Chương 412: Day Four Hundred And Ten

Dear Diary,"War does not determine who is right - only who is left." - Bertrand Russell Y'know, one of my science teachers used to go on about this dude Bertrand, talking about his thought experiments, advertising him as this total seventy year big brain moment package. Even showed us this grainy old video of the dude giving his 'message to the future', which really sounded pretty solid, even if he said it like some old timey full of himself white dude. No offense, but dude took a hundred words to say ten.

Still, he seemed pretty solid. Now I read him spouting Doctor Who quotes and shit like they're... Oh, my fucking god, I fucking did that. Yes, yes, stop interrupting. Sorry Dad. I can't believe I just did a derivative Lord of the Rings complaint. I mean, I never did that shit, at least in part because those movies were fuckin' old before I learned to read, but also because I read the books first and got eyeballs on the pub date before I saw the movies.

So I knew that all that shit I took for granted in Fantasy fiction, like orcs and elves and dwarves and dragons and magic rings and wizards and all that good shit, was shit from the Lord of the Rings. Okay, I get that some of it is just shit he stole from old fairy tales, but before him they were all just... fairy tales. Kids stories with no real coherence, little morality plays to keep folks in line.

But then along comes mister 'my middle name is growling' and slaps them all together and invents languages and shit, and bam, people spend the next fuckin' century remixing that shit. Dude is like the Dev of fantasy literature. But I hear so many people complaining that the movies and his books are fuckin' derivative of the shit based on the shit based on the shit that's based on what he wrote a century ago. And I think I just did the same thing with Bertrand Fuckin' Russell and Doctor Fuckin' Who.

Still, Russell and The Doctor are both right. War fuckin' sucks. Kinda wish I didn't love doing it so much. So last night as the sun dipped below the horizon and wireframe vision kicked in to fill in all the little details in the nooks and crannies, the call went out in the south central district.

I probably should have sent Olga, or even Marie, but Olga was on the far side of the river, and some part of me hadn't let go of the fact that the fucking Undead had set a trap for my precious Maenad, so I hopped straight over myself. I immediately spotted Centurion Furtim Cauda waving the flag, and stepped to their side.

"Furtim!" I stage whispered.

"What's up?"

"Lich." They pointed from the roof we stood on to a low hill almost smack in the middle of this section of the City. Right at the peak of the hill stood a dude in robes, that hyper violet glow emanating from where his eyes ought to be. This one only had two Death Knights standing next to him, but discount dowser and his beefy sidekicks had four rows of Fell Snipers around them. The lowest row stood just high enough to be head, shoulders, and chest above the mass of basic Undead swarming around them.

Thinking back to some of duBois' lessons on strategy and scouting, I did some quick mental math.

"Gotta be what, five, six thousand of those basic bitches there?" Furtim's reply took me a second to parse. Weird, what with Blend translating most things effortlessly, but when they said, "four thousand ninety six, two five hundred twelves, one sixty four, three eights and five" I had to sit there and add that shit up for a second before I realized that it honestly did not matter to me exactly how many basic undead there were. Lots, lots and lots, yeah.

Enough to swamp me, maybe, but not without those fuckin' Fell Snipers turning me into a pincushion. That brought me back to Furtim.

"The Snipers giving you trouble?" They nodded.

"Okay, I'm gonna..." Then I paused, thinking about the past week. Yeah, the Undead were a special breed of asshole, but some of them clearly fell into 'not thinking straight', if they were even capable of thought. Artemis had killed my fuckin' daughter, straight up had a dagger plunged through her, and I'd given her a second chance. I mean, probation, still, with brain tentacles ready to leave her drooling if she pissed me off, but a second chance nonetheless.

"Hold that thought. Spread the word. Be ready to take down the chaff, Marie and I will take care of the rest." They nodded, and I stepped a Marie and me to M-Space, hovering above a fluorescent dome of Miasma. Meanwhile the me next to Furtim stepped to the tallest vaguely intact building within line of sight of the hill. It looked like maybe some kind of City Hall, but this wasn't its own City, so maybe some kind of district meeting place, or maybe a Temple. I amplified my voice and called out, "Hey! Mister Lich!

Anybody awake in there, or are you just as brainless as those guys on the street?" The thing turned to look at me, nothing visible under its hood except two glowing eyes. I think they were eyes. Maybe a little close set. Then again, noseless had a big old lack of a schnoz, which left two big gaping holes in his face, maybe wastebasket warlock here had glowing nostrils or something. I waited for a thirty count while it just stared at me.

"Can. You. Hear. Me. Okay?" In M-Space the Miasma rippled, and a sibilant voice hissed out, "the Master awaits you."

"Cool! You can talk!" I stepped up to the edge of the building as the me in M-Space hovered away to suck in Mana from the tentacles hovering over the river.

"So, how's Undeath treating you? Got some hobbies? Whittling? Painting? Don't imagine you guys cook much. Oh! Music! Do you guys like music?" I hummed the first few bars of a J-Pop song I remembered from an old bullet hell game, then let my inner Apollo take over, spreading the music around the perimeter of the hill. Somehow I could tell It devolved to silence long before it got to the center.

"You shall die." The Fell Snipers all drew and fired, but before they finished firing their volley I had a chunky little Filtration Ward around me, plenty of Mana pumped into a tiny Ward set to stop nothing but Arrows. They pinged off doing no more damage than a gentle spring shower.

"Okay, yeah, sure, I'm gonna die eventually, I'm sure we all are. I mean, okay, I guess you guys already did? But I've already pulled like a thousand kids out of the hole you're standing in. Say the word, and I'll do the same for you." A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Poor quality Potter just hunched over and hissed out, "there is no escape!" I rolled my eyes and stood there, hipshot, ignoring the waves of arrows coming at me.

"Yeah, look, that's just factually incorrect. So far I've fixed three adults and like eleven hundred kids. Okay, one of the adults chose Hades rather than, y'know, life, because all his people were dead. But I can do that for you as well. You wanna walk away, that could be arranged. You want an afterlife? Sure. But you stay Undead, all that you've got to look forward to is dust. I guarantee it."

"The Master Awaits You!" It raised its hands in that fingers spread pose I'd seen before, and I had a Mana Ward up in time to catch the relatively anemic lightning that shot out. It ate through my Mana Ward, but I threw another one up as it did. I wasn't about to throw raw Mana at him, 'cause he'd just eat it, but he could throw Miasma Lightning at me all day if he wanted. Thing is, as he did that, I saw one of the two Death Knights standing next to him turn to face him, to watch him.

It started to move, but the Lich finished throwing lightning, focused on his maybe-disobedient bodyguard, and the thing turned back to mirror its partner. In M-Space, I whispered, "End the one on the left, Leave the one on the right together enough to talk." Atop the tower, I poured Mana into my defenses, into my Strong Arm and Swift Foot, and shouted, "okay, the NPC has started repeating its lines. Time for Liches who are Bitches to get some Stitches."

I stepped down to just outside the Miasma Ward, right between the two outer rings of archers. My swordstaff spun, and Sniper bits flew. All of them turned to face me, firing as they got shots, arrows bouncing off my skin as I sliced through them, laughing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Trolls coming out of cover from all sides of the hill. The Lich lifted its hands, and from M-Space I hammered it with the Mother Of All Smites.

Apparently whatever similarities this Lich had to the one that had tried to ambush Marie ended with 'the ability to speak', and didn't extend to 'enough Miasma to slow Mimic down'. He didn't die a slow, screaming, disintegrating death. He popped like a fuckin' balloon full of dusty confetti, and his Miasma Ward went with him. A moment later, I dropped that me on the far side of the hill, buffed up with Mana and pureeing Fell Snipers. I split each of me, dropping one at each point of the compass.

I worked my way widdershins, just because it's way more fun to say than 'clockwise'. Fuck it, I've made tactical decisions for worse reasons. Atop the hill, one of the two Death Knights turned toward one of the four of me and took two steps, building up speed as he bulled his way through the Snipers. Then half a dozen Maries dropped in behind each of the Death Knights. The one coming at me never saw her coming, and went the way of all flesh.

Okay, I really hoped not all flesh wound up torn limb from limb, but still, it sounded cool. The other one... Stood there as two Maries precisely, almost delicately removed his arms at the shoulder, then his legs at the hips while the other four stood ready to step in.

"Pull that shell off," I called out, "and maybe help with these Snipers?" The two of her taking apart the surrendered Death Knight pried his armor off. The other ten snickered at me as they straight up danced through a storm of arrows like fuckin' dodging raindrops, working their way outward to meet the four of me coming in. In less than a minute the pair of me stood atop the hill, surrounded by a dozen Maries casually splattering any Undead stupid enough to climb the hill at us.

One of me stepped up to the remaining Death Knight while the other hammered his former buddy with a Smite.

"Okay. Nod if you want to surrender?" He... Well, okay, either this Death Knight had been a she in life, or those were some really oddly placed tumors on her chest. She nodded.

"This is probably gonna hurt." The other one of me muttered, "sure as shit is gonna hurt me." I looked the Death Knight in the eye and said, "You ready?" Another nod, and the closer of me reached down and ripped out her Undead Soul. Gritting my teeth, I ignored the burn as the other me stepped to M-Space, gathered as much Mana as I could comfortably hold, then stepped back and hammered her with a whomping big Smite. Her Soul screamed as the Smite burned it, bent it, broke and reforged it, melted and reformed it.

By the time she hung there, a Mortal Soul being slowly eroded by the Miasma endemic to Calverton still, she looked like a shadow of herself.

"Life or afterlife?" She didn't speak, but she pointed at the body lying on the ground. The me who'd pulled her out stepped to M-Space and gathered Mana. It hurt, but hurt like burn cream going into a burn, like painkiller eroding nerves. I shoved her Soul back into her body, Shoved her limbs back in place and tacked them on with Heals, then the me in M-Space stepped back and hammered her with a Revive. She sat up, gasping. I collapsed back to one of me, hopped to the top of the hill, and hollered, "Furtim!"

A ways back from the melee, about where I'd expect a field commander to be, a Troll popped upright. Furtim, by the swordstaff. I realized right then that despite their rigid D & C, most of them fought like I did, crouched and ready to rumble.

"You guys got cleanup?" They shot me a clear thumbs up, at which point I realized that somehow I'd missed the fact that most of the trolls had three fingers, not four. Weird thing to notice just then, but fuck it. I grabbed the former Death Knight by the arm and towed her along as I collapsed back to the Black Dragon. Before she could get her balance, I hopped down to the deck, then walked over to where Skasn lay napping.

"Hey old man!" He blinked and leaned up on an elbow.

"Majesty?"

"Yeah, I got a prisoner here, figure you're the best one to keep her safe until morning when I can get with the Imperator and decide what to do with her." He chuckled.

"I have been lying around on my ass a lot, haven't I? I'll keep her safe and secure until you're ready to deal with her." I nodded, then collapsed Marie and I back to Lancaster House. Only to have Saffron scoop up the pair of us and plonk my ass down on the bed. I collapsed backwards, groaning.

"I'm sorry, Kitten. After dealing with that fuckin' Lich, I'm too tired to do shit today." She Grinned at me.

"You were doing what with a Lich now?"

"Oh, fuck you." I laughed.

"Seriously. Took a prisoner. Former Death Knight. Between that and ashing the Lich, I'm beat."

"You... did what?" Marie cut in, mischief in her voice as she said, "Capture."

"Holy shit, Goof. How... Never mind. This is neither the time nor place." She chuckled.

"Leave it to you to not only delay your just reward, but add to the rewards you deserve." She shook her head and tapped her teeth.

"Princess, or Voyeur?" I laughed and sighed.

"Aw, that's mean. Because you know I'm too tired for either, and you know I wanna say 'both'."

"Too tired to lie there and do nothing?"

"Too tired to enjoy my reward properly." She leaned down and kissed me, and even if my kissing back was a little underwhelming, because I wasn't kidding about being tired, she seemed to enjoy it.

"Oh, love," she whispered in my ear when she slipped away.

"This isn't your reward. But you're obviously too tired to choose, so... Princess it is."

"But... both?" I whined halfheartedly.

"Silly Goof. You can't have both."

"Why not?" Right about then, Marie slid her knees around my head, then bent her spine enough to kiss me, her chin tickling my nose and her breasts and extra nips taking up all my visual attention. I really was tired, because I muttered, "guitar," without realizing it.

"Because, dearest Goof, Princess of the Pillow for the evening, you would stop observing when we make you pass out anyway." Eyes sliding shut as Marie flipped me over, then four hands roamed my back kneading away knots, I murmured, "oh, shit. I'm in danger." Marie snatched me up, claws under my armpits, dragging my lips up to hers, growling, "Yes." before her tongue invaded my mouth as my eyes drifted shut again. I don't really remember anything clearly after that. My wives best wives.