The OP Lich is a Returnee, Chapter 20 (Patreon)

Chapter 20 – Attack

My eyes snapped to the door, even as I rose from my chair. Quickly, I looked through the eyes of my knights. Nothing outside. The guards weren’t even reacting as though there was anything wrong. Inside, however? That was another story.

The human guards outside the door were down. Looking through the Knight’s eyes, I could see that four were dead, with two others wounded pretty badly. One of them would need healing magic pretty quickly, or he wasn’t going to make it. My Knight, however, was uninjured. A grenade wasn’t enough to do more than scratch his shield.

Looking down the hallway through his eyes, I saw that it was filled with gunmen. Or, that’s what it looked like. If one trusted their eyes, then there were over fifty men in that hallway, all armed with assault rifles, and some of them even holding grenade launchers! If you looked closely, however, it soon became clear that those fifty—no, fifty-five—men looked awfully similar to each other, almost like there were only eleven, and they’d each been copied five times.

I recognized the spell, of course. Maybe not this exact implementation, but illusions designed to increase or hide one’s numbers were an essential part of a magical battlefield. Oh, everyone got gushy about the big, flashy spells, like fireballs and lightning strikes, but illusions and divinations were truly the most powerful spells on a battlefield. After all, unless you wasted power blindly throwing fireballs, you couldn’t kill what you couldn’t find.

Fortunately, my Knights were undead, which made them immune to some of the more common illusions. Sure, their ‘eyes’, such as they were, saw the illusions, but that wasn’t their only sense. They saw Life, and the illusions needed to fool that sense were quite a bit more complicated. My Knight saw them clearly.

So, there were eleven men, all dressed in black, with matching white hats, and all armed and ready to kill. I recognized the group as the Púcaí, a revolutionary group from Northern Ireland. One of the Púcaí raised his grenade launcher, and I threw a shield over my knight and the two wounded guards. As the grenade wasted itself against the shield, I turned to the King.

“Eleven men, probably Púcaí, or meaning to impersonate them. They’re using illusions to make themselves look like a larger force. You have four dead, one wounded, and one dying out there. Will you allow me to assist?”

The King took a breath, and then nodded. “Yes. Please handle them. But, if it is not too much trouble, can you take some of them alive? I want to know who did this, and how they pulled it off.”

I nodded, and drew a pair of potions from my storage. “Give these to the two who are still alive. I believe it would mean more for them, coming from their liege, than from me. They are healing potions.”

The King nodded, firmly, but didn’t say anything. He’d been in the military, like the rest of his family. He knew there was a time for talk, and a time for action. And this was no time for talk.

A touch of my ankh, and the gown I wore was replaced by my armored dress, the same one I had used in a thousand battles over the long campaign in the other world. The ring that suppressed my aura and a portion of my powers slipped into a pocket designed for it. Then, I reached into my storage again, and felt my staff rest comfortably in my hand. Stepping forward, I threw open the door, ignoring the bullets that were now peppering the shield I’d thrown up.

As I stepped in front of the downed guards, the King moved quickly to unstopper the two potions, and pour one down each throat. I didn’t bother looking at that, as I knew what the healing potions would do next. Instead, I was looking at the gunmen.

“There he is! Kill him! Daire, deal with the undead!”

That shout from one of the attackers was all I needed to hear. They were here for the King, not me. And ‘deal with’ me? Hah. I saw what they were planning, as soon as one of the men traded his assault rifle for a crucifix, and began speaking Latin.

Unfortunately for him, I was not so easy to deal with. There was a brief flash of holy power, as he tried to do his spell, but it broke against my shield. All things considered, I decided to maintain the shield, and just allow my Knight to deal with things. With a wave of my hand, I sent him forward.

To those who hadn’t seen one of my Knights in action before, the speed they moved was something unbelievable. They were actually faster and stronger than they had been in life. Not by a terrible amount. More like if you took the difference between a human in peak condition and someone who is gym fit, and added that to the peak human.

Before the priest could attempt another spell, he was distracted by the sword stabbed through his chest, like a character from one of those ‘Souls-like’ games who missed the block. That was particularly fitting, since the sword was enchanted to steal the souls of its victims, allowing me to interrogate, or torture, them at my leisure. Too bad there were no bonfires to save him, or his friends.

The other ten men focused fire on my Knight, but it was no different from the experience on the talk show set. My creations may have only had a portion of my power, but they were all far more powerful than anything in this world. Sure, they weren’t invincible (I doubted my average Knight could do more than get run over by a tank unless they had extra magic bolstering them, for instance), but against humans? They did not have nearly enough guns to take on my one Death Knight.

But they did not have time to consider that, for my Knight was already upon them. His blade swung down in a slashing strike, and the only reason his blade didn’t cut clean through his next target was because cutting through the rifle that had been held up in defense, which, along with the man’s collarbone, slowed his strike enough that he could not cut cleanly through the spine. The knight threw his newest victim off to the side, and advanced into the group.

That little display caused the men to start to lose their nerve. My skeleton wasn’t phased by their illusions, and their priest trump card had proven woefully inadequate. They began to panic, and one turned to run.

I couldn’t have that, now. With a snap of my fingers, a wall of black flames burst up behind the attackers. The runner didn’t care, or maybe he noticed that the black flames didn’t even singe the paint on the walls, and tried to force his way through. Maybe he was figuring that a getting few burns was a healthier proposition than trying to deal with my Knight.

He was wrong.

I was a Necromancer, after all. Those flames didn’t burn paint or stone. They burned Life. The man barely had time to scream as he passed through the flames. I allowed them to open for a second, afterward, so that the remaining men could see the desiccated corpse, looking like it had been dug out of an Egyptian tomb, rather than having been a living would-be assassin just a moment before.

As my Knight began going for maiming or crippling blows, hacking off arms and legs, rather than going straight for the quick kill, I said, in my most ‘charming’ Lich Queen voice, “Unworthy fools! Fall to your knees and pray for mercy, or the Lich Queen of Risen Athelia shall rend your souls. No peace, no afterlife shall ever be open to you. Your eternity will be nothing but torment.”

Then, as they were still trying to defend themselves from the Knight’s attacks, I hit the base of my staff against the ground, and a burst of necromantic power pulsed out. To their horror, the attackers saw their former comrades rise up jerkily, like zombies out of a movie, and turn to face them. Even more disturbingly, their lost limbs began animating, as well, with one severed arm grabbing its former owner around the ankle.

“See now, your fallen already begin their torment as tools of the Lich Queen!”

That was too much for them. There were six remaining out of the eleven, and four of those were missing limbs. They were broken, and all too eager to surrender. I released the wall of deathfire and the shield I had been holding, and set my Knight to guard them.

The two remaining guards stood. Both were shaken, but the potions I had given them were the good stuff. Oh, they tasted horrible, by all accounts, and the pain of the healing was roughly twice that of the injury itself, but that was all by design. Potion addiction was a very real concern in the other world. Best to make potions a last-ditch option, rather than something people seek out.

Looking back at them, and the King behind them, I said, “Your Majesty, as these brigands attacked you in your house, I would turn them over to your loyal guards, so that they may know the Justice of your lands.” It was a very formal way of speaking, but some situations demanded formal tones. After all, I had proclaimed myself the Lich Queen, and we were no longer behind closed doors, so acknowledging his authority in this matter was only right.

He seemed to be on the same wavelength, because he drew himself up to his full height, and said, strongly, “As King of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms, I thank you, Queen Akagawa. Please trust that these knaves shall know justice, as provided by the courts.”

Then, he turned to one of the guards. “I believe there has been quite a racket so far. Where are the rest of the guards, Captain?”

“Sir, I am unable to reach them on the radio. Some sort of jamming in effect, Sir.”

“May I assist, your Majesty?”

“If it pleases you, my Lady.”

I reached out with my senses, and quickly found the reason, now that I was looking for it. There was a barrier in place, covering this wing of the building. A very subtle one, that kept all sound from leaving this area, and blocked radio transmissions. It did not, however, keep me from projecting my senses through it, or communicating with my undead outside.

Stretching out further, I felt more barriers, over two other areas. The kitchens and a security office, it looked like. Peering through, I saw more corpses, and the lingering energy of their killings. It was fairly obvious, now, where the attackers had come from, and why no alarms were raised.

With a wave of my hand, the three barriers shattered against my power. “The barrier is down, as are the ones over the kitchen and what appears to be a security office. Death has visited those areas, as well.”

The guard nodded, and immediately raised the alarm. Once reinforcements arrived, I had my Knight stand down, and deanimated the bodies of the fallen. I was just extracting the souls of the fallen from my Knight’s blade, storing them in gems so that I could properly interrogate them later, when I noticed that one of the servants appeared, at the end of the hallway, looking furious. I knew it was trouble when he took a breath, and then began to charge forward, despite the guards turning their weapons on him.

“Mori, temerator animarum! By the Flames of Purification!”

A bolt of black lightning struck him in the chest, and he collapsed to the ground, as his soul was ripped from his body. He did not even have a chance to pull the cord on the suicide vest that was now clearly visible. All eyes turned to me.

I just shrugged. “Those Purifiers talk too much.” That got a couple uneasy laughs, before I looked back to the King. “It seems that my coming here has acted as something of a lightning rod. Might I suggest that we adjourn, for now, and continue our discussion some other time?”

The King nodded. “Unfortunately, I think that would be for the best. Though, if I might impose upon you to tarry long enough to replace that man’s soul, once the vest is made safe? If the Púcaí have joined forces with the Purifiers, then that is worrying news indeed.”