out, seeing the corpses in the water, and they even went out and hauled one back, ignoring the leeches and crustaceans and salamanders and squirming fish that fell off of it as they inspected its wounds.

Both of us were itching to take it to them. I had inherited a LOT of loathing of the undead, but motivated undead who weren’t actively laying waste to their surroundings were quite different from what I knew, although I did see them sneaking bites and tearing bits off the dead reedshark they’d hauled ashore, sort of like snacking on potato chips.

Kris was studying them intently, and the vibes I was getting off her was that she was not impressed. It was just... the insane amount of Soak some of these creatures had could be a problem.

I hissed out an Assay at III, going for subtlety. I didn’t want them alerted to the fact I was spying on them, so I went for not being sensed by what were clearly lesser sapient undead, as opposed to in-depth invasive evaluation.

“They have their own ranking system. The least of them there are just Undead. The sergeants or officers are Zombies, and that commander is a Lich. They, huh.” I blinked. “Okay, they are... pretty wimpy? Health 35, 70, and 90. Although they all can Cast, they are limited to Lead, Iron, and Copper, respectively.”

She just looked at me, and I looked back. “Firephasing would work best,” I noted, and gave her a go-ahead motion.

Her violet eyes boiled, that crazy eight-canine smile rose, and fwoosh, she was in motion!

Quaver became a solid bar of flame about halfway into her charge. The undead over there had absolutely no time to react before she reached the first of them, and adamantine flame cut through its skull like wet cheese, exploding it in steam and scorched brains.

Ah, she was on the charge. A Cleave Train towards the lich in command was right there in front of me, for all the double and triple-damage goodness.

A-one, a-two, a-three. Two undead and one zombie down, and then the lich ended up with Quaver sticking in its skull, carried to the ground as her charge ended and half the company of undead was already dead.

They raised up their spears as she smiled, completely undeterred, the undead not realizing the strangely vivid white fires rising from the corpses meant their comrades were in no way coming back. Heedless of death, they came at her.

Missed her. Riposte, another skull turned to ash, turning to a Cleave as they clustered around her and she twisted, danced among them, interlaced her own attacks, and spears and shields shattered as she sundered them, Sundering Cleave carrying the blows on to their owners.

I noted that being unafraid of dying was not a very good survival trait, as in less than twelve seconds, a blossoming flower of fire in the air, Kris danced through and between them all, and Burning burning corpses of purple-blue hue fell down behind her, along with a lot of remnants of shattered weapons.

Huh, she didn’t even have undead Banefire. That had to be galling. So many kinds to add to her Slaughter.

“You just popped all the heads, so no Baneskulls. Can you at least salvage enough for Tokens?” I wheedled at her, indicating the lich.

A bit abashed, the whirlwind of destruction hastily used her bare hands to carve out the breastbone of the lich before the Vivic energy from Quaver could consume it utterly.

It was fine. None of these things could support a higher Baneskull, anyway.

“There is definitely a relationship with Viamontians,” she declared, shaking her head. “This was a lich?!” she sniffed in disdain.

“Not a Power of Ten lich, obviously. The word just means ‘dead thing’ originally, so it’s later writers who gave it the mighty undead spellcaster connotation. Definitely not the same here.”

“I’ll say. I was severely underwhelmed.” Only one had even tried to get a spell off on her, and that had failed miserably. “I think they have some token jewelry on them...” She flicked an old silver necklace off the lich’s neck, a keepsake that was who knew how old, and tossed it at me irreverently.

“We’ll Burn that away first.” I wasn’t impressed. “Can you carve up a Token for us?”

“Yes. I’ve a feeling this should be priority on my Slaughter, too...”

“Undead always are,” I agreed sagely. “This is effectively a basic patrol squad. In a world of Powered, that means fringe and disposable.” I eyed the white stains on the ground, which would rapidly evaporate at the dawn. “Should probably treat the dead reedsharks, and not leave them for munchies, eh.”

Kris frowned, then reluctantly agreed. Not leaving any traces was a kind of trace of its own, but most of it would be easy to conceal with happenstance. “This is... odd. Military behavior tends to have your most elite serve as scouts, so they survive to get word back to you, and have a better ability to assess the enemy...”

“You are absolutely correct, with the addition of locals are best. But, you are ignoring the idea that these things are resurrecting elsewhere when they die.”

The look on her face changed, clearing up and shadowing with loathing at the same time. “Ah. They are sent out, expected to die, and will report immediately on what killed them and where when they do...”

“An effective scouting system, risking only your least valuable troops...” I agreed grimly.

------

We tossed the weapons, shields, and spears into the waters, which would play merry havoc with any scrying, and scattered about as they were, gave no clues to how the undead had truly died. The corpses all Burned down to vivic ash, and no spirits were going elsewhere to form new undead bodies and report on how they’d perished, either.

“I have a bad feeling they figured out how to have the necromantic stuff interact with the Summoning system. Plus, undead have the ability to command others of their kind less powerful than themselves. I’ll lay you really good odds that true undead can command Summoned undead sucked into the Summons system here.”

Kris inclined her head at that as she trotted along beside me on the wagon, me with my feet kicked up and lounging comfortably. “Sounds very logical. We’ve already got a rogue containment spell infiltrating it, and likely those floating virindi things. What’s something else?”

“Bad news.” I looked off at nothing. “It means there are multiple things that can infiltrate it if a random spell effect could. But if you know how the system actually works...”

Kris whistled softly as we sped through the night, the cool, but not cold, swamp air drifting around us, reeds and even lily pads still alive despite the season, and most of the trees still green. “That’s got implications...” she murmured warily.

“Yes. And, thinking about it, we don’t know how high the system’s ability to Summon goes.” I heaved a big sigh. “At the high end, the whole system could be used like a lich’s phylactery. Bind yourself to the system, and you couldn’t die, you’d just get resummoned elsewhere in a new body. If you’re of a strange mindset, you could even set it to be the body/monster of your choice.”

“Even... a boss monster, or something?” Kris asked softly.

“Yeppers.”

“That... sounds incredibly ominous.”

“Can’t imagine why.” I pointed to the left, and she coasted smoothly to a halt.

There was an Undead standing there in a cleared area of dirt, rising just above the cool, murky waters. Visually, it looked little different than the ones we’d killed, perhaps a little more ‘average’, with no discernible scars or outstanding features. “A Summons?” Kris asked narrowly.

“Uh-huh. And I bet if you look at the tracks, it’s not a fixed spawn, either.”

One minute later, she judged the truth of that. “Mosswarts, gromnies, mites, reedsharks all centered in this patch of land,” she confirmed, her feet on the ground and reading the impressions they’d left behind. “Definitely a Summons, not just undead...”

“I’m not impressed with their ability to retain their intellect. No doubt reserved only for the elite and powerful,” I sniffed. “Get your dead immortality here! Just leave your brains behind...”

Kris snorted at the idea, applicable as it might be. “Good soldiers don’t need to think, they only need to obey, right?” Her eyes flashed, hinting at things she’d seen. “No need for responsibility, self-preservation, anything. Just obey.”

“Such a perfect world you’re painting. Referring to anything?” I asked, amused.

“Viamont’s royal family had some pretty severe views on loyalty to the crown, but given their clan relations, it was not a national mindset, which is totally unsurprising.”

“Ah, hadn’t made that leap to a national identity, or a worldly one. Well, outside pressures and all that.” One of those pressures pushing back. Bloodily!