Mori went through her new undead’s memories and, by the end, was conflicted. On one hand, she could not fault its logic for putting the souls of the Clockworks to rest and freeing them from the Forgeheart’s control. On the other, though, something did not sit right with her letting souls disperse into errant soulstuff. It just felt… weird. One of the things she despised was letting souls die the natural way. It was painful, as she knew from experience.
Despite that, the undead figured out a way to lay souls to rest peacefully, without tearing them apart violently as was what happened normally. Mori mulled it over as the meeting concluded and the leaders of the living armadas left the large meeting hall ATHENA had created with the help of the statue angel. The walls were decorated, the ceiling had a chandelier, and the tables were nice. It also was a good place to let everyone have fun. Normally, Mori’s dragons, liches, or other death knights would disperse and find some side room to relax in. While it worked, it did not help them feel like they were in a comprehensive community. Or at least Mori thought so. Between the over five hundred sapient undead under her control, employ, or whatever word could be used to describe her relationship with them, they could not share the space between all of them, but all five hundred plus undead were seldom there at once, so it worked well enough.
As the last visitor left, Mori sighed and broke her Connection with her ethereal undead, “Alright, I’m naming you Grim,” she said, receiving a nod from Grim, “Go… do whatever you want. First, though, VII,” she said, catching the attention of VII, who was reading something other than her favorite revenge novel, “What do you want to do with the souls of the Clockworks? This one can break the connections easily between the souls and the Forgeheart.”
VII looked at the mass of black mana, gave it a once-over, then shrugged, “I don’t know. Normally, the souls go back to Mother and they’re stored in soul gems before they’re reused. The thing is, I don’t know how to make either the recall system or the soul gems that are needed. They’re different from a lich’s soul gem, Mori, so you probably can’t make one. Unless you want to carry a mass of souls around with you at all times.”
“In that case…” Mori muttered, “What if it puts the souls to rest? As much as I hate to say it, but something has to be done with those souls, or they’ll just be destroyed when we destroy the Forgeheart and whatever mechanism he’s using to control them.”
“Puts them to rest?” VII asked, “What do you mean by that?”
“You know… dispersing the souls painlessly, making the natural process less dramatic,” Mori explained, “Don’t you have a way to do that?”
VII shook her head, giving the cloud of mana another once-over, “No, Mori, we don’t… Can your undead do that?” Mori nodded, VII sighing in response, “Just one more thing to deal with when this is all over. So, they didn’t feel any pain?” Mori nodded again, “Then… Fine, let it do what it needs to do,” she replied bitterly.
Mori nodded to Grim, who dispersed with a rush of mana. She was feeling just as conflicted about the issue as VII was. She did not like it, but it was a necessary measure. But she put it out of her mind; she had a battle to prepare for.
*=====*
The next day, Mori was standing atop the central structure of ATHENA’s body with Idle, in her draconic form, beside her, “Are you sure? That seems a bit… degrading to you.”
Idle turned and stared at Mori, “Mistress,” Idle began, “Degrading is being made to ignore my personal duty to protect you. I don’t care if you’re riding on my back, in my claws, or even riding on my head. My duty is to protect you, and I think I’ve done that well. When you aren’t sending me off to fight Clockworks in the hills or running off to fight a bunch of hybrids without telling me…” Mori just smiled sheepishly, “Whatever the case, this is the most dangerous battle we have faced yet. I would find it to be a personal insult if you didn’t let me protect you.”
Mori had nothing she wanted to say against that. Sure, she had never properly defined their relationship with each other, with Idle as a bodyguard and Mori as Idle’s charge. Sure, Idle had never complained about the assignments Mori gave her before. And sure, Idle was always far more helpful when apart from Mori. Despite all of that, Mori just nodded, “In that case, I’ll take you up on it,” Mori replied, taking a tentative leap up to Idle’s neck, “Thanks, by the way.”
“No problem, mistress,” Idle replied, “So, what was the signal?” she asked. At that moment, an explosion ripped across the sands of the desert, originating from the walls of the heart of the Hive, “That, I guess,” she said, flapping her wings and taking off. Mori watched as the armada of skiffs made a slow approach to the Hive, firing cannons and artillery and hammering the walls Mori could just barely see over the horizon.
Clockwork artillery answered, firing shells high into the air in the direction of the armada. Shields manifested atop every skiff present, created by the mages who had suffered the fewest casualties. Fire rained and blasted shrapnel across the entire fleet, hurting few and killing even fewer. While the cannons traded shots, though, Idle was making good progress over to the Hive, dodging and weaving around the shells that filled the air.
When they arrived, the walls were in chaos. Shimmering Talonecs flitted between emplacements, slaughtering every Clockwork that resisted. As Idle touched down on one of the large clocksteel spires, a pair of Talonecs shimmered up to her, “Mistress,” Pandoran, as he wanted to be called, greeted, “We destroyed the walls in all of the places you wanted, though a good few of our other objectives are delayed. We suffered a few hard hits and half of us are recovering,” he reported.
Mori nodded, understanding the stress she put them under, “That’s better than I thought. Did you make sure not to get anyone killed?” she asked. They both nodded, “Good. In that case, gather every Talonec you need and bring them over. I’ll be helping with Idle and the other three should be here soon; I had them doing some errands for me.” Her officers nodded, shimmering away as she turned to the Hive, falling to chaos.
None of the Clockworks seemed to know where the enemies were coming from, and they ran through the streets like headless chickens. What gave Mori pause, though, was the general trend of the Clockworks approaching the seaside of the former Aekan city. “Mistress,” Idle said, “Do you want to follow them?” she asked, nudging her scaly head towards the Clockworks flowing towards the sea.
Mori nodded, and Idle took off, flying hard towards the sea, and the docks on it. It was only a minute before they reached the docks. And it was in total chaos. What could only be described as mermaids floated in water bubbles, shooting some magic or other at any and all Clockworks that approached. Idle hung in the air for a moment to give Mori a better view when a lance of water cleaved through her wing, sending the limb spiraling down to the ground.
Mori and Idle began to fall, but neither were too concerned, “Mistress, does the lich regeneration count if I break my bones?” she asked quickly.
“Yep. I’ve been through it and let me tell you, it’s not fun having your bones broken. At least you have a bunch of flesh around your soul gem. I didn’t have anything like that when that damn Mesa Dog threw the log at me. Wonder what happened to Frank, anyway…” she pondered.
Idle rolled her eyes as they neared the ground, “Mistress, the infiltration team already found Frank and the other undead. They were in the outpost and held the Clockworks off,” she said. Mori had just enough time to huff about the fact that no one told her that before they were thrown into the metal ground. Idle’s body did not suffer too much, mostly having her ribcage shattered and her jaw cracked. Mori, on the other hand, was thrown to the ground and skipped like a rubber ball, bouncing a few times before crashing into a fallen Clockwork Knight, as she called the fifteen foot tall bots. She could say one thing for certain, though. It hurt. It was almost as bad as getting a new Trait.
Her body, though, was barely harmed. She was made of adamantite, after all. She sat up and groaned, watching as her out layer, ground into dust because of the fall, returned to her, “Never doing that again,” she said, looking up to see a very scared-looking mermaid and a very concerned merman, “Hey there,” she said, “How’s it going?”
They shared a concerned glance, backing up a bit as well, “You…” the man said, his voice garbled by the water, “Are you a lich?” he asked.
“What gave it away?” Mori asked.
“Are you going to kill us?” the man asked, not-so-subtly raising his own staff at her.
Mori huffed, standing up and shaking off a bit of the dust, “No, but I do want to know what you’re doing here. Kind of a bad time to be taking a vacation from the sea, considering there’s a war going on around here. And a bad place, to be honest.”
The man glared a bit, “We are here to fight the Clockwork menace. Not prance around on ‘vacation,’ as you land dwellers do,” he ground out, “But you say that there is a war going on here?”
“Yep. We finally got enough people and resources together to take down the Forgeheart once and for all. What, do you want in?” she asked.
The man nodded, “We do, though I have my misgivings about… your kind being here,” he began, “But Sklanna needs to apologize for… attacking an ally first.” He waited a moment, then turned to the terrified mermaid, “Sklanna.”
“Huh?” she started, turned between him and Mori, “O-Oh! I am very sorry for my actions, madam lich… Can you forgive me?”
Idle, at that point, finally regenerated her bones enough to stand, and began to walk over to them, “You’re lucky I’m a lich too, or else I’d need a mage to heal my bones properly,” she sighed, “Mistress, having more allies doesn’t hurt…”
“I know that,” Mori replied, giving Sklanna a smile, “I forgive you. We all make mistakes, and this one didn’t set us back much. Anyway, you’re welcome to join in. I have some… special undead that look a bit like Clockworks, but you should be able to tell the difference. Hopefully. Anyway, we’ve gotta run!” Mori said, leaping atop Idle and holding on as she flapped her wings, “Do whatever you want!” she shouted down at the merfolk, “It’ll be over soon.” With that, Idle flew away, bringing Mori to the front lines once more.
