A Soldier's Life - 435 - The Soulless (edit 8-10-25 +220 words)

Chapter 435: The Soulless

The chaos of battle erupted around us, but the Sentinels were prepared. On the stern, flame erupted from Torandir as he fought the freezing salt water that would prevent our escape. Fenlorian jumped off the bow into the shallow water to take on the rushing undead in chainmail armor.

“Where is the mage?!” someone shouted. I assumed he was asking about the mage creating the ice, as it was forming much faster than the fire could erase it.

Another Sentinel shouted. “I can't find the origin, but it has to be one of the lich lords to be this powerful!”

I needed to decide where I could be most helpful, so I quickly moved to stand beside Fenlorian, leaping off the bow. Two splashes to my left and right signaled that Baelira and Bharok had followed me. Bharok cursed as his boots filled with salt since the water reached his knees.

I focused on the jingling of the mail armor as the soulless men rushed us. They wore steel half-helms, and their skin appeared to be deeply tanned. Their irises were dark, and their jaws set in zealous determination. Fenlorian glanced at me. “They are soulless. They will die like normal men.” And then we clashed.

I blocked an overhead swing with my shield and lunged forward. The man’s momentum did most of the work as magebane pierced the mail and his heart. I pivoted to let the body crash into the water behind me. Baelira's own blade flashed out for a throat, and a spray of hot blood hit my face. I couldn’t see Bharok, but I heard his hammer thud into a helm, crumpling another.

“Hold the beach!” Fenlorian yelled as he moved to get footing on the sand.

Bodies fell as we pushed forward to hold the beach. The waters and sand quickly became red. The soulless were unexceptional warriors, even though the weapons and armor they wore appeared to be of excellent quality. I blocked another strike and cut into a man’s neck. Magebane nearly severed the head, and I needed to hip check the body to avoid it from falling at my feet.

A Sentinel further down the beach we were holding yelled. “Their blades are poisoned!”

I focused on my next opponent, and the steel blade did appear to have a thin black line along the edge. A spray of sand from the next wave reached us as their boots kicked it up. Bharok cursed as his face was the perfect height to take a heavy spray of sand. I took a soulless on his flank in the thigh while blocking my opponent’s telegraphed swing. The wounded soulless went to his knees, and Bharok’s hammer thrust forward into his face, caving it in with a satisfying crunch.

Bharok grunted a thank you, and I was back to focusing on my own opponent. If the soulless had used their numbers to tackle us, things could have gone badly, but instead, they pulled up to engage us and were grossly overmatched with centuries of experience among the Sentinels.

I used my air shields sparingly because I didn’t know how long the rush was going to last. The biggest hazard was the bodies piling up at our feet, making it difficult to move. Unlike the demon attack, the Sentinels were prepared for this opponent. Only the elf who had screamed that he was poisoned had fallen, and another Sentinel on the boat had jumped into the water to administer a potion.

Slushy ice was soon mixing with the bloodied water on the shore, and I looked back, my heart sinking. The entire narrow passage was covered in solid ice, and the stern of the cutter was trapped as the ice continued to inch down the hull. The flames only melted the surface. When the last soulless fell, we stood breathing heavily among the bodies. I estimated that the six of us on shore had killed almost fifty. I had killed ten myself. If they were soulless, it made sense that the Sentinels hadn’t tried to use necromantic spells on them.

Orders were being given in the background. I used my boot to turn the head of a feminine body to inspect it. She looked like a normal human except for the shocked dark irises. I kicked off her helm to find her head had been shaved. In fact, looking at the other soulless who had lost their helm, they were all hairless—no hair and no eyebrows.

Even though the soulless were humans, I was itching to bring out the collector. The Sentinels had not brought theirs. “Would a collector work on these people?” I asked no one in particular.

It was Lepidus who answered, and I had not realized he had come ashore, and it spooked me. “Yes. They have aether cores. They are just immune to nether essence corruption. They can be animated as undead constructs, but I will not let that happen.” Lepidus kneeled over one of the bodies, removed his glove, and placed it on the soulless’s head. The body withered, the chainmail deflated, and the flesh and bone turned to dark sludge in seconds. It was a disgusting visual and turned my stomach. In the presence of so many necromancers, with the odds against us, it also seemed a waste.

I tuned into what was happening around me, discarding the thought of revealing the collector. Sentinel mages were still trying to find the source of the ice. “I think it’s an array buried deep underwater,” one of the men standing on the stern said, sounding uncertain. “It will take days to thaw.”

Torandir had stopped his fiery assault on the ice and turned on the High Sentinel. “How are we getting off the island?”

Fenlorian’s voice was steel. “They were waiting for us. The lords knew we were coming. We have not used this beach in a hundred years.” He was not accusing anyone, just stating what he was thinking. “Can anyone locate the arrays?” Everyone looked around at each other, but no one volunteered. My earth speak was ineffectual in the water, and my aether sight only showed the creeping ice glowing softly with aether powering the solidification.

Fenlorian’s jaw tightened as he came to a decision. “We cannot stay here till nightfall. Aurenis, return to Sanctuary and have them send another cutter. Take Isarion with you. Everyone else, gather on the beach.”

The Sentinels acted like veterans as two of the elves separated from the group. Isarion was the Sentinel responsible for cloaking our approach to the island and was needed to bring another in stealth. I thought Aurenis might have been a displacement mage, but I was proved wrong. Isarion hugged the Aurenis’s waist, and both Sentinels rose into the air and flew through the gap in the rocks into the ocean and back to Sanctuary.

I immediately cursed my own bad luck. If I had pushed forward and imprinted the dimension door spell form, I could have gotten all of us out of this farce. This was also Fenlorian’s fault for coming to the island. I could understand his need to confirm the dungeon’s status, having lost contact with the mainland, but it felt rushed and forced.

I was close enough to Fenlorian to hear Torandir ask another question quietly. “It took us four hours with water and air magic to reach here; it will take them twice that, if not longer, to get another ship here, and our best sailors are on the Salty Widow.”

“I am aware,” Fenlorian replied, and his eyes turned to Lepidus, who had remained conveniently out of the combat. “Any thoughts?” he asked aloud to the group with his eyes remaining on Lepidus. There were eleven of us remaining after the two went for help.

“We have time to confirm if the dungeon is active or not,” Lepidus stated flatly. I looked up, incredulous, as dozens of bodies littered the sandy shore. They knew we were here, and he wanted us to go further into the island? I looked at Fenlorian to dismiss the suggestion. He was making eye contact with Lepidus. Maybe his trust in the ancient legionnaire was waning.

“Let's get to higher ground. Whatever undead creature was nearby has left,” Fenlorian stated. I guessed those with their skulls marked no longer felt a powerful undead’s presence. He started walking toward the sandy path into the island.

Bharok grumbled. “Of course, they left. They accomplished their goal.” I turned and looked back at the tiny bay. The boat was completely iced in, and the water was frozen all the way to the sandy bottom. Dozens of fish were frozen in time, unable to escape the creeping ice. For my part, I was starting to doubt the High Sentinel’s wisdom and leadership. I settled toward the back of the group with Baelira and Bharok just behind me.

The walls of the rocky path looked like they had been quarried ages ago from volcanic rock and made mostly smooth. The sandy incline was steep, and in about fifty yards we emerged to a small rocky bald with a great view of the ocean. The dense tropical vegetation was about a mile away across an expanse of volcanic rock. Only the soft echoes of the water hitting the rocks below could be heard.

I moved off to the side and studied the ground while the Sentinels formed a defensive perimeter. It was sunny, hot, and humid, and we were exposed, but there was nothing but a single vulture flying over us.

“One of the lords has eyes on us,” someone said, gesturing at the vulture.

Fenlorian raised his hand, palm toward the sky. The air rippled around his hand. I didn’t have my aether sight active to see the spell form, but knew it was there. There was a whip crack in the air, followed by the vulture squawking as it tumbled from the sky in distress. It thudded into the rock a hundred yards away. “Scout the area,” he ordered without celebration. He meant with magic, but I had other skills.

I circled the area, sending out earth pulses, and reported first. “This path is frequently traveled,” I said, standing. “The volcanic rock is worn smooth, but that path could be old. But the piss stains and dried shit over here have accumulated over the last few months, not days.”

“The nearest soulless town is twenty miles from here. They couldn’t have reached us so quickly. They must have had to be camping nearby to ambush us.”

“Why attack us at all? They were outmatched?” Baelira said pointedly.

“The soulless are pawns of the vampyre lords. I am guessing this plot is theirs. They only needed to draw our focus away from the ice long enough for the cutter to be trapped,” Fenlorian said dispassionately. He turned his back and began to follow the worn path through the volcanic stone. The others followed, trusting their leader.

We didn’t get halfway to the vegetation line when someone spotted movement far to the right of where we were headed, about three miles down the volcanic, rocky landscape. I was already pulling my spyglass from my belt as another mage with enhanced sight spoke. “Looks like ghouls. I cannot give an accurate count. They will not come into the sun, but are moving toward our destination.” Undead were just weaker in daylight, and their bodies deteriorated quicker, but they were not helpless in the sun.

I focused my spyglass to confirm. At first, they looked like the soulless we had just killed. As I looked closer, the chainmail was rusting, their eyes were solid white, and a few had portions of their flesh hanging on their face. Fenlorian stopped our approach and looked frustrated for the first time. He faced back the way we came and then in the direction we were headed, undecided.

“We could shelter in the dungeon overnight,” Torandir offered.

I felt the need to point out a flaw in the plan. “If the dungeon is not open. Then only five can enter. We have not seen any signs of the dungeon creatures out here.” Fenlorian looked unshaken by my statement, as if he had expected someone to mention it.

“Then it is possible the undead lords are the ones who disrupted the dungeon under Sanctuary?” Baelira asked. That suddenly struck me as the actual reason why we were here.

“That is highly likely if this dungeon is undisturbed,” Lepidus added in his dry voice. “Then one or more of the undead lords gained the power to influence the dungeons, and we need to know who.”

“Who gets to enter the dungeon, if only five can enter?” One of the sailors asked. I think she was a weak water mage.

“That decision does not need to be made until we confirm that only five can enter. If any of you want to retreat to the cove, you can. It might seem defensible, but there are undead who are apt flyers.” Fenlorian said without malice. Eyes drifted to the ghouls moving through the vegetation in the distance and back to the beach we had left. Dividing the group was probably suicide. No one voiced their intent to leave the group. “We will make haste to the dungeon,” Fenlorian said, breaking into a jog. The others followed.

How did I get myself into these things?

11 Left.      On board: Lepidus, Baelira, Eryk, Bharok, Fenlorian, Torandir + 1 council, +4 sailors (did I change this to 10?) (2 sailors went for help….return in 10-12 hours at night)

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