DF254 - Teddy's Jam (Suliel) (Patreon)

The fighting in the castle was close-packed, fast and brutal. The small rooms and corridors only had enough room for five or six combatants, and Suliel was trying to push forward with a dozen. She’d meant to stay in the back with Tyla, but that ended quickly when they were flanked by a team of Skeleton Nobles.

Fortunately, or perhaps inevitably would be more accurate, she had lost some of her soldiers getting into the castle, so she could quickly add them to her forces.

Bind Undead. Bind Undead. Bind Undead.

After that, she was stuck in the middle of it all. Surrounded by skeletons fighting for and against her. Tyla, at least, was able to provide guidance, casting a spell that led them somehow through the maze of wastefully decorated rooms.

Kelsey was of no help at all.

“Get him! Get him! Over the top, then underneath!” she called out. She didn’t seem to be giving orders, just cheering on the fighters. She didn’t even restrict herself to one side, switching her support whenever she saw a particularly worthwhile attack.

One of her defenders fell, clattering to the ground.

Bind Undead.

Without hesitation, a Skeleton Noble turned his rapier against the skeleton next to him. Suliel didn’t need to see all her soldiers; they fought just as well without her supervision. But without eyes on her front line, she couldn’t tell when a soldier had fallen and needed to be replaced.

“Stab him! Stab him in the eye socket!” Kelsey yelled, gleeful at the sudden reversal.

Not everyone was as fickle in who they were cheering for, though.

“They’re never gonna kill her at this rate!” Mel complained from above.

“This is still pretty much the tutorial,” Kelsey reminded her. “You’re still learning, aren’t you, Suliel?”

“Little… busy… right now,” Suliel said, trying to look in three directions at once.

She was learning. She needed to give her minions verbal orders, but they could be as vague as ‘defend me’. Kelsey never stopped complaining about how much more favourably Suliel’s skeletons interpreted her orders. Also, any order she gave—unless specified otherwise—applied to all her bound creatures, regardless of whether they were in earshot at the time she gave the order. Her orders even applied to new minions, as soon as the binding was applied.

Small unit tactics was… a work in progress. Suliel supposed that working through the learning curve with disposable minions was one of the better ways of learning by doing. She could do without the personal danger, though. Those rapiers were razor sharp. If just one got through her guard… she tried not to think about it, and instead focused on keeping the ranks of her soldiers intact.

She was fortunate that the attacking skeletons didn’t possess any kind of tactical acumen themselves. They attacked in groups, but they didn’t try to hold doorways or ambush from around corners. They just charged forward without hesitation.

Suliel could feel her next level approaching, tantalisingly slowly. The drops of experience she’d been getting on the last floor had increased to a small trickle, but even a trickle could fill a room eventually.

Then, just as she was getting used to the rhythm of it, the sounds of fighting fell away. The last of the floor defenders clattered to the ground, and Suliel found herself in a spacious entry hall, leading to an ornate golden door.

“It’s not real gold, of course,” Kelsey commented. “Too soft, and delvers would keep dragging them off. As it is, they’ve sometimes spent an hour scraping the leaf off.”

Suliel hadn’t heard any stories of delvers coming back rich with gold leaf, so either their gains had been small enough to not be worth talking about, or spending an extra hour in an uncleared level had… consequences. She didn’t ask which it was, because she could guess, and she knew that Kelsey would take great pleasure in telling her.

Instead, she ordered two of the Skeleton Nobles to open the door. Nobles, because she only had four of the Warriors left, and she thought they would be more effective against a giant skeleton.

“Is it a coincidence that your skeletons are mostly bear weapons that are less effective against skeletons?”

“I guess not? They don’t fight other skeletons normally, so clubs weren’t a priority. Also, the delvers would laugh at me if I armed my skellys with sticks.”

“I doubt they would. They’d be too afraid that you’d rigged them to explode or something.”

Kelsey’s eyebrows rose. “That is a great idea,” she said. “Mel, why don’t you give me great ideas like that?”

“My job is to teach you to be a proper dungeon, not help you invent blasphemous artifacts!”

“I’ve got someone working on it right now,” Kelsey said. “I’ll call them boomsticks.”

In her mind, Suliel apologised to the ghosts of future fallen adventurers. Then the door was open, and her skeletons were going through.

“Fight doesn’t start until the hallway’s empty,” Kelsey commented. “So get in there, princess.”

Suliel glared, but there was no point in arguing, so she entered the room. As promised, the throne room was empty, not even containing a throne. Suliel’s minions fanned out in a semi-circle in front of her.

“And cue the boss music,” Kelsey said. The doors behind them swung shut on their own, closing with a thunderous boom. Suliel whirled around to look at them, but a grinding noise from the front of the room alerted her to where the danger was.

A massive throne had emerged from the far wall, slowly moving forward to its place on the dais. Sitting on it was the largest skeleton Suliel had yet seen, carrying a massive two-handed sword, and wearing a golden crown.

Suliel tried Bind Undead, but it didn’t work.

“Performance issues?” Kelsey asked innocently. “The King is peak Tier Two, just like you. Looks like your targets need to be lower-levelled than you.”

Suliel grimaced, but there was no time to waste. “Warriors, attack the King! Nobles, split up and block those doorways!”

She had heard stories about this room, more times than she could count. The King was the real threat, but his courtiers would enter after the first hit, attacking from all sides. The galleries… were new.

Suliel felt her heart sink as skeleton archers marched into position and drew their bows, but she quickly rallied. She had solutions to this.

“Tyla,” she said, pointing at the archers, “A shield?”

Nothing that Suliel could see changed about the air above them, but when the archers fired, their arrows bounced off an invisible barrier. That was half the solution.

Bind Undead.

“Smash them,” Suliel commanded the archer she had bound.

Meanwhile, her Warriors were fighting the supreme example of their kind. One swing from that massive sword sent two of them flying back—but it didn’t get past their shields. The other two pressed the attack, darting forward into the opening the swing left. Metal swords bit into bone, and Suliel breathed a sigh of relief.

So far, the exchange was going in her favour.

A clattering rasp heralded the arrival of the rest of the court, but her own courtiers were in place. Tasked with holding four doorways, her eight Skeleton Nobles took positions such that each attacker entering the room faced two defenders without support from the skeletons behind.

So they can manage tactics when controlled by me, Suliel thought. She didn’t bring it up with Kelsey; she was already on the hook for a barrage of complaints about how much easier she had it.

Another volley rattled off Tyla’s shield. The archers were so intent on shooting that they didn’t acknowledge the failure of the first volley. They also ignored her bound skeleton smashing his way through the squad.

Suliel turned back to the main event. Her four warriors had the King surrounded now, like hounds against a massive boar. He kept lashing out, only to provoke an attack from behind. His own attack, meanwhile, only dented the shields of her soldiers.

Judging that the moment was right, she sent her two special guards to join the attackers.

It was uncanny, the difference between those two and the regular skeletons. You couldn’t see it when they were walking or standing, but when they were fighting… they moved so differently. They weren’t stronger or faster, but their swords seemed to just float effortlessly, already headed on a trajectory that would lead unerringly to their target.

Moving as one, Hughie and Louie dashed through the gaps left between their fellow warriors and ducked under the vicious slash of the King’s sword. They didn’t stop, didn’t even pause as they rushed through the ring encircling the giant skeleton. Almost as an afterthought, their swords seemed to drift of their own accord, right through the knees of the Skeleton King.

He crashed to the floor. Not defeated, not by a long shot. Suliel knew that he could put himself back together, and even detached, his bones were still a threat. But her soldiers knew what to do. Two of them kicked the detached leg fragments as far away from the fight as possible, while the other two laid into the momentarily distracted King.

They didn’t do much. They did some damage, but they couldn’t stop him from rising to his knees, bracing himself on the stumps of his shattered legs. Suliel winced to see it, but skeletons felt no pain. His footing was a little unstable, but he was still more than capable of fighting. He announced his return with a backhand sweep that caught one of the Warriors off-guard. Unblocked, the sword cut right through his spine and sent the pieces tumbling away.

But now, his head was in reach. He was still seven feet tall, much taller than any of her soldiers, but he wasn’t so tall that a blade couldn’t reach his one vulnerability. Two swords were headed there now, travelling on inexorable trajectories.

He tried to block, but they were already twisting, evading his parry before he’d even started moving. One of them passed through his neck vertebrae and the other smashed into his grinning face.

The King’s head went flying, his crown falling to the floor. His body kept fighting for a few seconds, but when the skull hit the floor, it smashed into pieces. The light left his sockets, and his bones tumbled to the ground.

You have completed Level 10.Please select a new Class.

Suliel stared at the notification.

“You made it!” Kelsey exclaimed. “What did you get?”

She looked around. The final courtiers were falling to her skeletons, and her soldiers were pushing open the path down. It seemed safe enough for he to look at the list.

She skipped through the ordinary ones. She qualified for Royal Consort now. Amazing as that would have been a year ago, it was only Rare. The better ones were darker, leaning into her sovereignty over the dead.

Grave Sovereign (Tier 3, Epic)

That might be the standard successor to her current class.

Deathbinder (Tier 3, Unique)

A downgrade, and Suliel didn’t need more undead powers.

Lady of the Eternal Grave (Tier 3, Epic)

Didn’t really appeal.

“What is a Necro-Industrialist?” she asked Kelsey.

“Someone in charge of the Undead Industrial Complex, which is what I am now,” Kelsey replied. “You should take it! I bet it will give me production bonuses.”

Suliel scowled. She wasn’t going to take it; it was only a Unique, and empowering Kelsey wasn’t high on Suliel’s list of priorities. Then she saw it.

Queen of Death and Duty (Tier 3, Legendary)

“Legendary…” she breathed. Not quietly enough to go unheard.

“Legendary? You know you need to take that one,” Kelsey stated.

She was right, Suliel knew. Not only was it Legendary, but it was the one with Queen in the title. The rest of it was daunting but…

Queen of Death and Duty (Tier 3, Legendary)Stats: 10: [S|T] [A|D] PPWWCC (2 free)

You have reached Level 1.

Applying Benefits for Level 1

Strength + 1Agility + 1Perception + 2Willpower + 2Charisma + 2

Please allocate 2 free Ability points:

Suliel almost chose Charisma out of habit, but stopped herself. Important as it was, Charisma wouldn’t help her down here.

Strength and Agility. Her two weakest Abilities

Strength + 1Agility + 1

“I’m Third Tier,” Suliel said aloud. She brought up her status.

Suliel Anat, Queen of Death and DutyOverall Level: 16Paths: Scion/Sovereign of the Crypts/Queen of Death and DutyClass: Queen of Death and Duty

Strength: 14Toughness: 16Agility: 14Dexterity: 14Perception: 27Willpower: 27Charisma: 37

Traits:

Nobility’s Privilege, Aura of NobilityBonded to the Domain, Control Undead, Aura of Command, Court of Silence, Gravehold