First off, Karin and her husband are Good. Louise is only barely in the Delusion Evil alignment and whatever partner she takes is almost certainly going to be Evil as well.
Secondly, you just jinxed it.
Overlady: Attack of the Minions (Thread II)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
- Fantasy
Secondly, you just jinxed it.
The17thImmortal
Seeker of Sanity
Complete and utter omnicide of the local reality cluster.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Let's find out.
Part 10-3
"A wise man does not question his teachers, but instead listens to them until he understands in the heart every word that comes from their lips. Only once nothing the master says can phase the student are they his equal, and until that day they must study under him, paying their termly dues to the one who enlightens them. After all, is it not said, 'Red colourless free slaves learn ignorance from twenty countless masters of the Unseen Light'?"
– Confoundus, speaking to his students
Remarkably little went wrong on the trip there.
"Well, that was a dull voyage," Louise said, looking down at the looming white mountains around her. The windship creaked in the breeze, but for all their many, many flaws minions were actually surprisingly good on board ships. Especially if they were dressed as wind-pirates, as several were due to a misguided attack by would-be plunderers who had got minion'd. "I'm glad that's over. And I just pray we can land before we hit any more turbulence."
In all honesty, she might act like she had been bored, but secretly she was very relieved. There had been a slightly touchy moment over Germanian airspace, but the patrol ship had accepted their merchant flags and had not noticed that the sailors singing bawdy songs were in fact minions. She had spent most of her time down in her cabin, catching up on her reading. That, and being airsick. There had been some very rough spots, and while some of her evil books of magic had been filled with ways to kill a man, they had been remarkably lacking in non-terminal cures for nausea.
"Mraa," said Pallas informatively, leaping up onto the rail and looking down at the ground below without the slightest care.
"Yes, I suspect there will be mice down there," Louise said, as she took sightings on the landmarks and compared them to the best map she had. That had been one unforeseen aspect of the trip. It was traditional to bring a ship's cat along, to eat mice and rats. On a ship with minions on board, however, the cat had to fight minions for access to vermin. The minions seemed to use rats alternatively as food, hats, currency and something to bet on. Poor Pallas had lost weight, and also viciously savaged several minions who had tried to deny her dinner.
"Mrrr," Pallas said thankfully, licking Louise's unarmoured hand.
"You're right, I do hope it's warmer down in the valleys," Louise said. She snapped her telescope shut. She knew where they were, if that bright blue river down there was what she thought it was. "It looks like it should be. I mean, it's green down there. And I can see fields and terraces. I suppose there's snow on the mountain peaks all year around, but at least it's not an utterly frozen wasteland." She shivered. "Of course, it's just becoming autumn. Or at least it would be back home. I hate to think what it gets like here in the winter."
"Mraaaa!"
"Yes, I know. We really don't want to be here too long. I bet it's utterly horrid to sail back during the winter months."
Pallas leapt down from the railing, sprawling out on the wood of the deck. She was clearly begging for a tummy tickle, and Louise gave her one for a few moments, drawing her hand back quickly when Pallas lost interest and went after her fingers. Scooping her cat up, Louise decided to go back into the warmth of her cabin, and consider her approach to the site of the tower.
"I think I need a hot drink to warm up," she added. "I don't have a fur coat on my face, unlike you."
"Mrr."
She had found herself talking to Pallas a lot, especially during the daytime when the other kind of Catt she could talk to was asleep. It was sad to say, but she got more intelligent conversation from a cat than she did from either her sister's maids or from minions. Pallas didn't constantly say things like "It's not my place to think about that, milady overlady", or "I dunno, milady overlady", or "Argh argh argh milady overlady are using too many words what are long and hard to think about, what did I do right, this are a form of torture".
… she was getting slightly worried about what's-her-name. Urgh, Cattleya's maids just blurred together in her head. Except for that one. Her vocabulary was taking on a distinctly minionish overtone, and she was carrying one of their clubs. Hopefully it was just the stupidity of the peasantry coming through. Louise was fairly sure that peasants and minions weren't related, and it wasn't that what's-her-name had minionish blood.
God. Please let it not be the case. She hoped they couldn't interbreed. She really, really did not need that mental image. It couldn't be true, anyway. What's-her-name didn't smell bad enough to be part minion.
Putting those dark thoughts out of mind as she measured out distances and checked the compass in her cabin, Louise smiled to herself. Behind her, the kettle whistled. If they continued along their current course, they should be able to see the tower before nightfall. And when night fell… why, then Cattleya could take a look around.
She could use the exercise.
On void-black wings, the hungry shadow of the primal terrors of the night descended. A dead thing – hungry and lamentable and cursed to abhor the touch of the sun – wearing the skin of a beast flew in over the walls. Eyes red, fangs sharp, it muttered to itself.
"Stupid mean sisters and stupid diets and stupid trips abroad."
Cattleya, sad to say, was in an ill humour. While she loved her little sister dearly – of course, of course – over the past month and a half she had discovered that she loved her mostly from a moderately safe distance. It was fine back in the tower! They kept different hours, they had their own space, Cattleya could arrange her own mealtimes… all those necessary things to keeping two people on good terms with each other.
Unfortunately, Louise was displaying that in certain aspects she took more after their other sister. Which was to say, she was a teeny weeny little ittle bit mean and pushy. Well, more than that. She was quite mean. Sometimes she was very mean. Especially vis a vis comments about Cattleya's weight and general physical fitness.
She had tried to explain to her that as one of the living dead, it was the blood which allowed her to do pretty much anything and her body was just here to hold the blood. But Louise hadn't believed her. It was horrid.
Hopefully there would be a snack in here. She had been fighting the minions and Pallas for access to rats. She wasn't going to hurt her maids by feeding on them excessively, and drinking a minion's blood was… eww. Eww eww eww. Eww. Eww.
Cattleya shuddered and tried to put the smell out of mind. Landing on the wall surrounding the tower, she shifted back into human form with a flapping of wings and a faintly organic sound. There was snow up here. She was very glad that she didn't really feel cold, but she was also glad that Jessica's enchanted leather outfit had come with her. If she got too cold, she might freeze up and then have to get the blood pumping.
Leaning forwards, she frowned and touched the golden amulet around her neck.
"Louise," she said. "I can feel… a holy force in here."
"What do you mean, holy force? Do you really mean 'unholy'? And you're meant to call me 'overlady' or 'my lady' when you're on missions!" her little sister said sharply.
She really was very mean. "No, I mean holy," Cattleya said slowly. "It's like… this whole place was blessed. Except… it's rotten and faded and," she pushed her hand forwards, which smoked slightly but which didn't catch on fire, "… I can bear it."
Slipping forwards, she dropped down from the wall, landing in a crouch with a sick snapping of bones.
"Um."
"What is it now, Carmine?"
"I've just landed on a monk. They're dead."
"… were they dead when you landed on them?"
Cattleya looked down at the freeze-dried skeleton wrapped in tattered, faded orange robes. "Yes," she said firmly. "They were definitely dead. Or maybe undead." She looked around the courtyard, at the other long-dead corpses. "Given none of them are moving, I think they're just dead."
She stepped off the crushed corpse, and gave it a nudge with her foot.
"Yes. They're dead. Definitely dead. There's no chance of this one getting up and attacking me."
She poked it again.
"Definitely dead."
"What are you playing at?" Louise asked dryly.
"Well, I was thinking that maybe they're just pretending so if I pretended to not think they were going to get up and claw and bite at me they'd think they could blindside me and then they'd attack. I mean, that's what I'd do if I was pretending to be dead," Cattleya said reasonably.
"They're not doing that?"
"No." She kicked the corpse's head, which went sailing off over the wall. "And they don't even react to being despoiled or anything like that. So it's probably safe for you to come down."
Louise had to agree with her big sister's analysis. The monks were definitely dead.
Now she had questions about what they had been doing here. And what had killed them.
"What I are wondering," Maxy said thoughtfully, waving a burning torch around for light, "is if they was mwhahaha evil monks who do stabbing of people on stone tables, or if they was the kind who go 'Stop right there, I are going to stop you!'." Casually pilfering one of the corpses, he pulled off a necklace. "I are thinking this one was actually a nun," he added. "That are meaning they was probably the Good kind of monk. Evil nuns no are wearing robes made of so much cloth. They is wearing much less."
Gritting her teeth, Louise tried not to feel so offended that a minion that wasn't Gnarl was thinking exactly what she was thinking, about when she had been thinking it. It wasn't natural.
In the late autumnal chill of the night this high up, she could smell something cold and fresh on the icy breeze rolling down off the mountains. There was no smell of rot, despite the dead bodies which littered the courtyard. Of course there wasn't. They were so long dead any smell was gone. Not that they had rotted much. Their skin had just turned leathery and hard, like an old shoe buried in among the snow that covered the courtyard.
"What were you doing here?" she whispered to them, slowly approaching one of the figures that hadn't yet been minioned. There were two of them, slumped up against a wall. "What killed you?"
Squatting down Louise found that their withered forms were as stiff as wood. Faded robes crackled, shedding ice as she searched their pockets. She found strange foreign prayer charms with hints of smudged ink on frozen paper. And here, dark tattoos still intact on old leathery skin.
Except the markers weren't quite the same. Louise frowned. They looked like they had the same basis, but one of them had additions, almost like they were crossing out the old markers. And there! Scars, too! Healed ones on the different one. There was something familiar about them, too!
Gritting her teeth, Louise tried to think about the many, many books she'd read on the trip. There had been something about something like this. What had it been?
"Oh!" Cattleya said from directly behind her.
Louise shrieked and fell over. "Don't do that!" she managed, once she pulled herself to her feet, dusting off snow. "Make some noise or something! At least remember to breathe!"
"Sorry! But… oh! I… I think I recognise that tattoo! It was in one of your books!"
That was it. "Yes," Louise said, pinching her brow. "It was some kind of… some kind of sacred order of… of foreigners who liked sitting on cold mountains making silly noises with their mouth while sleeping."
"Meditating," Cattleya chided her.
"That's the same thing. But look at this. The tattoos and the scars on this one are over the top. And I think this is a symbol for…" she squinted down at it, "this is one of the symbols on the inside of the throne room," Louise said in a hushed voice. "Back home."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. I am. It's one of the ones on the floor, one of the ones leading down to the tower heart."
"So… what does that mean?"
Louise winced. "I can already guess. The monks – they killed each other," she said, gesturing over the two of them. "One sect was… was corrupted by the evil of this place. They put the markers on themselves. Secretly, that is. The scars had healed over. So they marked themselves, pledged themselves to this evil, and they hid it. A good number of them must have turned evil. And then for some reason, they started fighting."
"Why?"
"I don't know," Louise said. "Maybe one of them was found out. Maybe the evil ones tried to take over and things went wrong. But," she shook her head. "It's cold up here. There's snow here, and it's still early autumn, so there's snow here all year around. The bodies were left where they fell. So no one won. No one cleared up the bodies."
"Oh," Cattleya said. She shivered, looking around. Her eyes glowed a dull red in the night. "I wouldn't like to spend eternity lying around here."
Shaking her head, Louise leaned upon her staff. "We'll clear the place up afterwards. Give them a burial, at least. Now, come on," she ordered. "Get the minions to unload the specialist things Jessica made. Time to restore this tower."
A few hours later and back in Tristain, Princess Henrietta was dragged by Gnarl from her nice warm library where she had been conducting black necromantic rituals during the witching hour.
"Where are we going?" she asked, wrapping her midnight-black mantle around her.
"Malevolent news, your highness," Gnarl said cheerfully. "The overlady has managed to establish contact with us. It appears that she is alive and well in the Mystic East – or at least healthily undead! How malignant!"
"Uh, yes," Henrietta said, hastily trying to wipe away some of the symbols drawn in mouse blood on her hands.
"She wishes to speak with you, your highness. Down in the heart room. I would hurry. Sustaining this connection over such a distance is not easy."
"I'll… uh, I'll be right there." Henrietta reached for the bowl of water beside her ritual space. She hastily washed the pale ashes from her face and then took a cloth and cleaned the corpse-soot away from her eyes. It would have to do. She looked like she had bags under her eyes from the smeared corpse soot, but she'd just have to say that she hadn't been sleeping.
The heart room was cold and dark. Fortunately Louise-Françoise had forced the minions to make the narrow bridge to the heart less utterly perilous, because if she had not then Henrietta might have taken a terminal tumble as she sprinted to the tower heart. Only to remember that… uh, she hadn't actually been told by Gnarl how Louise-Françoise was going to manifest or otherwise make her presence known.
"Hello? Hello? Princess Henrietta? Can you hear me?"
The noise was coming from the tower heart itself. Still rather out of breath from her dash, Henrietta approached it. "Louise-Françoise? You… are in the tower heart?"
"Well, Gnarl said that with this distance, I can't get an image – but my voice should be coming from it? How is it? There's some crackling in your voice, but I heard you."
"Oh, Louise-Francoise!" Henrietta exclaimed happily. Her friend was alive, well, and she could speak to her. "I can hear you nearly perfectly!"
"Oh, Henrietta! That is wonderful! I've missed you dreadfully!"
"Not as much as I've missed you, my friend! It just isn't the same without you around. Jessica tries her best, but she is a very different soul to you. And Cattleya is well?"
"She is quite well. The trip was fairly peaceful, though I was dreadfully airsick over the mountains of Ruthenia." Louise paused. "Oh, I wish I could see you. I miss you."
Henrietta shifted uncomfortably. She was acutely aware that she had forgotten to take off her necromancer's mantle, that her face was streaked with dust and that her eyes were ringed in soot. The book had said that it was meant to make your magic more powerful and better at channelling Evil through one's own natural water magic. Henrietta was beginning to suspect that the book might have been lying to her. Or it had been written by some man who liked his women to look pale, consumptive and like she had two black eyes. "I miss you too," she said, on the grounds that repeating that would not go amiss. And she had missed Louise-Françoise.
"I've just arrived. We've taken the tower, and I've only just got it up and running. I'll spend a few days fortifying the place. The minions have already found that the place is lousy with the mushrooms that they love, so they're sorted, but I may have to go in disguise to some villages. That, or send some greens to steal food – though that is quite unhygienic. Still, things are going well. How have things been for you?"
"Well." Henrietta considered what to say next. A good girl would probably mention to her old friend that she had begun dabbling in the art of reanimating the dead as zombies and skeletons, and had ventured forth down into the lower levels of the tower and tried binding the various dead things down there that Louise had never got around to clearing out fully. The same good girl would also probably not have a plan to have some of the zombies board a Council-owned windship as passengers and then make it crash. As soon as she managed to get the hang of making the zombies do what she said, she would do it! She really would! And then she would need to find a way of getting to Albion while the overlady had the windship, in the name of True Love.
But then again, she wasn't a good girl. Her mother had been very clear about that. She'd told her again and again that she was lustful and controlled by her vices and brought shame to her family and what-would-your-father-think. And being a good girl got you locked in a tower for something that wasn't your fault. Being a naughty girl got you power over life and death itself. So, really, there was no point in being a good girl. Being bad was much more useful.
"I have good news, Louise-Françoise," she said brightly. "We have had a spot of bad weather recently. I've been working on dealing with some of the zombies and skeletons in the underlayers. One of them got loose, you know. It was a dreadful nuisance, until a minion found it and beat it to death with its own arm."
"Oh dear. I thought I had the minions seal all the entrances to those places."
In all fairness, she had. It had been very inconvenient for Henrietta when she had been trying to take control of one. Yes, her control was still… imperfect, but the walking dead were not particularly threatening when one had access to bored minions who were sulky that they hadn't got to go on an adventure with their overlady. "I made sure to ensure all the doors were re-sealed," she said, telling the truth in a very technical sense.
"That is good news. Well-managed. Now, with regards to- oh, wait a moment." Louise paused. "What is it, Catt?" A pause. Henrietta could just about hear Cattleya's voice, but not make out her words. "… what do you mean, lurching undead monks have risen from the catacombs and are trying to destroy the tower once again? Well, yes, obviously that's exactly what you mean, but…"
"Their blood is disgusting! It's all… cold and clotted! And full of holiness! It burned my tongue! Oh, you were talking to Henrietta? Henrietta!" Cattleya was now audible. She was talking like someone who had just taken a mouthful of unexpectedly hot soup. "How are you?"
"I'm fine. And you?"
"Dreadful," Cattelya said mournfully. "I've lost weight and my outfit is all loose on me and you know whose fau-"
"She has lost weight," Louise said smugly. "Sorry, my princess, but we're really going to have to cut this short. I have undead monks I need to kill. Re-kill. Destroy."
Perking up, Henrietta smiled. She could help! "Freeze-dried monks from the Mystic East are mummified by the cold," she said authoritatively. "They're highly flammable."
She could hear Louise's malevolent smile even without seeing it. "Oh, Henrietta! That is wonderful news!"
"No, it's not," Cattleya said. "I'm going to go… go stay somewhere safe until you finish setting everything on fire?"
"Would I do that?"
"Yes."
"Yes," added Henrietta.
Louise pouted. "Betrayed by my sister and my own princess," she said. "Oh well. Yes, Cattleya, protect this chamber. I think it's time to make this new tower feel all nice and homey with a good roaring fire."
Muskets sounded in the deep. The sigils on the left hands of the minions glowed as they fired and reloaded with an efficiency unusual for their race. Not even one of them had looked down their barrel and fired it out of curiosity about what it looked like.
"Come! Comrades!" Char waved around his banner made of a monk's staff and the tatters of an orange robe, throwing fireballs down at the dead. "We is gonna kill them for the Redvolution! Down with priests! Strangle them with their guts!"
"Idiot," Maggat growled, caving in one monk's head with a club blow. "They is dead. Strangling no are gonna work."
Still, insofar as his minionly brain had space for such matters, Maggat was vaguely concerned. There was an awful lot of undead monks down here. From what they'd been able to find before the endless hordes of the dead had pushed them back, the temple here had been here for quite a long time and interned a remarkable number of their dead in the tunnels. As soon as the tower had reactivated, they had all woken up. And they were all Good, despite being reanimated corpses.
Now, this meant a lot less to a minion than it did to most of the forces of wickedness. Minions had absolutely no problem with holy ground, and in fact were rather fond of sacred graveyards because they were usually full of things that could be looted and killed, or sometimes killed and looted. But still, these undead monks were rather more agile than their normal kind, and worse, had a minionly attitude to death. If they weren't sufficiently smashed up, broken bones simply knotted themselves together with white light.
Despite the fact that he should be enjoying an endless fight as much as Fettid was, the annoying veins of cunning that sometimes seemed to creep through his veins suggested to Maggat that – unthinkable though it was – it was possible that minions might be out-attritioned. Which was nonsense, of course – but the fact that he was thinking such things indicated something was very, very wrong.
Then Louise showed up and burned the tunnel full of monks to ash.
Maggat nodded solidly. The world was back to working like it was meant to.
"All right!" Louise shouted. "Minions, form up! We're smashing our way to whatever holy or sacred or something place that is making them come back. If it's another minion hive, I swear I'll scream!"
"Oh! They is coming back from the dead! That means it are gonna be the blue hive," Scyl said solidly.
She stopped. "Really?" she asked curiously.
"Oh yes. I is never right about these matters," Scyl said dreamingly.
Evil language, yes, Louise reminded herself. "Browns!" she shouted. "Form up and protect the blues while they handle the casualties! Reds! Lay down suppressive fire! Greens, protect the rear! Prepare to advance! We'll head towards the catacombs, killing everything dead in our way!"
That met with the expected cheers. Motivational speeches to minions were so much easier than demon lords or Cathayan emperors or people in your class at school.
The catacombs were presumably normally quiet, dark and gloomy, but minions were an effective remedy for all three. Instead, they were filled with goblinoid shouting, fire, and burning undead monks. Louise would have called it nightmarish, but honestly she'd seen worse.
Her metal-clad feet clanked on the rough stone. This area seemed familiar. The holes dug into the stone walls broke the architecture. In these tight quarters the undead monks could only attack along a narrow line, and so ran headlong into the minions. Sometimes she had to burn things up, but in all honest, she was fine with that. She was perfectly fine with-
And then the minions smashed down the door to the innermost chamber, and Louise totally lost her chain of thought.
Blue and red fires warred in a great bonfire in the centre of the room. Raising her left hand, Louise considered the strange feelings emanating from the fires. There was the soft kitten-warmness of Evil, but something much more painful and cold. Probably Good, given it was the opposite feeling to the pleasant feelings of Evil. Kneeling around it in a circle were dead kneeling figures. Insofar as far as Louise could tell from the long-dead monks and nuns, their robes were more expensive and there were more gold necklaces and the like. That probably made them the leaders.
As one, they rose, and took up their poses. They moved a lot more smoothly than the rank and file.
"That was not the blue hive!" Louise shouted at Scyl, feeling somewhat aggrieved.
"Well, okay, it are actually a super-special sacred oath of the monks what are always going to stay in this place and stop Evil from living in this place again," Scyl said, sounding hurt. "But it would be worser if it are the blue hive, wrong?"
The foremost monk, dressed in a faded orange robe and with an elaborate gold necklace moaned something in… some language. Probably Cathayan, if Louise had to guess, but they spoke lots of languages in Cathay. Either way, it sounded like the last gasp of air from a tomb door. His hollow eyes felt like they were staring into her soul.
"I'm sorry," Louise said, falling back on the well-recognised noble method for dealing with foreigners – ie speaking in your own language slowly and loudly. "But do you speak a civilised language? Tristainian? Romalian? No?"
The monk replied.
"How about an uncivilised language? Like Germanian or Gallian or Albionese." Louise shuddered. Urgh, Albionese and its damned –ough string of letters. Presumably that was related to the Dark Tongue in some way.
Unhelpfully, the monk didn't even have the common decency to speak one of those languages.
"Do you speak Infernal?" Louise tried.
But there really was no helping him.
"Wait! I know!" Louise rummaged through her outer robe. "I have those glasses for understanding what Emperor Lee says. Where did I put them? Oh, drat! Did I leave them on the ship?"
The monk said something, and then moved his hands in a spiralling gesture which narrowed in towards his core. A ball of light formed within them, bright and pure and righteous in the gloom of these catacombs. That couldn't be good.
Wait, no, it was probably Good. That was the problem.
"Minions!" Louise barked, throwing herself out of the way even as the corpse-monk punched the ball at her. Enthusiastically a trio of browns jumped in the way of the shiny glowing thing, possibly trying to eat it. Instead, it blew them into smithereens.
The other minions took that as encouragement and so charged in, screaming various war cries. The first brown to get close got its head punched clean off. So did the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth. The seventh, however, managed to impale the nun who'd just killed the fifth and the sixth on his broom and, gibbering, started using the undead holy woman as a hammer against her fellows.
"Reds! Burn them!" Louise shouted. "Blues, get going on that recovery!"
But that drew the attention of the corpses. One nun charged straight at her, hands moving like hungry snakes as she carved a path through the minions. A quick chant and Louise had a fireball at the end of her staff. She held it like a spear, keeping the dead woman at arm's length.
"Take her down!" Louise snapped, jabbing out with the burning orb. The nun flowed backwards with each poke. Oh yes, she certainly didn't like fire. "Someone! Kill her!"
The nun flowed to the left, one open-handed slap pushing Louise's staff away from the line of offence. Leaping backwards and muttering to herself, Louise clumsily dodged the first too-fast strike, but now the other woman was inside her guard.
Gritting her teeth, Louise dropped her staff and threw a left-handed punch. It wasn't a very good punch at all. The nun blocked it with a palm strike which jarred Louise's arm to the shoulder, and hissed something in her dead voice.
A hiss which quickly turned into panic as her own arm went up in flame. Withdrawing the gauntlet, Louise opened her fist and revealed the flame she'd been hiding within. With an exhalation, she sent fire rushing forth again and the nun ignited, collapsing down in a patter of embers.
"Founder, that really hurt," Louise complained, shaking out her arm. Lord, she wished Cattleya was here. But then again, with this much fire around, things wouldn't be going well for her big sister. She flexed her shoulder, and then stooped to pick up her staff.
"Overlady! Boss are coming your way!" Maxy shouted.
And the head monk was right in front of her. She managed to catch his first punch on her staff with purest luck, but the second took her right in the chest and with a crunch of metal she was sent skidding backwards to slam into a wall.
Louise spat out blood and gasped for air. Founder, that hurt! There was a fist dent over her left breast and the padding hadn't taken anywhere near enough of the blow. And she'd bitten her lip. "Fireball!" she managed to squeak out, holding her staff in one hand. The monk backhanded her ball of flame out of the way, advancing slowly but surely. "Fireball!" He did the same. "Argh… uh. Lightning!"
Thunder boomed and a forked tongue of pinkish lightning licked out towards the figure. And then he caught it. He actually caught it, grabbing the bolt and twisting it up in his hand as you might gather twine. The motions of his hands brought to mind flowing water and lapping waves, graceful and smooth.
"For the overlady!" screamed Fettid, throwing herself at the monk with both knives out. She stabbed the lightning ball within his hands, and promptly exploded, along with the monk. Undead religious figure and green viscera painted the walls.
Wheezing, Louise tried to breathe a sigh of relief. "Blues," she said.
"On it!" Scyl said cheerfully, pulling a trowel out from under his cloak and getting to work scraping Fettid off the floor. "Fettid had fun! She no have died like this before. I bet she are going to have lots of fun stories about the dead place this time."
"Yes. Ow. Yes. That is… that is a thing," Louise panted, trying to massage her chest through the plate armour. Founder, it hurt. She was certain there was going to be a bruise down there and her armour was pushing in on the bruise. She needed to get out of this armour before she damaged herself more. And… oh, sugar! Jessica wasn't here!
"Oh, hey, the monk are still dead," Scyl said happily. "It are making it easier to get Fettid out."
How was she going to get this fixed? Maybe she could have it just hammered out. Wait.
"Scyl. Why is him being…" Oh, sugar. Louise spun and set the area containing the partially rebuilt Fettid, Scyl, and the reforming monk ablaze. "Why won't you die!" she shouted at the dead man that crawled from the blaze, and felt fairly stupid for doing so after she thought for a moment. "Minions! Just keep on beating him! Reds, try to burn him to a crisp!
"Burny burn!" a red enthusiastically shouted.
"Wait, wait, can we set him on fire if he are already on fire?" another red tried, as a brown hopped around, feet on fire from where it had been giving the monk a good kicking.
"I no see why not!"
"But surely being on fire is something what is yes or no, and he is no?"
"Just cut him into pieces!" Louise shrieked, and then broke into coughing. Lord, if her armour hadn't been there he would have probably shattered her ribcage like a clay pot. Leaning on her staff, she limped away, desperately trying to think. He was coming back again and again, just like minions did. Just like Louis had. So he had to be getting life force from somewhere. Or unlife force. Or something.
"Overlady!" Maggat shouted, latched onto the burning monk's shoulders as he beat him around the head again and again with a club. "I is sure you has a cunning plan… Snot, cut his feeties off! Grabbit, pin the arms! Char, burn the breaks! I is sure you is cunning, but be quicker!"
"Quickerer," contributed Maxy as he tried sawing at one of the feet. "This are a problem! His legs are healing! Now my knify are stuck!" One struggling kick from the monk sent him flying into a wall, with the sound of a smashed lute.
"Wrong! Everybody, stick all your knifeys in him! If he heal around them, maybe he no struggle so hard!"
She blinked heavily. She could feel both Good and Evil in the fires in the centre of the room. Half the monks here had gone evil. And she was really, really good at Evil magic.
As fast as she could manage, she limped up to the sacred and also cursed fires. Louise took a deep breath. If she was wrong, this was going to hurt. A lot.
And she eased her left hand into the fire. Gritting her teeth, she concentrated and forced raw Evil out into the flames. "No pickled monk is going to get the better of me," she hissed. She could feel her hate and pain bubbling up inside her. "You punched me in the breasts. It really, really, really hurts. You stupid barbarian pig. You should have burned."
And with that last grated word, the fires flared. Red and blue alike were replaced by pink. The last of the reanimated corpses in the room deanimated.
Louise sagged down, utterly exhausted. "Is… is that it?" she managed.
"Yeah. Yeah, I is thinking so," Maggat said, dragging the charred corpse of the long-dead priest to her. "Look. He are still dead and now he no are moving."
Lord, she was going to be black and blue under her armour. Thank you, Jessica and thank you padding. She looked over the room. Minion losses hadn't been that sizable. The monks had mostly just been crushing skulls, tearing off limbs and occasionally pulling out a ribcage and stabbing them in the face with it. Minions did that to themselves when they were bored on Voidsday. Scyl was already back on his feet, still smoking slightly, working on Fettid.
"Overlady," Maggat reported smartly. "I are finding a key on the boss monk's body." He tapped his nose. "Probably for some treasure, what."
"Some treasure what?" Char asked.
"I dunno what. That are for the overlady to find out, idiot."
"Hee! That are tickling!" the newly reconstituted Fettid said happily, what hair she had all standing on end. She picked her nose, recovering a ball of spark-encrusted snot. "Oooh! It are magic! For the overlady!"
"Lovely," Louise said faintly. "You can keep it." Aching all over, she pulled herself to her feet. Find the treasure now. Then, back to the boat to lie down for… uh. Several days felt good.
"Ow. Ow ha ha. Ow. Ow."
Lying back on her hammock in the vessel, Louise tried to ignore the pain as Cattleya fussed over her and rubbed healing balm into her many bruises. To avoid thinking about it, she'd been reading the things she'd found in the head monk's quarters, now that she'd found her translation glasses again. They didn't give a perfect reading, but it was quite enough for her purposes.
The chief abbot had been quite a punctual record keeper, both before and after his death. Things got rather less detailed once he had become a dried corpse who only woke on certain holy days to carry out rituals, but it was enough that it seemed he had died almost three hundred years ago. The cold up here had just preserved the bodies. The cold, and apparently some kind of magic they had used so they could stay tied to the mortal world to fight evil.
Well, that sounded a lot like necromancy to Louise's ears, so really she was doing the right thing by destroying them. Anyone self-deluded enough to practice necromancy for a 'good cause' wasn't the sanest apple in the box.
Louise frowned. She couldn't help but feel that metaphor had gotten away from her slightly. Clearly a sign of how tired she was.
Regardless, from her reading she could tell that they'd set up their sacred fire to purify this place, tying their life forces to it to push the force of Good – and something had gone wrong. Some of the monks had turned evil, then they'd killed each other and the life force in the tower, part Good and part Evil, had reanimated the monks to fulfil their sworn oaths. If her estimates were right, it had died down enough that they lay dead most of the time, but when she had reactivated the tower, they had all sprung back to unlife.
And there were other things in the documents, older things that she wasn't quite sure the meaning of. Her glasses had problems with the older records, presumably because the language had changed over time. There was talk of a mysterious wanderer who had built this tower, and reference to mysterious figure called Shen Nao, Zuo Shou and You Shou – servants of Bulei Ma, who was either a hero seeking to destroy the tower-builder or one of his servants. It was rather unclear. In fact, from the context Louise suspected the writer was recording old tales.
Maybe there were secrets hidden somewhere in the region which would explain why the overlord who built this tower had come here in the first place.
"Ow!"
"Sorry, sorry," Cattleya apologised. "But you're going to need bed rest! Lots of bed rest! Which means it's just going to be down to me to make sure your plans go according to… well, to plan! Don't worry! You can trust me!"
Louise groaned. She had thought things were going well.
– Confoundus, speaking to his students
…
Remarkably little went wrong on the trip there.
"Well, that was a dull voyage," Louise said, looking down at the looming white mountains around her. The windship creaked in the breeze, but for all their many, many flaws minions were actually surprisingly good on board ships. Especially if they were dressed as wind-pirates, as several were due to a misguided attack by would-be plunderers who had got minion'd. "I'm glad that's over. And I just pray we can land before we hit any more turbulence."
In all honesty, she might act like she had been bored, but secretly she was very relieved. There had been a slightly touchy moment over Germanian airspace, but the patrol ship had accepted their merchant flags and had not noticed that the sailors singing bawdy songs were in fact minions. She had spent most of her time down in her cabin, catching up on her reading. That, and being airsick. There had been some very rough spots, and while some of her evil books of magic had been filled with ways to kill a man, they had been remarkably lacking in non-terminal cures for nausea.
"Mraa," said Pallas informatively, leaping up onto the rail and looking down at the ground below without the slightest care.
"Yes, I suspect there will be mice down there," Louise said, as she took sightings on the landmarks and compared them to the best map she had. That had been one unforeseen aspect of the trip. It was traditional to bring a ship's cat along, to eat mice and rats. On a ship with minions on board, however, the cat had to fight minions for access to vermin. The minions seemed to use rats alternatively as food, hats, currency and something to bet on. Poor Pallas had lost weight, and also viciously savaged several minions who had tried to deny her dinner.
"Mrrr," Pallas said thankfully, licking Louise's unarmoured hand.
"You're right, I do hope it's warmer down in the valleys," Louise said. She snapped her telescope shut. She knew where they were, if that bright blue river down there was what she thought it was. "It looks like it should be. I mean, it's green down there. And I can see fields and terraces. I suppose there's snow on the mountain peaks all year around, but at least it's not an utterly frozen wasteland." She shivered. "Of course, it's just becoming autumn. Or at least it would be back home. I hate to think what it gets like here in the winter."
"Mraaaa!"
"Yes, I know. We really don't want to be here too long. I bet it's utterly horrid to sail back during the winter months."
Pallas leapt down from the railing, sprawling out on the wood of the deck. She was clearly begging for a tummy tickle, and Louise gave her one for a few moments, drawing her hand back quickly when Pallas lost interest and went after her fingers. Scooping her cat up, Louise decided to go back into the warmth of her cabin, and consider her approach to the site of the tower.
"I think I need a hot drink to warm up," she added. "I don't have a fur coat on my face, unlike you."
"Mrr."
She had found herself talking to Pallas a lot, especially during the daytime when the other kind of Catt she could talk to was asleep. It was sad to say, but she got more intelligent conversation from a cat than she did from either her sister's maids or from minions. Pallas didn't constantly say things like "It's not my place to think about that, milady overlady", or "I dunno, milady overlady", or "Argh argh argh milady overlady are using too many words what are long and hard to think about, what did I do right, this are a form of torture".
… she was getting slightly worried about what's-her-name. Urgh, Cattleya's maids just blurred together in her head. Except for that one. Her vocabulary was taking on a distinctly minionish overtone, and she was carrying one of their clubs. Hopefully it was just the stupidity of the peasantry coming through. Louise was fairly sure that peasants and minions weren't related, and it wasn't that what's-her-name had minionish blood.
God. Please let it not be the case. She hoped they couldn't interbreed. She really, really did not need that mental image. It couldn't be true, anyway. What's-her-name didn't smell bad enough to be part minion.
Putting those dark thoughts out of mind as she measured out distances and checked the compass in her cabin, Louise smiled to herself. Behind her, the kettle whistled. If they continued along their current course, they should be able to see the tower before nightfall. And when night fell… why, then Cattleya could take a look around.
She could use the exercise.
…
On void-black wings, the hungry shadow of the primal terrors of the night descended. A dead thing – hungry and lamentable and cursed to abhor the touch of the sun – wearing the skin of a beast flew in over the walls. Eyes red, fangs sharp, it muttered to itself.
"Stupid mean sisters and stupid diets and stupid trips abroad."
Cattleya, sad to say, was in an ill humour. While she loved her little sister dearly – of course, of course – over the past month and a half she had discovered that she loved her mostly from a moderately safe distance. It was fine back in the tower! They kept different hours, they had their own space, Cattleya could arrange her own mealtimes… all those necessary things to keeping two people on good terms with each other.
Unfortunately, Louise was displaying that in certain aspects she took more after their other sister. Which was to say, she was a teeny weeny little ittle bit mean and pushy. Well, more than that. She was quite mean. Sometimes she was very mean. Especially vis a vis comments about Cattleya's weight and general physical fitness.
She had tried to explain to her that as one of the living dead, it was the blood which allowed her to do pretty much anything and her body was just here to hold the blood. But Louise hadn't believed her. It was horrid.
Hopefully there would be a snack in here. She had been fighting the minions and Pallas for access to rats. She wasn't going to hurt her maids by feeding on them excessively, and drinking a minion's blood was… eww. Eww eww eww. Eww. Eww.
Cattleya shuddered and tried to put the smell out of mind. Landing on the wall surrounding the tower, she shifted back into human form with a flapping of wings and a faintly organic sound. There was snow up here. She was very glad that she didn't really feel cold, but she was also glad that Jessica's enchanted leather outfit had come with her. If she got too cold, she might freeze up and then have to get the blood pumping.
Leaning forwards, she frowned and touched the golden amulet around her neck.
"Louise," she said. "I can feel… a holy force in here."
"What do you mean, holy force? Do you really mean 'unholy'? And you're meant to call me 'overlady' or 'my lady' when you're on missions!" her little sister said sharply.
She really was very mean. "No, I mean holy," Cattleya said slowly. "It's like… this whole place was blessed. Except… it's rotten and faded and," she pushed her hand forwards, which smoked slightly but which didn't catch on fire, "… I can bear it."
Slipping forwards, she dropped down from the wall, landing in a crouch with a sick snapping of bones.
"Um."
"What is it now, Carmine?"
"I've just landed on a monk. They're dead."
"… were they dead when you landed on them?"
Cattleya looked down at the freeze-dried skeleton wrapped in tattered, faded orange robes. "Yes," she said firmly. "They were definitely dead. Or maybe undead." She looked around the courtyard, at the other long-dead corpses. "Given none of them are moving, I think they're just dead."
She stepped off the crushed corpse, and gave it a nudge with her foot.
"Yes. They're dead. Definitely dead. There's no chance of this one getting up and attacking me."
She poked it again.
"Definitely dead."
"What are you playing at?" Louise asked dryly.
"Well, I was thinking that maybe they're just pretending so if I pretended to not think they were going to get up and claw and bite at me they'd think they could blindside me and then they'd attack. I mean, that's what I'd do if I was pretending to be dead," Cattleya said reasonably.
"They're not doing that?"
"No." She kicked the corpse's head, which went sailing off over the wall. "And they don't even react to being despoiled or anything like that. So it's probably safe for you to come down."
…
Louise had to agree with her big sister's analysis. The monks were definitely dead.
Now she had questions about what they had been doing here. And what had killed them.
"What I are wondering," Maxy said thoughtfully, waving a burning torch around for light, "is if they was mwhahaha evil monks who do stabbing of people on stone tables, or if they was the kind who go 'Stop right there, I are going to stop you!'." Casually pilfering one of the corpses, he pulled off a necklace. "I are thinking this one was actually a nun," he added. "That are meaning they was probably the Good kind of monk. Evil nuns no are wearing robes made of so much cloth. They is wearing much less."
Gritting her teeth, Louise tried not to feel so offended that a minion that wasn't Gnarl was thinking exactly what she was thinking, about when she had been thinking it. It wasn't natural.
In the late autumnal chill of the night this high up, she could smell something cold and fresh on the icy breeze rolling down off the mountains. There was no smell of rot, despite the dead bodies which littered the courtyard. Of course there wasn't. They were so long dead any smell was gone. Not that they had rotted much. Their skin had just turned leathery and hard, like an old shoe buried in among the snow that covered the courtyard.
"What were you doing here?" she whispered to them, slowly approaching one of the figures that hadn't yet been minioned. There were two of them, slumped up against a wall. "What killed you?"
Squatting down Louise found that their withered forms were as stiff as wood. Faded robes crackled, shedding ice as she searched their pockets. She found strange foreign prayer charms with hints of smudged ink on frozen paper. And here, dark tattoos still intact on old leathery skin.
Except the markers weren't quite the same. Louise frowned. They looked like they had the same basis, but one of them had additions, almost like they were crossing out the old markers. And there! Scars, too! Healed ones on the different one. There was something familiar about them, too!
Gritting her teeth, Louise tried to think about the many, many books she'd read on the trip. There had been something about something like this. What had it been?
"Oh!" Cattleya said from directly behind her.
Louise shrieked and fell over. "Don't do that!" she managed, once she pulled herself to her feet, dusting off snow. "Make some noise or something! At least remember to breathe!"
"Sorry! But… oh! I… I think I recognise that tattoo! It was in one of your books!"
That was it. "Yes," Louise said, pinching her brow. "It was some kind of… some kind of sacred order of… of foreigners who liked sitting on cold mountains making silly noises with their mouth while sleeping."
"Meditating," Cattleya chided her.
"That's the same thing. But look at this. The tattoos and the scars on this one are over the top. And I think this is a symbol for…" she squinted down at it, "this is one of the symbols on the inside of the throne room," Louise said in a hushed voice. "Back home."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. I am. It's one of the ones on the floor, one of the ones leading down to the tower heart."
"So… what does that mean?"
Louise winced. "I can already guess. The monks – they killed each other," she said, gesturing over the two of them. "One sect was… was corrupted by the evil of this place. They put the markers on themselves. Secretly, that is. The scars had healed over. So they marked themselves, pledged themselves to this evil, and they hid it. A good number of them must have turned evil. And then for some reason, they started fighting."
"Why?"
"I don't know," Louise said. "Maybe one of them was found out. Maybe the evil ones tried to take over and things went wrong. But," she shook her head. "It's cold up here. There's snow here, and it's still early autumn, so there's snow here all year around. The bodies were left where they fell. So no one won. No one cleared up the bodies."
"Oh," Cattleya said. She shivered, looking around. Her eyes glowed a dull red in the night. "I wouldn't like to spend eternity lying around here."
Shaking her head, Louise leaned upon her staff. "We'll clear the place up afterwards. Give them a burial, at least. Now, come on," she ordered. "Get the minions to unload the specialist things Jessica made. Time to restore this tower."
…
A few hours later and back in Tristain, Princess Henrietta was dragged by Gnarl from her nice warm library where she had been conducting black necromantic rituals during the witching hour.
"Where are we going?" she asked, wrapping her midnight-black mantle around her.
"Malevolent news, your highness," Gnarl said cheerfully. "The overlady has managed to establish contact with us. It appears that she is alive and well in the Mystic East – or at least healthily undead! How malignant!"
"Uh, yes," Henrietta said, hastily trying to wipe away some of the symbols drawn in mouse blood on her hands.
"She wishes to speak with you, your highness. Down in the heart room. I would hurry. Sustaining this connection over such a distance is not easy."
"I'll… uh, I'll be right there." Henrietta reached for the bowl of water beside her ritual space. She hastily washed the pale ashes from her face and then took a cloth and cleaned the corpse-soot away from her eyes. It would have to do. She looked like she had bags under her eyes from the smeared corpse soot, but she'd just have to say that she hadn't been sleeping.
The heart room was cold and dark. Fortunately Louise-Françoise had forced the minions to make the narrow bridge to the heart less utterly perilous, because if she had not then Henrietta might have taken a terminal tumble as she sprinted to the tower heart. Only to remember that… uh, she hadn't actually been told by Gnarl how Louise-Françoise was going to manifest or otherwise make her presence known.
"Hello? Hello? Princess Henrietta? Can you hear me?"
The noise was coming from the tower heart itself. Still rather out of breath from her dash, Henrietta approached it. "Louise-Françoise? You… are in the tower heart?"
"Well, Gnarl said that with this distance, I can't get an image – but my voice should be coming from it? How is it? There's some crackling in your voice, but I heard you."
"Oh, Louise-Francoise!" Henrietta exclaimed happily. Her friend was alive, well, and she could speak to her. "I can hear you nearly perfectly!"
"Oh, Henrietta! That is wonderful! I've missed you dreadfully!"
"Not as much as I've missed you, my friend! It just isn't the same without you around. Jessica tries her best, but she is a very different soul to you. And Cattleya is well?"
"She is quite well. The trip was fairly peaceful, though I was dreadfully airsick over the mountains of Ruthenia." Louise paused. "Oh, I wish I could see you. I miss you."
Henrietta shifted uncomfortably. She was acutely aware that she had forgotten to take off her necromancer's mantle, that her face was streaked with dust and that her eyes were ringed in soot. The book had said that it was meant to make your magic more powerful and better at channelling Evil through one's own natural water magic. Henrietta was beginning to suspect that the book might have been lying to her. Or it had been written by some man who liked his women to look pale, consumptive and like she had two black eyes. "I miss you too," she said, on the grounds that repeating that would not go amiss. And she had missed Louise-Françoise.
"I've just arrived. We've taken the tower, and I've only just got it up and running. I'll spend a few days fortifying the place. The minions have already found that the place is lousy with the mushrooms that they love, so they're sorted, but I may have to go in disguise to some villages. That, or send some greens to steal food – though that is quite unhygienic. Still, things are going well. How have things been for you?"
"Well." Henrietta considered what to say next. A good girl would probably mention to her old friend that she had begun dabbling in the art of reanimating the dead as zombies and skeletons, and had ventured forth down into the lower levels of the tower and tried binding the various dead things down there that Louise had never got around to clearing out fully. The same good girl would also probably not have a plan to have some of the zombies board a Council-owned windship as passengers and then make it crash. As soon as she managed to get the hang of making the zombies do what she said, she would do it! She really would! And then she would need to find a way of getting to Albion while the overlady had the windship, in the name of True Love.
But then again, she wasn't a good girl. Her mother had been very clear about that. She'd told her again and again that she was lustful and controlled by her vices and brought shame to her family and what-would-your-father-think. And being a good girl got you locked in a tower for something that wasn't your fault. Being a naughty girl got you power over life and death itself. So, really, there was no point in being a good girl. Being bad was much more useful.
"I have good news, Louise-Françoise," she said brightly. "We have had a spot of bad weather recently. I've been working on dealing with some of the zombies and skeletons in the underlayers. One of them got loose, you know. It was a dreadful nuisance, until a minion found it and beat it to death with its own arm."
"Oh dear. I thought I had the minions seal all the entrances to those places."
In all fairness, she had. It had been very inconvenient for Henrietta when she had been trying to take control of one. Yes, her control was still… imperfect, but the walking dead were not particularly threatening when one had access to bored minions who were sulky that they hadn't got to go on an adventure with their overlady. "I made sure to ensure all the doors were re-sealed," she said, telling the truth in a very technical sense.
"That is good news. Well-managed. Now, with regards to- oh, wait a moment." Louise paused. "What is it, Catt?" A pause. Henrietta could just about hear Cattleya's voice, but not make out her words. "… what do you mean, lurching undead monks have risen from the catacombs and are trying to destroy the tower once again? Well, yes, obviously that's exactly what you mean, but…"
"Their blood is disgusting! It's all… cold and clotted! And full of holiness! It burned my tongue! Oh, you were talking to Henrietta? Henrietta!" Cattleya was now audible. She was talking like someone who had just taken a mouthful of unexpectedly hot soup. "How are you?"
"I'm fine. And you?"
"Dreadful," Cattelya said mournfully. "I've lost weight and my outfit is all loose on me and you know whose fau-"
"She has lost weight," Louise said smugly. "Sorry, my princess, but we're really going to have to cut this short. I have undead monks I need to kill. Re-kill. Destroy."
Perking up, Henrietta smiled. She could help! "Freeze-dried monks from the Mystic East are mummified by the cold," she said authoritatively. "They're highly flammable."
She could hear Louise's malevolent smile even without seeing it. "Oh, Henrietta! That is wonderful news!"
"No, it's not," Cattleya said. "I'm going to go… go stay somewhere safe until you finish setting everything on fire?"
"Would I do that?"
"Yes."
"Yes," added Henrietta.
Louise pouted. "Betrayed by my sister and my own princess," she said. "Oh well. Yes, Cattleya, protect this chamber. I think it's time to make this new tower feel all nice and homey with a good roaring fire."
…
Muskets sounded in the deep. The sigils on the left hands of the minions glowed as they fired and reloaded with an efficiency unusual for their race. Not even one of them had looked down their barrel and fired it out of curiosity about what it looked like.
"Come! Comrades!" Char waved around his banner made of a monk's staff and the tatters of an orange robe, throwing fireballs down at the dead. "We is gonna kill them for the Redvolution! Down with priests! Strangle them with their guts!"
"Idiot," Maggat growled, caving in one monk's head with a club blow. "They is dead. Strangling no are gonna work."
Still, insofar as his minionly brain had space for such matters, Maggat was vaguely concerned. There was an awful lot of undead monks down here. From what they'd been able to find before the endless hordes of the dead had pushed them back, the temple here had been here for quite a long time and interned a remarkable number of their dead in the tunnels. As soon as the tower had reactivated, they had all woken up. And they were all Good, despite being reanimated corpses.
Now, this meant a lot less to a minion than it did to most of the forces of wickedness. Minions had absolutely no problem with holy ground, and in fact were rather fond of sacred graveyards because they were usually full of things that could be looted and killed, or sometimes killed and looted. But still, these undead monks were rather more agile than their normal kind, and worse, had a minionly attitude to death. If they weren't sufficiently smashed up, broken bones simply knotted themselves together with white light.
Despite the fact that he should be enjoying an endless fight as much as Fettid was, the annoying veins of cunning that sometimes seemed to creep through his veins suggested to Maggat that – unthinkable though it was – it was possible that minions might be out-attritioned. Which was nonsense, of course – but the fact that he was thinking such things indicated something was very, very wrong.
Then Louise showed up and burned the tunnel full of monks to ash.
Maggat nodded solidly. The world was back to working like it was meant to.
"All right!" Louise shouted. "Minions, form up! We're smashing our way to whatever holy or sacred or something place that is making them come back. If it's another minion hive, I swear I'll scream!"
"Oh! They is coming back from the dead! That means it are gonna be the blue hive," Scyl said solidly.
She stopped. "Really?" she asked curiously.
"Oh yes. I is never right about these matters," Scyl said dreamingly.
Evil language, yes, Louise reminded herself. "Browns!" she shouted. "Form up and protect the blues while they handle the casualties! Reds! Lay down suppressive fire! Greens, protect the rear! Prepare to advance! We'll head towards the catacombs, killing everything dead in our way!"
That met with the expected cheers. Motivational speeches to minions were so much easier than demon lords or Cathayan emperors or people in your class at school.
The catacombs were presumably normally quiet, dark and gloomy, but minions were an effective remedy for all three. Instead, they were filled with goblinoid shouting, fire, and burning undead monks. Louise would have called it nightmarish, but honestly she'd seen worse.
Her metal-clad feet clanked on the rough stone. This area seemed familiar. The holes dug into the stone walls broke the architecture. In these tight quarters the undead monks could only attack along a narrow line, and so ran headlong into the minions. Sometimes she had to burn things up, but in all honest, she was fine with that. She was perfectly fine with-
And then the minions smashed down the door to the innermost chamber, and Louise totally lost her chain of thought.
Blue and red fires warred in a great bonfire in the centre of the room. Raising her left hand, Louise considered the strange feelings emanating from the fires. There was the soft kitten-warmness of Evil, but something much more painful and cold. Probably Good, given it was the opposite feeling to the pleasant feelings of Evil. Kneeling around it in a circle were dead kneeling figures. Insofar as far as Louise could tell from the long-dead monks and nuns, their robes were more expensive and there were more gold necklaces and the like. That probably made them the leaders.
As one, they rose, and took up their poses. They moved a lot more smoothly than the rank and file.
"That was not the blue hive!" Louise shouted at Scyl, feeling somewhat aggrieved.
"Well, okay, it are actually a super-special sacred oath of the monks what are always going to stay in this place and stop Evil from living in this place again," Scyl said, sounding hurt. "But it would be worser if it are the blue hive, wrong?"
The foremost monk, dressed in a faded orange robe and with an elaborate gold necklace moaned something in… some language. Probably Cathayan, if Louise had to guess, but they spoke lots of languages in Cathay. Either way, it sounded like the last gasp of air from a tomb door. His hollow eyes felt like they were staring into her soul.
"I'm sorry," Louise said, falling back on the well-recognised noble method for dealing with foreigners – ie speaking in your own language slowly and loudly. "But do you speak a civilised language? Tristainian? Romalian? No?"
The monk replied.
"How about an uncivilised language? Like Germanian or Gallian or Albionese." Louise shuddered. Urgh, Albionese and its damned –ough string of letters. Presumably that was related to the Dark Tongue in some way.
Unhelpfully, the monk didn't even have the common decency to speak one of those languages.
"Do you speak Infernal?" Louise tried.
But there really was no helping him.
"Wait! I know!" Louise rummaged through her outer robe. "I have those glasses for understanding what Emperor Lee says. Where did I put them? Oh, drat! Did I leave them on the ship?"
The monk said something, and then moved his hands in a spiralling gesture which narrowed in towards his core. A ball of light formed within them, bright and pure and righteous in the gloom of these catacombs. That couldn't be good.
Wait, no, it was probably Good. That was the problem.
"Minions!" Louise barked, throwing herself out of the way even as the corpse-monk punched the ball at her. Enthusiastically a trio of browns jumped in the way of the shiny glowing thing, possibly trying to eat it. Instead, it blew them into smithereens.
The other minions took that as encouragement and so charged in, screaming various war cries. The first brown to get close got its head punched clean off. So did the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth. The seventh, however, managed to impale the nun who'd just killed the fifth and the sixth on his broom and, gibbering, started using the undead holy woman as a hammer against her fellows.
"Reds! Burn them!" Louise shouted. "Blues, get going on that recovery!"
But that drew the attention of the corpses. One nun charged straight at her, hands moving like hungry snakes as she carved a path through the minions. A quick chant and Louise had a fireball at the end of her staff. She held it like a spear, keeping the dead woman at arm's length.
"Take her down!" Louise snapped, jabbing out with the burning orb. The nun flowed backwards with each poke. Oh yes, she certainly didn't like fire. "Someone! Kill her!"
The nun flowed to the left, one open-handed slap pushing Louise's staff away from the line of offence. Leaping backwards and muttering to herself, Louise clumsily dodged the first too-fast strike, but now the other woman was inside her guard.
Gritting her teeth, Louise dropped her staff and threw a left-handed punch. It wasn't a very good punch at all. The nun blocked it with a palm strike which jarred Louise's arm to the shoulder, and hissed something in her dead voice.
A hiss which quickly turned into panic as her own arm went up in flame. Withdrawing the gauntlet, Louise opened her fist and revealed the flame she'd been hiding within. With an exhalation, she sent fire rushing forth again and the nun ignited, collapsing down in a patter of embers.
"Founder, that really hurt," Louise complained, shaking out her arm. Lord, she wished Cattleya was here. But then again, with this much fire around, things wouldn't be going well for her big sister. She flexed her shoulder, and then stooped to pick up her staff.
"Overlady! Boss are coming your way!" Maxy shouted.
And the head monk was right in front of her. She managed to catch his first punch on her staff with purest luck, but the second took her right in the chest and with a crunch of metal she was sent skidding backwards to slam into a wall.
Louise spat out blood and gasped for air. Founder, that hurt! There was a fist dent over her left breast and the padding hadn't taken anywhere near enough of the blow. And she'd bitten her lip. "Fireball!" she managed to squeak out, holding her staff in one hand. The monk backhanded her ball of flame out of the way, advancing slowly but surely. "Fireball!" He did the same. "Argh… uh. Lightning!"
Thunder boomed and a forked tongue of pinkish lightning licked out towards the figure. And then he caught it. He actually caught it, grabbing the bolt and twisting it up in his hand as you might gather twine. The motions of his hands brought to mind flowing water and lapping waves, graceful and smooth.
"For the overlady!" screamed Fettid, throwing herself at the monk with both knives out. She stabbed the lightning ball within his hands, and promptly exploded, along with the monk. Undead religious figure and green viscera painted the walls.
Wheezing, Louise tried to breathe a sigh of relief. "Blues," she said.
"On it!" Scyl said cheerfully, pulling a trowel out from under his cloak and getting to work scraping Fettid off the floor. "Fettid had fun! She no have died like this before. I bet she are going to have lots of fun stories about the dead place this time."
"Yes. Ow. Yes. That is… that is a thing," Louise panted, trying to massage her chest through the plate armour. Founder, it hurt. She was certain there was going to be a bruise down there and her armour was pushing in on the bruise. She needed to get out of this armour before she damaged herself more. And… oh, sugar! Jessica wasn't here!
"Oh, hey, the monk are still dead," Scyl said happily. "It are making it easier to get Fettid out."
How was she going to get this fixed? Maybe she could have it just hammered out. Wait.
"Scyl. Why is him being…" Oh, sugar. Louise spun and set the area containing the partially rebuilt Fettid, Scyl, and the reforming monk ablaze. "Why won't you die!" she shouted at the dead man that crawled from the blaze, and felt fairly stupid for doing so after she thought for a moment. "Minions! Just keep on beating him! Reds, try to burn him to a crisp!
"Burny burn!" a red enthusiastically shouted.
"Wait, wait, can we set him on fire if he are already on fire?" another red tried, as a brown hopped around, feet on fire from where it had been giving the monk a good kicking.
"I no see why not!"
"But surely being on fire is something what is yes or no, and he is no?"
"Just cut him into pieces!" Louise shrieked, and then broke into coughing. Lord, if her armour hadn't been there he would have probably shattered her ribcage like a clay pot. Leaning on her staff, she limped away, desperately trying to think. He was coming back again and again, just like minions did. Just like Louis had. So he had to be getting life force from somewhere. Or unlife force. Or something.
"Overlady!" Maggat shouted, latched onto the burning monk's shoulders as he beat him around the head again and again with a club. "I is sure you has a cunning plan… Snot, cut his feeties off! Grabbit, pin the arms! Char, burn the breaks! I is sure you is cunning, but be quicker!"
"Quickerer," contributed Maxy as he tried sawing at one of the feet. "This are a problem! His legs are healing! Now my knify are stuck!" One struggling kick from the monk sent him flying into a wall, with the sound of a smashed lute.
"Wrong! Everybody, stick all your knifeys in him! If he heal around them, maybe he no struggle so hard!"
She blinked heavily. She could feel both Good and Evil in the fires in the centre of the room. Half the monks here had gone evil. And she was really, really good at Evil magic.
As fast as she could manage, she limped up to the sacred and also cursed fires. Louise took a deep breath. If she was wrong, this was going to hurt. A lot.
And she eased her left hand into the fire. Gritting her teeth, she concentrated and forced raw Evil out into the flames. "No pickled monk is going to get the better of me," she hissed. She could feel her hate and pain bubbling up inside her. "You punched me in the breasts. It really, really, really hurts. You stupid barbarian pig. You should have burned."
And with that last grated word, the fires flared. Red and blue alike were replaced by pink. The last of the reanimated corpses in the room deanimated.
Louise sagged down, utterly exhausted. "Is… is that it?" she managed.
"Yeah. Yeah, I is thinking so," Maggat said, dragging the charred corpse of the long-dead priest to her. "Look. He are still dead and now he no are moving."
Lord, she was going to be black and blue under her armour. Thank you, Jessica and thank you padding. She looked over the room. Minion losses hadn't been that sizable. The monks had mostly just been crushing skulls, tearing off limbs and occasionally pulling out a ribcage and stabbing them in the face with it. Minions did that to themselves when they were bored on Voidsday. Scyl was already back on his feet, still smoking slightly, working on Fettid.
"Overlady," Maggat reported smartly. "I are finding a key on the boss monk's body." He tapped his nose. "Probably for some treasure, what."
"Some treasure what?" Char asked.
"I dunno what. That are for the overlady to find out, idiot."
"Hee! That are tickling!" the newly reconstituted Fettid said happily, what hair she had all standing on end. She picked her nose, recovering a ball of spark-encrusted snot. "Oooh! It are magic! For the overlady!"
"Lovely," Louise said faintly. "You can keep it." Aching all over, she pulled herself to her feet. Find the treasure now. Then, back to the boat to lie down for… uh. Several days felt good.
…
"Ow. Ow ha ha. Ow. Ow."
Lying back on her hammock in the vessel, Louise tried to ignore the pain as Cattleya fussed over her and rubbed healing balm into her many bruises. To avoid thinking about it, she'd been reading the things she'd found in the head monk's quarters, now that she'd found her translation glasses again. They didn't give a perfect reading, but it was quite enough for her purposes.
The chief abbot had been quite a punctual record keeper, both before and after his death. Things got rather less detailed once he had become a dried corpse who only woke on certain holy days to carry out rituals, but it was enough that it seemed he had died almost three hundred years ago. The cold up here had just preserved the bodies. The cold, and apparently some kind of magic they had used so they could stay tied to the mortal world to fight evil.
Well, that sounded a lot like necromancy to Louise's ears, so really she was doing the right thing by destroying them. Anyone self-deluded enough to practice necromancy for a 'good cause' wasn't the sanest apple in the box.
Louise frowned. She couldn't help but feel that metaphor had gotten away from her slightly. Clearly a sign of how tired she was.
Regardless, from her reading she could tell that they'd set up their sacred fire to purify this place, tying their life forces to it to push the force of Good – and something had gone wrong. Some of the monks had turned evil, then they'd killed each other and the life force in the tower, part Good and part Evil, had reanimated the monks to fulfil their sworn oaths. If her estimates were right, it had died down enough that they lay dead most of the time, but when she had reactivated the tower, they had all sprung back to unlife.
And there were other things in the documents, older things that she wasn't quite sure the meaning of. Her glasses had problems with the older records, presumably because the language had changed over time. There was talk of a mysterious wanderer who had built this tower, and reference to mysterious figure called Shen Nao, Zuo Shou and You Shou – servants of Bulei Ma, who was either a hero seeking to destroy the tower-builder or one of his servants. It was rather unclear. In fact, from the context Louise suspected the writer was recording old tales.
Maybe there were secrets hidden somewhere in the region which would explain why the overlord who built this tower had come here in the first place.
"Ow!"
"Sorry, sorry," Cattleya apologised. "But you're going to need bed rest! Lots of bed rest! Which means it's just going to be down to me to make sure your plans go according to… well, to plan! Don't worry! You can trust me!"
Louise groaned. She had thought things were going well.
…
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
Man, I hope that the monks Louise is there to actually kill are more of a bunch of pushovers than these guys. Otherwise, she's in a mountain of trouble, especially now that she was injured.
Chojomeka
Behold! QUEEN MONKE!
...Oh that'll be one amazingly horrified expression when she learns the truth.
rofl:
- Location
- Red Blood on Golden Shield
Of course the cat is the best of all your followers, Louise.
Where do you think the stereotype of the villain petting a cat came from?
Where do you think the stereotype of the villain petting a cat came from?
- Location
- in the trash
The irony is quite amusing.
Well, at least Henrietta is self aware enough to realise that she's being a naughty girl by practicing necromancy.
Ah! The joys of delving into ancient tombs and purging them of their undead guardians.
Reminds me of Skyrim.
It would be hilarious for the Reconquista to succumb under a tide of the living dead. And orphans.
Reminds me of Skyrim.
It would be hilarious for the Reconquista to succumb under a tide of the living dead. And orphans.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
Undead kung fu monks.
Catt is not a monk.
Damnit.
That's all Mir 'Fee could muster up? Did Louise bribe him or something? Gods of chaos are rarely so trustworthy.
That's more like him.
PostwarGryphon
Traveller of Planes
- Location
- Australia
Mortal Kombat!
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Those fucking monks. Urgh.
That said, OH HEY LOOK, SOMEONE PUT ALL HER POINTS INTO MORE MAGIC, SOMEONE CAN'T HANDLE HIGH-LEVEL MELEE HEROES. HOW ABOUT THAT, HUH? If you'd properly specced your Louise for melee, he'd have been an obstacle but not a serous threat, but nooooo. You had to get all three Malevolent-tier upgrades to the fireball! Just two weren't nearly enough, were they?
I am going to take vicious glee in watching you deal with living monks and their holy talismans.
... actually, I'm vaguely interested: how did you get past the prayer wheel on the first sublevel? Did you just skip that bit, or did snuffing the Good oath shut it down? I played a minion/melee build and just killed them until they stayed dead with the soul-eating power.
frozenchicken
Does not have a custom title.
Oh, Brimir. I was thinking Bulimia.
- Pronouns
- she/her
Chest-caving punch, eh... the likelihood of Louise running into Eleanore's monk friend-with-benefits just got much higher.
Unfortunately that means he's probably going to die. Live monks don't have the damage resistance and regen which allowed the zombie monks to out-last minions. Eventually Louise wins through sheer numbers. The live monks could turn the tables by capturing Catt, though.
OTOH, Henrietta's death could be the final push that makes Louise drop the delusions and fully commit to an Evil career. Henrietta is both her moral justification and her get-out-of-Evil-free card.
Unfortunately that means he's probably going to die. Live monks don't have the damage resistance and regen which allowed the zombie monks to out-last minions. Eventually Louise wins through sheer numbers. The live monks could turn the tables by capturing Catt, though.
Oh fuck, Henrietta's going to get herself killed. Is Jessica in on this plan? It doesn't sound like Henrietta's being subtle about the necromancy now that Louise is out of the Tower.
OTOH, Henrietta's death could be the final push that makes Louise drop the delusions and fully commit to an Evil career. Henrietta is both her moral justification and her get-out-of-Evil-free card.
PKRudeboy
Gentleman Snarker
Never underestimate terrible undead poets. Take your eye off them for a second and you'll get a railroad spike through the head.
- Location
- The Old Dominion
I am not sure how Louise even qualifies as deluded evil, if she got any more classical evil in the way she's acting she's be pulling final boss previews, playing the pipe organ and playing cards, golfing or politely dining with the heroes before leaving them alone in slowly operating deathtraps.
Seriously she's been pulling classic Zelda, Bond and classic final fantasy boss behavior though at least she hasn't done any snidely whiplash or Hooded Claw Behavior.