Chapter Nineteen - Tactical Terror

It was incredibly entertaining to watch the limpet struggle with her little army at first, but perhaps the girl had a knack for command because she soon developed a strategy and employed it across the field.

“Right, I need them split. The archer skeletons and one group of skeletons should move around here, then over to here.”

The limpet pointed from the beach, then to an area out and away from the camps, finally, she pointed to a spot some hundred necrometers to the west of the west-most camp, the direction opposite the lapping waters.

“They need to be really stealthy on their approach in the end. I don’t want them to be seen,” the limpet said.

“Understood,” Seventeen replied easily. He relayed the orders, and on the cast projection, I could see some dozen skeletons heading off and away from the main group.

“Okay,” the limpet said. She tapped her chin and chewed on her lip. “I need.... Urgh, that leaves me with... right. Move the abominations here. See this bit with the sand. It looks like it’ll be easy for them to climb out. Maybe... send three of them there. Which direction is the wind moving in?”

North to south,” Seventeen replied.

“Let’s split the other three abominations and half the zombies and send them south with the will o’ wisps. Look, see these rocky bits? Are they tall enough to hide an abomination?”

“Some parts seem to be,” Seventeen replied.

The limpet started to walk back and forth next to the projection, a hand cupping her chin. “Right, let’s try it. The will-o’-wisps are fairly fast, right? We should send them farther south, way farther. They might be mistaken for torches or something... how high can they fly? What’re their effective ranges for attacking?”

“Wisps can use very minor magics. Shocking touches, they can also turn invisible,” Seventeen recited.

“Wait, really?” the limpet jumped.

“Only so long as they’re not attacking, yes. They can also consume the life of a dead or dying person to regain their strength.”

The limpet grinned. “Perfect.” She pointed to one camp, the southernmost of the group, and one that was farther from the others. “We’re hitting this one first. I need the wisps... here, and here. And I need the abominations behind this outcropping here, and over here. Push the zombies over to here.”

The limpet picked her battlefield, a small clearing not too far from the southern camp. Along the north side of it were some large stones behind which she wanted her abominations to wait, along with the zombies. Her wisps, surprisingly, she moved on the other side of the camp, between it and the other four camps.

It took some time for everything to move into place, time I chose to spend asking about her plan. “Why three groups?” I asked.

“Well, they outnumber my forces by... about three to one? A bit less than that. I’m pretty sure in a straight fight they’d win. But they’re all split up into five groups, and I outnumber any one of those three to one. I could hit these two camps.” She pointed to the two that were father away from the others. “And then sweep in and fight on even numbers against these three who are close together, but if they notice early, then they’ll have time to prepare.”

“And so you split your force three ways?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yeah. The archers to the east will occupy that camp, the abominations in the water... well, I’m saving those for later. If everything goes wrong, at least I can attack from three directions at once. That might confuse them a bit. But I’m hoping that I can at least take out one camp before that happens.”

I leaned back into my seat and let things play out as they would. The limpet had a good head on her shoulders for these types of things, it seemed. Decent knowledge of the environment, she was thinking about what her enemies would think, and she wasn’t relying on brute strength or sheer numbers. A good start. Perhaps she just needed to hone those skills.

“Everyone is in place, ma’am,” Seventeen said.

The limpet stopped and eyed the battlefield. “Good. I need one wisp to stay invisible and move over to... here. Inside the camp. Will the campfire be a problem?”

“It shouldn’t,” Seventeen said.

One of the six wisps meandered over to the camp, it’s faded light, only visible thanks to the projection’s magic, moving to the edge of the camp then hovering in.

“Good... attack... see that one? With the robes? He looks like a cultivator. Can the wisps hit him from behind?”

“The back of the head?” Seventeen asked.

“The bum,” the limpet corrected.

I chuckled. “Why there, exactly?”

“He probably won’t die from one shock, right? So we’ll embarrass him instead. I need the wisp to fly right back over to here.” She pointed to the clearing where her abominations and zombies were waiting. “As quickly as it can, and while being bright.”

“A lure,” I said.

The limpet nodded.

We all watched as a spark lit up the camp and the cultivator, his rear now quite fried, leapt to the air and spun around. He screamed something, but his hands were too busy rubbing to point.

He didn’t need to as the wisp lit up and darted out of the camp. The limpet’s plan was almost foiled as a very Rem-like creature darted out of a tent and sliced at it, but its ephemeral qualities and wavering motions saved it from being skewered.

The wisp lead nearly half the camp out into the near-darkness of night, and to the clearing some hundred necrometers away. Some of them slowed down along the way, but the cultivator and the mantis didn’t give up the chase so easily.

“Okay, now!” the limpet said. “Abominations on the cultivator and that mantis, zombies keep the rest busy. The wisp can return to being invisible, but let it shock any of them that are too troublesome.”

Of the camp of a little over twelve, there were five humans and one mantis near the limpet’s trap when it went off. Two more were in the darkness between the trap and the camp, and the remainder were still around their fire.

The trap was fairly clever, but for a moment I suspected it might fail. The limpet’s group outnumbered their foes, but two of those were surprisingly nimble. A zombie dies almost immediately to the mantis’ strike, and one of the abominations reeled back as the cultivator punched it in the chest.

Still, it ended almost as soon as it began, with the cultivator’s leg caught in three of the abomination’s hands and the mantis being shocked by the wisp, then crushed by another abomination. The normal humans didn’t last very long at all.

“Nice!” the limpet cheered as the last soldier was killed.

“Hmm. If you were on the field, and a capable necromancer, you would have just gained half a dozen more units to fight with,” I said. “But so far you’ve done well. Do continue.”

The limpet nodded. “Zombies, after those near the camp. Abominations charge right in. When they try escaping, have the other wisps hit them. Focus their legs.”

The camp was stormed, and in the dark and with no leadership, the remaining humans were summarily crushed.

The limpet grinned, then pointed to the east. “Okay. That group. The skeletons. I don’t think we can take out the whole camp, but we can take a few of them out at least. Let’s have this main group.” she pointed to her wisps and ambomintions and zombies. “Move over to that camp. We’ll hit them from the south!”

The second attack didn’t seem to go quite as well as the limpet had planned. Her timing was off the moment one of the members of the camp saw something in the brush and moved to investigate. The limpet was biting her nails when she gave Seventeen the order to attack him.

He screamed, of course, which had others coming to investigate.

Someone, likely one of the mantises that moved between camps, alerted the others, and the third camp, the one nearest the westernmost camp, packed up and started to move before the limpet had even launched her full attack.

“Damn, damn, damn,” the limpet cursed. “Fine. Seventeen, hit that camp as hard as possible. Move one of the abominations out of the water... no, wait, send the skeletons still down there over to these rocks and make them hide in the bushes and such. We’ll ambush those that come to investigate.”

The western camp lost a few more members, but the rest, those savvy enough to see that they were in trouble, ran over to the next camp over. On finding it empty, they continued down to the twin camps nearest the ocean.

The limpet’s plan to draw attention towards the beach worked a little too well. Three cultivators and two mantises showed up to fight her one abomination, and the limpet fidgeted as it was summarily destroyed.

“That’s fine, it’s fine,” she said as she shifted from side to side. “Okay... wait for the normal soldiers to be returning to camp, then spring those skeletons out and hit them. Tell them to return to cover as soon as they can.”

“Understood,” Seventeen said.

“Now, we need to move the wisps over to the beach. Invisibility and all. Just get them there as fast as they can. When the cultivators start to turn back towards the camps, have the other abominations and zombies come out of the water, then when they approach, hit them with the wisps.”

Things quickly took a turn for the chaotic along the side of the beach, but the numbers were in the limpet’s favour, if only barely.

“We need... no, archers won’t be good there. Split the archer skeleton squad in three. One north, one south, the third stays with the abominations here. We’re moving this main group towards the camp. Spread them out just a bit, and bring the remaining skeletons in there too.”

The limpet’s largest group started to move towards the final camp while, on the beach, two mantises and a few cultivators fourth against the undead coming from the ocean. The footing, or lack thereof, seemed to favour the limpet’s army, but there were enough cultivators to make up for that advantage, and even the wisps swooping in didn’t turn the tides right away.

“Damn. Okay, send in the rest of the skeletons to hit the cultivators from behind,” the limpet said. “Wait, where’s the northern archer group?”

“Gone,” Seventeen said simply.

“Ah, damn... okay, wait, one of the cultivator’s is dead. Good, that’s good... what are they doing?” she pointed to the middle of the camp where soldiers were running around and pushing rocks into place in a rough circle, then tossing logs and equipment attop that.

“Creating a wall, it seems,” I said. A strange choice, but it would slow the limpet down.

She started to lose Wisps as one cultivator focused on them, but she doon died, swiped by an abomination.

In the end, the soldiers on the beach abandoned their leaders and rushed back to the camp, joining the two dozen others that were building a fortification there.

The limpet’s forces on the beach were down to only a couple of zombies, a single skeleton, and most of an abomination by the time they finally beat the last mantis down.

The limpet’s forces were still, technically, outnumbered, and now her adversary was aware of her, and building a barricade. The abominations could destroy that, but she only had four, really, and one was injured and another was so far gone that it couldn’t move from the sands where it lay.

The humans started to fire bows into the dark, and even landed a lucky shot that took out one of the limpet’s zombies. “Urgh, I might lose this,” the limpet lamented.

And then a mantis climbed onto the top of their barricade and raised her scythes.

“Is that Mem?” Rem asked. “She’s stupid, what’s she doing here?”

“She seems to be surrendering,” Seventeen said.

The limpet blink. “Huh?!”