Chapter 51 - Loyal Unto Death

Chapter 51

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth.

Greymane caravan camp site.

Silence descended upon the assembled survivors, and Allya sighed, before slowly getting up and brushing the dust off of her outfit.

"Yes captain, I am alright. And so is lady Pyn." Her tone was...icy would have been a polite way to put it. Anders coloured slightly as he realized his mistake, but fortunately he seemed astute enough to realize that trying to backpedal would only make things worst.

"That is excellent news milady. As per your previous orders, your troops are dispersing throughout the camp to rescue any survivors."

Allya smiled. At least the captain had some brains, she'd give him that, casually announcing to everyone that she had previously planned their rescue, and planting the seeds in their mind that they might have foreseen this...and that her very presence was a carefully orchestrated effort to try to save as many of them as possible. Oh she could work with this.

"That's excellent news captain! What about the main camp?"

Anders' face went grim, and Allya's smile fell.

"We have a problem. Most of my forces followed the plan, but unfortunately we were followed by many adventurers. When the manticore came the civilians between my contingent and the camp prevent an orderly division of forces. To avoid losing cohesion in the chaos I continue with standard operations, and sent runners back to try to channel the adventurers back towards potential attackers. Especially the manticore we observed."

Allya nodded.

"That was a very good decision captain, given the circumstances." Which, for what it was worth, was actually true, and not just lies to maintain a united front before so many witnesses. Oh, back in her days as a Knight-Valiant she would have been able to do better, but that was mainly because her forces operated with vehicles or cavalry mounts, which would have made parting through the crowds significantly easier, as well as be equipped with those 'radios' the artificers had given platoon leaders, making communications extremely easy.

"Thank you milady." Said Anders, bowing briefly.

Allya smiled at the captain again, showing her approval and trust in him, laying it on with a trowel for the audience's benefit, before turning towards Olstor.

"So, mister Numis. I don't think any 'kow-towing' will be required. And your thanks are duly accepted."

The obviously stunned caravan master opened his mouth, then closed it, and laughed, before stopping with a laugh.

"Apologies miladies, the stress and all..." Allya simply nodded, and Olstor smiled. "Well, in that case, you have my deepest thanks for your most timely rescue. Although I think further discussion will have to wait until the situation has stabilized and-"

"Ah! Good, you're alive!"

Once again, everyone turned, and stared at the dwarf that had just erupted from the ranks of Anders' men. Olstor turned around, opening his mouth for an evidently less than graceful remark, before closing it with a snap as he obviously recognized said dwarf.

"Guildmaster Starvak." Simply said Allya. "This is an...Unexpected pleasure."

Starvak smiled.

"It shouldn't be. You are, after all, an adventurer...And the lady of this land to boot. Letting you get devoured by monsters without lifting a finger would be...impolitic, to say the least."

"So I see." She turned towards Anders, realizing that if she didn't take the initiative now, she never would. "Captain! Assemble a small squad for my protection, and detach your medics and healers for the wounded here, as many as you can spare. Then join me, we must return to the camp and assess the situation there." She turned towards Olstor and Starvak. "You are welcome to join us if you'd like."

Olstor shook his head.

"I must regretfully decline, as I have to tend to my people. But you can be assured I will arrange for a direct meeting once things have settled down."

Starvak stroked his mustache.

"The situation here appears stable, and I suppose it would be...problematic to have our main camp reduced to ashes. It will be my pleasure to accompany you, and make sure my fellow adventurers do not impede our progress."

Allya nodded decisively.

"Very good. Let's move out then! There is no time to waste."

*****

"Well this sucks." Said Alexandra as she looked at the dungeon entrance through the eyes of one of her golems.

"It was inevitable, what with how much fighting is going on." Remarked Emilia.

"Still sucks."

Alexandra sighed as Emilia chuckled, and looked at her dungeon entrance. The pillars had seemed like such a good design choice back then. Of course, she hadn't accounted for a rampaging manticore knocking them over and using them as ammunition. And to give the damned thing it's due, it wasn't stupid. As soon as it had realized that more reinforcements were nearing the surface it had thrown a pillar at the entrance, taking out only and handful of golems, but which had neatly slowed the advance, enough for the beast to throw a few more for good measure and completely block the door.

Of course, Alexandra had tried to simply absorb the obstruction, before suddenly realizing that the odd feeling she had in the back of mind ever since the manticore had charged CQ wasn't from her boss being under attack. It was the manticore's interference zone, which was fucking huge. Dear Gods everything up to the challenge room was simply inaccessible! For the first time she truly realized just how powerful the damned thing was, and she considered herself very lucky that it had focused it's essence on becoming a giant rampaging monster with the endurance to survive in the wasteland, instead of a creature with actual magic spell, or whatever wild equivalent existed. She wasn't sure she could fight a mage that powerful with her current forces without using Emilia, or just trying to make them run out of mana by just swamping them with golems. And the latter wasn't guaranteed to work, she was a dungeon core, not the Queen of Blades, she didn't have an endless supply of zergs to throw at her enemies.

Of course she'd just ordered the reinforcing golems to start removing the rubble, but progress was being painfully slow, mainly due to the fact that even with their superhuman strength the entrance was simply too congested to easily allow for rapid removal of the rocks, and they didn't have any tools or wheelbarrows to help. She'd called up a working party from the mines of course, but it would still take them precious minutes to make their way there, minutes she didn't felt they had.

As she contemplated the problem, she noted that at least the clearing of the obstructing pillars had allowed CQ's forces to coalesce into a more cohesive frontline, and they're actually starting hurting the manticore, with Royal Guardians searing it's flesh with their flame spears, while the Palace Guards tried to hold it at bay, with the the Palace Marksmen and Royal Archmages peppering it with crossbow bolts and spells respectively.

However much progress they were making however, they were simply loosing troops to fast to kill the beast. They'd put a dent into it sure, but it was just tearing into them so fast...

In fact, the only thing that had prevented them from just being overwhelmed nigh instantly was CQ, teleporting behind the manticore or on it's back, delivering painful blows and otherwise distracting it, making it relent in it's assault to try and dislodge her. However the tactic was starting to take it's toll on the boss, even with her crimson veil stopping 90% of the incoming damage. CQ was visibly limping now, and was starting to have a harder and harder time mustering the strength to have her blows actually hurt the beast, which her quite frankly subpar (compared to the target) steel sword wasn't helping with. Alexandra vowed here and there that she'd find the boss a better weapon, even if she had to buy one from the town and lace it with teleportation enchantments so it couldn't be stolen.

Then finally, the line broke, as the Palace Guard ran out of reserve. The manticore roared triumphantly, starting to charge forward, straight for CQ, who was standing with a last cluster of Royal Guardians. Then...CQ knelt?

Alexandra's eyes went wide as the boss went on one knee, planting her sword into the ground, and began murmuring something. It looked almost like a knight praying before battle actually.

Whatever she was doing, her apparent surrender goaded the manticore, who surged forward. Then, simultaneously, all of the Royal Guardians raised their spears, and in a single, coordinated move, fired their power beams.

The manticore staggered back, screeching in agony, it's advance effectively stopped. The beam didn't seem to have done more that superficial damage -one of the first things CQ had tested out in the fight was to see if the attack would be effective enough to just use en masse to take out the beast, but it had proven extremely resilient to the concentrated energy beam-, but it had slowed it enough for CQ to complete whatever it is she was doing.

Suddenly a pulse of energy surrounded CQ, glowing crimson runes twirling around her, more and more adding themselves to the ensemble to form a nearly impenetrable cylinder around her. Then, in a single instant they broke into particles, who rushed above the rising boss and coalesced into a giant sphere. Alexandra unwittingly shivered as she remembered the blood sphere that Emilia had created, and which had eradicated the last of the core thieves, before shaking her head. This...Whatever it was, wasn't blood magic.

CQ waited for a second, and then yelled out, thrusting her sword into the air, and the sphere broke apart into a hundred different tendrils...Which immediately impacted the fallen golems littering the ground.

Alexandra's eyebrows rose, what was she-

Then her thoughts ground to a halt as her interface filled with status reports again and the golems came back up.

Okay, seriously, what the fuck? Thought Alexandra as she looked at the...zombie golems? Resurrected golems? Did necromancy terminology even apply to machines and constructs?

The Earth-born shook her head.

"Well that was unexpected."

Emilia nodded.

"I think this might be her new ability. Consecrated bosses usually gain new special abilities when going above a certain threshold, and I'm pretty sure CQ did."

"Right, I saw it in her menu. I think it was called 'undying loyalty', or something like that."

"Well, that's an apt name if there is one."

"Fair enough." Said Alexandra as she looked at the stupefied manticore as the newly risen golem army simply started attacking it again. The golems obviously hadn't been fully fixed, some of them were missing pieces of armor, or had to pick up new weapons from the ground from their still dead brethren to replace their broken ones. But overall, the effect was very impressive.

Alexandra winced. Even with that the manticore wasn't going to go down that easily. Already it was fighting back, throwing golems left and right, although this time they seemed to get back up even after sustaining considerably more damage than they should have. Whatever force had brought them back was evidently keeping them moving even long past the point at which their components had given out. It reminded her of the Pan-Asian Confederacy's Cybernetic Commandos, whose implants would just take over if the soldier died or fell unconscious, moving their corpse around like some obscene puppeteer, helped by the ridiculous amount of cybernetic enhancements they had, like robotic limbs and even organs. She'd never seen it first hand, thank the Gods, but the recordings had been disturbing enough, especially since the implant suite had a backup in the chest, and some of the decapitated soldiers, their head blown off by ordnance or disintegrated by plasma blasts simply kept coming, their neck still spurting blood or steaming.

Then, she received a ping.

1ST ARMORED FORMATION IN POSITION. AWAITING FURTHER ORDERS.

She smiled nastily, not noticing Emilia's wary but hopeful look at her expression. The cavalry had arrived. And if anything could dig through the rubble in no time, it was the spider tanks.