The lines between dreams and reality were blurring. The momentary disorientation caused by whatever attacked me earlier was wearing off; I could tell I was back. Luckily, I'd been in a state of limbo enough times now to distinguish reality, even as disconnected from my body as I was.
This was it. My truth. My hell.
I mentally clawed at myself attempting to grab hold of any body part that I could reclaim. In such a short time I had forgotten how infuriating it was that my body wasn't my own anymore.
The faint buzz of magic filled the air as I approached the center of the conflict. I could feel the waves of heat and cold ebb and flow in erratic patterns, accompanying the putrid scent of burning garbage and rotting flesh.
From beside me, a massive form with a disproportionately tiny pig head charged past into the battle, knocking me and others in its path aside. It wasn't long before a spear of Ice embedded into its shoulder nearly removing an arm, as blade of wind gouged out a chunk of flesh from its side, and the subsequent spell barrage shaved off pieces of flesh and bone. Despite the flames that gnawed at its flesh, and its waning body mass; it still pressed forward. A mere moments after, it fell. Its entire upper body was missing, but it had managed to push the frontline forward ever so slightly, and served as a cover for a few smaller creatures to make their ways to the front. With the undead forces never ceasing to pour past the walls like this, It was only a matter of time before the living defensive line was breached. Not like that is going to be my problem for much longer, seeing as I wasn't going to be around to watch it play out.
A twinge of pain stabs at me as I was nearly skewered by the appearance of a stray Icicle clipping my left arm. I could feel the frozen spike tear into the upper part of my tricep with a force that probably dislocated my shoulder. Instinctively, I freeze over the injury to relieve the pain, and keep my arm together. I could feel a slight chill come from a point near the center of my chest, then a layer of ice encased my entire shoulder.
A spark of hope lightens my thoughts as I force whatever feeling that caused the ice to form on my shoulder to spread and root me to the ground, my whole body encased in a shell of thick ice. I want to scream in elation upon my newfound discovery. I could still weld magic! To what extent I am still uncertain, but that isn't important right now. If this is true, then I may be able to find other ways of controlling my body. The end goal being not dying again. Unfortunately, I don't have the best track-record right now.
My mind races trying to come up with various solutions as to how to control my body, but I make little progress before my icy prison begins to crack from external forces. The hoard continued moving forward without me so I put my thoughts of freedom on pause while I dealt with the more immediate problem of not getting mangled further. Magic doesn't seem to function any differently now than before, it's just weird.
The cracks in my ice prison continue to grow, so I shelve my thoughts to focus on escape. Summoning some void tendrils I do my best to drag myself out of the chaos. My control over magic was shifty at best, but luckily it worked. The other undead are too stupid to consider anything other than eating the people in front of them, and the chaos of the battle helped mask my withdrawal.
I release my body but am quickly forced to re-anchor it with Ice, making sure it can't run off to go get itself killed again. The excitement I had felt from getting my magic back didn't really help when faced with the situation in front of me. The legions before me would turn me to dust if I tried to stop them, if the humans see me I would be gone in an instant, and I can't really keep my body from running right into the middle of both of them. The only thing I could really do is sit here frozen. Even then, what would come after? I wasn't just going to comply with what my body wanted, and I wasn't fond of the idea of letting everyone die.
A particular idea had crossed my mind with trying to puppeteer my body with void magic, but I thought it had too many flaws. Sadly it seemed to be the best option for the moment so I gave it a go. I dispelled the ice shell and my body made a break for the battlefield. Tripping it I secured my ankles and wrist to the ground, then made a rough skeleton to keep my body restrained but still able to move. Fine manipulation was a bit of an ordeal but it worked well at keeping me restrained yet still allowing me to remain semi-mobile, and a little less conspicuous.
My primary goal right now needs to be stopping whatever is happening. I could worry about getting control of my body back later, since I have no clue whether or not it's even possible, and having help might work better. My next destination needs to be the city. I can't do anything on my own right now and I need more information, but I need to focus on one thing at a time. Step one needs to be getting past the blockade.
Any smart defensive line would have contingency plans for creatures that aren't stupid and deviate ever so slightly from the rest of the hoard. That being said, the dead aren't exactly known for their ingenuity, but I doubt the city would be so insightful based on what I spoke about with Ravi. Only outside the city walls would truly be safe for me, but I couldn't really help from out there.
The incessant resistance from my body was beginning to slowly chip away at my mana pool. It didn't seem to care how it got away, it wanted out; which didn't mesh well with my desire to not eviscerate my own body.
Maintaining the constant hold over my body was taxing, especially when I had to stop it from tearing itself apart in the process. Not to mention it's constant groaning that was way too loud and made the notion of hiding almost impossible.
Embracing the nature of my dead self I decided to bury tendrils under my skin, it allowed me to get a better hold over myself which seemed to work in hampering the resistance I was facing, and allowed a finer degree of control, but it was a bit more taxing. It was really uncomfortable, and I also didn't like the damage it did to my body, but In a situation like this I needed to be in absolute control even if that meant ripping myself apart. That, and it wasn't like I was in great shape to begin with.
I needed to find a way to stop the hoard, maybe then I would have a way to get control of my body back. To do that my first course of action is to find Annabelle. If she started this mess then stands to reason she's needed to end it.
Looking back out on the hoard I could almost feel a connection to them; which unnerved me because that meant they probably knew where I was but didn't care. Yet … That also meant I should be able to find Annabelle.
Moving along the outer edge of the city wall, I created a mask over my body's mouth to try and mute my voice as well as a pseudo replacement for my left arm so that it was usable, and filled in a hole in my side using ice magic to make me more stable. It wasn't perfect, you could still hear a faint muffled scream from behind the mask and I was still a bit bent out of shape, but it was the best I could do at the moment. It was suspicious but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
I am currently on the North side of the city. The hoard had broken into the fields, a wide expanse of the northern side of the city with little more than crop land and a few loosely collected houses. Distruction here may be devastating to the few who live out here, but they were still a distance away from the actual hub of the city itself, where everyone would have been evacuated to. I'd like to say it was a stroke of luck the hoard broke through where they did. It gave the city a greater chance at fighting back since they don't have to worry about enclosed spaces and crowd control.
That being said this was planned by someone who should be familiar with how the city was designed. If Anabelle was smart then she would have attacked the South side which directly connects to the city, unless turning the empty crop plots into a burning wasteland was her main goal. I'd assume no.
The south side would be the fastest way to amass massive casualties, without allowing much time to react. Yet she chose the exact opposite. The fields gave too much space for the city's guards to react, and would only cause greater loss to her in a war of attrition. The hoard was mindless, and though strong, could only march forward with neither fear nor competence. The city was clearly at an advantage here … so why?
Looking back onto the battle front I finally saw the true carnage of the battle. Hundreds of humans stood facing down the waves of oncoming undead corpses scattered as far as the eye could see accumulating into small mountains. The humans were fighting tooth and nail to stay alive but their numbers were slowly dwindling.
A chill signified a shift in the hoard, and I could feel something moving behind me. Despite the endless stream of undead pouring into the city I could detect a small stream had broken off outside the walls moving towards the east side of the city. It was a but a minute fraction of the force I found myself in but I could feel that Anabelle was there. She was planning something.
I couldn't see what she stood to gain in this situation. This isn't an efficient way to kill people so that can't be the main goal. She obviously wants a war of attrition, but what does that give her? Perhaps she just wants to torture them? I Couldn't grasp what her plan was, but I wasn't given much else to do other than think.
Something still wasn't sitting right with me. Where was everyone else? If the undead were only attacking on one front there wouldn't be the need for so many people to stay back and protect the city which was probably what Anabelle had planned on. I didn't see any demi-humans in the battle, and they aren't likely to abstain from a fight even if relationships are tense, So to see so few people should be a good thing right? Were there other battles I was unaware of? Perhaps there is a range to the undead I could sense. Could I be underestimating Annabelle's forces? Further thoughts became unpleasant.
More concerning, after scanning the area I noticed the forest isn't defended at all. That being said there were no undead moving in that direction either, so maybe they didn't need to? If the forest was evacuated it wouldn't attract the undead, and the trees would only serve as a hindrance to wide area spells. It would be a bit of a detour but with a bit of luck I could probably make it through without attracting anyone's attention. My destination was set.
The journey to the forest was slow, I wasn't able to move very fast thanks to the constant protest of my body, and the awkwardness of attempting to move it manually. A finer degree of control was needed than I currently possessed considering I wanted to minimize mana consumption, and damage to my physical body.
Thankfully it seemed as though the forest had been abandoned, as I thought, and my body's meager resistance ceased. That relief soon turned to alarm. Why was no one protecting the forest? It was in essence a residential area was it not? I doubt they successfully evacuated this place.
I soon found my answer. A wave of warmth ran over me as I made my way deeper into the forest. Deeper still, and bright flames began to frolic along the remnants of broken houses and the dark form of scattered bodies covered the forest floor. There had already been a slaughter here, but it was much too neat to have been by the undead; the neat blade wounds belied those notions. I recognized some of their faces; They were friends.
Anger welled up inside me, morphing between a spiteful rage and a sardonic denial. Why do the things around me keep falling apart? Why couldn't we just be happy together? Why this? Why here? Why now? Why wasn't I here to stop it!? WHY! I wanted to scream, but the sound was caught within unable to escape. I could feel a pressure build as I struggled to make a sound to cry to do anything. But my body walked on dragging my grieving soul with it.
I had released my hold on my body and unknowingly began to wander in my stupor. As my head whipped onto the ground and my feet flew up I was snapped out of my daze and refixed the hold I had on myself.
My anger surged again; but in my muddled mind I couldn't tell what towards. Perhaps this had been a trap set for humans? By humans? A shocking feeling of disgust filled me at the thought of humanity, I hadn't felt so hopeless in a long time. I take a moment to calm down. I need to help everyone. Even if I'm angry; I can't abandon the home that had taken me in. There were still people I needed to keep safe. I pray we will meet again in heaven, though I know that will never come to pass.
[HP: 489/620]
[MP: 18257/26800{1000}]
Puppeteering myself was steadily eating at my mana reserves but I didn't have much choice. Of the many flaws of my plan running out of mana was a possibility that could be disastrous. If I got too low I was going to have to find a way to bind myself so I couldn't hurt others but thinking things over was a waste of precious time and mana so I pressed forward.
The city was barricaded, there were stone blockades that sealed off all the possible entrances from main streets and alleyways. Windows were boarded shut and the city looked protected, however upon closer examination the walls looked vulnerable. Some of them were made using earth magic, but others looked as if any object that could have been used to block up the roads had been haphazardly placed to fill whatever space was there. Ironically this actually created a few paths that could easily be used to climb over.
On the back side of the walls there seemed to be people patrolling. Since they hadn't noticed me yet I could more or less guess they were there to see if anything got through, but weren't expected to do much about it. My fears were confirmed. There wasn't anyone protecting the town, otherwise these people wouldn't be here. The walls would have been more sturdy. I would have already been caught.
Finding an alleyway that had been more or less forgotten, I slipped in, and climbed up on top of one of the buildings. Aside from the few watchers keeping an eye on the state of the Walls, everyone else in the city had congregated in the direction of the guild. I could practically taste the alluring scent of living flesh.
A short distance away from the walls all the people had disappeared, so I jumped down into the street. I needed a way to hide myself as I tried to warn everyone of the coming danger. I didn't have much time though. The group of Undead led by Anabelle was nearing the edge of the city, and it wouldn't be long before they would turn to tear a hole in the wall.
Passing over top of shops, I hop down and enter a small store that remained relatively stocked and pick up a cloak that is way too big for me, and seems to have been left in a panic, along with some form of liquid incense that I hoped would mask the rotting flesh smell. I initially planned to enter the guild from the front but there seemed to be a lot of people holed up in the Guild's main hall, and opening the giant doors to the guild seemed like it would attract too much attention. Luckily I knew of a back door in the school that would probably work out better.
~Boom~
The earth trembled as the hoard had finally breached the southern gate. The large wall crumbling under the paws of a colossal three headed Bear that towered over the city's buildings. I recognized the monster as a Calamitous Grizzly. This was an incredibly powerful monster that is said to hold dominion over the Dark forest. Anabelle was alongside the grizzly, riding on its shoulder as its pure size left buildings toppled underfoot. My confidence towards making a difference was immediately stamped out. This thing's cubs were terrifying enough to kill a trained adventurer. Against the abomination in front of me I may as well have just not come back to life.
As the duo neared the guild some people rushed out, not wanting to trap themselves in the path of the Giant bear, but I knew it would ultimately be futile. Other undead had accompanied the pair and were now roaming the streets. Escape is impossible now. The only option left was for the remaining survivors to take refuge in the school and pray.
Another small group stepped out of the guild looking to face the creature, and my heart sank when I saw who they were. Emmy, Caroline, Jacklyn, Blake, Grant, even Julien stood in defense of the remaining villagers, standing defiant in stark contrast to their trembling bodies. I move to join them. If I am going to lose anyone else then it will be with me doing everything I can to stop it. No, I will stop it. I forbid them from dying.