Chapter 169 - Terminal Ferocity

The look on his face was priceless. Peter clearly hadn’t expected me to answer that way. He spluttered for a moment, then shook his head and gestured wildly with his hands.

“Why all of this, then? Why the white flag, the meeting? If you didn’t want to negotiate a surrender, why do all this?”

I needed to be careful about my answer. If he knew I was stalling for time, he’d stop letting me do that. He’d throw caution to the wind and burn troops trying to take the Farm down faster. Even if he didn’t know why was was stalling for time, he was canny enough that if he knew I was, that would be enough to make him take action.

“I wasn’t sure, when I first came out here,” I lied. “I thought maybe there was a way to reach some sort of agreement. But Peter, you don’t want people to work with. You want people to serve you. You want an army big enough to conquer more and more lands. Where does it end? You want to be king of Vermont? Of New England? When does it stop?”

“Who says it has to?” Peter replied. “The Event changed everything! Before, money meant power. Now, personal power is what matters. Real power is what moves mountains. My god, look at you! You’re standing here holding off an army of orcs basically through sheer will and grit.

“Imagine the two of us, side by side! We could conquer any challenges we set our minds to. There would be no obstacle that we couldn’t overcome. Your will and power, coupled with mine? We’d be truly unstoppable.” Peter shrugged, then shook his head, looking almost bereft. “Why throw all of that potential away?”

“Mostly because you’re an asshole, Peter,” I replied. “You treat people as tools, not as people. You’re even worse with nonhumans. How much do you care for the orcs dying today for your cause? I’m guessing not much, because they’re just a means to your end.”

I backed away from him. Part of me did feel sad, because in some ways, he was right. He and I would have been an amazing team. We could have done a lot more together. Maybe we could have brought peace and calm to the whole region, even the state. Maybe beyond that, too.

But not with him.

He was a dark, evil man, who was dedicated to personal power at any cost. I’d never be able to trust him, nor would I be able to rein in his abuses of others. That meant there was only one option for me: to oppose him.

I flitted skyward, lifting myself ten feet off the ground so I was prepared to fly free if he had the dragon attack. Before flying off, I said one more thing.

“You’re right. We could have been great. It’s a shame you have so much darkness in your heart.”

Leaving on that note, I soared back to my wall. Peter mounted up on his dragon behind me, and passed orders to the orcs to get into motion again.

By the time I landed back on my walls, the siege towers were in motion again. I surveyed the field. Peter had brought the rest of his army forward some. The bulk of his forces were only a couple hundred feet behind the towers, now. And the towers were moving, getting closer to my walls every minute.

Plum and Sue were both still outside the walls, and I was out of other options to deal with the towers. If I hit one with lightning, that would give Peter the opening he needed to swoop in with the dragon. I couldn’t afford that, so I couldn’t just blast the things.

Sending out a fighting force from inside the walls wasn’t in the cards, either. I had just over three hundred tier one zombies left, but they’d get ripped apart by the much stronger orcs. I had a couple dozen tier five undead, but they wouldn’t stand up long against over a hundred tier four and five enemies.

I was going to have to send in my big guns, which meant I was going to lose them, which sucked. Plum was a powerful asset, and I was glad to have her around. But Sue? That dino had been with me through thick and thin. I’d won so many battles thanks to Sue’s power and Fireballs that I wasn’t even sure what it would be like without them. Sue was irreplaceable.

But I was out of options.

I allowed the orc line to advance a lot nearer. I had to wait until they were close enough that I could cast some spells at that range. In theory I could fly over, but the orcs had bows. They’d just fill the air with arrows until they took me down. On the wall, I had cover.

Once the towers were near enough that I could support Sue and Plum properly, I had to act fast. They were fifty feet from the wall now. Another few minutes and they’d be dumping orcs onto the parapet next to me.

First, I cast Augment Undead on both Plum and Sue. I wanted to give them as much power as possible. Once they were Augmented, I sent them in. Sue attacked the righthand tower while Plum attacked the left. I grinned as I watched the orcs react to two kaiju undead bearing down on them at breakneck speed once I gave the order.

Plum rushed forward, clucking like a deranged chicken, headed straight for the tower. Sue took a different tack, coming in from the side instead and blasting it with a Fireball. The tower took the hit, the explosion canting it off to one side. The orcs heaved on ropes, struggling to keep the tower upright, and they’d almost gotten it steady again—which was precisely when Sue crashed into it, flipping it over completely.

The giant undead chicken was less elegant about her attack. Plum just raced in at a sprint and smashed through the tower. Timbers and soaked leather went flying in all directions. Plum let out a mighty squawk as she passed through the shattered tower. The orcs on the other side recovered fast and pitched spears at her, but spears don’t do much damage to a giant chicken skeleton.

They did attract her attention, though. Plum wasn’t happy about having spears tossed her way, and she demonstrated her displeasure by eating the nearest orc. One gulp, and the orc vanished into her beak.

No, I have no idea where the orc went. He didn’t flop into the middle of her ribcage. He just vanished. Sometimes, magic can be as scary as it is interesting, and this wasn’t a question I wanted to ponder in the moment.

Sue was in the midst of a pitched battle. There had been about a hundred orcs hiding behind that tower, each of them close to Sue in power. They engaged as a mass. Orcs tried climbing Sue’s back, but the dino shook them off. Sue’s teeth bit one orc in half while their tail sent three other enemies flying. The enemy was getting in their licks, though, and the damage was racking up fast.

I cast Heal Undead on Sue. I needed to keep them both on their feet as long as I could. The towers were down, but that wasn’t enough to win the day. Peter had other ways of blowing apart my walls. I sent a Heal toward Plum as well. Both of my big undead were taking serious damage as the orcs gathered around them, penning them in and cutting into them.

Then the rest of the orc horde came forward at a run. I didn’t know if Peter ordered them in or if they’d just seen the fighting and lacked the discipline to hold back any longer, but whichever the case, they were moving now. It took under a minute for them to close with my undead, and now the damage was pouring in.

I cast more Heal Undead spells, as rapidly as I could manage, but I already knew it wasn’t going to be enough. The orcs tossed ropes on both undead. Sue burned them away with a Fireball, but Plum had no such defense. She cut away some of the ropes with her beak, but the orcs just looped more over her.

Plum staggered, almost falling over, and bit another orc in half. She’d killed so many of them! But she was fading in spite of all the Heal spells I’d cast. The worst part was, once she died, that was it. I’d cast Animate Dead on her bones, which was a single-use spell. If she ‘died’ again while still Animated, I’d never be able to recover her bones and use them again.

I waited until just before she was done for. The orcs had her pinned with a dozen ropes, but she still struggled and kept fighting. Another orc went down, and another… But she was almost gone. It was time.

I withdrew the magic keeping Plum animated.

She froze for a moment, then toppled sideways. All the resistance she’d been making to the ropes vanished in an instant, and she just fell over in the direction they’d been pulling. Unfortunately for the orcs, they hadn’t expected her to just drop, so she fell onto them, crushing a few more enemies in the process. Every dead orc was a plus.

Plum was gone, but she’d done a hell of a lot of damage to the enemy on her way out.

Sue was likewise in trouble. The orcs had my dino surrounded. I wanted nothing so much as to rush out there and help Sue escape, retreat back to the walls. But that wasn’t going to help, not really. The orcs would blow up the walls, and I’d have to send Sue to fight them again. We’d be right back where we were.

Instead, did the same thing for Sue that I did for Plum. I released the dinosaur from the spell I’d cast.

With Plum, that had been Animate Dead, bringing a semblance of life back to a dead body. But Sue was animated by the ambient magic of the world. I’d cast Control Undead on Sue, instead. When I dropped the spell, Sue didn’t collapse. The dinosaur instead reverted to their natural, uncontrolled state.

I cast another Heal Undead and kept casting them as quick as the spell reset, and sat back to watch the fun. See, Sue under my control was a powerhouse. But I had to order the dino to do things. I could order Sue to attack an enemy, but I’d always felt like my orders were limiting them. Like Sue wasn’t fighting at full power because they were held back by my commands. Maybe if I had more time and experience, I’d have been able to use Sue’s full strength, maybe not.

Either way, now Sue was released. The dinosaur was free to be a dinosaur again, and Sue was in the middle of the most target-rich environmental imaginable.

The first thing Sue did was let out a Jurassic war-cry that froze the entire battlefield. I could still move. So could Peter and his dragon. A few of the highest tier orcs kept their wits about them as well. But almost all the orcs simply stopped cold, right where they stood, struck numb by the magic behind that cry.

Which was when Sue lashed out. That massive tail swung, crushing two orcs. Sue stepped on another, spat a Fireball that sent another six flying, and kept moving, breaking through their ranks like it was nothing. The dinosaur was taking titanic damage, and my spells were not keeping up. I felt the health flowing away like water. Each Heal Undead I cast added some back, but it wasn’t enough to make up for what was lost.

Sue was dying.

More orcs died, one after another. Now the entire enemy army was focused on my dino. Sue was entirely surrounded. Ropes came in from all sides, and while the dinosaur sliced or burned some, enough found purchase that the orcs were able to finally lock Sue in place.

They hauled, dropping my dino to the ground. Sue hit with a thunderous sound, some of their bones cracking under the impact. Then the orcs closed in from all sides, weapons rising and falling as they hacked the undead life from Sue’s failing body.

I closed my eyes, tears running down my face, as my ally died trying to keep all of us alive.