Notes : Chapter 121 has been written and added to the queue !
This finale is going to be WAY longer than I originally thought. There may be a few more chapters ahead. I was aiming for 90k words total for book 3 and afraid I'd end up with 89, instead I'm at 94k and counting.
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Chapter 120
Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley
Starfire Pass
"Report." Said Sapphiria, in her simulation, keeping half an eye on her android and the pass.
She'd been doing as much analysis of the drone recordings as she could, but Cia had just shut down non-essential operations and been helping her.
"They are gathering most of their troops for the attack. Including their heavy infantry, their 'capital ships'. Data also indicates a multiple layers defensive perimeter around the pass. Without active scans it is hard to estimate, but it appears to rely on mobile forces rather than fortifications. Cavalry, backed by heavy infantry."
"Something to pin, and something to hold. Force estimates?"
"Estimates from the colonists appear to have been either considerably optimistic, or they have received reinforcements. There are around eleven hundred troops assembling for combat. An understrenght battalion. Or...two cohorts and one maniple by their troop organization?"
Sapphiria swallowed.
"That's...twice our estimates." Counting what they had already lost.
She knew they'd have some combat power left. They wouldn't have thrown away their chaff like that otherwise. Besides which they'd already lost...seven maniples, approximately, trying to get through?
"They could have rushed the Hand with all that. Why didn't they?" She wondered aloud.
"Perhaps these troops weren't there yet?"
"If they had reinforcements scheduled- No." She slapped her forehead. "It's the necromancers. They've been bringing bodies back as they lost people. That's why they didn't throw everything at once. They didn't have twice the troops at the start."
"Why? Wasn't our information that they could mass produce undead at Convergences?"
"Maybe they have a bottleneck we don't know about. Or they were trying to keep their numbers under the radar from whatever higher authority would have intervened about the bone tyrant. We know so very little about their logistics, their manufacturing capabilities. Most of what we have is speculation." Sapphiria grimaced. "But the only thing that makes sense for now is them constantly bringing up reinforcements. If they'd had sixteen maniples to start with, plus chaff, they'd have thrown half at the Hand and overrun the pass. And it's why they've been throwing chaff at us and keeping the skeletons back after that disaster with the trebuchet. They were rebuilding their numbers."
"This is problematical. If the enemy has on-site reinforcement and production capabilities, this siege will not end until they have been destroyed."
Sapphiria grimaced.
"Yeah. We'll need to counter-attack, or at the very least eliminate those necromancers with a commando strike. There's no telling if they can find bodies nearby. Certainly enough refugees must have died trying to evacuate the Magistracy to give them some backup." They probably couldn't source more legionnaires than the remains they'd brought with them, but even that was speculation. Hell, actually... "Hold on, I need to ask Gregor something."
She fully stepped back into her android, and turned towards the old skeleton.
"Hey, Gregor, can I ask you a question?"
"It would break the monotony. The patterns on the side of the pass are mesmerizing, but they could use more color." The skeleton smiled, or gave the impression to. Where was that effect coming from? It wasn't a direct data inload like interfacing with mana crystals. "Go ahead."
"Where do the Bane get their troops? I mean, you said the old legions rose in Merian and all the soulless joined them. But what about here?"
"Well, we know they resurrect the people they kill. After that...there were reports that they had excavations going. Literally digging up the dead."
"Wouldn't you..." Sapphiria stopped.
"Exhume and incinerate our honored dead? Believe me, some have tried to push for that. But the Bane were contained. When they broke out...there wasn't enough time to really make a dent."
Sapphiria licked her lips as she got the proximity warning. Oh hell, might as well ask.
"...I was actually going to ask 'wouldn't you have resurrected all the bodies already?', you know, before you had to give up on undead labor."
"Not everyone is brought back." Said the Hand, as they came back up on the parapet. "At least not under the Empire. Hence my current presence."
"Yes." Gregor glared at the Hand. "Being brought back was voluntary. For those who could volunteer. Hands, Dominions and Emperors, really anyone above a certain rank, was forbidden to be brought back. Apparently to stockpile you all for one big comeback."
The Hand froze.
"...I would like to retort that it was to keep the Empire moving forward and avoid bogging it down with a single, immortal ruler like many other places, but I cannot dispute that what you have just said may have factored in Kallaran's thinking. Sadly we may never know."
Sapphiria blinked.
"Wait, Kallaran was your first Emperor, right? The founder of the Empire? He didn't return?"
The Hand went to the battlements, and put his hands on the crenellations.
"None of the Emperors did." He softly whispered. "There was no one to bring back. The Thronebreakers incinerated their bodies when they stormed the palace, and destroyed the Imperial crypts."
Oh.
Wait.
"Not the crusaders? Who are those thronebreakers anyway?"
The Hand gazed at Gregor.
"Have you neglected to educate her of the history of the Empire?"
"We were a bit busy trying to, you know, not die." Retorted the skeleton.
"I would be happy to fill that gap in your knowledge. But there are more pressing matters." The Hand grabbed one of their pouches, and put it down behind the crenellations. "For you, lady Sapphiria."
The AI blinked, and grabbed it, her camouflage wrapping around it. It was a short range holographic projection, hence why her guns didn't just float in the air, though it became easier to detect the further it extended.
"Thanks." She flipped the pouch open, and grabbed one of the totems. She hesitated, brought up her walls, then interfaced with it.
She winced internally as she got the pulse of data, triggering alerts, and parsed through the runes. She had gotten the very basics of Imperial runes by Kalia, and the book the mage-magistrate had on them, but she'd also been...distracted during that. Plus, she hadn't finished her compiler yet.
"A...kinetic blast of some kind?"
The Hand nodded.
"Easy to counter. But useful against non-mages. There's many other totems. Those with identical iconography are of the same spell. I did not know how proficient you were with totems, so I opted for simple, easy to use ones."
"Thanks. I appreciate it." More than they would ever realize, as she was already going through them, cataloguing the runes.
Jackpot, as they said. Ready to use, enchanted items to duplicate? Oh hell yes.
The Hand probably had no idea what they'd just handed her.
"We are allies. Even if only of circumstance, helping you will help my own cause." The Hand's snapped up, at the same time as the sensors on the tower pinged her. "But it looks like we have other concerns. TO ARMS!"
A second later, a towering horror of bones and steel surged into the pass, and rushed forward, screeching like the damned.
*****
Sapphiria shut down every non-essential system as she tasked her bots and analyzed the threat. She didn't speed up her perception of time, though it was tempting.
They'd analyzed as much of the bone tyrant footage as they could, and talked to Gregor about them. Lots of animal bones, tied together with a sort of metallic exoskeleton, like some kind of arcane, undead xenohorror.
Her artillery thundered as the snowpiercer rumbled to life, the rolling fortress following a second after.
The Bane's infantry was behind the bone tyrant. She wasn't entirely sure of it, but the state of their armor and the amount of gilding on it seemed to indicate they were sending the newly resurrected in first. That tracked for their modus operandi so far. What was interesting was the lack of zombies. Clearly they didn't want to get slowed down by them. Even during their rush attack, the rotting corpses were slower than the skeletons.
Why didn't they have skeleton chaff though? Like the horde the Hand had used.
Questions for later. She watched as the shells came back down...
Bolts of lightning rose from behind the tyrant, and both exploded.
"They have point defense. Err, a way to intercept my artillery. Mages. Two of them." She said aloud, as she pinpointed the location of the casters. Cia pinged her and showed some anomalies in the shockwave patter, and she nodded. "Energy shield on the tyrant as well."
"Leave the mages to me." Said the Hand. "And only a ward, I believe. A shield would recharge, and be more complicated. Not to mention expensive."
"That's something at least. Better take care of them quickly though. My heavy guns are our main asset for dealing with the infantry swarm."
The Hand nodded.
"Then let us begin. You may wish to step back." They opened one of their pouches, and extracted a cylinder. A cylinder made of tiles, arranged into concentric rings. Each tile was covered in runes. Sapphiria analyzed them as she retasked the artillery. Maybe she could hit the backlines and-
The rings began to spin. One by one, as if the thing was...unlocking?
The final ring, at the top, locked into place.
The Hand reached out with their skeletal arm, and screamed out an incantation.
Bones glowed, energy wrapped around them like scintillating, pulsing muscles and sinew.
Sapphiria idly noted that the mages had come to a halt, though the rest of the army advanced.
The incantation finished.
And the energy became...wrong.
Something flowed from inside the cylinder. Something twisted.
And the universe began to scream.
She saw it go through the Hand's arm, burning the energy, feeding from it, following it. Singing, like a twisted, dying melody.
Then it was launched, like a spear of an angry God.
A twisted spear of madness. Energy vomited from it. It trailed blood, then acid. Sparked embers of plasma.
And finally, as it impacted one of the mages, it was followed by the vaporized ice of a comet hurtling towards a star.
Sapphiria only realized she'd been screaming when the spear hit.
The universe warped. Twisted. Broke.
Then remade itself.
And there was one less mage.
She stepped away from the Hand, her legs shaking.
"You..." She swallowed. "You threw a fucking manastorm at them."
"A tiny spark of one. But yes." There was sadness in the Hand's voice. "But this should help you."
There were two explosions, so close together they were nearly simultaneous.
Twin geysers of dirt, bones and metal erupted in the middle of the Nineteenth Legion's elite as the shells impacted.
Sapphiria shook herself. There was no time for this.
"Yes." She managed to let out. "It will. But I hope you have more in store."
He put the cylinder down, and she realized his arm was smoking, and looked like parts of it had been...not changed.
Devoured.
Like that spark had ripped part of the bone. Just like it had devoured the energy.
Sweet merciful star, what the fuck is that thing.
But there was no time. She grabbed her gauss rifle, and shouldered it.
The Hand must have seen her moving, because a split second later, an illusion wrapped around her. It wasn't necessary, but she appreciated the thought.
She began searching. Through her armor's sensors, and the ones on the tower, plus the drone now flying above it. The Hand had said they'd handle the mages. But she was certain that the other side had plans for that.
She saw it as she heard another incantation by her side.
Three skeletons, breaking pattern.
She pulled the trigger, and three hypersonic tungsten darts screamed through the air as two distant puffs of smoke appeared behind her.
There was a flash, and the last of the point defense mages dropped, shrouded in a nimbus of sparks and what almost seemed like dissolving shards of crystal.
The other two mages hesitated. Just long enough for the Hand's spell, some kind of howling sphere of clouds, to hit the one they had been trying to protect.
The ball exploded on impact, like it was directly converted into a shockwave, and the skeleton ended up as shrapnel.
A few seconds later, the last two mages realized they really should have broken formation, as two more geysers appeared.
"There will be more." Said the Hand, as the howl of the rolling fortress' engines ended in the screeching of brakes. "Hidden throughout. Those were only the first."
Sapphiria was distracted as she sorted the direct connections to the bots, directing them as they leapt out of the vehicles.
"Perhaps. But for now, they're keeping their heads down." She didn't even look as junkbots ran up to the crenellations all around her, the machinegun teams hurrying to get their guns deployed, while the shredder bots lumbered up the stairs. "Which gives us a chance to start evening the odds." She checked the bots status, then raised her hand. "Let me show you what I brought to our little endeavor. LIGHT THEM UP!"
She brought her hand down.
And the machineguns began to sing.