Chapter Twenty-Three - Fossil Fortress

Seventeen bowed to his lord, then turned and started walking off. The lord was busy at the moment, conversing with his warlock, the one blessed by the Bone Father with the title of ‘The Limpet.’

Oh, how he wished he knew all of the connotations of such a name. Alas, many of his books had been lost over the centuries and he was worried that his vocabulary was suffering as well.

Upon reaching the shore, Seventeen took a moment to just relax. The lapping of the waves against rock and sand was a soothing sound, one he’d heard too little in his time spent at the bottom of the ocean.

Had he any lungs, he would have taken in a deep gulp of ocean air already.

“Oh, enough dilly-dallying,” he muttered. Taking a step forward, he planted his loafers into the wet sand and focused. A pulse of necromantic magic shot out of him, powerful and sudden. He felt it travelling across the waves, hitting hundreds of undead crustaceans hidden under stones and in crevices .

The little undead received the signal and repeated it, sending it deeper and deeper into the depth, like the links of a chain each clinking in time as the chain was whipped.

Seventeen waited, patient and calm, until he felt a wave returning. A smaller, shorter burst of necrotic magic, designed in such a way that its provenance would be uncertain to all, but the most astute necromancers.

No point in having his fortress give away its position. It was, after all, in a somewhat disadvantageous position beneath the waves. Just as an army with some flying units could bombard the ground with nothing but stones, an adversary with a few boats could mortar his fortress from the surface if they knew what they were doing.

Seventeen set that thought aside and sent out another burst of magic. Not a single signal, but a stuttering, popping volley of them. The signals told a story, made a request, gave instructions, and most importantly of all, validated his credentials.

The ability for water to better transmit some forms of magic was something that most necromancers were aware of, but Seventeen suspected that few of his brethren in the greatest art had actually attempted to utilize it as much as he had.

The crabs and lobsters and other such creatures faithfully repeated his signal. It travelled down and away, skimming over the bottom of the ocean until it reached the ears of the fortress.

The undersea castle came awake.

He could feel it in his bones. The powerful, thump-beat of a long dead heart. Not pumping blood or anything so wasteful, but instead circulating the very life essence of centuries worth of gathered dead.

He could imagine it now, and only regretted a little for not being near his fortress as it awoke.

Core would brighten and the undead in the many caverns and hidden places below would rise, feeling the call to attention of the grand castle.

Muscles, strands as thick around as a horse, stitched together from the flesh of ten thousand creatures, would flex for the first time. The many, many legs beneath the fortress would bunch up, the long, boney feet at their ends finding purchase along the mountings placed there for just this occasion.

Some would fail, of course. Nothing ever worked to perfection. It was why the fortress had three additional hearts, it was why its veins and arteries had redundancies, why, with only half of its legs, it could still support its weight under the ocean.

The undead below would stream in droves onto the fortress. Ancient engineers of bone and gristle would rush to ligaments and veins, ensuring that all was well and repairing with their feeble magics, anything that wasn’t.

The scores of undead fish around the fort would swarm and swim in concentric circles, searching for prey in that moment of time where the fortress was at its most vulnerable.

Seventeen listened to the return signal. Short barks of necrotic energy and low hums of deathly magic. Things were functioning. One of the hearts had misfired, but was beating now. Two of the greater legs had failed, but were being repaired. Some of the sensors, the great eyes around the fortress, had rotted away and would require replacing.

He ‘tsked’ at himself. He should have inspected those more rigorously.

The fortress’s feet rose, the entire edifice pushing itself up, and its many legs, like those of a massive crab, struck out and into the earth around its base.

It left behind a hole, a circular pit hundreds of necrometers deep, with tunnels and passages buried into its walls.

A few undead fish dove into these to retrieve some final items, then returned to the fortress.

For all that the fortress was gigantic by the standard of walking undead, it was still minuscule faced with the scope of an entire ocean. It’s legs began to move in a carefully orchestrated dance, pushing and pulling it forwards.

Soon, Seventeen could no longer hear or understand the signals from his undead signallers. Too warped. The fortress’s many necrotic heart’s constant thumping, like war drums, drowned out the precise signals he used.

It was an issue he hadn’t foreseen. Another failure.

Still, the fort was coming, and despite its slow, careful movements, its bulk alone ensured that it moved across the land at a pace that even a skeleton running all out couldn’t keep up with.

Seventeen remained at his post, but that didn’t mean he was idle as he waited. He directed the undead behind him to find a place where the land formed a natural ramp, and sent the will-o’-wisps he had at his disposal high above in order to ensure that no enemies were near enough to cause trouble.

Certainly, the number of humans able to defeat his fortress were few, but that didn’t mean there were none, and it wouldn't fail to act to prevent any such disasters when all it required was a little bit of will and some forethought.

Finally, as the sun crested the horizon at last and the day broke properly, Seventeen saw his fortress with his own lack of eyes.

The very first sections to appear were the towers along the edges, now reinforced and solidified by an ablative layer of bones. Skeletal engineers were still hard at work, adding plates and additional weapons onto the towers.

Next came the top of the head of the giant turtle in the midst of the base. A gleaming shell of jade green, with its barnacles freshly removed. In the space where the turtle’s head would be came two faint, reddish glows.

Entirely made from a couple of jars with will-o’-wisps, of course. It wouldn’t do to have a weak spot actually glow. That would be stupid.

The walls came next, covered in jagged bones and manned by zombies and skeletons in white bone-plate.

Seventeen felt his soul soaring as the fortress continued to approach. It was bending a little now, having to support its own weight without the added buoyancy of water. Still, it marched on.

He sent signals to it once more, these ones finally strong enough to override the magical thumping of the fortress’s cores.

Human hearts all along the fortress’s interior started to pump, and with that pumping, spurts of water were ejected out of the sides. A heavy rain was torn out of the ocean as the bottom edge of the fortress broke out of the water with a walloping splash.

The fortress paused, and gantries of bone and sinew lowered themselves down. The skeletal, undead fish guarding it raced over to there, and were summarily harpooned by skeletons.

Waste not, want not. Their bones would be added to the whole.

“And so, the great war fortress rises! The bastion of boners, the living symbol of the might of the undead! Rise, Osseous! Rise, my Forward Operations Semi-Sentient Immersible and Landbased Headquarters!” Seventeen shouted, a nearly-reveous chant.

F.O.S.S.I.L. Head moved.

Each massive step jammed a crab-like leg into the waters, sending splashes as tall as a man into the air with every motion. The ground trembled as thousands of tons of warfort moved onto shore for the first time.

Seventeen placed his hands on his hips, stood as tall as he could, bent his spine back, then indulged in the traditional laugh of a necromancer whose creation was coming to life. “Mua-hah-hah-hah-hah!” he called to the heavens, interspersed with the traditional snorts.

F.O.S.S.I.L. Head hit land like lightning ramming into the ground. Rocks, clinging to the nearest cliffs for eons, tumbled down, and the sand shook. Small creatures scurried away in fright, some of them passing away as the weak necrotic energies wafting off the fortress enveloped them.

The sun rose, bathing F.O.S.S.I.L. Head in orange and yellows.

Seventeen stepped out of the water and sauntered back to his lord’s side. F.O.S.S.I.L. Head would move over to a place where the cliffs rose up a little and where the fort could lower itself enough that people could board the fortress with no more than a ramp or two.

Even when he arrived near the humans, F.O.S.S.I.L. Head was still clearly visible as it towered above. The humans were suitably scared. The mantis, the one that had surrendered, didn’t seem scared at all.

“Mem never saw something so cool!” she said.

“Pardon?” he asked.

“Mem never saw something so cool!” she said... again.

Seventeen turned and looked over at the F.O.S.S.I.L. Head. It was still covered in dark spikes and white crenulations. There were some zombies artfully hanging off the side, intestines hanging about like garlands. “Cool?” he asked.

“Mem thinks so.”

“Not... terrifying?”

The mantis tilted her head. “No? Is Mem supposed to be afraid? She can be if you want. Mem is good at being afraid, but she’s never been afraid of a building before.”

“It’s filled with undead.”

“Nice ones?” Mem asked. “Some seem mean, but most things can be mean. Some of the undead seem nice though. Rem seems to like that undead with the cute skirt, and the scary undead man that Mom wants Mem to kill is actually not so scary.”

Seventeen stared at the creature until, with a jolt of horror down his spine, it clicked. “My lord warned me about people like you,” he said.

“Mems like Mem?”

“No... well, yes, but--” He shook his head. “People so dense that they are impossible to plot around. Plan ruiners and experiment-eaters.”

“Mem would never do that,” Mem said. She shook her head. “Mem tries hard to be a good Mem whenever she can.”

“Seventeen?”

Seventeen spun around and found that the limpet was nearby. “Yes, ma’am?” he asked.

“Ah, I don’t think we need that now,” the limpet said. “I’m not leading anything now, am I? Um, you brought the fortress here.”

“I have,” he stated the obvious in reply to an obvious statement.

“Is Fang Fang there?”

Seventeen wished he could blink. “Let’s see, shall we,” he said.

Cursing himself, Seventeen walked out past the limpet and wondered how he could forget something so obvious.

What if the dog died and the limpet complained to her master, therefore making him look bad? Sure, he could raise the dog. Make it better. But humans were sentimental. It was even a protocol to kick a puppy next to or near an adversary if you wanted to make a point about how evil you were. Cats would also do in a pinch.

What if the dog had gone overboard?

He walked a little faster, sending the signal to lower the gate and extend the ramps.

A glance over his shoulder revealed the limpet... and the mantis. “Pardon me, but why are you following?”

Mem looked behind her, then pointed to herself with a scythe. “Mem is a dog walker now. She wants to see the dog for walking?”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

He cursed himself doubly.

When he arrived at the front of the F.O.S.S.I.L. Head, one of the first things to happen was a wet dog came shooting out of the fortress and crashed into the limpet.

“Well, at least that’s gone well,” Seventeen said. “Now I just need to find the next potential fire and extinguish it before it lights everything up.”

***