Given that you're trying to track down other sources of demonic taint, it makes the most sense to start with Corruption Sense, and seeing as how you're indoors, underground, and within wards against common Divination Magic, putting some extra force behind the attempt is also reasonable.
That said, your skill at Overloading spiritual techniques is rudimentary, such that you can only maintain one such technique at a time - and you'd previously used that trick to empower your Blessed Blade in anticipation of fighting ghosts and other undead. You've got more than enough spiritual energy left that dismissing that technique and renewing it after you scan won't be a huge issue, but the expenditure of energy is something to keep in mind all the same.
You move to the center of the room, placing yourself so that you can see through all four of the passages that connect to other parts of the base. Although your non-visual energy-based senses can scan around corners, you've found that the more they have to do that, the more cluttered the returns become - and that's when you're outdoors or in a (relatively) mundane environment. Being able to send the initial probe down those corridors in a straight line would at least help keep the initial probe clear.
Once you're in position, and your allies have stepped out of the way - except for the Hardhats, which are short enough that you can scan over them - you gather the energy, close your eyes to help you focus on what you're about to feel, and shift your Corruption Sense into active mode, releasing a pulse of spiritual energy muffled almost to nothing by your excellent control of your energies - and an aura of light, caused by the intensely focus Overload of those same energies.
/ Oooh, glowy. /
You spare a moment to open one eye and send a warning glare at that elemental. Goddesses help you, if he pokes you...
...
Anyway, a few points quickly make themselves apparent as you probe your surroundings. One is the reminder that solid stone interferes with mystical scanning techniques to a certain degree, and trying to scan through solid WARDED stone is approximately as difficult as if the walls were made of metal.
Considering how easily you've been able to punch through defenses of this nature with magic, having your spiritual senses stonewalled comes as a bit of a surprise.
You are also made to remember that these techniques don't have unlimited range, and that much of your ability to sense the things you're seeking depends on how strong THEY are, as well as how far away.
With all of that said, you pick up ambient corruption hanging in the air down all three corridors you haven't yet explored. It's not Hellmouth levels of bad, by any means, and isn't even as bad as the nastier areas of the Faerie Outpost were, but it's there. The aura seems strongest in the passage to your left, which leads to the main barracks - and past that, the entryway behind the inactive portal - while the route directly ahead of you, which you're planning on taking, is comparable to the fouled state of the energies in this room. The route to the right, meanwhile, is almost as clear as the one behind you, suggesting that none of the demonic werewolves were killed in the base's jail.
You don't sense any signatures matching the Demon Wolf's Heart in your hand, but given the greater levels of taint present down two routes, you'd be willing to bet that there's at least one more wolf-beast directly along your chosen path, and a few more laying (un)dead in the legion quarters.
While you could stop scanning for demonic energy here, it would be a simple enough matter to proceed while keeping your sensory sweep going. Then again, you're still glowing, and that's not really going to stop until you cut out the Overload.
It hasn't visibly upset the Memorians with you, or stirred any response from the bodies scattered about the room, but that could change. Especially when you run into another of the beasts.
This seems like a good compromise, and you make to disable the Spiritual Overload.
...
...actually, thinking back, HAVE you ever tried to disable the Overloaded portion of one of your techniques - be it powered by spiritual energy or otherwise - without actually deactivating the entire thing from scratch?
...
Well, whether you have or not, your control over your spiritual energies is good enough that you think you should be equal to the task. Just as soon as you figure out where to start... maybe...?
/ Aw, there goes the shine. /
Gained Spiritual Control B (Plus)
Gained Spiritual Overload E (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
While you've been turning your spiritual dial up and down, the conscious Memorians took a moment to investigate the remains of their brothers in arms, Hornfels gave the wreck of the wolf-thing a couple of nudges with his hammer-
*Boing*
/ Hehe- /
*Sma-crack!*
/ -ow! /
/ I warned you, blockhead. /
-and that elemental who can't seem to leave the Hardhat Beetles alone got dope-slapped by one of its companions.
Before an argument or a fight can break out there, you clear your throat and announce that you're ready to move on, which has the group sorting themselves out into their previous formation. Hornfels and the Beetles with him proceed the rest of the way across the chamber, through the arched door, and into the great hall beyond. The Memorians follow promptly, followed by one of the regular elementals and its accompanying Beetles - you make a point of sending the one that smacked the annoying one through first, to try and avoid further incidents.
And then you go through.
The right-hand "wall" of the hallway is a series of open archways, which provide quick and easy passage into and out of the soldiers' mess. As you enter the room, you see that Cato has Lucius and the three "unconscious" soldiers formed up into a defensive line in front of the nearest of those spaces, while Hornfels has planted himself squarely in front of the next opening, hammer not held with aggressive intent, but at the ready all the same.
Marcus, Hermanus, the other Earth Elemental, and the four Hardhat Beetles have gathered over to the left, their attention focused on something that you can't see past the elemental's bulk, but which your Corruption Sense quickly informs you is the next of the undead mutant werewolves. Like the first one, its sleeping spirit hasn't reached the point of reanimation, although from the energies in the air, it's more... aware, than its counterpart was. Maybe the howling, snarling, and claw-scrabbling stirred it up?
Regardless, what do you want to do about this beast? A pre-emptive attack is very tempting, but you have to weigh the value of that option against the possibility that a fight here, even a very brief one, will stir up the small army of ghosts haunting the mess hall.
Speaking of the mess hall, now that you're closer and don't have a warded wall in the way of your active senses, you can make out a few spots of corruption among the lingering phantoms - you count four, maybe five in all. Three of those are weak enough that the spirits in question were almost certainly "just" cultists in life, marked more by the weight of their own choices than by any demonic empowerment. The other two are stronger: one feels nearly as foul as the aura of the wolf-thing across the hall, or the crystallized heart you still have in your hand, though in a different manner; and the other seems to fall between that level of active supernatural corruption and the more "mundane" levels of the other three spirits.
You have another opportunity to test and refine a skill right in front of you; why wouldn't you take it?
On a side note, you consider using Greater Shadow Conjuration to "wall off" the mess hall by creating a bank of that Holy Water-substituted Cloudkill Spell you cast to clear the Gohma out of the Faerie Outpost, so as to keep the ghosts contained if they react to your attempts to purge the tainted werewolf. Then you remember that Cloudkill fills a set radius of twenty feet AND moves after being cast; you wouldn't be making a wall, you'd be gassing the canteen during mealtime.
You would rather not commit even the semblance of a war crime if you can reasonably avoid it, so that's out. Most other spells you know that create fogbanks of one sort or another are at least immobile, but still have the same issue of an unsuitable area of effect, so you have to dismiss them from consideration as well.
Really, if you're worried about containing the soldiers' spirits, it would be a simple matter to just raise a Wall of Force along that side of the hallway, extending the duration a bit so that the spell doesn't wear out before you're done dealing with the wolf-beast, one way or another. This won't stop the Memorian ghosts from seeing or hearing anything that happens on this side of the wall, but Cloudkill wouldn't have interfered with sound, either. As to vision...
Turning your attention back to the wolf-creature, you ask your allies to stand ready while you try to deal with it.
Once again, you use Shadow Conjuration to create a pseudo-Shinigami that resembles the Captain of the Second Division, and send it to "assassinate" one of the mutated undead lycanthropes.
*Crack*
Once again, you hear the disturbing sound of old bone giving way under the blow of a metal weapon, accompanied by a disappointing lack in any sudden, cleansing shift in the tainted energy you can feel in that direction.
There is also a startled yelp, as of a great dog being roused from a nap by an unexpected and quite painful impact. Bones click and grind against one another with a certain urgency as the energy of undeath rises-
*Crack*
-but your Shadow Shinigami started attacking while her target was still "asleep," and doesn't let up for an instant even as the monster struggles to rise and fight off this most unwelcome of wake-up calls. Whether due to the small size of the being you chose to emulate or the limits imposed by the quasi-real nature of the Shadow-stuff infusing the spell, Shadow Feng isn't quite able to shatter the werewolf's skull with a single blow.
*CraCRUNCH*
The third time is the charm, however, and you hear the clatter of bones coming apart and falling to the stone floor in a twice-lifeless heap. The sound is accompanied by the same sense of a dark aura collapsing, without the rush of purification that you were hoping for.
You figure it's worth trying, and as you cast the spell, you bend your will to shifting the appearance of this Wall of Force - trying to make it more "wall" and less "force."
The end result is far from the image of a solid wall, or even the see-through ghost of one. Rather, you've managed to add a shot of color to your force-field, turning what would have been a barely perceptible transparent pane into a slightly more perceptible transparent pane that has a faint sheen of-
-spread throughout and across it. It's not a glow, mind you - you suspect that would have been too likely to draw attention - just a kind of haze that noticeably thickens at the edges of the Wall.
Hornfels reaches out and runs one hand along the face of the barrier, causing the color to thicken slightly where his stony fingers and palm press against it, but then fading back to normal as his hand moves along.
/ ...huh. /
Gained Spell Thematics E
Two failures in a row have you tempted to forego further Shadow Shinigami shenanigans, until you've had a chance to talk with a certain shady shopkeeper about the matter. That said, you find you're not quite ready to give up on solving the purification problem yourself.
Quitting just isn't the Dinnite way.
True.
Pound their heads against a wall, maybe, but not quit.
Some walls are surprisingly breakable.
Also true.
Still, you do think you might benefit from mixing up your approach a bit. Apologies to Shadow Feng, but next time, you'll try emulating a different Shinigami.
...the vaguely disappointed expression on the Shadow Conjuration's face as she dissipates back into the gloom is probably just your imagination.
Turning to the haunted mess hall, you peer through your color-tinted Wall of Force, considering options as you pick the traitors' ghosts out from the rest of the crowd. Of the corrupted quintet, one of the three weakest appears to have registered the brief noise and violence of your Shadow Shinigami putting down the wolf-beast, as has the most heavily corrupted member of the group. In fact, those two spirits are showing signs of waking up, the dull glow of their eyes brightening and sharpening much as Lucius's did. In contrast, of the twenty or so other ghosts filling the room, just four are looking more or less in the direction of the now twice-dead lycanthrope, and none of those are reacting as if they're about to regain consciousness.
"What do you think?" you quickly ask Cato. "Should we take out the traitors before they have time to try anything, even if it risks drawing the aggression of the crowd? Or should we try waking the lot of them up first and wait for the turncoats to expose their real allegiance?"
"The first option is very tempting," the ghostly priest admits. "But as your Shadow Magic doesn't appear to have worked as you were hoping, I would prefer to try waking up the men - or failing that, letting these legionaries deal with the problem." He gestures to Lucius and the rest of his team.
You think you see where Cato is coming from. All of you, even the three Memorian commanders, are outsiders to this base, the events of its final day, and the resulting haunting; if any of you put the traitors down, they'll most likely just re-form in a few days' time, as ghosts with unfinished business almost inevitably do. But the loyalists are PART of the haunting; they were the ones betrayed and murdered, and they're also the ones who managed to kill these traitors in the first place.
Normally, having a bunch of mindless ghosts "kill" each other in a re-enactment of their last moments would just cause the haunting to persist. But if the loyalists can be made to wake up, recognize their betrayers for who and what they are, and THEN strike them down, it might be enough to push the traitors' souls all the way over the line into a proper death. Having a priest of Mars on hand to offer condemnations, blessings, and a channel through which the god can work his will upon the world, will only aid in that.
Still, you ARE tempted to try casting Greater Shadow Conjuration one more time. It might make a difference if your pseudo-Shinigami was going after an actual human GHOST, as opposed to a heap of animated bones.
You decide to have a little faith in your allies, and let Cato take point on dealing with his fallen fellows and the handful of traitors among their ranks - and so, when he requests that you drop your golden Wall of Force, you do so.
Right after that, however, you ready a Spell to Command Undead - because it's one thing to trust your allies, and quite another to just take it on faith that they'll succeed without fail or flaw, particularly when they're going up against a potentially unfriendly third party.
The situation calls for some modifications to the magic, so you drop the duration from days to minutes, raise the number of targets as high as you can, and then, after a moment's thought, dump the remaining energy you can muster into heightening the effect.
Even with these adjustments, your command of Necromantic Magic isn't advanced enough for the spell to affect the entire crowd, but it will be able to affect three-fifths of them, and heightening the spell makes it a lot more likely to actually work on those that it touches.
While you're doing that, Cato floats to the front of the small unit and raises his right hand to present the phantom medallion he has been wearing this entire time, a disc slightly smaller than his palm, with a single arrow-shaped point protruding from its upper left quadrant. With this gesture comes a sense of gathering energy, spiritual energy marked - marred, some might say - by the Shadow that defines Cato's current state of existence, but touched by something much, much more, a power and presence that shines through the murk of undeath.
"Sons and daughters of Memoria, hear me!"
The two unfriendly, "wakeful" ghosts immediately turn their attention to the priest, but so too do a number of the "sleeping" spirits.
What he's doing here reminds you of the times during your lessons on divine magic where the Hyrulean priestly trio have demonstrated their other Goddess-given abilities - in particular, how they channel divine power to chase off or burn away undead spirits. Cato is coming at it from the other side of things, channeling negative energy rather than positive - most likely due to his current state of undeath, and how it would react badly to his being a conduit for the latter - but he's also doing a couple of things you haven't seen Elder Terok, Madam Lanora, or Koron do.
"Children of Mars, attend me!"
That has more heads turning Cato's way, and several of those who'd previously joined his audience are starting to show that glowing-eyed awakening.
One of the things Cato is doing differently is that, rather than radiating divine power in all directions, he's directing it forward in an arc. Another difference is in what exactly the energy he's channeling is doing. From your lessons, you know that negative energy channeled in this manner is most commonly used to sap the life-force of the living, repair damage to the undead, or seize control of the latter. Cato isn't doing any of those things, although the way the negative energy flows around and through him before spreading out over his targets does remind you of the various Necromantic Spells meant to influence the undead, just not as concentrated as your own Spell to Command Undead would be.
"Friends! Memorians! Legionaries!" Cato declares, raising his symbol high with a final surge of power. "Lend me your ears!"
Your train of thought briefly skips tracks. Did he just...?
Regardless of what Cato did or didn't just say, that last burst of power has MOST of the ghosts in the mess hall looking his way, and of those, a solid two-thirds have stirred to a greater level of awareness.
As the priest of Mars begins to exhort his long-dead countrymen to shake off the sleep of ages, you ponder what you just saw. It was certainly a different ASPECT of divine power than what you've seen your tutors channel, and the source was entirely distinct from the Goddesses - who, despite their differences, still have a great deal in common, no doubt because of their sisterhood - but it still worked in a very similar manner.
You think you might be able to call on the Goddesses for a similar degree of intervention... but you're not quite sure if you SHOULD. Even outside of your current situation, you mean.
You are, first and foremost, a follower of Din, and the core of her creed is self-reliance and free will. She doesn't interfere with her followers' choices, and she does not grant power the way her sisters do - not unless it's a kind of power her mortal adherents could never obtain on their own, like that sliver of divine potency necessary to turn or rebuke the undead.
The thing is, you DO have fragments of divine power that you can call upon - or at least something closer to it than mortal spiritual energy. So while you might invoke Din's name when channeling energy, you may need to look to your own Power to fuel the effect. There's also the divine injunction of the Powers That Be to take into account; they'd at least protest Din or one of her sisters lending you their strength, whereas if you're throwing your own energy around... well, it's YOUR Power, so you can do what you want with it, or else that whole argument about impeding human development and self-determination was just a lot of hot air.
You've only encountered examples of the divine injunction at work on a couple of occasions thus far, but said incidents were memorable enough that you'd prefer to avoid giving the beings enforcing those limits more opportunities to interfere with you.
Plus, being self-sufficient in this manner just strikes you as the right and proper thing for an adherent of the Goddess of Power to do.
Darn right it is.
Gained Channel Power F (Plus)
Of course, you'll have to work out how to correctly shape and direct your Power to generate the sort of effects you've seen the priests use, and since you'll be building this skill up from scratch rather than having a deity do all the work, it'll be a while before you reach the point of being able to repel an entire room full of the walking dead just by glowing it up and presenting a... holy... symbol...
You hold up your right hand, gazing intently at the back, where the symbol of the Triforce has occasionally felt like it was burning.
Would that work?
...
Something to test, later.
Working out how to channel your Power to repel the undead and bolster the living seems like the approach that makes the most sense. After all, you live in a town infested by corpse-vampires, you've run into aggressive undead in other locations - mostly these two Memorian bases, admittedly - you're aware of yet other areas where such creatures are likely to cross your path - Karakura stands out there - and you, yourself, are a living being that could benefit from the healing properties of pure positive energy. Plus, that sort of power, that Light, is arguably closer to the true nature of the Goddesses and their Power, and would be easier to generate using the traces of divine energy still present in your system.
And yet.
And. YET.
Not all the undead you've met have been enemies. Not all living creatures react well to positive energy, or poorly to its dark counterpart. And while a part of you feels that one can never have too many ways to turn or destroy hostile spirits and corpses that don't have the decency to lie down and finish rotting away, another part points out that the undead can make useful minions, too, and adding another way to take control of a mindless zombie or compel an angry spirit to talk instead of shriek, wail, and try to murder you would be almost as useful as getting another method of nuking the walking dead.
More than that, though, why should your choice be limited to one or the other? Are you not an adherent of the Goddess of Power? Did you not just decide that you were going to learn how to channel your OWN Power, by your OWN will, in this new way? And have you not been striving to master ALL of the elements, instead of accepting the limits on your abilities that specialization would enforce?
The answer, of course, is yes - so why would you settle for learning ONE method of channeling Power, when you could develop and master BOTH? Why should you accept a LIMIT on your Power, when you're capable of working past it?
Bwahahahaha!
I have reservations about this.
I get where you're coming from, Wise Girl, but I can also appreciate that the Kid-King wants as many tools in his kit as he can get.
Gained Din's Favor B (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Past Life Experience C (Plus) (Plus)
While you're considering future applications of Power, Cato appears to have succeeded in beginning the awakening of the greater portion of the crowd in the mess hall.
Unfortunately, this includes the five traitors' spirits, who you see trading glances before those that were sitting down leap to their feet and, instead of charging at Cato as you thought they might, rush towards each OTHER as fast as their phantom forms can fly.
What are they...?
Gathering your energies, you trigger the Spell to Walk Through Space and st-
!
-umble, blinking in surprise as the magic activates, but then just fails to work. Why did-?
...
...oh, right.
Months past, Captain Marcus told you that the Outpost under his command was specifically warded against the use of the Magics of Illusion and Summoning, as part of their defenses against the Lords of Faerie. Teleportation wasn't strictly impossible within the Outpost, but it was limited to pre-authorized methods, such as the built-in entrance portals, that teleportation circle you never actually got around to investigating, and of course, the Gate connecting Earth and Faerie.
Seeing as how you never attempted to teleport yourself during your explorations of the Outpost, that fact kind of slipped your mind, and undoubtedly Briar's as well, given her failure to poke fun at you. And since you didn't specifically mention wanting to use teleportation to your Memorian allies, or even the living humans, nobody would have commented on it.
Still kind of embarrassing, though.
Quickly setting aside your feelings, you focus on the Spell to Command Undead. There was a significant temptation to try to channel your Power to enhance the effect, but you've never tried even the BASIC form of that ability yet, let alone tested its interactions with other spells - and considering how manifest Power tends to absorb and erode magic, it's not something you think you should be mucking around with under live combat conditions. Furthermore, you don't have a holy symbol, or even know if one is required for you to properly channel Power in the desired manner.
All in all, you decide it's best to limit your efforts to what you KNOW will work: "By the Power of Din, I command you to STOP!"
Your spell hits all five of the traitors, and three of them - two of the weakest ones, and the middlingly strong one - freeze in their tracks with sudden exclamations of surprise and dismay.
The strongest of the spirits visibly struggles for a moment, before throwing off the compulsion and continuing his forward charge - which is met by the last of the weak trio, who, rather startlingly, didn't appear to be affected at ALL.
In spite of the situation, you have to admit that you're kind of impressed by that one. Throwing off the equivalent of a seventh-circle spell is no small feat.
You've got to respect that kind of willpower, even when it's in the wrong head.
"Seize those traitors!" Cato shouts.
Whether in shock or outrage, some of the soldiers visibly freeze, but others turn to follow through on Cato's command. A few were already moving towards or reaching for one of the five tainted ghosts, and the priest's denunciation just makes them move faster.
Some are just too late or too slow off the mark.
Others seize the immobilized trio, who quickly shake off the binding of your spell as a result, but merely trade the shackles of sorcery for those of their fellow spirits.
One ghost, still thinking and reacting like a mortal, sort of leaps and falls forward in an attempt to grab the weaker of the two runners. He misses his fellow spirit's upper body, but manages to seize the legs-
"What the-?"
-and then finds himself getting dragged along as the other ghost just keeps flying forward.
No less than three Memorian soldiers dogpile the strongest of the traitors, but the soul in question rears back with a roar and a sudden surge of dark energy, throwing one of the ghosts clear off and "burning" another one harshly enough that he lets go with a cry of remembered pain. The last one has his arms wrapped tight around the traitor's neck, yelling in pain and determined refusal to let go, but is dragged along as the stronger spook just keeps lumbering forward.
Your allies aren't exactly immobile during all of this, but not all of them are in a good position to act, your living companions in particular are hesitant to try charging through all the ghosts - a mix of instinctual dread and conscious knowledge that touching ghosts can be very dangerous - and the Memorians that you brought in with you are hampered by the fact that ghosts are perfectly solid to one another. The spellcasters in your group are similarly hindered by the crowd, not having good lines of sight to your desired targets.
The end result is that despite the attempts to the contrary, the strongest of the ghostly traitors and the strongest-willed of the weakest manage to reach one another-
!
-at which point your senses register a surge of Shadow, Darkness, Spirit, and demonic corruption, as those two ghosts sort of MELT into one another, dragging their loyalist "passengers" along into the swirling mix of ectoplasm, necrotic energy, and screams. Several of the nearby specters, unable to halt the momentum of their own charges to seize the traitors, are dragged into the phantasmal mass with protesting cries of their own, causing the shapeless blob of phantom slime to grow far larger than the addition of their volume would have suggested.
/ Now that just LOOKS nasty, / Hornfels rumbles, as he heft his weapon.
And then a twisted, half-melted wolf-like head emerges from the giant lump with a wet, gargling howl.
You have no idea what is going on here, but ugh.
Your immediate response to the appearance of the demonic wolf ghost blob thing is to gather spiritual energy with your left hand, while shaping arcane energy with your right and muttering an incantation.
"Pull back!" you hear Marcus yelling in the Voice of Command. "Pull! Back!"
Halfway through the formation of the spell, you let fly with a brilliant beam of spiritual power, as thick as your fist.
Gained Spirit Blast E (Plus) (Plus)
Your attack hits the twisted apparition in the... upper forward center of mass - you can't really call it a "chest" at this point, given the grotesquely distorted nature of this thing's agglomerated form. It does seem to be trying to take that shape, but the... oozing... nature of its body is not helping at all.
The good news is that your Spirit Blast isn't somehow absorbed by the abomination, the way those unfortunate Memorian ghosts just were.
The better news is that the Blast visibly rocks the ectoplasmic monstrosity back on its... lower quarters.
The bad news is that this is about the only effect the attack seems to have - that, and causing the melted-looking canine head to half-turn, half-ooze in your direction, bloody light burning in its eyesockets and slime dripping from its maw and nose as it snarls wetly at you.
You're rather glad that you finish casting your Heightened Spell to Create a Resilient Sphere, and you're twice glad that your skills in the School of Elemental Magic are sufficient to let you make said trap big enough to hold the entirety of the hideous spirit.
A shimmering globe of golden light encloses the warped ghost, and its sheer, slimy bulk renders it too slow to escape before your spell has finalized.
A hushed pause falls over the battlefield, broken only by the thumps and spattering noises of the trapped monster's failed attempts to gnaw, claw, or simply force its way free of your trap.
"Clear the area!" Marcus says into the momentary silence. "Get THOSE three away from whatever their allies have done to themselves, and keep them under guard!"
"Wait," one of the loyalist spirits says, turning to the captain. "Who are you-"
"NOW, soldier!"
"You heard the Captain," Cato says. "Move, men! While we've got time."
Perhaps more willing to heed the priest who first roused them, the soldiers do their best to clear a space around the disgusting thing sitting close to the center of the mess hall. A small band of them haul the three struggling captives clear out of the mess, past your party, and over to the storage rooms on the far side of the central hallway.
"How long will that barrier hold?" Marcus asks you.
"Over fifteen minutes, assuming the... prisoner... doesn't manage to destroy it by then."
"Chances of that?"
"Pretty low, it IS a Resilient Sphere."
"I thought it looked familiar," the captain muses.
Since you've got some time, you discuss your options with the other magically talented members of your troop.
If it's at all possible, you'd like to get the five "absorbed" Memorian loyalists out of that giant ball of snot and spite, preferably while doing as little damage to them as possible. To that end, your suggestion of casting Break Enchantment is generally agreed to be worth trying, as this forced fusion is very likely to be the result of either Transformation Magic or a Necromantic effect that is enough like a curse to be at least somewhat susceptible to being broken as one.
Hornfels thinks the emergence of the gruesome wolf-slime looked a little too much like a sacrifice or a summoning effect for what you're considering to work, though.
Your suggestion of using the Spell to Banish a Seeming meets with less agreement. Hermanus only knows of the spell in question from his studies, and only vaguely at that, while Marcus, Cato, and Sir Roderick are entirely in the dark about it. Shadow Alex and the Briars have their doubts, but are willing to try it, while Hornfels has already made his opinion on the matter clear.
"Are you sure you aren't just saying that because you want to smash something?" Briar questions.
/ That may be a factor in my thinking, yes, / the paladin admits with a rumbling chuckle.
You've got the makings of a plan, as well as a couple of backups for if your attempt to divide the thing fails. Before you begin, however, Marcus would like you to wait a bit while some of the loyalists fetch their gear from the barracks you passed. Having more armed and armored personnel on hand would be better than the alternative, and the odds of them disturbing anything dangerous are minimal, given that you didn't spot or sense anything of particular concern when you passed through that area earlier.
You don't exactly dislike that idea, but Cato points out that the longer the five loyalists remain fused with that thing, the greater the likelihood they'll suffer long-term and serious consequences from the experience.
You can see where Marcus is coming from with his request, but Cato has a very good point about time being against the well-being of the fused souls. In the end, you decide to split the difference.
"Tell them to get their gear," you reply, "but let them know we're not going to be able to wait on them."
Marcus winces, no doubt picturing a dozen ways Things Could Go Wrong with that decision, but he nods and starts sorting out the crowd. Of the original twenty-five spirits that were in the mess hall, seven have been absorbed into the slimy wolf-headed apparition, three more are being held under guard, and another five are singled out to keep watch over the traitor-prisoners. The remaining ten form up under the Captain's commands and march back the way you came.
While they're doing that, your Shadow begins casting the Spell to Break an Enchantment, heightened for maximum effectiveness. He puts on enough of a show in the process for you to track his progress, and at the appropriate moment, you start counting down to warn your allies.
"In five..."
Lucius's squad ready their spears.
"...four..."
Cato falls back behind the soldiers, adjusting his grip on his holy symbol.
"...three..."
Hornfels shifts forward slightly.
"...two..."
Behind you, you hear uncertain rumbles from the other elementals, and a few "Pons" from the Beetles.
"...one..."
"Here we go," Roderick mutters.
Rather than declare "zero," you exert your will upon your Resilient Sphere, dismissing it. There is a soft chime as the golden globe disperses, leaving the bloated wolf-spirit to howl and surge forward-
"BREAK!"
-taking your Shadow's Spell almost head-on.
It doesn't even flinch, let alone slow down, as it falls upon the line of Memorian soldiers with a slobbering snarl. Their spears are long enough to intercept it, and its own "mass" is not so great as to snap the hafts on impact-
!
-but then its half-melted head lashes out in an attempt to bite, the gooey neck underneath extending like something rather more serpentine than canine. Sharp teeth snap shut within an inch of one recoiling soldier's face-
!
-which is when your less-Heightened, Reaching Spell to Banish A Seeming washes over the wolf-thing, to no more effect than your Shadow's attempt at dispersing it.
Probably NOT a Transformation or a curse, then, you note absently. At the very least, this mutated spook doesn't feel like it's powerful enough to have simply ignored a seventh-circle spell, let alone the eighth-circle one that your Shadow's enchantment-breaker worked out to. Nor was that spell resistance at work; you FELT your spell connect, it just didn't do anything.
/ Rrrraaaarrrr! /
*WHOOSH*
*SPLA-BOOM!*
Hornfels' opening hammer-blow comes down on the spirit like a wrecking ball, sending loose ectoplasm flying in all directions before making thunderous contact with the floor beneath. For all of that, the conglomerate spirit retains enough cohesion to round on its attacker with another of those gargling cries-
!
-which is when Shadow Alex's Overloaded Spirit Blast takes it in the back of the head. Now that the ugly thing is in the rush of battle, the Blast has even less effect than your own previous use of the technique managed-
!
-although the sudden press from the four Memorian soldiers does prompt a pained howl, as they drive their weapons deeper in an attempt to pin their oversized opponent. An unnaturally long and twisted leg extends from the roiling mass of slime, allowing a massive, melted paw to swat at the small line of troops, knocking two of them back and dislodging one of their spears.
Cato is working a spell of the School of Divination - whether he's probing the enemy for a weakness, querying Mars as to the state of the loyalists caught within the monster, or something else, you can't say over the noise of the battle.
"They seem to have this in hand," Briar notes.
They kind of do.
"I'm tempted to let them get on with it," Shadow Alex adds.
You kind of are, too.
You're tempted, but you push that aside and resolve to stick to your original plan, even if it does mean that this thing live- survives for a few minutes longer.
"Let's do it like we planned," you tell your Shadow.
He shrugs. "Your call."
With that, Shadow Alex begins making his way past the crowd of your allies-
"Whoa!" he exclaims, staggering suddenly as one foot threatens to slide out from underneath him after coming down on a puddle of that earlier-scattered slime.
/ My fault! / Hornfels calls.
-before disappearing into the corridor with the familiar blur of ki-boosted acceleration.
For your part, you turn and begin casting another Resilient Sphere, holding off from completing the spell just long enough for Cato to finish whatever he was doing-
...
-which takes him longer than you expected-
!
-but the moment you feel the aura of divine power around him start to settle, you cast.
"Clear!" you call.
Because they were already briefed on this plan, the four Memorian soldiers are able to step back in good order, though one of them ends up having to leave his spear behind in the process, trapped in its target's gooey body.
Despite the added, uh, accouterment, the golden shell of magical energy is able to take shape around the warped spiritual mass once again without too much trouble. The lost spear is kind of jammed in there as a result,
*WHOO-BONG!*
There is a sound like the ringing of a huge bell as Hornfels' hammer comes down on the outer surface of the Sphere.
/ Sorry about that, / the elemental paladin apologizes. / Bit difficult to stop once you have a whole face of rock falling like that. /
You struggle to parse that for a moment, before realizing that Earth Elementals wouldn't use the idiom "a head of steam" to describe built-up momentum or enthusiasm.
Mentally shrugging at the peculiarities of interplanar linguistics, you turn to the priest and ask him what blessing he asked of his god just now.
"Are you familiar with the Spell to Know One's Enemy?" he replies.
"...I may have heard of it in passing," you admit. "What insights did Lord Mars have to share?"
"Unpleasant ones," Cato answers grimly. "The Hammer mentioned that he thought the... emergence... of this thing resembled a sacrifice. He wasn't wrong about that."
/ I would have liked to have been, / Hornfels rumbles, eyeing the trapped spirit with renewed distaste.
"The cultists' souls are almost certainly lost," Cato informs you. "In life, certain of their ranks were entrusted with a kind of... I am told the modern term is 'suicide charge'?" He says those last two words in halting, badly accented English, which is a bit jarring against the smooth, magically translated Latin you've been hearing all this time.
You nod. "So they destroyed themselves to create... this?"
"A thousand years ago, it WOULD have consumed the users' souls and turned them into something similar to the wolf-beasts we've observed and encountered," Cato says with a nod. "Less stable - ha! - and guaranteed to burn out in the mid-term, but useful enough for spreading havoc and death in the short term. With the users being undead, and the device in question having suffered a thousand years' worth of degradation AND contamination both demonic and spectral in nature, when it wasn't especially well-made to begin with, the results have become... unpredictable."
"And your men?" you ask seriously.
"They're still in there," the priest answers. "The seed of this mockery absorbed them and holds them, feeding on their power to enhance and sustain its own existence. Forcing it to disperse might be enough to set them free, or it might not. I wasn't able to see that far."
Good thing you have Shadow Alex going to make a call to an expert, then. This thing might not actually be a Hollow, but everything you've observed so far suggests that the slime-spirit has enough in common with the denizens of Hueco Mundo to pass for their deformed cousin - in which case, a retired Shinigami should have a pretty good idea of how to deal with it without further endangering the souls trapped inside.
Is there anything you'd like to do right now, besides wait for Urahara's insights to be delivered?
Cato's findings seem like the sort of thing your Shadow should know, so that he can pass the information on to Urahara. While your Elemental Magic is developed enough that your Dark Self should still be within range of a simple Message Spell, you aren't sure if that magic will be able to pass through the portal - and not just because of the automatic dispelling effect attached to the entryway.
Still, it's a mere cantrip, so trying costs you nothing but time. And if it fails, you can send Briar to let him know; the wards on this place seemed a lot less Fae-unfriendly than the ones guarding the Faerie Outpost.
You cast your spell, pointing somewhat vaguely in the direction you know your Shadow went, and whisper, "Can you hear me, over?"
...
No response.
Double-checking your mental math, you're still pretty sure it's not the distance between you and your target that's the problem, which means that it's either your aim or the spell's inability to pass through the portal. Probably the latter, you think, since portals involve a degree of inter- or extra-planar movement, which the Message Spell isn't designed to work with. Or maybe the wards are just jamming it, possibly even by accident rather than design - Message IS just a cantrip, after all, they're not difficult to interfere with.
Regardless, you turn to Briar and ask her to go catch up your counterpart.
"Alright," your partner replies, "but you had better not leave this room or do anything excessive while I'm gone."
"What counts as 'excessive'?" Marcus wonders.
"If you have to ask, it's too much," is Briar's answer.
"...so, everything, basically?"
Oh, come on.
"Almost!" she says cheerfully.
You are NOT that bad!
...
Why will nobody meet your eye?
As Briar disappears down the corridor on a trail of sparkles, you turn, grumbling, to Cato, and ask him if Mars would have an issue with you temporarily Consecrating this or other parts of the base, to weaken hostile undead and (hopefully) prevent the traitor-ghosts from creating more of these abominations.
"Father Mars would have no issue with that," the priest replies. "I'd do it myself, except, well..." He trails off, holding up his ghostly hands with a faintly sheepish expression.
Yeah, incorporeality would pose an issue with a lot of spells. A spellcaster's ghost should still have access to the material components and focuses he was carrying when he died, but the passage of time, decay, and exposure to the energies of undeath can alter or ruin the effectiveness of such reagents. You also aren't sure if a ghost would be able to "re-use" spell components, or rather the spectral echoes of them he would be expending, but if so, there would almost certainly be some kind of limit on how often that could be done.
In any case, if a ghost wasn't carrying the reagents for a particular spell when he was killed, and doesn't have some way of making up for the lack, he's not going to be able to cast that spell.
Since you've probably got some time before Shadow Alex returns, you get out a few of your empty Clay Bottles and begin to cast an Extended Spell of Major Creation, aiming to fill-
-with silver dust. Your command of the School of Conjuration is such that you can just about make the stuff last indefinitely, although it might still be a little unstable compared to what a more experienced conjuror could turn out.
"You're conjuring your spell components," Cato says flatly.
Yes?
"...I can't help but feel that this is excessive," he finally says. "Or possibly blasphemous."
You haven't been smote yet, anyway...
You're about a third of the way through the ritual when the Memorian soldiers that left to fetch their equipment return, now clad in and carrying phantasmal echoes of their combat kit. You note in passing that not all of them are attired to full legion standard, which draws a disapproving frown from Marcus until the senior-most of the legionaries explains that they exhausted the supplies that were available in that part of the base and not already claimed by any of the other ghosts.
You've just about finished the ritual when Shadow Alex and the Briars return. Noticing what you're doing, they wait for you to complete the conjuration.
"Okay, first of all," Shadow Alex says, "it's after eleven o'clock at night in Japan right now. We're lucky Urahara is a night owl."
Does the man even NEED sleep, you wonder?
"Fair point," your counterpart admits, "and I have no idea. Second thing, that dispelling ward on the portal only seems to work against INCOMING targets."
Oh?
"I wasn't sure about it before, but after popping in and out of this place a couple of times, it does seem to be leaning that way."
Good to know. While you're on the subject, did anybody lose any buffs?
"No," Briar replies. "We got lucky this time."
"Definitely felt it TRYING, though," Shadow Briar adds.
Okay. And what did your mad spiritual scientist contact have to say about your corrupted spirit-in-a-force-ball?
"A few things," Shadow Alex says, taking a breath. "For one, he agrees that its behavior, what I described of its aura, and Cato's insights about its origins make it sound a lot like a Hollow, and that it almost certainly falls into the same category of 'corrupted human spirit turned spiritual predator'. If we had an actual Shinigami here, we might be able to purify it the same way."
Only "might"?
"He said he didn't have enough data to make any guarantees, especially not when some sort of demonic corruption was involved."
That's fair. Demons are notoriously good at making things go wrong for other people.
"On a related note, Urahara was pretty sure the reason you couldn't get that 'Shadow Shinigami' to work right was because you'd never actually SEEN a real Shinigami purifying a Hollow."
You nod, disappointed to hear that answer but having fully expected it. It can be hard to convincingly fake something you've never witnessed, and that would apply in spades when you're not trying to trick people - who are often easily misled - but to deceive reality itself.
While you're turning that over, you wonder if Shadow Alex mentioned who you patterned that Shadow Conjuration after.
"Did he have any recommendations?" you ask.
"Barring a reliable method of purification, he said our best bet at ensuring the loyalists come out in one piece would be to physically separate them from the rest of the spirit, before burning whatever was left of it. He noted that just pulling them out might cause the thing to collapse, given how unstable it is."
You glance at the amorphous mass of slime still slopping around inside of your Resilient Sphere. You can see what Urahara was getting at.
"Our other option would be to forcibly disperse the thing while Cato calls on Mars, and hope that the god can intervene to save his own when whatever is left of the cultists' souls go to their final punishment."
...well, then.
Five bottles' worth of silver dust might seem like a lot to some people, but you ARE dealing with an entire mostly-buried, partially-collapsed haunted fort, here. And it's not like you HAVE to use all of this stuff on this outing; having that silver to spare for future uses of the Spell of Consecration and other magics would be convenient - the Spell to Bless Water immediately comes to mind.
Used five Clay Bottles (Empty)
Gained five Clay Bottles (Silver Dust)
Given the situation, Shadow Alex didn't feel it was appropriate to distract Urahara with an amusing side-story.
Which is fine, you can always share the joke some other time.
You consider trying to modify the Spell of Telekinesis to pull the trapped loyalists out of their prison, but there are a number of problems with the idea.
For one thing, whether it's magic or psychic in origin, Telekinesis is by definition the exertion of physical force at a distance, and physical force - unlike the mystical "force" seen in Magic Missiles, Resilient Spheres, and other such constructs - is rather unreliable where incorporeal entities are involved. Purely mundane attacks will pass right through a ghost or other spirit without effect, while enchanted weapons - like Hornfels' hammer - and even spells suffer a significant hit to their usual performance.
Compounding the problem is the fact that you can't really TARGET one creature that's inside another. Once engulfed, the swallowed being gains a weird and highly inconvenient sort of protection, being buffered by its captor's physical and mystical defenses as though wearing a particularly disgusting yet highly effective suit of armor. Unless a spell includes some kind of built-in workaround - like Sending's ability to cross planar barriers or Message's simple capacity to go around corners and pass through gaps - or there's an obvious breach in the external body, the best you might manage is to AFFECT both swallowed and swallower with a spell, and then only in an imprecise and most likely damaging fashion.
And that's before getting into the part where you're trying to pull a bunch of ghosts out of ANOTHER ghost. If you were dealing with living beings that had been engulfed by a ghost, you could probably just reach into the deformed spirit's gooey mass, fish around for your quarry, and yank them out through all the slime. That won't work for the loyalists. No matter what they look like, ghosts are as "solid" to one another as if they had living bodies; more than that, you're pretty sure that the captive souls are being restrained in some fashion, if not outright fused with their captor.
No matter how you slice it, Telekinesis simply doesn't seem like it would work. Even if you reached right down the monster's throat, it...
...
Huh.
Actually, the symbolism of such an act, combined with how the wolf-headed thing kind of "ate" the five ghosts to begin with...
Okay, even with such a metaphysical boost, Telekinesis would still be highly unreliable, but it just so happens that you know a few spells for conjuring hands of mystical force. Mage Hand would be far too weak for this purpose, Interposing Hand is too passive, and Forceful Hand lacks the ability to properly grab things, but you know that there are higher versions of those spells which you could ritually invoke to get the sort of, ah, "dexterity," that this task would require. True, those Hands are usually about ten feet across, which is rather larger than the wolf's head and throat, but the fingers should be long enough to reach to its "stomach", and worse comes to worst, the deformed spirit DOES seems rather... stretchy...
You think you'd rather have the wolf-thing restrained while you remotely manually explore its insides, and while you've got a bunch of big strong elementals on hand to take care of that, asking them to hold an overgrown ghost in place runs into that whole corporeal/incorporeal issue again. For all the defenses you provided your summons, you aren't sure if they could properly restrain a ghost: true, Mage Armor IS a force construct, but it's not really meant to work this way; adding a Spell to Imbue a Weapon With Magic might not suffice; and you don't know a spell meant specifically to apply a ghost touch effect.
But you have three other spellcasters on hand, and so you ask if they do.
Magus Hermanus does not.
Cato and Hornfels also don't know a spell that enhances weapons, but they DO know the Spell of the Ghostbane Dirge, which would temporarily force the mutated spirit into a semi-solid state, where physical attacks and effects could affect it to at least some degree.
/ I have used the spell to confront other spectral entities in the past, / the paladin assures you. / This abomination would still be somewhat slippery, but as long as we keep it from phasing into the floor or the walls, it could be pinned for a time. /
Cato is the more powerful spellcaster of the two, so it makes sense for him to cast the spell.
While Shadow Alex directs your allies to their required locations - the other elementals moving to join Hornfels in surrounding the englobed ghost, the now-armed Memorians forming up with Lucius's team into a superior defensive line for Cato - you and the priest work out spellcasting times and then get to work.
Several minutes later, you complete your efforts. Since you need to grab some people and pull them out of a nasty spot, you attempted to mimic the Spell of the Grasping Hand, and after having the massive mitt first pick up and move a chair, and then - with permission - do something similar to one of the less well-armed ghosts-
"This is a disturbing feeling," the soldier in question mutters.
-in both cases, without incident.
Then, directing your force-construct to a standby position, you turn to Cato, who is already calling on Mars to "allow our weapons to bite true." At a certain point in his spell, you will the Resilient Sphere to collapse again, freeing the wolf-headed entity for the second time.
The amorphous abomination gathers itself, growling-
"Lord of War, show here your power!"
-and then recoiling as the new magic hits it.
/ Now! / Hornfels booms, as he rumbles forward.
/ Right! / the other three elementals chorus, as they follow suit.
/ Get that leg! /
/ I think that's an arm, actually...? /
/ Watch the head! /
/ Wow, this thing is REALLY squishy - and not in a GOOD way. Ugh... /
/ Slippery, too- no you don't! /
It takes some doing for the four Earth Elementals to pin the gruesome ghost - Hornfels has its neck and head in a kind of combination headlock-chokehold, while the other three are simulataneously restraining its limbs and making sure the thing doesn't sink through the floor and escape - and even then, you can see them having to constantly adjust their holds as the ectoplasmic mass keeps threatening to spill out of or simply pass through their hands.
You make a mental note that the Ghostbane Dirge is probably best used to allow for split-second weapon strikes rather than lasting grapples, and that trying to go mano-a-mano with a ghost in a cage match would probably not be a winning move, even with that spell.
"Hornfels, the head!" you call, as your Grasping Hand moves into position, giant fingers flexing.
/ On it! /
With some effort, the elemental paladin wrangles the lupine head and serpentine neck around to face you, and wrenches the slime-dripping, snarling jaw apart.
/ Now, summoner! /
The wolf-thing lets out a noise of angry confusion.
Your Grasping Hand's digits clench like a claw.
"HEY, WOLF-FACE!" you call.
One blank eye seems to turn your way, accompanied by a snarl.
The Hand rears back like a striking snake.
"OPEN WIDE!"
You will swear to anyone who asks that the ghost's eye bulges in alarm.
And then you can't see the thing's expression any more, as the giant hand shoots forward, reaching past the phantom fangs and spectral slobber with index finger and thumb, jabbing down the throat-
There is an indescribable noise from the wolf, part yelp and part gagging, as its maw and neck are distended around the questing digits. The sight would almost be cartoonish, if it weren't so disgusting.
-and into the warped soul's central mass.
The Grasping Hand fishes around inside the mutated ghost for a few seconds, and then a few more, and then long enough that you're beginning to fear even the symbolic boost wasn't enough-
!
-but then the Hand pauses, its searching fingers seeming to have found something.
Some truly horrible noises follow as your spell wrenches something out of the monster's "stomach," up its too-long throat, and finally past its far too widely-spread jaws. What emerges, pinched between the thumb and first finger of your Hand, is a man-sized ball of slime, colored not the grey-tinted white or grey-verging-on-black that has accounted for most of the undead spirits you've encountered thus far, but an unpleasant hue of yellowish-green. Long streamers of silvery saliva trail between it and the wolf's distorted mouth for a moment, and rivulets of the stuff fall away to the floor in a drizzle of disgust.
There is a collective sound of revulsion from the Memorians, and even Marcus seems unable to find it in himself to berate the men for that lapse of discipline.
And then, with a slow, drawn-out *shhhhluck* of slopping slime, an unsteady arm emerges from from the mass, coming to rest against the side of the thick finger above it. Using that point of contact as leverage, the Memorian ghost struggles to pull his head out of the sagging "cocoon" of slime wrapped around him. The outer membrane resists for a moment-
"Get that man out of there!" Cato finds his voice.
-before three of his brothers-in-arms hurry forward. You have the Hand set its rescued passenger down and then send it right back to the wolf-
There is another stomach-turning sound of distress.
-to fish out the next captive.
You swear the Hand shuddered before it stuck its fingers back down the wolf's throat.
Meanwhile, the Memorians have very carefully taken their short swords to the slime, not so much cutting away the outer layer as... sifting through it, to allow their comrade to escape. He emerges with a desperate gasp for air he hasn't needed in ten centuries, and promptly flops over on the floor, looking as helpless as a fish out of water.
This apparent weakness is quickly explained by a simple scan of the ghost's aura, which is on the lower end of average for the crowd, and just FEELS faded - to say nothing of spots of corruption clinging to him in places.
Two of the other soldiers sheathe their weapons and drag the poor soldier out of and away from the main puddle of filth, pulling him upright as Cato comes forward.
"Can you hear me, legionary?"
With an effort, the freed prisoner lifts his head and stares, wide-eyed, into the priest's face.
"That's the most HORRIBLE thing that's ever happened to me," he declares hollowly.
"I don't doubt it," Cato says, raising his holy symbol and beginning a new prayer. Looks like he's trying to determine how badly injured this experience has left the soul before him, and what needs to - and CAN - be done about it.
You let him work on that for now, and focus on getting the other imprisoned souls out before your Grasping Hand fades away.
One by one, with the accompaniment of a gallery of unsettling sights, a chorus of distressing noises, and entirely too much ectoplasm, your Grasping Hand fishes the captive loyalists out of their slimy spiritual prison.
As the number of soul still trapped inside the abomination diminishes, you quickly notice that the wolf-thing is shrinking as well, and its aura weakening. More than that, its form is becoming more... not solid, exactly - it's still a ghost, with all that implies - but perhaps more stable. The amount of excess slime sloshing about and dripping off of its form is diminishing, and the limbs are growing more defined even as they shrink, though they remain twisted and deformed, much like the corporeal wolf-things you've observed thus far.
This makes things a little tricky for the elementals, who have to reposition themselves a couple of times as their prisoner takes up less and less space and leaves its four captors more and more crowded together. Eventually, one of the lesser elementals has to let go and back away from the knot.
The mutated soul's reduced size also affects your Grasping Hand's ability to reach down its throat-
*Shhhhluck*
-with the Hand having to resort to just sticking one finger down the distended lupine maw and scraping around, causing the specter's belly to bulge unpleasantly as it tries to hook onto and drag out the last couple of captives.
You've got four of the Memorians out when their former captor starts to spasm, heave, and make a hacking, retching sound. Undead or no, you fully expect that the thing is about to barf-
!
-so you're not quite as surprised as you might otherwise have been, when a slime-dripping hand forces its way out of the monster's maw, reaching around with a kind of desperate determination.
Several of the Memorians rush forward, but your Grasping Hand gets there first, wrapping its first couple of digits around the extended forearm and then pulling.
"Blaarrghhhh!"
With a horrible, drawn-out vomiting sound from the beast, the last of the loyalists is pulled out - and then ANOTHER ghost emerges behind him, half-dragged along by the legionary's death-grip on this second soul's arm, half-forced out by their captor's convulsions.
The cultist so freed is the weaker of the two that you saw throw themselves together to create the twisted abomination you've spent all this time and trouble dealing with. You'd thought them both destroyed in the process, and that guess wasn't far off; where the ghosts of the five loyalists are covered in the spiritual filth of demonic taint, the cultist's already corrupt spirit bears a number of HOLES, ringed by reddish-black "burn marks" that reek of the energies of Chaos and Evil.
You don't blame the loyalist for trying to save someone from the slimy hell they were caught in, but you also don't hold out much hope for this cultist's spirit to survive his "escape."
As for the demonic ghost wolf-thing, it's finally shrunk to the point where it more or less matches its corporeal cousins, although its head, neck, and stomach seem to have suffered lasting internal damage from your... efforts... given how they bulge unpleasantly. The monster hangs listlessly in Hornfels' hold, which has shifted to a more conventional headlock now that the thing's proportions are closer to humanoid.
You honestly feel a bit bad for the thing, but not so much that it prevents you from turning to Shadow Alex and nodding.
Your dark doppelganger has spent the last few minutes ritually preparing the Spell to Burn Corruption, and now, as Hornfels releases the ghost and joins his fellow elementals in backing away from the thing, your Dark Self invokes the magic.
Instantly, a cube of space ten feet to a side is filled with a strange, violet flame.
The twisted ghost caught at the heart of the conflagration lets out a single howl before its form is utterly consumed by the supernatural blaze, and when the glare fades a moment later, there's nothing left of it.
You also note that the air in that space feels distinctly cleaner than it did just seconds ago.
Flame is the ultimate purifier.
Only for things that can survive it.
Burn, baby, burn!
"Well," Sir Roderick declares after a moment. "That was... disgusting, but productive. What now?"
You look at the six ghosts you just pulled from the jaws of what might well have been damnation.
This definitely seems like the sort of situation where some spiritual first aid is called for. You aren't sure what, if anything, can be done about any emotional trauma the unfortunate ghosts may have suffered, but you should be able to purge them of at least some of the taint they've picked up, and shore up their phys- er, that is, their ethereal forms.
Your gaze falls on the "rescued" traitor, who is definitely going to need some degree of healing BEFORE you try any cleansing rituals. The state he's in, you wouldn't be surprised if trying to scrub any of the corruption out of his soul finished what being spiritually half-digested started, and caused his manifested form to dissipate back into the mists for a while - or even forever.
Recalling that certain priests can channel the power of their patrons to heal the undead, you give some thought to attempting the same with your Power, and float the idea to the Briars and your Shadow while discussing how to handle this batch of wounded souls.
"I don't know, Alex," your partner says slowly. "You haven't even TRIED to use your Power that way before now, and it's had some unexpected results in the past when you just let it loose without the structure of a tested, working technique to direct it."
"And sometimes even WITH a proper technique," her Shadow adds.
"Yeah. Plus, even IF you do get it to work like you want, your Power is kind of... impactful, for the rest of us, and this guy's really not in any state to handle any more spiritual stress. Even a strong emotional shock might be bad for him right now."
...and your Power DOES have that element of awe and intimidation to it. More critically, your rarely-used Power Aura technique, which magnifies and projects the emotional aspect of your Power, is the very skill that you were looking to take mechanical cues from when you tried to channel Power. Now that Briar's pointed that out, it does seem like that could have consequences if things didn't go right - and maybe even if they did.
Much as you would appreciate the opportunity to practice a new skill, you'd really rather not risk burning out someone's SOUL in the process. Not even someone who's already damned himself, and could be rather successfully argued to have it coming.
Probably for the better that you conjure negative energy via a spell for this.
As you gather the necessary mana to cast your chosen spell, you crouch down near the last two ghosts to be freed.
"Nicely done, soldier," you compliment the Memorian. "I'd honestly thought this one lost to the wolf-demon."
"Wasn't going to... leave anyone... in that mess, if I could help it, Magus," the legionary replies from where he's sprawled out on the floor.
You nod. "I've heard a lot of people say that they wouldn't leave their worst enemies in awful situations" - granted, usually in movies or comics - "but you're the first I've ever seen match deeds to words."
"Some things really ARE just that awful, si..." The still slime-dripping ghost trails off, glowing eyes winking out and back in again as he looks past your Warmage's Robe and sees the person wearing it. "Pardon me for asking, Magus, but are you... just really short, or under some kind of a transformation spell?"
The Memorian soldier regards you in silence, visibly considering your height, build, and apparent age. You can just about see the moment when he decides he doesn't want to know the exact details.
You leave the undead man to his thoughts, focusing on your spellwork and your first "patient," who you target with one of the strongest applications of negative energy you can muster without use of a ritual. This is perhaps a bit against the usual rules of triage, where the goal isn't to heal the victim outright, just determine their condition and keep them stable for transport to proper treatment - but then, your "battlefield" healing magic allows you to do things fully-equipped modern hospitals can't.
Case in point, treating the undead.
An aura of darkness gathers round your left hand, and when you push towards the traitor's ghost, the accumulated energy flows forward like a grasping claw, one that grows as it advances until it is nearly as large as the phantom body of your target. Like calls to like, then, as the necrotic power of the spell first covers and subsequently seeps into the spirit's damaged form. Thin, faded grey reconstitutes and darkens, and the edges of the ghost's ethereal body grow more defined, seeming less on the verge of dissipating.
But the taint remains, and with it, the holes.
You had a feeling that might be the case, but you're definitely glad now that you didn't try using Power to do this.
You'd considered saying something to the undead cultist, but he still seems to be quite out of it mentally, so you save your breath and focus on healing the other freed captives instead. As none of them are nearly as badly off as this one, a quick application of a Mass Spell to Inflict Moderate Wounds seems to reinvigorate their, ahem, "spirits," although as with the traitor, the marks of their exposure to demonic corruption are largely unaffected.
Shadow Alex waits until you've finished that before casting the Spell of Undeath Inversion on the captives. Each of you then starts casting the Spell of Restoration. It would be ideal if you could just affect all of the ghosts with one casting, but you're fresh out of suitable diamonds for the purpose - unless you used the last stone on Akasha's Earring, which just feels inappropriate for something that doesn't involve her or the rest of the Shuzen family - and the extra energy you have to pour into the spell to offset that lack doesn't leave you any extra power for further modifications of the spell matrix. You also can't use a ritual to boost your efforts, as Restoration is one of those spells you can't cast without performing a ritual to begin with.
The good news is, Shadow Alex still has enough mana to cast the Spell of Restoration five times over, cleansing all the Memorian loyalists of the exterior corruption, without compromising his own existence. He was getting very close to that limit, though, which is why you handed him the last of your Spring Dew Potions.
*Glug*
*Glug*
*Glug*
Used Spring Dew
Gained Clay Bottle
"He downed the whole thing?" one of the loyalists exclaims.
"Isn't that supposed to be like chugging a whole bottle of wine?" another asks.
"It depends on your tolerance," Hermanus replies, while giving you and your Shadow disgusted and envious glances.
For your part, you're a little uncomfortable with having to "touch" the cultist to deliver your Spell of Restoration, partly because he's a hostile ghost, and partly because of the higher level of contamination he displays. Fortunately, with the spook still out of it, he can't focus his energies in that particular manner which makes a ghost's touch so devastating to living flesh - though you do feel a short-lived, chilly ache in your hand all the same.
As you back away from the captive, you examine the hand you touched him with for any signs of injury. Everything LOOKS fine, no wrinkles, spots, or other signs of sudden, rapid aging, but... is it just your imagination, or are your fingernails a little longer than they were before?
It's just your imagination.
Oh, good.
They could use a trim, though.
They probably COULD use a-
Either that or hardening into proper claws.
...
What.
Just a thought!
Lowering your hand out of your field of vision - and absently brushing it on your cloak to try and wipe away the cold, sticky feel of tainted ectoplasm - you focus on the ghost. The external corruption picked up from the cultist's brief visit to the belly of the beast has been washed away, as it was in the case of the loyalists, and the holes in the spirit's manifested form have shrunk significantly. They're not entirely gone, however, and a fair portion of the internal taint remains; in addition, some of the "color" that you restored to the ghost with your reverse-healing has... not so much faded, but been forced to spread out to rebuild the damaged areas of its ethereal body.
You had been considering using a second shot of Restoration to try and purge the ghost of his accumulated corruption entirely, but now you think it might be better to leave it be, lest you end up re-inflicting some of the very damage you were trying to address.
On the upside, the cultist has regained consciousness, and is staring at you with alarm. If two of the loyalist troops weren't holding him by the arms, you think he'd be trying to scramble away from you.
"Keep it away!" he half-demands, half-pleads. "Keep it away!"
Huh.
"Well, THAT'S a new one," Briar says after a moment.
"Wonder what brought it on," her Shadow murmurs.
You do, too. Did the ghost actually sense the Goddesses' attention just now, or is he "merely" reacting to the divine energies you faked to cast that spell - or perhaps the potential Power which allows you to do that in the first place? It could even be that he's just having trouble handling the sudden absence of some of that demonic essence in his soul.
Regardless of its source, the traitor's fear doesn't give him enough strength to overcome the hold of his former comrades.
"Hey. HEY!" you bark.
The ghost freezes, staring.
"You are, at this moment, nothing more than your soul. Do try to appreciate that a little more before you consign yourself to something more permanent than simple death, hm?" You start to turn away, stop, and look back. "Oh, and you're welcome."
The frightened traitor is hauled over to join his three surviving compatriots, and Cato and Marcus take a few minutes to sort out who among your batch of sudden reinforcements is going to be responsible for keeping an eye on that lot.
While the Memorians are sorting that out, you have some of your allies start scouting ahead. Shadow Briar takes point, making the most of her small size and the array of sensory enhancement spells applied earlier to check for traps and enemies while avoiding notice in return. Once she's pronounced the next room clear, Hornfels takes his Hardhat Beetle escorts and moves up to occupy the position.
The very next room after that, however, is the start of the maze-like section of the base. Not only do the rooms start getting small enough to make navigating them a real issue for the number of troops at your disposal, Shadow Briar also starts spotting active trap mechanisms, DAMAGED traps - which are at least as dangerous as the ones in full working order - and of course, corpses.
Most of the bodies the false Fae finds are either walking around, or have enough ghostly presences in the same room to account for their original owners. Unlike the legionaries and traitors you've encountered up to this point, Shadow Briar says these ones clearly have malice on their minds.
"It's a combination of the feel of their auras, the way they carry themselves like they're spoiling for a fight, and how the one that spotted me immediately screamed bloody murder-"
"Did he really?" you interrupt, recalling a particular incident with a small group of vengeful undead spirits.
"Not in actual WORDS," she admits, no doubt remembering the same incident. "It was more, 'GrrrrAAAARRRRGH!' with the eyes glowing red, the jaw hanging WAY too loose, and a lot of angry spear-waving. But the INTENT was pretty clear."
You nod. "Any idea if the bodies ahead of us started moving around because of the noise we made in here, or if they've been active longer than that?"
"Nothing that specific, but I think they're pretty recent, either way," the fairy's Shadow answer. "There's a fair amount of dust in those rooms, and not enough tracks to account for more than a few days' worth of mindless pacing about."
She can recognize that kind of thing?
"I used to explore some of the old Temples when I was young and dumb," Briar explains. "If nothing comes along to disturb them, mindless undead tend to end up standing in one place for decades at a time or following the same route over and over until the floor wears out. After a few centuries, the trails can get pretty obvious."
And this place has been locked down for a millennium.
Magus Hermanus calls up his illusion-map of the base again, and you spend some time reviewing the potential paths through this section. While there are technically a dozen different routes you could take to reach the command center from here, most of those are just variants on the same three paths: the short way, that goes straight to the heart of the base; a slightly longer route that swings past the main armory, which lies a bit to the west of the control room; and the longest way, which goes a fair distance off to the east, passing the magical workshops.
While you do want to check those workshops out if you can, you're inclined to wait. Hermanus agrees with that, noting that the workshops SHOULD have been locked down by the loyalists, and would need command authorization to open up again anyway.
"Quite aside from that," he adds, "we haven't accounted for either of my counterparts yet - neither Captain Brennus's staff magus nor the one that would have come with Captain Tertius. Securing the workshops would have been a priority for both of them, no matter which side of the uprising they were on."
"You think one or both of them might be in there," you conclude, nodding at the row of rooms with visibly reinforced walls on the map.
"And that one or both of them may be traitors," Hermanus concludes. "Or perhaps 'just' angered and maddened by a thousand years of unlife."
There are old, old adages about the dangers of confronting magic-users in their lairs. Wizards in their towers, priests in their temples - you've even heard one in passing from Ambrose about a modern Magus in his workshop.
So, yeah. DEFINITELY leaving that area for later.
That leaves you two real paths. Either you go for the shortest route, or you detour to the armory first. The only real advantage you can see to the latter approach is that it might give some of your new Memorian comrades a chance to finish gearing up, provided they can get into the armory and make use of whatever is left in there after all this time.
While a trip to the armory is in the cards regardless, you figure there are enough uncertainties about the usefulness of making such a visit FIRST to put it off until later, and go to the command center instead.
If nothing else, securing the control room will probably let you get a look at the vault's status, unlock it, and/or find out what's necessary to get it open.
Cato and Marcus end up assigning a little over half of the new batch of loyalists - including the incompletely equipped bunch - to stay in the mess area and keep watch on your four prisoners. While the remaining eight form up with Lucius's team, the priest and the captain join you and the Magus in reviewing your approach.
Shadow Briar informs you that there are at least three rooms of active, unfriendly undead along your chosen course, that being as far as she was able to scout ahead before one of the unquiet souls noticed and took offense at her presence.
The first of these haunted chambers, which is just to the west of the room Hornfels is standing watch in, contains half a dozen withered bodies, most of which are walking around with spectral silhouettes wrapped around them. There's also a proper ghost, whose apparent body was too badly damaged by whatever killed him to reanimate.
"Wolf?" you venture.
"The size and shape of the wounds looked right," the false Fae agrees, "but I didn't find its body."
The second chamber, lying north of the first, showed ancient, much-faded signs of Fire Magic having been used within it: scorch marks on the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling; a lot of blackened bones and equipment; and pockets of ash underneath the centuries of accumulated dust. Shadow Briar counted four more "possessed" corpses and nearly twice as many more ghosts, all of which were wreathed in eerie green-white flames - the memory of the spell that killed them.
"Fireball," you, your Shadow, and Hermanus collectively state, more than ask.
"It had all the signs," Shadow Briar admits.
The last room the pseudo-fairy had a chance to view, directly north again, held only three undead occupants. Two of them lacked much in the way of armor or weapons, while the third was fully kitted out, looked to have been run through with two separate, now-broken spears, AND had his head cut off.
"Wait," you ask. "Is he wandering around completely headless, or with a floating skull, or what?"
"Skull and helmet, floating just above the shoulders, but with no flesh left attaching anything and a clear break in the spine. Also," she adds, "the head is kind of crushed in a couple of places, like a big hand grabbed it and just-"
"We get the idea, thank you."
What a pleasant image.
Well, you'd been considering testing out your capacity for channeling Power to affect the undead, and now you've got a few options to do so that won't risk anybody's eternal soul burning up or falling apart in the process. The room where the Fireball went off is probably better left to Cato, though, given the number of ghosts involved and how angry they're likely to be - while there aren't a lot of NICE ways to die, fire is generally one of the nastier ones, and tends to give rise to accordingly nasty spirits.
While you're doing that, is there anything in particular you'd like the rest of your expanded allied force to attend to? You've got enough personnel here that you're never going to fit them all into a single room, much less in the middle of combat, and with the way the section of the base ahead of you is laid out - with almost every room providing access to MOST but not ALL of its neighbors - as well as the indication that the dead are well and truly starting to stir, it might be a good idea to go ahead and set up a defensive line in case something comes at you from the west.
You haven't forgotten those bodies you scryed on earlier, piled around the two dead wolf-beasts. You managed to handle the first of those things easily enough since you caught it in the middle of waking, but you'd prefer not to get flanked by two fully-active specimens, let alone whatever lesser undead they might bring along.
You let your allies know what you have in mind, and once you've assured the Memorians that there is no risk of this untested use of your Power doing unfortunate things to their countrymen, they are willing to give you the chance to test it out. In fact, Cato and Hermanus both seem rather interested in observing the technique.
Hornfels approves of your decision to focus your efforts on the ghost in the first room, though he expresses some doubts when you explain that you'll be trying to reproduce the effects of channeling positive energy in one room, and then using negative energy in the other.
/ In my experience, while certain faiths might allow their adherents to channel both energies, any given INDIVIDUAL member can only fully use one of them in that manner. /
"You think it won't work?"
/ I believe the expression among your kind is, "I won't believe it until I see it"? /
Here's to a convincing show, then.
After you've put forth what you want to do, Marcus, Cato, Sir Roderick, and Hornfels sort out a deployment for the troops. The elemental paladin will be acting as your main bodyguard in the next room, and is taking his assigned Hardhat Beetles with him as flanking guards. Cato will accompany you to try and subdue the corporeal undead without the big guy having to crush them, while Shadow Alex and the fairies remain at the ready.
Hermanus will take one of the lesser elementals, his rubbery-shelled escorts, and four of the Memorian troops into the room immediately to the west, and thereafter try to mirror your party as you move deeper into the base. The idea there is to clear some of the additional rooms, while making sure that if something DOES come at you from this facility's Gate Room, it won't catch you by surprise. Depending on what they run into, they can also call for support, or alternately provide it to your advance.
Marcus and the eight remaining Memorian legionaries will hold in this location while you clear and secure the first room, after which they'll move past you and escort Cato into the Fireballed chamber, which promises to be unpleasant.
Sir Roderick will take charge of your remaining summons and handle the rearguard for the time being, unless or until a situation calls for his assistance further up.
With that sorted, your summoned paladin moves through the doorway - which his massive form nearly fills, even when he moves through sideways - into the next room, Beetles trundling along behind him.
The sounds of angry undead reach your ears almost immediately.
Hornfels IS a lot harder to miss than Shadow Briar, you admit, as you follow after him.
It's a bit hard to see past the warrior's boulder-sized shoulders, but you can tell that, rather than charge forward with the uncontrollable hatred for all life typical of truly mindless undead, the six legionaries in this room have arranged themselves in a tight semi-circle, battered shields raised to cover one another and rusty spears extending as a single unit, rather than a collection of individuals that just happen to be aiming at the same target.
"Good or bad?" you wonder, as you gather your energies.
"Could be either," Cato admits. "Best hurry, young one."
Yeah, once the violence starts, it'll be a lot harder to stop. With that in mind, you take a quick guess and move a couple of steps to the right, just far enough to see clearly past Hornfels' massive form-
!
-and there's your target, second from the end of the formation.
You raise your hand, presenting-
-the back, which has glowed as though marked by the Triforce in times past.
Mana and ki combine, and surge-
"Son of Memoria!" you declare, hand raised into a fist as you feel six warm lines form three triangles across its back, a gesture that feels greatly familiar. "STAND DOWN!"
This brings back memories...
Good, or bad?
Yes.
About what I figured.
-and the ghost looks up, eyes gleaming against the golden energy that blazes from the topmost triangle.
The undead spirit does NOT suddenly burst into golden flame, flee shrieking in existential dread, or even flinch in discomfort from being exposed to your focused Power. But he does pause, staring at the source of the light for a long moment.
Gained Channel Power F (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Power Overload E
Glowing eyes narrowing in thought, the soldier glances up at Hornfels and then looks back to you.
"This elemental... is your ally... Magus?" he questions in a halting, raspy voice that carries an unnatural echo.
"He is," you reply firmly.
"And you... have come to...?"
It takes you a moment to realize the way the sentence trails off is intended as a question, and not the ghost losing the thread of his consciousness.
"We are were to secure the base, cleanse it of the traitors and the corruption they brought with them, and bring the lost members of the Fifth Legion home from Faerie." You gesture to Cato, who floats forward.
"Your watch has been long, soldier," the priest declares. "Too long, by far. Father Mars calls you to your rest at last."
"Resssst..." the ghost sighs, slumping. "That would... be wonderful..."
The other five undead didn't meaningfully react to your use of your Power. For the ones on the far end of the formation, that's probably because Hornfels was in the way, but for the rest, you aren't sure if it's because you were trying to focus it on their incorporeal comrade, if the technique is still too rudimentary for their still less than wholly conscious spirits to have registered it, or if they DID notice, and were just too fixated and/or professional to take their attention off of the obvious threat posed by the elemental paladin.
Regardless, Cato and the spectral soldier - whose name you hear as "Agrippa" - are able to convince the quintet to stand down and allow you and your allies to pass. None of the souls possessing their own long-dead bodies seems to stir to consciousness, and they prove resistant to the idea of leaving the place where they died, even on the word of a priest of Mars. Agrippa agrees to remain to keep his fellows in line while the rest of your force moves through this chamber.
While that's getting sorted out, you inspect the back of your right hand, where the luminous lines of the Triforce emblem are once again fading away to bare, unmarked flesh.
It SEEMS to work, anyway. Hopefully the technique just needs more refinement...
There is a rumble then, as Hornfels steps to one side to allow Marcus and the platoon of Memorians that ARE working with you to proceed past him and into the next, Cato joining their ranks as they go. You watch the double-line of soldiers pass through the archway at the far end of the room, the stones marked by faded streaks of ancient char.
Almost immediately, there is screeching and shouting.
Some of the undead in this room stir and heft their weapons.
"Hold," Agrippa whispers.
Suddenly, you hear more noises of violence from the room to your left.
Again, the "sleeping" soldiers react, a couple of the helmed skulls and rusted weapon-points turning towards the new disturbance.
"Hoooold," Agrippa repeats with more force, his voice warbling eerily.
As for yourself, while you aren't going to upset your allies and bodyguards by walking right into one of the fights that has developed, you are curious. You also aren't getting any flashes of imminent danger from your Spell of Foresight, so...
Maybe it's the fact that Cato and Marcus have a force of proper soldiers at their disposal, as opposed to a collection of men, monsters, and miniature mountain, or that you already know what they're facing - and conversely, DON'T yet know what Hermanus has gotten into - but you find yourself more interested in investigating the Magus's situation.
/ Going somewhere, summoner? / Hornfels rumbles mildly.
"Just checking on our flanking party," you reply. "Don't worry, I'll stay in this room."
The elemental's / Hmmm / of reply does not sound wholly convinced, but he doesn't move to stop you. He DOES shift his position so that he can look down the short passage that connects the two rooms with you, though.
From what you can see, Hermanus's mixed team has encountered another group of unfriendly undead. You aren't sure if the fighting broke out immediately, or if the Magus tried to cast something like a Spell to Command Undead and had it backfire, but there is definitely violence in progress. The four undead loyalists are using the lesser elemental as the anchor-point in a defensive line, flanking the bigger creature two to a side, with the Hardhat Beetles positioned in front of them, taking short steps to one side or the other as their opponents try to pass. This lets the legionaries use their spears over and around the Beetle's bouncy shells, while the elemental's greater size and long arms let it strike from above as needed. Hermanus himself is on the near right side of the formation, though you can only tell that from the auras of magical energy that give away someone maintaining a spell or two on the opposing side of the conflict, as well as the spell-fire that shoots past the elemental's form.
The aforementioned enemy group includes seven or eight of the expected undead soldiers - corporeal, from what you can see - none of the mutated wolf-beasts, and something that you hadn't seen before-
"Screeee!"
-namely, a kind of flying undead. Not a levitating ghost, either, but something with actual wings, great sails like those of a bat, only withered, torn, and half composed of green ectoplasmic energy, trailing short-lived sheets of the same as the creature swoops in and out of your narrow field of vision. Its body is roughly human-sized and -shaped, with the wings as part of its arms rather than growing out of its back - reinforcing the chiropteran resemblance - the feet running to oversized, mismatched claws, and the head looking less like an undead rodent than it does another kind of grotesque wolf.
Enough corruption clings to the thing to suggest that it is, or was, another transformed cultist, but you find yourself wondering how, exactly, the demons or their priests sold this particular transformation to their cannon-fodder. At least, you don't remember hearing that the Romans had any particular fondness for bats...
Whatever the answer to that might be, the mutated undead flier is causing your allies some problems. The other room is big enough - and your elemental ally, small enough in comparison - that the man-bat has room to maneuver, especially since its half-spectral nature lets it change its elevation and orientation in defiance of the laws that govern mundane muscle-powered flight. In addition, though the glowing trail of ectoplasm chasing the creature about not only presents a visual distraction and obstacle, however short-lived, it also splashes and spatters over the defenders, at the very least distracting them from their ground-bound opponents and possibly damaging them in its own right.
The Memorian loyalists have their weapons occupied with their opposite numbers, the Beetles can't attack airborne foes at all, and Hermanus is already firing the Spell to Disrupt Undead at the dive-bombing bat-thing, to limited success, while the elemental alternates between swatting clumsily at it and sweeping away parts of the formation that its allies keep trying to get into on the ground.
While it looks disorganized at first glance, you would say that your side is winning the fight. The size and strength of the elemental-
*Boing*
"What in the names of the gods?!"
"Poooon!"
-the frustrating defenses of your Hyrulean summons, and the numerous support spells you wrapped them all in are responsible for a lot of that, making up for the lack of similar boosts on most of the Memorian loyalists. Not that they much need it, thanks to their training and phantom weapons and armor, but it would have tipped the scales agains their similarly-equipped and -capable traitorous counterparts. Things are just close enough that your allies are winning SLOWLY rather than at a more convenient pace.
"Hornfels?" you say.
/ Yes, summoner? /
"I'm still not going to leave the room, but I AM going to interfere with that fight a bit."
/ I will be ready, then, / the Hammerer replies, smacking the head of his eponymous weapon against one stony palm.
You're already focusing your energies. You've had a Staggered Flicker on standby since you entered the base, so that's one thing you can skip for the moment. An exertion of ki has a Doppelganger appearing at your side, mimicking your movements as you shape your spiritual energy.
Gained Doppelganger D (Plus)
You'd considered Channeling Power to try and stun or distract that flying undead, but the relatively narrow passageway that connects the two rooms limits your field of vision, and the bat-thing is moving in and out of that area a bit too quickly for you to feel comfortable about "hitting" it with your rudimentary technique.
At least not without you slowing it down first.
And so you watch the field, spiritual power flowing between your hands for a long moment, before you let fly with an Overloaded Spirit Blast-
"Scree-EEEE?"
-which annoyingly fails to catch the undead man-bat by surprise, even with your allies providing a considerable distraction. Maybe the Overload of living spiritual energies caught the battle-ready undead's attention, or maybe its animalistic appearance includes some of the senses of the beasts it resembles - hearing seems like a good possibility - but either way, the wolf-headed bat-thing sensed your Blast coming and managed to twist most of the way out of the line of fire.
Even if you'd scored a clean hit, it wouldn't have resulted in anything as dramatic as a head-shot or blowing a hole through one of those phantasmal wings - your Spirit Blasts just don't hit that hard yet - but as it stands, you get little more than a glancing blow to the torso.
In addition, the spectral bat is now hovering in place, joining several of the nearer grounded ghosts in glaring your way, eyes burning with unholy intent.
/ Interference achieved, summoner, / Hornfels notes cheekily.
"And it's not over yet!" you reply, as your energies cycle enough for your next move.
Mana in one hand-
At a shriek from the bat, three of the traitor soldiers form up on the other side of the door.
-ki in the other-
Your allies try to break up the small group, but the trailing undead turns, plants a large, pitted shield between them, and gives his compatriots enough time to come at you.
-and you bring them together, golden Power once again blazing from the back of your upraised fist, reflecting off of the widened immaterial eyes and decayed but recognizeably startled expressions of the two undead soldiers that are actually facing you, while drawing an actual double-take from the wolf-bat creature you were focusing on.
"FALL!"
...
The demon-twisted aberration does not, in fact, fall at your command-
/ Gotcha! /
"SCREE-!"
*Smack!*
*Cru-BOOM!*
-but it hesitates in the face of your not-quite divine Power long enough for the elemental in the other room to snatch the nimble flier out of the air with one hand, cast it to the floor, and then bring its other, empty fist down in a blow that shakes the floor.
/ Well struck! / Hornfels congratulates his distant relative.
/ Ugh, / comes the reply. / Half-crunchy, half-slimy. Yuck. /
Still not what you were going for, but you'll take it.
Gained Channel Power F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Power Overload E (Plus)
The dismay on the rotted faces of your would-be attackers only increases when Hornfels rumbles up to properly intercept them.
With their air support suddenly down, a flanking attack underway, and their force split, this band of undead traitors doesn't last much longer, even without your further involvement. As the Memorians and your summons get on with cleaning up the mess-
"Get it off, get it off!"
"Ponnnn!"
-with one of the Hardhat Beetles claiming vengeance on a particularly unfortunate aggressor, you glance towards the burnt-out room where Cato and Marcus went. The sounds of fighting are still ongoing, but you can also hear shouting that doesn't sound like what you'd expect on a battlefield.
"Burn them! Burn them! BURN THEM ALL!" an unfamiliar voice cackles and crackles.
"By Vesta and Vulcan both!" Cato declares with a distinct note of exasperation. "CALM your pyromania!"
At least, not EXACTLY like a battlefield.
Leaving Hornfels, Hermanus, and your lesser summons to finish the clean-up of that group of corrupted undead, you cross the room and peer cautiously through the door that leads into the burnt-out room.
Your first glance bears out that suspicion that the room was subjected to the casting of a Fireball Spell, long, long ago. The scorch marks cover every surface save for the far side of the room, which has a big burn mark several feet across on it, just to the right of the next door, but is otherwise unmarred; the sections of the floor and ceiling which adjoin that wall also sport areas that are basically free of damage, right up to the point where smooth, curving lines of char mark the beginning of the destruction.
The spread of the damage suggests that the spherical conflagration that briefly filled this chamber was off-center by about five feet in your direction - hence the damage that spilled out of the doorway that you're peering through now, backwashing onto the walls, floor, and ceiling around it - and not quite three feet to the right.
None of the remaining piles of ash or the flame-eaten fragments of material poking out of them suggest barricades, booby traps, or any similarly pressing tactical reasons for the magic-user who nuked the room to have done so, beyond the presence of the now-undead soldiers - but looking at the dead men themselves explains it.
The four corporeal undead are essentially just more of what you've seen so far, men who died only half-clad for war, and whose spirits yet cling to their forms. The greenish flames that wreathe those bodies are a new trick, admittedly, and would be rather impressive if you'd come upon them without warning, as the ghostfire fills eyesockets to the point of overflowing, spills out of the blackened jaws in mimicry of the breath of life, and seems to run through the bodies in place of their long dried-up blood. Ancient weapons and armor that look to have been charred and half-melted by the fatal Fireball are now limned by the memory of it, reinforced in a manner akin to the bodies beneath, and all the more dangerous for it.
The seven actual ghosts in the room appear to be composed of the spectral flame entirely, and whether because they were better prepared to face the last minutes of their lives or because rage at the centuries-old treachery and murder has given them strength, all of them appear to be fully equipped for battle, wielding arms and armor forged from the pallid emerald blaze - all but one, whose weapons are sheathed at her sides.
In their stead, the lady legionary holds high the memory of a legion standard similar to the one that Briar is still carrying along for you. It waves in a breeze you cannot feel - or perhaps that's just the dance of the flames.
Looking around at the floor, you don't immediately see anything that might suggest the banner's presence-
!
-wait, no, there's a blackened pole next to that pile of bones, ending in a melted mass of metal that almost looks like it fused to the floor.
Though the cultists were being deceived by their demonic patrons, you know that they yet considered themselves heirs of Rome, just as the Memorian loyalists did. Because of that, both sides would have placed a high priority on securing possession of the unit's standard: to the loyalists, its loss to an enemy would have been an unbearable disgrace, made all the worse by the underhanded nature of the attack; while to the traitors, seizing the banner would have been a validation of their cause, as well as a death-blow to their enemies' morale.
Destroying the standard entirely wouldn't have been quite as good an outcome, but it would have been symbolic of the death of the force stationed here, and hence a worthwhile act in the eyes of any competent magic-user.
Ten of the burning spirits have arrayed themselves around their bannerwoman, and are currently facing off with the slightly smaller unit under Marcus and Cato. The priest currently stands near the front of the formation that was supposed to be defending him, the emblem of his patron held before him with one hand - to the rapt, burning-eyed attention of the other group of ghouls - while two bony fingertips on his other hand are rubbing circles in the phantom flesh on the side of his skull, as if he is suffering a powerful headache - or at least the memory of one.
The cause of Cato's pain appears to be the leader of the loyalist unit, who stands in front of the standard-bearer in an aggressive defensive posture - that is to say, it's clear that the first person or thing that tries to get at the flag behind him will find themselves stabbed, set on fire, and probably clawed and bitten and blasted with EYES OF DOOM for good measure. Said eyes are alarmingly wide in the sockets of the spirit's skull-like visage, jittering with the nervous tension that runs through the rest of the burning body and into the aura of soul-flame that crackles around it.
"Hunt the traitors!" the enflamed officer snarls. "No escape! No mercy!"
"That IS the goal," Cato tries, "but we must reach the control-"
"Hunt them and burn them! BURN THEM TO ASH!"
"BURN TO ASH!" his men - and women - shriek in response.
"Burn out the memory of them! Fire them, and forget them!"
"FIRE AND FORGET!"
...
Okay.
You look from the blazing banner in the ghostly legionary's hands, to the burnt-out husk and ashes on the floor that seem to be the standard's "mortal" shell, and then back again. And then, as Cato tries to talk the troop down from attempting to spread through the base like a wildfire - something that you think would not end well for this band of loyalists, given their limited numbers and how their individual auras come up short of the wolf-beasts and at least two traitors' ghosts for sheer strength - you look around at the Fireball-gutted contents of the room.
The idea of casting a Mass version of the Greater Spell to Make Things Whole and restoring the entire room comes to mind, but is dismissed just as quickly. After being burnt to cinders and left to lie forgotten for a thousand years, the sympathetic connections that you'd normally use to guide a repair spell - the objects' own "memories" of what they used to be, as it were - will have long since been broken and lost. On top of that, you have no idea what most of the stuff in here even WAS, let alone what it all looked like, meaning any attempt to manually direct your spell as it put things back together would be doomed to failure.
...with one noteworthy exception.
After all, you have a visual reference for the flame-blasted banner burning away ominously right in front of you. And if it's a little off-color - and translucent - due to the whole "ghost" thing and the greenish spectral flames emanating from it, its bearer, and the other members of the unit, you have the very recent memory of your OWN Standard, as well as more distant recollections of the emblems you saw in the Faerie Outpost, to help guide you.
In another small piece of good fortune, the burning ghosts aren't standing between you and what's left of the actual standard - and its bearer, you think, looking at the body - so you're able to shuffle into Greater Make Whole's casting range without having to walk out from behind the line established by your Memorian allies, or into the ranks of the not-yet-confirmed friendly loyalists.
Some of said loyalists glance your way, but Marcus is close enough that you can make it look like you've come to speak with him.
"What are you up to, lad?" the Captain asks quietly.
"Do you think it would help if I restored their standard, sir?"
"...it would," he says with a soulful sigh. "It truly would."
You'll just get on with that, then.
You study the phantom pennant for a long moment, slowly filling its appearance in with should be the proper color and substance. Then, with the resulting image fixed firmly in your mind's eye - and one of the more solid loyalists in front of you to obscure your gestures - you point at the scorched wreckage on the floor, and let your spell go.
"-waste time talking, priest!" the leader of the smoldering squad snaps. "The scum must be purged! Vengeance must be taken! JUSTICE-"
"What's happening to the standard!?" the bannerwoman exclaims suddenly.
At that, the leader - a centurion, maybe? - halts his tirade and whirls around to stare up at the banner that had been behind him. He's joined in this by the rest of his unit, some of whose ruined and phantom faces reveal expressions of confused alarm as the greenish fires wreathing their emblem diminish, dim, and finally go out.
And as those spiritual flames weaken, the physical form of the original standard reassembles itself - at least in part. The metallic emblem at the head of the banner that partly melted from the heat of the long-ago Fireball remains warped, and even as soot falls away from threads of age-old fabric that are re-weaving themselves and regaining their original color, you can see black-edged holes and scorch marks that simply aren't fixable with this kind of magic. You'd probably need to cast the Spell of Fabrication, with enough spare material of the proper kinds on hand, to get everything straightened out and filled in again.
For all of that, though, the standard is entirely recognizable, and even legible.
While the loyalists are still staring at their "copy" of the banner, Cato glances down at the actual standard, and then casts a quick look over his shoulder at you. Before you can do more than register the exasperated expression, the priest walks over to the banner and drops to one knee to retrieve it from the ash and dust still spread about it.
The burning loyalists IMMEDIATELY wheel about to face the priest, ghostflames burning higher and more intensely for a moment, faces locked into a sudden rage - but when they see the priest of Mars raising their old banner high once again, the undead soldiers freeze.
"Standard-bearer," Cato says firmly, "come forward."
There is a brief pause before the line parts, allowing the bannerwoman to advance. She halts two paces in front of Cato, her memory of the standard held straight at her side, but her attention is solely for the tattered colors the priest holds beside him.
Cato extends one arm, holding the standard forth. "Do NOT let it fall again."
"...never, sir," the woman whispers, as she takes the banner in hand.
There is a flash of green - and gold? - as the two standards flow together as one, spirit and shell uniting to create the same kind of "possessed body" effect that most of the corporeal undead display.
Cato allows the loyalists a minute to come to terms with what they are seeing, and then says, "Now, tell me, are you howling barbarians, or are you soldiers of Memoria? Will you run about like a pack of rabid dogs, or WILL YOU DO YOUR DUTY?"
The fiery ghosts stare at the priest, and at their standard.
Then the bannerwoman slams the butt of the pole against the floor. "Form up!"
"You heard her!" the commander snaps. "FORM UP!"
And like that, you have added another eleven undead legionaries to your ranks. All of them STILL on fire.
If there's something one of the three most important ghosts on your side wants to discuss, you feel like you should definitely talk about it, and sooner rather than later.
"Sorry if I was stepping on your toes, there," you begin.
"It's not that, young magus," the priest says. Then he stops, shakes his head, and admits, "Or rather, it's not ONLY that. Though even if I'd thought to try repairing their unit standard, I'm not sure if I would have been able to manage a restoration on that scale."
Oh?
"I was always better at the inspirational and martial portions of my duties than the more... creative ones," Cato reflects. "Not that I got much practice with the latter after I concluded my novitiate. Also, for all that standards are the symbols of the legion, detailed repair work isn't really one of Father Mars's domains."
Ah. "More Vulcan's territory?" you venture.
"For the metalwork, yes, and the fire damage in general, though repairing the banners proper would have fallen under Lady Minerva's aegis." The priest shakes his head again. "But getting back on topic, my MAIN issue with your latest bit of spellcasting was that it could have very easily started a fight with our incendiary brethren."
You DID see them casting some very angry looks in your general direction when they realized that something was disturbing their emblem. You think that the distance you kept from the banner saved you there, buying at least a few seconds where the burning souls weren't SURE who or what was messing with the device, and increasing the chances of them noticing that it had been fixed instead of violated further. If you'd actually been TOUCHING the standard, as the common Spell to Make Whole requires, things might well have gone... badly.
"And that was WITH me doing my best to keep them calm and rational," Cato adds. "We were lucky that none of them grew angry enough to ignore Father Mars's influence: if I'd lost even one, several more would undoubtedly have followed; and if one of those was the bannerwoman..."
"...the whole unit would have followed her," you conclude, nodding. "Dodged an arrow, then?"
"We did, and I would have appreciated being warned of the possibility beforehand, though I can certainly see why you didn't do it." He glances at the centurion. "THAT one was on the verge of running wild as it was..."
Tense situation all around, then. But you got through it in one piece, and even made some new friends in the process, so you can put it behind you without worry...
...although, going ahead, maybe you should avoid messing with the mortal remains of any other ghosts you run into? At least without warning your allies first?
With that sorted, you let Hornfels and the rest of your escorts know they can move up, preparing to move on to the room with the decapitated, but not actually headless soldier.
The sight of the big elemental and the rather smaller but still unnaturally large insects moving into the room prompts your newest batch of recruits to inquire what exactly is going on, and when Cato informs them of your original plan to secure the next room - including a description of the officer who got his head half-crushed and ripped off - the unit collectively ask to be given responsibility for supporting you instead.
"No offense meant to you, warrior," the leader says to Hornfels, "but this was our base, and that sounds very much like one of our brothers in arms."
The elemental nods. / I understand. /
"Actually," you say, mid-explanation, "can we just test something?"
"What sort of 'something'?" Cato asks cautiously.
You sort-of squint at him as you try to project your thoughts. / I just want to see if we can communicate telepathically. /
...
"Why are you looking at me like that?" the priest inquires.
"...you didn't hear anything just now?"
"Should I have?"
Apparently not. The question is whether that's on you, for having only rudimentary psychic abilities, or if it's on Cato, for being a ghost.
It was worth a shot.
You've been having a pretty good run of luck with your ongoing recruitment of the Memorian loyalists, and you'd like to keep that going, if you can. With that in mind, it makes sense to have this unit act as your escorts in the next chamber on several counts.
For one thing, a group of undead are just less likely to set off another undead by entering its territory than a holy warrior would be.
/ True enough, / the elemental concurs.
On another point, the most powerful of the undead in the next room seems to be a loyalist, which suggests that seeing a bunch of fellow Memorians marching under one of their banners - even a battered one - would go over a lot better with him. Between that, your Warmage's Robe, and the Standard that Shadow Alex is carrying (as well as his own Robe), you think you can probably get a pass for being alive when the rest of the unit aren't.
Mind Blank isn't an entirely perfect defense, there. While it'll shut down the supernatural awareness of life-energy found in many forms of undead, it won't prevent the fallen legionaries from noticing that you have a solid, completely intact body which doesn't happen to be wreathed by ghostflame, unlike the rest of the group. And if you get close enough for them to notice that you're still breathing, to smell you, or to hear your heart beating... well, they'll notice.
And finally, you just honestly get where the Memorians are coming from, in wanting to redeem themselves for their failure to defend the base.
With that settled, you and your Shadow move into position among the eleven-strong burning ghosts-
"Fix your grip, boy," the bannerwoman advises your Shadow in a low tone.
Shadow Alex blinks and then adjusts his hold on the shaft of the Standard while shifting his footing, trying to more closely emulate the dead woman's stance. "Like this?"
"Better."
-while the fairies hover overhead.
"You think we should stay here?" Briar asks her Shadow.
"I mean, the dead guy DID kind of go crazy when he spotted me," the faux fairy replies. "Might be better to avoid a repeat."
"On the other hand, we'd be letting these two out of our sight."
"There is that."
Your new escorts begin to move, roughly two-third of the unit passing through the door by twos before the two banner-bearers follow - the lady legionary hissing another quick correction at your Shadow in the process - after which you move through.
A moment later, you feel a Hyrulean-style headache start to come on.
The room you enter has a very peculiar layout, where the floor is broken up into five-foot square sections, each of which has a different elevation from its immediate neighbors. The one you're standing on is level with the corridor you just left, but the areas to your left and right are a couple of feet higher, while the space directly ahead is a couple of feet lower - far enough in either direction to force most human-sized individuals to clamber up or hop down, breaking up an advance and making positioning a force of more than four or five men annoying.
At the far side of the room is a wide, elevated platform five feet off the ground, undoubtedly meant to give the troops stationed there plenty of room to see and rain arrows, spells, or other sources of injury down on trespassers. That's where the "beheaded" undead is located-
!
-and you wince, raising one hand to your own throat at the sight of what ISN'T left of that poor bastard's.
It's kind of impossible to miss, given the way he's staring down at your party, eyes blazing almost as brightly as their auras of spectral flame. The crushed helmet is aimed your way, but isn't looking DIRECTLY at you; the two standards have definitely caught this guy's attention. You also see the other two undead Shadow Briar reported, both of them up there alongside the commander. You can sense a modest amount of magic from the one on the left, while the one on the right feels... odd. Not corrupted, but like he wasn't entirely human even before he died.
Regardless, your target is distracted, and you have a clear line of sight to him, but you're also a good thirty feet away.
You would like to have the fairies along and in position to provide warning before you or any of your current escorts walk - or float - into an active trap.
"Alright, that's fair," Briar replies. "But I reserve the right to run for it if the latest dead guy tries to zap me out of the air or something."
"In the event of the same," Shadow Briar adds, "I reserve the right to use you big people as cover."
There is a pause.
"...room for one more?" your partner asks.
"Sure, they're all pretty big."
"Some of us even have shields," one of the legionaries adds dryly.
"Also a plus!"
When you tried channeling your Power earlier, you were a fair bit closer to your intended target than you currently are to the mostly-neckless commander. Considering that this unfortunate undead is quite a bit stronger than the last guy you tried to use this technique against, and that you mean to try emulating negative energy this time around rather than the positive form, you think it'd be a good idea for you to get closer first.
"Alright, folks," you say quietly to your allies, "I need to get closer to the leader, and I've been told there are some traps in this room - some active, others damaged."
"Oh, lovely," one of the soldiers groans.
"I am suddenly very glad that I'm a ghost," another says.
Three of the corporeal troopers cast THAT speaker annoyed glances, while the last looks down at the floor under his feet with decided wariness.
"The good news is, both of the fairies have been given enchantments to help them detect traps. So, ladies, if you would care to show us the way...?"
"Right," the two Briars say in unison.
"So," your partner adds, "everyone who can levitate, do so."
"Everybody else," her Shadow continues, "listen to us carefully before you move."
The best news is, the seven ghosts and two fairies that account for over half your current group are able to ignore most of the traps-
"Careful not to fly too high," one of the fairies notes. "There are detection spells emanating from spots along the ceiling and upper walls, and I'm not sure what would happen if you tripped them."
Blinking, you glance farther up than you'd thought to look before - and yes, there are the auras. Simple Divination Magic, different auras covering most of the upper part of the high-ceilinged chamber with the equivalent of a modern grid of motion sensors or laser detectors. As the Briar said, you can't discern what those mystical tripwires are connected to, at least not with your passive senses, and you think actively probing them would not be a good idea.
-freeing up a lot more space for those of you that are currently earthbound.
The good news is that you and your Shadow have no real issue navigating the two-foot rises and drops that fill the chamber. You also don't set off any of the traps the fairies point out, and in fact, by leaning on what your partner and her Dark Self say, you're able to pick out the trigger mechanisms and other "surface-level" components for several of the devices.
Gained Trap Sense E (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
The neutral news is that, while the four corporeal undead are able to hop down between platforms easily enough, they have a harder time hauling themselves up when it's needed. They can DO it, but a thousand years of death has left them a bit stiff, and they don't have the multi-layered enhancements that you and your Shadow are currently sporting.
Finally, there's the bad news, which is that the three undead watching from the far end of the room don't simply sit there and wait for you to close the distance.
The half-equipped legionary with the magical aura begins firing pale rays of positive energy at your non-living allies, a classic Spell to Disrupt Undead. As a mere cantrip, it's not very powerful, and would need multiple hits to down any one of these soldiers, but it's also able to be fired off pretty much without limit, unless or until someone closes with the caster or he's forced to exhaust his reserves by other means.
The commander has moved to cover the caster, short sword still sheathed at his side, and a spear held at the ready to intercept any would-be charges.
As for the third ghost, with the unusual aura-
!
-there is a deep snarl as his ethereal form swells up, gathering the memory of muscles and phantasmal fur from out of nowhere, until another wolf-headed humanoid stands before you. This isn't one of the corrupted cultists, either: the body is strong but symmetrical, all limbs reasonably sized relative to the torso, the head, and to each other; the head bears exactly two eyes, in their proper places, which gleam with a yellow light similar to the hue of some natural wolves' eyes; and while the abrupt appearance of a half-human, half-apex predator monster-turned-undead does give you a sudden chill, it's entirely lacking in the instinctive revulsion that the demon-tainted creatures from before touched off.
This is the ghost of a genuine werewolf.
"How did you MISS that!" Briar demands of her Shadow.
"Give me a break! We've never SEEN a werewolf before!"
"Lupus!" you hear several of the troops exclaim. There is recognition in their voices, but also a hint of worry.
Knowing what you do about werewolves from your studies of monsters, you can understand why your escorts might be concerned. This is one of the rare monsters who, in life, would have been considered a peer to living vampires on the field of battle, thanks to his speed, resilience, and built-in weaponry - and now he's a ghost on top of that. Not only that, but there's a distinct lack of silver among the Memorians' arms.
The leader of your loyalist squad calls out, "Lupus! It's Tullus! Do you recognize me?"
His only answer is a baring of fangs, a flexing of claws, and an angry growl.
"Think he remembers that you cheat at dice, sir?" one of the men jokes weakly.
"The hell I-!"
From the look of things, you're about to have the angry ghost of a Memorian legion-trained werewolf in the middle of your allies, who aren't ideally equipped to deal with that kind of threat.
While you're still some twenty feet from your intended target, the werewolf's ghost is ready to pounce; if you're going to prevent that, you'd better act now.
Gathering your Power, you focus on the armor-clad undead leader, and attempt to reverse the polarity of your golden glow as you channel it through the back of your upraised hand.
As you release the energy, you once more take your cue from Cato's earlier performance, declaring, "Son of Memoria! Hear me!"
Your hand tingles as the golden light radiates across the room, this manifestation of your Power seeming a darker shade than usual, unless that's your imagination.
It's not.
Regardless, you see several of your undead allies shifting just enough to glance at you, clearly having sensed the divine aspect of your Power even if it wasn't aimed at them.
The trio upon the catwalk, meanwhile, all turn their heads SHARPLY in your direction, and for a moment you're worried that you're going to have an angry werewolf and spellfire coming at YOU instead of your allies - which you're honestly a lot better prepared to deal with, but would still be a bit worrying.
But then, the leader speaks, "I hear you, boy."
Success, maybe? You don't FEEL like you suddenly have a mystical bond of control over the undead soldier with only shattered remnants of a neck and a half-crushed head, and he doesn't seem to feel any particular deference to you-
"And I would like to hear an explanation for why CHILDREN not yet old enough to take the oath of service wear the robes of legion Magi, and carry the colors of an auxiliary unit that does not exist! And are you responsible for letting these fairies into the base?"
-check that; he DEFINITELY doesn't feel any deference to you, but you have at least gotten him speaking. And while his two cohorts are still very much on their guard, the werewolf hasn't leapt down to start committing great violence on your party, and the magic-user has even halted taking potshots at them.
Partial success, then?
Gained Channel Power E
Gained King of Spirits C
Gained Power Aura E (Plus) (Plus)
"There is a story there, sir," you admit. "Would you prefer to hear it from me, or would you rather speak with one of the officers who chose to grant me that commission?"
The soldier's glowing gaze regards you for a moment. "You imply you can call upon these officers?" he asks suspiciously.
"Three of them accompanied me to the base, sir."
You're not entirely sure where Cato and Hermanus fall in the military hierarchy, or even if they're proper officers at all as opposed to specialists who are afforded a lot of respect due to the value of their particular roles, but the priest and the magus definitely have some level of authority over the rank-and-file legionaries, so the title works.
"Did they, now? In that case, I believe I would speak with one of them - but only one."
Probably best to get the captain out here, then. He's known you the longest of the three - if only by a matter of half an hour at best, compared to the Magus - fought alongside you for a good part of that, and is still the commanding officer of the Faerie Outpost that is the counterpart to this base.
Mindful that casting a spell might make it look like you were compelling Marcus, you ask Briar to zip back to let him know he's needed.
Your partner shifts as if glancing over her shoulder at the three unhappy undead in the room, clearly weighing the risks of leaving you "unattended" with them, but then nods.
"I'll be quick," she replies before zipping off, the words meant half as assurance, and half as a warning to stay out of trouble in her absence.
There is a short pause after your partner has left.
"Kin?" the werewolf suddenly growls.
You look up. "What was that?"
"Is the fairy your kin?" the lupine-headed soldier clarifies through a forest of phantom fangs. "Your scents are faintly similar."
The confirmation that the major predator in the room can smell you that clearly, even from twenty-plus feet away, in dead air and with walking corpses all about, is not exactly comforting.
Every Memorian in your field of vision seems at least mildly interested in your answer.
"We're not related, no," you reply honestly. "If our scents are similar, it's probably because we made our bond as master and familiar stronger than is typical."
The werewolf then glances at the Shadows, furred brow furrowing.
Before he can comment on whatever the two Dark Selves smell like relative to you and Briar, your partner returns, Marcus marching along on the double behind her. The moment he catches sight of the mauled armor-clad loyalist, his gaze remains locked on the other dead man - who a quick glance over your shoulder confirms is returning the favor - although he does heed Briar's murmured guidance to avoid the traps.
The other loyalists make way, and Marcus pass through their line, coming to a halt between them and the other officer, staring up at the catwalk in silence.
"I am Gaius Falvius, Third Centurion of the Sixth Cohort of the Ninth Memorian Legion," the soldier above states. "Identify yourself."
A centurion, huh? Shouldn't he have a fancy crest on his helmet, or did that get rent off by what killed him? Or maybe Memoria had different designs?
Leaving that aside, there is a certain caution in the dead officer's voice that was not there a minute ago.
"I am Marcus Valerius Faustus, Captain of the Second Cohort of the Fifth Memorian Legion and current commanding officer of our outpost in Faerie," your ally states. "Explain yourself, Centurion. Why do you and your men bar the advance of loyal soldiers and allies of Memoria?"
"Doubt, Captain," the centurion replies, not without respect. "Specifically, doubt as to how two children came to be wearing the robes of legion magi, and carrying the banner of an auxiliary unit of your command that did not exist at last report."
"'Last report' was a thousand years ago, Centurion," Marcus points out quietly.
That gets a flinch from the loyalists in the room - all of them. They'd awoken enough to know that they were dead and undead, and to intuit from the state of their bodies and the base around them that their fall had taken place far in the past, but they'd not known just HOW long ago it had actually been.
Despite that unpleasant revelation, Centurion Gaius finds his voice. "...even so, sir. This command fell to treachery once already; I cannot, and will not, take the risk of such occurring again."
"As you should not," Marcus agrees. "Very well, then. How do you propose that we prove our trustworthiness?"
"First, sir, I would hear your account of how these boys came to carry those colors."
"Ah. Fair warning, Centurion, parts of this story are going to sound insane."
"Hey," you protest.
"I'm fairly sure we're half-mad as it stands, Captain."
"Even by that metric, the young sorcerer is ridiculous."
"Hey!"
Is there some part of the tale of your association and alliance with the Fifth Legion that you would rather Marcus NOT speak of?
"Before you begin," the centurion says then, "I would also like for Julius, here, to examine you for magical methods of control, or other... unpleasantness."
Marcus eyes the unarmored soul for a moment. "You do not have the look of a legion magus, soldier."
"No, sir," the soldier replies. "My mother was a sorceress, and I inherited a bit of her talent."
"And there's no teaching sorcerers," Marcus concludes.
"Not to legion standards, sir," is the agreement. "Still, I managed to develop a few useful tricks."
Judging from his aura, he could probably manage a third-circle spell, so you would say that "useful" is a fair assessment - though it would depend on which powers came to the man naturally, and which ones he managed to learn on his own time. Not all sorcerous traditions are equal, after all.
Marcus accepts the request, and once Julius has a Spell to Detect Magic going, the Captain begins his account of your exploits with your first meeting, where you woke him from his long state of torpor, informed him of the state of his command, and encouraged him to start addressing the situation. From there, he describes the "energetic" reunion with Hermanus-
"Your wife's brother?" the centurion interrupts. He sounds mildly disapproving.
"I needed someone competent and trustworthy to serve as my chief Magus," Marcus replies. "Much as he STILL annoys me at times, I knew Hermanus fit the bill, and he agreed that the Outpost needed more support than it was getting. We both traded some favors to get him reassigned."
-and from there, the assembly of the remaining troops.
There is a heavy, pained sigh from the loyalists on both sides of the room when they hear how many of Marcus's men responded to his call to arms - and by extension, how many didn't. You can understand their reaction, at least a little, as you did some reading on Roman military organization after that adventure.
As a cohort leader, Marcus would nominally have been in command of nearly five hundred men. You picked up enough clues back then to infer that the detachment of the Fifth Legion assigned to the Faerie Outpost was probably not at full strength, but even if they had only half their numbers before the cultists struck, less than sixty souls responded to Marcus's call to arms - well short of even a single century's worth of combatants, when there should have been six to nine times as many, depending on how you counted them.
The only saving grace there is that, few as they were, those soldiers were enough to do the job of retaking the base from demon-tainted traitors, rogue security automatons, and Hyrulean monsters.
Incidentally, Marcus glosses over most of that battle, since you weren't there for it, being rather busy trying to retrieve the Mirror of Shadows and not get murdered to death by the Curse-driven Dark Link. But the Captain does cover what he was told of your return from the depths and late assistance in the battle, and how that led to him asking you if you were a demigod.
Which was not the first time someone inquired about your divinity, or lack thereof, on that particular day, but you don't mention that, and Marcus doesn't bring it up, either.
He then describes your return visit, in the company of a Great Fairy-
"What." Centurion Falvius exclaims.
-a band of "foreign priests", and their gods-
"WHAT?"
-which naturally segues into Cato's return from beyond at Mars's behest, as well as the war god's intention to call the legionaries home, and your agreement to assist with that by finding the base you all now occupy, and calling Marcus and his fellows to either assist in the recovery of the facility, or to let them know you'd already cleared it out.
There is a dead silence after that pronouncement.
"If... if that is all," the centurion says, voice only slightly shaky.
"Not quite all," Marcus says.
And then he talks about your birthday party.
The summoning of his men, in shifts, to an island paradise.
The music.
The gifts.
The food.
The hunt.
The battles.
And of course, the drink.
"...and now I want to stab you just on general principle," Gaius mutters.
There is a mutter of general agreement among the loyalists - again, on both sides of the room.
Marcus grins. "I will not bleed wine for you."
"Bastard."
The muttering intensifies.
"That's 'bastard sir', Centurion."
"Yes sir, bastard sir." The neckless soldier turns to you for a moment, glowing gaze intent, and then his skull rotates to face his magic-wielding junior. "Well, Julius?"
"Neither the Captain nor any of our compatriots are under the effects of spells meant to bind or control the undead, Centurion," the magic-user reports. "At least, none that I can discern. You, Lupus, and I are also clear, although I did pick up traces of elevated necrotic energy on your person, vaguely akin to how a priest might attempt to compel one of the undead by calling on his god. As for the boys and the fairies... I couldn't get anything from them at all."
"Warded?"
"More effectively and unobtrusively than anyone or anything I've ever encountered, sir, but yes."
The centurion frowns. "I'm not familiar with that magic. Julius? ...what the-?
Julius is just staring at you, dumbfounded.
"Wake up, soldier!"
"Ah! Sir! Sorry, sir! I was... suddenly very preoccupied."
"I noticed," is his officer's dry response. "So, what is 'Mind Blank', and why is it so distracting?"
"It is... sir, just to be clear, you ARE aware that popular magical theory tends to sort mortal magic into ten tiers of increasing power, correct?"
"Starting at zero and moving up to nine," Gaius says semi-patiently. "I admit I never quite understood why they count it like that, though."
"The way I was taught, sir, it has to do with energy consumption, and ease of use," Julius informs his superior. "Null-circle magical effects are simple enough that they don't usually tire the caster, unless he's already severely depleted his magical reserves, and they're simple enough that they don't need formal training to use: magically talented children accidentally use them all the time, sometimes without even realizing it; and plenty of adults we wouldn't normally consider 'gifted' can learn and use a few cantrips, if they work at it."
"Alright," the centurion says slowly. "And I assume first-circle spells would be where magic starts to become tiring and require training, then?"
"Yes, sir," Julius agrees. "Magical effects of the first tier are the considered first true 'spells' as a result, and each subsequent tier of spells needs more power and more practice to gain access to."
"I'm following you."
"Well, for reference, sir, I'm able to cast spells of the third tier, if I make an effort. A typical legion Magus will have reliable access to the third tier, most reach the fourth circle in the course of their service, the very best may achieve the sixth - but usually only after decades of service."
"Still following you," the centurion tells him.
"Sir, the Spell of Mind Blank is of the EIGHTH circle."
...
Gaius looks from his ally, to you, and then back again. "You just lost me, legionary."
"And that's why I was distracted, sir," Julius sighs.
Your initial impulse to extend a VERY early mass invitation to your next birthday is almost immediately shot down by your good sense, as it's entirely unrelated to the current situation, and more than a little inappropriate besides - at least at this juncture.
You don't want to offend the local loyalists by making it seem like you're offering them a bribe to let you get access to their command center.
By the same token, offering to provide a phantasmal feast when your work here is finished could be taken the wrong way - at least if you made the offer to the LOCALS.
While Gaius and Julius are discussing the basic grading of magical effects and where your abilities fall by that metric, you turn to Marcus.
"A word, Captain?" you ask quietly.
"Hm?"
"Do you think it would be inappropriate of me to offer these men and the rest of their cohort a feast to break their thousand-year forced fast? After our work here is done, I mean," you quickly clarify.
"...so long as you did not make the offer until after the base was secured, I would not think so," Marcus answers slowly. "What sort of feast did you have in mind?"
"I see. And would my men be invited?"
You certainly aren't opposed to the idea of adding Marcus's men to the feast, but whether or not you actually DO will depend on what your magic reserves look like by the end of this venture, how many loyalists you end up finding, and/or whether or not the base's Gate to Faerie is functional.
It's one thing to conjure up a magnificent meal for a couple dozen souls, quite another to feed a hundred-plus mouths, and something else entirely if you have to provide transport for half or more of the party on top of that.
Marcus nods. "I'll stay hopeful, then."
"Right," Centurion Gaius finally says, as he turns back to you. "So in short, you're ridiculously powerful - doubly so, considering your age - such that it should be a simple matter for you to be controlling the captain or any of my people, yet you AREN'T apparently doing so, which tends to support your claim of being allied with the Fifth Legion."
"We also have Priest Cato hanging back for the moment," you add, "as well as Magus Hermanus commanding a different group off in... that general direction." You gesture at the left-hand wall, which doesn't have a door in it. You aren't quite sure where Hermanus's team proceeded after dealing with that wolf-bat-man-thing, save that they didn't follow you; they might be in the room beyond that wall, or they could have been forced to detour around it.
"Wait, the priest is here?" Gaius says quickly. "And you didn't bring him forward to speak?"
"I wasn't sure if he really counted as an officer or not, and Captain Marcus seemed to outrank him either way, so..."
"...point."
"For the record," Marcus chimes in, "senior priests and magi are treated as holding officers' rank in the legions, just not COMMAND rank."
Ah. The idea being to ensure that they could give orders in situations where their respective expertise applied, but otherwise were prevented from making a hash of things they didn't have the training and experience for?
"Less 'prevented' and more 'limited in the total harm they could do'," Gaius mutters. "I could name a few prize idiots in either set of robes..."
"As could I," Marcus commiserates. "Hermanus's predecessor as my unit's chief Magus among them."
"Brilliant moron or bastard genius, sir?"
"More like a bit of both, with a big family name and no shame about throwing it around."
Several of the assembled legionaries join their commanders in groaning at that, clearly familiar with the sort of individuals in question.
Regardless, with Gaius's agreement, one of the Memorian soldiers goes and fetches Cato, who quickly finishes convincing the already halfway-pacified loyalist trio to stand down and let you pass.
Before you proceed, do you have any questions you'd like to pose to Centurion Gaius, not-Magus Julius, or Lupus the Werewolf Legionary?
And would you like someone to scout ahead, or do you feel comfortable in having the party advance en masse? Gaius's small group can't really comment on the condition of most of the rooms beyond this one, having been stuck in the limbo of unconscious undeath for the last millennium like the rest of the loyalists, though a quick glance down the doorway behind them DOES give you some idea of the state of the next room - which appears to be empty, at least from what they can see without actually entering.
"On it!" the false fairy declares, snapping a mid-air salute before she zips into the next room.
There is a pause, during which Briar's Dark Self hovers in the middle of the room, looking around.
Then she turns in your direction and calls, "This one's clear!" before heading off to the right.
You trade glances with the three officer-ranked Memorians in the room. "Move up?"
"Move up," Marcus agrees.
"Form ranks, and advance!" Gaius barks at his fellow undead.
The legionaries swiftly and obediently fall into line, flame-wreathed souls alongside phantom wolf-man and fairly ordinary looking magic-user, and then start passing through the door by twos.
As they're doing that, Briar mentions that she thinks Hornfels would probably prefer to resume bodyguarding you, now that the "experiment" with channeling Power is over. You don't really disagree with that assessment, and your fairy partner is shortly buzzing back the way you came to let the elemental paladin-
"He's a WHAT, now?" Gaius asks in surprise.
-know it's fine for him to get back to keeping you "un-shattered," as he might put it. And also to pass on to the rest of your small but growing army that the advance has resumed.
While the continuing deployment is being sorted out, you ask the centurion if he can remember anything about the fates of his fellow officers, especially the leaders of the two units that were present in the base at the time of its fall.
"You're thinking one of the captains was a traitor," he concludes. It's not a question.
"We couldn't rule out the possibility before this," you admit. "Even in the best case scenario, at least one of them was ignorant of the cultists' presence in their unit, whereas the worst outcome had BOTH of them aware and actively supporting it... though the more I see of this place, the less likely I think THAT is."
"Events do appear to have ended fairly disastrously for both sides, don't they?" Cato agrees.
From what Gaius has to say, there appear to have been traitor elements in both cohorts, but the bulk of them - or at least the ones he saw - were from the unit that was rotating in, which was the Third Cohort of the Fifteenth Legion. At least two of their centurions were definitely cultists-
"I saw one of the bastards turn into one of those sick, sorry excuses for werewolves," Gaius explains. "The other one was fighting alongside a pair of the things without batting an eye."
-and he can confirm that two of his peers in the Ninth weren't, mainly on account of one having been found murdered in his bed, while the other went down fighting just a few rooms away. As to the captains' fates, he can't say.
On the subject of the traitors, when you ask if they had some sort of mark to identify them to their co-conspirators, Gaius confirms that most of the cultists wore simple pieces of cloth bearing the emblem of a red wolf's head somewhere on their persons.
"Most of them wore the things around their heads or upper arms, though I did see a few masks and sashes," the centurion clarifies. "We also spotted matching tattoos on some of the bodies, even a couple of brands, though usually only after they were dead."
It would be kind of hard to spot something like that when the person wearing it was trying to kill you, wouldn't it? At least if they were fully dressed and geared up for war, or covered in a coat of fur.
Gaius is also able to give you some information about the state of the rooms ahead, but you take it with a grain of salt, seeing as how the man died not too long after last seeing those chambers, and possibly not before the fighting was finished - to say nothing of what changes the passage of time may have wrought.
Still, unless part of the ceiling has caved in over the last millennium or there's a giant undead monster along the way, you should have a clear, albeit slightly twisted path to the control room.
You and your allies proceed deeper into this peculiar section of the Memorian Base, different "sections" of the expanded force leapfrogging one another as you move from room to room. Shadow Briar repeats her earlier performance of scouting a few rooms ahead and then falling back to report, and the first time she does, you catch her up on Centurion Gaius's account of what the route to the control room looked like when last he saw it.
Between the dead man's ancient intel, the fake fairy's more current reports, and the sheer number of troops you have to work with at this point - to say nothing about how fired up your undead allies are about retaking their post, redeeming themselves for their failure, and taking revenge on the traitors responsible for it all - the remainder of the trek through the maze-like area proves brief. There are a few short pauses as other undead cross your path, or vice-versa, but none of the groups so encountered are large enough (whether individually or in numbers) to pose a real delay to your force, much less a threat.
You pick up another half-dozen loyalists in various stages of decay and undeath, while twice that number of cultists are cut to ectoplasmic pieces by angry ghosts.
A couple more of the demonic wolf-things show their ugly muzzles as well, but the sight of them seems to absolutely enrage the ACTUAL werewolf on the scene. You weren't in position to see it, but from Shadow Briar's account, Legionary Lupus leapt clear over the three lines of men that had been in front of him at the time, hit his target with the force of a runaway Goron - one with rather more sharp and pointy bits than is typical of the burly rock-eaters - and had completely shredded it in a matter of seconds.
Your partner's Dark Self also notes that the rest of the Memorians didn't even bat an eye at their ally breaking ranks like that; they just filled the hole, lowered their spears, and focused on keeping the other slobbering abomination in the room pinned down until Lupus had finished with the first.
When you ask Marcus about it, he confirms that Memorian legion doctrine made certain allowances for werewolves and some other monsters of exceptional physical prowess, leveraging their instincts and abilities to benefit the legion as a whole as much as possible.
"A werewolf pack can do almost as much damage to an infantry formation as a cavalry charge," the captain says, "and they aren't particularly inconvenienced by uneven terrain, thick forests, or narrow streets. Granted, werewolves are rare enough that most cohorts never had a full pack, but you can be sure that any unit with a werewolf in the ranks knew how to make best use of his skills."
"And also to give him space on a full moon," Cato notes.
"How DOES the full moon affect a true werewolf?" you wonder then. "I'm more familiar with the cursed variety, and then only through stories."
"My understanding is that the full moon's light actually has very similar effects on both types of werewolf," the priest informs you. "Heightened emotions and an increased urge to assume their true form are basically universal, while some bloodlines had other abilities - the true weres, for instance, grew stronger and faster as the moon waxed. The difference in how the two kinds act beyond that is down to the difference in their natures."
A cursed werewolf is exactly that - cursed, mystically compelled to suffer and to spread suffering via their affliction. Even at the best of times, their transformations are unnatural, frightening, painful, and damaging to both body and mind, and the moon's light only makes it all worse. The strongest of the afflicted lycanthropes can endure the suffering and learn to control their curse, but many others literally go insane when the full moon touches them, and too many of those never truly come back to themselves. And then there are the ones that were insane or simply evil to begin with...
Monstrous werewolves are another matter. Transforming from human to wolf and back again is a perfectly normal part of their biology, no more painful than a good physical workout would be for a human, and often quite enjoyable for the benefits it brings. This isn't to say that monster werewolves CAN'T go mad under the full moon like their cursed counterparts do, but there's usually some other contributing factor when that happens.
Before you can comment or inquire further on the topic, there is an explosion from the room ahead of you - a particular low whoosh and subsequent burst of light, heat, and sound that any arcanist worth the name would recognize.
This is followed by a howl of absolute FURY from the burning legionaries.
A moment later, Shadow Briar comes flying back into the room you're in, coughing and leaving a trail of smoke behind her.
"Fireball?" your Shadow questions his partner.
"Fireball," she croaks in confirmation. "Came out of the control room aimed to take out as much of the squad as possible."
"Sounds like it only made them angry," Shadow replies.
"Most of them, anyway," you add, seeing a couple scorched souls fall back through the walls. These aren't the burning undead who died to fire once before, but some of the more normal dead men you picked up along the way, and Goddesses above, does it say something about your life that that sentence actually makes SENSE.
In any case, it would appear that either the dead wizard in the command room that you'd previously pegged for a traitor has revived, or else the one that looked like he might have been a murdered loyalist is active and thinks YOUR guys are traitors - or maybe he's just turned hostile to every living or undead creature that isn't himself or inextricably bound to his will. That happens a lot. Regardless, you have a capable magic-user in a reasonably fortified position, which is filled by potentially valuable magical devices you'd really like to secure in as close to good working order as possible. Said wizard also has armed support, judging from the sounds of battle coming to you through the door. There weren't that many traitors or confused loyalists in the room, but with the right weapons, a few of them just inside the doorway could hold off a larger number of undead soldiers for quite some time.
As the spiritually-singed ghosts fall back-
"Medic," one of them croaks.
"I hate Fireballs," another groans.
"Arrrrgh," Lupus agrees, looking like half his phantasmal fur was burnt off. Most of his front is blackened and bare, with the damage spreading along the flanks towards his back; you think the ghost werewolf may have taken a direct hit from that Fireball, or at least as close to it as an area-affecting spell can usually manage.
-you rush ahead-
"Alex, wait!" Briar calls.
"Lad, don't-" Marcus adds.
/ I'm on him, / Hornfels rumbles, even as the sound of a walking landslide picks up again.
-with a plan already in mind.
As soon as you exit the short corridor between chambers, you see that you'll have to make some adjustments to your plan. The doorway to the base's command center included an ACTUAL door, once upon a time, but all that's left of it now is a shattered and rotted wooden panel hanging off the left side of the arch, and a pile of dust, ash, and fresh embers on the floor.
Even with the door gone, the passage itself is blocked by the advance of your flame-wreathed Memorian allies, who are forming up in two rows, six bodies abreast and with a few more clustered together in the back, lowering their age-bitten and flame-warped spears against the four similarly decrepit weapons that are projecting out of the doorway, held by several of the armored undead you knew were in the control room. Behind that small defensive formation, you can see the robed spellcaster, whose aura is just recovering from casting that Fireball Spell - and now that you're viewing the man firsthand and without any interference from the base's wards, you can see bears the clear marks of demonic taint on him, as well as his allies. From the look of things, most of them are nearly as twisted as that one cultist who turned himself into that slimy ghost-absorbing wolf-thing. The wizard and one of the regular soldiers are even more tainted than that.
The sight answers one question, anyway.
"Push! Them! Back!" Centurion Gaius commands.
There is a wordless roar of bloodthirsty obedience from the assembled loyalists, with the spirit-flames of those that died to fire long ago flaring brightly in their eagerness to close with another hostile Fire Elementalist and make their opinion of that sort of magic known.
A part of you wonders why they aren't just trying to go through the walls, but you CAN sense an aura of Abjuration Magic around the control room - not clearly enough to tell what it does, not in these bare seconds of casual notice, but that it's there at all suggests the ghosts might have the right idea about taking the door.
Focusing your Power, you reach out to the robed figure in the back of the enemy lines: "ON YOUR KNEES, TRAITOR!"
The undead spellcaster flinches backwards in a display of clear shock that is echoed by his allies, and most of your own besides. You can actually FEEL the legion magus's alarm through the hazy tendril of dark gold energy that links the two of you - for all of a moment, before his eyes and warped aura flare, and his undead soul slips through your Power's grasp.
In passing, you make a mental note that just pouring MORE POWER into these attempts to cow or crush the undead with your semi-divine presence isn't working nearly as well as you'd like.
Gained Channel Power E (Plus)
"Godless cur!" the traitor hisses-
Excuse you?
-even as his aura shifts and his hands move through the gestures of a new spell. From what you can see and sense, it doesn't look like another Fireball, but it's definitely Fire Elementalism - the Spell of the Scorching Ray, if you're reading him correctly.
It's a shame that your mana is still cycling from the generation of Power just now, as you think you might have been able to get off a counterspell otherwise, maybe even blast his Rays down with a few of your own - and THEN some.
That aside, the knot of corporeal undead around the door is too thick for you to navigate through, Body Flicker or no, without knocking someone over or running straight through a ghost - either of which would be tactically ill-advised, and get your allies annoyed at you besides.
But while spells won't be an option for a couple more seconds, your ki is ready to go, and you have your Blessed Blade at hand besides. You don't think there's quite enough time to combine the two to reach out and touch that magus with a Sword Beam, but you have plenty of other options that could work.
Rather than call on additional powers, you decide to rely on the ones you already have in place - them, and a good sword.
Innumerable images blur past your mind's eye as the Spell of Foresight offers you glimpses of possible futures, few enough that you can make out some details-
Searing bolts of flame fly from the magus's outstretched hand at multiple angles, some bright with deadly probability, others faded for the lack of it.
Several shots fail to slip through the lines that stand between you and your foe, impacting a soldier; in other cases, the already-dead men are bracketed by literal fire, but not harmed.
The shadow of a great earth elemental comes up behind you, causing issues in a handful of timelines where you aren't paying enough attention.
-but still too many in total for you to trust the information to guide your actions.
To trim the prophetic clutter, you set your feet into a guard stance, raising the Blessed Blade before you and slightly to your right, both hands wrapped around the hilt.
Your decision to not move from this spot ripples outward, causing the array of potential futures before you to narrow sharply-
Fire flies.
A sword rises.
In one timeline, the blade miss-!
In a parallel, the angle is wro-!
In a third, the angle is corr- there is ANOTH-!
In the fourth, your phantom presence sidesteps-!
-and you correct your positioning and ready yourself accordingly.
"May the Triforce be with me," you murmur, as your opponent completes his spell.
Possibility and potentially narrow down to a single point.
Focus determines reality.
Two Searing Rays burn through the space where your undead allies stand. Some of the ghostflames blazing about the fire-slain Memorians are punched through or blown aside by the more focused fire of the traitor's spell, or by their "tailwinds" of suddenly super-heated air, and you catch sight of a flinch, a duck, and a dodge among the ranks, but there are no actual hits.
Good for them. As for you...
Guided by Foresight and with its movements and reaction speed greatly enhanced by magic and ki alike, your body moves to the left, taking you entirely out of the path of the SECOND ray of thermal doom, while your Blessed Blade comes around to parry the first-
*Woom*
*Hiss-spang!*
-which goes flying off the Hylian steel and its own multi-layered field of magic and ki at an awkward angle that goes nowhere near your allies, much less the enemies who stand beyond them. Instead, the ray is deflected up towards the ceiling, where it leaves a nasty scorch mark in the space above the top of the doorway.
Gained Dead Man's Volley E (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Ranged Defense F (Plus) (Plus)
Your relatively modest height and the number of bodies in the way make it hard to be sure, but you think you see the magus's skeletal jaw drop.
Granted, that reaction COULD be in response to Hornfels' entry, but you choose to believe it was your display of spell-deflecting swordsmanship that did it.
Now do that WITHOUT all the magic.
Is that jealousy I hear?
Jealous? Pfft. I'm not jealous.
So you're NOT going to go pester Link to train until he can do the same thing?
Using Foresight is cheating!
The second Searing Ray, meanwhile, goes hissing past you - somewhere about the level of your neck, as it happens - to smack into the equivalent of the elemental paladin's shin. There is a flash as the firebolt impacts, spending some portion of its strength against the Spell of Mage Armor you wrapped your elemental ally in, and then more against the crystal-riddled hardness of his armor. If anything got through to affect his actual body, you'd be very surprised.
/ A poor effort, corpse-caster! / Hornfels rumbles, as he rises to his full height, raising his weapon high. / Now, try mine! /
Wait, is he seriously going to-
/ IT'S HAMMER TIME! /
And with that, Hornfels the Hammerer brings his mighty arms down - in the process, letting go of the stonehammer they bear, sending it flying over the heads of the Memorian loyalists and straight at the group of traitors beyond them.
You have just enough time to glimpse expressions of dread on their dead faces-
*Cra-CRUNCH!*
-before ONE of those looks is blotted out forever as the hammer falls, blasting that unfortunate cultist's skeletal head clean off his shoulders. Hardly slowed by the mass of withered flesh and dried bone - most of which falls off the hammer's head and lands behind the staggering but still upright body - the weapon continues on its course for the magus-
"SHIELD!"
-who gets a spell off in time to try and save himself-
*Smash!*
*Tinkle*
-but whose barely-formed Shield Spell proves unequal to the task of deflecting or absorbing the force of Hornfels' flung weapon. Shards of raw force spray out from the point of impact as the cracked construct is forced out of position-
*WHAM!*
-leaving the undead arcanist to take the hit in the upper chest. Whether due to his lighter build and lack of armor or just from the pure force of the strike, the traitor is propelled backwards, tatter-cloaked arms and legs trailing out behind him.
"ADVANCE!" Gaius roars.
The Memorian loyalists utter another wordless howl as they press forward-
*Whoosh*
*Ba-SCREE-BANG!*
-some of them ducking reflexively as Hornfels' hammer comes flying back OUT of the doorway, smashing aside the half of the door that still hangs from its rusted hinges, and soaring across the length of the chamber to meet its master's waiting hand.
You stare up at your summoned ally for a moment.
"Nice shot," you tell your ally, with a nod of appreciation. "But I have to ask..."
/ Yes? /
"Does the name 'Thor' mean anything to you?"
/ Ah, the son of Jord! / Hornfels replies with a rumbling chuckle. / Yes, I admit, I took some inspiration from him and his hammer when I had mine made, if only in terms of function. I wanted a way to smash flying creatures that didn't have the stones to come down and fight me, but I didn't want to have to go looking for the weapon every time I threw it, let alone risk losing it, so... / He trails off with a tectonic shrug and a heft of his hammer.
...who's Jord? You thought Thor's mother was Frigga.
Have comic books LIED to you? Surely not.
Gained Norse Theology E
Ahead of you, the loyalists are pressing their assault. The body of the traitor legionary that Hornfels beheaded is still on its feet, still has a hold on the spear it was wielding before, and seems fit to fight. Being undead, the corpse doesn't really NEED its head or any of the other body parts vital to mortal survival in order to keep functioning; as long as the angry soul that is possessing the body remains in place, it can guide the corpse just fine.
But even if Hornfels' headshot didn't put the dead man down, it definitely distracted him, and the loyalists have seized on that momentary advantage - as well as how it reduced the number of weapons fending them off by a full quarter, if only for a few moments - in order to close the distance.
The other three cultist spearmen try to hold the line until their ally can recover, but they were outnumbered in terms of effective weapons to begin with, and the temporary loss of direction to one of those spears has only worsened their odds. The doorway isn't nearly wide enough to allow the Memorians to bring all their spears to bear as they advance, of course, but you can see the loyalist formation tightening and adjusting individual positions and stances so that they can bring the maximum number of long pointy sticks to bear in the space they have.
The practiced smoothness with which the dead man maneuver is mute testimony to the fact that the legions both considered and trained for the difficulties in taking fortified positions like this.
And then the actual ghosts in their unit take to the air, bringing their spears along with them. While the lack of stable footing means they can't get as much force behind their thrusts, the momentum of their flight does make up for some of that - though not as much as it might, if they weren't wobbling about so much, clearly not nearly so prepared to perform aerial maneuvers.
But unsteady or not, the air support increases the number of weapons the cultists have to worry about by half, and that plus the angle of attack finally breaks their line.
One traitor is pierced by no less than three different weapons and dragged deeper into the room by the ghosts, struggling and snarling curses all the way.
The other two lancers who still have their heads are likewise pushed back, not succumbing to their wounds but simply not able to withstand the press of bodies against them.
And then, with the distance closed, the short swords come out and go to work, a simple pattern of thrust, withdraw, thrust again that is almost mechanical in its smooth, precise efficiency.
The undead traitors take a long time to die again, fighting for every second and making the loyalists pay for every wound inflicted. One of them tries to reach for something at his neck, a necklace or medallion that stinks of demonic corruption to your senses, but taking one hand away from the fight even for a moment just lets the loyalists tear into him that much faster - and one of the loyalists drops his own sword, seizes that traitor's arm, and wrenches it away from his neck before he can grasp whatever he was trying to get at.
In the end, the legionaries quite literally take their opponents apart with main force and vengeful enthusiasm, breaking dusty old bones, smashing skulls, and bringing ghost-fire to bear against the lot until only charred fragments and smoldering ash trailing wisps of eerie greenish "smoke" remain.
It is brutal, it is uncomfortable to watch, and it is effective; the cultists will not be able to use those bodies to rise again. You just hope they don't manage to re-form as proper ghosts...
One the room is deemed secure, the centurion assigns a third of his men to gather up what's left of the traitors and get it out of the control room. Another portion of the unit are sent to see to the other torn-apart bodies in the chamber, the loyalists stationed and murdered here a thousand years ago, and now apparently "murdered" again by the cultists to prevent them from reanimating. These bodies are handled with a great deal more respect, laid out to one side of the command center with some attempt being made to match all the pieces together properly. The last members of this impromptu squad take up guard positions outside the door, saluting Marcus and Cato as they arrive.
The priest catches sight of the "dead" loyalists and moves to oversee the handling of their bodies - whether that's to help them move on right now or wait until later, you aren't sure.
Marcus takes in the state of the room, particularly the arrays on the walls and the desk-like masses of worked stone, and then says, "Someone find Hermanus," to the room at large.
"I'll send our fairy scout," you say in response to Marcus's general order.
"I'm on it!" Shadow Briar agreees.
Since you want to ask Hornfels a question, you accompany Shadow Briar back out of the command center, taking a moment before she leaves to ask the loyalists who came with Marcus and Cato if they have a better idea of where Hermanus's party is currently located. It'll cut down on the number of potentially haunted and booby-trapped rooms the fairy has to go through; you've been having a good run of luck with those so far, but why take a risk you don't have to?
With that information in hand, your partner's Dark Self zips off down the hall to the west, leaving you free to approach the elemental paladin, who has taken up a relaxed vigil near a passageway that leads north.
"Did you spot something?" you ask, glancing down the dark corridor.
/ Thus far, only the quiet and the darkness, / Hornfels replies.
Quiet is nice, as long as it's not the hush of something moving around stealthily. Darkness is fine, too, but the sort of creatures that you have are likely to continue to find lurking in it in this place are another matter entirely.
"Out of curiosity," you ask your summoned ally then, "you said you took some inspiration from Thor when designing your hammer. Did you mean to say that you've met him?"
/ Oh, no, nothing like that, / the paladin replies. / The Plane of Earth is vast, and Thor's visits there infrequent; to the best of my knowledge, I was never even on the same layer as him, let alone close enough to witness anything of his deeds. And as my own deeds are but a modest mound next to the mountain of his legend, I have not drawn his attention. I simply know of him through rune and dance. /
Gained Terran D (Plus)
Well, that's a bit of a disappointment, but alright, then.
It's several minutes before Shadow Briar returns, which she does to the sound of undead footfalls, the rumble of an earth elemental on the move-
*Clip-clop*
*Clip-clop*
-and the familiar but decidedly unexpected sound of equine hooves clacking on the stone floor.
Rather than fly ahead, your partner's Shadow seems to have decided to stick with Hermanus and the mixed group of Memorians and summoned monsters he's been overseeing. The number of loyalists has increased from four to seven, two of whom are not human: the one, head and shoulders taller than the rest of the group save for the elemental and very obviously the source of the hoof-beats, is a centaur; and perched on his broad back as if riding side-saddle is a feminine figure wrapped in phantasmal feathers, with wickedly clawed hands and feet. You're not sure if she's a harpy, a siren, or something else, but she's chattering away with Shadow Briar, who is sitting on her shoulder.
In exchange for the new additions, you can see that the members of the group have picked up some battle-damage. Most of it is minor, scratches, scuff marks, and a few puncture wounds that might be an issue on living targets, but aren't a worry for the undead. A bit more concerning are the small burn marks scattered all about, as if the group as a whole was hit by a shower of flaming sparks.
Hermanus himself is fine, aura giving away hints of recent mid-level but not overly intense spellcasting.
You wonder what happened...
"'Rune and dance'?"
Maybe it's the mention of one of Din's lesser domains, but you're curious enough about the phrase that Hornfels used to seek an explanation.
/ The Plane of Earth has little of the 'parchment', 'paper', or other such materials that you soft ones so often use to write on, / the elemental paladin tells you. / Your liquid inks are just as rare. There are few native sources for any of it, and not much demand for imports: many of my kin and the other natural denizens have no real interest in or skill at writing; and when we DO wish to leave permanent records, we prefer to do so in stone, crystal, or metal. Things that will last. /
Briefly, you glance over your shoulder at the control room, where an example of just such a lasting record can be found. "Okay. And runes are your preferred writing system?"
/ Indeed. / Propping his hammer on his shoulder again and balancing the haft with one hand, Hornfels holds out the other two you, thick fingers spread as an example. / It is difficult to make complicated shapes with hands like these, particularly when it takes a certain amount of force to make your mark... or when the one doing the writing is, ah, not the shiniest stone in the pile. Not to mention that when you write on stone, mistakes are not easily corrected. Thus, simple shapes are best. /
Okay, that seems to track. "And the dancing?"
/ How am I speaking to you right now, small summoner? /
...oh.
Okay, yeah, since the Terran "tongue" is a mix of geological noises and body language, its natural artistic expression WOULD be as dance, wouldn't it? And if that's the Earth Elemental equivalent of how a spoken language gives rise to singing, Hornfels' original statement of "rune and dance" is just his version of the poetic phrase "story and song."
Gained Elementalogy D (Plus) (Plus)
If it got some of your allies injured, you want to know about it - partly so you'll be prepared to shield your compatriots if you run into something similar in the not-too-distant future, and partly so that you know who or what to smite, should you see them.
"One of the magically gifted cultists threw a Spell of Burning Hands at us," Hermanus replies with mild annoyance. "My counterspell stopped the bulk of it, but sparks of something I'm fairly certain were some hell's fire blew through, leaving the damage you see here." He finishes with a frustrated gesture at his current subordinates. "The good news is, we didn't lose anyone to that, and can report five more cultists down - along with three other loyalists we weren't in time to back up."
"We can add that to the four that were in the command center," you tell him frankly. "Centurion Gaius and his people put down the traitors quickly enough after I distracted their Magus, but they'd mutilated the bodies of the others before we got close. Whether that 'just' prevented them from rising or killed them again..."
"One more treachery for the bastards to answer for, damn them," Hermanus growls. "I swear, if they did further damage to the wards...!"
He stalks towards the command center, muttering imprecations.
Bit of a mood, there, but not entirely out of character for the dead man in question.
You're about to follow Hermanus when you sense an undead presence coming up behind you. Turning-
!
-you have to restrain an urge to flinch or jump back when you find the bird-woman just THERE, peering at you intently with barely a foot between your faces. She is floating several inches off the ground, wing-arms extended but unmoving, all "lift" instead coming from her undead state. Even with that extra height - some of which she's sacrificed by leaning down to look you in the eye - you realize that this monster lady wasn't that much taller in life than you are now, and slender besides. Or at least that's what is suggested by the ghostly echo of her living form, wrapped around a partial skeleton of very fine bones.
If not for being undead, you think she'd be rather pretty, though perhaps a bit too fierce and wild for some modern definitions of the term. Her hair is short, feathery, and looks a bit wind-blown, her eyes are a little too large to be entirely comfortable - especially with that unblinking raptor's stare she has going - and of course, there's the claws.
"Boss," Shadow Briar says, from where she's still sitting on the spirit's shoulder, "this is Trill, one of the local cohort's harpy scouts and messengers. Trill, this is the kid I was talking about. What do you think?"
Trill the Harpy regards you for a moment longer, and then draws back, nodding. "Pretty eyes."
"I told you!"
"...seriously, Minion Number Two?"
"Of cou- wait, since when am I Number Two?"
"Since right now," you reply, before turning to the ghostly bird-woman. "And for the record, Miss... Trill?"
She makes a chirping sound of interest.
"My eyes are not 'pretty'. They are handsome, awe-inspiring, even exotic, but so not 'pretty'."
The harpy regards you for a moment, expression impassive.
Then she smiles, raises one feathery limb-
?
-and gently pats you on the head?
"Keep thinking that," she advises with unmistakable amusement.
While you are trying to assert your complete and total lack of prettiness, Hermanus gets on with investigating the state of the base's central control array. It takes him several minutes, during which he confirms that there was basically no damage done to the system a thousand years past, which in turn reduced the consequences of a millennium's worth of neglect and decay - though it did not eliminate them. The reanimated traitors DID make an attempt to sabotage the system after ensuring the loyalists trapped in the room with them wouldn't pose a threat, but either they weren't equipped for that job or they waited too long to get started on it, because the damage is mostly surface-level.
All told, Hermanus estimates that the base's systems are somewhere above seventy-five percent operational. And that gives you some options for how to proceed.
Marcus, Hermanus, and Gaius exercise one of those options by activating the base's internal Divination arrays, letting them run for a minute, and displaying the results above the central stone table in a three-dimensional Illusion-based map that immediately reminds you of the one Hermanus started using back at the meeting with Sir Pritchard's people. With this, you're able to pinpoint the location of all currently active entities inside the base, as even the truly incorporeal ghosts show up as hotspots of Necromantic energy - or perhaps "coldspots" would be more appropriate?
Regardless, there are a few blotches of dark spiritual power covering areas where undead exist, but haven't yet risen for whatever reason. A particularly strong one is located in the base's main magical workshop, supporting the conclusion you and Hermanus reached earlier about a magus from either side trying to take advantage of the resources in that area before he died. There's another mass of necrotic potential inside a DIFFERENT workshop, located directly across the hall from the first, a discovery that has you briefly picturing two angry undead spellcasters spending eternity blasting away at each other from behind fortified positions. A third coldspot can be found in the armory, which the system says is currently closed and locked - you try not to think too hard about what THAT might mean - and by far the largest is spread throughout the Gate Room and the approach to it, where your scrying efforts previously revealed the remains of a fairly large battle.
On the topic of Marcus's fellow captain, Brennus, while there is some undead presence in the section of the base set aside for the officers' quarters, the one he remembers as Brennus's room is devoid of active or dormant energies. While not enough to make any definitive statements about the man's fate, it does at least suggest that he wasn't killed in his sleep.
The system is also able to determine concentrations of demonic taint. It's nowhere near as widespread here as it was in the Faerie Outpost, instead confined mostly to individual entities - but "mostly" isn't "entirely," and there are a few rooms that you're going to need to purify before all is said and done.
You are not surprised to see one of those overlaps with the main magical workshop, while another covers the Gate Room. The third, however, is located up in the officer's quarters, in a hallway that connects to rooms which were normally set aside for important guests and as temporary housing for staff that were rotating in.
As far as control of the systems goes, Hermanus did say earlier that his access would be limited, even with Marcus along to provide command-level clearance. Adding Centurion Gaius to your force helps a bit, but there are still elements of the base's system that are either locked out, or would be risky to try making use of.
The other things Hermanus has clearance to use are the base's internal communications network, the lighting, the locks for secured locations like the workshops and the armory-
"Provided no one used command authority to seal those," he adds, frowning at the map. "I can't find confirmation, but if they HAVE been locked down, we'll need one of the senior officers to override it."
-and of course, the sensors. He could also shut down the portals and some of the internal traps, but he couldn't reactivate them, and a number of these systems appear unresponsive, besides. Battle-damage, internal collapse due to erosion and such, other factors; who can say?
There's also the matter of the security automatons. You've not seen any of them yet, and from what Hermanus can tell, they weren't activated when the base fell. Given the traitors held the command center for a time, they must not have been confident in their ability to control the constructs, and it would seem that whoever killed the cultists either didn't have the authority to activate the autonomous defenders, had similar reasons not to do so, or just didn't get the chance.
For his part, while Hermanus thinks it might be possible for him to activate at least some of the stone soldiers, he's at least as reluctant to try as any of his former contemporaries would have been. After all, the same arguments about limited command authority and friend-or-foe identification apply at LEAST as much today as they did back then, and it having been a thousand years since the magically-animated statues got their last maintenance check wouldn't help matters.
Given your access to the intercom-like system that Marcus used in the Faerie Outpost to rally his men, you could try to stage a repeat to gather up the undead loyalists in one go, but the fact that you've been running into reanimated traitors in rooms you hadn't even visited yet makes that a bit of a gamble. You can't really distinguish between one undead figure or another until you've seen them up-close, and sending out a general order to assembly would risk leading the cultists right to you.
True, you could try to turn that to your advantage, gathering your current and not-insignificant force in or near the area in question, and ambushing the turncoats when they arrive to attack you...
It's a strange sensation, being patted on the head by an undead harpy.
A hand ending in raptor's talons is not the first, second, or even tenth thing that comes to mind when picturing a "soft touch," but the manner in which Trill's wings are attached to the more human parts of her upper limbs - growing out from the elbow down along the outer edge of the limb, and extending past the hand before folding back up the arm to slightly past the shoulder - means that the feathered portion partly engulfs the hand, like one of those long, billowing sleeves you've seen on some dresses...
*Pat*
...
Lacking the force behind her gesture to push through that fluffy barrier, Trill's feathers effectively blunt her talons, yet the talons in turn provide a degree of firmness that turns what might otherwise be just a face-full of feathers into something...
*Pat*
...
And then there's the fact where the harpy is (mostly) a ghost possessing what's left of her mortal remains, meaning that you're feeling this far, far more on the spiritual level than the physical, which is...
*Pat*
...
Look, "strange" does not equal "bad," and you're suddenly very glad that your spiritual senses are as developed as they are.
Gained Spiritual Enhancement C
Also, you're feeling a stronger kinship with Moblin than you usually do.
"That lucky little shit," one of the legionaries mutters in jealous admiration.
Trill makes a sound that your distracted mind registers as a musical, "Ufufufu..."
Eventually, you recover your senses, reluctantly escape the harpy's feathery clutches, and re-enter the command center to hear Hermanus's assessment of the situation and take part in the subsequent decision-making.
Looking around at the state of the room, you are reminded that you never got a chance to examine the Faerie Outpost's control room with the Spell to Analyze Dweomers, on account of the required focus that you ordered not having arrived at the time. You would rather like to correct that, and seeing as how this facility's command and control are in better shape that its counterpart's, you'll probably learn more here than you would there anyway.
You mention your desire to inspect the system to your allies, adding that once you have a better idea of how everything works, you could attempt to repair the most recent damage. The consequences of the long-term neglect are admittedly beyond you, as the repair spells you know can't address any warping that may have occurred - whether due to physical stress, heat-induced melting, centuries of erosion, or what have you - and most of that damage is old enough by now that it'll have long since settled as the array's "natural" state anyway.
"How long would that take you?" Marcus asks.
"...make it seven minutes for the analysis," you reply after a moment. Considering the state of your magical reserves, ritual-casting as much as possible would be well-advised at this point - that, or assigning the task to your Shadow, but he's got even less mana to spare than you do, and would have to spend more of it (or just more time) passing on whatever he learned to you. "Beyond that, it'll depend on what I find."
The Captain nods. "While you're doing that, then, I'd like to borrow your Shadow."
"Sir / sir?" the two of you reply.
"I'm going to take the Centurion and some of the men to check on the armory," Marcus explains, nodding to his junior officer. "If Hermanus can't open the door from here, we may need to investigate other options of doing so - if at all possible, I'd rather have these soldiers properly equipped for a battle before we go poking into these areas." He indicates the demonically tainted areas of the base.
You nod, slowly. Your personal preference would have been to hold off on visiting the armory until after you'd swept the officers' quarters, both to determine if a loyalist commander was in there and could be brought into your expanding force to give you the access codes you need, and to make sure that any traitor leadership in the area was put down before it had a chance to cause trouble. That said, you can't blame Marcus for wanting to do something other than stand around waiting while you're doing mystical analysis and possible repair work, and he IS currently the ranking officer on site - not to mention how he's also sort of YOUR commander, given that whole "honorary legion auxiliary" thing.
On that note, since Shadow Alex might need both hands free shortly, Briar blips back to her human-sized form-
A couple of the loyalists who hadn't seen this already are visibly startled.
-and takes your banner from him. Your Dark Self then gathers up one of the lesser elementals, a couple of the Beetles, and Shadow Briar, and accompanies a dozen or so of the Memorians down one corridor and out of sight.
By then, you're well into your spellcasting.
You aren't quite halfway through the ritual when Hermanus starts manipulating the controls.
"...override security locks... override emergency lock... no, I do not want to override ALL locks in that area, you daft device..."
"Problem?" Sir Pritchard inquires.
"No, just... questionable spellcraft," Hermanus replies. "There we are, armory door unlocked." Another moment, a touch of a glowing stone, and the Magus speaks. "Captain, you're free to proceed."
"Thank you, Magus," Marcus's voice issues from somewhere overhead, at a normal, spoken volume.
There is a pause, during which you hear movement, some grunting, and then the rumble of an elemental.
"Marcus?" the Magus ventures.
"The door's stuck," the Captain replies shortly.
Hermanus glances down at his workstation. "...it's reading as unlocked..."
"We heard the locks unlatch, Hermanus, the door ITSELF just isn't opening. The lad's Shadow is directing the elemental to give it a go-"
Marcus's voice is briefly drowned out by the rasp of some great metallic object sliding across stone.
"-just needed a big enough push."
There are no further interruptions, and you're able to finish your ritual and raise the gold-rimmed ruby lens to your eye to begin looking around the chamber.
The command center's spell array registers primarily as a combination of Augmentation and Divination Magic - though the way those aspects are arranged reminds you a bit of Enchantment Magic - with some Abjuration-, Elementalism-, and Illusion-based secondary elements. It also doesn't register as a single object: there's the wall-mounted array that is, to the best of your understanding, basically the central processing unit of the system; there's the crystal-topped table which is the main interface; there are secondary consoles - something the Faerie Outpost didn't have, as best you can recall - along the other walls; and then there is the network of defensive wards and Divination devices spread throughout the base.
Even with Analyze Dweomer, there's only so much of the devices' inner functionality that you can see - the spell doesn't work through solid stone, after all - but what you can make out is informative.
Gained Magesmithing C (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Even as your analytical magic reveals the functions and methods to activate the objects in question, you find yourself uncertain if the Greater Spell to Make Whole will be able to affect your targets. Specifically, you're concerned about the central array, which covers most of the far wall but also extends into it to some depth. Depending on how much of that stone facade is actually part of the system, and what is just architecture, your spell simply may not be able to accommodate something that large. The Metamagic effects you've learned to date won't help you, either; you don't need an increase in range or number of targets, but pure volume and/or mass.
That said, the wall array hasn't been destroyed, so perhaps you don't need to use the Greater Spell? The regular Spell to Make Whole would probably suffice to patch up the damage, and the array's size wouldn't be an issue for it. It'd be more time-consuming than anything.
You could also attempt a ritual, an "Even Greater Spell to Make Whole," as it were, borrowing the targeting formula of the Lesser Spell and applying it to the Greater Spell.
You inform Hermanus of your findings, and what you wish to attempt as a result.
"One minute, lad," the Magus replies, before contacting Marcus again. "Captain?"
"Yes, Magus?"
"The boy has completed his analysis of the system, and thinks he can repair the recent damage. He says it will take him about six minutes to set up for, though."
"I recall you preferring to have systems deactivated or on standby before doing maintenance in the past," Marcus notes. "Will that be an issue for us?"
"I don't believe so, but given some of the" - Hermanus glances from his tabletop display to the wall of arcane sigils, and then back again - "puzzling decisions made by whoever last updated the array, I can't rule out the possibility that powering down the system might trigger a lockdown of critical areas, or a general UN-locking."
That last bit has you glancing at the map of the base again, confirming a number of chambers with closed doors that glow a steady green, as opposed to the yellow of the unlocked armory, or the red that overlays the shattered entrance to this very chamber.
Nothing in blue?
Secured, unsecured, breached?
There, there.
Something like that, you figure.
Marcus seems to have recalled the image you're looking at. "Send the rest of the troops that are with you and in need of rearmament to my location; I'll dispatch Gaius and his unit with the necessary arms to outfit the men we left to stand watch."
You give Hermanus a minute to sort that out, hearing a few quick orders and the shuffle of undead, rotting-booted feet moving off in the direction of the armory, followed by the rumble of a couple of elementals repositioning themselves to make up for the decline in numbers-
*Boing*
/ Hehe- /
*Sma-crack!*
/ -ow! /
/ I can keep this up all summoning. /
"Po-po-pon!" The weird Beetle noise carries the distinct overtones of laughter at someone else's expense.
-or maybe just to take advantage of it.
You only start your ritual when Hermanus re-enters the command room and gives you a nod.
"The men are en route, and our auxiliary has started working one of his... lesser absurdities," the Magus informs the Captain. "You have six minutes and counting."
"Contact me again in five."
Maybe half a minute after that, you see the glowing dots that represent the soldiers just dispatched reaching the armory. No sooner have they arrived than twelve other dots break off from the group and head down the hall in your direction.
A little less than a minute on, you hear those troops go marching through the room outside, but they don't stop; instead, they head back into the security maze, following the cleared route that you took on a reverse course to the mess hall.
Another four minutes of uninterrupted casting later, Hermanus re-opens the channel to the armory, and is told that the last of the Memorian soldiers are just tightening a few straps and grabbing some extra spears and blades before exiting the room. Maybe ten seconds after that, you see the last of the glowing spots on the map that represent Marcus's detachment making their way back to the command center - and then you see only shadows and the glow of everburning torches, the projected image winking out along with most of the lights in the chamber as Hermanus quickly gets everything ready for your repair attempt.
You finish your spell before the soldiers arrive, and watch as recently broken-off bits of stone and metal pick themselves up off the floor and float back into position at half a dozen different points along the wall-spanning array. Here, shards of a shattered crystal rapidly reassemble themselves into one whole piece, which solidifies with a shimmering hum; there, broken lines of defaced glyphwork rewrite themselves; and everywhere, the freshest-looking damage is smoothed over... with timeworn stone and tarnished metal that honestly doesn't improve the aesthetic very much.
But as the last fragment snaps into place, a faint sheen of energy plays over the surface of the array and through its many lesser elements.
"...done?" Hermanus ventures.
"I think so," you reply. "Turn it back on, and let's see what happens."
Hermanus does that, idly reaching out with his off-hand to rap the knuckles against the desiccated wooden backing of one of the ancient seats. "Here we go."
There is a hum.
Light returns, and a moment later, the map reappears.
Hermanus takes one look at it and invokes Pluto and Minerva, wishing a dim fate on the artificers who last worked on the base's security system.
Seeing how many formerly green-lit doors are now showing up as yellow, or how many of said doors have undead and/or demon-tainted presences moving through or outside of them, you can't really blame him. And yes, the armory did lock down again while the system was out, not that it's really a problem for your side right now. It might even be taken as an advantage.
"Did I at least fix the array?" you ask.
"One minute, I need to lock down as many... ha, got you!"
Several of the doors just went back to locked status, trapping... looks like a good two dozen undead, still in their original rooms.
That just leaves the THREE dozen or so that escaped from the other chambers. The good news is, they're not all concentrated in one place, nor are they all showing signs of corruption; the bad news is that they're all moving in your direction, and are positioned such that they'll all arrive within a minute or so of each other, from two different directions; and the worse news is that the corrupted signatures mixed in with the various groups don't seem to be under attack from any of the others.
"Situation?" Marcus asks, as he marches into the command room, with your Shadow and Sir Pritchard right behind him.
"The armory, Gate Room, and other high-security areas locked down when the system disengaged," Hermanus reports quickly, "but a bunch of other doors unlocked. I managed to reseal some of those before the rooms' occupants escaped, but we still have about forty unknowns coming our way. A third of those are definitely hostile, I can't speak to the rest."
Given the apparent lack of violent interaction between the definite cultists and the other members of the scattered groups, it's possible that you're looking at a mob of enemies. It's just as possible, however, that some or all of the traitors are keeping their true colors hidden while surrounded by loyalists, or even that all the undead marching your way are still trapped in that unawakened state, and are just instinctively homing in on the first real disturbance to their unquiet existence in the last millennium - though that last one would beg the question of HOW they knew to come your way.
You could see a bunch of conscious or even semi-cognizant spooks remembering that the locks on their doors could be controlled from the command center, but if that awareness isn't there, what could be leading them to you?
You really doubt it was your spellcasting. True, sixth-circle magic is both potent and beyond your ability to conceal, but you were performing it as a ritual, which would have dulled the signature to some extent. More than that, though, there's no straight line between you and any of the undead; the corners, stone walls, and at least one set of security wards in the way represent too much interference for them to have sensed you, unless someone had a relatively strong active detection spell going.
Or, from the way the undead are dispersed, more like four or five someones. Which, again, just seems unlikely from what you know of the spread of magical talent among the Memorians.
Putting that aside for the moment, you consider your options.
From what the map shows you, your route to the officers' quarters is blocked by one group of seven undead, with a gang of four and a band of five about to link up behind the first group. If you put your Ki Enhanced Haste to work or used a Body Flicker, you could probably get past all of those soldiers and go after the source of the tainted aura in the guest rooms - which ISN'T currently moving in your direction, you note, but also doesn't appear to be locked in one of the rooms - but you're not really keen on that idea at this point. Your only allies who could keep up would be Shadow Alex, the Briars, and maybe Sir Pritchard, you doubt any of them would be pleased with the idea.
While there are a few other places you could go, the only one that seems to have any point just now lies back through the security maze - linking up with Centurion Gaius's unit to stay out of harm's way and keep an eye on your handful of prisoners. It's not an appealing option either, for completely different reasons, but you can see how the adults and adolescent Fae around you might see things differently.
Your third option is just to sit tight and see how the impending fight turns out. If your Memorian allies were alone, they would be outnumbered by about half, but with the advantages of full gear, a defensible position, accurate intel on the enemy's position and numbers, and the fact that their undead peers aren't going to arrive at in one unit. That's a pretty unfair advantage to start with, and adding you, your summons, your fairy, and a mage-knight to the list just makes it more so.
With that in mind...
A momentary impulse to make a fast break for the officers' quarters is readily suppressed, and you instead wait to see what instructions Marcus has.
"Form up!" the Captain calls to the troops. "Prepare to receive attackers from the northern and western passages! Hermanus, unless there are any security doors in their path-"
"One that reports as damaged, another that I just closed."
"How many will that hold?"
"Should stop nine of-" The Magus breaks off suddenly as the door image that just turned green starts to flash between green and yellow, before settling on a solid sunny hue. "Wonderful. They have an officer who remembers his passwords, and even with the repairs, I can't lock that out."
"Join the line, then."
Hermanus is already moving for the door.
"Alexanders!"
"Sir! / Sir!"
"Two things. First, I'd like your summons to fill out my force."
"Not a problem, sir." You call out into the next room, "Did you catch that, Hornfels?"
/ I did, summoner. I will work with the dead ones to wrestle these rockheads and the bouncy creatures into position. /
A Hardhat Beetle peers through the wreckage of the door. "Pon?"
"Tell the others to listen to him!"
"Po-pon!" And then it goes skittering away.
"...the variety of creatures available to summoners never grows any less confounding," Marcus mutters, shaking his head. "Right, second thing: are you and your Shadow up to joining Hermanus in providing magical support? I'll expect you to follow his orders if you do."
Because for all your power and the fact that you have worked alongside the Memorians, both here and back at the Faerie Outpost, you still aren't one of their Legion-trained spellcasters. There is a difference between taking part in the same fight as an allied group of soldiers, and actually acting WITH the troops as a proper part of the whole unit, in accordance with the commanding officer's design. You've done the former several times today alone; the latter, not so much.
There is also the state of your mana reserve to consider. You're down to somewhere between a quarter and a fifth of your maximum magical energy, while your Shadow shouldn't be doing much better, and while you can get quite a lot done with the energy you have left, every bit that's spent now is less energy for later - and there's still quite a lot of haunted ancient fortress to clear out.
Weighing against that, however, are the Liquid Starlight Potion still in your dimensional pocket, as well as the much more generous amounts of other energies still in your system - your ki and spiritual energies, in particular, seem like they'd be appropriate for the upcoming fight. True, your ki-based projectiles would be a bit less effective against undead enemies - and especially incorporeal ones - due to their mixed nature, and you wouldn't be delivering Fireball-level strikes in any case, but there must surely be a place for fire support on the level of a Ki Blast. And while your ranged spiritual techniques are rather less practiced, the sheer strength of your soul ought to make up for a lot.
Alternately, you could personally stay out of the fight, while sending your Shadow in.
"And Sir Knight, meaning no offense to your skills-"
Roderick raises a hand to stop the Captain. "I'm not trained in your particular tactics, and your men aren't trained to accommodate mine."
Marcus nods. "Precisely."
The knight returns the gesture. "I'll stick close to the boy, just in case."
"Excellent."
Although you would really like to cast the Spell of the Threefold Aspect right now, you can't do so. The spell doesn't affect your equipment, only your body, your Warmage's Robe wouldn't fit your adult form, and this is decidedly NOT the time to be changing outfits.
Given the situation and the utility that a physically adult form would provide if it comes to close combat, you instead decide to cast the Spell to Alter One's Self - which WILL upsize your gear - and simply take on adult proportions in a more generic package. There's no sense wasting the extra mana on a full Polymorph when it won't give you a better result, and you don't have time to ritually cast other spells.
Before you can do that, however, you need to remove one of your overabundant magical enhancements, to make "room" for the new one. Seeing as how the Spell to Walk Through Space is entirely useless within the Memorian Base, you dispel it, momentarily wishing it was one of those magics that could be conveniently dismissed when it was no longer needed, just to save you to the time and the mana. Then again, the spell normally only lasts for a couple of minutes at most, so that was probably a factor in the original designer's thinking...
While you're casting and waiting for your mana to cycle, you refresh a few of your ki and spiritual boosts, which have either lapsed in the time since you entered the base, or weren't active at all. Spiritual Sense first, both to detect threats and to give yourself time to adjust to the not-inconsiderable presence of your undead allies, then Staggered Flicker to evade, Spiritual Armor and Ki Armor in case you can't...
And that's when your mana reaches readiness.
By this point, you're well out of the command center and into the rather crowded intersection of hallways beyond. Marcus has sent about a third of the troops off with Cato to intercept the smaller "column" of angry undead swarming your way from the west, but that still leaves over twenty Memorian soldiers, a couple of Earth Elementals, and a brace of jittery Hardhat Beetles to take up space, which you, your Shadow, and Sir Pritchard's armored bulk now add to.
The formation that has taken shape has your Beetles in the crescent-shaped front row, with Hornfels holding the end of the curved line to the right of the northern door, and his lesser kin the left. Behind them are two ranks of eight undead legionaries, spears lowered and shields at the ready, and a slightly greater distance behind them are Trill the harpy and Hermanus.
The pair look up at your approach.
Trill cheeps, blinks slowly as she looks you over, and then hesitantly raises the same wing-arm that she previously used to pat your head with, stretching out and standing on the tips of her talons.
This leaves her clawed fingers waving in the air in front of your face.
The harpy is visibly dismayed by this development.
"It's only temporary!" Shadow Briar quickly assures her.
"Different from your last spell," Hermanus notes.
"No time to cast that one," you reply, before standing at attention and setting up Spiritual Enhancement and Ki Aura. "With the Captain's compliments, sir, two auxiliary spellcasters at your command."
"Plus bodyguard," Sir Pritchard adds.
The Magus considers that. "...right, then. First of all, our top priority will be identifying enemy spellcasters and neutralizing their magic by whatever means we can. Interruption, counterspelling, making them doubly dead - whatever seems most likely to work, without wasting energy, putting ourselves or the troops at risk, or disrupting the line of battle."
You and your Shadow nod in unison, while your Corruption Sense and Brain Enhancement go up. The former will help you identify who and what needs aggressive purification, and the latter... honestly, it's probably going to be most helpful in assisting you with sorting out the multiple information intakes you have going.
"Second: Shadow, I want you to go after Cato's group and support them as the priest requests, or as close as you can to it."
"Sir!"
Your Dark Self turns to dash down the corridor after the other group of Memorians, his partner zipping along after him with a called-back, "Hang in there, Trill!"
"Stay safe," the harpy replies, waving.
You activate your Spiritual Sight, and follow that with the Ki Step technique.
"Third," Hermanus says, head turning towards the northern passage, "if there's a spell you could cast to support the troops, now's the time!"
No kidding. You can hear the particular, peculiar sound of a group of undead warriors advancing on your position from down that hall, but more clear is the unpleasant mix of spiritual energies: the individual essences of "regular" undead, tainted by anger and hostility; at least one hotspot of demonic corruption; and just a general air of Shadow-touched Spirit leaning towards Darkness, as often manifests in places where the restless dead have been gathered together in numbers for long periods of time.
You draw your Blessed Blade to run spiritual energy along and then into it, and complete your self-buffing as you consider Hermanus's request.
When it becomes clear that your Shadow isn't following your leading in upsizing himself, Trill seems to get over her disappointment about her sudden height disadvantage.
At least until your Dark Self heads out.
She also regards Briar's human-scale form with some surprise, and a bit of interest, but doesn't raise her hand.
"...not going to pat me on the head?" your partner asks.
The harpy shakes her head. "Standard," she explains, pointing a talon at the banner Briar is now holding. "Bad discipline."
That makes sense. The legions would try to discourage anything that might be considered disrespectful towards the devices that are both the central symbols of their honor, and also a key part of their battlefield communication.
"Also, boys are more fun to mess with," Trill adds, chirping in amusement.
...
You're going to ignore that for now, as you have a battle to be contributing to.
"How does another Spell of Haste sound?" you ask Hermanus.
"Like an excellent idea!"
That's what you thought, and you quickly cast the Spell of Augmentation in question, using your knowledge of metamagic to increase its duration by a couple of steps - after all, there's still a lot of base left to explore, so why give up this particular advantage if you don't have to?
Your spell takes effect, and the results become apparent almost immediately, as that slight delay in the undead soldiers' reactions to the movements of your already speed-boosted summons and Marcus's likewise-accelerated orders is rapidly smoothed out.
The Haste Spell was definitely a good choice, though it's a good thing there aren't any more troops in that formation, as you were right on the edge of the number of bodies you could reliably affect with a single casting, without risking the integrity or performance of the magic.
Any further thoughts on the matter are put to the side as the mass of advancing undead draw close enough for you to clearly make out their bodies in the gloom of the hall. Rather than a mob of mindless walking corpses and angry ghosts, you're looking at a unit of eight or nine soldiers moving together as a unit, advancing steadily but cautiously. Their equipment is similar to what your allies were using before that trip to the armory, with only two or three individuals close to being fully kitted out for battle, although all of them are at least armed. You count three spears, two shields, plenty of short swords, one robe not unlike the ones you and Hermanus are wearing-
!
-and one weapon that reeks of almost as much corruption as its wielder, whose aura is about as tainted as that of the cultist who turned himself into that wolf-headed slime creature. You can't get a good look at the armament in question, as its owner is positioned near the back of the group, but you would guess its physical form to be a legion-issue blade, or at least intentionally fashioned to look like one.
Having come close enough for your eyes to make them out, the undead can also see your party, and the presence of a line of their countrymen fully clad for war and aimed in their direction definitely gives them pause.
Marcus calls out the same introduction he used to identify himself to Gaius, and adds, "Identify yourselves, or prepare to be destroyed."
There is a brief susurration among the troops, and you can see them glancing at each other and gesturing. Such behavior reminds you of nothing so much as a bunch of kids trying to figure out which of them gets "volunteered" to deal with the sudden and unexpected presence of an adult.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the buck seems to stop with the warmage, a lanky figure that was probably as close to skinny in life as military training and requirements would allow, and who has been rendered downright skeletal by his existence beyond the grave. He hovers slightly above the floor in the manner of a ghost, ancient robe billowing slowly around him, ghost-flame wreathes his hands and burns ominously within the pits of his eyes-
"I-I am A-Adalbert, sir, Ap-p-prentice Magus, Sixth Cohort, Ninth Legion."
-and his voice squeaks.
...wow. You weren't expecting a dead man to sound so... young. The weird hollow echo that undeath tends to add to human voices makes it a little tricky to tell, but you think this guy must have been closer to fifteen than to twenty when he died - which is a depressing thought - and the nervous stammer only makes that worse, compounding the lack of age with inexperience.
One of the other legionaries hisses something.
"Ah! Uh, s-state your business! ...i-if that wouldn't be t-too much trouble, sir?"
You swear you hear some of the "enemy" undead sigh.
You KNOW you hear some of your allies chuckle.
For your part, you're trying to get a bead on the cultist in the back row, but it's difficult. Projectile attacks are probably not going to connect with that one, which leaves... a number of options, still, although the best ones would require using mana.
While the introductions are underway, and without moving too quickly, you shuffle closer to Hermanus and mutter, "Cultist in middle of the back row, Magus."
"You're sure?" he replies, just as quietly.
"He feels almost as nasty as the one that transformed in the mess hall, and his weapon is just as bad on its own."
"Wonderful," Hermanus notes. "Just the one, though?"
"Seems that way."
Not to toot your own horn or anything, but being aware of the demonic energy in your environment is a skill you've had several very good reasons to develop, a certain innate talent for, and plenty of practice at despite your limited number of actual encounters with fiendish entities - call that last one a silver lining to the big, nasty stormcloud that is life on the Hellmouth.
Which isn't to say that your corruption sense is infallible. Discerning the presence of such taint in general is quite easy for you at this point, but identifying specific KINDS of taint is something you're still working on, and will need a lot more exposure to different demonic breeds, unholy artifacts, and Hell-dimensions before you can really call yourself an expert at it. And it's entirely possible that somebody in that cluster of undead men is carrying a top-class Amulet of Nondetection or some other aura-masking device of sufficient quality to fool you, although you do think that's unlikely.
You aren't using Divination Magic per se at the moment, but certain lessons learned from wielding sensory-enhancement spells carry over to your other supernatural senses, and even the mundane ones.
"Orders, sir?" you ask, making an effort not to sound cheeky.
"I'm half-tempted to just rain Magic Missiles on the wretch, or have you trap him in a force-sphere like you did the last one," Hermanus admits. "Unless you've got a better option...?"
You run through your moderately overwhelming list of options. You've already ruled out most projectile attacks - although Hermanus mentioned the one spell that could be relied on to hit your intended target in this situation, and no one else - and given the distance and the number of undead between you and the lone traitor, you don't think channeling your Power is an option this time. As far as other spells go, three come to mind: the Spell to Command Undead; the Spell to Halt Undead; and, as Hermanus already mentioned, the Spell to Create a Resilient Sphere.
Command Undead has the advantage of a very long duration, which you could cut down on to free up energy for the Heighten Spell Metamagic, making it much more likely to work. Weighing against that is the fact that even a successful casting wouldn't ensure that your target stayed benign, only that you'd have the chance to convince him to listen to you - and it would have to be YOU, specifically.
Halt Undead would be more expensive to augment in the same manner way, but a success would take the traitor out of commission entirely - though only for a short period of time, unless you invested some additional energy into extending the spell.
Resilient Sphere would render the cultist a non-threat for a longer period of time than Halt Undead with no further enhancement, and unlike the two previous spells, it wouldn't be pitted against the dead man's willpower - a trait that angry spirits are usually strong in - but rather his ability to dodge.
Fortunately, the extra height you picked up from casting the Spell to Alter One's Self makes you tall enough to look over the shoulders of the assembled legionaries - and then some; they're mostly around five-foot-six or five-seven, but even your less-than-idealized adult form clears six feet - so you don't have to worry nearly as much about getting a clear line of effect between you and your target as you otherwise might have. It's not a complete non-issue, which is why you're not really considering firing energetic projectiles downrange - at least not ones without the benefit of built-in tracking - but it's reduced enough for less aggressive spells to still be a valid option.
Between its greater power and the fact that it doesn't try to interfere with the will of a spirit strong enough to resist the call of the grave, the Spell to Create a Resilient Sphere just seems more likely to work than the other two, at least without resorting to metamagic to boost their effects. And while you are tempted to use that technique for this spell, Resilient Sphere is already at the limit of magic that you can reliably keep under wraps while casting.
Considering how nervous Apprentice Magus Adalbert sounds, keeping your spell concealed until you're ready to use it is an asset you don't want to give up.
You inform Hermanus of your preference, and he tells you to ready the spell while he lets Marcus know what's going on.
"Try to hold off casting as long as you can," the Magus says, "but if it looks like the traitor is about to try anything funny, lock him down. We'll deal with the consequences."
"Yes, sir."
Keeping your hands out of the Apprentice Magus's line of sight, you take a slow, sidelong step to your left to give yourself a clearer view of the cultist. The width of the doorway connecting the two chambers adds a bit to the difficulty of lining up your spell without risking it hitting any of the Memorians, but not insurmountably so. You're just glad that Hornfels and the other elemental are positioned to the sides, rather than having one of them directly in front of you, as then it probably WOULD have been impossible to make the "shot" in question.
While you're doing that, Hermanus casts a simple Message cantrip and whispers an update to the Captain.
You see Marcus's left hand make a particular gesture where it hangs at his side, but he doesn't otherwise let on that he's heard anything, instead continuing to address the stammering young spellcaster.
"-base, arrest any remaining traitors to face Mars's judgment, and expunge any demonspawn we find, before restoring the portal to Faerie and allowing the rest of my unit to finally come home," the Captain is saying.
"Uh... th-that is... quite a c-claim, sir," Adalbert says. "I w-would need something to confirm it."
"I came here with a priest of Mars," Marcus says promptly, "though he's currently engaged elsewhere. One of your own centurions, Gaius of the Sixth Cohort, has heard our claims, and agreed to support it."
"Oh? Oh! Uh, i-if I c-could speak with the Centurion, then-"
"He's currently overseeing the rearmament of another element," the Captain says. "Perhaps instead, you might speak to the second soldier in your back line."
"W-wha-?"
A corrupted aura shifts.
"After all, I'm sure a traitor would-"
A sword rises, its curse-blackened blade dripping motes of red malice in your augmented vision.
"Death to the-!"
You unleash your spell-
*Thunk*
-and the tainted blade bounces off the interior of a translucent globe of golden force.
The young Magus, having whirled about with his left arm coming up in a clear defensive maneuver at the sudden disturbance behind him, now stares at the "ally" who forced his way through the thin ranks of the irregular unit on surprise and a zealot's determination, and came within inches of stabbing Adalbert with his corrupted weapon. You don't know what the results of the junior spellcaster's being wounded by that sword might have been, save that they wouldn't have been good.
The other seven men in the unit are likewise on their guard, some with weapons turned towards the Resilient Sphere and its prisoner, some pointing their blades at each other, and a couple more continuing to keep spears pointed in your group's direction - though even those guys are casting quick glances over their shoulders to try and see what just happened. At least one of the soldiers doesn't seem to know who to aim at, his short sword constantly moving from potential target to potential ally.
"Good timing, Alexander," Marcus says.
"Thank you, sir," you reply.
Gained Commanding King E (Plus)
"Now, Apprentice Magus Adalbert," the Captain continues.
"S-sir?"
"According to the security system, there are a dozen more lost souls coming down the passages behind you, and at least some of them are cut from the same cloth as that demon-loving turncoat. I would rather not see you and your ACTUAL allies caught between any more traitors and this force, so I will ask you to surrender your weapons and consider yourselves in protective custody until we have more time to sort this out. Am I clear?"
Adalbert considers that, and his hooded, skeletal visage turns away from your force for a moment, glancing back up the hallway. Several of his fellows do likewise, and if you reach out with your senses, you can just make out wisps of new undead auras coming into range.
"...c-clear, sir."
"Good. Legionaries, secure our countrymen."
"Sir!"
"And the traitor, sir?"
"Recommendation, Alexander?"
It'll be a quarter of an hour yet before that Resilient Sphere wears out on its own-
*Thunk*
*Thunk*
-and judging from the cultist's frustrated screaming, the curse on his weapon doesn't increase its damage output enough to overcome the sheer durability of a construct of pure force. You could dismiss the Sphere after the loyalists have been moved out of harm's way, but there isn't really time to take a howling mad undead demonic cultist with a dangerous weapon into custody safely, before his backup gets here. That gives you only two real options: either leave the traitor where he is and deal with him later; or let out and put him down. If you go with the former, the Sphere will block your line of effect and prevent you from firing spells down the corridor, but it'll also force the next wave of dead guys to split up and go around the force-ball if they want to advance.
While an argument could be made for keeping this cultist ali- er, intact, in order to answer questions, you don't think it would really be worth the effort. Power doesn't always correlate to rank or authority, but it's a pretty reliable benchmark in supernatural circles, and while this undead individual is one of the more thoroughly corrupted that you've encountered - though not the most tainted even so - the strength of his aura beyond that is nothing special. He also didn't pull out one of those suicide-transformation devices, and these points together suggest he may not have been overly important in the demon worshippers' ranks.
Weighing against that conclusion are the presence and as-yet unknown purpose of the cursed sword. A magic item like that isn't something lightly made or handed off to just any wielder: either it's meant as a weapon, in which case you'd want it in the hands of a skilled and loyal fighter, so that it can do the most damage; or it's meant as a vessel of corruption, in which case the "owner" may be a victim himself - and as such, was important or valuable enough to be worth the added effort.
You don't think it was the latter case, however. If this soldier HAD been a victim of the cult, twisted by that sword, the blade's curse has had a thousand years to sink its roots deeper and wider through the man's soul, and from there to spread to others. Really, by this point, a corruptive vector of that nature should have spread to half the base, or at least the undead personnel - and you've seen nothing of the sort. For all the common "scent" or "color" of the unholy energies clinging to the demon worshippers, each one has still been perfectly recognizable as an individual - wolf-slime-spirit amalgamative transformations notwithstanding - and the sword just didn't seem that strongly tainted besides.
No, it's far more likely that the swordsman's corruption is of his own choice rather than any fault of his weapon's, which rather sharply reduces any desire on your part to expend time and effort trying to save him. And while you DID want to avoid sending more souls to whatever demons were behind this ancient cult, the failure of your pseudo-Shinigami to purify previous undead hasn't left you with any real alternatives.
With that in mind...
"Sir, I would recommend that once all loyal Memorians are clear, I drop the Sphere, and Hornfels removes the traitor. If you don't have any objections, Hornfels?"
/ None, summoner. A question, however? /
"Yes?"
/ What of the sword? /
...good question.
/ Agreed. /
"So be it, then."
And so it is. After the legionaries have disarmed their countrymen and escorted them back through the line, the elemental paladin rumbles into position, hammer raised. Mindful of the second group of undead that are incoming, you waste no time in dismissing your force-construct-
*WHAM!*
-and Hornfels in turn brings the hammer down without delay, a single two-handed swing that reduces the cultist's rotted skull to so many fragments of bone, and seems to dislocate the spine besides.
The blow doesn't prevent the undead traitor from taking a swing at the elemental with his cursed sword, but Hornfels catches the blade with the crystalline armor on one of his forearms, swats it aside with a contemptuous air and a flash of light - pure emerald against bloody red - and then-
*WHAM!*
-strikes a second time, turning most of the right half of the dead man's remaining body into a pile of still-twitching fragments. The dark sword clangs loudly as it hits the floor, still grasped by most of an arm below the shoulder.
Even that hit doesn't completely destroy the walking corpse, let alone disperse its angry spirit, but the dead man is basically defenseless AND immobilized at this point-
*WHAM!*
-making Hornfels' third strike more of a formality than anything else.
The elimination of the traitor draws a number of howling protests from further down the hall.
While the cursed sword definitely can't be left for the other undead to potentially pick up and start using against your allies, you don't think it'd be a great idea to destroy it outright.
For one thing, magic weapons, even cursed ones, tend to be tougher than their mundane counterparts. Even with his enhanced strength and stone-crushing hammer, Hornfels might need a few blows to break the blade, and given he has to deal with its wielder first AND get back in formation before the next wave of might-be enemies arrive, you don't want him out there for too long.
On another point, you'd like a chance to study this weapon - provided you can find a way to transport and store it safely, as for once, you're not keen on just shoving the magical item that has caught your eye into your expanded pocket.
And thirdly, simply shattering the sword here and now might pose its own hazards. Bits of cursed shrapnel flying about, the possibility of some bound entity being released, the chance of it being empowered by some demon's will and said demon paying attention to the weapon's first period of activity in a millennium - there are numerous unpleasant possibilities.
With all of that in mind, you ask Hornfels if he can personally secure the sword until all is said and done. Being a paladin AND a summoned entity, he's got the least chance of being affected by the weapon's cursed nature.
Hornfels' body language radiates sudden disapproval. / I hope you do not intend to keep it. /
"I already have a better sword," you assure him, holding up your Blessed Blade. "I just want to dispose of that one under more controlled conditions than this."
/ Ah. / And like that, the disapproval goes away. / In that case, I will see to it. /
And so he does. After reducing the traitor to so much bone paste, Hornfels hooking the sword's guard with the butt of his hammer, drags it along the floor - along with most of the undead soldier's arm - and back through the doorway, before half-sweeping and half-throwing the weapon into the far corner.
/ No one touches that, on pain of smashing, / the elemental declares firmly, placing his hammer between the corner and everyone else in the room in an unmistakable gesture of warding and warning.
You repeat the warning for the benefit of those who don't understand Terran, just to make sure.
And then the next wave of undead properly enter your sensory range, a dark blot of necrotic hostility illuminated by three hotspots of corruption, and worse, with thin tendrils of demonic energy spreading about the group even as you watch.
"Vengeance for our fallen!"
"We do not forget!"
"Death to the intruders!"
"In the name of the true sons of Rome!"
"Kill them all!"
Well, this lot doesn't sound like they're going to be talked down, and from the orders Marcus gives and the way the troops on your side ready themselves for serious violence, your Memorian allies aren't inclined to make the attempt.
That said, when the incoming troops get a little closer, you can see that seven of them aren't truly corrupted themselves, merely wreathed in a dark haze of unholy energy that mingles demonic taint with some of the very same energy of unlife that you've been throwing around to mixed success. The aura emanates from one of the three genuinely corrupted figures, who is clad in the rotted remains of a priest's uniform not entirely unlike the one Cato wears, and the tendrils of corruption shot through it run from a medallion in the traitor-priest's left hand to the heads of the uncorrupted members of the group.
Is he controlling them? No, the cultist's aura doesn't seem strong enough for him to command this many Memorian legionaries - they were no slouches in life, and much of that strength has carried over into undeath. But if not outright COMMANDING those men, he might be INFLUENCING them - and since it's being done by channeling energy (even a particularly vile form of energy), it might be breakable by a similar method.
That said, you've been having trouble affecting individual targets with your channeling, and generating the Power for this would eat up even more of your mana.
All things considered, you would rather not leave any loyalists under the influence of the ones who betrayed them if you can help it - and you still have enough mana left that you can at least TRY to help.
You quickly alert Hermanus to your findings, point out the three definitely corrupted members of the group coming towards you, and then state your desire to try and free the others.
"Do it," he says in response.
So you do, gathering your ki and mana and holding off on fusing them into Power just long enough for Hermanus to alert Marcus, for the Captain in turn to tell the troops to brace themselves for a magical reaction, and for the cultist-priest to get into range - because if you can only reliably affect one target at a time with this technique, it makes sense for that target to be the source of the effect you want to break.
As soon as everyone is in place, you act.
Ki to mana to Power to channel to YOU-!
The double-line of Memorian loyalists shifts uneasily as golden light passes over and around them, but they do not allow themselves to be distracted more than that.
The incoming mass of undead momentarily pause in the face of your unleashed Power.
And the traitor-priest flinches back as the force of your will comes down upon him.
Gained Power Aura E (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
But he doesn't drop his spell, freeze in terror, or run screaming back the way he came.
Instead, the dead demon worshipper seems to gather his resolve, swells up as if taking a deep breath - or maybe just gathering his tainted power to himself - and points a bony finger on the hand not clutching his medallion straight at you.
"ANATHEMA!"
You blink. That's a new one... and why is Sir Pritchard making that funny choking sound?
"In the name of the gods, DESTROY IT!"
Hey now! Rude, much?
...really, Roderick, are you okay?
The seven loyalists advance, as does one of the other corrupted souls. The ninth member of the unit is another magic-user, who manages to get off a bolt of some sickly-looking greenish-grey energy, which clips a few of the legionaries mid-flight but isn't stopped on its way to you - but also isn't fast enough or sudden enough to catch you, much less catch you off-guard. Your enhanced senses and speed make dodging the attack a straightforward affair-
*Fwoom!*
-and then Hermanus blasts the undead arcanist AND the priest with Scorching Rays. It isn't enough to destroy either of the enemy undead, but the legion Magus did something to his spell that causes the normally short-lived flames to persist, clinging to their targets and spreading across their bodies. The arcanist manages to beat out the fire before it spreads too far, but the priest's rotted robes go up in flames, turning him into an inhuman torch.
"PUT ME OUT! PUT ME OUT!"
You spare a moment to be glad that Centurion Gaius took the fire-slain loyalists with him, because enemy or no, they might not be too happy about this... or maybe they'd be entirely TOO happy; it can be difficult to tell with the vengeful undead sometimes.
In any case, Hermanus's decision to use fire has succeeded where your Power failed, as the cult priest's considerable distraction has disrupted his influence over most of the loyalists.
It wasn't in time to stop them from attacking, but as the tendrils of corruption break up and fall away, you can see several of the "attackers" suddenly pausing, body language radiating pure confusion as they find themselves fighting their fellows.
Of course, the cultist that joined the advance doesn't stop, and his shouts for order and pressing the attack start to rally some of the loyalists to him, but Marcus bellows something about "battlefield Enchantment training" which once again gives them pause.
*WHAM*
And then Hornfels steps in-
*CRASH*
-and deals with the cultist in the front row-
*CRUNCH*
-with a few neat blows.
*HISS*
For his trouble, the elemental paladin takes one of those unpleasantly colored bolts to his broad chest, producing a vicious sizzling sound and an angry roar akin to an earthquake. The next thing you know, undead across the field are flinching away from the Hammerer as an aura the color of patinaed bronze radiates out from him, a spiritual surge shot through with divine power. When he raises his warhammer next, its massive head shimmers like it was a great many-faceted jewel instead of a mass of shaped stone.
/ Abominable warlock! Join your masters! /
There is a brief scream-
*WHAM!*
-which is cut off by the massive impact and accompanying flare of that same metallic light.
The flaming priest shrieks something-
*WHUMP*
-but doesn't manage to get off a spell or a curse before the OTHER elemental falls on him like the living avalanche its kind so resemble.
Hornfels glances at his kin as it draws back from the smoldering, pulverized ruin of the cultist's form.
The other elemental shrugs. / Can't let you have all the fun smashing things, now can I? /
The Hammerer nods. / That is fair. /
It takes some time after that to settle the loyalists and convince them they weren't just tricked into allowing three of their allies to be pulverized, a process that is helped along considerably when Cato and Shadow Alex return - leaving most of the unit they were with in the next room, due to space concerns. The priest is busily haranguing everybody involved when Centurion Gaius turns up and gets dragged into sorting things out.
You do a head-count in the middle of that, and come up one loyalist short. It's an unfortunate loss, but considering the soldiers were deceived into attacking a prepared defensive position when they weren't even properly equipped for combat, it could have been a lot worse.
Do you have any questions for anybody while the latest "recruits" are getting sorted out?
You're curious as to what that whole "anathema" business was about, but seeing as how Cato and Marcus are occupied sorting out the troops, you turn to Hermanus and Sir Pritchard.
Roderick starts making that funny sound again, which - now that you aren't in the middle of a combat situation - you are able to recognize as badly restrained laughter, echoing funnily inside of his helmet.
You glance at the Magus, who is, along with Trill, Shadow Alex, and the Briars, giving Roderick a strange look.
"I have no idea what the knight finds so amusing about it," Hermanus replies with a shrug, "but 'anathema' is a way of calling something accursed, damned, utterly loathsome and outcast."
You take that in, turn the information around in your head a couple of times, and slowly nod. Most people wouldn't consider an expression of divine power to be so objectionable, but since the cultist was an undead demon worshipper on the receiving end of the effect, you suppose it makes sense that he'd have a rather different perspective on the matter.
You wonder if he realized you were generating that Power on your own, or if he just thought you were channeling the power of a godly being. Either would probably have been an issue regardless, but you can see how the idea of a mortal able to call up that kind of energy independent of a god's intervention might have been particularly alarming to a follower of an unholy power, as opposed to a more conventionally limited servant of the divine.
...wait.
"...you don't suppose he thought I was a god, do you?" you ask suspiciously.
For some reason, this sets Roderick off again.
Everybody in your little group stares at him, but it's Trill who ventures a somewhat concerned, "...all right?"
The knight waves off the concern with one hand. "I'm fine, really." *Snort.* "It's just... ah... does the phrase 'and they shall know no fear' mean anything to you, Alex?"
"No," you reply honestly, "although I do kind of like the sound of it."
So do I.
"Heh. Well, if you ever create a legion of superhuman warriors with that as their motto, be sure to credit me for it."
...aaaand now I have no idea what he's talking about.
You will... keep that in mind?
You don't want to stick the cultist's sword in your dimensional pocket, and you don't really want to put any of your allies at risk by having them carry the thing around.
The Memorians' undead state is a curse of sorts in and of itself, and could have a dangerous resonance with the energies imbued into the blade as a result. Plus, the whole point of this excursion is to allow the betrayed legionaries to go to their long-overdue final rest; getting one or more of them contaminated with demonic energy would defeat the purpose.
Your summons wouldn't be in danger of any permanent effects, but given the Hardhat Beetles' origins as Hyrulean monsters are ultimately demonic, exposing them to a demonic curse doesn't seem like a good idea regardless. The three common elementals have not struck you as the shiniest stones in the pile, to borrow a phrase, which would affect their ability to resist whatever effect the curse tried to visit on their summoned forms, and while Hornfels is doubtlessly much better prepared and equipped to deal with such an issue, he kind of needs both hands free to make proper use that hammer of his.
You're ABSOLUTELY not carrying the cursed sword yourself, and you would really rather not ask Briar or Sir Pritchard to put themselves at risk doing so. That leaves the Shadows, both of whom are manifestations of your magic, and thus potential catnip for curses in their own right.
All in all, it seems like the best idea for now is just to leave the sword in the corner Hornfels slid it into, and make sure that everyone knows not to go near the thing, much less touch it.
Adding a magical ward of some sort to prevent contact might not be a bad idea, either, but a quick review of your repertoire doesn't have any particularly suitable spell leaping out at you. In the end, you decide to trust legion discipline to prevent any accidents.
Eventually, with a certain amount of shouting and a couple of threats of that discipline you were just thinking about, the officers get the troops sorted out, and while the new batch of loyalists head off to the armory to see about outfitting themselves, another "command meeting" is called.
Marcus quickly recounts the events you just went through to Cato and Gaius.
The priest then explains what the troops he was overseeing had to deal with. To sum up, five definite traitors were eliminated, two loyalists lost to battle-damage-
"But not to damnation," Cato adds firmly. "They may yet manifest anew - unless we complete our work here, in which case they will have simply gone on ahead of the rest of us."
-and another six recovered with varying degrees of injury.
You glance at your Shadow.
"Wolves," he mouths silently in response, while holding up his free hand with two fingers extended.
Ah.
Gaius then reports that the handful of prisoners you took earlier remain in the custody of the loyalists you left to guard them. There was some discussion about moving them to a more secure location, but with the proper holding cells as yet unsecured and likely rusted and rotted away besides - to say nothing of the issues with restraining the incorporeal captives - he figured it was best to just keep them under watch.
"Unless our priest or Magi can offer a more reliable alternative?" he inquires.
The idea of popping a Resilient Sphere around each of the prisoners does come to mind, admittedly, or at least for the actual ghosts you've caught thus far. The more corporeal undead could be shoved into a room and "locked" in with a Wall of Force.
After the matter of the prisoners is resolved, the question then becomes where and how to proceed with your exploration. You and your allies have enough man-, monster-, and minion-power at this point that dividing your forces isn't just possible, but necessary, which means somebody's got to stay in the command center, operate the table, and keep everyone in contact.
With the unfortunate enforced absence of the last members of the Ninth Legion to man that particular post, the job falls to Hermanus by default.
Considering the readings the security system provided about the presences in the workshop area, neither Marcus nor Gaius are keen on going in there without magical support equivalent to two fully trained, experienced, and probably quite angry legion Magi - which basically means both you AND your Shadow would need to join that push. Otherwise, your options are pressing on to the Gate, going after whatever is in the officers' quarters, or just doing a room-by-room sweep.
Which objective(s) do you want to speak in support of?
Your mana reserves are low enough that further spellcasting should probably be avoided, unless it's urgent or done via rituals. Ritual-casting in turn is probably not a good idea right now, as your allied force just drew the attention of a few dozen undead, to say nothing of those entities in other parts of the base, whether trapped in the various rooms that Hermanus was able to lock down or elsewhere. Leaving said undead alone any longer than you absolutely have to doesn't seem wise, especially not when one of them is a traitor magus, and another is a probable loyalist magus who doesn't yet know that you are his allies.
As a rule, giving unfriendly magic-users time to prepare is a bad idea, and these ones have already had anywhere from ten minutes to a few days' worth of time, depending on when their uneasy rest was disturbed enough for them to begin the process of awakening, and how quickly they proceeded to do so.
You express your concerns to the officers, and voice your support for a strike on the workshops, as soon as is practical.
Marcus, Cato, Gaius, and Hermanus all rather agree with your assessment, and a deployment is quickly worked out.
Marcus will lead the force going to the workshop, taking twenty of the slightly less than sixty loyalist troops available. You, Briar, your Shadows, and Sir Pritchard will be part of that group.
While you're on that, Centurion Gaius and Priest Cato will lead a second unit of twenty to begin clearing out nearby chambers, whether by recruiting the residents or putting them down. As neither Julius the Sorcerer nor Apprentice Magus Adalbert had much to do with the workshop area in life - the one because his powers weren't suited to creation, the other because he wasn't yet trusted with anything more complicated than scroll-work - they'll accompany this detachment to provide arcane support.
The remaining Memorians will keep watch on the command room, allowing Hermanus to work without distraction. Hopefully, anyway.
As you head out, Trill the harpy says, "Careful."
"I will be," you assure her.
As your unit starts to move deeper into the base, you, Marcus, and Roderick discuss possible tactics, only to be interrupted by Hermanus offering some important intel over the communications system. From what he can determine via the security wards, the Magus with the corrupted aura is active and working magic - specifically, a Spell of Summoning, which-
"Wait, what?" you and your Shadow exclaim in unison, interrupting Hermanus's voice.
"Double time!" Marcus calls to the troops, who pick up speed. "And follow as you're able!" he adds for the sake of five of them, who weren't among the group you cast the Spell of Haste on earlier, and so immediately start to lag behind.
"Yes, sir!"
Sir Pritchard, meanwhile, keeps up well enough, displaying a sudden turn of speed that is accompanied by a surge of his own energies.
"Some of the base workshops have summoning circles that the base-wide wards don't interfere with," the Magus is saying over all of this, voice fading in and out slightly as the base's equivalent of an intercom struggles to keep up with your unit's Hasted movements.
"You couldn't have mentioned this sooner?" your Shadow asks sharply.
"The circle hadn't been activated the last time I checked," comes the testy reply.
As if the prospect of facing a proper legion-trained Magus turned demonic cultist wasn't concerning enough to start with, he now has access to Summoning Magic.
"What are we looking at, Hermanus?" Marcus says quickly.
"Readings consistent with a spell of the sixth circle-"
Oh, good. You're dealing with one of the TALENTED Memorian battle-mages.
"-looks like a Spell of Calling... oh, hells. That's the Spell of Planar Binding, or I'm a toad."
And the good news just keeps on coming!
You think back, trying to figure out how long Hermanus was away from the station in the command room. You know that it takes ten minutes to complete the Spell of Planar Binding, and it has been... worryingly close to that amount of time.
If not for that Spell of Haste, this batch of troops would never get to the workshop in time to prevent the cultist from calling up whatever unholy help he's trying to raise. As it is, you may have a chance. Possibly. It really depends on when the traitor started his spell, and how long it'll take your guys to get INTO the workshop-
"The door is locked, I'm still trying to override it," Hermanus confirms.
-terrific.
As fast as the Memorians are moving with the benefit of your magic, you and Shadow Alex are capable of moving faster still. Do you want to run ahead to try and prevent the summoning in progress from being concluded, or would you prefer to arrive with reinforcements and a plan?
