“Down!” Marta screamed as her eyes snapped open!
Much to Amelia’s surprise, the death dog obeyed by stopping its charge just short of biting Amelia, only to lay down and look at Marta with a confused look. It looked at Amelia again and growled.
Marta screamed, “No!”
The dog gave her an inquisitive look and whined a little, as if asking a question.
Marta hugged her sister and spoke to the dog, “This is Amelia. She’s your friend.”
She let go of Amelia and the dog approached in a far less hostile fashion, licking Amelia’s hand, while she stared with mixed amazement and waning terror.
“What? How?” She sputtered.
Marta rubbed the head of the dog, muttering in disturbingly affectionate manner, “Who’s a good boy? Yes you are!” As the dog licked Marta’s hand, she explained, “This is Bones, the Queen’s dog. His body’s senses haven’t worked for centuries and he instead perceives everything with his spirit, which works in a more metaphorical way. He can tell what’s happened to me, though he doesn’t understand it, or he wouldn’t obey my commands.”
“What’s going on?” Amelia finally tore her eyes away from the dog that had been trying to kill her mere moments earlier, instead looking at Marta.
“The Queen is in the process of trying to consume my soul. To that end, she chipped off a piece of my spirit and replaced it with a piece of herself. We’re now linked and that can’t be undone. We’re caught in a battle of wills, a contest of eat or be eaten, though for the moment, the Queen is busy, because Iris is giving her the beating of her unlife.”
“Are you going to be all-right?”
Marta nodded with unsettling confidence, “I have no choice, so I’ll eat her soul, rather than laying down to die!” She grinned evilly, in a fashion Amelia had never seen before, “The-” she referred to the Queen as a female dog, “picked a fight she wasn’t prepared for and I’ll use her own magic against her! I’ve been experiencing her memories and the more I pick through her thoughts, the more I learn about blood, bone and spirit magic, the cornerstones of necromancy. That’s already been of significant help in this fight and we’re just about even.” She noted Amelia’s look of concern and sighed, “I know I’m becoming more like her, but that should be temporary. Once I’ve stolen her soul, I should eventually go back to normal.”
Amelia wasn’t at all reassured. In fact, Marta’s words had only increased her concern, but she decided to keep those thoughts to herself, since there was nothing they could do about the situation.
“Any idea where Iris is?” Amelia decided to get back to business.
“Across the hall, on the left., at least according to the Queen’s memories.”
Amelia led the way, followed by Marta, then Bones. As Amelia unlocked and opened the door, some kind of muffling spell ended and their sister’s voice became quite clear to hear.
Iris spoke, “Iris Blackwell, Specialist, L-F-7-5-9-0-2.”
Amelia’s light orb illuminated their sister, who lay on the floor of the cell, beside a bucket of water and an old, stale loaf of bread.
“Iris Blackwell, Specialist, L-F-7-5-9-0-2.” Iris repeated herself.
“Is she okay?” Amelia asked.
Marta shook her head, “No. The Queen really put her through the ringer: a full day of torture spells, followed by something even worse. The Queen forced Mina to addict her to pleasure spells, followed by offering more, in exchange for information.”
Iris repeated her name, rank and serial number as her sisters talked.
“That’s really sick!” Amelia commented, then asked in a concerned tone, “Who’s Mina?”
“Sorry, that’s the Docking Witch.”
Amelia nodded, then asked, “Why is Iris repeating that?”
“I think it’s a self-hypnosis thing, to block pain. She once told me a little about the training the WIA gave her, for the sake of resisting interrogation. Either way, though, we shouldn’t disturb her too much, because she’s keeping the Queen busy.”
While Marta scooped up Iris, Amelia sniffed the bucket and concluded it was full of water. She picked it up and drank until she was sloshing, because she needed it so badly.
Marta carried Iris like a baby and Amelia led the way to the war wagon. From there, they strapped Iris into the front seat and Marta climbed into the back, while Amelia took the wheel and Iris continued her mantra. Bones leaped onto the hood of the wagon, clearly intent of riding it from the outside.
“Let’s get out of here.” Amelia commented.
Iris surprised them both by speaking more normally, “Get the spell-core.” Having said her piece, she went back to muttering name, rank and serial number.
“She’s got a point.” Marta agreed, “We need our spell-core back, if we can get it. I suspect it’s been bonded to this ship’s core, though, which would make things troublesome.
“Can you tell me the way?” Amelia asked.
“Yeah.”
The Queen was frustrated, because every time she started to cast a spell, Iris switched to choking! It was getting extremely tiresome, but the Queen couldn’t break free, because the younger woman’s hand-to-hand training had been rather excellent! Even undead strength gave her no advantage, because Iris was stronger via remote-touch than she was in person!
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
The Queen didn’t know what to do and that was ticking her off even more! As rage consumed her, uncontrolled magic poured from her body much like the day Bones died.
The Queen formed a strategy in her mind, based on her past work with mythril, which could be quite dangerous to mine, because excess magic built up in the metal, until it burst out, like water from a broken dam. At that point, all it took was any nearby mind with a hint of imagination, which would force a spell-like shape on the energy. Such randomized spells were normally referred to as a mythril surge. Such wild magic was insanely difficult to control, but could be tamed and controlled with runes.
She didn’t know what would happen, but she hoped to produce a spell via a surge, because if things continued as they were, her head was likely to be twisted right off!
The Queen growled and concentrated on a particular effect, in the hope that her mind would be the one to shape the magic, though that was no guarantee and she calculated the odds of that happening at sixty percent, with a thirty percent chance Iris would shape it and a ten percent chance of nothing happening. Additionally, there was a twenty-five percent chance the ship would absorb it, though there was some overlap between that option and the other three.
With a grunt of effort, the magic pouring from her body peaked and surged, producing an outward explosion of energy in all directions, which emanated from the Queen, with all of it in the form of spirit magic! The Queen barely heard a ghost-like scream from Iris as she took the brunt of the blast!
The Queen laughed with delight, straightened up and stretched her limbs, just in time to be run down by Amelia’s war wagon, a second time!
“Huh. There’s that zombie in a dress again.” Amelia commented, while Marta sniggered, causing Amelia to ask, “What?”
“That was the Queen.” Marta explained.
The eyes of Iris popped open and she added her two bits, “You’ve run over her twice, now.”
She clutched her head and groaned.
“Really?” Amelia spoke with surprise,
“Yeah.” Both of her sisters spoke at the same time.
“Well, maybe next time we should shoot her first.”
The Dead Queen looked up at the war wagon, bothered by the fact Bones was riding the front end. It wasn’t like him to betray his master, but on the other hand, he was probably confused. That had happened once before, during the process of consuming a soul, since his body’s senses had mostly failed so long ago. In general, the Queen kept him away from her victims, once she started feeding, to save him the trouble. Unfortunately, that meant Amelia had led him straight to Marta, who was clearly canny enough to give him orders.
The Queen muttered the words of her corpse repair spell, reassembling herself.
As she rose to her feet and looked on the metal wagon, she wondered where they were going, since they hadn’t turned to go back to their ship. After a little thought, she concluded they were going for the spell-core, which was no worry. After all, only the core’s owner could touch it.
Then she remembered the intricate runes on Amelia’s spell core, which surrounded the activation circle. T?he circle had been designed to only work for Blackwell women. There were similar runes on the core of Foundation Stone, which only allowed the Queen to touch it, but it had specifically been worded as ‘owner’, rather than using her name.
She considered the implications for a moment and realized there was half a chance the Blackwell sisters could touch the combined core without the self-defense spells activating. Worse, if they couldn’t separate their core, which would be quite impossible without knowledge of mythril welding spells, then they were likely to just steal the whole thing.
The Queen cursed and started running! She had to stop them, or all of the spells unifying the granite of Foundation Stone would malfunction, because the spell-core was the only thing capable of keeping the entire mountain synchronized!
She spoke a spell consisting of ‘gravity’, ‘fly’ and ‘witch’, that she might move faster! The magic carried her aloft and she accelerated down the hall at high speed, in pursuit of her would-be victims, who were really starting to become a vexing trio!
The zombies guarding the spell-core chamber burned to ash, screaming as they died by Marta’s hand, though what they screamed was bizarre: “Thank you!”
“That’s just weird.” Amelia pointed out as she parked the wagon and shut the engine off.
“Not really,” Marta explained, “because it hurts to be trapped in a rotting body.”
“That’s why they moan all the time, right?” Iris asked.
“Yeah.”
As they got out of the wagon, Amelia looked on Iris with concern, because she was sweating and trembling.
“Are you okay?” Amelia asked.
“Not really,” Iris admitted, “but we have bigger fish to fry. We can deal with the consequences once we escape.” Changing the subject, Iris pointed out, “When I tried to unscrew that thing with remote-touch, it hit me with a spell that made me feel like I’d been burned alive.”
Amelia nodded and slipped on a pair of thick gloves, then cautiously approached.
She spent a few minutes examining the runes, then pointed to one of the smaller cores screwed into the large one, “Found our core.” She crouched and examined it, then shook her head, “It’s been welded in place. I’ve no idea how that could have been done, because mythril is so hard, I was forced to cast the parts and thread them while they were still hot. That’s why ours was put together with screws. I’ll have to take it apart, but we’ll lose the screw rod at the bottom.”
“You can replace that in the short term with a steel rod.” Marta suggested, “It won’t function as well, but it will get us limping.”
Amelia looked on Marta with shock, “I’m surprised you know that.”
“The Queen knows.” Marta shrugged.
Amelia produced a screwdriver and gingerly reached out, only to stop short and curse.
“What?” Iris asked.
“The Queen welded the whole thing together! It’s now all one piece!”
Iris nodded, sat down on the floor and muttered, “I’ll try first. If it knocks me out again, we’ll have to leave it. I’ll need those gloves.”
Amelia nodded and removed her gloves as Iris closed her eyes to chant her name, rank and serial number.
Iris stepped out of her body, took the gloves from Amelia and slipped them on her invisible hands, in the hopes that would be enough. She laid hold of the huge spell-core and gave it a counter-clockwise twist. Much to her surprise, it didn’t fry her again.
After a few more twists, it came free of its socket in the floor and there was a sudden lurch as the monolith’s propulsion spells failed. Fortunately, the artificial gravity spell kept going, because it had been chiseled into the granite of the mountain at regular intervals, before it had been flown into space.
“Well, that was surprisingly easy.” Her body commented as she put the core in the seat of the wagon dedicated to the rear gunner.
Iris ended her spell and reluctantly returned to her aching body.
Marta pointed out, “That should be safe to touch, now that we’ve stolen it.”
“Why?” Amelia asked.
“It doesn’t hurt people that own it.” Marta grinned and recklessly put a hand on the bare mythril.
They climbed back in the wagon and Amelia backed them into the hallway.
The Queen noted the approaching roar of the steam-power wagon and dropped back to the ground. She knew the spell-core had been stolen, because the magic of Foundation Stone had grown more wild, on top of the gravity spell that had been slowing the ship having vanished.
It was deeply frustrating, but it would be solved soon enough, because she’d finally gotten her mind settled on solid ground and she was ready for a real fight.
The wagon came around a corner on two wheels, then dropped back to four and the Queen’s grin grew wicked as she chanted the words of a spell!