Wandering Warrior: Judge - Chapter 37

Chapter 37

We made it to the cheese factory well before dark, but the heavy clouds made it seem otherwise.  It couldn’t have been much past four in the afternoon, yet everyone except Jess and I were nearly stumbling around in the dark.  She had stayed back with Murphy and Cross while Leedy and I had moved up to check the front of the long stone building.

“I don’t like this.”  Leedy was crouched next to me in the tall grass next to the hut that had once served as the guard house to the facility.  “I know the sun is hiding behind those clouds, but it won’t matter much to the vampires.”

“Don’t bet on it.”  I looked to the west, where I knew the sun had to be.  “Maybe a younger vampire can run around, but an elder vampire is sensitive to even the slightest ultraviolet radiation.  They aren’t going to get fried by a full moon or anything, but direct rays, even through heavy clouds, will cook them up like a bucket straight out of a Kentucky Fried drive through.”

Leedy looked at the side of my head, probably trying to see if my brains were leaking out of my ears or not.  “I swear, half of what you say is pure nonsense.”

“You’re not wrong.”  I shucked my pack and leaned it up against the building, making sure it was out of sight.  We had both already seen that the only entrance on the front side of the building was blocked off by an overturned wagon, meaning we needed to find an alternate way inside.  “Tell everyone else to drop their stuff off here, and I’ll swing around the south side while you all swing north.  We meet on the back side and plan our entry from there.”

He gave me a thumbs up and the two of us split apart.  I stayed low, keeping below the top of the grass.  I had almost completely maximized my perception, making it easy to see where I was going.  It was also easy to smell the scent of old blood and rotten meat, mingled with rotten milk.  Time to dial back the ol’ sense of smell a bit, before I went nose blind to the funk.  Not that it would have been a bad thing, but I didn’t want to rob myself of an early warning system if I didn't have to.  What I wasn’t getting a lot of was noise.  Either the stone walls were incredibly thick, there wasn’t anything inside, or they knew we were here.  Given the smell and my luck, it was definitely the last option.

I had to wait a good five minutes for the others to catch up with me on the opposite side.  It had given me enough time to spot three likely places we could enter, which made all of them bad choices.  A large empty window frame, a set of double doors warped open by age and neglect, and a smaller door on the western side that looked to still be in working condition.  The five of us grouped up behind a pile of rusted out milk containers less than fifty feet from the largest entrance at the rear.  I laid out what I had seen, and we quickly agreed on one thing.

“It’s definitely a trap.”  Murphy peeked through the containers at the double doors before ducking back down.  “There’s no way that’s not a trap.  They want us to go in there.”

Cross pointed the way they had come.  “We saw another window on the side that’s been boarded up.  We could go in there.”  He looked at the open window near the double doors.  “Not that it’s a better option.”

“Why don’t we just throw spells at them until they have to come outside and face us?  We could use bigger spells, coordinate attacks, and keep from getting overwhelmed or cornered.  Wouldn’t that be easier?”  Jess looked around at us, obviously confused as to why we hadn’t already just said so.  “Am I missing something?”

“It’s as good a plan as any, Jess.  There’s only one problem.”  I held out my hand in an upside down ‘V’ and prepared the delving spell that I had used on the well back in the quarantined village.  One cast, and I could already tell that there was an extensive underground area.  “There’s a big basement, and I think they’ve expanded it.  They can just retreat down there and wait for us to run out of spells.”

“You’re assuming they’re smart enough to do that.”  Leedy tapped his nose at me.  “Not every enemy makes good decisions.”

“But to hope for their stupidity is to plan for failure.”  Cross pointed at me.  “We all know the best plan is for you to send in a big spell and set off whatever ambush is prepared for us.  The rest of us can fight what comes out.  After that, we go in and clean up what’s left.”

I shook my head.  “I don’t think a full-frontal attack on a lich is the best option.  Well, it is, but we need to be more surgical.  It would be better to create our own entrance by punching a hole through the ceiling all the way to the basement, and take on the strongest enemy while we’re at our best.  The vampires won’t be able to run while the sun is out, so after the lich is gone we focus on them.  Zombies, ghouls, and whatever else can get mopped up after we’re done with the greater undead.”

“And how, exactly, do we survive being inside the basement long enough to kill the lich without getting ripped apart by the rest of them?”  Surprisingly, Cross didn’t sound combative.  He sounded genuinely curious.  “Because that would be quite the trick.”

“Remember when it was just you and me, and I tried out that strip of fabric that messed up all those undead?”  He nodded, and I held up the artificial monster core.  “I think I can do it again, but better this time.”

Once Cross was in on the plan, the others quickly agreed.  Instead of fabric, I used a strip of wood this time.  It only took me a few minutes to carve out the runes with my pocket knife, and I had to prick the finger of everyone present to include their blood in the creation of the device.  The majority of the blood was mine to ensure it would be strong, but using theirs would ensure they would be excluded from the aura when it activated.  Seating the lumpy piece of hardened mana in the hole I cut for it was a chore, since it wasn’t a perfect circle.  I had to wedge a few slivers of wood in the gaps so it wouldn’t fall out, and I knew it wouldn’t hold up if someone bumped it too hard.  It would have to do.

“Is it ready to go?”  Jess had been looking over my shoulder while I worked, literally breathing down my neck.  “It doesn’t look like much.”

“Yep, it’s ready.”  I passed it off to her.  She took it with wide eyes, almost dropping it.  “When things kick off, I’m going to be too busy to watch over that thing.  It’s up to you to guard it.”  I pointed to the section of the rune sequence that activated the pull on the core.  “Just push a bit of mana in here, and set it on the ground.  Once it goes off, we’ll have a good five to ten minutes before it burns out.”

“There’s a big difference between five and ten minutes, James.”  Leedy didn’t seem amused at such an unspecific time frame.  “In a fight, that’s a huge difference.”

Looking back at him, I shrugged.  “Well, considering I’ve used one of these once, with a piece of fabric, it’s the best guess I can make.  What I can say for sure is, anything strong enough to withstand the aura it creates is going to do their best to destroy that thing.  So, protecting it needs to be a priority.”

“I’ll help Jess.”  Murphy had his halberd ready to go, with a short sword on his hip.  His breastplate and helm were polished, and the runes on both thrummed with unused power.  He was certainly ready.  “They won’t get through the both of us.”

“We’re wasting daylight.  Come on.”  Cross led us to the side of the building with the boarded up window, where we took turns helping each other onto the roof.  It was made of slate, giving it a stone look like the rest of the building, and flat enough that we didn’t have a problem finding footing.

For once, I didn’t have a memory to remind me of something.  Assaulting an undead stronghold through the roof with only four people to back me up?  Definitely a first.  I cast my delving spell again, picking the place that seemed to be most central to the underground area.  It was actually near the front door of the building, which would have been the last place we would have been able to easily access had we gone through the rear entrance.

“Is everyone ready?”  I looked around, getting confirmation from each of them.  We had checked and rechecked our gear so many times it was pointless to do it again.  “Okay.  The first spell is going to clear the way, the second is going to make room for us, and the third is going to let us drop down without getting hurt.  The moment we confirm the lich is nearby, or we start to get overrun, Jess activates the core.  Her and Murphy guard it, while the rest of us kill as many of them as we can.”  I held out my hand, forming a fist.  Lightning danced around it as I forced mana into the spell that built across my knuckles.  “Here we go!”

My punch slammed into the roof, shattering tile downward in a funnel of destruction.  The spell I had used was a variation of earthen spike, but I hadn’t properly formed it into something solid.  By leaving it more ‘free,’ it allowed the energy to explode downward in a cylinder shape that took what materials were available instead of creating any from mana.  Basically, it was a homemade tunneling spell that dropped a tube of stone pulled from the building into the basement.

Screams from undead throats echoed out from below, and I answered them with a swarm of fireballs.  Instead of one big spell like in the clearing, I cast a series of smaller ones to reduce the strain on my mana reserves.  A wave of heat rushed out of the hole, so I twisted my wrist, causing a small vortex to form.  Flames leapt upward, carrying with them the smell of dust and roasted meat.  Rotten roasted meat.

“How are we supposed to go down there?!”  Leedy was missing part of his eyebrows after trying to look down the hole, and I wasn’t sure if the redness on his face was from the heat or if he was mad at the surprise makeover.  “We’ll be cooked alive!”

“I’ll admit, maybe fire wasn’t the best choice.”  I moved over to the other corner of the roof.  The underground section here wasn’t as deep, but it was still wide open enough to give us room to fight unobstructed.  “What can I say?  I’m not perfect.”  I punched downward again, casting another makeshift cylinder digging spell.  Air rushed in, feeding the flames before black smoke came pouring out.  I cast a series of wind blades to clear it enough to see, and I deemed it clear enough to risk it.  “Come on, before they realize what we’re doing!”

As everyone jumped, I used the vortex spell to slow our fall enough that we could reach the bottom without breaking our legs.  It was still a hard fall, and the uneven ground caused by the chunks of stone covering the ground from my spell meant it was easy to twist an ankle.  Murphy let out a curse as he came down, and I rushed over to help him to his feet before he could ask.

“That wasn’t fun.”  Murphy grunted in pain as my healing spell straightened out his leg.  It had been a complete dislocation, meaning it was going to be extra sore for a long time.  It was one of those injuries that stuck with you no matter how much healing energy you dumped into the body.  My eyes asked him the obvious question in the flickering light of the fires caused by my spells.  “I’m good, I can walk.  Just don’t ask me to run anytime soon.”

The room we had landed in had probably once been meant to store wheels of cheese, but the wooden racks had long since gone to rot.  The dividing walls had been smashed to rubble, turning the entire basement into one large open area with the occasional section left standing to hold up the building above.  I could see the dug out section of the basement where my first breeching attempt had gone off, flames still leaping high enough that the floors above were burning.  Suddenly, I was glad we hadn’t landed there.  It had been their refuse pit, and the source for the raw materials the lich necromancer needed to make his undead abominations.  As we watched, several amalgamations of bone and flesh tried to climb free of the pit as the magical fire ate away at their substance.

A high-pitched scream meant to freeze a man’s brain into slush hit us with a physical force, causing the runes on everyone’s helms to light up.  My shield bracelet glowed red, telling me it was repelling an active magical assault.  A charred skeleton came clacking into view, its blackened fangs somehow more prominent than any vampire I had ever seen before.  Its eyes glowed with green eldritch flames, scorching the skull’s sockets as they rolled wildly in the dark.  When it finally spoke, it did so straight into our minds, despite our protections.

How nice of you to present yourself to me, my new vessel.  You have no idea how much trouble it would have caused if I had been forced to chase you halfway across the known world.  As a reward, I’ll have to do something nice for you.  Perhaps a pleasant dreamscape for your soul to reside in, while I take control of your body?  Hmm?  Would that be nice?

Jess glanced over at me before looking back at the vampire skeleton.  “I guess we found the lich.”