Chapter 57: DD3 Chapter 003 – Crashing

In the grim darkness of the sewers, he waited. Surrounded by rivers of shit, with only goblins and the dead for company, Tamlin felt oddly serene. The smell was profoundly unpleasant, but for a boy who was so familiar with the rancid stench of decaying flesh, the watered-down faeces wasn’t all that bad. The steady drip-drip of condensation falling from the ceiling and the rapid breathing of so many creatures packed in together were the only sounds to interrupt his near-silent contemplation.

The green fires that burned in the sockets of his shades’ eyes cast everything in hues of green, something his still-living allies seemed to appreciate even if they didn’t need the dim light to see. The necromancer had realised some time ago that he quite liked goblins. The feral little creatures—even if they unironically claimed to be civilised—were surprisingly pleasant company. They were quiet, respectful, and if he ignored their tendency to occasionally try and eat his minions, far more agreeable than their human counterparts.

The goblins hadn’t spat on him once.

A spasm of pain shot through his stomach and feeling weak in the knees, Tamlin staggered to one side. He reached out for support only to find that he had misjudged. His hand missed the dank wall and floundered instead through the humid air, as he began to topple from the paved walkway. The channel of slow-moving sewage that ran through the tunnel beckoned unappealingly while it rapidly grew larger in his vision.

A small hand shot out and grabbed Tamlin by the belt. Their grip wasn’t perfect—he felt sharp claws dig into his skin and he heard the fabric of his trousers tear—but his saviour’s hold on him was as steady as it was deceptively strong. The necromancer hung suspended over the river of shit while he tried and failed to will his tired legs to move one last time. Fortunately, while his body was too pain-riddled and exhausted to respond to his desperate urgings, the goblin who’d grabbed him was perfectly capable of hauling one small boy back to safety.  

“Thanks,” Tamlin gasped, his breathing rapid and heavy.

“It is nothing,” Glorious replied.

He wanted to say something more, to get to know the horrifically scarred goblin better, but between the waves of searing pain that had yet to subside, and the taciturn creature literally turning her back on him, the moment had well and truly passed.

“Someone comes,” she announced a moment later, and every goblin crowding the narrow tunnel drew their blades. Following their lead, Tamlin instructed his shades to do the same and he felt his order go out a heartbeat before long blades—too long to be used effectively in the sewer—were drawn from rasping sheathes. 

The thick iron grate in the ceiling shifted, casting thin rays of brilliant torchlight down from above. The light grew and Arilla Foundling, or Traylan if you wanted to annoy her, peered in over the edge. Her customary look of concern rapidly shifted to relief when saw the goblins’—and likely his—filth stained faces.

“Did everything go okay?” the warrior asked.

“Go fine,” Glorious answered.

Arilla nodded once and moved back from the opening while the goblin leader gestured for her troops to move. Their light mail and leather jerkins did not slow them down in the slightest as they swiftly clambered up the walls of the tunnel. The green-skinned creatures crawled through the narrow opening four at a time in their rush to enter the basement above. 

Summoning the last dredges of his stamina, Tamlin stiffly followed after them, having to accept an embarrassingly large amount of help from his raised corpses just to ascend the Gods-forsaken ladder built into the side of the sewer tunnel’s wall.

He emerged into the fresher air of what turned out to be an expansive wine cellar. While he recovered from his exertions, hundreds of goblins and fifty of his veteran shades, clad in thick runic steel, continued to stream through the opening behind him.

All those bodies clambering out of the filth was more than a little bit noisy, and the previously reserved goblins whooped and laughed with excited glee. Personally, Tamlin thought it was far too early for celebrations, although he was more than a little bit relieved that the first part of the plan had gone well. Having crawled through the narrow opening, he was decidedly glad that he didn’t have to fight his way up and out of the basement.

“Where’s your cane?” Arilla asked with a pronounced frown.

“I don’t need it,” Tamlin said. 

He attempted to push past the concerned warrior before she could protest any further, only for his body to betray him as he stumbled forwards instead. His legs were still weak from the long walk, and his most recent episode had only made him more fatigued. 

She easily caught him before he could slam head-first into the ground, and while he was grateful, he hated that he needed to be saved almost as much as he despised the patronising look of pity that crossed her face. Seeing the obvious concern present in her too-expressive eyes, he had to agree with Typh that it was a good thing they had decided to take the city—Arilla would have made a terrible politician. 

He struggled out of her gentle grasp, or more accurately: he pulled back and she let him go once he was steady on his feet. 

“You’ve exhausted yourself walking through miles of tunnels without it. Go get some rest, I’ll tell Typh we’ll have to proceed without you,” Arilla said, unaware that she was the second woman to help him stand in recent memory.

“I’m fine,” Tamlin lied. “I can do this. Just show me to my room.”

“I’m worried about you, Tamlin. This is too much for you,” she said predictably.

“You’re not my mother, Arilla. I decide what is too much for me. Besides, we both know that you need my help.”

“You’re just a child…” the warrior stated.

“And you’re just a teenager,” he spat, feeling angry at his own weakness, but choosing to take it out on her.

There was an awkward pause while she tried to think of something smart to say to that, but he knew there was nothing she could say. They were both right. Tamlin was far too young to do what the dragon had asked of him, but so too was Arilla. Depths take him, even Typh herself was barely an adult in dragon years, and most of the goblins who would die tonight had only been born in the past few months.

They were an army of children whose parents had failed them. Worse, the Elder Council—pretentiously named as they were—had abandoned their duty and left them all to die without even the hope of salvation. Arilla drawing a line beneath the age of eighteen was idiotic, especially when they both knew that him sitting out of the fight would only lead to more deaths. Tamlin had proven that much in Rhelea, even if it had cost him dearly.

Age was ultimately just another number, but unlike the levels that made him strong, this one wouldn’t help shield him from the horrors to yet to come.

“It’s this way,” the warrior finally assented.

Arilla led him across the wide basement, through rows upon rows of glass bottles held horizontally in expansive shelves. He limped past more than just a healthy reserve of grain and other non-perishables, which were stacked high against a wall by the stairs. The steps to the ground floor loomed high above him, and still weak from his hike through the sewers, Tamlin struggled to climb them. 

His legs trembled and his lungs heaved with every step. Blood pounded in his ears while he fought through the strain to move upwards. He knew that he should ask for help, or at least rely on the corpses he had to command, but his pride refused to allow it. He was fifteen and he wouldn’t let himself be a cripple. 

They were just stairs, whereas he was probably the most powerful necromancer in the country. By the time he’d made his way to the top, Tamlin wanted nothing more than to lie down and rest for a year. 

Gods be damned, but he did need his cane.

Arilla politely ignored his suffering and pretended to inspect a painting on a nearby wall while he recovered. When he was ready, they resumed their walk through the wide marble hallways that ran through the estate, while increasingly large numbers of knife-wielding goblins scurried about, joyously trailing filth through the almost palatial home. 

The warrior slowed to allow the necromancer to hobble by her side, as they travelled through a large ballroom where scores of nobles sat bound and gagged in their ostentatious finery. They were watched over by at least half-a-dozen rogues, although it was hard to get an exact count as they all dressed the same in black leather, and had a tendency to flicker in and out of sight.

The hostages looked increasingly fearful whenever a shit-covered goblin came close to them, but despite their vulnerable position they easily saved the worst of their contempt for him.

Tamlin could feel their hateful eyes boring into him. The stifled gasps that were audible even through the cloth gags in their mouths. He could practically hear the word necromancer whispered on their lips—it didn’t matter that they couldn’t talk, his imagination and all-too-recent memories of rejection were more than capable of making up for that deficiency.

Like many things that bothered him, he tried not to let it affect him.

After the hall there were more stairs, and another even longer period of recovery before Tamlin entered what was to be his room. It was grand in all the ways that Typh cared about, but the necromancer only had eyes for the large four-poster bed.

He immediately flopped onto it and closed his eyes.

“Are you okay?” Arilla asked.

“I’ll be fine… but have someone bring me bread, water… and my cane. I’ll need it later,” the boy asked, too tired to even lift his head from the silk sheets.

Tamlin took a few moments to steady himself and checked his status out of perverse curiosity.

Name: Tamlin Stroud

Species: Human

Age: 15

HP: 150/150

SP: 3/150

MP: 849/860

Strength: 0

Dexterity: 0 

Vitality: 15

Intelligence: 45 

Willpower: 45

Charisma: 5

Class: Fell Caller - Level 47

Fell Caller’s Arcana - Level 47

Fell Caller’s Empowerment - Level 43

Fell Caller’s Preparation - Level 40

Fell Caller’s Projection - Level 47

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Trait: Mana Scarred

Fell Caller - You call twisted souls back from where they should not return. As a result, you are given the option of further strengthening your ability to call and command the dead you raise.

+1 Vit, +4 int, +3 Wil, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Necromancer] tagged.

Fell Caller’s Arcana - You may directly expend mana to create magical effects. You may add this skill’s level to your effective intelligence and willpower for determining the efficacy of your necromantic and death aspected magical effects, the size of your mana pool, and the rates of regeneration. Additionally, you may choose to temporarily forgo all benefits from this skill to instead hide your class tag.

Fell Caller’s Empowerment  - Undead creatures you control gain flat damage mitigation and a bonus to their effective strength scores equal to half this skill’s level. Additionally, you may spend mana at a rate of 3 per second, per creature, to double this bonus and include dexterity and vitality scores for the duration.

Fell Caller’s Preparation - You may imbue mana to repair and modify a corpse. Modifications are limited to 1 pound of organic material per skill level which may be added or removed without detriment to the efficacy of the reanimation. Additionally, you may also inscribe spells into an inert corpse.

Fell Caller’s Projection - You may house your soul in a suitably prepared corpse. When housed, you may cast spells with the prepared corpse as your point of origin. Additionally, you may split yourself into a number of corpses equal to 10 x the rank of this skill.

Trait - Mana Scarred

Your body has been permanently damaged by the effects of manaburn. Your base stamina expenditure increases by one order of magnitude and you receive a slight increase in mana density.

Mana Scarred.

It was his shitty reward for saving Rhelea. That and the levels, which while nice, didn’t really make up for the random and severe bouts of pain that periodically ran through him. 

Eating anything richer than a thin broth or plain bread usually brought on another agonising episode, and while his restricted diet seemed to successfully minimise his pain, it only exacerbated his stamina issues. In the six months since the trait had appeared on his status, what little muscle Tamlin had once possessed had rapidly withered as he grew as gaunt and skeletal as the shades he commanded.

Typh claimed that it was the death-aspected mana leaking from his inefficient spells that were making his nutrition issues worse. The only solutions available to him, short of simply mastering necromancy—something which should only take a century or two—was to either stop animating the dead or to simply tolerate the pain of eating more substantial food. 

Giving up his magic was completely out of the question, and after a little experimentation had left him vomiting up every meal, so too was stomaching the pain. 

Tamlin would accept a depressing diet that barely sustained his ailing body long before he’d ever put up with being normal. He was a prodigy, his level and his age proved that a thousand times over and he wasn’t about to stop now just because things were getting a little hard. 

Sprawled out on the bed, the boy tried to relax and put the unpleasant thoughts to one side. He searched for a position where his aches and pains were less pronounced, before eventually giving up. Ultimately, he chose to flee his body in favour of the refuge provided by the dead.

With a steady trickle of mana running through [Fell Caller’s Projection], Tamlin followed the lines of power that extended from where his class resided and towards the corpses he had prepared earlier.

He felt his soul leave his inadequate body behind. His persistent hunger and pain were replaced by an intoxicating rush of invigorating energy, and the quiet urgings of his new forms’ other occupants. The necromancer opened his eyes and fires sparked in fifteen sets of sockets. The unnatural flames burned away the surrounding flesh that was no longer needed as Tamlin was treated to sights and sounds of a flock of newly arisen crows. 

Each avian body was pristine and perfect, he’d seen to that. Although, the once one-and-a-half pound birds were now considerably larger from having spent some time being altered by the fledgling necromancer. 

Tamlin took confident steps in the darkness of the basement, threading between goblin stragglers who’d fallen behind, and his other shades who stood motionless in their runeplate. 

The necromancer delighted in the sensation of pain-free movement even if he wasn’t in his real body. The boy cocked his heads to multiple sides and ruffled his feathers in unison before taking to his wings and flying out from the basement amidst a flurry of black feathers. 

His crows, now more powerful in death than they had ever been in life, wanted to caw out their triumph and so he let them. He loosened the reins of control just enough so that their twisted spirits could announce their unliving joy to any and all who listened. Echoing, ethereal caws filled the large building while his flock of oversized birds flew through the halls of the manor. He stopped for a time to cause chaos in the ballroom, where the bound nobles cowered beneath his flapping wings and haunting cries. 

When he was done terrorizing them, he sent his flock one by one through a shuttered window. There the crows’ modified skulls proved their worth as they easily punched through wood and sheet glass. The birds climbed up into the warm night’s sky while a summery breeze blew beneath his many wings. 

He soared through the air just shy of the cloud cover, enjoying the thrill of flight, which even when felt through nerves of deadened flesh, was exhilarating to Tamlin. Hiding within the powerful forms of the undead had grown far more alluring to him since his body had started its decline. Where before, he’d loathed the perpetual cold of the grave, and chafed under his twisted spirits’ endless anger towards the living, now he didn’t mind it so much.

It wasn’t like he wasn’t already angry. 

He tried not to think about what would happen to his real body if he stayed as a bird forever, and instead he directed his creations to fly in large expanding circles high above the Nauron estate.

With an aerial view of the grounds, Tamlin watched patiently through his crows’ eyes while a mass of goblins crept from the edges of the property and spilled out onto Helion’s wide open streets. The green-skinned creatures quickly climbed up onto rooftops where they began to traverse the city far out of reach from the few citizens travelling the roads so late at night.

Every sign suggested that no alarms had been raised, and so Tamlin left the birds circling and split his focus yet again, this time issuing orders to his shades waiting patiently in the basement.

The change in perspectives was sudden and unpleasant. His human puppets were a lot more present than the crows were, and they were far less satisfied by the mundane tasks of simply moving. They weren’t tortured souls, but they weren’t happy either—they were however, hungry, and as he wrapped his will around them, he felt their anticipation rise at the promise of impending violence. 

It was time to feed them.

His fifty were all Rhelean dead, unclaimed corpses that he had personally saved from the bonfires. Tamlin had done everything in his power to make them as powerful as they could be, with thickened bone plating courtesy of [Fell Caller’s Preparation] doing much to improve the inadequate defences of the undead. He’d wanted to carve runic spells deep into their bodies, but that was proving to be quite problematic.

Instead, he had settled for equipping them as best he could with some of the finest runeplate from the ratlings’ forges. They wielded swords, because that was the most readily available weapon in the dragon’s camp, and if it wasn’t for them being betrayed by their shade tag, then from a distance they could almost pass for knights.

Following far behind the goblins, Tamlin’s dead exited the manor and marched down the long gravel path leading onto the city’s streets. He divided them into parties of five, which was hard to manage even with his crows flying overhead, but it was far less conspicuous than the alternative.

He had to split himself to his limit to observe and personally control twenty sets of differing bodies, while the remaining fifty-five merely followed his orders. His mental stats helped a great deal with the constant influx of jarring information, but he was still overextended far more than he would have liked to be. His concentration periodically slipped, and things were certainly missed, but he managed to get his shades where they needed to be without having to kill any late night wanderers travelling the city.

The curtain walls that protected Helion were immense, massive constructions that defied human comprehension. If Typh’s army outside attempted to besiege the city, they would almost certainly fail. Helion had fallen exactly once since its founding, and not at all in the last thousand years thanks to those near-impenetrable walls.

Located deep in Terythian territory, the capital had never faced an Epherian siege, and the kingdom’s neighbours to the south and east knew better than to try and take the country’s capital in any of their previous conflicts. In a way, this history made things easier, for while the soldiers on the wall were no doubt told to keep a keen eye on the Typh’s tent city beyond, they weren't really prepared for the possibility that they could fail.

Tamlin sacrificed more than half his flock to take out the visible sentries on duty by the gatehouse. While his crows were ordinarily not that dangerous, the necromancer spent the additional mana to activate [Fell Caller’s Empowerment] on eight of the fifteen birds. Their dexterity rose along with their already enhanced strength scores, and the forty-eight-and-a-half pound crows suddenly picked up an enormous amount of speed as they dive-bombed—beak first—into the heads of the sentries on the wall. 

Men died as already dead birds smashed skulls and speared through brains. While the fresh and the less-fresh bodies slumped to the ground, ten teams of five shades converged on the steps leading up to the gatehouse while goblins readied themselves on nearby rooftops.

“Halt! Who goes there?” an armoured soldier called out into the dark, as fifty heavily armoured forms raced towards him with weapons bared. “Oh, Gods! Sound the—”

The two soldiers on watch by the bottom of the stairs were low-pewter, whereas Tamlin’s shades were high. It was not a contest, and in a handful of seconds runic swords had parted their leather jerkins and splashed the men's guts onto the ground. More voices called out in alarm, but no bells rang out yet.

The necromancer felt his shades’ joy at shedding fresh blood as they climbed the steps two at a time in their hurry to repeat the experience. Men and women sallied out of the gatehouse to meet them on the stairs with weapons at the ready, but whenever someone showed any signs of rallying the surprised defenders, Tamlin promptly sacrificed another crow to ensure their quick death.

Unprepared and lacking meaningful leadership, the battle for the gatehouse was proceeding swiftly. While his shades fought their way room by room through the massive fortifications, goblins scaled the walls, picking off anyone who tried to run, and taking ownership of the alarm bells before they could be sounded.

Given the sheer size of the walls, which had to be a hundred feet thick at the thinnest point, there were a lot of defenders to kill. But Tamlin’s dead were hungry for violence, and the soldiers manning the gatehouse were ill-prepared for a surprise attack. The necromancer watched through their flaming eyes while his shades butchered guards in their beds, or killed soldiers before they could even put on their armour. He kept them in check, adjusting formations and preventing them from wandering off and alerting different sections of the walls.

Minutes later when it was done and Tamlin felt sick to his stomach, the necromancer flew with his last remaining bird away from the city. He didn’t have to try very hard to reconcile the deaths he had just caused, even if he knew he’d remember the desperate begging for some time. The guards’ lives had been spent to prevent a siege, which would save countless more—besides, he’d already saved thousands in Rhelea, so he could afford to bloody his hands a little bit.

After crossing several fields and gently sloping hills, he came to the campgrounds. The tent-city was dizzying in size, having swelled dramatically since its establishment only a month ago. Peasants and travellers from all over had joined up after receiving their first and in some cases second, or third classes. While few of the new arrivals would be joining in tonight’s assault, enough were to make a difference.

Tamlin flew low over the large camp, smiling internally at the archers who tracked his passage with nocked arrows pointed at his avian skull. 

Ignoring them for now, the boy-necromancer instead looked down at the sea of canvas while he searched for his quarry. Predictably, towards the front of the camp, he found her. 

Halith. 

She was waiting for him, dressed for war in her ornate suit of heavy armour along with a squadron of her finest. When she saw his bird land beside her, the woman looked down and smiled, revealing a predatory mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.

Tap, Tap, Tap.

Tap, Tap, Tap.

“All’s good then?” Halith grinned.

Tap, Tap.

“Excellent! Come, Tamlin, there’s a space for you on my rat-ogre. Let’s take ourselves a country shall we,” she chuckled, and to the pealing sound of her laughter, messengers fled the ratling’s presence and within minutes, the dragon’s camp marched on Helion.

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