The Army of the Dead
In truth, Karem wasn't all that worried.
The undead throng packing the pure white horizon couldn't even scale the walls of Present. What chance did an army pouring over the mountains stand of taking Afterglow Fortress?
By modern standards the fortress was tall enough to make any ordinary building look like a toy. And those "buildings" stood in layer after layer, sealing the entire ridgeline shut.
By any common sense, it was impossible.
Gordon clapped Karem on the shoulder just as the climb up the fortress stairs nearly finished him off.
"Huuuuuh— wh-what is it? Haaaah—"
"Look over there."
"Hoooooh. Yeah? Oh—"
Saying something was impossible by common sense simply meant that uncommon methods could make it possible.
Still gasping, Karem's mouth fell open without thinking.
An impossible army was slowly drawing near.
Thud— thud— thud— thud—
Mammoths so rotten their bones showed through. Lindblums whose torn membranes and hides dangled loosely. Wyverns that could no longer fly, propping themselves on their wings as they crawled closer. Trolls and ogres dragging their arms along the ground, shedding bone and flesh with every step.
Between the great undead that shook the earth, humans, animals, and monsters advanced toward the fortress with an eerie, absolute indifference to everything around them—focused solely on their destination.
"What the hell—"
"...Is spacing out going to fix anything? Snap out of it already! Hey, take us to the command post right now!"
Catherine's bark dragged the dazed party back to their senses. The servant, face white as paper, hurried them toward the command room at her urging.
"Trolls and ogres I can accept, but mammoths, lindblums, and wyverns. Everything I can see right now. Hah. They really scraped together quite the variety."
"Makes Fungusby and Narke look like children's games."
"Narke? Whoever that was, if those big ones start piling up hills of themselves, things are going to get ugly."
"Hills? Ah—"
Catherine's words dragged a half-forgotten memory from the back of Karem's mind.
High walls and towering buildings everyone had believed safe. And the frenzied things stacking their own bodies into towers to climb over them.
They were only dim memories of games and movies now, yet the images were clear enough to send a chill down his spine.
"Could you not say creepy things like that, please?"
"I'm being serious. How do you think that corpse army plans to take this fortress? You don't actually believe they'll smash it down with raw force, do you?"
"Normally it'd be an inside job... ah."
Gordon remembered the scream they had heard earlier from Catherine's room.
At the head of the party, following the servant, Catherine snapped her fingers.
"Right. We've already handed out holy water and that—"
The thought of the substitute still left a sour taste; she shook her head.
"—soybean garum stew to every soldier in the fortress. Any undead or demonkin among them should already have been dealt with."
"Yes. The third one was the last, apparently."
"The third? When did you even ask?"
"Mary overheard it from outside the door. Right?"
Mary nodded silently.
"Whether it was undead or that demonkin who used to be Rowan, I don't know."
"By the way, kid."
"Yes."
"You have plenty of that soybean garum left?"
Karem tilted his head, roughly estimating how much doenjang had remained in the barrel before he handed the kitchen over wholesale.
"Uh... well. At least a few hundred servings, I'd say."
"Then we can dilute it with water in an emergency. Still hard to believe, even now. That stuff actually holds divine power. Enough to stand in for holy water. How? Why?"
"Beats me. When I made the meju I just offered sacrifices and prayed every day."
Nothing particularly unusual about the routine. Had anyone thought a little harder, they might have realized the gods had actually answered those prayers—an astonishing truth—but there was no time.
The moment they pushed through the snow flurry and neared the command post, a thunderous roar of welcome blasted through the door.
"What? No room in the lifts? Are the muscles on those bodies of yours just for decoration? If there's no space, haul it yourselves!"
Bang! With that final bellow, bear-sized warriors burst out of the command post as if their lives depended on it, kicking up snow as they fled.
"Soft, the lot of them these days. Always looking for the easy way. Ah, guests. Why are you standing out there? Come in."
In the center of the command room—one wall completely filled by a massive barrel—Richard stood with both hands braced on the table.
"How does it look?"
"Nothing to report yet. The fighting hasn't even started. In fact, I have questions of my own."
Richard shifted a token on the map, then looked up.
"Duchess Atanitas. Lord Stark. Unlike me, stuck here in Iceland all this time, the two of you have seen and experienced a great deal."
"Ah, Margrave? I'm flattered, but—"
"No need for empty words. Even the smallest observation will do. Tell me what you've grasped."
Richard waved them into seats.
"Well, one thing did catch my eye."
Gordon idly touched the pommel of the longsword at his hip.
"I don't see any of the fast ones. Not just those oversized undead—no ghouls or wights either."
"That's only natural in Iceland."
Richard dropped into a chair; the tokens on the table rattled.
"Winter is nearly here, and Iceland lies under the grace of the Lady of Winter. Even in spring or summer the weaker undead are diminished. In this season they can hardly show their true strength—even if some outsider raised them."
That was why lindblums and wyverns—sub-dragon species that normally became high-tier undead the moment they rose, and even took to the skies—were now crawling on the ground.
"Still, something bothers me. Every last one of them looks like a natural undead, or is clinging to the form it had just before death."
"One thing is certain, at least."
Every eye in the command room turned to Catherine.
"The one who raised that army—"
"Yes. I saw a giant, like a rock golem, raising them from a distance. He had a collaborator too—a grizzly beaver that looked like a mage or shaman—"
"Then it must be the giant. He's still terribly clumsy with the power."
Catherine stated it as plain fact.
"Bluntly put, he's a child with far too much power."
"What?"
Karem stared at her without meaning to. Mary, Gordon, and Richard did the same.
Clumsy? Leading a corpse legion of that size? A child with too much power?
"Uh, Lady Atanitas. They're bringing an army that makes Narke's squeakers and chirpers look like nothing. How can you—"
"Necromancy that handles corpses is an easy target for every kind of prejudice, but in the end it's still just one branch of magic. One school."
Boom—! Boom—!
Catherine's words broke off. The command room shook as the roar of ballistae firing like explosions rolled in from outside. Moments later came the distant, muted crunch of impacts pulverizing undead.
"A necromancer who has reached the level needed to organize an undead host of that scale would certainly be an archmage. One who spent decades—or more—perfecting the craft. Doesn't something strike you as odd?"
"Like what?"
"There isn't the slightest trace of variants or subspecies—Dullahans, Death Knights, Flesh Giants, Pretas, Narcherers, Alghouls—or any other crafted abominations."
Catherine folded her arms and tilted her head. Silken golden hair spilled over her shoulder with the motion.
"To my eyes it's nothing but a mob of zombies that happen to be numerous and rather large."
"Now that you mention it... even smaller undead packs usually drag wraiths or ghosts around with them—"
Gordon had been staring at her as if she had lost her mind, but as her words continued he began stroking his chin with a dawning look of "wait a second."
He had been so distracted by the giant monsters that became high-tier undead the moment they rose that he hadn't thought carefully. Once he did, the oddities started to add up.
"Being surrounded front and back is bad enough, but at least there's that silver lining."
"The undead swarm on Present's side is probably just an extension of the force controlling the ones beyond the mountains."
"...Hartmann reported some suspicious undead mana stones to me. Don't tell me—"
"Yes. Likely the aftereffects of whatever that necromancer giant did... hm?"
Catherine nodded, then suddenly snapped her head to the side.
"Lady Atanitas? Why did you—"
"...This is worse than I thought."
"What?"
Without giving anyone time to answer, Catherine shoved off from the table and strode out of the command room. A startled Karem and the others followed a beat later, Richard with them.
Thud—! KRA-KOOM! Boom! Fwoooosh! Whiiiiish—!
While every siege engine on the fortress hurled ballista bolts, chunks of ice, and flaming stone at the undead army that ignored the damage and kept coming, Catherine fixed her gaze on the center of that host.
"Lady Atanitas! What on earth—"
"The real threat was someone else entirely!"
She snatched the staff floating beside her and gripped it with both hands.
The instant the staff struck the floor, the amber at its tip blazed with light.
Thrum—
Centered on the staff, the snow blanketing the ground answered Catherine's mana and began to move, etching a vast magic circle like a mystery diagram across the earth.
"Atanitas! What in the world are you—"
"There's someone on their side on the same level as me."
"What?"
Snowflakes drifting down from the sky neared the circle, resonated with Catherine's mana, and rose again, floating gently alongside the golden hair that lifted into the air around her.
As distinct mana gathered around the glowing amber, the ambient mana of Afterglow Fortress and its surroundings synchronized with the circle that had begun to radiate a sharp chill.
Gooooooooh—
An unnaturally powerful roar of wind suddenly howled overhead, yet Karem felt no pressure at all. Same as before.
Even ordinary people like Karem noticed it now. How could they not, when an eerie sound thundered above their heads and faintly luminous mana particles—visible even to untrained eyes—began to swirl around Catherine?
Mana users like Gordon saw far more.
Mana that had existed in its natural state was colliding.
Crackle— screeeech— grrrrrrrrr—
Two colossal wills locked in an invisible battle high above the battlefield, each fighting to seize control of the mana that blanketed the field.
"Hah. Never thought I'd get to watch another archmages' contest for dominance right here."
"Contest for dominance?"
"Yeah. Ah, you won't be able to see it."
Gordon shook his head at Karem's questioning look and stared upward.
In the midst of the unnatural gale and the sounds of rupture, the two masters of mana refused to yield an inch of control, each seizing the mana with their influence and tearing the sky apart.
At the heart of the undead host beyond the mountains.
Tap—
The giant who had been driving the army relentlessly toward the fortress of gravestones, indifferent to every wound they took, turned his head.
—Chieftain. Did you not say you were preparing magic? What are you doing?
There, a gaunt grizzly beaver whose blood had soaked the snow around it was squeaking frantically, shaking the trophies hung about its body while rapping its staff against the ground.
Beep! Biiip! Kikikikik—beep!
—...That is unexpected.
An archmage could halt an army single-handedly; unless something extraordinary intervened, nothing short of another archmage-level force could stop one.
And the grizzly beaver chieftain snarled the news at the giant.
There was an archmage at the fortress of gravestones.
—Then you are effectively neutralized.
Looking up at the razor-sharp mana that savaged and shredded one another, the giant shook his head.
Unexpected, yes—but it did not matter.
What mattered most were the collaborators inside.
Some might already have been exposed, he would not claim otherwise, yet with battle only moments away there would be no time to sort them out and summon priests. He doubted anyone would even think of it.
—You can still send the signal, yes?
Squeeeak—!
—Then begin at once.
The trembling grizzly beaver tore the wolf skull from its head, hurled it to the ground, seized its staff again, and focused.
Hwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak—!!!!
A scream like the wail of the damned vibrated from the center of the host all the way to the fortress.
It was the signal for the traitors within.
But no collaborator remained to answer it.