Grobert’s premonition that the next few weeks were going to be exhausting, turned out to be a gross understatement.
Norman was lucky if he managed to get four hours of sleep a night between helping clear rubble and reviving more of the townsfolk. All of the work ran on the gron idea of hard work, dialed up to eleven because the dead didn’t need to rest.
It wasn’t all bad though.
Grobert managed to locate Eugene’s phylactery after speaking with some of the revived guards. A few had said he was acting weird during one of their patrols and led Grobert out to the area.
Eugene was rather stoic after he was restored to life, even when he learned how much time had passed since he died.
Once Grobert and Eugene returned to the city, the three of them got together to discuss the transition. Norman picked at the bland stew with his spoon, he missed his personal chef. The stew was fine, but it was made just to feed everyone. There wasn’t much effort put into the taste.
Norman sighed internally and handed his empty bowl to the server with thanks. “So how was it?”
“What?” Eugene asked after swallowing a mouthful. “The food? It was alright.”
Norman rolled his eyes, “no, the afterlife.”
“Honestly, it felt like a nice long nap. Can’t even remember any of it. Last thing I remembered was fighting the bastards at the gate, then waking up with old sour puss looking at me. Next time, send a hot chick to come and wake me up instead. I would have almost preferred staying dead than waking up to see that ugly mug. I thought I was in hell.” Eugene dodged a small rock thrown by Grobert.
Eugene grinned and the three chuckled at the joke for a bit before Eugene turned serious. “I’m pretty sure they got in behind us.”
Grobert’s jovial mood vanished in an instant. “They did. Used the teleporter to sneak past our walls.”
“I told you it was too risky to keep that damn thing in the city, maybe next time you’ll listen to me,” Eugene grunted before shoveling more food into his mouth.
“It was guarded. I still don’t understand how they managed to take out all the guards without alerting anyone. I only realized something was wrong when I heard screaming coming from inside the city. There was no time to bring in reinforcements and I tried my best to stop them, but there were simply too many with callings.”
Eugene pointed his spoon at Grobert, “well we sure as hell aren’t setting up another one of those teleporters inside the city. I’m not even sure I want one outside the city. The enemy could still use it to move troops to our position faster than we could counter.”
Norman rubbed his hands together near the fire. “But we kind of need it, especially now that Grothlosburg has shifted. I don’t know how big that new zone is, but it's going to be a treacherous journey either way, especially if the dinos have started roaming past their zone.”
Eugene gave a non-comital grunt.
“I wouldn’t worry about having a working teleporter anytime soon anyway,” Grobert added. “Most of the parts I used to make it came from Grothlosburg. And I somehow doubt the enemy left the one buried in the building intact, nor the one near that traitor's village. There is the one in the fog lands that the lizna used to travel to Ashvale for trade, but I will need to visit it in person to verify if it is still intact. If it is I might be able to link it to Grothlosburg but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Their range tends to be a bit limited.”
“Explain to me how she was able to betray us again?” Eugene asked pointedly, changing the subject.
Both Norman and Grobert looked at each other, but it was Norman that spoke first. “It’s my fault. I thought she might not have been completely truthful with us, but I put off asking her more questions until after it was too late.”
“Fuck that!” Eugene spit. “That’s not what I mean. We all fucked up there, we all missed the warning signs. I’m asking how she was able to do it?”
This time Grobert was the one to respond. “We aren’t completely sure. From what we know, she somehow convinced the Brotherhood to help her. Why? Who can say, but she obviously had something to offer them in exchange for a military offensive against us.”
“The ability to resurrect,” Norman stated.
“What?” Both men turned towards Norman.
He sighed. “I believe they were after my grimoire. I hid it in the castle, but when I returned, it was gone, along with all of my notes. I believe Noorani offered them a version of immortality for her help.”
“Well, fuck. Of course, she did. That makes more sense than them attacking us because she pissed off one low-level clergyman. But you didn’t see any greykin running around in their capital? And if she has your grimoire, she must know about those orb things, what did you call them?”
Norman shook his head. “To answer your first question, no. I think she's going full rebirth, like how I dealt with Toby. I can’t imagine these zealots would want to remain undead. As for your second question, again, no. I personally burned the only set of blueprints and designs for the phylacteries after the stone mages built the copies. I never recorded anything about them in my grimoire or left any notes to even hint at their existence.” Norman tapped his skull, “they only exist up here now.”
Eugene let his spoon clatter into his empty bowl. “Gods above, we’re all doomed.”
That brought a fresh round of chuckles from the three of them.
“I guess that explains why they didn’t come back to search for us. As for her plans, they seem a bit short-sighted to me. Being undead doesn’t have nearly as many downsides as being alive does. I can’t imagine what would make her willingly want to go back. The pain, the aches, the fatigue, bah. I’ll take being undead any day of the week, no offense, Boss.”
Norman shook his head. “None taken. And you don’t have to convince me. I feel like I’m puppeteering a meat suit half the time after being revived again. It’s weird. We know that being undead is markedly better, but the people in the wasteland don’t. They also seem quite a bit, let's say less knowledgeable about the differences. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn they have a version of hell or an underworld and the Brotherhood used that to gain momentum against us. Maybe they even have tales about the undead rising up to devour the living. They seem to have much more in common with humans than any other people we’ve come across so far.”
Norman had always found it odd that the gron had no concept of an afterlife or even stories that hinted at the possibility. He wasn’t sure if the jorik had any either. The ooraki didn’t have a word for necromancer or undead in their language, but they did honor spirits. But that was more like nature spirits as opposed to an ancestral one. The concept of an afterlife and undead seemed to be a purely human or hum invention as far as he could tell.
Did the human fascination with the afterlife and the undead reflect a deep-seated fear of death, or was he reading too much into it with the limited information he had?
“Not like it matters what her plans are,” Eugene declared coldly, pulling Norman from his thoughts. “They dealt the first blow, now it’s our turn to return the favor.”
Norman nodded reluctantly. He had thought long and hard about how to hit the enemy, leaning heavily on Groberts wisdom in the matter. Their attacks would be swift, deadly, and without witnesses or mercy. The goal was to make their enemy afraid enough to turtle up inside their city, as they had forced Norman and his people to do in Ashvale. Norman had even discarded his notion of freeing Pedro to weaken the Brotherhood. He simply didn’t know where they held the man. And they wanted to strike swiftly. He would do his best to ensure Pedro survived, Norman owed him that much.
“Have you picked out the soldiers going with you?” Norman asked.
“Yup. We will strike their outlying cities, killing any of their faithful we come across, and vanish like wraiths before anyone even knows what happened.”
“And the priest I told you about?”
Eugene's face twisted into a sour expression when Norman mentioned the priest. “I wish you would just let me deal with him like the others.”
“No,” Norman stated flatly, staring at the larger man with anger-filled eyes. “I want him as an example.”
“Yeah, yeah, quit trying to set me on fire with your glare, Boss, I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t changed your mind. I’ll get it done. When are we setting out?”
“After the stone masons get your phylacteries ready.”
Eugene wiggled uncomfortably in his seat. “I wish we didn’t have to use those. They give me the willies. But I understand why you want us to.”
The conversation died off soon after and Norman excused himself to get some much-needed sleep.
***
After Norman left for bed, Grobert turned toward Eugene. “They can’t know it’s us.”
“I know.”
“Are you prepa-”
“I said I know!” he hissed quietly. “You think this is my first rodeo? No witnesses, I got it. I’m not a child.”
Grobert nodded, looking back to where Norman had disappeared to. “He can’t know.”
Eugene chuckled at that. “You think the boy’s soft?”
“No, I just don’t think he realizes the scope of things that can happen during a war. Innocents die, that can’t be helped.”
“I think you underestimate the boss. As for the bodies, just get me some of the spell anchors. I’ll store any so-called innocents that meet their end and Norman can do as he pleases with them once this war is over.”
“I’m working on it,” Grobert replied tiredly. “I can’t recall the rune personally and Norman hasn’t let those anchors out of his sight long enough for me to copy the spell.”
“That’s the hold-up? You’re overthinking things again, old man. Just ask him for it.”
“How do you propose I do that? Hmm, lie to him?”
Eugene shook his head. “Who said anything about lying? Tell him we need it to recover any of our dead while we are in the field. It’ll be the god's honest truth. No need for this back alley nonsense.”
Grobert sighed, “I guess you’re right.”
This statement almost caused Eugene to choke on the water he was drinking. But he recovered quickly. “Of course I’m right, you don’t need to sound so surprised.”
***
Norman listened as the two men laughed after their quiet conversation. He had overheard everything. The two seemed to forget that the armory building tended to amplify sounds and they weren’t that far away.
While it was kind of them to try and hide the realities of this war from him, he wasn’t ignorant. He knew innocent people would die. He had known from the moment the war began that people were going to die. Innocent people were dead already, and Norman cared more about those than he did some random villagers that might get in the way while his people removed the Brotherhood.
Norman knew if he was soft or held back now, many more would suffer, and likely for years. That simply wasn’t acceptable.
One of the main reasons Norman chose Grobert's plan over Eugene's was because Eugene wanted to storm the enemy town and slaughter everyone in sight. That might be a solution to cut off the head of the Brotherhood, but Norman agreed with Grobert’s initial assessment. If they didn’t get rid of them completely, they would become an ever-lasting thorn in their side.
Their fight wasn't with the civilians that resided in the wasteland but with the Brotherhood and their spreading dogma. But he didn’t completely believe the civilians were innocent. They had let this rot fester without so much as trying to stop it.
Norman would not rest until the Brotherhood was defeated. Not after what they did. If that meant killing innocent people that got in the way or were used for hostages, he wouldn’t-. No, he couldn’t let that stay his hand. These people had proven they were ruthless, so Norman would have to be even more ruthless to ensure victory. No matter how distasteful he found some actions.
***
The stone mages had the phylacteries ready by the next afternoon. Eugene’s strike force would need to take them with them as Norman wasn’t sure about the range of the orbs. All of the orbs were also pre-charged this time and the guard were all given extra sets of clothing in case they needed to be revived in a hurry.
Weapons were not as easy to come by thanks to the Brotherhood. The two other stone mages came in clutch to resolve that problem. They were able to form obsidian blades for all of the guards, including replacements. The blades were attached to hollow handles made from bone that could be tied to a stick to make crude spears if they needed to.
As for armor, Norman supplied each guard going with Eugene with a full set of Bone Armor. He only wished he had the resources back before the battle that destroyed the town. Back then he had only been able to provide the torso version of the armor for all the guards.
Eugene got a full set of armor as well, Norman called the one he gave him a juggernaut set. It was twice as thick as the normal armor and impossible for anyone but a physical classer to move in. The man looked practically like a wall of bone when he wore it, making Norman chuckle. Eugene complained it made him too slow when he wore the double thick armor. Norman didn’t doubt that. When he had tried it on, Norman couldn’t even move under the weight of the suit.
The other complaint Eugene had with the armor was its color. Norman didn’t think there was anything he could do about that, but he was wrong. Eugene figured out how to color the armor. It shouldn’t have been possible since only parts of a body could be stored in the spell anchors. Turns out that impregnating the bones with some creosote oil and coal dust was the trick. It gave the bones a dark grey look to them. The change from looking like a wall of bone to a terrifying death knight was rather jarring. Norman approved.
He walked among his ‘death knights’ as they were arrayed in formation. If this army didn’t belong to him, he would have been terrified to be anywhere near them. They stood completely motionless and silent, making him feel like he was walking among statues that could come to life at any moment to strike him down. Since this army of deadly warriors did belong to him, he smiled widely. If any of their enemies saw them coming, they were bound to shit their pants from fear alone.
Norman returned to the front of the formation where Grobert waited quietly. He stopped next to the man and nodded. Then he turned to face the gathered death knights and the small crowd of civilians beyond them. Everyone that had been revived so far was here to witness this send-off.
With a deliberate clearing of his throat, the soft muttering of the gathered crowd quieted. Norman spoke loud enough for all to hear. "It is time we reclaimed our honor! Go forth and strike fear into the hearts of our enemies," he commanded, his words crisp and forceful. "Show no mercy, for they do not deserve our kindness or compassion!" The death knights responded with a unified salute, their fists pressed against their chests, the sound echoing through the empty city streets and sending a chill down Norman's spine.
Eugene offered a brief nod of approval to Norman before turning to address his men. "Move out!" he ordered, his tone conveying a sense of urgency and determination.
Grobert’s premonition that the next few weeks were going to be exhausting, turned out to be a gross understatement.
Norman was lucky if he managed to get four hours of sleep a night between helping clear rubble and reviving more of the townsfolk. All of the work ran on the gron idea of hard work, dialed up to eleven because the dead didn’t need to rest.
It wasn’t all bad though.
Grobert managed to locate Eugene’s phylactery after speaking with some of the revived guards. A few had said he was acting weird during one of their patrols and led Grobert out to the area.
Eugene was rather stoic after he was restored to life, even when he learned how much time had passed since he died.
Once Grobert and Eugene returned to the city, the three of them got together to discuss the transition. Norman picked at the bland stew with his spoon, he missed his personal chef. The stew was fine, but it was made just to feed everyone. There wasn’t much effort put into the taste.
Norman sighed internally and handed his empty bowl to the server with thanks. “So how was it?”
“What?” Eugene asked after swallowing a mouthful. “The food? It was alright.”
Norman rolled his eyes, “no, the afterlife.”
“Honestly, it felt like a nice long nap. Can’t even remember any of it. Last thing I remembered was fighting the bastards at the gate, then waking up with old sour puss looking at me. Next time, send a hot chick to come and wake me up instead. I would have almost preferred staying dead than waking up to see that ugly mug. I thought I was in hell.” Eugene dodged a small rock thrown by Grobert.
Eugene grinned and the three chuckled at the joke for a bit before Eugene turned serious. “I’m pretty sure they got in behind us.”
Grobert’s jovial mood vanished in an instant. “They did. Used the teleporter to sneak past our walls.”
“I told you it was too risky to keep that damn thing in the city, maybe next time you’ll listen to me,” Eugene grunted before shoveling more food into his mouth.
“It was guarded. I still don’t understand how they managed to take out all the guards without alerting anyone. I only realized something was wrong when I heard screaming coming from inside the city. There was no time to bring in reinforcements and I tried my best to stop them, but there were simply too many with callings.”
Eugene pointed his spoon at Grobert, “well we sure as hell aren’t setting up another one of those teleporters inside the city. I’m not even sure I want one outside the city. The enemy could still use it to move troops to our position faster than we could counter.”
Norman rubbed his hands together near the fire. “But we kind of need it, especially now that Grothlosburg has shifted. I don’t know how big that new zone is, but it's going to be a treacherous journey either way, especially if the dinos have started roaming past their zone.”
Eugene gave a non-comital grunt.
“I wouldn’t worry about having a working teleporter anytime soon anyway,” Grobert added. “Most of the parts I used to make it came from Grothlosburg. And I somehow doubt the enemy left the one buried in the building intact, nor the one near that traitor's village. There is the one in the fog lands that the lizna used to travel to Ashvale for trade, but I will need to visit it in person to verify if it is still intact. If it is I might be able to link it to Grothlosburg but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Their range tends to be a bit limited.”
“Explain to me how she was able to betray us again?” Eugene asked pointedly, changing the subject.
Both Norman and Grobert looked at each other, but it was Norman that spoke first. “It’s my fault. I thought she might not have been completely truthful with us, but I put off asking her more questions until after it was too late.”
“Fuck that!” Eugene spit. “That’s not what I mean. We all fucked up there, we all missed the warning signs. I’m asking how she was able to do it?”
This time Grobert was the one to respond. “We aren’t completely sure. From what we know, she somehow convinced the Brotherhood to help her. Why? Who can say, but she obviously had something to offer them in exchange for a military offensive against us.”
“The ability to resurrect,” Norman stated.
“What?” Both men turned towards Norman.
He sighed. “I believe they were after my grimoire. I hid it in the castle, but when I returned, it was gone, along with all of my notes. I believe Noorani offered them a version of immortality for her help.”
“Well, fuck. Of course, she did. That makes more sense than them attacking us because she pissed off one low-level clergyman. But you didn’t see any greykin running around in their capital? And if she has your grimoire, she must know about those orb things, what did you call them?”
Norman shook his head. “To answer your first question, no. I think she's going full rebirth, like how I dealt with Toby. I can’t imagine these zealots would want to remain undead. As for your second question, again, no. I personally burned the only set of blueprints and designs for the phylacteries after the stone mages built the copies. I never recorded anything about them in my grimoire or left any notes to even hint at their existence.” Norman tapped his skull, “they only exist up here now.”
Eugene let his spoon clatter into his empty bowl. “Gods above, we’re all doomed.”
That brought a fresh round of chuckles from the three of them.
“I guess that explains why they didn’t come back to search for us. As for her plans, they seem a bit short-sighted to me. Being undead doesn’t have nearly as many downsides as being alive does. I can’t imagine what would make her willingly want to go back. The pain, the aches, the fatigue, bah. I’ll take being undead any day of the week, no offense, Boss.”
Norman shook his head. “None taken. And you don’t have to convince me. I feel like I’m puppeteering a meat suit half the time after being revived again. It’s weird. We know that being undead is markedly better, but the people in the wasteland don’t. They also seem quite a bit, let's say less knowledgeable about the differences. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn they have a version of hell or an underworld and the Brotherhood used that to gain momentum against us. Maybe they even have tales about the undead rising up to devour the living. They seem to have much more in common with humans than any other people we’ve come across so far.”
Norman had always found it odd that the gron had no concept of an afterlife or even stories that hinted at the possibility. He wasn’t sure if the jorik had any either. The ooraki didn’t have a word for necromancer or undead in their language, but they did honor spirits. But that was more like nature spirits as opposed to an ancestral one. The concept of an afterlife and undead seemed to be a purely human or hum invention as far as he could tell.
Did the human fascination with the afterlife and the undead reflect a deep-seated fear of death, or was he reading too much into it with the limited information he had?
“Not like it matters what her plans are,” Eugene declared coldly, pulling Norman from his thoughts. “They dealt the first blow, now it’s our turn to return the favor.”
Norman nodded reluctantly. He had thought long and hard about how to hit the enemy, leaning heavily on Groberts wisdom in the matter. Their attacks would be swift, deadly, and without witnesses or mercy. The goal was to make their enemy afraid enough to turtle up inside their city, as they had forced Norman and his people to do in Ashvale. Norman had even discarded his notion of freeing Pedro to weaken the Brotherhood. He simply didn’t know where they held the man. And they wanted to strike swiftly. He would do his best to ensure Pedro survived, Norman owed him that much.
“Have you picked out the soldiers going with you?” Norman asked.
“Yup. We will strike their outlying cities, killing any of their faithful we come across, and vanish like wraiths before anyone even knows what happened.”
“And the priest I told you about?”
Eugene's face twisted into a sour expression when Norman mentioned the priest. “I wish you would just let me deal with him like the others.”
“No,” Norman stated flatly, staring at the larger man with anger-filled eyes. “I want him as an example.”
“Yeah, yeah, quit trying to set me on fire with your glare, Boss, I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t changed your mind. I’ll get it done. When are we setting out?”
“After the stone masons get your phylacteries ready.”
Eugene wiggled uncomfortably in his seat. “I wish we didn’t have to use those. They give me the willies. But I understand why you want us to.”
The conversation died off soon after and Norman excused himself to get some much-needed sleep.
***
After Norman left for bed, Grobert turned toward Eugene. “They can’t know it’s us.”
“I know.”
“Are you prepa-”
“I said I know!” he hissed quietly. “You think this is my first rodeo? No witnesses, I got it. I’m not a child.”
Grobert nodded, looking back to where Norman had disappeared to. “He can’t know.”
Eugene chuckled at that. “You think the boy’s soft?”
“No, I just don’t think he realizes the scope of things that can happen during a war. Innocents die, that can’t be helped.”
“I think you underestimate the boss. As for the bodies, just get me some of the spell anchors. I’ll store any so-called innocents that meet their end and Norman can do as he pleases with them once this war is over.”
“I’m working on it,” Grobert replied tiredly. “I can’t recall the rune personally and Norman hasn’t let those anchors out of his sight long enough for me to copy the spell.”
“That’s the hold-up? You’re overthinking things again, old man. Just ask him for it.”
“How do you propose I do that? Hmm, lie to him?”
Eugene shook his head. “Who said anything about lying? Tell him we need it to recover any of our dead while we are in the field. It’ll be the god's honest truth. No need for this back alley nonsense.”
Grobert sighed, “I guess you’re right.”
This statement almost caused Eugene to choke on the water he was drinking. But he recovered quickly. “Of course I’m right, you don’t need to sound so surprised.”
***
Norman listened as the two men laughed after their quiet conversation. He had overheard everything. The two seemed to forget that the armory building tended to amplify sounds and they weren’t that far away.
While it was kind of them to try and hide the realities of this war from him, he wasn’t ignorant. He knew innocent people would die. He had known from the moment the war began that people were going to die. Innocent people were dead already, and Norman cared more about those than he did some random villagers that might get in the way while his people removed the Brotherhood.
Norman knew if he was soft or held back now, many more would suffer, and likely for years. That simply wasn’t acceptable.
One of the main reasons Norman chose Grobert's plan over Eugene's was because Eugene wanted to storm the enemy town and slaughter everyone in sight. That might be a solution to cut off the head of the Brotherhood, but Norman agreed with Grobert’s initial assessment. If they didn’t get rid of them completely, they would become an ever-lasting thorn in their side.
Their fight wasn't with the civilians that resided in the wasteland but with the Brotherhood and their spreading dogma. But he didn’t completely believe the civilians were innocent. They had let this rot fester without so much as trying to stop it.
Norman would not rest until the Brotherhood was defeated. Not after what they did. If that meant killing innocent people that got in the way or were used for hostages, he wouldn’t-. No, he couldn’t let that stay his hand. These people had proven they were ruthless, so Norman would have to be even more ruthless to ensure victory. No matter how distasteful he found some actions.
***
The stone mages had the phylacteries ready by the next afternoon. Eugene’s strike force would need to take them with them as Norman wasn’t sure about the range of the orbs. All of the orbs were also pre-charged this time and the guard were all given extra sets of clothing in case they needed to be revived in a hurry.
Weapons were not as easy to come by thanks to the Brotherhood. The two other stone mages came in clutch to resolve that problem. They were able to form obsidian blades for all of the guards, including replacements. The blades were attached to hollow handles made from bone that could be tied to a stick to make crude spears if they needed to.
As for armor, Norman supplied each guard going with Eugene with a full set of Bone Armor. He only wished he had the resources back before the battle that destroyed the town. Back then he had only been able to provide the torso version of the armor for all the guards.
Eugene got a full set of armor as well, Norman called the one he gave him a juggernaut set. It was twice as thick as the normal armor and impossible for anyone but a physical classer to move in. The man looked practically like a wall of bone when he wore it, making Norman chuckle. Eugene complained it made him too slow when he wore the double thick armor. Norman didn’t doubt that. When he had tried it on, Norman couldn’t even move under the weight of the suit.
The other complaint Eugene had with the armor was its color. Norman didn’t think there was anything he could do about that, but he was wrong. Eugene figured out how to color the armor. It shouldn’t have been possible since only parts of a body could be stored in the spell anchors. Turns out that impregnating the bones with some creosote oil and coal dust was the trick. It gave the bones a dark grey look to them. The change from looking like a wall of bone to a terrifying death knight was rather jarring. Norman approved.
He walked among his ‘death knights’ as they were arrayed in formation. If this army didn’t belong to him, he would have been terrified to be anywhere near them. They stood completely motionless and silent, making him feel like he was walking among statues that could come to life at any moment to strike him down. Since this army of deadly warriors did belong to him, he smiled widely. If any of their enemies saw them coming, they were bound to shit their pants from fear alone.
Norman returned to the front of the formation where Grobert waited quietly. He stopped next to the man and nodded. Then he turned to face the gathered death knights and the small crowd of civilians beyond them. Everyone that had been revived so far was here to witness this send-off.
With a deliberate clearing of his throat, the soft muttering of the gathered crowd quieted. Norman spoke loud enough for all to hear. "It is time we reclaimed our honor! Go forth and strike fear into the hearts of our enemies," he commanded, his words crisp and forceful. "Show no mercy, for they do not deserve our kindness or compassion!" The death knights responded with a unified salute, their fists pressed against their chests, the sound echoing through the empty city streets and sending a chill down Norman's spine.
Eugene offered a brief nod of approval to Norman before turning to address his men. "Move out!" he ordered, his tone conveying a sense of urgency and determination.
