Chapter 1727: Sacrilige!
Archlich Vozen had raised grand armies of legendary proportions throughout his long life, and the purple-eyed corpses surging across the Fujimori line were an insult to every one of them.
No binding scripts, no muscular enhancements, no bone restructuring. Black Fang had made no effort to turn the dead into glorious undead constructs.
They were raw, unmodified, freshly killed meat walking on strings that had no business producing anything beyond a lurching shamble, and a dwarven captain she’d bisected seconds ago was carving through his own former comrades.
"Sacrilege!" The word tore from the archlich in a screech that cracked frost on the nearest tombstones, gems flaring white along his chain.
"She didn’t modify a single one of them!" His gauntlet swept toward the horde. "Proper necromancy demands meticulous binding and restructuring to produce soldiers worthy of the craft! These puppets are raw meat running on fumes, inferior in every conceivable-"
A vine the width of a horse’s torso erupted from the earth beneath three of his shielded undead and crushed them into the dirt, necrotic shielding crackling apart like wet paper.
Orianna stood with one hand raised and flower constructs blooming around her in a crescent of thorn and hardened bark, each pulsing crimson from the Bloodfather’s mark.
"Yeah, yeah. Constructs that stand on their own in seconds, ready to tear into high level enemies from the get go," she called across the gap, "are so inferior to creations that need months of tinkering in your disgusting crypts. I am in full agreement, lich."
Another vine caught an armored corpse mid-charge and popped it inside its coils like a grape.
"Puppets that fight with predatory instinct rather than shambling in circles waiting for orders?" She shook her head. "Your necromancy truly is superior."
Then a sly smirk appeared on her lips. "Wait. Black Fang is actually a much more proper user of necromancy than you are, because she derives her powers from the One True Necromancer. You’re just a dark mage who’s only useful so long as you have decades of preparation time before you have to face anyone truly strong."
"You dare-"
"Quiet. I’m admiring the sight."
Her gaze found the violet streak cutting through Fujimori infantry in the distance, and the professional mask she wore like a second skin slipped for a breath of naked reverence.
"Marvelous... What an otherworldly sight," she murmured, too quiet for anyone breathing to catch.
Her constructs drove forward into Vozen’s ranks, and behind them the archlich burned as raw fury poured into his craft in tendrils thicker than anything he’d produced since the battle began.
...
Gorthrax the Eternal caught Elisabeth’s mace on a barrier of pooled darkness, and the impact drove cracks through the necrotic wall and rattled the blue fire in his empty sockets.
Elisabeth pressed through with divine light bleeding from every joint of her golden armor, and her second swing caught the Drowned King mid-charge on Gorthrax’s flank.
Holy fire sheared through rusted armor at the shoulder and flung the severed chunk free in a shower of sparks.
"MY SHOULDER, YOU MISERABLE COW!"
"Quiet, corpse." She was already pivoting back to Gorthrax. "Young lady, I hope this helps."
"Stop trying to steal my kill and mind your own business," Iris hissed at the divine messenger of the Goddess as if Elisabeth was a drunkard in a tavern that stood in her way.
"Huh?" the Arch Priestess gasped, full of shock. She was trying to help a valiant young girl against the terrible monster she was facing and instead she got told to mind her own business?
For a moment, confusion was evident on her face.
Then she shrugged. ’She lost a lot of blood. She didn’t mean it.’
The Eternal had yielded three measured steps during the next exchange. [Grasp of the Abyss] poured from his gauntlet in a wave that bent light around itself, hit Elisabeth’s golden aura with the weight of a frozen sea, and cratered the ground between them.
Elisabeth planted her feet and held, mace braced across her body, radiance pushing back against the dark.
Then her eyes moved past him.
The purple-eyed puppets were tearing through the Fujimori line.
Gorthrax saw it.
"Found a new target, little hypocrite?"
Her radiance flared. "Don’t talk to me, filth."
"Let me guess..." A dry rattling escaped his ribcage that barely resembled laughter. "You’ll find a way to convince yourself that she and the villain are somehow different? Somehow good despite wielding more potent evil classes than undead do?"
"None of this is your concern, filth. I’ll help you return to your grave."
"Truly, you fanatics are the biggest hypocrites to have ever lived."
Her mace came down hard enough to split the earth beneath his feet. The barrier he raised cracked but held, and the blue fire danced in his sockets.
He’d found a nerve. He was in no hurry to let it heal.
...
Black Fang carved a corridor through the Fujimori infantry toward the elders’ position, and everyone between her and that destination was a delay made of meat.
Her puppet army flowed in her wake, purple-eyed corpses filling the gaps with her predatory grace, and the blue-skinned soul soldiers held the flanks in formations that kept the corridor from collapsing behind her.
"She’s breaking through! Stop her!" A samurai screamed and charged from the left. She cut through his guard and his throat in the same motion, and the cry turned into a wet gurgle that ended before his knees hit the ground.
Behind her, the venom in the wound was already at work, purple-black tendrils knitting the throat back together in a wet crawl that wasn’t healing so much as restructuring, sealing the gash enough for the muscles to function. The body sat up with purple fire where its eyes had been.
A Fujimori spearwoman saw it happen and her weapon slipped from her fingers. "No... stay down... stay down..."
She was directly in the Venomborne Terror’s path, and she’d watched three soldiers try to run in the last thirty seconds and not one of them had made it four steps.
"This... I-I can’t do this anymore! Facing such an enemy is impossible!"
The spearwoman cried and dropped to the ground, curling into herself with her knees against her chest and her arms around her skull.
"Mama..." The word left her in a sob muffled against her own knees. "Mama, I want to go home... I want to hear your lullaby just one more time..."
Black Fang reached her, katana dripping.
The violet eyes looked down at the woman crying for her mother in the dirt, and whatever passed behind them lasted less than a breath.
"A mother’s lullaby..."
She whispered under her breath and stepped over.
Then she resumed the killing.
The dead flowed past on both sides, close enough for the spearwoman to feel the menace radiating off dead skin, and not one of them touched her.
She stayed curled on the ground long after the killing sounds moved past her, then cracked one eye open.
Three of them had stopped mid-march, staring down at her with violet embers where their eyes should have been, patient and expectant, as if waiting for her to figure out what came next.
The spearwoman looked between the three dead faces and understood. Her hands rose above her head, shaking.
They bound her wrists behind her back, firm but not cruel, and as the rope tightened the spearwoman’s gaze found the violet streak carving through the Fujimori line thirty meters ahead.
"Thank you..." she whispered toward the woman who spared her life, tears running fresh down both cheeks.
’Did crying for my mother like a pathetic coward actually save my life?’ The thought hit her as the puppets marched her toward the rear of the formation.
’Does the Venomborne Terror have a weakness for girls who cry for their mothers?’
She looked back over her shoulder at the woman in black, who was splitting a Fujimori officer from collar to hip without any change in her expression.
She couldn’t tell. Nothing about that woman suggested she had any weaknesses at all.
The clan’s banners grew larger through the smoke.
She found the Scarlet Lilies in her path before she reached the elders.
Lilith was a couple dozen meters ahead with her back turned, sword crashing against Elder Tomoe’s guard in a wild rhythm, the grey-haired woman a decade younger than Chizuru and fighting like every one of those years mattered. Bronnya held position to her left, absorbing a samurai charge on her shield.
Void sat on the tanker’s back with her eyes shut and her hat sliding sideways.
Black Fang closed the distance in silence and swung for the back of Lilith’s neck.
