Book 2 : Chapter 27

Jungfrau, Nussegrund

Mallorn the Elf

Unbidden, his arm rose, clutching a pale blade. Light filled its edge and darkness creeped into the edges of his pained vision.

“Fly! Away from the walls!” He struggled out through a helm forced on too-tightly. 

His arm descended, a wispy bolt of energy escaping the tip of the blade and shooting forth. It smashed through the walls of the bar that sat at the base of the walls, then into the side of the walls themselves, and exploded with the fury of a thunderstorm. 

The wall shook, the air screamed, and men clutched at their ears. A shower of rubble and dust issued forth, spreading out on both sides of the wall, which could be seen through the new gateway now opened in its base. 

His arm swung again, against his will, and another pale bolt issued forth to smash into the wall. Higher than the first swing, knocking out a larger section of support and causing the wall to start crumbling in earnest. 

Atop the battlements, he could see the forms of the Heroine’s party dashing away as the walls crumbled behind them. Their taller, faster members scooping up the smaller ones as they fled the crumbling defenses.

Mallorn snarled beneath his helmet, face soaked with sweat and blood. “You could’ve done that the whole time? Spent your sweet ass wasting time instead of winning the siege huh?” His words were bitter and harsh, more to express his displeasure with his captor than to do anything effective. 

The voice of the dragonrider echoed around his ears. “The siege was never the objective. The death of the Heroine is. With the destruction of my previous shell, contingencies must be made to further this ambition.”

“And keeping me alive? What objective does that further, huh?!” Mallorn demanded as his body stalked forwards, armor carrying him steadily towards the collapsed wall and climbing up the tumbled stones, towards the fled heroine. He attempted to move counter to the movements of his armor, resisting with what strength his exhausted muscles still had. It slowed his captor, but only slightly. 

The dragonrider explained in a blunt, matter-of-fact manner between echoes of random voices. “A hostage is useful now that I am without my aegis. They will be reluctant to wield their most destructive magics against me if you are in the way.” 

His armor reached the top of the uncrumbled section of walls, leaping powerfully up and landing on the edge of battered stones in the process, a march of the dead following in his wake. Soldiers raised their shields and weapons, and a hail of crossbow bolts fell upon him.

They bounced off the scales of his armor, steel unable to piece the centuries-old dragonhide. 

“Run! He has hold of my armor! Run!” Mallorn cried out in warning. A few soldiers in the back pulled back in a hesitant manner as his armor strode steadily forwards. Lines of skeletal abominations, ram-headed and four-armed, charged forwards past either of his sides, wielding four chipped iron weapons apiece. They crashed into the defenders as berserkers, clawing open shieldlines and stabbing forwards whenever possible. 

A giant reached forwards from behind him and swept a long club, brushing off a wall of men and bone berserkers both, freeing the path for his march onwards. 

“How the hells are you coordinating all of this?” Mallorn seethed as his body passed under tower gates and through a hall of fleeing soldiers, ignoring bolts lit with burning pitch as they bounced off his armor. 

A gauntlet rose, bringing his hand with it, tapping at the center of his chest. The glowing blue rune pulsed and spread further, covering his chest like a heraldic coat. “I am not. The cabal of lesser necromancers are. I am simply trusting them to know better than attack the symbol of our MASTER.” 

“Get out of my armor you jackass!” Mallorn roared impotently as he passed through the second tower gate and emerged on the next set of walls. 

“I will not. It is rare to find a shell superior to my previous.”

“What are you, a hermit crab?” He growled.

“A noble creature.”

He emerged before the Heroine’s party and a band of soldiers, armor briefly pausing and allowing him an opportunity to cry another warning. “Run or kill me! He’s within my armor, and nothing but your most powerful spells have any hopes of destroying it!”

“W-we aren’t going to do that!” The Heroine cried back, pained, tired, but with a fearsomely determined glare in her eyes. “We’ll get you out of there!”

“Apologies, my fellow elf, I’ll have to disgrace you in battle.” The swordswoman with the ridiculous anti-armor declared, raising her sword in a defensive position.

The painted warrior raised her sword and clanged it against the front of her shield, then returned to a ready posture with a grin on her face. “I wanted to ask for a fight later, but now is fine too!”

The dragonrider’s voice echoed again, this time carrying through the air. “Admirable is their optimism, is it not?”

His arm raised, and a pale light filled the sword. Mallorn’s arm shook within the armor, trying to hold back the swing, but all of his remaining strength barely bought another half-second before the sword fell.

That half second bought enough time for most to leap away from the center, the pale bolt exploding forwards. It ripped through one unfortunate man then passed through empty air for a distance and smashed into the archway of the next tower entrance.

The stones of that tower shook and rumbled as they partially collapsed, preventing any retreat along that path. Men shouted in panic as their tower destabilized for a moment, then held.

“The bolts are invisible now?!” The painted warrior yelled in complaint, rolling forwards on her shield and bouncing up into a charge towards him. “Cowardly to use a hidden blade, ghost!”

Mallorn’s eyes furrowed. Invisible? No, the bolts were clearly visible, with a pale hue of a color he couldn’t put a name to. Straining against it, his armor rose to turn aside the charging thrust and counter with a heavy bash of his scale shield. The painted warrior staggered but held.

“He’s weaker now!” She declared triumpantly. “Slower too!”

His armor twisted, turning aside thrust from another angle from the elven swordswoman and giving a return-stab to her knees. A risky move that opened him up to counter attack, but the swordswoman didn’t take the bait, and instead fully disengaged again. 

“He’s not any weaker, Mallorn is merely resisting him, you brute.” The swordswoman declared, practically sliding as she moved to his flank again. The painted woman continued her own heavy assault of his front, but his armor was too durable and the spirit too experienced. It was steadily pushing both warriors back and advancing onwards towards the heroine.

“Morgan, do you have any ideas for how to free him?!” A fervent whisper echoed from the elven sorceress, her golden polemace swinging to smash an errant skeletal berserker from the walls while the Heroine conjured a ray of burning light that punched a smoldering hole through a bone giant’s skull. 

“I’m thinking!” The petite necromancer growled back, entirely ignored by the dead that were crawling up upon the walls. After a few moments, she began to reply. “The possessor is still a ghost, so I could try to dominate him. From there we can remove Sir Mallorn from the armor.”

“Will that accomplish anything? We’d still have to fight the shell.” The sorceress asked back.

“I don’t know! Maybe!” The necromancer snapped stressfully. “He still needs mana to sustain him from an external source, he can’t make more, being dead. If he’s taking mana from Sir Mallorn to sustain himself right now, then removing him will prevent the ghost from doing anything.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Then at least you can blast it to ash if he’s free, you cow!” 

Mallorn’s attention returned to the motions his body was going through. A piece of information from the necromancer gripped in his thoughts as a lifeline of escape.

If the ghost was using his mana to act, then using all his mana would cripple the ghost, wouldn’t it?

With a patient seething, he waited for the opportunity, slackening his resistance to the armor’s motions as he bided time. The armor began to move more smoothly, pressing the temporary advantage with a flurry of precise swings, stabs, and bashes. Errant blows from both elf and human shook his flesh beneath the armor, making his vision blur with pain.

The sword rose as it pulled away, and Mallorn seized upon the moment. He jerked his arm further away with all his remaining strength, and poured mana into the blade. Not a pulse, not a steady drip- a total flushing of everything he could manage in a single instant.

A howling storm of energy escaped from the blade and soared through the air, punching upwards uselessly. It passed through layers of smoke and fog and into the clouds above, where it eventually detonated in a brilliant display of wan mana. 

Darkness exploded across his vision. He slumped in his armor, and the armor slumped with him. 

Conscious, but barely, he smirked in triumph. The armor began to be pushed back as the advantage was seized upon by swordswoman and painted warrior. 

“So you are parasitizing me, aren’t you?”

“A clever observation. Who gave you that thought, reckless elf?” The dragonrider replied with a mental echo. Slow limbs barely kept pace with a pair of attackers, his body being pressed further and further back along the battlements. A giant of bone pulled itself up along the battlements and slammed its fist down, avoided by both warriors but giving the armor a brief time to recover momentum. 

The dragonrider took the moment to make another observation, staring at the party of the heroine as they fended off the hordes of undead crawling up along the walls. The helm turned to regard the mass of dead outside the walls, and specifically at entire lines and flanks of corpses suddenly collapsing with seemingly no attackers. “...The cabal is being attacked.” The dragonrider observed. 

A moment passed, then the helmet nodded. “...My objective is unfortunately untenable now.” 

His armor turned, waving a sword at one of the bone giants, who turned to look down at him with pale blue eyes aglow. Mallorn’s eyes widened as the bone giant reached down with an open palm, the armor he was trapped in stepping upon it with practiced ease. “What are you doing?!” He snarled, a rush of panic fueling the hot demand for answers.

“Retreating. With my previous shell destroyed and you drained, I no longer have the resources to fulfill my mission here. The heroine’s party is strong enough to overcome me as I am.” The dragonrider explained calmly. “Naturally, you will come with me.”

“Absolutely not! Spit me out this instant you fucking leech!” Mallorn snarled, limbs shaking with rage. 

“I will no-” The armor paused as the bone giant suddenly shifted its grip. The helmet turned. The bone giant pulled an arm back, then hurled him through the air. He barely had time to glimpse the elephantine skull of the giant as he was flung.

Mallorn grinned as the giant’s eyes were filled purple instead of blue. 

Blackness greeted him as he crashed back into the battlements and rolled to a stop against rubble against the far tower. Stars lived in his eyes for an eternity. His pain was so great that it stopped being pain, and simply became a lush numbness in a sea of darkness. 

Distantly, he could feel it start to rain. The armor he was trapped within immediately started to pull itself up, gauntlets clutching sword and shield. 

The petite form of the lady necromancer appeared over him, holding a gnarled wooden staff up to his chest. 

“Shackle the spirit!” 

And finally, his armor ceased to move.

Mallorn smiled, finally allowing himself to briefly relax.

He slipped into unconsciousness the exact moment he slackened his wrath.

AN : A bit short tonight- any further requires alt povs and we'll save that for next chapter.