The Zombie Knight

Banda was sick and tired of this shit. This was supposed to be an easy job. Simple reconnaissance. Go in with Invisibility, report back on what they found. All the men that Roy had foisted upon him? An unnecessary precaution, Banda had said. They'd only slow him down anyway, Banda had said. If anything, they'd just make the job more difficult, Banda had said.

And lo-and-fucking-behold, the situation had now devolved into a total clusterfuck.

Given the man's age, that would probably be bad enough to deal with on its own, but considering what happened with Bloodeye's weird transforming powers, Hector had to expect some kind of nasty surprise with this guy, too.

An enormous smokescreen filled the area around Banda, a tactic that the man probably didn't realize would not help him against the Scarf of Amordiin. Hector could still sense the man's location within it just fine.

So Hector riddled him with holes. Or tried to, at least. They didn't entirely take, instead getting stuck partway through his body and oozing out molten iron like blood.

Still, that had probably surprised him. And perhaps Banda learned a lesson from it, too, because he vanished into his own smoke. Becoming his own smoke, Hector realized. Just like he had watched Xuan Sebolt do with the power of pan-rozum.

Only three of Banda's men were still moving, the rest having been caught by Pauline. They were going after the golems and getting quite close. Hector had no way of knowing who they were or how dangerously their abilities might be, but it didn't entirely matter, because the golems still shredded one of them to pieces before being brought down.

And by then, the golem that Banda had destroyed was already regrown and revving up more molten cubes. He started regenerating the downed two, in new locations this time, spread farther out.

All things considered, Hector didn't mind this state of affairs too much. Banda was definitely going to be a problem, but they'd whittled his forces down from twenty-seven to three, including Banda himself. And the bastards were stuck playing a deadly game of whack-a-mole that was clearly not in their favor.

Banda just stood there, staring, as did all his men.

A part of Hector wanted to walk out there and ask them what they were thinking, maybe try to add to the intimidation factor by showing up in person. But no. This was fine. The longer they waited, the more time Abbas would have to get here.

Then everything happened very quickly.

A glob of something hawked up through Banda's throat, and the man spat it out at the nearest golem with the force of a cannon. The flaming phlegm hit dead on and melted through the iron as if it were butter, but Hector still managed to launch three of the orbiting cubes from before the golem collapsed.

And from the other two, Hector launched everything at once, riddling the enemy group full of explosive holes.

The field instantly erupted into chaos. The thirteen enemy combatants scattered--or tried to, until half or more of them suddenly stopped moving. Frozen in place my a psychic assault from Pauline, as expected.

Hector was locked on the aberration, though. Banda had been shielding them with his body, but after that first barrage, the man had abandoned the effort, perhaps deciding that the Invisibility was not worth it since it clearly had not worked as intended.

The aberration went down immediately, torn to shred just as expected. And the Invisibility shattered.

Still, however, Hector motioned for everyone behind to stay. They could join the fight at any moment now, but he didn't want them to be put at risk until it was clearly necessary. He still had two golems remaining, and he was working on remaking the third.

Hector knew from Hahl Saqqaf's intel that Banda had the power of osmium transfiguration, capable of creating highly toxic and flammable compounds.

He put an end to the "alarm" system that he'd been using with the little clumps of metal, and silence finally returned. Banda and his men took notice, pausing at the sudden change.

Hector made the three golems' heads snap-turn in unison--dematerializing then rematerializing in an instant. Little cubes full of molten iron began orbiting around their bodies, readying themselves to be launched.

Banda's group hesitated again, watching the golems for a long moment.

Perhaps Banda could tell that this wasn't an empty threat now. Even if the man didn't exactly know what he was looking at, the intent had to be quite clear, no?

Controlling the orbiting cubes at a distance was certainly more difficult than just making them orbit around his own body, but it helped that the golems were immobile. And that the cubes were small. They wouldn't pack nearly as much of a wallop as the most powerful version of this technique, but they would almost certainly be more than enough to shred through that aberration like tissue paper. And with the thinned crowd, Hector had a pretty good lock on the aberration's location.

If Banda still felt bold enough to keeping walking forward, Hector would fire off a warning shot.

And wouldn't ya know it, Banda did exactly that.

At that first step, Hector fired off a molten cube right in front of Banda's face, exploding the rocky ground a few short meters away from the man.

Banda turned toward the sight of the explosion, perhaps to assess the damage done as the cloud of dust dissipated, then looked toward the golem that had fired the shot.

Hector made the missing cube regenerate as Banda watched.

And for a long time, no one moved.

Another one of the Abolishers bolted. Banda was there again to stop them, but two more followed suit this time and managed to break away from the group. Then another two, and another three, and then they were all just scattering.

Hector blinked to himself, hardly able to believe that his plan had actually worked. He could sense them fleeing. Twenty-seven enemy combatants, all running away. Wow.

Except.

Ah.

Not all. A few were returning.

Now Hector understood. Banda had thrown the aberration over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes while trying to keep the others pinned down. He'd probably wanted the aberration to keep as many people invisible as possible before they got too far away. Hector was fairly certain about that much regarding Invisibility, at least. It had a limited range, like a bubble.

Poor Banda. He didn't realize that he was wasting his time. If the guy wasn't an infamous, mass murdering psycho, Hector might've felt a little bad for him.

Banda only managed to round up thirteen others in the end, some by force and some who simply never left his side to begin with.

Hector had to be particularly mindful of those latter ones, he felt. Those men were loyal and unaffected by his intimidation tactics.

But the numbers had been thinned. Thirteen down from twenty-seven. Not bad.

'Banda's pissed,' said Pauline.

Yeah. Hector could guess as much just from his gait. The anger and intent was clear with each decisive step the man took toward Warrenhold. They started circling around the three golems that he'd erected earlier.

Okay. Hector felt like he'd done just about all he could with intimidation alone. There was probably no scaring off this Banda motherfucker. Things were about to get real bad.

But he had had one last tactic in mind.

And since they weren't budging, Hector went ahead and made a second golem. This one, he positioned on the left, close to the aberration. Ideally placed for launch a soul-infused barrage of iron spikes, if need be. Unless the aberration was really powerful--and Hector suspected that it wasn't--that would probably be an instant kill.

The Abolishers took immediate notice of the new golem, and this time, their formation shuddered noticeably. They clumped together a little more, backing slightly away from the second guardian.

Banda, whose aerial outline Hector had made sure memorize, moved through the small crowd and pulled the aberration into the middle.

Hmm. Damn.

Perhaps he'd just given up a valuable opportunity. The aberration would be much harder to kill now.

Bah. He made a third golem, this time on the right.

The group of Abolishers compacted further. They had to realize that they were almost surrounded now. There was only one direction remaining. The direction opposite of Warrenhold.

C'mon, you bastards. Leave. Get the fuck out of here, already.

Hector honestly didn't know if he would be able to win this fight. Conventional wisdom suggested that he stood no chance against someone as old as Banda, but at the same time, he felt like it wouldn't be impossible, either.

And perhaps that dangerous thinking. Perhaps that was the psychological problem of emergence that Garovel had told him about. The slow build up expectation reduced stress and therefore the likelihood of emergence.

Hector tried to remind himself that he had to be exceptionally careful here. His reputation was built on a mountain of lies and half-truths. If he started buying into it himself, that would very likely spell the end of everything.

Were they still hoping that they hadn't been detected? Hector couldn't sense any of their mouths moving, and Pauline wasn't telling him anything new, so they probably weren't talking to each others.

Hmm.

Hector still had some room left with his volume limit. He could probably make another golem. Maybe even two or three more.

He decided to text Pauline again, first.

can u tell me which 1 is the aberration?

Normally, he would've just been able to rely on Garovel for picking aberrations out of a crowd, but that couldn't be done against Invisibility, which rendered them entirely undetectable to reapers.

Hector couldn't recall if he'd ever talked to either Pauline or her father about aberrations before, though. There was a fair chance that she wouldn't have any idea what he was talking about.

'The one on the far left,' she said. 'Can you sense him?'

Ah. Well, that was a relief.

The one on the far left, huh? The Scarf of Amordiin was describing a lanky figure with fluttering hair and a long knife in one hand.

Truth be told, Hector still wasn't entirely sure how Invisibility worked. Did the "shadow" of aberrations like this function in the same way that it did for others? Could they still wield it as a weapon? If so, then what was the point of that knife, then?

Regardless, the aberration was the easiest pressure point. If this turned into a fight, he would want to eliminate the Invisibility as quickly as possible in order to help everyone else see the enemy, too.

He still didn't want to strike the first blow yet, though. The ideal scenario here was to make them retreat.

If he could make them believe that an iron puppet really was moving autonomously, as part of some incredibly elaborate reactive trap system, then that might just scare the living crap out of these motherfuckers. And theoretically, he'd be able to launch attacks with it, too, if necessary.

He materialized the puppet right in front of them, wanting its appearance to be obvious. For its design, he didn't have long to dwell on it, so he just based it on something he'd seen once before. A rock golem from the Undercrust. The one that he'd seen fighting a feldeath in Himmekel.

This iron golem wasn't nearly so huge, though. He made about twice the height of an average person, feeling that was more than enough. And he gave it molten globes for eyes, too, so that it would have a glowing, menacing stare.

All in all, it was just a big lump of iron, one that happened to look humanoid, if rather bulky and too tall.

Hector held his breath as he waited for Abolish's reaction. If they realized that it was essentially nothing more than a scarecrow, then this was going to get very messy very quickly.

Hector could sense Roman and the others moving up behind him, all carrying Amir-9s with them. He held a hand without turning around, wanting them to wait. They all seemed to understand.

The Abolishers, meanwhile, still weren't moving. Hector could sense that all their heads were pointed straight at the golem, watching it intently as they were perhaps wondered if it was about to attack them. But they weren't taking the initiative. They weren't attacking it first or backing off, either.

This was good. And also not.

Hector liked knowing that these guys weren'timpervious to fear-based tactics, but at the same time, it seemed like Banda Toro was going to make things difficult.

Hector could scare the hell out of them all day long, but if Banda was there to call his bluff every time, then what difference would it make? Eventually, the rest of them would catch on.

Unless Hector made good on some of this fear.

And perhaps he could do that.

They still didn't know that he could sense them. They didn't even realize that he was up here aboveground. And as Pauline had mentioned, they were worried about a "reactive dust beacon."

To Hector's mind, that could only be something like what he had seen from Leo in the Undercrust. A material that had been imbued with a reaction state. These Abolishers were scared that they had triggered some sort of reaction-state-based alarm system.

Obviously, he didn't know how to use reaction states, as they were an incredibly advanced materialization technique, but these intruders didn't know that. So what if he took that a step further, then?

Couldn't he create some pretty wild shit and disguise it as being part of a reaction state?

He could use the enemy's own battlefield expertise against them.

All those thoughts raced back and forth across multiple processes in his head, and Hector arrived quite quickly at the conclusion that, yeah, he liked that idea. It certainly sounded better than waiting around for them to make the next move.

He'd never had cause to create anything like an iron puppet before. From a purely practical standpoint, it just never made much sense. Anything that the puppet would do, he'd have to think quite hard about in order to accomplish via the rules of materialization in order to give the appearance that it was actually moving autonomously. In normal combat, it was far more efficient to simply launch attacks himself.

This was clearly not normal combat, however.

Better not to kick this hornet's nest unless he absolutely had to. If there was a chance that they could avoid a fight here altogether, then Hector needed to take it.

And to that end, he went with his countdown strategy. He materialized tiny clumps of iron in a wide radius around the Abolishers, letting them fall down and make more noise. He made sure to add little iron platforms below them as well, just to guarantee that the noise was crisp and loud. Wouldn't do if the clumps fell quietly into the dirt or one of Warrenhold's few patches of grass.

It was definitely catching their attention.

The clear, little tinks of metal moved around the group clockwise, drawing their looks each time. And once it made a full revolution, Hector added a second tink to each beat. Then a third. And a fourth.

The shift in their body language was obvious. Many of them were trembling as their heads darted to and fro.

They weren't doing anything about it yet, though.

That was fine. He could keep adding more, keep ramping up the noise. Garovel and the others had no doubt sent word to Abbas already. He might've had the numerical and age disadvantage, but a waiting game was in Hector's favor.

At length, however, after the tenth or so iteration, one of the Abolishers broke formation and bounded away from the group.

He was caught immediately and pinned against the ground by a lanky figure, the one who'd previously been at the front of the party. Was that Banda, Hector wondered?

Judging from the figure's mouth movements, more words were being exchanged, but Hector of course couldn't make out what was being said.

'You've successfully freaked 'em out,' said Pauline. 'Banda is threatening the one that tried to run away.'

They were taking their sweet time before resuming their trek toward the decoy castle.

Hmm. Hector wondered if he might be able to make them paranoid enough to turn around and leave. That was supposed to be an issue with older servants, right? Paranoia.

What was the most unnerving thing he could think of?

Maybe a countdown. A sound like a ticking alarm clock, starting off slow and then getting progressively faster and faster. If they heard that shit, how would these guys react? They were still just standing there, waiting. Ah, no, he could sense their mouths moving, too, as they whispered to each other.

Before he could even ask the question of her, Pauline told him what they were saying.

'They're discussing whether or not they should abort their mission.'

Wait, what? Seriously? Just because of a tiny clattering of metal that they'd just heard?

'They're worried they might have sprung some sort of trap. A tripwire alarm. Or a... a "reactive dust beacon." What the heck does that mean?'

Mm. Hector actually had a pretty good idea what that was, but this wasn't the time to explain it to her. He texted her one more time.

r they saying nything that confirms they r abolish?

'Oh. Uh... no, I don't think so. One of them just called the guy at the front "Banda," though. Does that help?'

It definitely did, and Hector's eyes widened. Banda Toro, the Raptor of Kortan, was one of Bloodeye's top men.

Shit.

Well, that was one problem solved. He almost preferred being uncertain, though.

If Bloodeye himself was 133 years old, then Hector guessed that his top guys would have to be pushing seventy, at least.

No one here at Warrenhold right now was that old. Nere Blackburn might've been the closest. Hector was fairly sure that she was somewhere around fifty. Maybe.

The trespassers were still coming closer. Hector knew he'd have to make a decision sooner rather than later. Were they hostile? Were they not? If he gave them a chance to explain what they were doing here, he'd be giving up the element of surprise, which could lose him the fight. And by extension, all of Warrenhold. And all of Atreya. And Lorent, too, for that matter.

Yeah. Those stakes were a little too high.

Abolish or not, if these people didn't have ill intentions, then they shouldn't have been trying to sneak up on him like this.

Hector inched a bit closer without coming out from behind the last iron wall that stood in between himself and them. Technically, there was one more wall but it wasn't iron. It was Warrenhold's original wall, the old and dilapidated one made out of crumbling stone. In fact, once they passed that broken wall, they would officially be too close, Hector decided.

He put a few iron cubes into orbit around himself as he waited for them to cross that arbitrary line. He removed the Amir-10 from his back and fitted it over his left forearm.

It was a bit of a pain to carry the thing around with him all the time since he couldn't materialize it like he could with the Amir-9, but hopefully, he'd get used to having it there.

The first of the trespassers crossed the broken wall, Hector sensed.

Hmm.

Maybe he could test these fuckers before going all out. See how they reacted to a sudden noise behind them. A small clattering of iron pebbles.

Ah. The sound made them all stop and turn to look. The iron was already dematerialized, though. Nothing to see over there, guys.

They didn't immediately attack the noise, at least. That was something. Not much, but something. It meant they were calm. Not jumpy.

Experienced, most likely.

Hmm. Well, even if she only got some of them, it would certainly help to thin their numbers out.

He didn't want to risk responding to her vocally, so he texted her instead.

how many can u get?

'Mmmmm... dunno,' she said. 'Hard to say. Odds are, some of them will be naturally resistant or even immune. And the more I freeze at once, the weaker the effect becomes. Soooo... if I had to guess, then I'd say, maybe... somewhere between ten and twenty?'

Holy fuck.

It was a risk, of course. If they became aware of her presence, that could create all sorts of problems. Hector didn't know Abolish's exact policy regarding Sparrows, but Hanton had belabored the general point enough for him to worry about what might happen if word of a Sparrow's nest in Atreya got out into the broader world.

If he allowed Pauline to get involved directly, he would be playing with fire.

But then again, Abolish was on his fucking doorstep. Probably. Technically, there was still a slight chance that these trespassers weren't with Abolish, in which case a lot of people might get hurt for no reason.

Agh.

He supposed he shouldn't play the Sparrow card just yet. He texted her his response.

only do it if they atk me

'Mm, okie dokie.'

In the heat of battle, it would be easier for her to conceal her abilities, Hector felt. Hell, the enemy might even think that he was the one doing it. Human psychics were a thing, too.

Wait, they were? Where had he learned that from?

Eh, didn't matter now.

Hector sensed someone behind him, coming up through the Entry Tower. Was that Joana? He wasn't familiar enough with her spatial outline to tell for certain just by the Scarf alone, but it seemed like her. She had a few others behind her, too. Oh, hey, that was Roman there.

Good.

They were being cautious. They didn't know what to expect.

Hmm. What to do here...?

In all likelihood, this was just a scouting party, maybe not even intending to attack Warrenhold and instead just trying to gather intel and report back. And with twenty-seven enemy combatants, the odds weren't exactly in his favor, either. Plus, if even one of Bloodeye's top guys was in that group, then a straight fight would probably not go well for him, Hector thought.

It might've been best to leave them alone and wait to see if they left of their own volition.

Agh. But they kept getting closer.

Obviously, he couldn't let them get inside Warrenhold and discover how empty it was. That would almost assuredly invite an attack from Bloodeye himself.

But then again, maybe that would be good in its own way, countered a spare thought process. Warrenhold was the most defensible position, after all. If Bloodeye was busy attacking Warrenhold, then he couldn't attack random, helpless citizens in Lorent.

Would it really be that simple, though? And what if these motherfuckers got inside Warrenhold and just started attacking shit instead of leaving to report back?

No.

Definitely couldn't take that risk.

Had to do something about them now. He put a few cubes into orbit around himself as he deliberated. Thanks to the decoy castle, he was already near his volume limit in this area, so if he wanted to do something huge, he'd have to annihilate some of it first. Perhaps small, sneaky attacks would be better here. At least until the enemy knew where he was.

'I could freeze them in their tracks, if you want,' came Pauline's voice again.

That was true, he supposed. Sparrows did have that power, didn't they? Could she really do that to all of them, though?

He reached the bottom of the Entry Tower and blitzed up the stairs, glad to see that every floor was already empty of people. It took a while to reach the top, and he probably could have been moving faster with creative use of materialization, but he wanted to be able to sense everything ahead of him beforehand.

Once he reached the big double doors that led out onto the surface, he stopped. They were still closed, but he didn't need to open them. They weren't airtight, so the Scarf could sense what was on other side just fine.

The area immediately around the entrance seemed to be clear. He concentrated, trying to sense as far away as possible.

Still nothing.

Hmm.

He decided to text Pauline again.

how close r they?

Her response was fast, as usual.

About a hundred meters or so.

Oh. That was pretty far. And with the decoy iron castle up there, he could probably exit the Entry Tower just fine without being detected.

He opened the doors and stepped out, pouring all of his focus into the Scarf. The wind wasn't all that strong, but it helped a little. He could sense the full shape of the decoy castle, small as it was. No one was that close by yet.

'They're east of your position,' came Pauline's telepathic voice.

Ah. She no longer felt the need to text, huh? Hector searched for her with the Scarf and soon found her. She was indeed in her roost, just as she'd said.

That was helpful. She might actually prove invaluable in this situation, Hector thought. Hell, she kinda already had.

He moved east as she said.

When he neared the edge of decoy castle, he began to sense it. A small crowd in the distance, just standing there.

No, wait. Some of them were inching closer.

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