Chapter 33: DD2 Chapter 027 – Fugitive

They couldn’t find their way back to Typh. The tunnels that connected the ritual chamber to where the dragon had battled the Alchemic Knight had collapsed amidst all the fighting along with what felt like half the network of underground passages. By the time they had returned to try and find another way around, they arrived just in time to witness the noble dragon being dragged off by the Inquisition.

At first Arilla had been worried that Typh would kill them, adding even more souls who were just doing their job to her already prodigious bodycount, but when she surrendered without a fight the warrior didn’t know what to think. 

Until she saw Inquisitor Xanthia. 

Then she was thankful that her paralysis made freezing on the spot so very easy. Her instinctual desire to back away in fear was trumped by her inability to move her legs. As quietly as she could she demanded in hushed tones that Tamlin release his hold on the corpses he had animated. Arilla had no idea what kind of perception skills the living legend might have, but the warrior was decidedly uncomfortable being in the presence of so many undead considering the circumstances—not that she thought she’d ever be comfortable around Shades after her time in Doomhold.

The support that had kept her upright subsequently slumped to the ground as Tamlin complied with her request and pulled his mana out of the Templars’ corpses and her injured body followed them soon after. She didn’t dare make a noise when her face hit the uneven floor, or when the aftershocks from Typh’s fight caused a spray of dust and loose stones to fall down on top of her. Instead she watched and waited, thankful that [Slayer’s Sight] at least let her see so much of what was happening in the dark.

Inquisitor Xanthia’s face was one of the worst kept secrets in Terythia, and Arilla strongly suspected that the high levelled woman probably liked it that way. Over the years she had seen the Inquisitor’s almost plain visage depicted with varying degrees of accuracy on countless banners, posters and illustrations. Now, looking at her in the flesh, Arilla could say with certainty that technically accurate or not, not a single rendition had captured the supreme confidence in her own power that Xanthia possessed. No doubt it was within her power to put a stop to such practices if she wanted to, but as far as the warrior knew, very little existed beyond the remit of the Inquisition’s expansive powers. 

Tamlin was surprisingly easy company for someone who was already damned and was witnessing his country’s greatest hunters only a few hundred feet away. The boy’s necromancer tag disappeared from sight the moment he cut his connection to the corpses, and his eye colour returned to a less glowing shade of green. There, huddled against the mouth of a shadowy tunnel where they waited, too fearful of making a single noise to risk backing away. 

Time passed agonisingly slowly while they watched as Typh was shackled and taken away by the Inquisition’s knights. More soldiers arrived in that time, pewters so low in level that Arilla could see their level but in numbers she had no desire to cross, especially in her injured state. The children in cages were herded together before they too were escorted out, while what was presumably a large group of scholars and runescribes came in to investigate the runes left behind, all under the watchful eye of another Alchemic Knight.

Arilla hated it. 

She felt like they had lost more surely than any other time before. While the orphans might be safe for now, her limp and useless body dampened any nascent thoughts of victory. That she was so dependent on the kindness of a child necromancer for survival while Typh had been captured by agents of the crown, was another nail in the coffin of her optimism. Whether Typh would be executed or sold to the alchemists she was so afraid of, Arilla had no idea, but it seemed like things were rapidly going from bad to worse.

“I think this is the best chance we’re going to get for a while,” Tamlin abruptly said. His words were little more than a hushed whisper as he gestured to the group of runescribes in the cavern beyond who had congregated excitedly around a set of markings that to her eyes looked much like any other.

“Perhaps. We should be patient, if we wait longer we’ll—”

“No,” the necromancer declared firmly. “This is our best chance and I’m taking it. Now are you coming or not?”

It was a stupid question. While Arilla may have had more than thirty levels on the boy, she also had exactly one working arm, and that was it. The balance of power hung firmly in Tamlin’s direction, and she was keenly aware that if he tried to kill her for her levels—something someone with his class tag was supposed to attempt—there was essentially nothing she could do to stop him. While she had no desire to go out half-cocked and get herself killed, she couldn’t afford to fight with the child, and even if she ‘won’, the daunting prospect of being abandoned, alone, immobile, and vulnerable was even less appealing than a dangerous flight through the catacombs beneath Rhelea.

“I’ll come if you help me,” she conceded.

Tamlin nodded once, the youth appeared surprisingly commanding when he wanted to be, especially for someone so introverted. His eyes blazed a sickening green, and soon matching fires bloomed amongst the corpses around her. Their dead hands gripped her firmly as they lifted her upright and dragged her along. Their platemail clinked softly as they walked through the darkness away from the ritual chamber, and hopefully towards the surface.

Navigating the tunnels was not something Arilla looked forward to doing, especially without Typh present to guide and protect her. The knowledge that until she recovered she was entirely dependent on a clay rank child with a forbidden class was not reassuring. Yet the few creatures they did encounter in the darkness seemed to want no business with their group, not when it was composed primarily of dead flesh animated with death-aspected mana.

As much as she didn’t want to, Arilla had to admit that the undercity was hauntingly beautiful, especially this deep. Sprawling ruins and broken monuments littered the interconnected warren of tunnels and caverns. The walls had finally stopped shaking enough that they felt comfortable taking a short break to rest while Tamlin regenerated his mana. She tried to relax into the seat she had been roughly propped up against—a broken statue of a nameless god who was reaching for a sword at their belt that had snapped off over the ages—which was much easier said than done, especially when you couldn't move your own body, but she managed to eventually position herself in a way that at least looked comfortable.

Tamlin’s corpses swiftly moved to patrol the perimeter in perfect silence. The fires in their eyes and the glow in their master's provided the only light source in the small chamber they had chosen for their reprieve. Arilla didn’t actually need it to see, not with [Slayer’s Sight], but the green light reminded her of the moon’s luminescence, and for a moment she allowed herself to pretend that she was back on the surface as she looked out at all that she could see.

She couldn’t help but stare at the forgotten beauty of the past as she basked in the feeling of the faintest tingles of sensation in the tips of her fingers and toes. Whether it was real or just wishful thinking she didn’t know, but for now she was happy to hope. 

Typh had previously shared with her the smallest fraction of the dragon’s ancestral memories, and it was a gift that even now Arilla struggled with. The places she had seen with eyes that were not her own had given her a perspective on Rhelea that she wasn’t sure she wanted, but now looking at the broken fragments of a previous age, she knew enough to connect the dots and really see what it had once looked like.

And it was utterly astounding.

Her breath caught in her chest, and she imagined that her toes curled in their boots, as she pictured in her head the great plazas that humanity had once built. She saw the towering statues to classers, both human and other, who had earned the respect of millions. In her head they stood tall, high above the grand edifices and constructions that made even Erebus’s palace look homely. Great cities and majestic vistas all created by the ingenuity of her species unfurled themselves in her mind's eye and as the warrior looked around in the cold, quiet, dark of an underground cavern she could see the fragments of it all that still remained.

A large part of her wanted nothing more than to see it again, to see humanity reclaim what it had lost, but there was that small matter of the looming Monster apocalypse to deal with first.

“Are you going to talk to me at all?” Tamlin asked, turning to face her with his shining green eyes and necromancer tag proudly on display, just like a villain out of the stories. 

“I’m sorry?” Arilla replied, swallowing the spike of instinctual fear that followed in the wake of his almost aggressive tone.

“I saved your life and you haven’t even said thank you. You keep looking at me like I’m worse than the people you killed.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it? I know you and Typh still have a thing, but I also know that you’re the religious type.”

“I came down here to save you.”

“No you didn’t. You came down here to save them. If it was just me, would you have bothered?”

“I—”

Arilla bit her tongue rather than spout the platitude that immediately came to mind. Tamlin was right. She would be dead without his timely intervention, and if he had used any other kind of magic to save her then she knew that she would be treating him very differently. 

But necromancy was wrong. 

She had heard of its evils in countless tales, seen them for herself in Doomhold, and now a nascent necromancer was sitting before her, still young and weak, not yet the terror she knew he would eventually become. She wanted to reach out and crush his throat, to spare Terythia the thousands of dead he would eventually create. The intoxicating rush of levelling was so much more addictive when one can reap experience from a thousand miles away all through the proxy of his animated dead. She unclenched her one working fist. Damned or not, the boy was still an innocent. As far as she knew he had yet to kill anyone except for that one notable instance of self-defence, and even if he had killed—had murdered someone undeserving—who was she to judge when her own kill count was so very high?

Typh doubtlessly knew. It was certainly the best explanation as to why she had promised to teach the boy. What she had meant when she said Tamlin has secrets. But where did that leave her? Arilla just didn’t understand how the church could possibly be so wrong, or how a necromancer could be standing on the side of all that was right and good.

After everything she had done was she even good?

Her entire childhood, her foundational beliefs had all been turned upside down since meeting Typh. Like the day of her torture, today contained another moment in time where she had learned far too much in the worst possible way. Everything she had known about Creation was wrong. Monsters were people, and people were somehow worse than monsters. The church was evil, and necromancers befriended dragons who were, if not good, at least trying to prevent the mass-child-sacrifice and summoning of eldritch horrors that the institution who had raised her seemed so intent on committing.

For the first time since Typh’s return, Arilla’s hand itched for the bottle. The sweet release from having to think about right and wrong beckoned her, and she knew then, that if she were able, her resolve would shatter into a thousand pieces, and she’d drown herself in alcohol never to emerge again.

Fortunately that wasn’t an option right now.

Arilla swallowed her pride. 

“You’re right. You saved me, and for that I’m grateful. It’s just hard for me to adjust to this, my world has changed so much, so quickly. The church raised me, you understand, and well, you are a necromancer.”

“I get it,” he said, surprising her. “I was as confused as you were when Father Mihalis and all those people from the church funnelled us down here. With how I was practically snatched from the street, at first I thought they were looking for me because of… you know, but when I saw the ritual circle and the others things got pretty dark.”

“You shouldn’t have had to go through that. You’re just a child.”

“I’ve been through worse.”

“Really?”

Tamlin gave her a severe look, and she found her eyes being drawn to his tag.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I was a regular mage before, I got The Class thinking that I could use it to bring my mother back when she passed. Only, all I could do was make her twitch at the funeral, and there was nothing in there you know,” he continued, looking up to her for understanding. “Anyway, my dad, when he saw what I could do, he changed, and I… I guess I had to change to survive him. Needless to say, I’m not the biggest fan of my class either.”

“I’m sorry for your loss—losses,” Arilla offered sympathetically. 

“I’m sorry for yours as well... Does it ever get better?” Tamlin asked.

“No, but you get better at not letting it bother you,” Arilla said earnestly. Her own grief over her dead mother and absent father was still an open wound that she knew would never quite close. She could lie to him, but she hated lies with a passion, and what really was the point? Tamlin was a necromancer, surely he could handle a little bit of blunt truth.

“So what next?” she asked, surprised when she looked over once more to see the stoic child in tears. “Gods…” she muttered. “Come over here.”

“Why?” the boy asked between choked sobs.

“Because I’ve only got the one arm so you need to come to me if I’m to hug you.” 

Tamlin obliged. 

***

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The long climb back up to the surface, while easy, was deeply unpleasant. The corpses that Tamlin controlled were strong and unyielding, but their mailed grips and shambling steps were not by any means gentle. When it eventually arrived, Arilla’s first breath of fresh air was not to the familiar smells of the city she knew so well, but of smoke and blood on the wind. 

Rhelea was burning.

For the second time in as many days the warrior emerged from a near death experience by the harbour where she clambered out of an old tunnel set against the side of the rushing river. Three of the more dilapidated corpses were abandoned in the neck of the passageway in favour of the discretion that only two would bring. If Arilla could stand by herself, or Tamlin had a hope of carrying her, then all five of them would have been left behind, but as it was they would have to hope that long cowls and the darkness of the evening would obscure their clearly reanimated features—especially the burning green fires that filled their eyes. 

The tags that identified the former templars as shades would remain obfuscated until someone got a decent enough look at them; that, or if anyone with a halfway decent perception skill passed them by. While such skills were relatively rare amongst the non-combat classers, Rhelea was a thriving city, and classes were ubiquitous. Arilla had hoped to abandon Tamlin’s necromantic minions long before it became an issue, but upon seeing the state of the town, that was looking less and less likely.

Ultimately, her plan was so bad that it felt like one of Typh’s, but with the dragon captured Arilla was on borrowed time. She needed to get patched up and figure out what to do next before the Inquisition put two and two together and came after her as the Dragonrider.

That is, if Rhelea didn’t burn itself to the ground first.

Tamlin’s shades roughly dragged her along snow-covered side-streets and alleyways. Arilla’s head craned about on her mostly immobile shoulders, and while she constantly anticipated the moment that they were caught, it never came. She struggled to believe it, but her plan was actually working. 

The fires that burned throughout Rhelea provided a significantly larger distraction than the group of four could ever have asked for. Of course it wasn’t all roses and ambrosia. While the fires seemed to be mostly contained to where Lord Traylan’s new construction projects were, the roads themselves were anything but safe. Armed gangs of civilians with and without combat classes roamed the streets where they clashed infrequently with Traylan soldiers and other groups who were either loyal to the Traylan regime, or more often than not were simply taking advantage of the chaos to loot the various businesses and residences throughout the city.

There had been a handful of times where Arilla was especially worried that they would be caught, but from a distance the distinctive red and white armour of the church’s templars stood out, and neither side of the conflict seemed to want to pick a fight with that particular institution. They were extremely careful to keep a lot of distance from anyone they saw, but thankfully the crackling fires over the horizon, and near constant sound of conflict did much to distract from the green flames in the eye sockets of Tamlin’s reanimated warriors.

“Where did they even get so many swords from? I thought swords were supposed to be expensive,” Tamlin asked while they waited in an alley for a band of looters to move on.

“They are,” Arilla grunted. “But Rhelea has more forges inside the Crafters Village than the rest of the country does combined. Each one of those forges will be manned by a classed smith and their apprentices, who can all churn out better weapons in half the time it takes their unclassed competition to make one.”

“We take it for granted because we’re used to it, but Rhelean steel, at least within the bounds of the city, barely costs more than the metals that go into it. Given the classed miners, charcoal burners, and prospectors who are all based here… the weapons are very cheap all things considered. The forges are one of the major reasons—besides the alchemy—that merchants without classes risk coming this far west,” she finished.

Tamlin stared at her wide-eyed for a moment and actually looked his age for once. 

“How do you know that?” the boy asked. “Aren’t you an orphan? The others aren’t half as—”

“Educated?” Arilla supplied, before Tamlin could say something worse. “Yeah, my schooling wasn’t great... But I’m an adventurer now, and a wealthy one at that. Cracking open a book or two are hardly my greatest feats.”

“You don’t look the bookish type.”

“I’m not,” she said, leaving it at that.

Arilla turned her head to face the street and realised that the sounds of splintering wood along with the cries of rage and fear had stopped. The looters had either moved on, or decided to camp out in the now pacified tailor shop. Either way, the street was clear and it was time for them to move on. Arilla looked back at Tamlin, and he gave her a subtle nod. His youthful brow furrowed momentarily and the boy’s shades once again lifted the warrior to her feet and began dragging her limply down the alleyway and onto the now quiet road. 

Their armoured boots resumed their uneven pace, crunching through the fresh snow that now mixed with the ash that fell from the sky. The monotonous sound only briefly stopped when they carried Arilla over a wooden sign that she absently noted featured a spool of dark blue thread pierced with a silver needle.

When they finally arrived at their destination, a dead hand slapped ineffectually against the door. A look of frustration was exchanged between the warrior and the necromancer until Arilla was eventually propped up against it where she rapped her knuckles hard against the wood. Her gauntleted fist scratched the paint, but before any real damage could be done sounds of hurried movement could be heard coming from the other side.

The door opened just a crack to reveal a thin-faced healer, who looked as weak and soft to Arilla’s seasoned eyes as they all so often did.

“Templars? Oh Gods above! A Necromancer!” the young man exclaimed, clutching a short blade better suited to opening letters than stabbing people close to his chest.

 

“Shut up, Liam,” Arilla urged, and pushed the door open further with her one arm while the level 12 healer backpedalled in a panic. Her undead escort dragged her inside behind them as the group swiftly made their way off the street and firmly closed the door.

“Arilla?! Gods help me, what happened to you?! How are you bronze rank already?! How do you even know where I live?! And why is there a damned necromancer with you?!” Liam asked, his voice somehow managing to rise higher and higher with every successive question.

“Help me to a chair first, these things aren’t exactly gentle,” Arilla responded.

“What!?” Liam answered, before moving to do just that. Tamlin’s shades released her from their uncaring grip just as the healer approached, and the sudden weight of her limp body very nearly threatened to drag them both down to the ground. “Depths, how are you so heavy?”

“Think, Liam, I’m a strength based warrior, you know that.”

“Right, of course. Denser muscles, skin and bones,” he muttered to himself. “Even so, do you have a skill that enhances that?”

“I’m not answering that, you should know by now that your curiosity is hardly your best trait.”  

“Maybe you have a point, but why are you here?” Liam asked, finally setting Arilla down in a chair while Tamlin stood awkwardly between his shades by the door.

“Because I need a healer, obviously.”

“Well yes, I can see that, but why me?” he said, and then pointing to Tamlin. “And why did you think it was a good idea to bring that into my home?”

“Lay off the boy,” she threatened.

“Arilla, he’s a necromancer! You know what we’re supposed to do. The law is clear, we’re supposed—”

“I wouldn’t finish that sentence if I were you.”

“But the law—”

“The law is fucked, have you been outside? The boy stays. If you want to try your hand at killing him, you can go through me first,” the warrior said bluntly.

Liam’s eyes flashed from the small knife in his hands, to the child flanked by his necromantic minions that stood in full runic plate, before back to Arilla, bronze-ranked and angry even if heavily wounded.

“Arilla, we’re friends, I would never harm you,” the healer lied and Arilla decided to leave it be. “You still haven't answered any of my questions.”

“Liam, did you really think that Typh would just let you wander off into the world without keeping an eye on you after you guessed she had a hidden class?” Arilla asked.

“Yes?”

“Think, Liam! You should have thought about the consequences of your actions before you tried to blackmail your way into our party.”

“He tried to blackmail you?” Tamlin interjected.

“Wait, is Typh a necromancer?” Liam asked.

“Of course not,” Arilla said disparagingly, earning herself a glare from Tamlin’s still glowing green eyes.

“Are you sure this is the right house?” the boy asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure, Liam. You are going to help me aren't you,” Arilla stated, rather than asked.

“I am?”

“Yes. Now do what you are good at. Heal me.”

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