Chapter 52 - The Final Countdown

“I’d say it is about time,” said Badgelor, returning briefly from his scouting mission.  The companion link was not on a channel that was easily monitored, so the war badger remained unseen.  

“How are they holding up,” I asked.

“Seen better, but also seen much worse,” said Badgelor.  “If your intention with Julia’s weapon was to infuriate Charles, it worked.”

“Yup, that was what I was going for,” I replied having no idea what he meant as I checked the last strap on the leg of my armor before moving onto the rest of my gear.  I needed to focus, this was going to be the big showdown and I needed to ensure that I was at the top of my game.

“Why the hell are you wearing Filly’s jacket,” said Shart as he yanked the jacket back into his storage.  “I can tolerate Filly stealing back his hat, obviously no one could secure it well enough, but I’ll be extra damned if anyone takes his jacket!”

Badgelor rolled his eyes.  

“I’ve got my eyes on you, badger,” said Shart.

“Ahem,” I said, looking over my companions.  

“Are you ready,” asked Shart as I finished polishing my latest weapon.  

“I’d better be or this is going to be the shortest defense of all time,” I said, glancing down at Badgelor’s gift.  “You sure you should be parting with these.”

Badgelor nodded.  “I’ve got a promise to keep.” 

“So do I,” I said, nodding.  I was ready.  The world was ready.  I could taste it.  The final battle was about to start.  “Shart, what day is it?”

“Turfin?” replied Shart.

“Wait, that day doesn’t end in Y?”

“No days end in Y, Dum Dum,” replied Shart.  “It's Mogdon, Zbras, Turfin, Boogle, Choo, Yippai and Badgelor’s Rest.”

“You have a day named after you?” I asked.

“I used to have two,” replied Badgelor, “Freaking Turfin and his stupid ‘sacrifice myself to save the world’ nonsense.”

“I wanted to bring this up for a while now, you keep saying that any day that ends in Y is a good day to kill Charles, and no day ends in Y,” said Shart.  “It seems like you think you can’t win.”

“On Earth all the days end in Y,” I said.  

“Do you think you can only beat him on Earth?” asked Badgelor, “That’s not productive, we need to beat him here.”

“Jim, you have to be confident in yourself, just think you got past Mogdon, everything else is downhill until the Choo,” said Shart.  

“I’m renaming Turfin 'Wednesday” I said, using my Kingly powers to rename a date.  

“Yes,” bellowed Badgelor.  “Suck it you old hero who’s not me!”

“So Shart, what day is it?” I asked.

“Wednesday?  That name sounds made up,” said Shart.  

“It's a day that ends in Y, that’s a good day to kill Charles,” I said.  

***

“Where is the Mayor,” whispered someone as the horde of undead began marching towards the wall.  Julia, of course, was totally confident that the Mayor would arrive just in the nick of time because that’s what he always did in the stories.

She just wanted the nick to happen earlier.  

Julia knew and understood the plan, but there was a difference in intellectually understanding why you needed the enemy to crack the cask before you brought out your own vintage, and actually watching the wine spill.  

The Dark Overlord’s attacks were terrifying, but a massive wave of undead was somehow even more so.  Julia was as much a historian as your average princess and grew up listening to the various stories of Grebthar fighting the Dark Overlord, never had there been this many undead.  Never once in the stories, never once in the histories.  

The sheer mechanics of supporting that many undead was impossible by anyone other than a god.  

The first ranks had been obliterated by her counter attack, but in the minutes after they had reformed and now the enemy had their own barriers.  The undead’s barriers were dark, wicked things powered by shadow and there were so many that even the mana around them was becoming contaminated.  

That wasn’t all they had though.  Somehow Grebthar raised adventurers from the dead with some amount of their power intact.  The northern custom was to bury a person bound with their gear, and so many of the adventurers were armed with the powerful set of equipment they were buried in.  

Arrows and spells peppered the wall as her family picked themselves up and got back to defending.  Blasts of holy power rained down on the undead, but with so much shadow energy about their effects were muted.  

Julia focused on generating another barrier that ran along the entire length of the wall as a fourth massive wave of arrows flew up to blot out the defenders.  Most slammed into the barrier uselessly, but one arrow flew high over it.  To Julia’s horror the arrow suddenly twisted in air and dove straight into a mass of her cousins before exploding.  

Most survived, one was flung forward off of the battlements and plunged into the mass of undead below before anyone could do anything about it.  

The next volley saw three arrows bending similarly, but Queen stood next to her and shot them out of the sky with her rods.  The Staff of Power was giving her far more control over her spellcasting than she had previously exercised.  She picked it up from where Julia discarded it and now it was hers by family tradition.  

Which was going to be a problem later if any of them survived.  

***

Fenris liked easy tactical problems, and this problem was easier than most.  The way to hold off the massive horde of undead off was to bottleneck them and the Western Gate Fortress had literally the best bottleneck of all time.  

The tunnel itself was impressively long, so the defenders could start very near the enemy and ‘allow’ themselves to be pushed back virtually the entire length of the tunnel with no worries.

They could allow this because the roof and walls of the tunnel were filled with every type of trap that could have been imagined by Grebthar, the Walker of Siers, Beakatrix, and those adorable Dalton Daughters.  

During the first push, the enemy had used primarily undead and Fenris allowed the Dandies to get pushed almost back to the entrance before engaging any traps.  The hall exploded in magical, scientific and more conventional stamina based traps leaving the cobblestone road through the wall covered in undead gore.  

Stamina based traps involved complicated things like putting heavy rocks up in the roof of the tunnel, and heavy rocks worked against most foes.

Then he led the Dandies as they pushed back the remains of the undead horde all the way to where they started the battle, much to the consternation of the enemy general, a powerfully built one armed undead that looked very much like someone had reanimated the corpse of the great Triblade.  Fenris really hoped that was not the case, because he both admired Triblade, and that companion was the only swordsman who could match the legend, Han So, in one on one combat.  

“And we are sure that is not the Triblade,” asked Zorlando, about the weapon.

“Just a bad copy,” hoped Fenris.  

The second push was worse.  Somehow the Dark Overlord managed to find a mind boggling number of dead adventurers and raise them as well.  Fenris suddenly deeply regretted the northern concept of interring their powerful adventures in consecrated crypts.  The concept was to show the wine drinkers that even Northern dead could be trusted, but based on what Jim said it was more likely that the Sphinx had influenced that.

There was a massive crypt of dead adventurers that had been guarded by ‘retired’ adventures just outside of Filly.  Fenris knew some of the guards there and they had a distinct tabard showing they were retired, much like the large undead fighter rushing towards him.

Fenris deflected the blow with his shield and slashed along a weak spot in the undead warrior’s armor.  The warden’s blade deflected without doing much damage, so he executed a shield slam which sent the larger undead warrior flying backwards into the mass of undead.

Unfortunately, undead were much tougher than humans and didn’t die easily.  That one would be back on his feet in moments and several of the adventurers in his honor guard were already badly wounded.  

The Dashing Dandies were good, but even they were hard pressed against this sort of attack.  Wounded troops needed to be pulled back quickly so that the undead didn’t get them.  Some of the dead they ate, others were dragged back screaming for a worse fate.  

Worse, several of the undead were magical casters and were busy peppering anything that looked like a trap with magical effects.  At least one pot of boiling oil had exploded due to fire magic and many of the murder holes in the ceiling were frozen shut.  

Which was fine.  

“Now,” said Fenris, clanging his sword to his shield three times.

When Hansa invented the thingamabob it was a somewhat useful, if unpredictable weapon.  You could throw it at an enemy, and that was reasonably effective especially if they didn’t have any science based resistances.  

Margwal on the other hand saw their use for construction, and that meant that the explosion needed to be much more controlled.  She designed them with variable timers as well as making the basic contraption much larger.  Then she invented various explosives for hot and cold detonations, useful in mining certain kinds of ore.  Later she would develop the explosives to be flatter or longer for better use in mining.  

That seemed to be the best possible use of the devices until Rose got ahold of them.  Rose was different than her sisters in a variety of ways.  She wasn’t as innovative as Hansa, and she wasn’t as practically determined as Margwal.  Rose believed in aesthetics, that a device needed to both look good and be useful.

And everyone could use a good cobblestone.  

The undead didn’t care that the cobbles had a floral pattern down the length of the corridor.  They marched past those stones relentlessly.  The undead champions might have cared, they might have wondered why those stones were replaced but they couldn’t see them covered in gore like that.  

The Dandies moved like a swarm of ants.  The front ranks held, but everyone behind them dug in the muck until they found the stem to a cobblestone rose and started pulling stones until the nearby stem was plucked.  That left a gap between the stones the undead were standing on and the army.  Rose called that space a firewall, something Fenris didn’t understand but she insisted it was critical.  

“Now!” yelled Fenris and Zorlando brought down the science plunger which caused the single line of stones they left in place to spark as the Science worked down them.  None of the effect crossed the hastily made gap and the Army of Windfall was in the clear.  

The rose printed cobbles erupted in flame.  The flames from the fuse they left were hot enough to be uncomfortable, but when the flames got to the spot beyond where the dandies pulled stones there were six such stems running down the length of the passage causing a visible wall of fire that obscured the entire tunnel.  The Dandies had to step back three paces from the heat and Zorlando was having all the stones they pulled dragged back away from the fire.  

“Rose said we only needed a three stone gap, right,” said Fenris.

“Yup,” replied Zorlando, who’s mustache was curling.

“And we decided on 20, because Hansa,” said Fenris.

“Yup, you did,” replied Zorlando. 

“So how many did you actually pull?” asked Fenris.

“We went forty cobbles back,” said Zorlando as he held out a cigar towards the fire and the tip lit.      

“Good call,” stated Fenris as the fire ended as soon as it began, and the passage was clear.  One of his bodyguards prepared to charge and Fenris held up his arm.  Several undead had piled into the passage and collapsed onto the ground steaming.  

“They are not getting through here for a few minutes,” said Zorlando.

“Good, let the healers patch up the troops and we’ll get ready to advance,” said Fenris adjusting the strap on his invincible shield. “With the enemy blocked off from here, they have no way to go.”

***

“I’m actually surprised about something,” said Shart as I adjusted the straps on my armor, again, and stopped.  That was a nervous habit and I needed to get it under control.  “How were you able to make something like that shield?”

“Charles doesn’t actually trust anyone,” I said.  “Figured that out when Excalibur broke.”

“He said as much,” said Shart.  “But I don’t get why that matters.  Does him not trusting others mean that he wasn’t willing to give them the good stuff?”

“No, it is deeper than that.  He doesn’t just not trust people, he actively expects them to betray him,” I said.  “The sword could have been made so that what I did didn’t break it.  The Hammer could have been built without his ‘worthiness’ enchantment, but those weren’t his weapons.  They were for his generals.”

“And he was afraid they would stab him in the back,” said Shart.  

“All of the items he made were of the utmost quality he decided to give them,” I said.  “That’s a weakness I can hopefully exploit with this.”

Badgelor shook his head, “I still canna believe there was magical material that powerful just lying around in Windfall.”

“Yup, strange that,” I said.

“Was it part of the tower,” asked Badgelor, sniffing at my new toy.

“In a manner of speaking,” growled Shart.

“Let’s say it was earned through someone’s grossly overplaying their hand,” I said.  

“Oh feck you,” said the demon.

Badgelor lay on his back, letting the sun warm up his tummy mounted solar cell.  “You gonna hide in Jim’s skull the whole fight?”

“The Dark Overlord will recognize me instantly, it won’t end well,” said Shart.  “If he catches me, he will report me.”

“How?” I asked.

“Do you honestly think you are the only other being on Ordinal with the admin skill,” said Shart.  “Most people have very limited access, if they have it at all, but reporting me to the Admins is a first rank task.”

“I could have reported you,” I chuckled.  

“Yeah, Dum Dum, I know thinking isn’t your strong suit, but play that one out,” said Shart, but I’d already realized what would happen.  The Admins’ were not benevolent, they were lazy.  If Shart screwed up they would punish him because they had to, but the easiest solution for me from an admin was just erasing my existence.  Immortal beings were not supposed to hate anything, but they also didn’t want to do anything more than was necessary unless they had a reason.  

I smiled, looking around the field where the shattered rock was scattered into a million pieces.  Shart had blown many of those pieces to bits.  Then he spent his time cursing or urinating on the remains of his most hated foe.  

A butterfly landed on Badgelor’s nose, causing the war badger’s face to crinkle.  He ate it.  Then spit out the remains.  I scratched him on the head, and he tolerated it.  I seldom pet Badgelor as he was generally not fond of being touched, but… well, it was going to be my last chance.  

“You full up,” I asked and Badgelor nodded.  His health and stamina pools took a real beating, in the earlier fight.  Now he was back to 100%.  He glanced over at me and I opened another portal sending him back into the fray.  I lacked his level of the disguise skill which I thoroughly regretted.  

Shart perked up, “Badgelor, Professor Badgington is back on the field!”

“He’s over there scouting again,” I said.

“Damn it, he gets to watch filly fight while I’m stuck over here with you,” said Shart.  

I sighed, smiling at Shart.  The demon flinched back as if I’d struck him.  

“How much longer,” asked Shart.

“Fenris will tell me,” I replied, finally looking at the map.  Charles was ordering his troops now so he wouldn’t have time to search me out as hidden as I was.  The undead were all stopping at the wall at least, but it looks like they were so thick they were overlapping.  

***

Julia screamed a battlecry and flung sawblades into the oncoming undead as they continued dashing up the outer wall.  

“They are using Spider Climb, I’ve just never seen it applied over this big of an area,” yelled Stormwind as he blasted out a bolt of primal lightning into a massive undead knight.  The undead adventurer raised his shield, causing most of the bolt to scatter away uselessly.  

“Push them back,” yelled Julia as a massive two handed sword slammed into her barrier, cracking it.  The runes on the blade glowed, digging it further into the barrier.  Suddenly the knight stumbled back as Ashe materialized behind him and drove a single dagger into the back of his leg.

The explosion that followed took off the limb and the knight toppled back to his second death.

Julia checked the wall, her party was still intact.  That was about the only one.  Even Professor Badgington was being pushed back, despite beating down over a half dozen of the undead himself.  One of her cousins was next to him, waving her hands around causing undead after undead to leap bodily off the wall to their second death below.  

They were barely holding the top of the wall, and the Great Book of Obi said that having the high ground was the most important thing.  

“How are they maintaining the spell,” asked Ashe, ever practical.

Julia had no idea, but knew someone who did.  “Find Lance!”

“He’s over there,” said Ashe pointing instantly to the target.  Lance was standing behind Angela and Cole, blasting away with a rather impressive suite of spells while his bodyguards shielded him.  As she watched, an undead running towards a stunned cousin flashed white with holy fire and was knocked away.

Julia generated three wind’s saws, orbiting them around her allies for a moment where they carved a massive chunk out of a groaning undead warrior before targeting the saws at more three undead charging her party.  Stormwind threw a handful of seeds on the fallen zombie, which all explosively sprouted into a ball of vines.  That didn’t kill the undead champion, but it certainly ruined her day.  Suddenly finding herself unable to move, the undead didn’t stand a chance when Stormwind kicked the ball over the edge.  

But the champion grabbed Stormwind when he kicked the ball, and because everyone was fighting for their lives against the horde no one realized what was happening until too late.  The ball continued to grow and roll to the edge.  Stormwind flipped over the edge with the undead the instant Queen realized he was out of position.

Julia darted over to the edge, ready to stop him with a barrier but by then it was too late.  Julia’s last image of the druid was as a bird, desperately flapping wings until the massive ball of vines slammed to the ground.  

Queen screamed.    

Julia only knew snippets of Queen’s backstory.  Her cousin had been Princess Julia, until she wasn’t.  Her cousin had been exiled, until Stormwind the pirate abducted or rescued her depending on the telling.  After that she became Queen of the Inner Sea, with Stormwind her loyal partner.  

All Julia remembered was that her cousin gave up being the Queen of Falcon for Stormwind.

“Focus, everyone is dying,” begged Julia.

“I don’t care,” wailed the Queen as she eyed the throng of undead below, but even in her anguish some bit of sense prevailed as she watched her family dying on the wall.  Charging the Staff of Power, she launched herself at the undead that were nearby, leaving Julia and Ashe alone.

“Lance is in trouble,” said Ashe, ever practical.  

Julia nodded, running after her handmaid as Ashe flipped over an undead leaving another explosive dagger point in the small of his back.  Julia threw up a barrier as the undead champion exploded into gore.  

Julia blocked two more and cut a third in half when holy fire began raining around her.  None of it struck her or Ashe; she pushed through to Lance’s unit.  Angela and Cole let her through.  

“Lance, there is a spider climb buff cast on the undead,” began Julia.

“No, it is a spell cast directly on the wall,” replied her cousin as he continued blasting undead with holy lightning.  “There are spell runes directly attached to the wall but I don’t see any way to break them without the Mayor.  The wall is virtually impregnable against any attacks.”

“Not versus Science,” said Ashe, pulling out two more daggers.  

Julia activated her Mana sight.  There were seven runes on the wall, each rune radiating massive amounts of magical power.  The runes looked strange, half formed.  Configured like that they would be draining the caster of enormous amounts of mana, which of course Grebthar wouldn’t even notice.  

“There’s no way we can get all of them,” said Julia.

“We only need to get the top one, and we are right on top of it,” replied Lance, pointing to a spot twenty logs down where a plasma burn marred the stone. 

“Ashe, can you Science that rune?” asked Julia. 

“I’m going to need to place something powerful and I’ll be totally exposed while I do it,” said Ashe, who pulled out a very large, very flat thingamabob with Margwal’s signature puff of white smoke emblazoned on it.  Ashe preferred the sister with the safest equipment, it appeared.  

Julia spotted the problem instantly.  While undead champions were climbing the wall, there were many more of them on the ground.  If Ashe was hanging there, she would be hit by any number of the arrows that even now managed to score an occasional hit on an exposed target. 

Projecting a barrier twenty logs away was going to significantly weaken it to the point that some of the attacks made by the undead, specifically the undead champions with magical weapons, would breach that barrier eventually. 

They were in mass combat, which meant that Ashe would be reasonably safe from casual strikes and even attacks by massed troops would have trouble targeting her.  However, there were so many Archers with the Sniper perk on the field, that exposing Ashe would get the woman killed before she could destroy the rune.

In the cool calculus of war, Julia was willing to sacrifice Ashe if she could have actually accomplished the mission, but without additional cover that wasn’t likely to happen.

“I’ll help,” said a voice as SueLeeta stepped out of the muck.  “The Dark Overlord is hiding somewhere, and I could use a few more targets.”  Ashe stared at her stepmother wickedly.  

“Let’s do this,” she began.  

Ashe tied a rope around a crenulation and ran down the side of the wall.  Ashe was using some sort of contraption on the rope that kept it taunt the entire time, allowing her to focus on getting where she needed to be.  Julia focused and did something the family would have claimed was impossible, she used her light control skill to make her barrier transparent instead of its usual bright golden color.  

SueLeeta started shooting her crossbow.  Anything on the ground that so much as looked at her stepdaughter got an arrow to the face, which they didn’t seem to  mind over much for the most part until they exploded.  SueLeeta preferred Hansa’s devices, they exploded more colorfully.  The undead started shooting at SueLeeta, causing Julia to form a second barrier trying to shield both.  

The hunter was closer, so that barrier was relatively simple.  Julia made it so hard that most arrows just bounced off when they struck.  Ashe’s barrier was more distant, and that made the execution trickier.  There was no way to make the barrier hard enough to deflect even arrows at that range.  However, what Julia couldn’t do with hardness, she could do with thickness.  

You had to get pretty far into the barrier skill tree before you could significantly expand the thickness of your barrier because it was largely a useless skill.  Hardness caused arrows to bounce off a barrier, while thickness just made the barrier’s effect deeper.  That caused projectiles that entered into it to slow down.  The downside was that an archer with explosive shot could easily blow a massive hole in a thick barrier, so Hard barriers were vastly preferred by most caster.

Julia was a connoisseur.  Sometimes she preferred it thick, and sometimes preferred it hard.  

Right now, they were on top of a massive wall and the number of archers that could manage an explosive shot from that range were limited.  Julia expanded the barrier until its thickness number was in the double digits, that was as thick as a town barrier and should be proof against almost anything.

As arrows and the occasional power beam blasted into her barrier, Julia stood giving them a good shot.  Anything to keep the fire focused away from Ashe.  Still, stray arrows sought Ashe out, smashing into the barrier repeatedly.  

Ashe stood there, as the device was finally planted and then started climbing up the rope when an arrow flashed through the gap between Julia’s two barriers and severed the rope.  Looking down in horror, Julia expected to see Ashe falling to her death.

Ashe stood there, unmoving.

“The spell is on the whole wall, I don’t know why she needs the rope,” said Lance.

“Because we are trying to blow up the rune you idiot,” said SueLeeta.  

Seemingly, Ashe agreed and started running up the wall towards the top until two balls of lightning struck Julia’s barrier simultaneously.  The first one she negated even as SueLeeta put an arrow into the caster’s face.  The second ball penetrated the barrier, flashing lightning against the wall, and Ashe.

Her handmaid was shocked stiff for a moment as the fuse burnt out on her bomb.  The explosive detonated in a massive shockwave, lifting Ashe off the wall very nearly to the top before gravity regained control.  The wall rumbled and massive pieces of stone rained down on the ground below, and Ashe fell.  

Julia attempted to slow her with a barrier, but all that managed to do was brush her against the wall, where Ashe kept falling.  She windmilled her arms and suddenly one foot stuck to the wall, then the other as she began dashing madly down.  

“Where is she going,” said Julia, flinging a half dozen sawblades around the sprinting rogue in a desperate effort to protect her.  A nearby undead, still stuck to the wall, was bisected and another missed a strike as a bolt impacted, shattering a knee.  

“The passage,’ said SueLeeta as she continued to fire.  With Ashe slipping through the confused undead, Julia suddenly became the premier target in the fight. 

Area of effect spells buffeted her barriers while snipers shot arrow after arrow at her.  Nearly every sniper had some sort of barrier piercing attack, and they were using all of them.  It was only the sheer power of her barrier that kept it intact under the pummeling and she couldn't manage it for long.  

“Who’s that big guy with one arm,” asked SueLeeta as Ashe continued towards the passage.  She was rapidly running out of wall at this point and the one armed undead was ordering more of his minions into the passage.  

“Triblade,” hissed Julia, not believing it.  The former commander of the Armies of Windfall and Grebthar’s Right hand.  She kept his 404 rules of warfare on a bookshelf in her room, but could no longer find them.  

Ashe threw down an explosive the instant before she landed, and the resulting pop cleared just enough space that her landing wasn’t too damaging.  Still, she was running at top speed before flipping off the wall.  Fortunately she performed a ‘superhero’ landing, which was of course the best way of landing as it minimized damage significantly.  

The undead near the base of the tower were not the undead champions they were fighting above right now for some reason.  All of those seemed to be focused on climbing the wall, so Ashe was only fighting the elite vanguard of a never ending horde of undead as opposed to adventurers that would have instantly killed her.  

Ashe went into a death blossom.  It was an ancient term from Grebthar’s day, where a warrior used all of their abilities and cooldowns in a short period of time as they anticipated no way to survive.  Even now, Ashe’s was using her last Star Fighter on an undead, the holy energy burning a hole through that undead and his companion when the one armed champion stepped close.

SueLeeta shot, and the bolt went wide.  Then again.

“What’s wrong?” asked Julia, lining up a saw blade and firing indiscriminately into the crowd.  Her shots from this angle were next to useless against undead and she couldn’t target Triblade.

“He has an anti-sniper perk,” said SueLeeta grimly.  “Several of them, actually I’m trying to target him.”

The scene played out with brutal speed.  Ashe didn’t have anywhere to run, but the regular undead troopers were trying to push their way into the passage and seemed to ignore her.  That left her alone in a small ring with Triblade.

She flung a handful of glowing white knives at Triblade, but he sidestepped most of them, and caught one in the legendary Triblade.  The sword was perfectly designed for acts like that, and even as he parried he twisted the blade sending the dagger right back at Ashe.  She stumbled, the blade stuck up to the hilt in her thigh.

The next moment Triblade activated some hellspawned version of a lunge, and Ashe attempted a dodge.  Her path, Star Fighter, used holy energy to move, giving her a magical blink dodging skill that few rogues possessed.  That caused her to slip into the light as she moved out of the way and gave her a greater opportunity to avoid strikes, usually.

Despite the fact she was more than half light at the moment, the sword still found her and a bloody Ashe went spinning through the air before crashing to the ground.  Triblade stood over her, and Julia could do nothing.  

“Finally,” hissed SueLeeta as she fired a bolt that was flashing an uncomfortable shade of blue right at the bastard.  With contemptible ease Triblade swung his blade up, slashing the bolt in two and blasting lightning away from him uselessly.  

Julia inhaled, that was it.  No more help from above could reach her friend in time to help.  

Then the line of undead in front of the passageway wavered.  Julia couldn’t affect Triblade, so she channeled the largest blade she could and flung it down the wall, slashing the dozen or so undead in half right as several more exploded and Fenris charged out of the passage.  

He didn’t stop there though, he kept right on charging straight into Triblade.  The undead monster tried to sidestep, but Fenris’ shield was true and he still slammed into the undead forcing him back.  

Zorlando was at his side instantly, and both men fought a desperate battle against Triblade while the rest of the army pushed through the passage to Ashe.  Unfortunately, outside of the passage they were getting swarmed on all sides and the undead champions were deciding that if they couldn’t attack anyone up top, then this new target would do.

“This is unfortunate,” said SueLeeta, pulling out another bolt.  Julia looked at her questioningly as she seemed to be aiming at Ashe.

“They can get her out, she won’t be captured,” said Julia as she continued raining saw blade down on the undead.  Fenris and Zorlando were barely holding their own against Triblade and with the moment of surprise gone, they were being pushed back.  

“Best not to risk it,” said SueLeeta as she fired off one of Hansa’s latest creations.   The bolt sailed down and slammed right into Ashe’s thigh with enough force to cause the dagger embedded there to pop out.  Ashe screamed, and then shot back to her feet.  

• Hansa’s patented Holistic Healing Bolt:  This crossbow bolt has been filled with two superior healing potions.  Damage 100.  Health restored: 250.  Status effects: Badger’s Rage.  

“Wouldn’t a healing crossbow bolt hurt,” asked Julia as Ashe began striking at every nearby undead as the formation pulled back into the passage.

“Oh yes,” replied SueLeeta.  “I tried one and the pain is incredible.  I’d almost prefer death, almost.”  The dandies retreated into the passage, with Triblade hot on their heels.  

“The top of the wall is secured,” said Sir Dalton, holding the Staff of Power.  Julia felt sick, sicker.  The final few undead were being put down but the top of the wall was covered in bodies, and virtually all of the fallen adventurers were someone she knew personally.   The undead champions had been pushed back, but at such a cost.  

Hansa stood shakily, the shoulder plating on her armor was gone as was her helmet.  She looked tired.  So did Rose, who had removed the plating on her leg armor to directly apply healing potion.  Even HarDragon looked tired, and that was something Julia dreaded someplace deep.  The only one who didn’t appear injured was Professor Badgington, who looked utterly at peace on a battlefield such as this.  

I am a banner to my people.

“Burn the bodies, we don't have time to recover them for proper funeral rites and we cannot let the Dark Overlord have them,” said Julia emotionlessly.  

“Where is Ashe,” asked Dalton.

“She is down, fighting with Zorlando,” replied SueLeeta.  

“Good,” was all Dalton said as turned to carry out her orders.  

***

The Dark Overlord watched the spellwork collapse.  Watched the trollop somehow evade all of his forces, and then watched even the ‘mighty’ Triblade fail to stop her from escaping.  

Yours is a legacy of failure.

Charles was tired, he just wanted the plan to work.  He needed these assholes to stop.  Deep down, he hoped to not have to use the ultimate weapon for several reasons.  Badgelor loved dragons, but if Jim was in Windfall he would have shown himself by now.  At least that’s what his sources inside of Windfall seemed to agree on.

The problem with bringing a huge army of undead to kill everyone was that ‘allies’ you had on the inside tended to reevaluate their loyalties fairly quickly.  The Sphinx spent generations infiltrating the Falconian nobility.  They viewed the likelihood of the Dark Overlord appearing as zero, so their political games were bloody, but fine.  

Now that he was here with an army of undead and mercilessly killing everyone, there were few riders on the Dark Overlord train.  That didn’t need to be the case, Charles fought Dark Overlords who were political giants, wielding massive armies.  The Dark Overlord from the Eastern Isles raised an army great enough to rival anything he could slap together.  

But Charles was over that sort of thing.  His attitude was best explained as “Join me and die”, which didn’t do well to encourage allies.  

So the single handful of sources in Windfall that still fed the Sphinx information all said that the Mayor was not there presently, and he needed the wall gone.  If magic didn’t work, he’d try might.  

And damn the world.