[TLQ-B2] 13. Calamity (Patreon)

XIII

Calamity

While there was still light, I returned to the field, where my ancestor’s gifts were still kneeling. Grass stalks fluttered in the cold winds roving over the plains and ruffled deceased hairs. The three giant undead towered and cast me in their shadow, making it colder than it already was.

But the cold was not foreign to me. Not anymore.

My palm rested on the chest of the female human in full plate. While I’d spend my day lunching and chatting, the corpses had never once left my mind.

I had a few ideas on how to raise the corpse successfully, alongside some thoughts on why my methods failed.

‘The rules could be different.’

I didn’t know whether this realm and my own were parallel planes or existed in the same reality. In my world, necromancy worked through the two methods I was familiar with: suffusing the body or invading the core.

That may not be true in this reality.

‘Death and ice are related.’ Two sides of the same coin, I almost wanted to say.

So why would the solutions not be related?

Miasma drew into my lungs. I allowed it to sit before exhaling and breathing in deep again. Then I directed the energy into the corpse, towards the heart, where I spun the dark energy so it wrapped the core like a cloak shielding you from the cold. The layers were so thick the heart would never escape without me letting it.

Death hardened into the shape of a diamond. I let go of my breath, and stepped back, and inspected my work. Strands of miasma leeched from the death cage into the core and blackened the heart.

“It’s slower,” I whispered.

It was working, but it’d take a while before the cage finished its work.

So I sat down and waited while studying the process.

‘The energy cost is less.’ Because I wasn’t invading the core directly. That said, there was also less risk of the core breaking.

‘Interesting.’

There were certainly benefits to this technique.

Bones creaked and the corpse moved. I watched as it rose to its legs…and fell back to one knee.

Its head lowered. Queen, the term echoed in my head.

‘Hoh. You can speak?’

The term echoed literally, not as a feeling, as it’d done with my previous undead. I stepped around the kneeling knight.

[Queen’s Guard - Level: 1 | Tier: II]

Queen’s Guard. The name wasn’t familiar to me but its tier was the same as that of my other elite undead. There were four more knights like her in the entire squad of undead.

Though the Queen’s Guard could speak, she was limited to that single term. Though I expected I could also have her call me ‘Empress’ if I wanted to.

‘Intelligent to a degree.’

Which meant far from unaware. She’d be smarter and more adaptable than Durak, who was capable enough to follow complex instructions and react to changes in the battlefield.

‘This is good.’ Should every one of these undead be Tier II (I doubted it), I could finally start creating divisions that could take on missions without my interference. I could also begin stationing squad near strategic locations around the Duchy to avoid future invasions catching us off-guard.

I turned away from the Queen’s Guard. Many more corpses awaited my touch. I wouldn’t be able to raise them all in a single day.

‘Four or five days, give or take.’

Which was too long for my liking. However, there was no way around it.

I placed my palm on the next corpse and went to work.

Night was quick to come when one was working. The morning and day as well. Before I could blink, one whole more day had passed, making this my second morning in Kreed.

All the Children were again gathered for lunch. A deep quiet lorded over the dinner table, which only the intermitting sounds of spoons hitting bowls broke. Beside me, Titan slurped from his bowl so fervently a line of tomato-coloured liquid slipped past his mouth.

I glanced to the other end of the pew, where Ruelle slowly raised a spoon to her lips…and nibbled. She wasn’t even looking at her spoon and instead stared out in front of her.

‘Guess it didn’t turn out well for her.’

Well, not my problem. I gave her the greenlight.

I looked away just as she noticed me staring and partook from my own food. Between spoonfuls, I spied on Titan. Whatever he’d told her didn’t seem to have affected him in the slightest.

‘Poor girl.’

The boy already had too many secret admirers among the ladies in town and the Children. Trying to win him over was a fool’s endeavour.

My attention strayed and lingered over his skull. The want to identify him was there.

The athletically inclined boy popped an eye open as he emptied his bowl. A sly smile crept on his lips as he looked down at me, then he continued finishing his meal.

…

Wouldn’t asking him just work?

“Say, Titan,” I said.

His bowl slammed down on the table and he sighed. “Yes?”

“Mind if I identify you? I’m curious about your progress.”

His ears twitched like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

My head tilted.

“Ah, of course,” he stumbled over his words. “Go right ahead.”

“Thanks.”

I peered.

[Titan - ?]

“Oops. Hold on.” He closed his eyes. A heartbeat passed. “There, try again.”

[Titan - lvl. 65]

I kept my expression even. His aura was as dense as that of Ruelle. Denser, even, so she should be a lower level than him.

If the levelling worked similar to how Lucian explained it to me, then lvl. 75 should be the cap of the first stage—the Sealed stage. Levels themselves weren’t the be-all, end-all. That said, they were an important measure of one’s strength.

Titan, as he was now, should be able to wipe the floor with all of the undead under my control. Probably all at once.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Incredible, am I not?” His nose rose towards the sky.

“Blegh,” Rosalind, sitting on his other side, said. “Can you throat yourself any deeper?”

The table paused. Titan’s cheeks flushed. Then everyone burst out into laughter.

The butt of the joke whirled on Rosalind. “You dickhead, what are even—”

I only half listened to the catfight that ensued and opted into studying the remaining Children. Not one had a weak energy signature. Each and everyone, in their own manner, was stronger than I was at this point in time.

Taking a slow sip of my soup, my gaze hurled past the table into the darkness shrouding the town, where the plains extended beyond my view.

I had to get a move on.

Whatever had wiped this place out, it may still be around.

The darkness which’d settled upon the land went by. So, too, did the sun, until it was night again.

Today marked my fourth day in this vision.

Tendrils leeched from the death cage around the giant’s heart. Though I’d put the initial estimate at three to four days, working on the corpses of Meridyth, Billy and Durand took more mana than I expected despite doubling my estimation to be safe. However, Ilya’s reserves were no joke. She had more miasma at her disposal than I did.

Unfortunately, calling up the system revealed nothing but my own status, so I couldn’t take a peek at her true powers.

I dropped those thoughts as the giant known as Durand rose to his feet with a groan. His loincloth tumbled in the wind. Since he was so large compared to myself, I had an open view of his privates. If the giant cared, he didn’t show it at all. He reached for the anvil at his feet, which was wide enough I, and five clones of me, wouldn’t be able to wrap around it.

Light flashed the moment his palm touched the equipment and it vanished. Following the thread of energy revealed it inside himself—the anvil was encased in a sphere orb of mana that hovered near his heart.

[Darksmith - Level: 23 | Tier: II]

Level twenty-three. That placed him close to reaching the third tier already. Beautiful.

“A class ability?” I asked.

The undead looked down. “Your observation is astute.”

His words echoed over my head. My brow rose. “Is that sarcasm?”

Which made him clap. “Your intellect also knows no bounds. Truly, our next lord is gifted. Meridyth and Billy will be overjoyed.”

I blinked. He was the first of the giants I’d raised, so this caught me quite off-guard.

However, instincts took over.

”Kneel.”

The undead practically fell to one leg.

“Lower your head below my level,” I said.

He had to bend awkwardly to make it work and keep kneeling, but I didn’t care. He was not looking down on me.

Staring Durand in the eyes, I said: “Is that any way to behave in front of your queen?”

His snort had enough force the resulting gust almost blew me away. “Queen? With all due to respect, Your Highness, your spiritual development is that of a babe. Please don’t sully the name of the queens before you.”

Arms crossed, I studied him for a few moments. ‘He’s not disloyal.’

Disloyal undead were rare but possible. Normally, it happened when the undead you raised was many times more powerful than yourself. If the gap was too large, the undead may even turn on the necromancer. But that all depended on the ego of the undead. Some would never turn on you, no matter the difference in strength.

Holding out my hand, I turned him into a miasma fragment and absorbed him. The process was similar to when I used frost shards but not the same. This method, was a lot more limited—I wouldn’t be able to store nearly as many shards inside myself.

Still, there was no resistance.

No. He wasn’t disloyal…just mouthy.

I spawned him back in.

He deadpanned. “Are you done, Your Highness?”

The thought to punish him passed through my head. It did. However, as a rule, I was against punishing my soldiers unless the situation warranted it. For example, if Durand had been a case of a ‘disloyal’ undead that was causing me problems.

This was a problem of him respecting me. Punishing him wouldn’t make the situation better, only worse.

That was another ideology I’d taken from Lucian. One that’d worked in my favour many times. There were plenty of ways, after all, to sabotage a mission I gave you without directly disobeying your orders. And I was not keen on keeping tabs on my intelligent undead all the time. Still, if the others turned out to be like this, I may be better off not using them for the time being.

“It seems your disagreement with me stems from me being weak,” I said. “While you’re not technically wrong, you are unaware of how ignorant you are.”

The undead opened his mouth to release another snarky response—

I held up my hand. “Safe your arguments. You’ll be in my service for centuries to come. I’m certain you’ll change your tone in not even a hundredth of that time. More importantly—”

I motioned around us.

“—do you know where we are, Durand? I seem to have gotten stranded in a place that isn’t entirely expected.”

The undead’s gaze paused on my face but spun to survey our environment. His eyelids drooped. “This is not the spirit realm of the chamber.”

“An astute observation, War Counsellor Durand.”

He turned back to me and scoffed. “You’ll have to excuse my earlier comments, Your Highness. This servant was merely surprised.”

The edge he’d attached to the moniker before had gone, though it was still hidden deep underneath.

“I have no idea where we are,” he said. “I only remember what Lady Morgathis told me before she cast us into slumber.”

“Which is?”

“‘Fret not, my children. When you open your eyes, I will stand before you again.‘”

Which made me hum. If she’d promised that, I could see why the undead was surprised at finding himself in my service. Technically speaking, Grandmother wasn’t wrong. Undead were more of an incarnation of their ancestors than a mortal was one of their grandparents. But I still wasn’t her.

My gaze went to the other dead. There were still a few to raise, but I had time and miasma left.

I turned back to the undead blocking out the celestial body in the sky from my view. Durand wasn’t moving anywhere unseen. Though that wasn’t really an issue in this place, there was no reason to take any chances.

“I’ll store you for now, Durand. I take it you don’t lose your awareness when stored?”

“My view is limited but not eliminated, Your Highness.”

I nodded, retracted his fragment, and roved my senses over the other undead. I had enough miasma left to raise another giant. The third would be a guess.

‘There’s nothing to be done about it.’

I’d do the last giant tomorrow. Afterwards, I should finally be able to leave this place.

That last thought had my chin edge out past my shoulders. Kreed was not visible from here. However, I could yet hear the laughter of the Children like a phantom’s cry.

‘It was not a bad place.’

To be surrounded with individuals that shared your potential, that were good to each other…it was a blessing. Had I been born here, I would’ve undoubtedly called it home.

‘I never did figure what happened to them.’ And if raising my last dead expelled me from the trial like it should, I never would.

Miasma gathered beneath my fingertips. That was fine. Some things were better left in the past.

I reached out for Meridyth—

Where did you learn to use those powers, Child?

The miasma swirling in my palms stilled. My ears jerked. I listened to the breeze. Did I…

It was not your imagination.

I pulled away from the corpse and swivelled. Titan wasn’t here. No one was, except for me.

“Who is speaking?” I said.

Was one of the others playing a trick on me? Morgan was known for her mental abilities…

The one whose power you call upon without rhyme or reason.

My brow rose. Light shifted to my right. Frigid winds crashed into my turning face, and I reflexively closed my eyes. When I opened them, my heart skipped a beat. The grass plane had vanished. Ceased to exist, was perhaps a better way of describing it. In its place was an icy expanse not unlike the ones in the Duchy of Vrost. The skies were clear, however, painting the mountain peaks rising in the distance with a defined stroke.

On the surface far below the mountains stood a sphere entirely made of ice. It was so large it covered everything but the very tip of the mountain behind it. Dark currents swirled on top of the ice, lines that appeared a decoration of the iceberg more than anything. A shadow hovered within. Its red eyes pierced through the core of the sphere. Two horns curved from the side of its head and a cape billowed behind it, it’s frayed edges appearing like a thousand cut shadows, each wriggling and writhing within the frost.

Child, you ask who speaks? My true name has long been lost. But in your vulgar, common tongue, they call me—

The iceberg—no, not an iceberg, a prison, I realised—quivered as whatever enchantments and runes tensed to withstand what was coming. And though they absorbed most of it, the icy expanse still trembled, the quake shooting up into my bare feet and rocking me to my core.

”Kalameet.”