Kevin only stopped his rampage after he had used up more than 90% of his mana pool. Even though his wild and uncontrolled attack had caused a decent amount of friendly fire, the undead armies had been utterly annihilated. There were barely even bone fragments left on the field for the evil necromancers to use to reanimate the undead! If the evil people of Darksol had the power needed to reform their pawns from the state they were in, then Darksol would have conquered the world ages ago. Everyone was certain; not even the Abominable King himself would be able to reconstitute that many shattered skeletons.

Despite having won the battle, morale was dismally low. They had fallen for two main traps and nearly got their noble cavalry destroyed. Actually, with their prized war horses dead and reduced to near nothing, there was no cavalry left to speak of. Worse still, they now were at risk of being excommunicated; all Kevin would have to do is give the word and they would lose everything.

As the hours ticked by, however, they came to thank the Goddess for Her mercy. Kevin had apparently forgotten to make good on his threat, or perhaps he never had intended to go through with it to begin with. Instead, Kevin took out his wrath on another slave whose body was burned to ash after he was done. Everyone in the camp gave a silent prayer of thanks to the poor woman who died so brutally so that they could emerge unscathed, but no one spoke a word of dissatisfaction with Kevin’s blatant and flagrant flaunting of his power.

He was the Hero, after all, and due to this the laws regarding the treatment of slaves meant nothing. He was the one chosen by the Goddess, so he was within his rights to ignore any and all laws made by mortals if he saw fit to do so. Still, all inside the camp could still hear the sounds of Kevin’s brutality echoing in their heads hours after it had been done. No one got a good night’s sleep that night as they could hear the beating even in their dreams.

The next day, there were no undead assembled to face them. Kevin was ecstatic at this, as it meant (to him at least) that his genius tactics and strategies had been proven undeniably valid. He had led the forces of the Luminas Confederacy to victory against impossible odds with his brilliant mind, so naturally the rest of the siege would play out as he willed it as well. He ordered the men to prepare siege ladders and start assembly of the catapults. To his surprise and anger, the catapults had been assembled during the night as he slept.

This angered him because, in his own words, “Nothing should be done without my say so!”

Still, this just meant that the siege could progress that much faster, so he was ‘merciful’ to those who assembled the catapults and only had them lashed for three minutes straight with a cat-of-nine-tails. As soon as that public punishment was done, the soldiers got into position and advanced alongside the catapults.

…

Alistaira watched through the crystal ball as the idiot leader of the Heroes further destroyed the already terrible morale of his subordinates. She could barely understand what kind of mind that this ‘Kevin’ had. She knew that he was just a cruel, sadistic and monstrous man, but even then, she could not fully wrap her head around his obviously self-destructive actions. Simple cruelty didn’t account for his seemingly intentional attempts to utterly destroy morale and cause his forces to lose. No, there had to be something else, but what it was happened to be something she couldn’t put her finger on.

“Could it be that he is just too dumb to realize how much of an idiot he is?”

To Alistaira, that seemed to be the only explanation to his actions.

Well, it didn’t matter anymore. The soldiers had entered into the range of the cannons and…

Boom! Boom! Boom!

“There it goes…”

Her crystal ball showed her the carnage that the cannons created. The sight of wood splintering and the torsion of the assembled catapults exploding as heavy metal shot impacted them was a sight for sore eyes. Catapult after catapult was blown to bits as concentrated fire from multiple cannons made short work of the machines. Eventually, there were no other siege weapons left save for the ladders.

“Just in time, too…” Alistaira muttered. The last cannonball left in the fort had been the one to demolish the final catapult. Soon after, the dull booming of the mortars replaced the now silent cannons. Looking at the scene from her vantage point, she saw entire formations of soldiers be very nearly blown to meaty chunks as the mortar shells exploded just a few feet from the ground. She had to give the men in this fort some credit; they certainly knew how to make the fuses just the right length.

The mortars fell silent three minutes after they began and, in their place, the summoned undead siege weapons began to open fire, accompanied by the musket and rifle fire of the living soldiers of the Mortal Auxiliary. Alistaira knew that this was the time for her to act, and she stood up from her seat and walked up to the walls. She nodded to the fort commander as if to tell him that he and his men had done enough, and the man responded with a salute and the blowing of a trumpet. On cue, the men on the walls marched in orderly fashion off of them and into the dungeon entrance.

Alistaira tapped her staff on the stone beneath her feet and loosened up. The undead left on the walls were not nearly enough to hold them for any length of time, but that was not their purpose. All of this was meant as a test for the new Heroes. A chance for them to begin to realize that they would not have an easy time. This fortress was never intended to hold back the forces of the Luminas Confederacy, although it could do so if the situation demanded it.

The siege ladders docked on the walls and Alistaira finished her spell. A timer had been set and now all that was left was to leave and let her spell work its magic. She floated down to the dungeon entrance and smirked as she entered. At that moment, the connection to their master was broken and the undead on the walls lost their cohesion. The formations stopped fighting as a unified force and devolved into the mindless husks that undead were previously known for.

The change caught the enemy soldiers off guard, and they faltered a bit under the altered assault. This bought just enough time for Alistaira’s spell to finish its activation, and the walls of the fortress crumbled away to reveal that they had been built around the countless bones, armor and weapons of innumerable Skeleton Spearmen and Skeleton Swordsmen. Now without a master, the pile of undead flowed like a wave of death towards the living. As she finished the spell, she could hear the screams of a whining baby who thought himself an adult.

“DAMN IT! I REALLY HAVE TO FUCKING DO EVERYTHING, DON’T I?!”

At that scream, the battlefield once again erupted as the Luminas Church’s ‘Glorious and Divinely Blessed Hero’ threw a tantrum at seeing his plan disrupted.