Having done what little they could in terms of preparation, Anastacia, Gilbert and Emilia made their stand outside of the firmly sealed gate to the city. Their enemy had no doubt been waiting for her bloody message to be discovered, and though Anastacia had initially slipped back into Valor, they didn’t have much time before the guards reported activity outside. The necromancer had quickly slipped into an older, expendable outfit and hastily headed out with her friends; Crimson wasn’t the type that would politely wait for more than a brief moment.

Though the guards posted on top of the wall had warned them of what was on the other side of the gate, it wasn’t quite enough to prepare the adventurers for the sight. Even if Anastacia had a decent idea of what to expect and Gilbert had seen a lot on his travels, the seven-meter-tall mountain of mulched human bodies caught them off guard.

Sitting on a throne of corpses on top of this mound, was its creator, Inquisitor Crimson. About as old as the priestess confronting her and mostly in line with the other necromancer in terms of pasty and fragile looks, she would have seemed very unassuming – if it weren’t for the blood and chunks of flesh dripping off her hands and set of red robes.

The inquisitor waved at Anastacia. “Morning, pumpkin. Long time, no see!” She cheerily greeted her. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought along some friends I made on the way here? I actually had more but they started to smell.”

“Fuck you, Crimson!” Anastacia gave her own greeting and tried not to look directly at the mountain of corpses.

Crimson gasped theatrically. “Who taught you such language?! Are these people being a bad influence to you? Maybe I should ‘befriend’ them too? After all, my friends are all very polite and well-behaved.” She suggested and gestured at the corpses piled under her.

Taking her sweet time, the inquisitor stood up from her throne and started descending from the mound. Joints popped and bones crunched as the corpses under her feet arranged themselves as better footing for their controller. Partially coagulated blood gushed from the torn veins as the corpses broke themselves by twisting into shapes human bodies weren’t meant to reach.

“You know, Anastacia, my orders do ask me to bring you back alive, if possible. I honestly don’t know if I have the self-control to do that… So, could you please resist as little as possible? I want to keep you around for a while and if I have to tear you apart it’ll make you rot faster.” Crimson asked as she reached the ground. She obviously didn’t consider her request to be in any way unreasonable.

While the insane necromancer was addressing her target, one of the guards on top the wall saw his chance and swiftly released an arrow at Crimson, just like Anastacia had suggested for the guards to do. The arrow flew true and would have hit its mark, if it weren’t for one of the corpses lunging out of the pile and catching it with its head. Three more arrows followed suit but were all similarly intercepted by another corpse shambling out of the mountain.

The inquisitor stared slightly annoyedly at the parapets that were out of her immediate reach and extended her hand towards the first corpse that had taken a hit for her. The corpse’s spine ripped itself out through the skin and arranged itself into a curved shape in the necromancer’s hand while a tendon stretched itself between its tips to form a grotesque bow of questionable efficacy. The other corpse tore out one of the arrows jutting out of it and handed it over to Crimson, who curtsied and thanked the remains she herself puppeteered.

“Don’t interrupt me!” She yelled and shot the arrow back up at the wall, missing by several meters but absolutely obliterating the arrow as it collided with the wall with far more force than any regular bow would be able to generate.

Allowing the bow to collapse in her hand, she tossed it into the pile behind her and turned back to Anastacia. “Very rude of you to try something like that, I am thoroughly disappointed. Now stand still so I can kill you quickly.”

Immediately after she finished her sentence, a tendril made out of limbs sprang from the pile behind her and came crashing down right next to Anastacia. It would have ended the fight then and there, if Gilbert hadn’t deflected it with his mace.

As planned the guards began firing arrows towards Crimson one by one, forcing the inquisitor to use some of her concentration to protect herself.

Using this chance, Emilia closed in on their enemy. she swung her mace at Crimson, who expected for another corpse to emerge from the pile and take the hit, but it didn’t. Someone was interfering with her control. Trying to dodge the priestess’s mace far too late, Crimson took a sidestep that resulted in the mace hitting her shoulder, crushing it badly. The necromancer screamed in agony as Emilia prepared for another swing. Suddenly Emilia stopped. Her foot was too close to the pile and a few of the arms sticking out of it had grabbed on to her boot, tripping the priestess and pulling her towards the pile.

Crimson’s scream had turned into maniacal laughter.

Another tendril formed from the pile, wrapping itself around Emilia’s leg and lifting the priestess up and moving her towards the arrow fire. Luckily the guards noticed this in time and stopped before hitting her. The crazy necromancer, having regained her full concentration, shook off Anastacia’s interference and took back what she considered hers.

“You have grown, Anastacia. Flesh is my domain, and yet you stepped in my way so quickly. It’s almost a shame to kill you now and never see what you could eventually become. But worry not, I’ll keep you and your friends together – at least until I get bored of them.” She laughed, still in considerable pain but not letting that distract her.

The first tendril, now back in Crimson’s full control, swung towards Gilbert and slammed him off his feet. It then continued to attack the old man by wrapping around his feet and dragging him along the ground.

Anastacia’s plan was in shambles. She was supposed to interfere enough for Emilia to kill their opponent right away, but clearly she hadn’t managed that and now it started to seem like everyone was going to die because of her lack of training. The other possibilities for a plan ran through her mind as she couldn’t help but to worry that she had ignored a better method of approach – one that didn’t rely on her so much. Time felt slowed as she was forced to stare at the pile of flesh and blood while trying to think of anything she could do. Throwing her daggers or anything else wouldn’t work, since Crimson would just use Emilia to protect herself. There must have been something she could do that the inquisitor couldn’t.

Suddenly, a line from the tome she had immersed herself in came to her head. A chapter devoted to dealing with other necromancers, one she had mostly skimmed over had started with the line ‘The weakness of those that can’t control living material, lies in their own body.’ It had seemed pointlessly cryptic at the time, but only then Anastacia realized that it was supposed to be taken literally.

While it would have technically possible for her to simply take over the inquisitor’s body through overwhelming power, such an approach would have been far too slow and Crimson would have noticed it far too early for it to work. What Anastacia needed was a weak point, a chink in the armor that could be focused on and broken through before she would be acted against. Such a weak point could have been anywhere from an open wound to a limb that had gone numb, anywhere the normal function of the body was disrupted. Obviously, a papercut wouldn’t have done much good, but luckily Emilia had managed to land a proper blow on the inquisitor’s shoulder before being caught.

The arm dangled lifelessly from the crushed shoulder, its circulation had weakened and Crimson probably wouldn’t have been able to move it even if she wanted to. It provided a relatively easy mark for Anastacia and she was able to push out the remnants of the inquisitor’s powers just in time as her attack was noticed. It was hard for Anastacia to tell if it took five minutes or five seconds, but she successfully gained control of the arm.

“Ah...” Crimson gasped and ceased laughing as her own arm reached for her throat. “It would have been nice if I could have kept you, wouldn’t it?” She asked and used her powers to sprout several more tendrils from the pile, all of which aimed at Anastacia directly.

A fraction of a second before they reached her, the tendrils fell limply onto the dirt road as Crimson’s concentration was broken completely. Glancing up, Anastacia could see four arrows embedded in the inquisitor’s chest, killing her almost instantly. With an innocent and sad look on her face, she collapsed and Anastacia could feel her die.

As soon as the danger was over, the victorious necromancer could see and feel the bloody carnage left behind and her vision started to blur out of disgust. She managed to not pass out by quickly turning away and throwing up while falling on her knees.

Emilia kicked away the mass of gore that used to be the tendril holding her and hurried over to Crimson’s corpse, prepared to end the necromancer if needed, but after inspecting the body, it was clear that she was dead. After signaling this to the guards on top of the wall, she ran to look after Gilbert, who appeared to be fine aside from some minor cuts and bruises that could be healed easily. Both of them knew that the real pain would present itself later this evening or tomorrow morning as constant aches.

The guards opened the gate and came to take a closer look at the situation. The one that had been listening in on the original plan, helped Anastacia up. “Good work Miss Necromancer. It looked kind of bad for a second there but looks like we pulled it off.” He said, rightfully proud of the guard’s part in the fight. “I hate to bother you more, but we’re going to need help cleaning this, it’s blocking the gate.”

Anastacia threw up again.