The last half-kilometer to the tower was empty.
Lunaris stopped herself; that was the wrong word. Emptiness was neutral. This was… vacated. The miasma here was so thick it had color, a faint greenish-gray tint that hung in the air like fog that had forgotten how to move. The ground underneath was the color of old bone, powdery, and nothing moved on it.
“They’ve cleared it,” Fty said quietly. “On purpose. Nothing wild gets this close to the tower. Veranthos doesn’t want competition for his organized forces.”
“Or,” Lisa said, “he doesn’t want the wild ones to see what he’s feeding the organized ones.”
Ian made a face.
The tower stood above them now, needle-dark against the gray sky, and the wall around its base ran along the contour of the mountain’s shoulder. Thirty feet of stone, with a gate in its southern face; wood, reinforced with bone, open a meter or so, just wide enough to offer an invitation that was really a funnel.
Figures moved on the wall.
Lunaris counted without meaning to. Twelve, fifteen, twenty. Maybe more behind the crenellations. Armor, weapons. Players. Real ones; the tags flickered above them as the party came within range, and she saw levels she didn’t want to be seeing.
Lv. 31. Lv. 33. Lv. 36. Lv. 28. Lv. 39—
That one was at the gate.
He stepped out as they approached. Walked forward to the foot of the wall and stopped there, and every other player on the wall mirrored his pause.
Big. Armored. The player who’d specced into heavy plate because he liked how it sounded when he walked. His helmet was off, slung at his hip.
[Korven the Unburied Lv.39]Guild: The NecromancersClass: ??
He looked at Lunaris.
He didn’t look at Toxica.
“You’re not welcome here,” he said. His voice was flat.
Lunaris stopped at a distance she hoped was respectful, far enough that neither side could pretend to be drawing. She kept her hands visible. The mantle settled around her shoulders. “Korven,” she said. “I’m Lunaris. I represent the Kingdom of Rimebreak. This territory falls within our borders, and we’ve come to—”
“I know who you are.” His voice was steady and very bored. “Cave girl. Queen’s pet. We’ve been watching you since you landed.”
Lunaris pushed forward. “We came in good faith to—”
“Good faith.” He almost smiled. Almost. “Lunaris. Listen to me. You’re not here as a neighbor. You’re here as the current leaders of Altandai, and that makes us enemies. We took this tower because it was empty. You claimed a border on a map. Those aren’t the same thing.”
“We’re offering integration. Full guild—”
“I know corpos like yours.” He shook his head. “I’ve heard this speech. Every big guild does it. They come to a small outfit, they promise land rights, compensation, ‘full guild status within the kingdom’s structure,’”—he quoted the phrase—“and then six months later they walk over whoever didn’t fall in line fast enough. Because smaller fries are always expendable when the numbers don’t work.”
“We’re different,“ Lunaris said, and she heard how it sounded coming out of her mouth.
Korven shook his head again.
“No,” he said. “You’re not. And no, we won’t be joining.”
Behind him, the players on the wall shifted, a weight-shift, a posture-shift as if on purpose.
“Also,” Korven added, “Toxica’s logged out; you’ve been carrying her Rimelion body for twenty minutes. And she has been posting from the moment she logged off. Our Earth channel’s been lit for twenty minutes. Half the guild’s got a meme folder named after your queen. So whatever pitch you were going to finish—it’s not going to land.”
“Fine,” Lunaris said. She kept her voice level. She was proud of that, distantly, later, in some part of herself that was still taking notes. “Fine. If you won’t negotiate, I’ll go back to Altandai. I’ll report. We’ll handle this through channels that don’t involve either of us dying on this wall.”
“You can go.”
“Thank you.”
“After you leave your gear here.”
She blinked. “What.”
Korven’s face didn’t change.
“Your weapons, your armor, your mantle, the potions, whatever you’re hauling. It all stays. Call it a loot drop. Call it an apology.” His eyes finally moved past her, to Poundcake, to the bound body of a woman on the ground at Poundcake’s feet. “Call it payment, if you want. You killed Gravesworth and hurt Toxica. That’s two of mine headed to respawn because of your little expedition. The gear covers the cost.”
“I’m not giving you my mantle,” Lunaris said.
“Then you’re not leaving.”
Lunaris’s hand found her rapier grip without her permission. She took it off again, slowly. Made sure he saw her do it.
“Korven—”
Something moved on the wall.
Behind the players, above them, behind the crenellations, rising from inside the courtyard were rising skeletons.
[Armored Skeleton Warrior Lv.30][Armored Skeleton Warrior Lv.30][Armored Skeleton Warrior Lv.30]…
Lunaris stopped counting.
And behind the skeletons, climbing into view along the wall like someone was hoisting them up from the courtyard in some obscene elevator, came the Death Knights.
Black plate. Greatswords. Half-helms. Violet eye-sockets burning steady and ancient.
She counted those, because she had to.
One. Two. Four. Seven.
Ten.
At least ten.
Each one of them a copy of the thing she had barely—barely—put down in the cave with Poundcake pinning its arm, with Paradox Slash perfectly timed, with everything she had.
The party behind her went very still.
Ian’s hand found hers. She let him take it. She didn’t look away from Korven.
Korven hadn’t moved.
His hand was on the hilt of a greatsword slung at his back. His helmet was still at his hip. His face had not changed.
But his eyes had.
The wall of undead stood at his back in silence.
Korven’s hand tightened on his sword.
“You will pay,” he said, “for humiliating my girlfriend and hauling her like a sack of potatoes.”
Lunaris opened her mouth.
Poundcake cut her off.
“Go.” He pressed something into her palm. A rolling pin, worn smooth, the wood warm from his belt.
“Our Queen gifted me a pastry,” he said, and his voice was loud again, pitched for the wall to hear. “It should not be wasted. The dough rises when the oven is true. Take the loaf home, small baker.”
Then, under his breath, so close to her ear it barely disturbed the air: “Leave the woman. She’s his. Six minutes. Don’t come back.”
“ENOUGH STALLING!” Korven’s voice carried across the dead field. “Drop the gear or we'll come down!”
Lunaris’s brain did the math faster than she wanted it to. Every option ended with her team dead on this grass, in front of a tower they couldn’t take, for reasons that wouldn’t survive a report back to Charlie. Every option except this one.
She nodded.
Once.
“RETREAT!” she yelled, and her voice didn’t shake.
Lisa’s head snapped around. Fty’s eyes moved from her to Poundcake and back again, and she watched him register what was happening in real time, watched his jaw set, watched him not argue because arguing would waste seconds they didn’t have.
“Thank you,” Lunaris said to Poundcake, and she meant it, and her voice broke on the second word but didn’t stop. “Thank you.”
“Tend the oven, leader. Now move.”
“NOW!” Lunaris shouted. “Back to the ridge! MOVE!”
They moved.
Ian grabbed her elbow and dragged her half a step before she remembered her legs. Lisa was already past them, fire curling at her hands for cover. Fty fell in at the rear, ward contracting around the four of them, leaving Poundcake standing alone in the open field with Toxica slumped at his feet.
“WAIT—” Korven’s voice cracked across the open ground. “DID YOU JUST—”
Whatever else he said was lost to the wind.
Lunaris didn’t look back. She made herself not look back. She ran with a rolling pin in her left hand and a rapier in her right, and the mantle flared behind her, and she did not look back, because if she looked back, she would turn around.
“Luna—” Ian started.
“Don’t.”
“Luna, we can’t just—”
“We can. He told us to. Run.”
They ran.
—
Poundcake watched them clear the ridge.
Four silhouettes cresting the dead grass, one of them dragging the smallest one forward—Ian with his hand on Lunaris’s elbow, pulling her through the grief before she could sit down in it. Lisa at the back, turning once, fired a scattered volley of fireballs in a wide arc that hit nothing.
Fty didn’t turn. Fty understood.
Good.
Poundcake exhaled.
He had approximately ninety seconds before Korven’s patience ran out. He reached for one of the few items in his inventory.
The vial was warm. Everything Charlie gave him was warm; he had never understood why and had decided to stop asking.
He read the notification one last time because it seemed disrespectful not to.
[Burning Disguised Desire]Quality: 8-mythicEffect: The Goddess of Exploits grants you 7 temporary levels. Combined with 3 of your own, the bearer burns all 10 to multiply their stats fourfold for 10 minutes and is immune to conditions. Upon expiration, 3 levels are permanently lost.Info: Made by Queen Charlie and Scamantha™ — the one your alchemist told you not to worry about. Created by combining a fragment of the Apple of Gatei with two potions Her Majesty discovered held secret synergy. The use of this item is under review and may be restricted in future patches.
Permanently lost, Poundcake thought, and almost smiled.
There was a mathematics here that Charlie had understood when she handed it to him, and had understood again when she did not ask him to share it with the others.
She had known he would be the one to use it. She had known he would be the one who wouldn’t come back to worry about the three levels.
He had known, too. He had accepted the vial with both hands and bowed, and she had nodded, and neither of them had put words to it because words would have made it a promise and it had only ever been a willingness.
Good queen, Poundcake thought. Good soldier.
He drank.
The potion went down like a sunrise. Four times, he thought.
Of everything.
[Miasma field negated by Burning Disguised Desire]
On the wall, Korven had stopped yelling. Korven was staring. Korven had finally realized that the baker was still in the field.
Poundcake set his feet.
He looked up at the wall. At the twenty players. At the ten Death Knights. At the skeletons still emerging from the courtyard behind them, and at Korven, who had his greatsword half-drawn and was trying to decide whether to come down alone or send the army first.
He will send the army, Poundcake thought. He is that kind of commander.
Good.
Poundcake pulled his sleeves up past his elbows.
He reached, internally, for a skill he had not yet used. The skill activation notification bloomed across his vision.
[The Final Firing]Type: 7-legendaryEffect: Consecrates a 30m radius around the caster as a sealed kiln. All ranged attacks originating outside the zone can dissipate upon entry by using mana. All hostile entities within the zone can be compelled toward the caster with irresistible force by using mana. Within the zone, the caster’s perception, and combat focus are massively amplified. The caster may not voluntarily leave.Duration: 10 minutes, or reaching 0 mana.Cooldown: 168hInfo: None leave until the baker is done.
The surrounding ground turned to brick. One heartbeat the dead grass was dead grass; the next, it was fired hearthstone, dark red, ancient, radiating a low orange glow along the seams.
The wall of the keep was maybe forty meters away.
The kiln’s edge was thirty.
Close enough.
“FIRE!” Korven roared.
The wall lit up. A dozen archers, a half-dozen casters, a storm of arrows and lances of dark energy and one half-formed summoning that was probably meant to be impressive; all of it arcing toward the single figure standing in the middle of a field of brick.
None of it reached him.
The arrows dissolved into ash at the kiln’s edge. The spells unraveled into their component motes and drifted away on a wind that smelled faintly of yeast. The summoning never finished; whatever dark energy was feeding it was cut off at the ankle the moment it crossed into the zone.
Poundcake breathed out.
The skeletons came next. Korven sent them first because Korven was not, actually, stupid; he understood what he was looking at, at least in part, and he sent the expendable dead against the unknown skill to see what it did.
They came at him in a ragged wedge. Thirty, forty, the courtyard’s full garrison pouring through the gate and across the kiln’s threshold.
Once inside, they accelerated. The compulsion caught them the way his Proving caught wild undead, but larger, hungrier, an appetite rather than a pull, and they ran at him with the helpless enthusiasm of iron filings meeting a magnet.
Poundcake met the first one with his palm.
The skeleton’s skull came apart like old pottery.
He was moving before the bones hit the brick, the rhythm coming back to him from a long way down, his body remembering what his monastery had spent two years teaching him to forget. Palm strike. Redirect. Break. Step, pivot, break.
Three skeletons. Six. Nine.
He did not count. The system counted for him, notifications pinging in his periphery like a kitchen timer he had stopped listening to.
[Skeleton Warrior Lv.30 defeated][Skeleton Warrior Lv.30 defeated][Skeleton Warrior Lv.30 defeated][Skeleton Warrior Lv.30 defeated]...
Players came next.
Korven had realized by now that the skeletons were feeding him rather than stopping him, and he had switched tactics. Three of his mid-tier damage dealers vaulted the wall, landed in the kiln, and were inside the compulsion before their boots touched the brick.
Poundcake felt them enter. He felt every hostile entity that crossed the threshold, a small tug in his chest that told him if he wanted to spend mana, where they were and how fast they were moving, and, crucially, how much they weighed.
The first player swung a sword at his head.
Poundcake caught the blade.
With his hand.
Four times everything, he thought, with something almost like wonder, and then he closed his fingers, yanked, and the sword flew out of his hand.
The player had no time to look surprised.
Poundcake hit him in the sternum, and something structural in the man’s torso gave up, and the player crumpled onto the brick and did not stand up again.
[Player “Grimshade” defeated.]
He kept moving.
They kept coming.
He did not think about this. Thinking would have cost him time, and time was the only currency he had left, and he was spending it on the only purchase that mattered. Somewhere on the other side of the ridge, four people were running through dead grass, and every second he kept this kiln lit was a second they moved further from it.
Fourteen skeletons. Twenty. The skeletons had stopped coming only because the skeletons had run out.
Six players. Seven. Eight.
He ignored it.
A ninth player, a caster, a woman with a staff he recognized from somewhere, although the recognition was too far away to reach, tried to cast from inside the kiln.
Her spell came apart the moment it left her staff; the kiln did not distinguish between projectiles from outside and projectiles from inside, and when she realized it, she died by his hand.
[Player “Vex the Undying” defeated.][Player “Cormack” defeated.]…
Korven had stopped sending players.
Poundcake registered this and did not let himself feel it, because feeling it would mean hope, and hope was a luxury he had surrendered when he drank the potion.
The Death Knights descended.
All ten of them.
They came over the wall in a line, heavy plate hitting the brick with ten synchronized impacts, greatswords drawn, violet eyes burning steady, and Poundcake felt the kiln’s compulsion slide off them like water off oil, he had to use more mana than usual.
Ten, Poundcake thought. Ten greatswords at this tier, coordinated, against a single Hearthkeeper at four times his stats.
Survivable for maybe ninety seconds. Maybe two minutes if he was generous.
The first Death Knight reached him.
Poundcake went to work.
He gave up offense immediately; ten against one at this tier was not a fight, it was erosion, and he had been trained for erosion. He dropped into a defensive form, weight low, palms open, and let the first greatsword pass by his shoulder at a cost of a handspan of skin. He redirected the second into the third. He took the fourth across the ribs because there was no stopping it, and the regeneration from the kiln knitted the wound before the blood finished leaving him, and he pivoted and the fifth went past his ear.
[Death Knight Lv.42 defeated.]
He killed one of them.
He should not have been able to kill any. He did it anyway.
Death Knights were in a ring around him, and he was bleeding from places the regeneration could no longer keep up with, and the kiln’s light was dimming at the edges, and he had, by his reckoning, about ninety seconds left.
It would be enough.
He killed the second Death Knight with a palm strike to the back of its skull, caught the next one’s greatsword on his forearm, heard the bone go, did not care, and broke its knee with a stomp that cratered the brick beneath.
[Death Knight Lv.42 defeated.]
Poundcake was thankful his team left, because they would not be able to win, not even with Lisa. “Enough!” he heard a voice and then Korven came over the wall. The commander had been watching the fight the entire time, and the commander had finally understood that his army was not going to finish this.
He landed in the kiln at a full run.
Poundcake turned to meet him and knew, with the clean certainty of a man who had run out of everything except one last motion, that this was the one.
Korven swung.
Poundcake caught the blade on his good arm. The steel bit to the bone. He did not flinch. He stepped inside, drove his palm into Korven’s helmet, and felt the plate deform under his hand, and felt the man stagger for one full second.
One second was not enough.
Korven recovered.
Korven’s gauntlet came around in a backhand that Poundcake saw coming and did not have the speed to slip, because the potion was draining, because the kiln was dimming, because the math had finally come due.
The gauntlet caught him across the temple.
Poundcake’s knee hit the brick.
He looked up.
Korven stood over him with the greatsword raised, the commander’s face twisted, and Poundcake did not close his eyes. He met the man’s gaze. He held it.
The greatsword came down.
[You died][Attention! You lost 3 levels because of Burning Disguised Desire!][Level: 38 -> 35][Congratulations! You defeated enemies and leveled up!][Congratulations! You are now level 36!][Congratulations! You are now level 37!][Congratulations! You are now level 38!][Congratulations! You are now level 39!]