Chapter 32 - Cliffhanger

Shiro hadn’t been wrong when he said it was a long way down. Even with the heat of the fire assailing my back, I was hesitant to make the call.

Of course, I could levitate my way down — and I could do the same for Shiro and Sarah. But the entire Legion? With the worst of the fire just minutes away? That was too much, and too little time.

But perhaps they didn’t need to fall gracefully. The river at the bottom didn’t look deep enough to cushion anyone’s fall, but from this height, it would make little difference, anyway. There were more than fifty meters to the bottom — even if it were the ocean, it would be little different from landing on top of stone.

The wights, though, were already dead. They didn’t need most of their inner parts to work — I mostly made use of the muscles and skeleton. Even then, a wight could function just as well with a crushed ribcage.

The intensity of the heat rose, and I realized I had run out of time. With a thought, I instructed the four thousand odd undead to throw themselves off the cliff, belly first.

It would take some time for all of them to move, so I steeled myself to hold the fire back to the best of my ability.

“I’m not sure about this,” Sarah said, eying the drop with a furrowed brow.

“I’ll levitate you two down,” I said, moving some of my mana away from the shield. “Don’t resist.” I enveloped the two Revenants in threads of Force, and willed it to carry them down into the ravine. Sarah extended an arm to her bear, looking worried, but I couldn’t send it with her. The bear would take the harder way down. The spell would do its job on its own, so I turned back to the incoming wall of fire, and focused all I had to disperse the heat.

It was good that I couldn’t feel pain, because I could see my body’s skin sizzling under the unrelenting heat. Some of the wights near the back were spontaneously combusting, the desiccated corpses standing no chance against the intensity of the blaze.

Minutes passed, but to me, it felt like hours. So focused was I on holding back the fire, I almost didn’t notice when the last of the Legion were moving to jump. Around me, trees crashed down, brought down by the smoldering from within.

With the last of my energy, I followed the last of my army down the cliff, letting go of the shield and weaving a quick levitation spell in its place. A few stragglers — makeshift wights built with mismatched body parts — who were slower to jump burst into flames as soon as the shield was gone. A thread of Force pushed them away from the landing spot — I didn’t want the fire to spread after all the effort I’d gone through.

I landed atop a mountain of wights, who hadn’t moved from their position after landing. I figured it would be quicker to have them land on top of each other rather than clear the landing zone, and I hoped it would cushion the fall for the later groups. I climbed down the mountain of flesh and bones, stepping into the shin-deep water, and broke into a maddened laughter.

I laughed and laughed until the stress finally left me, then I set myself down in the river, letting the water flow around my body.

“Do you think he’s okay?” Sara asked, a hint of apprehension in her voice. The water rushing past my ears made her words sound garbled.

“Eh, probably,” Shiro said, “he’s just being weird.”

“I heard that,” I said — or rather, I tried to say, but all that came out was bubbles. I lifted myself into a sitting position, removing my head from the blessed water, and tried again, “I heard that.”

Shiro shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Do you think we’re safe here?” Sarah asked, and her face looked worried, still.

I glanced up towards the top of the cliffs, where the sky was painted red by the fire. A strong wind blew through the ravine, keeping any falling embers away from the ground.

“Most likely. It’s a long way up to the forest, and there’s little vegetation here,” I said as I looked around. The rocky cliffs were almost devoid of life, except for the odd hanging tree here and there.

“So, what do we do now?” Shiro asked.

I blinked in surprise. I hadn’t thought that far yet. “I suppose we’ll continue with the original plan,” I said finally. “There’s no reason not to. We’ll have to follow the cliffs for a while — there’s no scaling this, not with an army — but from what I remember, it should lead towards the coast. It shouldn’t put us too far off the mark.”

“Didn’t you have a map with you?” Shiro asked, tilting his head.

“Oh… yes, I did, in fact!” I said, slapping my face as I remembered the baggage wight. I had forgotten about the poor fellow during the commotion. With a thought, I identified the thread leading to that particular undead and gave it a tug as I instructed it to come find me.

The mountain of wights twitched as a stubby-looking undead climbed its way out from under its brethren, and I willed them to untangle themselves and prepare to march again.

The baggage wight stumbled around as the writhing mass of flesh and bones moved, and finally, he freed himself from the mess and waddled to my side. It wore a gigantic leather backpack, the straps fastened up tight to keep the contents safe. It had been touched by the fire, a bit, enough that the leather was flaking, but it looked superficial. I walked up behind the wight and started rummaging through the backpack.

There weren’t many things inside — the map was one of them, as was a compass and some other navigational trinkets, as well as supplies for large-scale casting. It would have been quite painful for me to lose them. I needed to learn how to make a pocket dimension sooner rather than later.

I spread out the map before me, squinting as I tried to identify where we’d ended up. I hadn’t paid much attention to our heading with the fire at our backs, but it wasn’t hard to identify the general area — there weren’t many rivers going through that particular area.

“We should be somewhere around here,” I said, pointing at a thin line while Sarah and Shiro peeked over my shoulder.

“That’s not too bad,” Sarah commented. “It looks like it’s a tributary of the Brightwater River, so it should be enough to follow it.”

“Indeed. We seem to be lucky, at least on that account,” I said.

“Right?” Shiro asked. “Who even sets fire to a whole forest?”

I shrugged. “It was a good strategy, especially since we outnumber them. I would have lost the Legion if it weren’t for this place here, and that would have been as good as losing the war.”

“I guess,” Shiro said, hunching his shoulders, “It’s just, such a crazy idea. So much destruction — and they could have gotten caught up in it too.”

“The wind was blowing from behind,” I said, shaking my head. “And they weren’t far from the edge of the forest.”

“Are you doing well, Sarah?” I asked. She hadn’t said much, and she looked withdrawn, haunted.

“I’m fine,” she said, waving away my concern. “I’m just not good with heights.”

“Oh? The great scary Death Knight is afraid of a little height?” Shiro teased.

Her expression darkened. “You’re the one to talk? You were afraid of Winnie!”

“Because you had him bite my hair!”

“Where’s Winnie, anyway?” she asked, looking around the ravine for signs of her ursine companion. I spotted him after a few moments as it worked its way out of the pile, and I sent it an order to come to our location.

As soon as Sarah spotted it, she ran up to her bear, jumping straight onto its back and stroking its fur. Far from her earlier apprehension, she looked happy now, at peace.

“Rest up while you can,” I said. “We’ll be moving as soon as… as soon as this mess is untangled.”

The shallow water combined with jagged rocks every so often slowed our advance through the ravine. The forest had been faster, though not by much. But I had little to complain about — better to be moving slower than becoming cinders.

The cliffs became shorter as we approached the coast, and soon they disappeared entirely as the little river merged with the Brightwater River. As soon as we were out of the water, Sarah seated herself on a rock, removing her plate boots and turning them upside down. A surprising amount of water flowed from both of the boots, as well as a… frog?

“Poor frog,” Shiro said, “I wonder how it survived the smell of your feet.”

“It was doing all it could to hide from you. Better the smell of my feet than to be courted by you,” she retorted, crossing her arms.

“Ouch. Touche.”

I took out the map and quickly identified the spot where our small tributary met its bigger brother. The Brighwater went straight through Brightharbor, which was a major port on this side of the continent. We hadn’t been taken that far off track either, having only lost perhaps half a day of marching. Now, though, we were back in an open field, and with a bit of luck, the Count’s men would think the Legion dismantled.

It was a good opportunity to catch them off-guard, so I quickened our pace, adding a touch of magical support to our speed, and sent the birds to keep a lookout for any troops.

But for now, we marched, and soon I was lost in thought as I considered ways to protect myself and my minions in the future.

A tug on one of my Soul threads told me the birds had found something. I gestured for the Legion to stop as I focused on pinpointing its location. It was coming from the east, and slightly behind us. Soon, another tug came from the same direction, but I wanted to wait a bit more before making a decision. They weren’t smart, but if two thought they’d found something worth investigating, I would have been a fool not to.

I followed the birds’ trajectories for a minute — it seemed whatever they had found was headed south, just like us. Returning to Brightharbor, most likely. I willed the Legion to continue moving while changing its heading so we’d intercept the potential enemies before they made it to the city.

It was some hours later that we finally set sights on our enemies. There were two hundred in total, perhaps, and they had stopped on top of a hill. The Dead Legion wasn’t subtle — their scouts would have seen us coming, and they must have realized they stood no chance in running away.

We approached cautiously, wary of any traps. But they must have exhausted their bag of tricks, for we were allowed to proceed unimpeded. I called a halt once we were close enough and waited to see how they would respond.

A tall woman descended from the hill, bearing a standard upon her shoulder — a pristine white flag billowed in the wind. She was accompanied by a man carrying a stack of papers. I motioned for Sarah and Shiro to follow me, and we proceeded to meet the enemy delegation halfway.

“I am here to offer our surrender,” the woman spoke with no inflection, no twitch to give away her feelings.

“So easily?” I asked, even though it wasn’t unexpected.

“You outnumber us twenty to one,” she scoffed, some anger bleeding through her mask, “I know a lost fight when I see one. If the fire didn’t stop you, straight combat definitely won’t.”

I nodded, acknowledging her reasoning — it was also good to have confirmation that her people had been behind it.

“And who do I have the pleasure of speaking with…?” I asked.

“General Palas of the Resistance,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Odd for a general to command so few troops,” I noted, surprised.

She simply glared at me and motioned for her aide to take the lead.

“Right,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “These are the terms I drafted for formalizing the surrender. Please take a look and we can modify them if you deem them insufficient.”

The man handed me a stack of papers as thick as my wrist, and I couldn’t help but sigh. I had won this, and cleanly, but why did it feel like a defeat?