Daughter of Death - A Necromantic LitRPG

“At dusk, when the city was bathed in starlight, I recalled the tales my mentor would spin about the Seiliewichts which lurk within the roots of the Great Oaks.” A pair of elongated fingers tapped against the wooden table, “They’re hollow, you see, and once you find an opening, they sink all the way down to the centre of the planet. But it was a forbidden pastime, for the Shamans believed that tricksters of the night would spirit away anyone who intruded upon their faerie kingdoms.”

Drayya sighed, “Every race has its myths. I didn’t know the Great Oaks were hollow, though.”

“Oh, the Seilies are no myth.” Baccharum replied, “I’ve seen a Boggart myself. It was slipping into the fissure of a root tucked away beneath the flycatcher verdants. Its face was like something you glimpsed in a nightmare - ugly and long and with far too many teeth stuffed into its gob. My luck was rotten for years after that, and a presence lingered at my bedside whenever I closed my eyes. I could feel it watching me, but never once did I try to confront it.”

Drayya’s expression grew worried. Baccharum’s words were like something out of a fable, but the uncertainty across his chapped lips indicated perfect honesty. “...Why not?” She asked.

“The Seilies are bound to a queer code of morals. What may seem innocuous to us is a grave insult in their society. More often than not, they detest being perceived above all else. I did not look in the Boggart’s direction whenever its presence hounded me because I knew that was exactly what it wanted - an excuse to punish me. When my ignorance continued for long enough, it grew bored of me and left, and I haven’t felt its shadow since.”

“You’re not being serious.” Drayya frowned, “That sounds terrifying.”

“Terror and whimsy may be the only forces that keep them anchored to this world. I can’t say for certain whether they’re anything more than monsters, but they are not living creatures like you and I. They are - and will most likely continue to be - the Seiliewichts. Even when this world has passed, I’m sure their presence will linger in one form or another.”

“Baccharum.” A voice came from behind, and the two at the table swivelled their heads to face it, “Don’t bother Drayya with your ghost stories. She can be terribly superstitious.”

Lieze wandered into the room with tomes under both arms. Within the confines of Alberich’s fortress, she found, the temperature of the magma chamber was much more bearable. Out of fledgling tradition or sheer coincidence, she and the others had converted its dining room into a space to discuss strategies and future plans. Maps of the continent littered the iron table, all of them missing a crucial segment.

“Superstitious!? In this wondrous world of ours!?” Drayya turned her nose up, “Unthinkable.”

Baccharum ignored her huff and gestured broadly to the maps, saying, “We haven’t quite found what you’re looking for yet, Lieze.”

“Will we ever?” She asked.

“No.” He smirked, “A map of Akzhem won’t have been gathering dust in the archives of some Dwarven castle. A treasure like that would be more at home in a museum. I’m afraid we’ll be going in blind no matter how fiercely we search.”

“That’s not entirely true, is it?” Lieze set her books down on the table, “We have you, after all. And what better guide to the Black Forest could there be than an Elf? It’s not just the geography of the region - Elven society isn’t well understood by we dwellers in the light. For all I know, they’ll be pushovers compared to the Dwarves.”

“If only that were true.” Baccharum straightened his posture, “-But no, the Elv are anything but pushovers. You may have thought of me as an outlier all this time, but most warriors raised in Akzhem are sympathetic to the idea of becoming assassins. I wouldn’t expect them to face you head-on with even a quarter of the Dwarves’ gusto.”

“So… not only are we blind in Akzhem, but our enemies can see perfectly well and already have experience with attacking from the shadows?” Drayya sighed, “Why can’t it ever be easy?”

Lieze was about to agree, but stopped herself. Countering the strategies of her enemies was doing a fantastic job of keeping her mind sharp. The thought of outsmarting the Elves when they had a staggering home advantage was enough to excite her lust for warring.

“Not to mention, the region’s terrain will make it awfully difficult to march an army towards the Black City.” Baccharum continued, “More likely than not, we’ll be forced to split into smaller groups to make any headway - prime targets for those who prefer to lay ambushes instead of charging headlong into battle.”

Reserving her choice of Mythic Destiny had been a good call from Lieze. She was resolved to choose [Horde Master] and maximise her power to whittle the enemy down in a conflict of attrition, but that strategy simply wouldn’t work in Akzhem. [Fleshwarper] would allow her to control a smaller, manoeuvrable force. Warriors like Mime and Alberich had proven themselves quite capable of carving through fodder to reach Lieze, worsening the effectiveness of low-level Gravewalkers as she encountered deadlier foes.

“Speaking of the Black City…” Drayya piped up, “Who rules the Elves, exactly? A king?”

Baccharum shook his head, “A Head Shaman and his inner circle are responsible for governing the city. Those that live there, anyway - many Elv choose to dwell within tribes in the wilderness, often with Shamans of their own.”

“They’re disconnected as a nation.” Lieze added.

“-That was the case when I was exiled, at least. And many a year has passed since then, so who knows what might have changed?”

Unlike the mountains, Lieze wouldn’t be able to send in necromancers to scope the region out beforehand. Baccharum was the only subordinate of hers who understood how to traverse Akzhem, and he was an exile. She wasn’t keen on the idea of placing herself in harm’s way without the slightest clue of what to expect.

“This is going to be more difficult than I thought…” She muttered.

“We’ll be expected, too.” Baccharum intertwined his bony fingers, “No amount of isolation is going to prevent news of the Order’s conquests from spreading across the continent. We were able to take the Dwarves by surprise to some extent, but that won’t be the case in Akzhem.”

“Not much of an optimist, are you?” Drayya set her head down on the table, “If there’s nothing to be done about it, then there’s no need to worry either. We’ve come this far on our own merits, so we’ll just have to place our trust in Lieze.”

Her words were encouraging, but the lethargic tone accompanying them revealed just how badly Drayya was being dragged down by Baccharum’s summation. In Sokalar’s world, such rhetoric would have been punished, but Lieze knew better than to underestimate the warnings of her allies. If it wasn’t clear to her before, it certainly was now - Akzhem would not only be her final conquest, but also the most difficult.

“...It’ll be weeks yet before we’re prepared to move on.” She said, “By then, I’ll have something prepared to deal with the Elves. Focus on recuperating from the battle in the meantime.”

Baccharum stood from the chair that was much too small for him, “I think I’ll get some fresh air. I haven’t had an opportunity to leave these caverns since I arrived, and I can only tolerate the smell of ale and beard sweat for so much longer.”

Through the doorway, he disappeared into the harsh, windowless corridors. The rays of marigold light filtering into the dining room could fool one into thinking the fortress was trapped in perpetual twilight, but it was simply a trick of the magma chamber’s luminescence mixing with the sunlight casting down from above.

“How are you feeling?”

Lieze lifted her chin to see Drayya staring at her from across the table.

“How am I feeling?” She repeated.

“The Dwarves are gone, and you’re two Scions up. I thought you would be happier. Or is that expecting too much from you?”

Lieze paused, “...I have nothing to be happy about while there are still enemies on the horizon.”

“You said something like that when we took Tonberg, too.” Drayya closed her eyes, “Is it really that you can’t afford to relax, or are you too afraid to admit that you’re worried about something? You can hide it from the others, but not from me.”

Lieze wasn’t certain how she felt about someone knowing her so well. Drayya had a bad habit of yanking her down from from the Order’s impenetrable throne and making her seem like some aimless girl seeking a shoulder to cry on. Worse still, as the months crept on, she found that habit ever more endearing, and the offer of Drayya’s embrace exquisitely tempting.

The girl’s cheeky smirk revealed just how dearly she loved those moments. The innocence captured in her expression reminded Lieze of a far simpler time, when the two of them barely came up to Lüngen’s waist and spent all of their free time trekking ankle-deep through the marshes on the hunt for singing bullfrogs.

“...Do you think the Sages were being truthful?” Lieze asked, “About the Light-in-Chains, and the end of this world. Or do you think we’re no more than puppets in some grand scheme to usurp the Gods?”

“I’ll be honest with you - I trust those old fools about as far as I could throw them.” Drayya spread out her arms on the table, “Do you remember the story about Ricta’s lost sister? The monster we found beneath the castle? It was a Sage who orchestrated that farce, and for no other reason than to sow despair. He could have saved that child, but instead, he transformed it into some kind of twisted creature.”

“I took that to mean the child was destined to die, and that opposing destiny only leads to tragedy.” Lieze replied, “The sister’s abandonment was the result of cruelty on behalf of her family, not the Sage. They wanted an immaculate daughter who could grow into a tool for political gain, not a monster bereft of beauty. That’s why they locked her away.”

“-And yet those who punished fools obsessed with defying destiny ended up trying to control it themselves.” She sighed, “I agree that it’s suspicious. Why would the Sages have bothered ascending if they planned on destroying this world? I wouldn’t be surprised if they swooped in at the last minute to reveal that we were pawns all along.”

Sigmund’s words seemed genuine at the time, but Lieze wasn’t a fan of any factor she didn’t have direct control over.

“I don’t doubt that the Light-in-Chains is powerful. But we still haven’t discovered what it actually is from a source that isn’t confused by riddles.” She said, “Before we make a move on Akzhem, I want to find another Sage’s tower and get some real answers for once.”

“-And if it turns out we’re being led on after all?” Drayya cocked her head.

Lieze placed both hands on the table.

“I don’t care.” She answered, “We’ll take the Light-in-Chains for ourselves if that’s what it takes. Those fools haven’t ‘ascended’ at all. They’re just phantoms of the past, unable to affect the world in any meaningful way. Those who seek ‘immortality’ - the likes of Sokalar and the Sages, are wasting their time. They’ll do anything but admit that true change can only come about at the hands of we lowly mortals.”