Ogre Tyrant: Chapter 61 - Death and misery - 5 of 6

Ogre Tyrant: Chapter 61 - Death and misery - 5 of 6

Faine’s observation caught me momentarily off guard. However, after overcoming my shock, I realised that the walls of the inner fortress were far more ornate and decorative than a military fortress had any right to be.

In hindsight, the prolific adornment of gargoyles and other statues on the battlements should have been a tipoff. Everything reminded me of the Mournbrent grand cathedral. Focusing on aesthetics at the expense of pure military functionality.

“Which means it’s possible the Liche found an Artefact within the treasury...” I commented bitterly, convinced that the hypothetical Artefact was responsible for blocking my Summon Spell.

“Perhaps more than one...” Jayne agreed before brusquely clearing her throat, “Or maybe not. The royal family only had one Artefact, after all. So there is no guarantee that the Werrians would have had more than one!”

“That’s right!” Randle agreed with patriotic fervour. “Our kingdom may not have been as large, but our history is much richer and roots are far deeper than the damned Werrians! It’s possible they didn’t even have any Artefacts at all!”

Faine nodded emphatically in agreement.

It was an interesting experience to be reminded so bluntly of my champions’ allegiances. However, so little time had passed since they had taken their oaths that I figured it was to be expected. It would have been more suspicious and disappointing if they were capable of shifting their allegiances so completely within such a short time.

Loyalty was earned, not taken.

After recovering my mana, we approached the main entrance to the palatial fortress and found the gates and portcullis were both left open.

The flagstones within the fortress were stained with blood.

As we cautiously made our way through the main passageway, we encountered piles of ash-strewn about with abandoned weapons and armour.

The particles of ash in the air made it increasingly difficult to breathe. We were forced to stop and make damp masks to wear beneath our helmets. However, the increased obstruction made it difficult to breathe as well, just in a different way. It quickly proved impossible to wear both a mask and our full helms simultaneously.

Left with little choice, I conjured open helms as replacements.

The open face of the helm made it much easier to breathe and provided a wider field of view. Unfortunately, the open face of the helm also provided a significantly larger opening for receiving an enemy attack. However, given the choice between slowly suffocating to death by inhaling airborne ash, or risking increased injury to the face, I was inclined to choose the ambiguity of the latter over the near-certainty of the former.

Navigating our way through the fortress was an altogether unnerving experience. The oppressive silence caused every booted footfall on the bare sections of stone floor to ring through the empty hallways and chambers. All the while, faint sounds of battle echoed in the distance, and every so often the fortress would shake as Ushu continued his assault from the outside.

Unwilling to drag out our stay within the fortress, I spent a quarter of my mana to render the four of us invisible to the mindless undead.

There was still the possibility of tripping hidden traps, but I decided that Marco or the mindless undead would have triggered most traps we would otherwise encounter.

Moving quickly through the fortress, I witnessed the devastation wrought by the Liche’s occupation. Blackened dried blood crusted the walls and floors seemingly at random. The streaks and spatters on the floor suggested that those slain by the Liche’s forces had not remained immobile for long.

Passing through the main hall, we slipped past a dozen pale-skinned undead in bloody tattered clothing. The situation of the undead was strange. They were each manacled to the leftmost wall and bore several signs of having been savaged by Zombies or other carnivorous undead.

Trying not to dwell on the depravities of the Liche, we pressed onward and continued following in Marco's wake.

No longer concerned with fighting any of the mindless undead, we made good time and I could sense that we were steadily gaining on Marco.

The situation we encountered in the main hall proved to be far from unique. Nearly half of the apartments we passed by had one or more corpses or undead manacled to the walls and wearing the bloody torn remains of fine clothing.

Ascending a final set of stairs we found ourselves standing beneath the open sky and surrounded by crumbling walls and the broken remains of the roof.

Emerald flashes of light bled over the top of the rubble and Marco’s cries of rage and the clash of steel sang through the air.

“Hang back,” I warned before carefully scaling a pile of nearby rubble. I had no intentions of joining the battle directly unless it was strictly necessary. However, to make that decision, I needed to witness the battle with my own eyes.

Unsure of what I had expected to find, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat disappointed by the scene unfolding before me.

Marco was trying, and largely failing, to engage the Liche in melee with his claws. However, the Liche was easily blocking Marco’s attacks with a long thin staff. Each time the Liche blocked one of Marco’s attacks, the small crystal at the top of the staff would flash with emerald light and blast Marco backward several feet.

As best as I could tell, the mana signature felt incredibly similar to Thundering Strikes but was slightly different.

Despite the aristocratic ball gown worn by the Liche, it had no problems matching Marco’s speed and Agility. However, the jerkiness of the Liche’s movements suggested that the speed and reflexes might be the result of a Spell. The Liche didn’t seem nearly as acclimated to the speed of the engagement as Marco. So despite being faster, the Liche wasn’t able to gain the upper hand.

After knocking Marco away, the Liche would throw arcs of lightning from her free hand but fail to land any direct hits due to Marco’s enhanced Vampyric speed.

Neither party spoke a word, communicating only through cries of rage and snarls of frustration as they each failed to gain the upper hand over the other.

After overcoming my initial surprise, I noticed Wisp standing calmly atop a pile of rubble near the edge of the rooftop.

Realising he had been spotted, the cowl of Wisp’s robes turned in my direction.

Disappearing in a cloud of shadow, Wisp reappeared at my side. “I am waiting for the Liche’s supply of mana to wane,” Wisp stated bluntly, perhaps worried that I was doubting his loyalty or capabilities. “I must also confess...I wanted to give Marco a chance at his vengeance...” His dry rasping voice carried a melancholic tone I had not heard before.

I had never pried or even inquired after Wisp’s personal history, afraid of the potentially distasteful or foul events I would uncover. However, I now realised that I had been incredibly shortsighted, cowardly, and largely self-serving.

Wisp was a monster, that much I knew for certain. However, he was also a Variant. A Variant undead.

It occurred to me that I had never questioned that particularly aberrant detail. So far as I was aware, there were two methods for the creation of Variants. The first was through sexual reproduction, and the second was through random creation by the Labyrinths.

I had simply assumed that since undead lacked the functioning sexual organs to reproduce through regular means, that Wisp had to have been created by the Mournbrent Labyrinth.

But what if he had once been something else?

Higher-level adventurers used monster Slaves to add combat power or form expandable frontline support. Which meant that it was possible that Wisp was not originally from the Mournbrent Labyrinth at all. He may have been killed or otherwise abandoned and left for dead, only to rise as an undead.

I recalled how determined Wisp had been in his desire to ‘purify’ himself within Mournbrent’s grand cathedral and its consecrated grounds. An act that caused him an immense degree of pain and very likely may have held a high chance of destroying him outright if he failed.

Why would someone willingly subject themself to such torment and risk of destruction unless their current state of being was somehow worse than not existing at all?

Wisp was not a good person, but he wasn’t needlessly cruel either. He was obedient and made himself helpful when requested. All the same, he killed without remorse or hesitation and demonstrated no outward feelings of loss over the deaths of allies and enemies alike.

How much of that detachment is a part of his personality? And how much is due to his existence as an undead?

As I continued watching Marco's duel with the Liche, I couldn’t settle on an answer.

Ushu had ceased his attacks on the fortress but continued circling the rooftop from a distance. Similarly, Dhizi had begun patrolling further out and Nadine appeared to have joined Clarice on Dhizi’s saddle.

The stalemate between the Liche and Marco took a sudden turn as a bolt of lightning forked down from the sky and struck Marco as he attempted to dodge the lightning cast from the Liche’s hand.

Sent into uncontrollable spasms, Marco’s leather armour, his clothing, and his skin smouldered as the Liche continued channelling the lightning from her left hand.

Screaming in rage, Marco could do nothing as his nervous system betrayed him. Completely at the Liche’s mercy, it would only be a matter of time before he would be destroyed.

Wisp bowed the cowl of his hood briefly before releasing a quiet breathless sigh.

Disappearing in a burst of shadow, Wisp suddenly reappeared behind the Liche in its blind spot, thrusting Ophelia’s Blessed blade at the small of the Liche’s back.

Perhaps sensing Wisp’s mana, the Liche spun about with impossible speed and knocked the flat of the blade aside with its staff.

Undeterred, Wisp repeated the manoeuvre and appeared behind the Liche again, this time using the momentum generated from the Liche’s deflection to perform a sweeping strike.

Again, the Liche spun about, the ruffles of the large gown twirling with dizzying speed as the staff was struck against the sword for a second time.

Several dozen attacks were then made in rapid succession and successfully repelled before Wisp broke the rhythm of their engagement. However, rather than appearing behind the Liche, Wisp reappeared ten feet in front of the Liche instead.

As lightning began to crackle in the Liche’s left hand, the cowl of Wisp’s robe cocked slightly to one side. “You do not know, do you?” He asked in his dry rasping voice, a measure of unexpected sympathy in his tone.

Wisp’s comment appeared to have caught the Liche off guard and it hesitated, the feral anger in her expression taking on a small degree of confusion.

“It was me,” Wisp commented, his posture and tone reminiscent of a funeral director offering neutral condolences to a grieving family. “I am Wisp.”

The Liche’s eyes grew wide and it visibly staggered as if Wisp had struck it a mortal blow.

“I struck the blow that killed her,” Wisp continued in a commiserating tone, “I killed Liz.”

The Liche’s dishevelled hair covered its face as it hung its head. Bare pale shoulders shaking, and fists trembling, the Liche remained silent.

“Despite her crimes, I did not intend for her to suffer,” Wisp’s tone remained neutral but respectful. “However, she and indeed, both of you, cannot be permitted to exist. The path you have chosen is unaccept-”

“SHUT UP!” The Liche snarled, “YOU THINK I FUCKING CARE WHAT YOU WANT?!” The Liche raised its head and glared at Wisp with unmitigated hatred.

“No, I don’t expect you do,” Wisp replied casually and lifted the Blessed blade in preparation for combat.

“RAAAAAAGH!!!” The Liche screamed and released a torrent of lightning from her left hand just as a powerful bolt of lightning lanced down from the sky.

Before either Spell could connect, Wisp disappeared.

Expecting Wisp to appear in its blind spot, the Liche spun about and swung its staff but struck nothing but empty air.

Wisp appeared a half second later and severed the Liche’s left arm just below the elbow with Ophelia’s amber glowing blade. Before the Liche could retaliate, Wisp disappeared once more.

Shrieking in pain and anger, the Liche swung its staff about in a blind rage. The force and speed of the swings distorted the air and I could feel the breeze on my face despite my distant vantage point.

All the while, the Liche’s amputated arm crumbled to ash and was cast to the wind.

“SHOW YOURSELF!!!” The Liche demanded shrilly, “FIGHT ME YOU FUCKING COWARD!!!” As the glowing green eyes of the Liche scanned the rooftop, I felt its attention settle in my direction.

Releasing a Barrier on reflex, I was just in time to intercept a torrent of toxic emerald light. Despite the colour difference, I recognised it as the Life Drain Spell I had learned from Wisp.

No doubt desperate, it was unlikely the Liche would end its attempts to heal itself after a single failure.

Pulsing another Barrier, I leapt up and over the rubble and began charging toward the Liche.

A second Life Drain Spell spattered against my expanding Barrier. However, unlike the first Life Drain Spell, the second quickly proved to be a sustained effort. This required me to continue funnelling mana into the Barrier or risk being hit by the Spell.

Now locked in a contest of mana capacity while I closed the distance between us, I conjured several magical javelins and threw them at the Liche one after another in rapid succession. I had no real expectations of hitting the Liche, but I needed to distract the Liche and provide an opportunity for Wisp to land another strike.

True to my expectations, the Liche easily avoided all but the final javelin. The last would have struck the Liche in its right shoulder but was disintegrated by a lance of bright green light. Unfortunately, none of my attacks seemed to distract the Liche in the slightest. However, the Liche suddenly staggered as something struck it in the back.

With no sign of Wisp, and Marco still twitching on the floor, I could only stare in surprise as the Liche was struck five more times in rapid succession. Ceasing its Life Drain Spell, the Liche threw itself hard to one side.

Several arrows skittered against the floor and mounds of rubble. Following the trajectory of the arrows, my gaze settled on a small group of soldiers clustered on the eastern mountainside.

Screaming in fury the Liche blasted the eastern mountain with bolts of lightning. However, as the afterimages of the lightning faded, it became clear that the Liche had only guessed at the position of the soldiers and had subsequently missed them entirely.

I vaguely recalled the squad of soldiers that I had sent south with the express purpose of testing the Empowered Veil of Undeath Spell but was surprised that they had disobeyed the order to retreat. That they had given up the opportunity to return home and instead inserted themselves in a confrontation that could see them dead before they even realised what had happened.

Preparing to cast another barrage of Spells, the Liche staggered and very nearly collapsed as the boundary of my expanding barrier passed over its body. With confirmation that the speed and reaction time from earlier had been provided by a Spell, I redoubled my effort in closing the distance between us.

I was rapidly running out of mana. However, one more solid strike might very well end the conflict and I was already committed.

Holding Shiverfang tight with both hands, I lined myself up against the Liche and mentally braced myself to deliver the final blow.