Chapter 127: The puppet master
The street was becoming a thick, chaotic mass of groaning, shambling bodies.
For every undead Rhys and Emma cut down, two more seemed to take its place. The sheer number of them was overwhelming.
Then, they heard it.
A low, deep, groaning sound. It was not from a single undead. It was a collective sound, coming from all over the city. It was the sound of an entire city waking up from a long, dead sleep.
Rhys cut down another undead, its rotten head separating from its body with a wet squelch.
He looked up at the castle on the hill. The feeling of being watched was stronger now.
He could feel a powerful, malevolent consciousness at the heart of the city, a single will that was controlling this entire army of the dead.
It was like a giant spider, and they were just two small flies caught in its vast, growing web.
He grabbed Emma’s arm. "We have to get to the high ground!" he shouted over the noise. "We can’t fight them all here!"
He began to fight his way through the horde, pulling her along with him.
They pushed their way through the sea of grasping hands and gnashing teeth, heading for the wide, stone steps that led up to the castle plaza.
It was a brutal, desperate fight. Rhys was a storm of destruction, his shadow blades clearing a path through the endless horde.
But even he was beginning to feel the strain. The sheer number of them was overwhelming.
His Qi was draining at an alarming rate, and his arms were beginning to ache from the constant, repetitive motion of killing.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, they reached the steps. They scrambled up, leaving the main bulk of the horde behind them on the street below.
They reached the top and stood in the vast, open plaza in front of the ruined castle. They were safe, for a moment.
Rhys turned and looked out over the city. And what he saw made his blood run cold.
It was not just the street they had come from that was filled with the dead. Every street, every alley, every open space was filled with them.
The entire city was moving. It was a river of death, a silent, shambling tide of thousands upon thousands of corpses, all of them slowly, inexorably, moving towards the castle.
And as he watched, he saw more of them crawling out from the very ground itself, their grey, skeletal hands breaking through the earth.
The city was not just a ruin. It was a graveyard. A massive, unholy graveyard that had just been disturbed.
"By the gods," Emma whispered, her voice full of a horrified disbelief. She stared out at the endless sea of the dead, at the faces of the people who had once been her subjects.
The sheer scale of the horde was enough to break the will of any normal cultivator.
There was no fighting this. There was no winning. There was only being swallowed by the tide.
Rhys stood beside her, his face a grim mask.
He had faced an army of the dead before in the Labyrinth, but that had been his own army, loyal and controlled.
This was different. This was an enemy that felt no pain, no fear, and would never, ever stop.
If things turned grave, he would have no other option to summon his army.
He looked at the dark, gaping entrance to the ruined castle behind them.
Their only escape, if he didn’t want to expoe his army to her, was the portal her mother had left behind, down in the crypts that lay beneath.
But between them and that door was an entire city of the dead. And it was still growing. He could feel it.
The malevolent will at the heart of the city was calling to its soldiers, and from the deep, dark places of the earth, they were answering.
"What do we do?" Emma asked, her voice trembling slightly. The reality of their situation was beginning to crush her. "We can’t fight them all. There are too many."
Rhys was silent for a moment, his mind a cold, calculating machine. She was right. A direct fight was suicide.
Even with his power, he could not kill millions of enemies. He would eventually run out of energy, and they would overwhelm him.
He could use his Low-distance Jump to get them to the castle entrance quickly, but the horde was already beginning to climb the wide stone steps, a shambling, unstoppable wave.
They would be swarmed before they even reached the door.
He needed a different plan. He could not out-fight them. But perhaps he did not have to.
The true enemy was not the army of puppets. It was the puppet master, the single, powerful will that was controlling them from inside the castle.
If he could defeat that, the army would collapse. But to get to the puppet master, he had to get through the puppets.
’There is no other way.’ Rhys sighed.
"You are right," Rhys said, his voice calm and steady, a strange contrast to the growing roar of the dead.
"We can’t fight them all." He turned to look at her, a cold, dangerous light in his pitch-black eyes. "So we will not fight them. We will command them."
Emma stared at him, confused. "Command them? They are being controlled by whatever is in that castle."
"There is more than one king in this graveyard," Rhys said simply. He turned his back to the approaching horde and walked to the center of the plaza.
He knelt down and placed his hand on the cold, cracked stone. "Stay behind me. And do not be afraid of what you see."
He closed his eyes. He reached into his very soul, into the core of his Ashen Sovereign bloodline. He felt the familiar, cold power begin to stir.
This would be the first time he used this ability on this scale in the real world. He did not know what the cost would be, but it did not matter.
This was the only way.
He focused his will on the dust and ashes of the men who had died here just minutes ago.
They were fresh. Their life force, their echoes, were still clinging to their remains. They were perfect vessels.
"Arise," he commanded, the word a silent thought in his mind.
He began to burn his lifespan. It was not a small amount. He felt years, then decades, then centuries of his life force turning into a new kind of fuel.
A thick, grey fog, the color of ash and old bone, began to pour from his body. It spread across the plaza, covering the ground in a swirling, unnatural mist.
The malevolent will in the castle sensed it. It felt a new power, a rival power, intruding on its domain.
The groaning of the undead horde grew louder, more urgent.
They began to shamble up the steps faster, their mindless hunger now mixed with a new, instinctual command from their master: destroy the intruder.
Emma stood behind Rhys, her dagger held tightly in her hand. The first wave of the undead reached the top of the steps.
She gritted her teeth, preparing to fight, to protect the strange, silent man who was now their only hope.
But before the undead could reach them, the ground in front of her began to move.
From the swirling grey fog, a hand made of compressed ash and bone shot up from the cracks in the stone.
Then another. Every undead he had killed came to shape.
They rose from the ground with a silent, disciplined grace. Their bodies were no longer made of flesh and blood, but of a dark, grey ash that seemed to swallow the light.
Their eyes glowed with a cold, silver light, the light of absolute loyalty.
They were not just risen dead. They were his Ashen Vindicators.
In seconds, hundreds of new soldiers stood in the plaza, forming a perfect, silent shield wall in front of Rhys and Emma.
They held long spears made of solidified shadow and small, dark shields that pulsed with a faint energy.
They were an island of perfect order in a sea of mindless chaos.
The first wave of the city’s undead slammed into the shield wall. The clash was a messy, chaotic sound of rotting flesh meeting hard ash and shadow.
The Vindicators did not flinch. They held their ground, their movements precise and coordinated.
They were not just defending; they were killing. Their shadow lances pierced through the skulls of the undead with a cold efficiency.
The malevolent will in the castle let out a silent scream of rage. It had not expected this. It had not expected another necromancer.
It pushed its own will forward, trying to wrest control of the new soldiers from their creator.
Rhys felt the mental assault. It was a wave of pure, cold hatred that tried to break his concentration.
He felt a pressure in his mind, a voice that was not a voice, screaming at him to submit, to release his creations.
But Rhys’s will was a fortress. His mind, forged in the fires of the Labyrinth and the void of Chaos, was not something a simple necromancer could break.
He pushed back with his own will, a silent declaration of his own authority. This was his army.
These souls belonged to him.
The psychic battle was a silent, invisible war fought over the heads of the two clashing armies of the dead.
For a moment, the entire horde of undead on the steps faltered, their movements becoming confused as the two controlling wills fought for dominance.
It was the opening Rhys needed.
"Now!" he shouted, his eyes snapping open. He stood up, the grey fog receding back into his body.
He grabbed Emma’s hand. "Run!"
His soldiers did not need to be told. They pushed forward, their shield wall becoming a spearhead.
They carved a bloody path through the confused ranks of the city’s undead, opening a small, temporary corridor.
Rhys and Emma ran through that corridor, sprinting across the last stretch of the open plaza.
The dark, gaping entrance to the ruined castle was just ahead.
The malevolent will, realizing its mental attack had failed, reasserted its control over its army.
The horde let out a collective roar of rage and surged forward, crashing against the small, brave line of Vindicators.
Rhys and Elara did not look back.
They ran for the door. They could hear the sounds of the battle behind them, the clash of bone and shadow, the groans of a thousand dead things.
They reached the castle entrance, a dark maw that smelled of dust and ancient death.
They plunged into the darkness without hesitation.
The moment they were inside, the malevolent will let out a final, frustrated scream.
The full weight of the undead army, millions of them, crashed against the castle steps behind them, a tide of death trying to follow them into the darkness.
They were in. But they were not safe. The air inside the castle was colder than the forest outside, and it was thick with the same corrupt, stagnant Qi they had smelled in the city.
The puppet master was here. And now, they were in its lair.