Chapter Thirty Eight

Lilia gathered her mana and prepared for round two against Javert.

She felt a degree of hesitation at the idea of finishing off the undead necromancer. At least, she had a few hours ago. He clearly knew much more about the art than Lilia herself did. Sure, he didn’t appear to be as good at creating familiars, but Lilia still didn’t know how to place spells on souls. If she looked at it from that perspective they were on even ground.

The situation had seemed urgent enough that Lilia had gone ahead and cut Javert’s mind conduit without broaching the subject with Cinna first, but she’d originally intended to ask the princess about the possibility of letting Javert live afterwards. Even a lich like him would need some time after reviving before his mindless body got around to restoring his mind conduit again. That would have been plenty of time for Mr. Bearbones to crush his new soul crystal and disable him again.

In the meantime Lilia might have been able to come up with some way of limiting Javert’s reach and abilities. Maybe she could have constricted his soul conduit to reduce his access to mana or found some way of cutting him off from his thralls and familiars. Even failing that, Lilia hoped Cinna would thought of a way to convince him to stop trying to kill them.

Then Javert had attacked Mr. Bearbones’ soul.

At that point Lilia decided letting him live would be too dangerous. She understood now why necromancers usually placed spells on the souls of their thralls and familiars. Javert pierced nearly all the way to Mr. Bearbones’ soul conduit before Lilia could even react. If not for the connection between she and her friend he might have succeeded. As Javert’s mana settled around her friend’s soul conduit, though, Lilia had sent a surge of her own mana through their bond and blasted Javert’s mana away.

Oddly enough, he didn’t seem to have expected that. His shock had been apparent even without words. He’d gone stiff and his defenses and slipped, giving Lilia enough time to destroy the tendril he’d sent out and pierce so far into his soul that he’d no longer had the leeway to go attacking her friends.

No thoughts of mercy were left in Lilia’s mind as she plunged past the surface of Javert’s soul with her mana. Fortunately with Javert more or less “dead” right now the resistance Lilia faced had been greatly reduced. This made her third duel with a mage in the depths of his own soul, too, so she’d built up a deal of experience.

The first mage Lilia had fought hadn’t been as strong as Count Keller. Neither was Javert, for that matter. It might have had something to do with Keller being a noble. Lilia didn’t really understand what that meant, though. She wanted to ask if being a powerful mage was required for becoming a noble, but it would have to wait until she was done.

If Lilia were to rank the three, Javert still took first place. He’d been incredibly difficult to defeat while conscious. Every move Lilia made had been countered immediately. Not by sheer raging force, but by deliberate and coordinated movements. Javert’s control of his mana had been leagues beyond Lilia’s own and he’d used every trick available to slow her progress.

Where Lilia excelled, though, was offense. She couldn’t currently replicate his defensive techniques but she hadn’t spent a year wrestling with the layered defenses Master imbued his thralls with for nothing. Try as he might, nothing Javert did could entirely sever the tendrils of mana Lilia used from her own soul. When he tried to tear them apart she just made them more flexible. If he attempted to cut them off, Lilia concentrated her mana to fend off his counterattacks.

Her progress had been slow, but Lilia had never once been pushed back. She’d fought her way to the center of his soul over the course of hours and severed the connection between Javert’s mind and body. After going through an ordeal like that Lilia had been hesitant to delve back in, but…she found herself almost disappointed by how easy the second round ended up being. Even as tired as she was, Lilia easily navigated the currents of Javert’s soul. Before she knew it she had her mana wrapped around his mana conduit.

“How…easy,” Lilia murmured. Apparently Cinna didn’t hear what she’d said, as the knight didn’t reply. Shaking her head, Lilia tightened her grip on Javert’s soul conduit until it finally snapped. His soul drifted away as if carried by the wind, vanishing into whatever place souls went to. Then the aching pain in her butt won the battle for Lilia’s attention. “I’m done! Can we please stop now? This cart is really hurting my butt.”

“Already?” Cinna questioned in surprise. She turned to stare at Lilia for a few seconds. Lilia looked away, more concerned with rubbing her sore spots. “Very well. It doesn’t seem like there are any draugr nearby so I believe we’re in the clear. Although…”

“What?”

“I can steer the horses with the reins, but you’re the one that told them to run. I think you’re the only one that can stop them,” Cinna pointed out. Lilia had been so distracted she’d forgotten the horses were her familiars.

“Oh. Right. You can stop running now!” The horses slowed to a walk but didn’t actually stop. “Um, I mean, you can stop now. Actually, just listen to whatever Cinna tells you to from now on, okay?”

Cinna started laughing. Lilia puffed out her cheeks.

“I’ll start setting up camp. Go ahead and dump that body off to the side of the road or something,” Cinna said once she’d finished. The normal reaction probably would have been to ask if they should bury the body, but that question didn’t even occur to Lilia in the first place. She just nodded at Mr. Bearbones, who dropped the corpse off the back of the cart.

Lilia thought she heard chewing sounds from that direction a few second later, but she didn’t really care enough to check. Probably just Cyclops anyway.

***

“You’re a monster…” Lilia groaned the next day as she struggled to find some way of sitting in the cart comfortably. It seemed to be a futile effort. She’d been shifting her position all morning but nothing worked. While she knew little about carts, Lilia had grown certain of one thing: they were not meant to move this fast.

Every bump and pit in the road caused the cart to bounce like mad. Much to Lilia’s misfortune there were many of those. They’d hardly been on the road for an hour before Lilia began praying for one of the cart’s wheels to break and save her from this torture.

“We’re making good time, though,” Cinna rebutted. Lilia felt the cart begin to slow. “At a walk we would have needed much longer to reach the next town. Look; it’s already in sight.”

Peeling herself off the bottom of the cart, Lilia gazed into the distance. She could faintly make out the outline of buildings in the distance.

“So we can look for a coach now, right…?” Lilia asked hopefully.

“Assuming the town never evacuated, yes,” Cinna confirmed. Hearing that, Lilia deflated. “Keep in mind this town was under the purview of Count Keller. We’ve already seen that others of his vassals failed to evacuate. Chances are high that Dame Stenberg didn’t either.”

“Then why do you keep bringing up that they might not have!?” Lilia shouted.

“I don’t want to get your hopes up, but I don’t want to dash them either…” Cinna replied, sounding conflicted. “Personally, I just hope we can find another cart at all. It’s hard to say how much longer the wheels on this one will last.”

“Can’t we just ride the horses instead?”

“Riding a horse takes getting used to as well. I’m afraid it wouldn’t be that much of an improvement from your perspective. You would likely have saddle sores by the time we stopped for lunch,” Cinna explained. “You lack proper clothing for riding and would need time to learn how to maintain the correct posture as well.”

“If it’s going to be like that I’d rather go back to walking,” Lilia asserted.

“Now, now. If we can’t locate a couch we’ll at least borrow some bedding. I’m sure we can find enough pillows and blankets to make the back of the cart comfortable. Not quite as good as proper shock absorbers, but better than nothing,” Cinna assured her. Unwilling to believe it until she’d tried it, Lilia just grunted in response.

Since Cinna had slowed down anyway, Lilia hopped down from the cart. She could keep up at the current pace and she wanted a break from being tossed around. Noticing her absence, Mr. Bearbones lifted his head and leaned over the side, brushing his skull up against Lilia in a request for pets. She rubbed the top of his skull, amused by the way his neck bones pressed right against the side of the cart in a way that would have been impossible for a living bear with a whole throat in the way.

An hour passed. The town grew closer. It paled in comparison to Storrhamarr but was still large enough to warrant its own walls to keep out monsters. A gate sat along the road Cinna and Lilia travelled, its doors hanging open.

The bodies in the streets had been left there long enough to become draugr already.

Much as Cinna predicted, this town too had failed to evacuate. Few armed draugr walked the streets, though. Considering the number of them in Storrhamarr, Lilia didn’t need to think very hard to figure out where they’d gone. Even she could guess that Javert wanted as many soldiers as he could get. Evidently the civilians hadn’t been worth considering, though, as he’d simply left them behind to resurrect on their own instead of making them thralls.

When Lilia looked up at Cinna she found a grim look on the woman’s face that Lilia didn’t quite understand. After all, she’d expected to find the town in this state, hadn’t she? Humming lowly, Lilia dismissed it as something she wouldn’t get and turned her attention back to the draugr. She didn’t sense any connections on them, so she went ahead and got rid of the ones already in range.

“Are you certain there are no other necromancers nearby?” Cinna asked, seeing the draugr fall to the ground. “Then again, perhaps it would best to draw them out anyway…”

“I don’t see any souls here that look like mages,” Lilia replied.

“I suppose if there were any the necromancers wouldn’t have left them lying around like the rest,” Cinna acknowledged. “Still…we only saw a single pair in Storrhamarr. There should be at least a few mages in any town of this size, and it isn’t as if we conscripted every mage in the kingdom. Did they gather every mage they found and send them all to join that army at the Stryk?”

“Uh…I don’t know. I guess I could send Directions to check, but I would take a while.”

“It was a rhetorical question. No need to worry about finding the answer yourself. Let’s focus on finding ourself a coach for the time being.”