The Grim Legion

by Kindred Ult

  For his part, Darren gave no explanation save to continue walking until he reached the cliff's face. He did not stop, but walked into the cliff. As Niethel gaped, Sophella followed Darren's example, and before Niethel could try to make sense, the werewolf skeleton behind him grabbed him and walked towards the cliff. In an abstract sense, Niethel appreciated the way that the elongated fingers were perfectly fitted for capturing him, but more important to him at the moment was the ever-approaching cliff. As they came very close to it, he tensed for impact, but no pain enveloped him when he finally came into contact. When he felt nothing, he opened his eyes, just noticing that he had unconsciously closed them.

  Light filtered through the open cave mouth behind him, and Niethel felt silly as the skeleton set him down. Darren and Sophella stood a few feet in front of him. They were watching something, but from where he stood, Niethel could not see what it was. When he walked up to them, however, he gaped. He stood at the bottom of a hollowed out mountain. In front of him was a deep pit, and at the bottom of it he could see what looked like an arena. The ground of the arena was covered with bones, to the extent that Niethel was not sure how high the bones were stacked because the ground never showed through them.

  Above him, though, was the true spectacle. The cavern corkscrewed upwards and upwards, slowly becoming smaller until it hit the top. A small glint of moonlight showed through a hole at the top. Crosswalks shot from one wall of the mountain to the other, and so many passed the expanse that they looked like a giant maze from where he stood. Large chains hung from many of the crosswalks, and they usually supported buildings, which blinked with light as they swung back and forth to a tuneless rhythm. Countless lights followed the curve of the two main walkways, which worked their way around the mountain. Even from where he stood, Niethel could see homes dotting the otherwise gray sides of the cavern as small points of color and light.

  Sophella turned to Niethel and smiled at him. It was easy to tell what she was thinking. She was glad to be home. When Niethel joined the two of them, Darren said that they should meet the leader as soon as possible, so he began to lead them up one of the two large pathways. As they walked, Niethel could not help but notice the humans around him.

  There were humans walking up the main roads, across the bridges and crossways, or simply flying. There were old couples, silently roaming the halls while exchanging few comments. Their personal skeletons seemed almost as corroded as they were. They hobbled alongside their masters and provided support when needed. They usually held cloaks or canes rather than weapons. Children ran about, hung from the chains, and some even flew for short distances. Their skeletons were disparate things. They teetered on two bones that served as feetless legs, shambled forward with twenty or more bones as legs, or tried to hop and maintain their balance on only one bone. They looked like they might fall apart at any second, and many of them did from time to time, but once one did, its miniature master or mistress would immediately run to it and begin to fix it.

  The younger adults walked about in couples, groups, or on their own. They appeared to be normal humans, with concerns, loves, dislikes, and lives. Their skeletons ranged from ones that looked like they might even be human to ones that barely had any recognizable shape. Niethel found it interesting how he could immediately tell the combatants from those who did not battle by their skeletons. The fighters always had unconventional creations that were festooned with weapons, while those that must have been civilians employed skeletons that seemed more down to earth. A few even had ones that were basically what a normal human skeleton would look like.

  Niethel found it hard to not stare, and at one point Darren turned around and caught him looking at a necromancer couple that walked along with their hands clasped. Niethel felt eyes on him, and quickly shifted his gaze back to Darren, who laughed.

  "You seem surprised, leech. Did you not expect a civilization here? Did you think that we would be a collection of huts surrounded with mounds of partially decomposed bodies? Did you think that we would be groups of old humans long ago lost in our depravity with no children because we sacrificed them to pagan gods?" He sneered.

  "No." Niethel could think of nothing else to do, so he lied.

  Darren did not appear at all convinced, but he shrugged and turned back to walking up the slanted, winding road. "Damn demon worshiper." He whispered as he continued walking. He may have not known about vampire's hearing, so it made Niethel wonder just what he meant by that comment if it was not meant as an insult. Before he could really ponder the problem, however, he was caught up again with the sights and sounds of the city as they continued to scale the inside of the mountain.

  Niethel noticed that the houses, bridges, and even the state of the road improved as they got higher, and the necromancer's cloaks were more individually designed. The skeletons became even more exotic, with orcs, dwarves, dragons, vampires, what looked like octopuses, and every manner of unimaginable hybrids. There were also many monsters walking about that were still flesh now, from zombies that reeked of death to gargantuan creatures that looked as if they still might be alive. Niethel could not help but notice the change, and he wondered just what kind of class differences there were between those who lived at the bottom and those at the top.

  He saw fewer warriors, and more luxury skeletons the higher they climbed, and eventually he saw necromancers walking with several special skeletons following them. He even saw one necromancer, with gold embroidering webbed all along his cloak, followed by almost forty individualized skeletons. He was almost impressed, until he saw the ten other necromancers who walked behind the apparently rich one. They wore normal cloaks, and their heads were bent down as if in deep thought. Niethel had never seen necromancers have to focus to control their personal skeletons, and he was forced to wonder just how many of those skeletons were being meticulously kept alive by the work of the lower-class necromancers.

  He happened to glance to the side, and saw Sophella watching the procession with some distress evident on her face. She seemed upset by what she was seeing, but she still calmly walked past the rich necromancer, and even answered his call to her. Similar appearances became even more common as they reached the final stretch of road before the end.

  The necromancers living at the last part did not walk anymore. They rode upon either some skeletal beast or upon platforms carried by several skeletons. As usual, they were followed by dozens of specialized skeletons and a small group of huddled necromancers. Niethel saw Sophella's face twist when she saw one of these, but she still remained studiously silent.

  Then something strange happened. Not three hundred feet from where the road hit the ceiling, they passed what looked like the last of the necromancer nobility. Niethel had no idea if they were nobility or not, but he felt that they deserved the title. They passed by the man, who sat upon the palanquin held up by eight skeletons with four arms each, but he did not greet them, so they gave none in return. Both Niethel and Sophella saw that the group of necromancers at the end of the amazingly long line of skeletons that followed the noble was struggling. Sweat lined their faces, and every now and again one would stumble. Niethel thought little of it; he had grown accustomed to even that sight lately, but then he saw one of the necromancers stumble and fall to the ground. The necromancer hit the ground with a thud not ten feet away from him and Sophella, and sprawled along the cobbled road.

  The three of them stopped, and Niethel was about to go to the necromancer and help her, for he saw that it was a woman by the length of her copper red hair, when he heard a shout and looked back behind him. At the front of the procession, the necromancer noble was lying on the floor as well. Apparently, the necromancer that had collapsed had been in charge of several of the skeletons holding up the palanquin, and when she collapsed, they did the same. The palanquin had toppled over, and now the necromancer noble was lying on the ground.

  He swiftly got to his feet and looked over at the group of necromancers, who now stood stock-still i
n astonishment. As soon as the noble saw the woman lying on the ground, his face contorted in rage and he scrambled to his feet. He walked stiffly towards her, and Niethel could see his blood red face from where he was. As he walked, the noble motioned to one of the largest skeletons, which saddled up to him. Niethel noticed that the skeleton had two spinal cords, and though that was strange, until he noticed the noble grab one of them mid-stride and yank it out. The spinal cord went limp immediately, and as the noble flexed it in his hand, Niethel noticed with instantaneous clarity that it was a whip.

  When the noble reached the woman, she was just barely beginning to get to her feet. With a quick motion of his hand, the noble had two skeletons help her up. The skeletons held her by each of her arms, and the noble lifted her chin with his free hand until she was looking him in the eyes.

  "I-I'm sorry, lord." She began to say, but before she could say more, he cut her off with a shout.

  "Sorry? Sorry! I pay you good money to just walk there and keep my skeleton creations animated. I pay you well for such a simple task, but what do you do? You let go of your control, and threw me from my throne. You're not sorry, not yet." When he was finished, he chopped his hand in the air and the two skeletons holding her turned her around until her back was facing him. Another skeleton walked forward and used the sharpened bones it possessed instead of hands to slice open the back of her cloak. The robe fell around her as a line of blood flowed down her back from the cut the skeleton had made. As the noble raised the spinal cord, Darren hesitatingly walked in front of the scene.

  "Perhaps we should see the Lich King no—" He started, but Sophella pushed him out of her way and stared at the scene before her. Niethel was as transfixed as she was.

  The noble raised his hand behind his head before bringing down the whip with a brutal ferocity that rivaled even a vampire. The woman screamed in pain as the spinal cord cut a gash along her back, and the other necromancers huddled together away from the noble. The noble grinned and brought his arm back again before slashing down a second time. This time the whip slashed across the woman's spine, and she screamed in agony and slumped in the skeleton's grasp. The noble began laughing and brought the whip back a third time. When he tried to swing it down, however, he hand would not move.

  The noble turned around and saw a black-gloved hand wrapped around his wrist, and he moved his confused gaze to the eyes of Sophella, who stood next to him with fury in her eyes. Before he could even speak she grabbed him about the neck with her right hand and lifted him into the air. He gurgled, and she slammed him against the wall of the mountain. He gasped in pain, and spewed out a few words.

  "Wh-what are you doing, kill her!" His face scrunched as Sophella forcefully closed his windpipes.

  The other necromancers were snapped out of their stupor, and they began making motions with their hands. The multitude of skeletons surged towards Sophella, but in a flash Niethel was between them with his sword and dirk drawn. The first skeletons to meet him were quickly dispatched, and before many more could join the battle, Sophella tightened her grip around the noble's throat until he gagged. She looked him in the eyes.

  "Tell your pet necromancers to cease their attacks before you and all of your precious skeletons die." Even as she spoke, Niethel was weaving in around the skeletons and slicing at will. Each cut he made incapacitated a skeleton, and none of them seemed to be able to touch him. In the back of his mind, he noticed that only a few of them were battle skeletons, and he smiled as he thought about how weak this noble really was.

  The noble choked once, and then, when Sophella released her grip on his throat a bit, he quickly gave orders to stand down. The skeletons immediately stopped, and the necromancers looked relieved as they ceased their hand movements. Sophella smiled as they stopped, but then the noble looked at her and spoke in a trembling, pathetic voice.

  "It's again-against the law to hurt an-another necromancer." The pain in his eyes was evident, and they could see he was pleading.

  Sophella turned to look at the woman, who was even now sprawled across the ground, her back laid open and blood flowing down it. She looked back at the noble and whispered very quietly. "Yes, it is."

  In a flash she had slammed him to the ground, and in seconds her and Niethel were walking along with Darren. She stopped only once, when she reached the group of necromancers, and that was to tell them to take the woman to the infirmary. After that, she looked neither to the left nor the right as the three of them walked to the end of the road and up to the stairs that marked the beginning of the palace and the home of the Lich King. When they reached them, Darren turned to the two of them. Niethel had expected a reaction from him, but his face seemed studiously blank.

  "In here is the Lich King. You may enter, Sophella, but the other one may not. We have already given the two of you a great privilege. No other vampires have ever entered our city alive before, and only you may see our Lich King. I will watch over the other one while we wait. He will, of course, be forced to have a spell placed upon him forcing him to never speak of this place again."

  "Gee, thanks." Niethel was beginning to like this place less and less.

  Sophella shot him a look of warning and agreed. Darren moved aside as she walked up the steps. When she had passed out of their sight, Darren turned back to him and motioned to a comfortable bench bolted to the wall. It was long enough for two people to lay outstretched on it, so they were a comfortable distance away from one another when they sat down, but Niethel still felt uncomfortable. He stared straight in front of him, until he noticed that Darren was looking at him from the other side of the bench. Niethel stared back at him for a bit, but eventually the silence became too dense, and he had to break it.

  "What?"

  "What?" Darren replied, his face a challenge.

  Niethel returned his challenge. "Why are you staring at me?"

  Darren's eyes narrowed. "Because I've never seen a monster before."

  "Hey, at least vampires treat their own with some sense of decency, not like your people, apparently." Niethel had not really meant to say it like that, but what he had seen was still very fresh in his mind.

  Darren's face looked like it was ready to explode. "You think that you're so damn superior to us, don't you? You think that you're sickened by what that necromancer did to the other? That was nothing compared to what you vampires do to humans. She will heal, and he would have been reprimanded, I'm sure of it. You vampires, however, you steal our very souls and damn us for eternity every time you make another of your own. You tell me what is worse, is it social problems and reanimating the dead, or killing innocent humans before bringing them back against their will and cursing them to an eternity of punishment?"

  Niethel was taken aback by the ferocity of Darren's emotions, and he had no response save to look ahead of himself at the road across the gap. As he watched necromancers walking around, he pondered what Darren had said. 'Are we really that bad?' The question disturbed him, and he wondered, not for the first time, just what would happen when he died. His fatigue caught up to him before long, however, and he gladly slipped into the oblivion of sleep. He hated thinking about topics like that anyway.

  Sophella walked along the halls that filled the very top of the mountain with nostalgic happiness. It had been so long since she had been here that she only remembered about some turns right after she made them. All of the paintings, rugs, and carvings made her think of all of the times she had run past them with her childhood friends. She remembered her family, her loving mother and strong father and all of her siblings. She had been the oldest, but now most of them would seem older than she was now. She had returned only once before since becoming a vampire, and even then they had all seemed so much older.

  Her feelings grew stronger when she reached the doors that marked the entrance to the royal chamber. She grabbed the handles and was comforted by their worn smoothness. After standing in front of the doors for a moment, she breathed in and pulled them open before
walking into the chamber. The first thing she noticed was all of the necromancers who sat around on tables that littered the room. The carpet that led to the throne was the same, but all along the sides necromancers muttered back and forth amongst one another. None of them had skeletons with them, since only the Lich king could have a skeleton with him in the room, but it was obvious by their dress that these were the wealthiest of the necromancers.

  Sophella felt uneasy seeing all of these here. They had never been there before, since her father had always held the royal chamber in high regard and only allowed a few in at once. In that moment, she walked swiftly past the tables and up the carpet that lead to the bone-encrusted throne. Her suspicions were validated when she saw that the person sitting on the throne was not her father, but when she saw whom it was she smiled and called out.

  "Skull!" She ran forward with elation, forgetting court protocol for a moment in her happiness. She bounded up the steps that led to the throne and embraced the startled Lich King.

  "Sophella?" He replied, obviously startled. When he had composed himself, he returned her embrace. "Sophella, it has been too long since I last saw you, sister."