Immovable Mage

– Era of the Wastes, Cycle 219, Season of the Rising Sun, Day 2 –

Edmund hurriedly checked his equipment and rushed down the stairs of the outermost watchtower. He forced himself to take a moment to recompose himself when he had arrived at the last steps. He knew from the scouts that they did not have much time, but he had to be aware of the impression he would give his subordinates.

Edmund was in command on the ground and he hated it. He did not even remember how he had ever reached his current position. He definitely did not remember volunteering. If he had known the kind of choices being in command entailed, he would have run the moment the previous officer had threatened him with his first promotion.

Revolutions, politics, and refugees.

Crime waves, being underfunded, and understaffed.

Always hard choices.

Always prioritizing.

In Edmund’s opinion, prioritizing was just a fancy way of avoiding the word sacrificing.

But what could he do? The demands placed on him were always unlimited while the resources granted to him were always limited.

Edmund hated it. All of it. But it was his job. More importantly, this city was his home. It had been the home of his parents, his grandparents, and many generations before that. The name of the city might have changed, but it was still the same place. It was the home he had grown up in and had always planned to die in.

Today, Edmund was slightly regretting those plans to die here. From the reports, the dying would happen a lot sooner than he had ever considered. No matter. This was his job. This was his home.

Edmund closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was not proud of some of the choices he had made as part of his job, but he would make the same choices again. He had always tried to choose his home above all else.

His pride, his subordinates, his private life, his orders, and even his dignity. At times, he had to sacrifice any and all of those. All for the city. All for his home. All so that the citizens could continue another day.

Edmund had lost so much of himself. He was painfully aware of it. Even so, he was at peace. He had done his best.

Today was just another day. Just one more sacrifice to be made.

Edmund straightened his back and walked confidently into the room. He could see the fear in the eyes of his subordinates. He suppressed the memories of all the guards previously lost in the line of duty. He could not afford to wallow in self-pity. The city needed them.

Edmund caught the gaze of a guard that would actually let him speak his next words sincerely. “It has been an honor serving with all of you.” It was true. True for some at least. He knew that none of his guards were perfect. A few were far from it. It did not matter. He had to prioritize. Today was bringing the point home more than ever.

“Have you seen the horde?” shrieked one guard. Edmund was dismayed at the outburst but not surprised. That human woman was included among the guards he was less than proud to work with. At the beginning of the Setting Moon, she had incited an investigation into the Flower Protector, which had been a giant waste of time and nearly soured Edmund’s relationship with the neighborhood.

Edmund knew this city guard very well. In the distant past, she had repeatedly asked for raises he simply could not afford. He knew that now she was deriving a side-income from members of the city’s unsavory underbelly. He was not a fool.

However, the woman’s intel was generally accurate even if it was one-sided and transparently feeding into the agenda of her other employers. The bias did not matter. There were other equally-corrupt city guards who acted as sources to balance the scales.

Edmund made them all believe that they were successful in their infiltration while using all of their intel to keep all of their employers down while deflecting some of the resulting heat onto the rival criminals. Their spies among the guards were watched and they would never make it to the higher ranks.

“We don’t have much time.” Edmund spoke with authority. “I have already sent orders to activate the defensive perimeter. We’ll be moving there shortly as reinforcements.”

“What?” The human woman paled. “You can’t be serious! There is no way we can win against that horde! It’s just—”

“Do you want to run?!” roared Edmund and he moved his gaze over everyone. “Leave the city that you’ve sworn to protect? Leave it to die?!”

Edmund moved his eyes towards another city guard whom he knew very well. He looked at the threads poking out of the man’s uniform. They had no funds to replace their uniforms after the change in government. They had to remove the symbol of the Bloodborne Kingdom, but it had never been replaced by something new to rally behind.

Edmund caught the gaze of the human. He knew that the man still resented him for giving the order to stay down during the uprising of the Knights of Labor and their allies against the monarchy. The man was one of many.

They had all followed Edmund’s orders to stand down. Edmund had judged it the best way to preserve the city and its citizens. The knights had mustered an impressive force and resistance would have meant incredible destruction. Few of the guards had truly felt loyal to the kingdom and fighting against their fellow citizens was not what they wanted either.

However, they had all sworn to protect the city and on paper, that had meant the government. They had given an oath to protect the Bloodborne Kingdom. While Edmund had chosen a broader interpretation of their oath, not all citizens looked kindly on their inaction during the revolution. Ever since his orders, those like Tamsin had spent every day hurling insults at the guards.

“I’m not a coward,” shouted the man indignantly and mumbles of agreement reverberated among the gathered guards.

Edmund nodded slightly. He knew his subordinates. He knew how to talk to them. It did not make it easier. On the contrary, it just made him feel so much guiltier when they followed his orders. Orders that could lead to indignity, dishonor, and death. Today it would certainly be death.

Edmund took a deep breath and spoke firmly. “I know that some of you blame me for the accusations of cowardice we have to face. That is your prerogative. It was my order, even if you chose to follow it.”

Edmund stared challengingly at his subordinates. “Well, today I’m ordering you to stand your ground. We will defend this city until our last breath! We will buy the citizens time to escape. For your families, friends, and neighbors. We will fight for them!” He forced himself to scoff. “If you choose to ignore my orders, then the cowardice will be entirely yours to own.” He raised his chin and spoke with pride he had to search hard to find: “I have fought for this city every day! I will not stop now!”

Edmund was about to lead his subordinates out to jog the last few hundred meters towards the defensive perimeter when a commotion broke out near the window.

An elven guard with dark greased-back hair pointed. “What’s the Flower Protector doing?”

They could see Terry dropping from the sky behind the last building. A single figure that was dashing madly forward towards the horde.

“Perhaps some kind of martialist dare? Get as close as you can before turning around?”

“It doesn’t look like he’s turning…”

“Then he’s suicidal and a fool. Even if he has a death wish, he should stay within the defensive perimeter and—”

“What the—?!”

“That—”

***

Terry had no idea who was watching. He didn’t have any time to care. His mind had been racing to come up with suitable plans. He had none. All he had were the legs that kept him running and an idiotic idea.

An idea worthy of the idiot he thought himself to be at this moment.

The hellspawn that were leading the undead charge were growing bigger and bigger in his vision with every step he made. He knew this horde was beyond his abilities. He knew he had no chance to fight them all off on his own. He knew that perfectly well.

Terry kept running regardless.

All he wanted was to go home. To his friends and family. To his whaka.

But he just couldn’t.

That was not the path of the person he wanted to be. Not at this moment. Not with a horde of undead hellspawn crashing towards the city in his sights.

A city that he could not even stand if he was honest.

A city with good people nonetheless.

Terry subconsciously accelerated to double down on the path he had chosen. He had no perfect plan to get through this. He had no idea how this would turn out. All he had was an idiotic idea to buy time. He’d have to take it from there and improvise.

The screeching of the widowmakers was already deafening. They burst through the ranks with a violent charge and took over the leading position. Eagerly setting their eyes on the first prey entering their reach. Their primal instincts were overwhelming the whispers in their undead ears.

Terry rushed towards the deafening shrieks. From the depth of his lungs, a defiant battle roar welled up to greet the undead cries. He knew that desperate tears were gathering in his eyes but he charged forward for as long as he could allow himself. He whipped his hands forward and an enormous torrent of mana burst from his body into the king spear. Even more mana followed the septimum attachments on the elongating orange pole.

Many pairs of eyes were watching this clash. Every single pair simultaneously opened wide with dumbstruck disbelief. In the clash between a single man and an overwhelming horde of undead hellspawn, it was the horde that ground to an abrupt halt.

The widowmakers’ eager screeches of bloodlust had transformed into howls of death when all along their charging line, they collided with an immovable orange pole. The massive juggernauts following the widowmakers immediately crashed into them. With every successive collision, the undead vanguard was compressed into pulps of rotting flesh until they split over the immovable pole and arrived in two pieces on the other side.

While the squished undead were uttering their final death croaks, Terry was busy darting back and forth and frantically finishing off those undead that were not quite dead dead yet.

Even though Terry was amazed at how well his idiotic idea had panned out so far, he could not allow himself to breathe easy. The combination of the king spear with its unbreakable pole of adjustable length and the Immovable Object spell turned out to be a great horde stopper, but the more squished undead pile up in front, the less the impact was felt by the undead further behind when they collided. The front acted as a squishy buffer towards the immovable pole and dispersed the force of impact over a larger area.

Stupid chubby undead hellspawn.

Terry skillfully switched between trapping the overextended limbs of surviving widowmakers with immovable tertium and then amputating their bladed arms with his keen daggers. He would like to destroy their hard headplates too, but that would take too much time. He was on a timer and he knew it. The unexpected success of his initial idea had centered entirely around the horde’s own momentous charge.

He had one large impact. From here on out, it would be a grueling grind.

Terry was resolved to fight with all he had. As soon as the horde had lost its momentum, he deactivated his spells and retrieved his king spear while summoning his barrier spear for his second hand. The cold metal of his trusted inscribed spear was as comforting as the protective barrier it summoned.

The spear his accepted mother Isille had given him.

The divine hammer inscription that was the signature of his deceased aunt Sigille.

The keen daggers of which one had been given to him by his siblings Lori and Jorg.

Terry found solace in knowing those items were with him in this battle. It felt as if he was not entirely alone when facing his likely final fight. He knew that there would be no miraculous dungeon intervention this time. Idiotic ideas, grit, and the mental support from thinking of his family were all he could count on.

Terry fought frenziedly. Hacking and thrusting. Letting the king spear blow up with lightning. Wielding divine hammers parallel to his spear slashes. Emptying his storage items and skewer boxes to place immovable needles and blades. He was resolved to take down as many of those undead monsters with him as possible.

Terry was controlling the divine hammer inscription while shifting his burst technique and slashing out with the lightning-infused king spear when another idiotic idea entered his head. It would tie down his king spear, which was bad, but once the idea had come, it refused to leave his head.

Terry slashed his king spear to cleave through the neck of a zombie while the divine hammer following his spear’s trajectory some distance away was pushing a shade into the transfixed needles he had placed before.

Terry knew that he did not have any of the proper aspects to efficiently fight a horde of undead. He had no more mana sublimator to use his stockpile of monster cores. That had been left behind together with his aspected spears in Thanatos. The lightning blasts from his king spear were undoubtedly effective, but they were far from efficient.

Terry knew that if he wanted to fulfill his resolve and take as many down with him as possible, then he had to be efficient. It was probably an idiotic idea and definitely meant tying up his king spear, but it might also be a way to achieve efficiency. To kill a few more before he would run out of mana or luck.

Terry nimbly dodged the fist of an undead juggernaut. Fortunately for him, those undead hellspawn appeared sluggish when compared to their living counterparts. Combined with his increased abilities, he was doing much better than the time when he had to face the juggernaut champion in the dungeon.

Terry retrieved a U-shaped tertium piece and forced another torrent of mana into his king spear. In an instant, the king spear pierced through the remaining mass of undead. Right after, the wall of undead pressed against the orange pole that remained movable this time.

Movable but with limited direction. Transfixed tertium was acting as a fulcrum and with most of the undead pressing against one side, the bladed half was cleaving through the undead on the other side.

Terry rushed behind to adjust the length of the spear and reposition the fulcrum if necessary. He felt both ridiculous and elated to manage this gigantic undead-powered seesaw. Ridiculous because he was busy darting through the horde without any leeway to personally engage them. Elated, because using the horde’s own force against them was proving to be ridiculously effective. Effective and efficient.

Terry’s elation was extinguished when he noticed something change. Something entirely unnatural when it came to undead behavior. The remaining mass of undead spread out. It would be one thing if the higher rank undead had caught onto the lethal seesaw’s weak point. However, even the weak runners were spreading out and moving more slowly. That was an action beyond their feral instincts.

That action required an intelligent leader that whispered to the dead.

Terry did not sense any liches or death whisperers in the horde, which meant that the whisperer was not a death aura creature. He involuntarily thought back to the horde’s unnatural arrival.

Shadow aspect.

Terry collected his king spear and circulated mana into his magic brooch. He stepped into the shadow plane. He ignored the new mass of undead lurking in the strange dark world. His senses zoomed onto the vampire signature at the end. Their eyes met and Terry saw surprise flash through the red irises.

Terry did not have time to linger in the shadow plane. He rose his feet to return to the regular plane where he was immediately assaulted by a juggernaut. He dodged and tried to get his bearings when an icy claw carved into the juggernaut’s rotting flesh.

For a moment, Terry stared dazedly at the mana resonance of a white tiger. A human martialist pursued the undead juggernaut. She only stopped briefly to nod at Terry.

Terry became aware that other fighters were arriving on the scene and joining the defense.

Martialists. One of them stopped next to Terry. “Senior, we stand with you.” Many were from the groups that had insisted on addressing him with ridiculous epithets before, but there were also others.

Many hunters arrived on a large ship carried by undead. Thiago the Whisperer was barking commands. “Fight you pathetic worms! This is our city! I won’t be outdone by a wimpy Flower Protector!” Beside him, Hector was barking more orders and Intira was whispering to lead their own undead against the incoming horde.

From another side, a woman led a group of channelers that wreaked utter havoc among the undead. The holy aspect of the Bright Lady was anathema to these death-aspected creatures.

Terry was flabbergasted to even sense the signature of Ruby. The dwarf and her Thanatos soldiers were tearing into the horde with no less ferocity than the city guards and knights of the Freedom Cooperative.

Terry sensed many Knights of Labor entering the fray, but Alexander’s signature was nowhere to be found. He did sense familiar presences among the guards though, which reminded him that he had intel to pass forward. While he fought fiercely, he also shaped finger runes in front of Edmund, Thiago, Intira, and the leaders of other factions.

There was a vampiric death whisperer guiding those undead hellspawns and the rest of the horde. Terry did not have a good way to force him out, but perhaps some of the others did. Soon after, he could sense several people making a move.

Hector from the hunters led a group into the shadow plane. An elven city guard with dark greased-back hair did the same and he brought a few channelers of the Bright Lady with him.

Intira appeared next to Terry with a blink of light. “The boss says there’s definitely more than one whisperer on the other side. Otherwise, we would have already taken over.”

Terry nodded. He had noticed that some enemy undead around the ship of the hunters were switching sides. The Whisperer was evidently worthy of his name. It required skill to wrestle control over undead from another.

“The one in the shadow plane is not bad, but that one cannot whisper here.” Intira spoke hurriedly and with a grave tone. “Another must be hidden here.” She did not wait around and blinked away to return to their ship.

Terry nodded again and he forced himself to relinquish some of his mana to use for mana touch scouting. He was convinced that this would be the best use of his mana now that more fighters had arrived. He did not dare to truly hope they would win, but he did feel a lot better about their chances to buy time.

As if to spite Terry’s budding hopes, the earth trembled with the appearance of a huge undead behemoth. The hellspawn grew until it could rival most of the city’s skyline. It towered over the battlefield and stomped forward on legs that ended in maws of rotating teeth.

The horrifying sight struck fear into the hearts of even the most hardened defenders. Everyone stared with despairing eyes at that rotting monstrosity. Even their worst nightmares had never spewn up something this hellish.

It was in that desperate moment of stillness that a single figure darted up on layers of divine mana. Their gazes moved from the hellish nightmare towards the back dressed in shadow-fabric and ill-matched colors. The back that was already growing smaller in their sights while the figure was charging straight towards the looming hell.

An elven woman in leather armor turned her head to look at the dumbstruck person next to her. Intira could not help but throw out a tease: “What about it, Boss? Still trying to compete with the Flower Protector?”

Thiago managed to compose himself and cleared his throat. “The shrimp can have that one. I won’t abandon my ship while enemy whisperers are out there. Stop spouting nonsense and focus on our own whispers. We wrest the whisper authority from the enemy and we win. That is the only way to save our city. Everything else is just a side-show.”

“Side-show?” Intira smirked lopsidedly while taking in the sight of the defenders who had been jolted from their stupor and once again fought with reinvigorated morale. She shook her head but did not bother to disagree with the boss.

***