Fortress Al-Mir

“Electro Deus!”

Lightning scorched the ground where the red-eyed ghast had been standing an instant ago. The ghast hadn’t jumped aside. It simply vanished. Arkk recognized the effect immediately as the same kind of teleportation he could do around Fortress Al-Mir.

“I did warn you, Master. It isn’t too late to flee.”

“Focus on the rest of them,” Arkk said, launching two more lightning bolts at the goblins attacking the gate. “Without an army, the other Keeper…” Arkk trailed off as the third goblin he tried to fry vanished much like the ghast.

It wasn’t just him either. Archers on the walls found their arrows passing right through where their targets had been. Farr’an tried to hit one of the snapping insects with a crossbow bolt, only for it to be whisked off elsewhere. Dakka and Orjja had procured bows from somewhere and were making efforts, but to Arkk’s eyes, it looked more like a waste of arrows than an effective battle tactic.

“Electro Deus.”

Five bolts laced out from each of Arkk’s fingers. Only two hit their targets. The Keeper was quick at getting the minions out of the way.

Zullie threw a few lightning bolts of her own. Like Arkk, the majority of hers struck nothing. Their combined accuracy was still better than any of the archers. Lightning was just a bit faster than arrows and they didn’t have to aim much at all. Just point and blast. Unfortunately for Zullie, she couldn’t maintain the output that Arkk could. After two or three bolts, she had to stop and take a short rest. That took out half their effective fighting force for several moments.

With a frustrated cry, Dakka shouted the incantation for lighting and fried a raptor that had tried to leap onto the wall near her. It looked like she tried for a second bolt but didn’t manage anything before collapsing, chest heaving up and down. Interesting though it was to note that she could cast that spell in a combat situation, Arkk was disappointed in her stamina with it.

Maybe training would increase her effectiveness? He would bring it up with Zullie later.

Arkk narrowed his eyes as he spotted movement in the distance. More monsters were approaching. Reinforcements? Or were they the ones the Keeper had whisked off coming back to rejoin the fray?

“He has territory nearby?”

Vezta, who hadn’t yet acted in an offensive capability as she stood next to Arkk, simply nodded her head. “I would expect nothing less.”

“We—”

Arkk cut himself off as a cry of alarm rose over the far end of the wall. A yellow and black striped insect had scaled the wall. One of the guards, bow on the ground and sword drawn, didn’t get a chance to strike out before the scythe-like pincers sliced him clean in two.

Arrows and crossbow bolts rained down as the insect started to lash out at another guard, only for the insect to vanish. That didn’t stop the arrows. One ripped straight through another guard’s thigh, eliciting a cry of pain.

The distraction allowed the forces at the wall to spring their attack. A ghast, using its powerful hind legs, leaped into the air not far from Arkk, intending to land on the wall somewhere near him.

“Electro Deus!”

A blinding bolt of lightning followed by a heavy thunderclap struck the flying ghast. Its limbs seized in mid-air but its momentum carried it straight toward the wall.

Tendrils erupted from the shadows around Arkk, ripping the ghast from the air. Arkk expected it to simply get whisked away to wherever the other monsters had gone, but it didn’t. Vezta’s tendrils wrapped around its limbs and began pulling, squeezing, and twisting. Pale blood dripped to the ground as if the ghast was a wet cloth being wrung. Finished, Vezta flung the broken body back into the crowd with enough force to crush a goblin.

“We should count ourselves lucky that this whole town isn’t within our opponent’s domain,” Vezta said in a conversational tone as she worked. “Not only would I not have been able to teleport directly to your side, but one of those large insects teleporting behind you would take off your head before either of us could react.”

“A few more of those and the wall will fall anyway,” Arkk said, looking around. “The Keeper just needs to kill enough guards to lessen the defense enough to where the majority of his force can rush inside unhindered. Until then, it is a battle of attrition and his teleportation tactic is giving him an advantage while depleting our stock of arrows. But…

“The Keeper isn’t fighting the way I would. He could have used his servants to burrow into the burg, bypassing the wall entirely. He is just throwing his forces at the wall. The heavily defended part of the wall no less.”

More reinforcements were coming to the gate. Soldiers from elsewhere. Even some of the mercenaries from the tavern.

Everyone was coming here.

“Dakka!” The orc wasn’t effective with the bow and couldn’t manage sustained lighting bolts. Arkk pulled out his crystal ball and tossed it over. “I need you to scry the rest of the wall. Make sure we aren’t fighting a distraction.”

“Me? Scry? I can’t—”

“It’s easy. If you can cast a lightning bolt, you can scry! Just think of where you want to see with a little touch of magic and the crystal ball will take care of the rest.”

“I… I can try.”

Arkk glanced at Zullie, who had given up on lightning spells in favor of some bird made of flames that swept outward from the wall before exploding in the middle of the monsters. It wasn’t killing anything—the wave of flame following the explosion wasn’t nearly as fast as lightning which meant that the Keeper could pull any monster that was in danger away—but it was doing a wonderful job of giving them some breathing room.

Vezta wasn’t actively attacking, but the few monsters that did make it within range either had to be whisked away before her tendrils could reach them or else she would crush them. It was like the Keeper couldn’t teleport anything away once she got her tendrils around them.

Both were too effective to put on scrying duty.

“Do it,” Arkk said, tossing the crystal ball. “Succeed and you’ll get a pay raise.” She tried to protest, but Arkk was already turning away. “Orjja!”

The green-skinned orc stiffened, loosing an arrow before turning to face him.

“Get down to the guardhouse. Take the teleportation circle. You should find another circle at the other end. Repeat that until you’re back at the fortress. I’ve shoved Rekk’ar and the other orcs into the armory—hopefully, they get the hint to gear up. Bring them back here.” Before she could offer the same protests that Dakka had tried, Arkk added, “You should be able to use magic enough to activate the circles.”

Orjja gave an uncertain nod to acknowledge the order but didn’t protest as she rushed down off the wall.

“Will a few orcs turn the tide?” Vezta asked, voice soft in the heavy rain.

“Not necessarily, but if we are being surrounded, I would rather have people I can count on to have my back,” Arkk said, eying a pair of the First Legion who were taking up the defense down the wall. “Can we destroy or otherwise nullify the Keeper’s territory? If the Keeper’s forces have to travel long distances after being rescued, that will at least wear them out. It should also slow down the attack, giving our side moments of rest.”

“Your lesser servants should be able to forcibly unclaim territory. They won’t be able to claim it in your name without territory of our own, but it would shrink our opponent’s effective area.”

Arkk, after launching a few more bolts of lightning, summoned a pair of lesser servants. “Burrow in that direction,” he said, pointing to where the reinforcing stream of monsters was coming from. “Find enemy territory and disrupt it.”

“They shouldn’t require verbal orders,” Vezta said, canting her head as she watched them leap off the wall and dive into the ground. A few monsters struck at the lesser servants, but they couldn’t follow into the tiny passages. The servants weren’t digging corridors or halls meant for others, just their own amorphous bodies. “The lesser servants are direct extensions of the [HEART]. Your [HEART].”

“So the ones I summoned earlier can be brought back to help those two?”

Vezta dipped her head. “For as much as they can help. You’ve seen them fight. The moment the other Keeper spots them, their mission will end.”

“They need escorts.”

“Master,” Vezta said, burning suns that were her eyes turning to bore into him. “Might I remind you that you said we were to defend only?”

Arkk fried a goblin and hit a ghast with lightning. The latter got back to its feet, unfortunately. “You know what they say about a good defense,” he said, gritting his teeth into a forced smile. “We just need to—”

“No we master. The Keeper is after you. If you step foot onto enemy territory, you will be surrounded and defeated in an instant.”

“If it is any consolation, I don’t think the Keeper wants to kill me. Just eat my brain.”

Vezta was not amused.

“I’m open to suggestions.”

Vezta drew in a breath of air and let it back out. “I will go after your servants. You will stay safe.”

“Will you be safe?”

Vezta’s eyes shifted back to the ground over the wall. She assessed for a moment before nodding. “If this is all the Keeper has, I won’t die.”

“And if he has more? If there is another of your kin around?”

“Then I will impress upon my sibling the utter mistake of attacking the master of Fortress Al-Mir.”

Arkk held Vezta’s gaze, looking for any sign of false bravado in her confidence. Finding none, he smiled. “Then I’ll leave this to—”

“Arkk!” Dakka shouted, moving closer with the crystal ball. “Sorry to interrupt. You were right. The guards along the northern side of the wall are dead. They look… eaten. Partially.”

Grimacing, Arkk looked back to Vezta. “If the Keeper is here, now might be the best time to go. Destroy as much as you can. Once you’ve been noticed, get out.”

Vezta hesitated, then bowed. “As you command.”

She backed up until she bumped against the waist-high barrier of the wall. She didn’t stop moving, tipping over backward. Arkk rushed over just in time to watch her land on her feet, somehow facing away from the wall. Tendrils covered in eyes and mouths whipped around her in a fury, striking at anything too close. The Keeper took note in an instant, ripping away any monsters that were within reach.

As soon as there was nothing left to attack, Vezta’s tendrils turned on her. They twisted around her, folding over and over as they tied her down into a tiny knot far too small to contain her full form. The tendrils turned and shrank until they were completely gone, pulled into the ground right where one of the lesser servants had burrowed into the ground.

A moment of silence covered both sides of the battlefield with Vezta’s departure. More than a few eyes turned in his direction. Even Zullie was staring down at the spot where Vezta had vanished. Arkk tried to pretend he didn’t notice. Instead, he used the momentary lapse in action to send a full-powered bolt of lightning at the nearest insect. The explosion of yellow globs of blood and viscera started the battle over again.

Twisting, roiling masses of tendrils erupted back onto the surface just after reaching a fortified wall through the narrow tunnel the lesser servants had dug. The entrance to the fortress was well hidden, poking out from a large boulder that might have been covering the entrance entirely up until this event started.

Vezta stared for a long moment, watching and observing as she tried to recall just who had commanded a [HEART] in this area. The area had the faint smell of death and decay still lingering even after a thousand years. The Eternal Silence, Vezta presumed. The only Keeper Vezta could recall who paid such tribute to the Eternal Silence would have been Duncan the Undefeated, who had obviously been defeated at some point over the centuries. Or… maybe he hadn’t. The Eternal Silence, a master of death and undeath, could have sustained a servant indefinitely.

Or so would have been the case before the Calamity.

As Vezta stood watching, a third lesser servant emerged nearby. Arkk had summoned five in total, three before she arrived and two after. She wasn’t sure where the missing ones were, but the three present should suffice for her current duty.

Disrupting the enemy’s ability to return their minions to the fight in a timely manner wasn’t a bad plan. It might make the opposing Keeper less inclined to rescue useless minions knowing that they wouldn’t be back in the fight for a long time in addition to tiring out those that did get rescued. It showed acceptable levels of tactical thinking, which was about all Vezta could expect from a novice. It was also a plan that only had a chance of success now. If the [HEART] of this fortress was connected to the [PANTHEON] the way it should have been, Vezta wouldn’t have made it more than a step inside before magical destruction rained down upon her for her insolence.

As it was, all she had to worry about were the monsters raining down upon her.

Vezta watched with narrowed eyes as a trio of monsters emerged from the long stairwell that led down into the depths of the fortress. None noticed the glowing eyes in the shadows of the Darkwood. They didn’t bother to look back, ushered along by their Keeper to continue their mindless assault on the human settlement. A pair emerged shortly after and another two after that.

Simply walking inside would see her caught. While Vezta had every confidence in her ability to escape, even should the Keeper make an appearance, the lesser servants would perish and thus she would fail her mission. Without the siege magics provided by a fully functional [HEART], burrowing inside wouldn’t be possible either. She could scour the area for an alternate entrance but that would likely consume too much time.

Vezta looked over the three waiting servants with a distasteful frown. If only she could carry out the task of destroying territory on her own. Alas, her former master had sacrificed much of her connection to [HEART] magics to make her a more effective advisor capable of autonomous thought and activity. It had been necessary for her to delve into the mysteries of the [HEART] failure caused by the Calamity.

Reaching down, she picked up one of the squirming masses of tentacles and began reshaping it much as she had done with the servant currently in charge of tailoring. Discarded bits and pieces fell to the ground around them as she rent the physical form of the creature, leaving it more or less in the form of a shadow between the stars. A few glowing eyes and one snapping set of teeth were all that remained. The rest of the darkness bled into the shadows of the brush under the trees.

Vezta performed the same treatment on the other two servants. They wouldn’t survive for long like this. They didn’t need to. Within the hour, she would finish her task and would finally be able to get her stubborn master away from this place.

Prepared, Vezta waited for a lull in the number of monsters emerging from the opening beneath the barrel. Her tendrils pulled her down into a shadowy form, though it wasn’t quite as hidden as while in Fortress Al-Mir or while near Arkk. The Keeper might notice if he paid attention. Some of the smarter minions could as well if they knew what to look for.

Entering the passageway with the other servants trailing after her, Vezta was surprised to find a total lack of doors. Had the Keeper relied entirely on the boulder as their method of defense? That, Vezta could only shake her head at. It was either an embarrassing display of incompetence, an embarrassing display of overconfidence, or an embarrassing display of ignorance. Whatever the case, her opinion of the Keeper fell even further as she continued down a long and straight corridor.

She no longer held any delusions that this might be Duncan the Undefeated.

The corridor was a mess. The tiles were cracked and broken and the gemstones, typical identifiers of [HEART] territory, were faded or missing entirely. Vezta could hardly believe that this area could count as territory without the linking stones carrying out the [HEART] magic. What were the servants of this fortress doing?

Vezta’s slithering march through the fortress corridor came to a pause as she considered that question.

Were there servants? Arkk only knew the spell to summon lesser servants because she taught it to him. If other servants of Vezta’s kind had withered away in the years since the Calamity, there might not be anyone around to teach the current Keeper of the [HEART]. Vezta was unsure how she had survived. The [HEART] going dormant without a master should have starved her. Instead, she had waited for a suitable master to come along and now lived to watch Fortress Al-Mir regain its beat.

Master Razerk’s modifications to her being might have been the cause. He truly had been a genius in the art of magic. If only he had lived to see her return with knowledge of what the so-called Light gods had done, he would have had the portal reopened in a week and the Calamity undone the next.

Thought discarded, Vezta pushed forward. If there were no servants in this fortress to reclaim the territory she destroyed, her task became infinitely simpler. She just needed to find the furthest junction of the territory. Fortress territory had to be contiguous for any given locale. If she disrupted territory as far from the boulder entrance as possible, she wouldn’t need to fight her way through minions every step of the way. Normally, that wouldn’t even be possible. She would have to start at the outside and work her way in on any proper fortress. Here? With the weak links between each tile?

She was honestly surprised that the fortification magic was still working. Destroying the territorial claim would be child’s play.

With the magic of the [HEART] disconnected, the servants would then be able to collapse the tunnel entirely, forcing the monsters to take a different route if the enemy Keeper wished to continue their assault.

Vezta found her junction after a few minutes of scurrying along the corners of the corridor. This tunnel was long and empty, much like those from Fortress Al-Mir that led to the nearby villages. It lacked the traps Arkk had installed and had no other defenses. Not even patrolling minions—they were presumably all involved with the assault. Vezta was disappointed with how easy this job was.

The servants under her command got to work with a mere gesture, fighting the weak magic of the dilapidated fortress’ claim on the territory. Vezta remained at the ready, fully prepared for the rain of minions.

Yet the tiles cracked and withered, collapsing to raw earth. As the last of the fortress magic dissipated from the area, a cascading effect ran down the corridor at Vezta’s back, destroying every tile and wall. Not questioning her good fortune at a lack of opposition, Vezta directed the servants to the walls to begin collapsing the tunnel.

Only after they burrowed within did the situation change.

A ghast appeared before Vezta, perhaps the same one from the initial moments of the assault. Frothing white foam dripped from its unhinged jaw as it looked around the corridor. Its tiny red eyes settled on Vezta after only a moment. Without a word or attempt at communication, it charged.

Vezta just waved, smiling wide as the tunnel collapsed down around it.

That wouldn’t have killed the Keeper. Even if he hadn’t been possessing a body, a simple teleport would have him extracted. With the collapse and no territory on this side, however, he was trapped over there. Vezta did not know where other entrances were or if there was another close route. That should still stall him enough.

Perhaps more than enough. A small part of Vezta wanted to agree with her master. Crushing this interloper entirely both for offenses against the [PANTHEON] and being such an embarrassment toward Keepers of the [HEART] would have been gratifying. Still, embarrassment though this Keeper was, her reasoning from earlier had not changed. Especially not now that he had been alerted to her presence. He would be on guard if he wasn’t completely incompetent.

With a small shake of her head, Vezta turned and started walking back through the dirt tunnel, directing the servants to continue collapsing the tunnel behind her until they inevitably expired.

Upon returning to the burg, Vezta took stock of the situation as she approached. The gate had been bashed in but there wasn’t any fighting going on. Bodies stained the ground, most from monsters but a few humans as well. No living monsters remained. The Keeper must have pulled them back, possibly fearing that they were under further attack.

Ducking under a ruined wooden beam of the gate, Vezta’s many eyes swept over the scene. The knot of fear pulled taut deep within her chest.

Humans stood on one side. Orcs stood on the other. Arkk was on the ground, blood staining his tunic from a series of thick claw marks across his chest. Zullie crouched over him, muttering something as she drew her finger over one of the wounds. The skin behind her finger sealed together as she moved, but whatever magic she was using didn’t work properly. The skin split apart almost immediately and her spell wasn’t doing anything about the black veins spreading out from the wound.

“Master?”