Chapter 102 - Four Clan War Leader

  As soon as the two control stones touched, they melded together, their material flowing and interlocking until they’d solidified into a single object. In shape, it looked about the same as the first one I’d acquired. The stone was a small carving of a medieval tower, like a rook chess piece. It was mostly black, shot through with sparkles of clear crystal and small veins of golden yellow.

  The shape was interesting, because that’s what the first one I’d gotten looked like. The stone I’d won from the ant queen had been different, shaped more like the ant mound. That was gone now, wiped away by the merger. All that was left was my stone. It was a bit bigger than it had been before, and heavier too.

  As I thought about the stone, I felt the siren call again to use it, to activate it, same as I had when all of those Domains were created before. The feeling was weak, though, probably because there was no way to use the stone where I stood, not with two other Domains overlapping the area. If I wanted to use the thing, I’d need to get far enough away from the already existing Domains.

  What would having a double strength control stone do, anyway? I really had no way of knowing. I’d have to test and find out, and that wasn’t happening right now. I had too many other things to worry about before I could think about setting up my own Domain.

  Sue and Hope were wiping out the rest of the eggs, and I’d sent my remaining undead wandering through the tunnels to kill the remaining ants wherever they were hiding. I felt one of the fire skeletons die and frowned. They were going to need more help to finish the job, but that was easy enough to resolve.

  I’d lost what, fourteen tier three undead in the fighting, plus a couple of ants. That was a lot of Animate Dead points that I probably ought to use. I quickly went to the piles of dead ants and tapped a bunch of them, looting them for their crystals. Once I’d taken care of that, I started casting Animate Dead to bring back the ants we’d slain. It took me a few minutes, but in short order I had twenty-two tier two zombie ants created. I sent them off into the tunnels as well, moving in two packs of eleven each to scour the rest of the complex for anything living.

  They met resistance almost immediately, but they crushed it and pressed on. I kept a thread of my attention on my minions, mostly so I’d notice if they ran into any major issues, and focused the rest on collecting all of the crystals we’d won by wiping this place out.

  The eggs didn’t drop crystals. I tapped one to find out, but nothing appeared. I felt a little grateful about that, oddly enough. Sure, it would have been nice to get a bunch of extra crystals from them, but if helpless eggs dropped magical stones, then probably other helpless things would, too. The post-Event world was bad enough without adding the nightmares that could come from that sort of thing.

  The giant ants all did, though, and there were a lot of them. We’d killed almost a hundred ants in this room alone, plus there were a good number in the upper tunnels that I hadn’t collected yet. I’d need to snag those on the way out. Gathering all the stones took forever, and by the time I was done, the undead ants were coming back in, each of them bearing a recently slain ant, one of the survivors they’d hunted down.

  Some of them brought back dead ant larvae, too, but like the eggs those didn’t drop crystals. I ordered them to stop bringing those. The ant young still needed to die, or we risked one turning out to be a queen, and it was probably kinder to put them down than to allow them to starve, anyway. But I didn’t need to see each one we’d killed.

  Eventually it was done. I’d lost a few undead ants in the carnage, but I let them be. I’d Animate a few more skeletons once we hit the surface. We took our time going back up, making sure to gather each stone as we climbed our way back through the tunnel.

  I ought to have been elated. I’d just taken down a massive threat, solo! It was worth celebrating, and maybe I would once I was back with friends. For the time being, all I felt was exhausted.

  At the surface I released some of the zombie ants from my control, and instead Animated some more skeleton type undead, using up the last of the ‘raw materials’ there. I had ten juggernauts, eight fire skeletons, and five tier two zombie ants. The higher tier undead was a bigger investment, meaning I had less troops to play with, but my observation was that a single tier three was stronger than three tier ones. Quality was working for me better than quantity.

  Dawn was brightening the eastern sky by the time we were ready to roll out. That wasn’t my favorite thing to see. I was supposed to meet Patches at the ruined fort three hours after daybreak. That was still an hour or so out, but my time was seriously limited.

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  Should I go back and get Kara first, or meet Patches? Crap. I couldn’t be in both places at the same time, and now that I had a decent undead army again, my speed wasn’t what it had been, either. I could race ahead on Sue, but then I’d be leaving the rest of my undead in the dust.

  Damn it, Kara was going to kill me, but I needed to go meet Patches first. If I went to the Guard base there was no way I was getting out of there in time to meet him, and if I wasn’t there, the ratkin might vanish entirely. We could really use their help against the mall.

  I climbed aboard Sue and we headed out, surrounded by my little army. I stared back into the black hole in the ground before we left, wondering. I’d slain all the ants. One or two might escape, but probably not much more than that. I was confident this threat was done for. But I couldn’t take down the nest itself. That collection of tunnels and caverns would remain there. How long would it be before something else nasty took up residence there?

  There was nothing I could do about that. I shook my head, and set off. We took Route 16 up to Route 2, then went west from there. The sun lifted over the horizon, revealing a city that I barely recognized anymore.

  Burnt buildings were everywhere. There must have been some big fires the night before, because a lot of the ruins still smoldered. Those had been stores, and homes, and hotels. Now they were ashes and blackened stone. Smoke was everywhere on Route 2, as a lot of the burning had been right along that corridor. Had the mall undead been responsible for this? That was my best guess. They were burning the city down as they spread. I wondered how many hapless victims had been turned into zombies last night while I was facing off against the ants.

  This was a no-win scenario. I just couldn’t protect everyone from everything. I killed the ants to stop them from preying on people, but while I was underground taking them down, the zombie horde torched block after block and killed who-knew-how-many others.

  How do you keep going on, when there are so many enemies, and they keep doing everything they can to tear down what little was left of humanity?

  I clenched my jaw and stayed focus on the task at hand. One thing at a time. All I could do was take the next step, do the next right thing.

  I reached the ruined goblin fort about an hour before I was due to meet Patches, and at first I thought I’d beat them there. The ruins were untouched, still a pile of logs scattered across the ground where there’d once been walls, the goblin buildings inside crushed beneath. I’d been gone for almost a full day, so I wanted to make sure nothing else nasty had taken up residence in the meantime. At first I considered sending in my zombie ants. They’d be great for spotting any enemies hidden among the logs.

  But the ratkin wouldn’t recognize them, and I wanted to be sure not to scare them off. If they were around, hiding, they’d probably seen Sue and I, but I wanted to be certain, so I sent Hope in, instead.

  Hope went bounding up the hill the rest of the way, sniffing at the logs. All at once, the area was awash with movement, ratkin coming out of the brush one after another. I heaved a sigh of relief as soon as I recognized them.

  “Patches! Good to see you!” I called out. I passed Sue the order to bend over so I could climb down, and then remembered I didn’t need to do that anymore. I untied myself and flew up instead, gliding off her back to set down on the ground not far from my ratkin friend.

  “Selena,” Patches said, nodding respectfully toward me. “You fly without wings now?”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I guess I do!”

  “Was your mission productive? Where is Kara?”

  “It was. I gained a full rank. I’m tier seven now,” I replied. It was something to celebrate, even if whatever was in charge of the mall was still probably stronger than I was. I had it pegged at tier eight or higher. “Kara got hurt, though. She’s with allies, healing. I’ll go pick her up later, but I didn’t want to be late to meet you.”

  “You look exhausted, Lady Death,” Patches said, sounding worried. “You are well?”

  I nodded, but I could feel the fatigue seeping through my bones with every movement. “I’ll be all right. Pushed myself a little harder, and I need to rest sooner or later here. But there’s still a lot to be done, right? How did it go, gathering more ratkin?”

  Patches scuffled at his whiskers with his front paws, and I realized that was like, a grooming behavior or something. He almost looked…embarrassed? Then he spoke.

  “We did find more. Two other clans of ratkin.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but stopped.

  “And?”

  Patches shook his head, looking confused and embarrassed. “They made me war leader! For all four clans! I tried to decline, but they said I was the one who’d found humans that would treat ratkin as allies, so I was the only choice. It feels…very strange.”

  I laughed. Couldn’t help it. For a moment Patches looked offended, but I flashed him a smile. “I’m laughing in joy. That’s well earned, Patches. You are a leader for your people now, and they certainly need one.”

  “As you are a leader for yours?”

  “Mmm. I guess so?” Was I really a leader? Or just a symbol? I wasn’t sure.

  “Humans need a leader, too,” Patches pointed out.

  “There are a couple of humans already doing that work,” I told him. “Some necromancer west of here, and Colonel Turner at the Guard base.”

  “Are they doing well?” Patches asked.

  I wished I knew how to answer that question. “Probably better than I would. But I learned a lot about myself last night, too, sort of like you did when they made you leader. I’m stronger, faster, and more ready to face what’s coming than I’ve ever been before.”

  “That is good, because we will need all of your strength,” Patches replied. “I have brought fifteen paws of warriors to fight. We counted your army—another six paws?”

  I did the mental math, recalling just in time that the ratkin had four fingers, not five, and nodded. “I have about six paws of troops, yes. You have fifteen paws? That’s like sixty ratkin! That’s awesome news.”

  With that many additional troops, our odds of winning this battle were only climbing. Now I just needed to see what the Guard was willing to commit, and we could get this show on the road.