The First Lich Lord - Chapter 184

I stalked into the camp, which was laid out in circles. The four padded limbs of my body not making a sound. Not only had I been practicing with Raven with four-legged creatures, this one was further enhanced. In the creation I had used dark magic in every aspect. Now darkness clung to my form.

I moved past the first row of tents towards my target. The group had split up as night fell. Everyone had their own goals. Jessica and Nick were hunting down and marking the strongest individuals. Ehud was going after the artillery.

Raven had the hardest job. She’d protested at first because it did not include her killing anything, but when I questioned her ability to accomplish it she had glared at me and assured me she could. She was sneaking into the fort.

My job, and the job of the other two rogues, was the most straightforward: cause some mischief. The rogues who volunteered understood their chances of coming back were low. Our goal was to draw attention in the chaos we were causing while the others accomplished their missions.

I passed the second row of tents, and waited for a pair of soldiers carrying torches to pass before I darted across the road and into the inner row. I made myself as small and close to the ground as I could get. There was no way of knowing if the others were in position, the waiting was supposed to give us a chance of all being ready.

A large fire burned in the central part of the camp. The tents were bigger and more elaborate, Jessica’s and Nick’s targets would be here. Our distraction should bring them out. There was a silhouette of a man on the other side of the fire. Suddenly he staggered and fell noisily into the fire, sparks exploding out. A figure stood where he had been, already moving towards his next target, I hadn’t gotten into position first after all.

A pair of clerics walked by my hiding place, and I struck. I sank a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth into one of the clerics’ necks as my back legs tore at him. With one arm, I reached around seeking his throat, as the other lacerated the face of the second alarmed cleric.

My claws tugged, catching on the bone of his skull and destroying one of the eyes. I spat out a wad of flesh—I had not given this creature a stomach. There was a spray of blood from severed arteries as the cleric I had jumped on collapsed.

Shouts of alarm were already ringing out, the other two rogues having either been spotted or let themselves be seen. The cleric whose eye I destroyed had drawn his mace and was swinging at me. Even the first cleric was still alive, he was a tough son of a gun, I left him alone to dive at his companion.

By the time I was done mauling the second man, making sure he was fully dead, the first cleric had cast healing magic on themselves and she was trying to get to her feet.

My claws sliced into her flesh, but before I could do any significant damage, a blast sent me crashing into a tent. When my vision cleared, I saw a paladin charging towards me, warhammer raised. I scrambled, dodging away from a powerful blow that cratered the ground. There was a flare of magic and the paladin sped up. I barely managed to dodge it, more focused on the fact that his magic hadn’t been the pure white of Olattee, nor the black of its dark cult. It had been red.

I scrambled away from the paladin, who wasn’t my ideal target. The inner circle was erupting in chaos. The two rogues were flashing through the group. Already nearly a dozen bodies lay on the ground, I felt inadequate. I hadn’t even brought down two, and in the same time the players had killed nearly a half dozen each.

A priest strode out of one of the large elaborate tents, his gait confident and a disgusted glare plastered across his face. This had to be one of Jessica and Nick’s targets. I managed to grab him before a pulse of magic sought to throw me off. All it did was drive my claws deeper into his flesh and through his surprisingly tough robes as I clung on.

The chances of me killing this man were slim to none, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t try. When the pulse of magic faded, I yanked myself forward, maw open wide and going for his throat. A clenched fist slammed into my open mouth, exploding with black magic that hammered me flat into the ground. That blow was followed up a moment later by another fist, this one glowing with white light hammering me down.

Deciding I was better off moving on, I tried to escape. Glancing at the priest in between dodging blows I realized he wasn’t a priest. Though his robes were fancy, he held no scepter nor holy symbol. He fought with his fists—I’d found some kind of monk.

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After a series of powerful blows, the monk slowed and I used the opportunity to try and spring away. But he suddenly grabbed a hold of one of my legs right before I would’ve been clear. “Oh no you don’t,” he growled. The hand gripping me hurt, and the moment before he began thrashing me around like a ragdoll, I saw flickering blood magic fading from his body.

I was slammed into the ground over and over again. If it had been a movie I was certain he would’ve tossed me away and gave me a chance to recover. But that’s not what he did. He did a decent job of imitating what a person did when they were trying to swat a swarm of rats with a shovel.

***

“What the bloody hell was that about?” Morden growled, kicking the strange undead that had attacked him. It was covered in gore, having used it to beat to death one of the annoying bound souls that had snuck into the camp. “Surely it did not expect to kill us?”

“Assuredly not,” Everit agreed. The third assailant had gone after her, but the paladin, even unarmored, had dispatched the fool with ease.

“They did manage to kill some of the weaker clerics,” Marcia, a cleric, noted.

“Doesn’t matter,” Lexx, a priest, said. He wore elaborate half-black-and-white robes with bloodred runes sketched a crossed it. “Since they have channeled divine power, they should make excellent minions.”

“It is nice that we don’t have to hide this exquisite power anymore,” Morden agreed. “We are so close to completion, that it doesn’t matter if the rest of the church joins the friar, the holy city is ours and the monarch, along with the archbishop’s, are so close to finishing.”

“It was a distraction.” Omen, a war cleric, strode into the central clearing. “Our catapults were attacked and many of the crew are either dead or wish they were. Are you going to kill that thing? Or is there a reason you’re keeping it alive?”

“Oh.” Morden looked down at the undead which was doing a decent job of playing dead. “I was actually hoping we could see what happened if we pumped blood magic into the undead, it might be a useful thing to test.” He picked up the undead which was something between a human and a big cat.

***

“I think in the end it was already gone,” Lexx said to Morgen. “You must’ve destroyed whatever it used for a brain. Still, good to know we can make the undead bleed and that blood magic, when properly used, is quite effective.”

They had spent the last hour poking the undead with different kinds of blood magic. Lexx, the unofficial leader of the group, had eventually tried a minor healing spell that caused the arm he cast it on to gain living flesh that poured out blood until the arm disintegrated.

“I think we’re forgetting something,” Omen said, his voice disapproving. “Where did they come from? They attacked our catapults, if they had just attacked us that would be one thing. But the catapults indicate they belong to something larger. Has the Lich gotten here?”

“Why would he have come this way?” Everit asked. “I still won’t believe they’re working together. Besides, he shouldn’t even know we are here, we came from the capital far too quick.”

“Unless the friar managed to get a message out,” Lexx argued. “Why does the two of them working together seem so preposterous to you?”

“It just doesn’t seem like the friar,” Everit disagreed. “He was always too much of a stickler for the rules.”

“No.” Lexx had known Friar Brown for a long time, he wished they could’ve brought him along with them. With the friar on their side, no one would’ve been able to even slow them down. “He has always followed…”

Lexx’s words trailed off, a flare of magic getting his attention. But before he could even track down a direction or what it was, a cluster of eldritch blasts hammered out of the night. The defenses around the camp weren’t meant to withstand an attack in such a small area. Half of the blasts detonated against the shield, breaking open a hole.

It all happened so quickly that Morden was just barely turning towards it when four eldritch blasts hammered into him. Five blasts had made it through, one missed, destroying a tent and catching the poor priest inside by surprise.

The explosions had the monk stumbling. The wounds left behind were like cauterized craters in Morden’s muscular body that glowed with eldritch magic. Already magic was swirling around the camp as the priests sprang into action. Morden straightened up, the glow of the eldritch power already starting to fade as his own magic overwrote it. “That the best you got!” he yelled out and threw back his head in a roar.

An arrow that gave off a deathly aura that made even Lexx feel sick punched through the top of his mouth and out the top of his head. Three more arrows giving off the same aura buried themselves in his chest. A moment later, the thunderous crack of the sound barrier having been shattered echoed through the camp.

Barriers formed all around the inner camp as the clap of the sonic boom ended. Lexx turned to see what was giving off such an awful aura. Morden’s body refused to die even though his brain was already dripping out of his ears as a black sludge. His body collapsed to its knees before it began spasming as nerve endings fired. Rot spread out across his torso from the other three arrows, ensuring the bodies death.

“Over there!” Marcia pointed to a hill where a cluster of figures stood, the remnants of a concealing dome of dark magic still fading. Two of the figures were nearly completely done building huge and complex eldritch spell, the light given off by the magic illuminating the hilltop. Four figures held bows, standing around a figure with a massive longbow still emitting flickers of eldritch power.

The ground shook as four massive figures landed. Two of them emitted eldritch light as they charged. Out from behind the hill rode a cluster of mounted figures on steeds wreathed in eldritch power. Into the night, a thumping baseline of a song played out.