Hey, something I haven't mentioned on this story yet, but I do in fact have a Pat reon.

Half of the reason I even started writing this story was that I was talking to one of the patrons and they mentioned a specific type of weapon they'd like to see in a story, so I started writing this since this setting fit in with that weapon. If you want to support me there's a link on my profile, or you can just go to the site itself and add /Fireflux at the end of the home page URL. The benefits are early access to new chapters before they come out on here, a week in advance, as well as access to a patron-only Discord where you can chat to me about stuff.

Anyways, enough of self-advertisement, I hope you all enjoy the chapter ^.^

Chapter 8


"So, yoo's a witch den?"

Shrugging, she kept her eyes on the two orcs as they spoke, letting her skeletons guard her while she conversed with them. "I suppose the correct term would technically be necromancer, but close enough. I started off by controlling corpses then started making my own." The orcs both gave looks at her skeletons again, but the more observant one was the one that spoke next.

"Wot's your beef with da humies then?" His voice was clearly less rough, with a better understanding for proper words, even if it was still pretty crude. After a moment to debate the ramifications, she decided to tell the orcs that the humans had discovered an ability of hers that turned their minds to greed, keeping it vague but still true. "Right. Humies always wont what dey don't have. More land, more meat, more swords, more dead orcs."

He spat on the ground as he finished, his disgust as clear as his friends. She was pretty interested in how quickly the orcs accepted her words, but put it out of her mind. "When I got brought in, I was told things by the Head Ranger, and I want to confirm which are true and false about orcs." Their spines straightened at her words, their hands lingering closer to the blades she had given them a while ago. "You have my...word that I won't attack you based on your answers, I just want to know what parts were true or false."

Though wary, the orcs did answer her questions when asked, helping her solidify her picture of them. The Head Ranger had some bias, but a decent portion of what he said was true. Orcs did raid villages frequently, killing those they found mercilessly, and enslaving others to work in Mordor as farmers, metalworkers and other menial labourers. But they didn't rape those they captured, or at least it was such a small quantity as to be called such, since orcs didn't have an attraction towards humans, only orc-females, who were kept far below ground or on the farthest reaches of Mordor, used as rewards for good service, or in times of need given freely to increase the population.

They did torture for fun sometimes, though she didn't care about that much, plus they did it not just for entertainment but also for information or for intimidation. A flayed slave being stuck on a pole would certainly make the other slaves fearful or retribution for trying to escape, thus working normally in order to avoid such a fate. The orcs regarded themselves mostly just as foot-soldiers for their Dark Master Sauron, but the more intelligent orc did say he wouldn't mind one day being able to settle somewhere on the coast of the great lake on Mordor and spend his time how he wanted to spend it, not at the whims of orcs higher than he.

When questioned, he told her about how orc hierarchies worked. The more mindlessly brutal an orc, the more likely that orc would find himself sent on missions more likely to get him killed. Most orcs weren't actually that stupid, it was just a survival mechanism. By being 'stupid' and 'normal', they would be overlooked for special missions with a higher likelihood of death. The more intelligent-seeming or strong or vicious would be those picked, whilst the main foot-soldiers were to be held back for major assaults which weren't to be avoided anyway.

Apparently Krant, as was the name of the more intelligent orc, had been caught reading, which got him singled out for a special mission alongside a group of other orcs, wit their objective being to ambush a convoy of fine steel weapons being transported to Amon Lhaw from the Iron hills. Unfortuntely for them, a group of soldiers had happened to come across them.

They only survived by dropping their weapons and surrendering, the other orcs all being more vicious and dying for it. They ended up in Amon Lhaw whilst the humans decided what to do with them, and then she came along and freed them. After she'd slipped out the window and disappeared, they followed suit, sneaking out the same way she had except they knocked the guard on the wall out and then climbed down the wall itself, using their strength to hold onto the corner of the tower and slowly shimmy down.

Running away after that, they ended up catching a tail and had been running for several hours in the hopes of losing their pursuers when she showed up and killed the humans for them. In the interests of being fair, she let them ask her a few questions though warned them that there was a lot she wouldn't answer. Interestingly enough, their first question was similar to the Head Ranger, as to her intents towards Mordor.

She could answer that one pretty honestly, she really didn't care about Mordor. If the two orcs went back and roused a war party to come attack her she'd eye any who come from there as she now would with humans, with suspicion and hostility. If they left her alone, she'd do the same. That was pretty much all there was to it. They asked her about why she helped them, getting the easy answer of it increasing her chance of escaping, and that was it.

Krant probably knew asking about her creations was a bad idea and one of the ones she wouldn't answer, so after those questions, he asked a final question technically, but it was more of a request. "Reckon you can get us over Emyn Muil?" She told them sure, sending her specialists along with them. To be safe, she sent a travel to escort them as well, who would inform her if enemy forces were seen nearby.

She had promised to get them across safely, and she had decided she wasn't a being to break her promises.


When she received an alert from her raven saying that a maximum-level danger had shown up, she naturally assumed that her spell was malfunctioning.

She had added the strength-gauging feature by implementing a crude counting system. The size of a group would be counted, and the level of strength would be gauged from that. 1-5 people would be level 1, 5-20 would be level 2, 20-50 for level 3 and so on and so forth until level 10, which was anything over five thousand. She checked the raven to see what it was mistaking, but upon seeing a vast army moving through the area, she started to get a little worried.

It was more men, all clad in their armour and wary as they crossed the region. It had been a few weeks since she had seen Krant and the other orc cross out of the rocks and start making their way towards what they called the Black Gate to the east across the Dead Marshes, the main entrance to Mordor. In the time immediately following she had been wary for more men attempting to hunt the two orcs down and was poised to intercept them, but none came.

This meant there was only one likely outcome, they were searching for her. At a rough count she saw around seven thousand men, each armed and armoured as the one beside them. Beyond that was the baggage train, hundreds and thousands of people who were to keep the army supplied. One of the advantages Emyn Muil gave her was that it was utterly barren. To cross it with a group was the work of a simple journey, but to cross with an army would take an immense amount of logistics.

The only reason she saw for them to undertake such a task and in such high numbers was if someone very high up in the kingdom had caught wind of her existence, most likely the king or at least one of his advisors, looking to secure a stronger position. She had no intention of being a glorified resource creator, her mental opinion of humans dipping lower as she saw how far they would be willing to go just to get ahold of and use her power as their own. Thousands of men being sent to their deaths just to try to get her abilities...it disgusted her.

At that moment she felt a new feeling, one of regret, for what she would have to do. It was likely very few of these men knew what they were being marched towards, nor would they likely agree with it. It was only after spending a long time contemplating did she realize it was likely that the Head Ranger hadn't actually wanted to or even planned to capture her as the commander had, which helped her gauge his actions better.

It wasn't enough to clean the mark, but it did help her get a better perspective on things. The commander was the one who should have had her ire from the start. Another pang of regret as she remembered the two guards she had killed, as well as those hundreds of soldiers she had butchered mercilessly. Not one had survived that day, not after she was finished with her tests.

If these men were bid to assault her again, she would repel them just as violently, perhaps even more-so, but she wouldn't be needlessly cruel. The proverbial cat was out of the bag about her rough area anyway, so allowing some to escape and even sow fear and dissent would be for the best. To that extent she rose even more towers, placing Air Sentinels atop them.

She also placed numerous more Crystal Whirlwinds around her base. For every five levels gained the Whirlwinds were able to control another crystal, so for those who reached those marks, she created an extra Soul Crystal. That did mean her plan to have them using dozens and hundreds of crystals in swarms was down the drain, but it was just a fun idea, not as effective as a single crystal being rammed with great force at the enemy.

Taking some time away from the surface, she also fortified the space around her Crystal. The crude stone door was replaced with steel, the walls and floor and ceiling all having the same transition. If anybody wanted to get into the room, they would have to breach thick steel walls. Within the room, that would be where Prime was during the battle. It was too important to risk her strongest skeleton get taken out by bad luck, best to keep it where it could best use its strength. Outside she had a dozen Specialists replace the regular warriors stood guard, each Specialist training with a partner in using their swords, slowly grinding their levels up.

Elsewhere in the cavernous space she had hundreds of skeletons sparring with each other, as well as the same amount of archers practicing and specialists doing the same. She had neglected Oak Colossi and Book Golems a little, but since keeping her army uniform and neat appealed to her, she stuck with skeletons. Her skeleton mages...were still disappointing. Levelling did little to nothing for their casting abilities, and while they could learn new spells like Greater Wind Blade, they couldn't really think of new applications of the spells, leaving her to do it all.

She still had them grind levels as well, but they would be seeing little combat until she could figure out a good use for them.


She kept a wary eye on the oncoming army as she prepared for a second assault, forming her skeletons up as they began to prepare for an attack, their intent clear as scouts began observing her base.

The walls were beefed up further, thicker steel backed by even thicker stone atop which her archers and specialists stood. She prepared more Crystal Whirlwinds, placing them in front of the walls. She had now a total of sixteen towers around her base, each one topped with an Air Sentinel, so she really wasn't too worried about an attack from siege equipment, even as she could see them constructing ballista from parts that they'd brought along.

This wasn't some hastily thrown-together assault force hoping to overwhelm her, it was a dedicated army that probably had planned for several outcomes. She kept her warriors underground, hidden and ready to suddenly charge out into the fray should the walls be breached. She had removed and covered up the holes in the ground her spikes were in.

Instead, she had carved out tiny holes in the wall, two centimetres across, and put steel spikes into each one. If someone attempted to hide beside the wall where her archers and Sentinels couldn't shoot, she would impale them from the wall itself. This would force any close assault to not get too close the wall, limiting their cover. Unfortunately, her raven providing recon showed her that they were making big movable shields, presumably from the fact her archers had been seen stood on the wall. That would give them cover from the archers, but her Air Sentinels would obliterate the wooden shields with ease.

The ballistae were their primary targets though. As long as they could be knocked out, the wall was under no threat. Admittedly, she doubted a ballista bolt would ever do a noteworthy amount of damage, but there was a chance it could break the main crystal of her Air Sentinels, something which would cause a catastrophic explosion. If she wanted them to effectively cast spells in all directions though, she couldn't afford to cover it in armour. Of course, chances were that any bolts fired at a Sentinel would be shot down long before they reached the target, so she wasn't too worried about that.

What did worry her was that abruptly the assembly of ballista was halted, and they began working on a far larger construction. Considering it was about 4 times as big as the ballistae were, it would have a considerably more dangerous projectile. She gave the construction some focus, plotting out a way to destroy it, before setting that plan in motion, even if it had a high chance of giving away one of her best assets.

To test her plan, she created a raven, but rather than a common Soul Crystal, she gave it a pair of crystals, one of a normal size and the other far smaller, the larger being a rare whilst the other was common. She then had it forcefully move the mana from the smaller crystal into the larger one, all at once. This resulted in an overload of mana, detonating the crystal violently. The explosion was very impressive, blocking her view for a few moments as dust was blasted out of the ceiling and floor, several large boulders falling.

This was not the kind of creation she would do often as it was pretty expensive, but for specific tasks it would work perfectly. She didn't name it, just creating another and sending it flapping upwards and away. It was ordered to fly all the way around to come up from the back of the enemy base, then dive-bomb towards the construction whilst trying to avoid detection and detonating when it was about to impact the ground.

She observed the bird's approach from the eyes of another raven, watching it tuck its wings in and use its tail as a rudder to guide itself down unseen and silently to its target. Just as it was about to hit the ground and die or be damaged beyond movement, it exploded, tearing the half-built construction to smithereens and sending the entire camp into a frenzy. She felt a sense of satisfaction as she faintly heard the outrage and panic in voices as they tried to figure out what had happened.

It was approaching night-time, so the black-feathered bird was even harder to see, nobody had seen what had happened. They all knew she probably caused it, but were still none the wiser as to how. Deciding she'd pressed her luck enough, she had the raven start flying about normally again, acting as though it had been distracted and panicked by the explosion and was now gliding away.

Her objective was complete anyway, so she could go back to more natural observation.


A week went by during which she kept a keen eye on the enemy.

Whoever was commanding the army clearly wasn't as stupid as the previous one, since they went no outright assaults for no reason, instead opting to keep their units safe and scout her defences out whilst seemingly trying to bring in the supplies to start construction on a second unidentified device, probably a siege engine of another kind. Unfortunately, that gave her time to develop another secret weapon. She had dug out some meat from one of the decomposing corpses currently stuffed into a room in her base and dumped it outside.

This attracted flies and scavengers of all kinds, plentiful and ripe for copying with Synthesis. She took the largest fly she could find, clearing out its internals and leaving it with just its eyes, the external parts and its wings, but replaced the insides with a pair of Soul Crystals. One was a lot bigger than the other, both taking up all of the space within the fly.

The detonation sequence was identical to the raven she had made, and the explosion was comparatively smaller, but still looked strong enough to cause serious damage if it was positioned correctly. Unfortunately, it seemed that the camp that had been set up also had blacksmiths and other workers, so they were going to likely start just producing what they needed on-site.

Security for those areas was also even tighter than before, to where she doubted a raven would be missed dive-bombing into things. A fly, on the other hand, could easily be missed if it flew low and stayed out of the open when it was bright. If it only moved at night or during very early morning or evening when it wasn't very bright would make it easy to reach important targets and detonate.

If she had the flies hide somewhere within the camp she could even have them all attack targets at once, causing a crippling blow all in the span of seconds. If she could get the soldiers to be forced to leave somehow that would be perfect, she could avoid fighting and avoid either side getting more than the minimum amount of casualties. The previous explosion had caused a single injury, one soldier who was close enough had his arm impaled by a piece of wood, and she suspected there would be more even with the lower explosive power her flies had, but she had already killed hundreds, and while she regretted it somewhat, they had attacked her first.

She wouldn't needlessly kill those she didn't need to, but a few casualties was fine in her eyes.


Quickly switching views to the fly currently hiding in the commander's tent, she planned the best course of action out in her mind.

If she assassinated the commander and the higher echelon of command staff, the army would be left with two choices. Either wait in place for another command unit to be sent, or disperse and return to where they came from. Her main issue with it all was that it was a temporary solution. The enemy king, who she was attributing this to now, was out of her reach.

Though, who decided that? She could easily send a raven with a pair of Soul Crystals to go and blow him up, but then what if it wasn't him doing it but another high-ranking part of the Kingdom? She would likely open the way for more subversion of control. The lack of intelligence for the situation stayed her hand, but she needed to do at least something.

Biding her time, she cut off her vision from the fly, returning it to the featureless stone beneath her base. She had expanded to claim a good chunk of the space available to her, gouging out the rock with Telekinesis and using Synthesis to work the stone down into nothingness, leaving her with more empty space to fill with skeletons and other creations.

The army outside was large, but it was entirely unaware that it was outnumbered. All that had been seen by forces aboveground were some of her skeleton archers, specialists and all her Crystal Whirlwinds. The Air Sentinels looked decorative rather than defensive, whilst all her other forces were currently below-ground training. To all intents and purposes, the enemy force believed that they had numerical superiority and just needed a way to get inside.

Along the wall her spikes prevented any ladders from being placed, and the terrain was far too rocky for any sort of siege tower to be pushed along, leaving them with projectile-based siege weapons or tunnelling. She would have seen if they were mining towards her base somewhere, that kind of project would take every long time and generate a lot of stone to be transported away, which so far she had seen none of.

She was honestly quite curious now to see how well her defences would hold up against a concerted attack from thousands of men, so maybe allowing them their siege weapon would be for the best. If they saw all their attempts to assault her base fail before the first hurdle, perhaps that coupled with their siege weapons then all detonating and leaving them weaponless again would see them decide to leave her in peace to experiment.

Then...she realized something. She didn't actually want peace. Peace was the invitation for experimentation and learning, but she had already done such a thing. Conflict had inspired her to create new creations, her bomb flies, her ravens and Air Sentinels and Crystal Whirlwinds, all were the product of necessity through conflict. If she had no conflict, yes she would be free to gain more knowledge from the immense library she had available to her, but she would have nothing to test her creations against.

What she really wanted was a stable conflict. She wanted to be attacked repeatedly, but not so much that she had to devote all her time to it. She wanted to be able to create new crafts which she could test in battle against the men who so desperately wanted to imprison her and use her as a thing. That way of thinking justified for her, at least somewhat, what she intended. Gone where the plans for sabotage and assassination. No, from now on, she wanted a battle.

The only question now...was how to incite it.


The first order of business was actually recalling her flies.

She saw no point in destroying the parts they were bringing to craft their siege engines, not if they ever were to assault her base, so removed all but a select few, which were assigned to track specific targets, killable with a mere thought. The commander was one, as well as some of the higher-up officers or sergeants or whatever they were called. She also had the most experienced and dangerous-seeming of the enemy forces followed.

If at any point she was worried about losing the battle, eliminating those extremely experienced soldiers in a single instant, as well as gutting their command structure in a fell swoop would doubtlessly cripple the army and leave it utterly helpless. She doubted she would need to even use such a strategy, not with the quantity of forces available to her, but it never hurt to be prepared.

She had finished the slow monotonous grind of creating armour for all of her creations, spending some time experimenting with trying to create a better sword for her warriors and specialists. Quite interestingly, the skeleton specialists that had been training with Prime had been upgraded to Prime as well, which added some confusion and led her to literally plating Prime's entire skeleton in a thin layer of steel.

Since the skeleton wasn't actually joined together but instead was suspended in the position she deemed it so by whatever force animated her creations, she was able to actually cover all of Prime in metal. The eyes were vulnerable still, but to counteract that as well as make the skeleton seem more imposing, she replaced the generic metal armour she had copied from the soldiers she killed with one of her own design, one that she wouldn't admit to but had spent an entire week creating prototypes for.

It was made of steel with gold trim, and was a unique suit for Prime's use, mostly just so she could pick that particular skeleton out of a crowd instantly. The actual armour itself was to be used by all her warriors and most specialists, it would just be lacking the trim detailing. She had gotten the gold Synthesis option unlocked from the library, several of the tomes had been edged with it, which was plenty to prock her ability.

She also worked on making a set of lighter and stealthier armour for her archers and specialists. Full plate was good, but only for a proper battle. If she needed to sneak her forces around an enemy to attack the vulnerable flank, having shiny and clanking armour was a terrible idea. It wasn't something she began making, right now all of her skeletons were using the stolen armour design, nor would her wall guards be using it, there was no need for them to wear inferior armour when they were going to be out in the open anyway, but in the future it would be useful.

Her hope was to spread her specialists out all over Emyn Muil, using her ravens to coordinate harassing attacks on enemy forces when she wanted to be left alone. Sure, she wanted conflict, but if she was never able to have time to work on her theories, then it would be a hassle. She could also use her bomb flies to kill priority targets, those would be extremely helpful for getting rid of repeat annoyances.

Maybe she could even send one to the capital of Gondor, and see about scouting the situation there, see what was up with the King and whether it really was him getting her attacked. She wanted the attacks, but if it ever became too bothersome, well, a blown up head was an easy way to fix things. For now though she withheld that option, instead working on adjusting the bow that her skeleton archers and specialists used.

It was copied from the ones the rangers used, but since that was just by sight as she hadn't touched one, it was presumably an inefficient bow. her archers could shoot it alright, but that was because they were levelling up and thus improving. If given an inferior tool and told to use it, they would do so and improve at using it, but if then she gave them a properly-made one, surely their efficiency would skyrocket.

That was of course counting on the idea that the bow she had made was inferior at all. What the problem that arose was just solely rested on the fact she didn't know what was and wasn't good. Was the string too long, or was the wood too short? Was it rounded too much, or did it have enough curvature, or perhaps too much? Not a singular book in the library that she'd found even mentioned what measurements a bow should have, so she had to go through the arduous process of making hundreds of bows and giving them to a random skeleton archer to use, observing how it improved or declined, noting the adjustments made and reverting them or tweaking them further.

Trial and error at its finest, but the results were definitely showing. More and more the skeleton archer was able to hit the target, which was a level 1 skeleton she kept re-creating, in the places she dictated. The left hand, the right eye, through the pelvis, the collarbone. When the skeleton was too damaged to retain its form she just disintegrated it and made a new one.

With each new bow that was made the skeleton was able to hit more accurately the target. She did swap out to other skeleton archers on occasion as the one she was using steadily levelled up, mostly going for the lower level of skeleton to keep the focus on the bow, not the skeleton itself. And as it got more and more accurate, she got closer and closer to making a bow that actually worked.

But, before she could finish, one of the ravens hit her with the message of a large enemy force moving, and as she switched to its vision she could see that the army had finished the large siege device and was now moving to assault her. The device itself looked basically like a big catapult, a log arm holding a sling at the back, a...it was a...trebuchet, that was what it was, and she could see a large stone being loaded into it. She dropped what she was doing, ordering all the practicing skeletons up towards their ready positions near the stairs up to the surface, floating up through her base and then outside up further, getting a high vantage point of the area and the forces that were oncoming.

It was time to test her defenses.


Sorry for the cliffhanger.

I feel like having a big battle scene at the end of this chapter just wouldn't fit very well, not after all her experimentation, subterfuge and modifications. So, next chapter will be the big battle. Before you review yelling at me for how inconsistent she is, don't forget that she only has actions to bits and pieces of knowledge and thus has to build her standing point on certain things from scratch. She went from hating humans to understanding to wanting them to attack her but without hating them.

She isn't a cut-and-dry character, she has to learn what she does and doesn't need to do.