Chapter 25: Chapter 24 – A Decisive Clash to Claim Destiny

"Ironically enough, should necromancer lords engage into open warfare with one another, the war that resulted would arguably be amongst the few wars that has minimal casualties.

 

After all, the vast majority of a necromancer's army would already be dead, one way or another, long before the war ever started, and it's not even uncommon for the only living beings within an army to be the necromancers themselves, and none others." - Nikolas Feydorov Aglev, spymaster for the Elmaiya Empire, circa 19 VA.

The Bone Lord's infantry line surged forward to clash with the Junoran horde. The centerline where the bone champions held the line remained stable, as the disciplined undead cut down the thralls that assaulted them in perfect symphony, each one's movement covered and covering the other two to their sides.

 

By their sides however, the horde of beastial skeletons engaged in a chaotic melee with the thralls. The chaos actually benefited the beasts, as it helped cancel out the numerical advantage of the Junoran thralls, while the beasts clearly had their pre-decided roles to exploit such chaos.

 

Skeletons of great four-armed apes held the tides of the Junoran thralls, and concentrated them in place. This allowed large, quadrupedal skeletal beasts with multiple horns on their skull to charge through the gathered Junoran thralls and wreak havoc among their lines, while packs of smaller skeletal beasts - wolves especially prominent - followed in their wake and cleaned up the survivors.

 

Once the battle was well and truly engaged, and the further lines of Junoran thralls started to press on the first line, the Bone Lord gave the signal. The outermost two heads of his mount rose high into the air, and gave a loud, animalistic bellow - albeit unlike anything Aideen had ever heard in her life, or unlife for that matter - which was the signal to charge.

 

Cavalrymen from both wings of the Bone Lord's formation started to trot, then cantered, before they transitioned to a purposeful gallop that led them straight towards the flanks of the Junoran army. Their paths were diagonal, aimed at the congregation of necromancers at the very rear of the army.

 

Moments before they met the Junoran lines, wicked lances and long spears were lowered by the first line of cavalrymen. On the other hand, those in the second line behind had their blades, maces, or axes held in hand.

 

First to clash with the Junoran thralls were not even lances, but bone beasts of horrible power and ferocity, who leapt out from behind and between the cavalry frontlines. Fangs and claws tore through flesh, pikes were deflected or broken against bone plates, and despite the Junoran necromancer's best efforts, the front line still fell into disorder as the bone beasts ran roughshod through them and created openings all over.

 

Moments after the beasts struck, lances and long spears skewered the Junoran frontlines. The pikes they leveled, while effective against Vitalican cavalry who used flesh-and-blood horses as mounts, proved wholly ineffective against the skeletal mounts used by the Wings of Night and Death Knights.

 

As the cavalry ahead cleared the way for them, the ones behind - half the Wings of Night and the entirety of the templars - crashed into what thralls managed to gather themselves after the initial charge and went to work as they butchered their opposition with efficiency and extreme prejudice.

 

As the cavalry distracted and drew the Junorans' attention to them, the infantry lines pushed forward hard from the center. The Bone Lord's mount breathed out clouds of death magic that on their own must have annihilated a good two or three thousand thralls, and the bone champion infantry line suddenly wheeled to the left and right as they opened a path in their center.

 

From the gap, Haon, Trí, and Ceathair charged out, fifty bone champions formed lines to the sides behind them, while Aideen, Diarmuid, and their mother rushed ahead behind the assault. Dó wasn't in sight, but that was to be expected. Thralls were tossed aside like ragdolls, or in bloody chunks, or both at once, as the three undead constructs cleared the way for their mistress.

 

A few thralls still slipped past the gaps in their coverage - the constructs and the bone champions slaughtered most they ran into, but there were just too many thralls around - and these ones, Aideen and Diarmuid handled personally.

 

Diarmuid beheaded one thrall and sliced an arm and half a torso off another in one brutal swing, and slammed the hook-spike at the back of his axe into another thrall's skull on the backswing, before he wrenched it around violently and freed his weapon in a shower of grey, gooey, disgusting brain matter as the thrall's head shattered.

Aideen would have complained as some of the disgusting mess splattered on her clothes, but by then, she was already covered from head to toe in the same, mostly due to her own doing. She sighed as she brought down her staff with all the force she could muster on the head of a thrall and averted her eyes as it burst open under the blow, splattering her face with some blood and brain matter in the process.

You are reading story Unliving at novel35.com

 

She nearly vomited her guts out as she spat out some that accidentally landed in her mouth.

 

Aideen raised her head and caught the sight of four cloaked figures that burst out from the mass of thralls. They were figures very similar to one she knew all too well, soul puppets, designed for the sole purpose of assassinations.

 

She was just about to shout out a warning to her mother when she saw Trí swat out one of the soul puppets out of the air with a mace, and Ceathair skewered another with its spear. A third soul puppet managed to approach Aoife, only for her to completely disregard it.

 

Her disregard had a good reason behind it, for a mere five steps away from Aoife, the soul puppet staggered, and was stopped in its tracks. Its four limbs were spread-eagled while it suddenly found itself held aloft, with spear-like legs skewered through its four limbs.

 

Dó appeared in sight for a short moment as she opened her jaws wide, and chomped down on the soul puppet, which just left four disembodied limbs held by her legs, that she shrugged off nonchalantly.

 

The last soul puppet landed near Aideen, and she intercepted it before it could approach further towards her mother. Her staff clashed with the puppet's pair of three-pronged punch daggers, as she kept it busy.

 

Despite her training, actual combat with an enemy that felt no pain and had no fear for their life was a different matter, and the puppet had her on the backfoot. Until she decided to take more extreme measures.

 

When the puppet's right hand blade came in a thrust, she allowed it to go through. The searing pain wracked her as the three pronged blade stabbed into her abdomen, tearing flesh and cutting organs on its way in.

 

The pain intensified when she curled over the wound - with the blade still inside -, clenched her muscles around it, and forced the flesh around the wound to heal, effectively trapping the blade within herself. She felt her healing to be less effective than usual around the wound, the blade no doubt laced with poison like the last.

 

As the assassin paused in surprise for a moment at what she did, Aideen took the opportunity and ignored the pain as she brought down her staff against one of the puppet's knees, then the other, shattering the kneecaps with her blows.

 

The soul puppet crumpled, and almost fell, only held up by its right hand, which still clutched the blade entwined deep inside her abdomen, and caused her another wince of pain in the process.

 

Until a black axe swept by and severed first the arm, then the soul puppet's head, as Diarmuid came over to help her. He gave her a slightly worried look, but she shook her head and indicated that she was fine.

 

Aideen tore out the blade from her body, and discarded it, before she and Diarmuid ran ahead to catch up to their mother.

 

You can find story with these keywords: Unliving, Read Unliving, Unliving novel, Unliving book, Unliving story, Unliving full, Unliving Latest Chapter