Cornered by Pawns

The queen of Luzan strode into the room with a twilight gown of beautiful black felt with round cuts of diamond twinkling over the collar, snow waiting to fall. She had on white gloves and gold rings. Well, gold rings on the right hand, silver rings on the left. Emerald earrings, long and hanging, swinging with whumping force, enough to puff sound up into the ear inquisitively dangled from her ears. The kings sat at a table playing a game of chess. The king of Milynine was trapped by pawns. He put his hand to his forehead and tried to figure out a move.

“Allow me to interrupt.’ -the queen

“Oh, of course.’ -king of Milynine

“You’re only letting her speak because you’re losing, Edobe.’ -king of Namelle.

“That is a rude thing to say, Josofu. Your words cut deep.’ -king of Milynine.

“Anyways. I’ve received word that Inella and her coven have defeated Artur and Dwende. Godoro is here, waiting outside to be let in.’ -queen.

“Well, let him in.” -king of Milynine. Godoro walked in the room in newly made clothes, but the splendor of his silks could not cure the wounds of his defeat. Having lost in Milynine upset him deep in his emotional psyche.

“My kings, my queen.” Godoro bowed to each. “Inella will likely be here within the week. Unless you have any truly genius ideas, I fear that all we have left is to revel in the end. There is a certain finality that is not yet heavy on our days. Death will be here soon, but until then, we are as free as birds, as beautiful as still-yellow flowers pale in summer light.” Godoro smiled aloofly.

“Ah, the mage thinks himself a poet.” Edobe said. He smirked. He fanned his fingers out away from the chess pieces.

“Here we go again.” Josofu rolled his eyes as he spoke.

“Bones do shiver

Left out to dry,

Tears run, river.

To drown, to die.

Time does march on us,

And long we wait at

Knife edge, for dawn is

Honeydew, plate that.” Edobe spoke in a timed meter, switching from lines of four syllables to lines of five.

“Impressive.” Godoro marveled. “I have known many poets in my time; I do not claim to be one. I am not self punishing enough to indulge myself in the art form. It could only ever be a hobby for me in comparison to magic anyways. For every new thing that I learn, I have to restudy three other things to maintain my vast knowledge. It’s such exhausting work. And yet it is the life I signed up for.”

“Right, and we were born into our positions, each of us. The royal, divine blood. That which separates us from everyone else. Though, they are largely dead now, aren’t they?”

“Wait, maybe I do have a genius idea.” The queen spoke. “Godoro and I could easily bring back zombies from all over the land. We could wage a war of attrition against Inella. Godoro informed me that Inella can revive herself, but if we encamp her in zombies, we could bleed her out of mana over time.”

“She can bring herself back from the dead? Can it be true?” Josofu scoffed.

“Aye, it is true. I saw it with my own eyes.” Godoro nodded gravely. The news was irrepressible. It weighed heavy in the hearts of each person in the room. It was invisible, but everyone could see it, sense it. There was an intensified gravity in the room. No one spoke for a long time. King Edobe thought about each of the kingdoms that had fallen. Each castle that was likely dust and rubble, stone walls reduced to art installations of battered and rammed remnants. He thought about what he could have done differently, if anything. Certainly something. He could have sent all of his forces to Baz, and stopped Inella there. No, probably not. It wouldn’t have made a difference. That is when it became clear to Edobe that nothing they did from now on would make a difference either. Inella was a momentum that had grown over an extended period of time, and nothing could stop her from toppling the last bastion of society. Even if she tripped herself, she would tumble and slide wildly into Namelle and reduce it to abstractions of prior cement and plaster.

“We will put all our eggs in this basket? Or do we need to do something in addition to using the zombies against Inella?” Edobe said.

“Surely the zombies will be enough. There’s no way she can face all of the death that she has caused all at once.” The queen spoke confidently.

“I do not think that anything can stop her.” Edobe was glum, sitting with his hand propping up his chin in an uncharacteristic slouch for royalty.

“Are you telling me that you have gone soft and given up so soon, Edobe?” Josofu asked. “Don’t tell me this.”

“I am only being a realist. Of all the battles Inella should have lost, she succeeded with ease when we should’ve killed her. Milynine and the three high mages were our best shot, and now we are banking on zombies. It’s delusional. It’s actually delusional that we are sitting in this room and waiting for Inella to knock on our door and blow our house down with a great big huff and puff. Whether the zombies slow her down a week, a month, a year, we are trapped in here for that long with nothing to do but weep at the fact that we will not survive this one sided war.” Edobe droned on and on.

“You underestimate the undead. Please, try to act like a man.” The queen said. Edobe looked up with hurt eyes and flinched at the queen’s second sentence. And so the plan was put into action. The queen and Godoro worked together to circulate mana.They linked with each other and passed mana back and forth until they had enough to teleport to a centralized location where they could draw the dead.

Drawn Dead

The queen and Godoro stood in the windswept plains of lush green grass and tall, surly hay and barley. A table of jagged black stone was propping two sets of elbows. A flock of reanimated zombies roamed around in the open pasture. They mulled with slow, limping feet. The zombies growled, hummed, and “hnnng’d.”

“The dead from Zoboru, Baz, Hokurr, and Celith are almost all here. Our numbers are well into the thousands at this point. At this rate, we can expect the dead from Luzan, Ko’fell, the Celith Towers and outerlands to arrive within two days.” Godoro said.

“Yes, we will grow our number of zombies significantly in the coming days. And keeping them here, sedated, that is easy. These zombies have no brains, they are only shambling corpses. Once we put the bloodlust into them, we will have to be cautious.” The queen said; she took a comfortable yawn while her head was held between her hands. Her elbows were still resting on the jagged table. Zombies of all shapes, sizes, and colors mumbled and dragged their feet aimlessly. They didn’t know how to be hungry yet, only to shuffle forward.

“Will you have lunch with me today?” Godoro said as he walked away from the cement circle that the table was magically attached to.

“Of course. What are we having?” The queen asked.

“Tuna salads from the palace and charcuterie with steak strips.” Godoro motioned to the mentioned food. It appeared out of thin air from the palace. Godoro had informed Edobe to have a chef work something up. Edobe had never had to cook in his life, so Godoro didn’t want Edobe to be the one to cook. The two sat down in the green grass and ate. They spoke of things that were inaccessible to the public. They had access to this information because they contained the platitudes of hidden knowledge that is acquired from living in a wealthy, privileged way. Hahaha - they laughed frivolously without fear or shame. Hehehe. No consequence. Largely alone, the two of them, since their company of zombies was designed to be speechless.

Inella could feel something strange in her gut. A pang. A feeling of unseized fate. She knew that there was something she had to do, unsure what that would be. She unwittingly could feel the undead stirring, rising, routing to meet the queen and Godoro. “Huh.” Inella said to herself with a shake of her crow feather hair. Some deep part of her was thirsty for a cup of tea. She decided to enter the realm of the dead and visit the souls she made herself the shepherd of. A self appointed shepherd. As she slipped out of reality and into a wispy white counter-existence, things slowly began to become clear. A table was set, and the table itself was the milky white ectoplasm of a ghost. The memory of the table was garnished in exactness. Felhur sat playing hand games with the children Inella had kidnapped and killed. Edmund Tygrowthe watched them with a slight smile, his arms folded across his chest. Inella’s zombies waited here for orders, but what Inella was about to do was less about orders and more about balance. The ghost of Eric II wailed a curse at Inella as he screamed out of the realm and into his eviscerated body to be a zombie. Blair came from where Eric II left. Balance. One out, a different one in. Felhur twiddled his thumbs silently.

Blair spoke to Inella in the fashion of a Macbeth-esque ghost prophecy. All witches anyways. Blair said: “Inella, my blood is on your hands. My blood will never wash off. I have no blood left to bleed. I am hardly anything anymore. I am almost less than nothing. But I will not use my time to be bitter. I must teach you a counter spell. A single spell. And it is ironic that I, the slain student, should teach you, the living master, but, nonetheless. The spell requires the blood of a queen. It is a ritual. If you can take the blood of a queen, then you can turn the tides. And the tide that is soon to rise against you will surely overwhelm you unless you do as I say.” The image of Blair flickered for a second, a spectral tv static. “Take the blood of a queen and speak the words “return to eternal slumber, unturned is the soil, my turn it will be to rule.” The rest is up to you to be able to do. This spell will easily take over 90% of your mana, but it is a sacrifice that must be made. An actual sacrifice that must be made, not a sacrifice like I was. But I am not here to be petty, or waste your time. Drink your tea, Inella. It will be the last thing you enjoy for a long time.” Blair delivered her cryptic message and disappeared, a scattered, dissipated dust in a howling wind.

“What was that?” Edmund Tygrowthe asked, curious. Felhur responded with the sign language that signified “I have no idea.” Inella was petrified. She stood as stiff as a tree. Her cup of tea was stuck on her pursed lips. Inella tried to compute what had happened, but she could not. All that she could do was remember the words of the spell she would need to use. And she was unsure what she would even be using it for in the first place.