Fortress Al-Mir

“Current food stores can feed the prisoners for three weeks with mild rationing. Further than that and we’ll need either extreme rationing or another source of food.”

Arkk nodded his head, sliding a paper across his desk. “Thank you, Alma. Maintain the mild ration for now then. We’ll reevaluate our situation after a week. I hope to receive a response from Evestani’s leader by then.”

If it came down to it, he could create hatcheries and pig farms like what Fortress Al-Mir had. There were already some present at Elmshadow, mostly confined within the tower, for his own troops. It was the last option he wanted to go for, however. The magic of Fortress Al-Mir and Al-Lavik consumed gold to fuel the farms. Feeding the thousands of prisoners would drain his already diminished supplies ever further.

The werecat shifted where she stood, lips curling in a distasteful frown. “They’re going to pick up their spears and point them at us the moment they’re free. You know that, right?”

“Maybe so,” Arkk said. “No. I’m a fool but not that big of a fool. Probably so. But I can’t keep them here. The Duchy is in too much turmoil under Katja and with the pressure the rest of the Kingdom is heaping on her. I could order them executed—Priscilla would revel in the opportunity to kill a bunch of humans and I don’t doubt I would get several volunteers to hold the executioner’s axe from among my employees. But that doesn’t get me anything. If Evestani is willing to pay for their release, then it is clearly the best option.”

“Assuming it isn’t a trap.”

“I’ve spoken with some of the others about ways to check if the gold is tainted in any way. We’ll be exhausting that list. If the actual exchange is a trap, then it won’t be a very good one. Zullie had a proposition to ensure that nobody will be physically present at the exchange,” Arkk said, glancing to where the blind witch sat with a smug smile on her face. “She was just about to inform me when you came in.

Alma glanced over with a shudder. The felt cap she wore shifted without her touching it. Arkk didn’t blame her for her discomfort. The deep holes that had once held her violet eyes looked… worse than usual. Or better? They were still black voids, but the tiny flecks of light scattered across the backs of her eye sockets now gleamed with unnatural energy.

Not that there had ever been anything natural about her lack of eyes.

A curse and a gift at the same time, or so Zullie said.

She was still blind. But, whatever ritual she had done on herself—Arkk was almost afraid to ask—gave her at least some insight. She tilted her head as if looking around the room. “Ah,” she said, as if she hadn’t been expecting the sudden attention. “You probably would rather hear my proposition alone before we involve others.”

“I’m not going to like it,” Arkk said. It wasn’t a question.

Zullie just smiled.

“Very well. Alma, thank you for the report. I’ll consider your concerns.”

With one last glance at the witch, the werecat gave Arkk a nod and quickly departed. As soon as the door shut, Arkk turned to Zullie and waited.

And waited…

And…

“Zullie? We’re alone now.”

Zullie jolted, turning her head toward Arkk. “Sorry. Still not used to seeing like this. Or… not seeing. It’s more like my level of knowledge just shifts. I don’t so much notice someone has left because the knowledge of their absence was just… always there.”

“Are you… okay?” Arkk asked, feeling genuinely worried for the witch.

She… didn’t exactly look well. Ignoring her eyes, her cheeks were thinner than normal and her black hair, normally kept tight in a ponytail, hung loose and wild around her head. More like Agnete than Zullie. Strands even hung over her face, not that they would obstruct her vision. And beyond her appearance, she had always been a strange one, heavily invested in her magical research. But since the incident…

Well, there was a lot to worry about.

“Fine. My eyes—or my… eye holes?—do have this persistent itch. I’ve been trying to find a way to not feel it but nothing any spell does to my eyes seems to last. Otherwise, Hale would have been able to give me new ones.”

“I see…”

“Rude,” Zullie huffed, folding her arms.

Arkk narrowed his eyes, trying to decide if she was making a joke. A joke didn’t fit with her personality. But rather than being offended or in good humor, she looked nervous. Her foot tapped against the ground in repetitive, agitated taps. The fingers on her elbow jittered as well. And she was biting her lip.

“So, your proposition? What’s so important that we have to meet like this?”

“Okay. Hear me out. It’s like this… Well, there’s something… I just wanted…”

“Zullie.”

“There isn’t a good way to say it so I’m just going to say it,” the witch said, moving her hands to her knees where she scrunched up the fabric of her trousers. “There are a lot of dead in and around Elmshadow.”

Arkk blinked. He blinked again as he ran over what she just said, just to make sure he wasn’t misunderstanding anything.

“No.”

“Oh please—”

“No, Zullie. The horse was bad enough.”

“What was bad about it? It served its purpose and it served that purpose well. Nothing bad came of it. It’s just magic like any other magic.”

Arkk’s thoughts soured as he considered the horse. The horse had been just a horse. Hardly worth thinking about twice. It had been useful at the time, saving them the effort it would have taken to drag the Protector’s body back to Fortress Al-Mir.

But it was just a horse. This was…

“Hear me out. I would never have said this aloud back at the academy; Inquisitions tend to come knocking if you say the wrong things. But you’re different. We’re different.”

Arkk drew in a breath and let it out as a long sigh. “Zullie, this isn’t even worth considering.

“Of course it is worth considering. Necromancy isn’t evil, it’s just magic. To living people especially, it could be so beneficial. The dead can perform dangerous labor without fear, working in mines, fields, lumber mills, and even as experimental test subjects that would otherwise put people at risk. The only problem with it is that nobody wants to watch their mother or husband or children shambling around.”

“That’s quite the problem.”

“Hardly. All we have to do is scrape off all the meaty bits. Nobody can tell one skeleton apart from another.”

Arkk ran his fingers in a circular motion over his temples. “That’s not the solution it sounds like it is,” he said, closing his eyes.

“Look. We might be seeing a demon in the near future. I don’t want to fight a demon. You don’t want to fight a demon. Agnete, Priscilla, and Vezta don’t want to fight a demon. And if we all don’t want to fight demons, you think you can even mildly convince the rest of Fortress Al-Mir to fight a demon?” Zullie shook her head back and forth, further tussling her black hair. “But you know who doesn’t care if they have to fight a demon?”

“Dead people.”

“Dead people!” Zullie said, clapping her hands together.

Arkk hated that she had a point there.

There were a lot of dead in and around Elmshadow. Both from the recent conflict as well as the initial siege. During the time the burg had been occupied, plenty had died as well. Evestani hadn’t done much for the bodies. They cleared the corpses out of the areas they had been using. Elsewhere in the city and its surroundings, they just sat out in the open, exposed to the rats and the elements. With the cold of winter still lingering as spring slowly awoke, they hadn’t even really decomposed.

Zullie sounded so… convincing.

“And, as long as we have a bunch of skeletons to fight a demon, why not use them elsewhere too? You can supplement any fighting force with disposable warriors. Send the dead in first as shock and terror troops, both demoralizing the enemy as well as wearing them down before the living have to engage. And, with regards to the prisoners, they can act as escorts.

“There is even a bonus! The prisoners will be less likely to rebel or, after rejoining Evestani, raise their arms against us again if they know that, should they fall in combat, they’ll just rise again and join the other side.”

Arkk, elbows on the desk, ducked his head and clasped his hands together behind his neck. “I need you to stop talking.”

“Why? Because my arguments are too good?”

“Yes!” Arkk snapped. “This is the kind of thing that gets mercenary companies on our asses.”

“We are the mercenary company. Sure, First Legion might be scurrying around and the Claymores aren’t completely destroyed. But you really think they have the power to stop us even without adding a legion of undead to our ranks?”

“White Company.”

“They still can’t stand against us.”

“I still need a good relationship with Astra and Vrox. If they catch wind of this… I’m sure Hawkwood wouldn’t be all that pleased either. And this might just be the thing that gets the Prince to summon his demon.”

Zullie stopped talking, frowning to herself.

Arkk used the silence to lean back and think a little without her honeyed words filling the air. Despite his words just now and despite his reservations, the idea had merit. A lot of merit, if he were being honest.

He didn’t know how actual mercenary leaders and military generals handled it. The fortresses provided unparalleled ability to teleport everyone in his employ out of danger. Because of that, Fortress Al-Mir had only suffered a small number of casualties. Those who had died too quickly to react to. Combined with esoteric magics of teleportation rituals, Flesh Weaving, the fact that everyone in his employ could cast at least a few small spells, and the support of beings like Agnete, Priscilla, and the gorgon, and Arkk had quite the advantage.

Yet he still felt wracked with guilt over every one of those who fell because of his ideas, plans, and actions. Arkk was constantly concerned with keeping everyone safe even as he sent them into dangerous situations. He tried his best to learn from failures and to not repeat the same mistakes twice.

Meanwhile, thousands of people would die when two regular armies met each other. Both sides would clash and, at that point, it was impossible to not have hills of corpses piled up. Even in this latest battle, Hawkwood and White Company had suffered three times the casualties that Company Al-Mir saw, even adjusted for the total amount of people. They weren’t contracted with Arkk. He couldn’t move them around like he could with his forces. Hawkwood knew that and still had designed battle plans around it, sending his men into the thick of the fight.

How did Hawkwood and others like him handle that? Arkk felt like he would have crumbled. As he was, he was legitimately considering necromancy of all things just because it sounded like it might save a few lives.

But if it did save lives, wasn’t that worth it?

“Alright—” “How about—”

Arkk cut himself off as Zullie started to speak at the same time. He gestured for her to continue, only to sit there feeling dumb for several seconds before he cleared his throat. “Go ahead,” he said.

“If you are opposed to necromancy, I did have a few other ideas. They will take longer as they require research and development instead of the already existent necromantic spells.”

Arkk held his tongue, wanting to hear what she had to say without mentioning that he wasn’t quite as opposed to necromancy as it might have sounded.

“Godly magic. Specifically, magic derived from the Lock and Key.”

“Zullie. The last time you messed with that, you lost your eyes. And you lied to me. I’m still not happy about that.”

Zullie lurched forward, hands gripping her knees. “I didn’t lie!”

“You said that stuttering spell was a shield—”

“It was a shield. In all my tests, it worked fine. Mostly. I just couldn’t keep it going for any length of time. I didn’t expect that your freaky magical reserves would open a rift in reality.” Zullie leaned back, taking a breath. When she calmed down, she tilted her head up. “But, because it did, I think I caught a glimpse of things I wasn’t supposed to. I learned things. I think I know what went wrong, how to correct it, and, more importantly, how to fabricate rituals and spells that utilize the magic of gods.”

“I think I’m more open to necromancy than—”

“Oh please. I know what went wrong. Xel’atriss, Lock and Key is too… real. Too close. It is the god of barriers and boundaries. It is especially sensitive to power directed toward it and, when it notices that, it gets curious and checks on what is coming knocking.

“I have theories that the Lock and Key is entirely unaffected by the Calamity. All the other gods were cut off by what the traitor gods did but how could the master of barriers wind up trapped behind a wall? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“That isn’t what Vezta—”

“Vezta doesn’t know anything. Or, not everything. For all her age and strangeness, she spent a thousand years sitting in an empty fortress in the middle of nowhere. She isn’t a god. She isn’t a spellcaster or magical researcher. In the end, she is as mortal—and fallible—as the rest of us.”

Arkk crossed his arms, cocking an eyebrow. “She hasn’t been wrong so far.”

“How would you know? You don’t know anything more than what Vezta has said. And if Vezta is wrong about a few things, you don’t know anything at all!” Zullie stood from her chair and crossed the room. Her foot knocked against the edge of Arkk’s desk, but she didn’t seem to care. She jammed a finger against the top of the table. “A thousand years ago, something changed. Before that change, there were a large number of gods involved in the world and closer connections between this world and others. After that change, the connections were cut off and only three gods seem to remain.

“Anything beyond that is hearsay and conjecture. Those three gods are probably responsible for the Calamity as it fits with the circumstantial evidence we have.” Zullie pulled back from Arkk’s desk, visibly calming herself down. “To be clear, I don’t think Vezta is intentionally deceiving us. She’s probably correct about most of what she said.

“But I do not believe she is correct about Xel’atriss being locked behind the Calamity. A being that could casually open a portal between here and the Underworld can’t be restricted like that.”

Arkk let her words hang in the air for a long few moments. Zullie remained standing on the other side of his desk, her breathing unusually heavy. She reached up, shoving her rectangular glasses up the bridge of her nose. The refracting glass only made the starlight in the back of her eyes sparkle all the more intensely.

For his part, Arkk sat a little confused. “I am not agreeing with or denying what you are saying, but what does that have to do with utilizing spells derived from the Lock and Key’s power?”

Zullie flinched ever so slightly. “Sorry. I got distracted. Xel’atriss is the easiest to craft spells with because of all that I just said. It is the closest non-hostile greater entity. The other options are the Heart of Gold, the Holy Light, and the Almighty Glory.”

“None of which are acceptable. What about the Cloak of Shadows?”

Shifting her weight from foot to foot, Zullie shook her head. “Savren and I confirmed that no magic—or anything—is leaking from the Underworld through the portal. I believe that includes the Cloak’s power.”

Arkk shook his head. “The shadow armor and cloaks seem to disagree with that.”

“The shadow armor and cloak were crafted in the Underworld and brought over. It’s a bit different. Like how we can charge the glowstones over there and then bring them here to power rituals. The ceremonial dagger is probably weaker here, but we haven’t had the opportunity to properly test that with all the other things going on.” Zullie paused then added, “The Calamity is still in full effect. It wasn’t weakened because of the opening of the portal.

“That said, there may be a way to… tunnel through the portal to tap into the Cloak of Shadows’ power more directly. I do not recommend this. Not only might it cause a weakening in the Calamity—something that would probably end poorly for this world unless we are sure that the magic from the Underworld will flow through at a manageable rate before being drained out somewhere else—but the complexity of such a tunnel would likely require years of research. Tapping into Xel’atriss is far simpler.”

Arkk drummed his fingers against the table, closing his eyes as he thought. When he had personally met with Xel’atriss… things had gone rather well. The god hadn’t communicated in words, but in adjustments to his knowledge. One of those adjustments was… well, an urging against repeating the ritual that had caused that meeting in the first place. As a result, Arkk shut down all planar research immediately after.

When Zullie had lost her eyes, he had taken that as a reaffirming of that warning. That magic of that type was, in some way, taboo. But now, the one who had lost those eyes was saying that it wasn’t an issue. She had already performed some kind of ritual based on the Lock and Key, that which allowed her to somewhat comprehend her surroundings even without eyes.

As far as Arkk had heard, there had been no repercussions from that.

Arkk stood, turning his back to Zullie, and faced the large window that looked out from the Walking Fortress. He peered straight through the hole in the mountain north of Elmshadow Burg. Godly magic had carved that hole. While the tower had mostly weathered what of the attack made it through the mountain, he knew it wasn’t going to be enough. The avatar would be back and he would likely change his tactics.

On the other side of the Duchy, there was the potential for a demon to appear. Despite his research, despite conferring with Abbess Hannah in Richter’s battlecaster group, despite having read through the black book, he still didn’t know exactly what a demon could accomplish. Only that they were empowered by a supernatural might to fulfill the terms of their contracts. If the Prince summoned one contracted to destroy Company Al-Mir, they would be up against potentially another avatar-level threat. If not greater.

Wasn’t asking for assistance in times of such hardships what gods were for? That was what Abbess Keena preached in the Suun sermons back in Langleey Village. She had been talking about the Light, specifically, but…

“Do you recall when we first built the temple back in Fortress Al-Mir?” Arkk asked as a sudden thought occurred to him. “Sixteen pedestals appeared around the perimeter that weren’t in the plans. A few of those pedestals were occupied with statues of gods. Vezta said it was because the temple was a place closely connected to the gods.”

“I remember,” Zullie said, sounding a little confused.

“Three of the pedestals were occupied by the traitor gods. One held Xel’atriss—”

“More proof that the Calamity didn’t affect it.”

“Perhaps,” Arkk said, “but there was one other occupied pedestal. That of the Jailor of the Void. I encountered an avatar of the Jailor, right here in Elmshadow. He was… out of his mind, but his abilities were powerful. Don’t repeat this to Agnete, but his powers might have been stronger than her flames.” He had been able to destroy—or detain, in his words—those golden statues that Agnete had failed to melt.

“I see what you’re going to ask,” Zullie said as Arkk turned again to face her. “I don’t know anything about this Jailor. Neither do you, beyond what you just said. For all we know, this being was a secret fourth traitor, allied with the other three. Xel’atriss, we know from its actions, is friendly. Or, at least, willing to assist.”

“You don’t think it is worth investigating?”

“From a purely academic sense, of course it is! But we’re under limitations, time constraints, and pressure from gods.”

“So we should stick with what we know, even if we don’t know that much.”

“Speaking of what we don’t know, I have examples of how to tap into the Lock and Key’s power. I have no reference for this Jailor.”

Humming, Arkk returned to his seat. He would ask Vezta what she knew. Even if, as Zullie said, she didn’t know everything, she certainly knew more than anyone else. Aside from her, only Priscilla and the Protector might know anything.

He would ask them as well.

For now… “Very well. I’ll authorize this research and see that you get what you need. But you are to be exceedingly careful. No more accidents.”

“I don’t intend to lose any more body parts. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“I do.” Arkk drew in a deep breath then let it out again as a sigh. “Also, come up with ways we might raise undead without upsetting everyone because of ethics, morals, religion, and common sense. If you can do that, you can raise as many as you think we need. But only from the corpses of Evestani. None of the local villagers or our comrades.”

“Ah.” Zullie held up a finger. “I was thinking you would do the raising.”

“Me? I don’t know necromancy.”

“It’s easy. I’ll teach you in ten minutes.”

“But—”

“I can raise twenty-five to fifty. A hundred if I strain myself.” Zullie’s lips split into a shark-like grin. “You, with your freaky magical prowess, can likely raise every corpse in Elmshadow without even noticing the drain. If you want an army, you’re going to have to do it yourself.”

Arkk slumped back, closing his eyes. As he did so, his perspective shifted to the cenotaph within Fortress Al-Mir. It needed new names added to it as a result of this battle. He had been delaying because of everything that needed doing, but…

“Fine,” he said, red light flooding into the room as he opened his eyes.