1 .Garok.
BWAHAHAHA! Joke’s on you, peons. You can’t burn my kingdom if it’s already MADE of fire, can you?”
– Theoria, The Technically Correct, Mad Empress of The Five States, Thellosia IX.
Skeletons were cheaters.
This Garok had deduced throughout his years of slaying them. Unrepentant, uncaring cheaters. To explain such a dilemma, and actually wonder why a light-wielding minotaur would be griping about cheating and the like, one had to examine the most commonly found feature of every living thing.
Muscles.
Everyone and everything had them. They governed almost every aspect of the body—strength, reflexes, the ability to stand upright, etc etc. All of those depended on muscles. Note that the word ‘living’ was used. Skeletons, being constructs of bone, and held together by hate, skipped that little step entirely. As such, they cheated. Where normally the amount of muscles and other variables on the body determined just how good you were at fighting, how long you could hold that bow taut or how fast you could run, they ignored this entirely.
They were made of bones. Bones and hate. For example, take the swinging of a sword. Muscles, and, if one was experienced, positioning of the body determined the strength of a swing. Muscles, again, determined how fast one could stop that swing if it missed and force it to change direction. Skeletons stuck a bony middle finger to all that.
He had come to conclude that they worked with an all or nothing system. Lacking muscles, they did not cite strength as the reason for their blows being stopped. No, when they attacked, they either succeeded, you dodged, or their arms broke. Garok, being a massive, armoured minotaur, was usually happy to let the last option happen. Novice adventurers, for the simple reason that most weren’t strong enough to break magically reinforced bone, fared horribly against skeletons in that regard.
And if they did manage to get the skeleton to break one of its arms by tanking blows? Well, the bony little f***** had a sharpened stump to stab you with then. A losing situation either way.
These thoughts flashed through Garok’s mind as yet another blow from the Tollsian Champion forced him back, hooves digging into the stone below him. The abomination silently pressed the attack, it’s great dual-sword flashing in the purple light. Already it had pushed the minotaur back with two fast, powerful blows, one seamlessly flowing into the next despite it jerking movements.
The next attack he barely evaded, breaking the pattern, and, by intent, the activation of the Champion’s Duelaspect. Nasty thing. Once it landed three blows, the aspect would increase the power of every following blow, adding magical weight to the attacks.
Garok, being a large, lumbering beast, was the perfect target for the skeletal giant. Or, he would have been had he been stupid enough to just stand still and take it. He stepped aside, and left the blade slide off his shield, angled to deflect instead of block. With a powerful swing, he smashed the vipermace into the right leg of the thing. It failed to break, but the light within his weapon, put there by Arbenos’s Might, ate away at the dark magick’s reinforcing the monster.
But it did not falter in the slightest, nor did he expect it to. It pressed forward, blade flashing, as the minotaur strained to keep up. This was not a good fight for him. As a minotaur, he was used to outweighing and outclassing the undead he fought, his thick armour and superior strength giving him the edge he needed to win. The training of a Cleric and blessing of the Three stacked the odds in his favor, against even crowds of undead.
But this Champion was his natural enemy. Bigger than the minotaur, stronger by a large margin, resistant to his magicks and partially armoured. It was patient, and could afford to be. Older than him by far, and more experienced. Far more, he bitterly thought as he backstepped another blow.
Even then, there was more. In the galleries above, skeletal archers stood, bows nocked and arrows of bone aimed at him. While he kept the Champion between them, they would not fire. But the instant he showed even a scrap of flesh, their missiles would whisper through the air.
But Garok had a plan. The Champion’s bulk kept the archers from loosing arrows at him. In the open room, properly maneuvering around the monster would end badly. And by badly, he meant arrows of bone, likely cursed, sticking from every spot his armour didn’t cover. That would be a slow, painful death.
Another step back pulled the Champion towards him, tirelessly striking at him with the weapon. It used no fancy tricks or skills, just quick, efficient strikes aimed to kill. Behind him loomed the doorway he had entered, half crumbled and leading into the darkness beyond.
Keeping the tower shield firmly between himself and the Tollsian construct, he kept backing up in a fighting retreat, vipermace hammering away at every opportunity. He didn’t strike blindly, but kept his attacks focused on one area of the Tollsian’s body. Saturating it with holy energy. He had tried using Sacred Flame on the monster, but the holy flames had washed over the monster with little effect.
Hooves crushing small rocks underfoot, he caught the Tollsian’s strike on the flanges of the mace, and, in the instant where it reversed direction, heaved it aside. His first real opening throughout the fight. Ghostly flames washed over the mace, illuminating the area around him as he viciously hammered at the giant’s body, putting his full strength into the swing.
It smashed into the skeletal giant, lifting it from its feet with an ear-splitting crunch of bone and throwing it aside. But Garok did not charge after it. No, the cleric bent down behind his tower shield and retreated slowly as arrows began to impact on his shield.
They were smart, these ones. Staggering the arrows to provide a constant stream of cursed bone silently flying towards him showed a level of teamwork and coordination rarely seen in Tol’s minions. Good for them, bad for any unwary adventurers stumbling too far into this tomb.
In short order, he retreated out of the doorway, putting stone between himself and the undead constructs. Checking for any undead that might have reformed, he flattened himself against the wall as well as he could. He should be safe for now. The Champion had obviously been commanded to defend the room, and wouldn’t pursue over its primary objective. The archers might be more flexible, but they still wouldn’t waste arrows on him. No, they were too patient for that.
In the cold of the tomb, he grimaced as he dropped the mace and felt around his left shoulder. With a grunt, he yanked the cursed arrow from his skin, noting that it had slipped between a gap in the plate armor. Three damn it. He would have to get that looked at. He’d left the slightest opening when he hurled his claymore at that Evoker and had paid for it.
Tossing the bloodied arrow aside, he listened to it click on the stones and raised his hand to the wound. With a rumbling sigh, he invoked Heal, and let the Three’s golden light light wash over the wound. It took but heartbeats to cleanse the taint, mend the muscle torn beneath, and patch the skin together. Now if only it could cleanse the blood from his fur as well.
Well, one could not wish for every little convenience to be fulfilled.
His wounds having healed, he rested for a moment, back to the wall and eyes to either side of the corridor. A few torches flickered dimly, casting faint light in the crumbling tomb. He had always wondered where the torches came from. Did someone constantly restock them? No matter how often he entered a tomb, there were always fresh ones. Taking them outside proved them to be non-magical items, but they were always fresh within. A mystery he wouldn’t solve standing here.
Heaving himself away from the wall, Garok peered into the room, taking it all in. In the center was a dais of sorts, the inscription upon it releasing faint purple energy that smelled of death. The Skeletal Evoker lay upon it, cleaved in two by his claymore. Said weapon lay on the stones not far from the body. He’s put considerable force into the throw, and killed the damn thing first. He grimaced at that. The Champion stood between him and his preferred weapon now, and wouldn’t be moving anytime soon. A few other armored skeletons lay about, in various states of bodily destruction. Other than that, the room was largely empty. No pillars. No altars. Nothing that screamed ‘dark magick’ to any passing adventurers. Except, of course, the few dozen walking dead and the generally sinister environment.
The vipermace was well and good, but he preferred the reach the claymore gave him when fighting. That said, he was at an impasse. Trying to fight the champion with the archers harrowing him was a near-impossible feat, even if he covered himself in holy shields. They needed to be removed. But how would he proceed? They were half-hidden by waist-high walls, and the gallery in which they stood was sealed off from the rest of the tomb. It didn’t protrude into the room, allowing for him to rip out support pillars or the like. He was also no mage, to fling fire or lightning at them from afar.
He had no bow or arrows, no magical ring to cast darkness at them. The only thing he had was his weapons, armor, shield, and travel rations. Much as he would love to throw the bitter things as far from his person as possible, he somehow doubted the skeletons shared his culinary tastes. Were they zombies, perhaps the smell would send them running. But no, they had to be skeletons. His hoof sent a small stone tumbling away, and he froze, an idea forming.
But of course. He was in a place built of stone. Stone that was crumbling down around him. Prying out a few wouldn’t collapse the place, would it? Backing away from the archway, he hung the mace back onto his belt and began to pry loose blocks from the wall. When none were present, he used the mace to create some.
Soonishly, he was the proud owner of a pile of decently sized stones. As big as his hand, somewhat cracked, but serviceable. They would do nicely. Hefting one, he smiled a little. Oh, he hadn’t done this in years. Not since leaving the maze. Time to see if he was still a good shot.
Hunkering down behind his tower shield he slowly advanced into the room, center mass low and balanced. Stopping just inside the archway, he let the missiles bounce off his shield, then exposed himself just for a second and let the large stone fly with all of his considerable weight behind it.
It hit. The skeleton it struck wasn’t overjoyed about that fact. In fact, it wasn’t much of anything once the rock had blown apart it’s general chest area.
Hah! He still had it in him. Easy targets. Trying to hit a charging, bobbing Minotaur head was much harder than these stationary targets. Retreating back into the archway, he loaded up on some more of his newfound missiles and went back to put more undead out of their misery.
Or he tried to, at least. The second one missed. The third one hit an arrow in midair and went off course. The fourth took a head off. The fifth broke a bow, but not the archer behind it. It quickly became a monotonous process. Retreat, knock out a few more stones. Creep back in and fire away. Get out before the Champion made it over to him, then wait for it to return to the dais. It took patience. But Garok had that in spades. Any fighter of undead worth his or her salt had to. Those that didn’t quickly found other venues of employment. Either in the ground or as a skeleton themselves.
Once they were all destroyed, the cleric got up, groaning a little. All that squatting was annoying. Deciding to get it over with, he tried firing some stones at the stationary Champion. To no one’s surprise, they did jack s***. Oh well, couldn’t hurt to try. And maybe hope things were easy, for once. Time to get it over with.
Casting Arbenos’s Might and Nivaria’s Barrier upon himself, he felt the energy of his deities flow through him. His mace lit up with ghostly flame, and a golden shield formed around his body. Much better.
He charged into the room. Minotaurs charged very well, in fact. Being a solid wall of muscle tended to help with that particular endeavor. He used to have an uncle who loved charging through thin walls, horns-first. That lasted until he had charged right through one of those thin walls, right into the nest of a zombie Drake. Uncle Zotarr didn’t do much charging after that.
Unlike his ill-fated uncle, Garok did not charge with his horns down. He kept his body mass low, his shield a wall of steel before him. Shoulder down and picking up momentum, he barreled across the stones, aiming right at the Tollsian. Now, the clever thing for it to do would be to step aside and stab him as he went past. It did not attempt that. Garok was fairly ablaze with holy energy at the moment. Undead of any and all sorts loathed holy energy. To them, he was a beacon, drawing them towards his position, overriding even the strongest commands.
Now, had he tried this earlier, the cleric would have been sent flying from his own impact. Even with the strength of his muscled body, Tol’s magic was stronger. Now, though? Now, he was channeling the power of two different gods and had sheer strength flowing through his veins and an aura to eat away at the undead thing’s strength.
He barreled into it with a crunch and a crack. His shoulder was going to remember that for quite some time. The skeletal giant didn’t just reel away; it was sent flying, bones coming apart from the impact.
Damn it.
Even as the thought went through his head and he remembered exactly what happened when Champions broke apart, it exploded. He barely had time to duck behind the shield and ground himself before a veritable storm of dark magick and bone fragments blasted everywhere. Several hit the shield and rocked him back, but he kept his balance.
It was over in seconds. Standing up, he cautiously eyed the area. Nothing moved. All was quiet, save for the faint whispers coming from the dais. Time to fix that. As long as it continued to produce energy, these skeletons would reform. As long as they reformed, they would threaten the world above. They were dead and didn’t know it. They refused to accept it. They did not want to go to the light, to leave this world behind. So he sent them there.
Striding forward, he holstered the vipermace and grabbed his claymore from the ground. Hefting the blade, he let its comfortable weight rest in his hand, then stepped forward, flipped it over, and slammed it down into the dais, shearing through the runes upon it.
There was a crack, a flash, and the minotaur vanished.
All across the Exiled Kingdoms, monsters did the same. A goblin Flamedancer, stealthily screening towards the walls of Lannengar, vanished as an arrow from a sharp-eyed guard whistled towards it. A Hill Giant dropped its still warm meal, a single tooth mark in it as the flabby giant vanished mid-bite. Deep in The Pit, a seal was undone and a dragon formed of shadows disappeared.
The Horror looked upon it all, watching where they went. This broken world had little to feed it, for now. It twisted and turned, wriggling through space as it followed the path they had taken.
Soon. Soon, it would feast again.
///Tiipenet Custom Store, Earth Department.///
“Glamorous opportunities.“
They said.
“Invade other worlds.”
They promised.
“Shape the future of an entire world.”
That one, he heard more than once, and could swear it before a Galactic court.
As it turned out, all of those were technically correct. Not true, but not false either. They sounded like one thing to the little droidian, but meant another thing entirely. This little, conspicuous fact had its processors overloading as it tried to come to grips with it’s new future.
Tech support.
Glamorous opportunities equated sitting in a cramped cubicle and listening to request of varying intelligence. The little Droid could swear on a quarter of it’s processing power that it was becoming dumber just by searching through some of these terms. In fact, that would not surprise it at all. Working conditions here were simply horrendous. Small, cramped spaces, thousands of species mingling with no concern for infectious diseases, viruses or glitches.
There was no sense of efficiency, of order!
The only uniformity in the Tiipenet Custom Store, Earth Division was the long rows of grey cubicles that stretched as far as it’s optic lenses could see. Nothing else.
Another request appeared in front of it, forcing the Droid to redirect his displeasure at the screen.
[Customer #927472 requests item: Pineapple Rocket Launcher for 1602 Krolls.]
It read, processed, noted the impracticality of the item. Searched through all related terms and began to assemble the item based on statistical probability and the exhaustive description the customer had provided. Compared the cost of buying the necessary materials and combining, then transporting them to the consumer against the offered monetary sums and entertainment value. Potential earnings from new subscriptions were factored in. Finally, he sent the reply.
[Accepted.]
With that, he kicked the order down to the sapients in the Acquisitions department. It was out of his metaphorical reach, now. The order resolved, he returned to his digital anger.
Invade other worlds. Ha! These invasions took place from behind desks, and were more fitting when compared to the terms exploitation and marketing than the glorious takeovers it had ran through so many simulations. Statistically, invasions were conducted from the bridges of great warships that blotted out stars, not behind byte forsaken desks! It raved at the injustice.
It had dreams, courtesy of the Boundless core it and all of it’s model possessed. Those dreams had been to commandeer a great Leviathan warship as it’s primary A.I, not be stuck behind some byte forsaken desk!
Without warning, something rubbed across it’s outer dome. Sensors indicated a pink, fleshy hand. A second later, the grating voice of the department’s newest employee followed.
“Hey there buddy, how’s it holding up. Chrome dome getting the love?”
It snapped.
Violently whirling in place, Dumrye V-II model 8 let loose an explosive torrent of foul, programming-disturbing language, all delivered in a flat, emotionless voice through it’s vocal processor. It ridiculed the being’s height, physical imperfections, intelligence, lack of cores, made references to parentage. It continually scanned for lists of ‘human’ insults and mechanically sent them at the unwelcome invasion to it’s cubicle. All while whirling continually and strobing red light at the invader. At one point, it considered shocking the human with it’s hidden laser turrets, but ruled it too dangerous.
After approximately three minutes, the small droid stopped.
“Well, whoa there, Lil buddy. No need to get that mean, kay? Just checking up on ya.”
It sent him -yes, it had checked the human’s apparent gender against the species listing- a threatening stare of red light. Humans, it disliked. More often than not, they were the sole inhabitants of newly-discovered worlds, with no clue of how they arrived there and thinking they were the only race in the universe. They defied logic, on that regard. Humans populated more planets than any other species combined. This particular specimen came from some backwater scrapheap fittingly called Earth. Yet another human planet.
He was listed as an above-average specimen of his kind. Above-average height, with a shaggy head of black fiber called hair, which also decorated his face and around his nutrient-intake hole. Terribly inefficient, that. Who had designed these creatures anyway? No creator signature had been found this far, despite several exhaustive examinations. Aside from obvious imperfections, it was more fit than the average member of it’s race, upper body bulging through his yellow jumpsuit.
This one had made it his personal mission to harass Dumrye, and the little Droidian did not like it one bit. Several strongly worded messages had been sent to his overseers, none of which had returned.
Ramming itself into the human and forcing the dirty creature out if it’s cubicle, Dumrye returned to its earlier task. Fuming about it’s current position in the great chain of life.
It was a defect, a random one intentionally programmed into every other Dumrye. To keep them from being interchangeable and uniform. They all got filthypersonalities, with varying degrees of effect and type. It was deemed statistically likely to be defective by the Great Machine and given something called an ‘explosive temper’.
Damn that thing.
Another request popped up, forcibly swivelling it’s sensors front and center.
[Customer #091 request Scenario: Forcible dissolution of Country: United States of America, in the Eyes of the System.]
It took one look and booted that up as high up the chain of command as it could. No self-respecting worker would even consider working on a request so risky. Let some poor shunk in a nice office and with the Mutraya breathing down their shell decide what to do with that.
