BlueShear
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Chapter 67
🕑 Added 2024-10-22 22:00:09 +0000 UTCIt was only with the advent of the Azure Queen that humanity struck the first decisive blow to rift born kind.
One that was heard around the world and back. Taking the war to them after countless centuries of indolence, the hero’s and fated champions, great warriors of old, rapidly expanded the boundaries of their burgeoning queendom.
Beating back incursion after incursion with brutal efficiency. Facing off against impossible odds time and time again. Genius tactical know how and unrivaled levels of discipline what allowed them to continually win the day without fail. Their tread relentless, prowess unmatched, ambition liable to shame the gods.
Until that was, it very suddenly was not. Sad to say, the impetus of that first ever legendary campaign would not survive the death of its main driving force—the Azure Queen herself.
And though many after her have sought to claim that title in the decades following her death, humanity has been fighting a losing battle ever since. Where every one step forward means ten steps back. A retreating conflict where, this time, it was the rift spawn who had the upper hand. So that many of the great bastions, shining beacons of humanity meant to shield against the dark, were lost.
The imposing towers, grand defensive formations, and the honored heritage they represented. Unwilling to let such an indignity stand, an elite task force was put together to retake these fallen bastions of civilization, led, as it just so happens, by a newly elevated academy graduate.
Eleanor, now elevated to the rank of Corporal, peaked her head up over the lip of the rise, squinting to better make out the barren valley below. The dusty, rock-strewn bowl, more resembling an uneven crater, which just so happened to house one of several Impregnable Bastions—coined before repeated retreat and years of neglect had made a mockery of their namesake. That lost, tower shaped idol… oh! And an unending sea of undead.
“How many of them, do you think?” Eleanor asked, still unused to giving commands.
The woman to her left sucked her teeth.
“Twenty thousand maybe. Thirty at the most.”
“Right! So, no biggie then?”
The woman did not respond. Not that she’d expected her to. She’d tried living up to the elevated station Lieutenant Carver had honored her with, all the way here she’d done her very best, but as of yet, her command had been less than agreeable thus far.
It probably didn’t help that they’d been an established squad well before her appointment, and now more or less operated how she imagined they would have if she weren’t even there. Much of that involving treating her as if she weren’t even there. Not unless they absolutely had to. Like right now, for instance.
“Okay then. Let’s head ba-”
But the woman was already moving, shimmying her way down the incline, before loping silently in the direction they’d made camp.
“…back,” Eleanor sighed.
***
“We go straight through.”
Eleanor gaped at the woman, Fen, once commander of their ragtag squad.
“But…? After all your preaching that stealth is paramount when traversing the frontier? Did you not just hear the part about tens of thousands of undead?”
“I did, but there’s nothing for it,” said Fen. “Boulder here will make us a path,” she reached over and patted the head of her Stone Salamander familiar.
“Okay…? But what about our exit strategy? You can’t expect us to hold out against that long enough for it to matter.”
The woman shrugged.
“Don’t have to. All we need to do is reignite the soul crystal at the very top of the tower. Once we do that, all of the left-over rift spawn should crawl back into the vile pits from which they came.”
“Uh, hey. Really hate to interrupt, but I still don’t understand how you can be so damnably sure of this without it, you know, ever having been done,” R. Jun chimed in.
Fen said nothing, merely stared down her familiar with dead, almost vacant eyes. Shockingly, the scarred woman was the first to look away, though perhaps Eleanor shouldn’t have been surprised, all things considered.
“Right then. Everyone ready? I want to be in and out. Brisk and efficient. No heroics, no unnecessary risks.”
“Yes ma’am!” was the squad’s immediate response.
Eleanor traded looks with her familiar. He only shrugged, giving her a pointed look that she willfully ignored—not willing to rehash that same argument all over again. She looked up at the rise, picturing the hoards of undead it hid from view, and sighed.
***
“Go! We’ll hold them back from here!” Fen exclaimed, bashing in the head of yet another of the zombies trying to breach their makeshift fortifications.
A sloppily raised stone barricade, already it was riddled with multiple zombie shaped holes, and was visibly crumbling before her very eyes. Standing on the narrow threshold of the grand, arched doorway leading into the tower proper, Eleanor hesitated. Smashing yet another undead with a brutal swing of her spiked mace, Fen glanced back, a flash of irritation twisting her features.
“Go!”
And so, ever the obedient soldier, Eleanor went, Jun trailing casually behind. Turning away from the furious melee happening on the wide tower steps, Eleanor fervently hoped that the woman was indeed correct, and that vanquishing the unending hoard of undead could be so simple as she suggested.
Upon crossing the main threshold, they found themselves in a grand entrance hall, plucked as if from another place in time. Albeit not one especially far from the time they were now living in.
The ceiling soared high above. Nearly swallowed by shadow, faded murals and worn carvings could just barely be seen adorning its surface. Depicting great battles and even greater victories.
Or at least Eleanor assumed that’d once been the case.
The walls here were made of the same semi-transparent brick as the great wall had been. Though, where those had burned with an inner fire, these looked as if those inner flames had all but gone out.
Along these walls, alcoves housed the rusted remnants of what could’ve once been armor. Likewise, the hall was adorned with the tattered remnants of tapestries or banners, she couldn’t tell which. The remains of massive chandeliers hanging from rusted chains bolted into the ceiling, where they weren’t already littering the floor.
Ahead of them, a faded carpet ran the length of the hall, leading up to a central staircase that branched off to either side. The one to the left ending only a few meters up—a heaping mound of debris clear indication as to where the rest of that stairway had gone. And directly opposite them, upon the upper landing, stood a set of imposing double doors.
Doors which could’ve been a day old for how much wear and tear was apparent on its glistening surface. Like tempered glass, chipped obsidian in texture, the massive doors had clearly weathered the test of time. Their pristine state only made more miraculous given its contrast to the rest of the hall.
Very keenly aware of what every second spent gawking was costing her team, Eleanor quickly rushed towards the end of the hall, taking the stairs three at a time. Reaching the landing at a sprint, she was just beginning to ponder how in the world she was meant to get the massive doors open, when the first of many cracks resounded throughout the hall.
Swiveling on her heel, Eleanor could only watch in mounting horror, as a spiderweb of fractures swiftly spread across the hall.
Racing across walls and ceiling like great arcs of lightning, shedding dust and debris as they went, it wasn’t long before the first massive chandelier slipped its bindings and came crashing to the floor. And from there, a several ton rain of masonry soon followed.
Spinning round, she was prepared to throw herself at the doors, if need be, only to find that Jun had already somehow leveraged them open and was now frantically gesturing her inside. Ears rendered deaf by the growing cacophony, Eleanor didn’t waste even a second. She ran at the door, slipped through the narrow gap, and heard the door slam shut just before the deafening cascade nearly shook the walls from their foundations.
Then the rattling stilled. For long moments after, the two merely breathed heavily in the sudden silence.
“So,” said R. Jun, his eyes glowing in the relative dimness of the room. “How much do you want to bet they’re not coming back for us?”
Eleanor merely rolled her eyes, not even deigning to dignify the question with a response.
Getting to her feet, Eleanor stumbled in the dark. Reaching out blindly, she steadied herself with a hand on the wall, only to then leap back in surprise when, all along said wall of what was apparently a massive circular chamber—maybe half that of the ovoid gymnasium where she’d taken her physical assessment—large braziers flared to life with azure flame. Revealing, in turn, the many undead that shuffled therein.
[CommonBorn Zombie (Lowly F Grade)]
The numbers inside this chamber were in no way comparable to what waited for them outside, but nearly two hundred zombies packed into an almost airtight space wasn’t anything to scoff at. It also wasn’t particularly pleasant on the olfactory organs. With a simultaneous groan, as if they were all of one mind, the hoard of zombies turned and began shambling in their direction. Jun scoffed.
“Alright then. What do you say? Shall we make this interesting? Highest kill count wins. Loser has to profess their undying loyalty and base inferiority, valid from now until the end of all known time.”
“What-?”
But before she could even cobble together a response, several ruby daggers were already whistling into the meandering hoard, decapitating ten zombies in the time it took to blink and dropping them like limp sacks of grain.
“Come now. Of course I know this contest is superficial at best, the outcome was decided well before either of us was born, but I’d really rather expected more from you. The victory won’t feel nearly so earned unless you at least manage to keep up.”
And so saying, Jun immediately leapt into the fray, heads, black ichor, and severed limbs rising and falling in his wake like some grim form of confetti. And, after only a moment of blank incredulity, Eleanor leapt right in after him. She couldn’t just take this lying down after all.
***
From atop their earthen vantage, the artificial plateau their leader’s familiar had created, one of Fen’s combat elite hesitantly voiced a concern.
“Was that wise, do you think? Trapping the rift spawn in there with her? Weren’t that the one we was supposed to be delivering to the Lieutenant?”
Fen grunted.
“Any of you want to try restraining that monster while Boulder here drops a building on its master?”
There was no response to that, only an awkward silence punctuated by the shifting of feet. They’d all seen what that particular familiar was capable of on the journey here, after all.
“But, isn’t that bad for us? I mean, if we go back empty handed…?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. I sincerely doubt there’s anything in there capable of putting that monster down. Whereas the girl on the other hand? I dare say that rift spawn can’t protect her from everything. We’ll give it a week. Hopefully by then starvation will have weakened the rift spawn enough that collaring it will be easy. Then, we can finally say goodbye to this sodding hellhole.”
And to that, the rest of them could only agree.
