Chapter 94: 88: The Capital

Less than pleased about Eisheth's dismissive attitude toward you, you don’t object to the current game plan, eager to finally bring back your sister.

“We should at least warn the town guard that something is up in the forest,” you say to Eisheth.

The succubus stays silent for a moment and then says, “Cer! Go find Rocky at the usual place and tell him that some nasty creatures are gathering in the mountains and might attack this town.”

Cer wastes no time and dashes through the door.

“Take us away, Rosy!” Eisheth says and puts away her pipe and takes two steps back from Rosetta.

“The rest of you should step back also!” Rosetta says with a wide grind and gets out one of her daggers from the shadows of her cloak. She does a pirouette, slashing the air around her. The thin, blueish cut in the air stays, then it expands. “Hold on to your buts!”

The magical cut expands and grows, passing through you all, without harm. You feel slight warmth when the cut phases through your chest. Soon the magical circle expands and grows all around your party, taking shape of a dome in fifty different shades of blue, all swirling and mixing. The giant orc Gorrazsh, succubus Eisheth, Human mage Elza, bunnykin Epsilon and Alpha, the half-naked adventurer Rosetta and you are all inside the dome, ready to be teleported. Only the two small girls with dog ears, Ber and Us, are left outside the magical teleporting sphere.

The next thing you see is the luxurious carpets disappearing beneath your feet. But before you can fall you are back on solid ground. The ground you stand on is paved from large stone blocks, leveled perfectly with cracks so thin, you probably wouldn’t be able to wedge anything thicker than a fingernail between them.

The dome around your new-formed party starts to shrink back into a thin circle and withdraw back to Rosetta, revealing your new surroundings. The dimming, reddish, setting sun behind you paints the capital in ghastly lights. You are barely half a mile from the outer walls of the capital of Lignom, Highwer. The wall is the first of many stone walls that section the capital into parts as the city goes further uphill. The walls envelop each section in a nearly perfect circle, that is additionally divided into eight parts by stone walls going across. Without a way to completely destroy these walls, a siege would be next to impossible as the assaulting forces would constantly find themselves trapped in these sections, bombarded by arrows and boiling oil from all sides while fighting uphill.

At the top, in the most inner parts of the city, heavily obstructed by the black smoke you can make out the silhouette of a massive fortress. It seems to be a thousand feet high, but that can’t possibly be. Thick round towers, the massive central keep that looks more like a mountain than a human structure. The fortress alone puts both the bandit stronghold and your dungeon-castle combined to shame. And the entire town of Ranville would easily fit in one of the walled-off sections of Highwer.

“Were those always like that?” Epsilon asks pointing to the gates that the stone road you are on leads to.

The massive fifty feet high gates are not only open, but one of them is shattered. Even from such a distance, you see the rubble scattered at the opening.

“No, that is not normal at all,” Rosetta says. “And the city shouldn’t be emitting smoke as darker than the fumes after the sacking of Buntal.”

“And shouldn’t there be people evacuating from the city if there was a fire or an army outside the walls if this was a siege?” Elza asks and looks around, not seeing a single soul in sight. You look around and see a similarly grim picture around you. The grass seems dead, colored dim-orange by the strange sunset. The few single-story wood and stone houses that you can see look soulless, some with open doors, though none of them are burned or visibly ransacked. Further ahead along the road you see strange shapes, like dried out trees, planted at regular intervals.

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You look at the sky and realize that it is not sunset yet. Yes, the sun is low, but it should not be this dim-red color. And during sunset, the sky is usually colored warm orange, not dark-red, as if smeared by dried up blood. It must be this sky that gives the city even grimmer shades of black and red than needed.

“Good William, I am not sure why I came on this adventure, and I feel it is above my skill-level,” Gorrazsh says, looking nervously at the smoldering city.

Eisheth clenches her fists and says in a strong, determined tone, “Quit your sniveling! Those that want to go back, can start walking back!”

And without even looking at the others she walks toward the city without hesitation and with a firm and steady posture.

“Move it!” you say in support of your brave succubus sister, following her not far behind.

Rosetta hurries alongside you and the others follow behind.

IT does not take long for you to see that the strange shapes you saw before are actually long poles, with a single charred body on each of them, impaled on them through the chest. Eisheth slows down and slowly walks up to one of these poles. There are about twenty poles in total, ten on each side, with a short distance between each of them, the last two poles just a few dozen yards from the gates.

“What the hell,” she murmurs looking up at the strange thin body on one of the poles.

“Shaaaaaa!”

The ash-covered body reaches out to Eisheth, though she is well out of reach below. It apparently screams but is only able to let out a low, disturbing, hiss. It raises its burned head, ash falls from its mouth as it hisses, the eyes are pure pale-white. The other bodies also come to life. None of them are able to reach Eisheth or anyone else from your party. So each of them grab their respective poles that impale them with both hands and slowly pull themselves off of them. You see their bodies slide up the poles, about ten inches at a time, the corpses showing surprising strength in their charred arms. Within ten seconds they are off the poles and fall to the ground with a predictable thud.

Silence. None of you move. Neither do the corpses. Then, with low, chilling hissing, all twenty of the corpses begin to rise to their feet.

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