Gravetower

by Kell Inkston

“I need….” Chaos sighs as he takes one last sight at the misery before him. “… You are not wrong. I shall come to terms with this at another time, but here I am spending the time of the living grieving over the recently deceased. Let us go.” With a wave of his hand, he casts out a consecrated beam of light over Aoline— the necromancer’s gruesome damage undone in but a moment’s time as her body is re-sutured without even a scar to speak for it; her physical injury has been healed, but Chaos knows that was only half of the damage wrought upon her.

  The second she’s capable again, Aoline begins screaming— flailing and weeping uncontrollably.

  Chaos wastes no time in collecting his dead minions along with the infested unconscious Knight Glory as Scout Minion heaves up Aoline; he takes care not to forget the splintered pieces of Worldloss, either.

  With immense cost to his mana reserves, Chaos cuts open a portal, no longer blocked by the now crushed O.E.L. infrastructures. As he expected, they made the reasonable decision and finally rerouted power to begin cleaning up the obliterated mess that is now their headquarters.

  He crosses with his minions over to his primary tower, the one centrally networked with dimensional magic to all his others. This is the great kingdom of towers and the chief domain of the High Overlord— Towerne, presently besieged by the loathsome Royal Knights.

  Chapter Fifteen: Reclamation

  A lone minion is crumpled up in the overlord’s high throne room as the blasts of siege and battle rage on floors below him. He perks up instantly as the synonymous drone of a portal being cut through the world takes to his antennae. The Insurmountable Killing Machine Himself steps from his self-made gateway with a duo of minions in tow, along with a few bodies.

  “SIR, SIR, SIIIIII-”

  “Yes, Frantic Alert Minion,” Chaos responds as he closes the gate behind him with but a flick of his gaze.

  “The Royal Knights are almost to the central tower! We’re all roast and hgauhhh?!”

  Chaos smirks. “Now just what could have you so afraid?”

  “What happened to your arm, sir?!”

  Chaos looks to the empty socket, clenching furiously around the wound to staunch the flow of his white blood, a single small drop of which could serve as a common person’s entire store-worth of mana. “Well it seems as though I must have misplaced it.”

  Frantic Alert Minion waves frantically— which is not such a surprise, really. “Sir, it’s your arm! And what’s up with the screaming girl? And what’s up with Scout Minion’s face ohwaitit’salwaysthatugl-”

  “ ‘Haha’, squealer, very funny,” Scout Minion snaps back.

  “What is the exact situation? Has their masteress appeared?” Chaos asks as he hands off the two bodies alongside an unconscious Glory to a nearby General Service Minion.

  “No sir, but why do you have a human with you? That doesn-”

  “The exact situation, dear one.”

  “O-oh! They’re piling up at the hinterland tower, looking like they’re summoning with their summoner knights!”

  Chaos pats the short and squeaky Frantic Alert Minion gently on the noggin. “Ahh, as summoners are so disposed to do. Can I trust you’ve sighted Knight Immaculate there?”

  “And Knight Divinity!”

  Chaos draws back in surprise. “Isn’t that the-”

  “Alteration and enhancement knight? Yeah,” Scout Minion says as she finally rests the convulsing Aoline against the throne room’s wall.

  “I must admit I would have expected them to have teamed up sooner than now.”

  “Don’t you remember, Poppi— they hate each other,” she says as she takes to his side.

  “Oh, they do?”

  She smiles. “Yeah, I bet they were ordered to work together just because of how crazy the situation is.”

  Chaos pauses a moment with a perplexed expression. “…Wait a moment… so they actually think they have a chance to overtake the tower?”

  “Apparently so, sir.”

  His expression sharpens, and the reckonings of a smirk begin on his features. “Is that… so? And they think they can do that while I’m here?”

  Scout Minion grins with blood-thirsty enthusiasm. “I think they do.”

  His smirk grows to a smile. “Even… while I am alive, anywhere— they would grant me and my children and the law of the universe that insult?”

  “Yup. They’re not much for common sense; though in your defense, this is the first time they’ve found your towers in like, a while.”

  Then, his smile grows to a grin. “Why yes, yes it is! I suppose I will have to welcome our first-time guests into the estate properly.”

  Scout Minion laughs, and then they’re off for the hinterland tower’s passages.

  The two fold past dozens upon dozens of minions, who are scrambling for arms and snacks and all manner of what-nots— anything to help the battle effort; one of the more competent minions even finishes hogtying an out-of-formation knight.

  “Good day,” Chaos speaks over the dozens on the line looking down the hallway.

  Instantly, every pair of antennae perks up to full height.

  “Overlord, sir!”

  “Daddy!”

  “My lord!”

  “We’re saved!”

  “These assholes are about to get it something serious.” are among the dozens of voices as a few minions run up and hug at his legs and waist.

  “Worry not, little servants of mine. We shall take the point together from here,” he says amidst much cheering and gasping at his bravery.

  “But sir!” a random minion starts, “what will you do with only one arm?”

  Chaos’s grin ridges grimly. “One hand is all you need to make a fist,” he replies jokingly.

  While the crowd hums and wonders at his words, a dense tread of heavy feet can be heard from the far end of the hall. Everyone hushes up as the army of steps approach while, from around the corner, bickering can be heard.

  “…learn that you can’t treat people like your personal servants all the time,” a firm, female voice speaks, clearly audible to Chaos and his minion legion.

  “But they are my personal servants, Jay. You just… we’ve been over this. It’s hard to get over it because all I do is hang around my summoned!” a male voice sounds off, surprisingly masculine in tone for the usual summoner, Chaos thinks.

  Just before rounding the corner, the woman releases a long, rolling sigh. “Right, but you need to learn that there’s a huge difference between telling one of your goblins to clean your feet and telling the District ‘fucking’ Commander to-” She peeps in surprise as the two round the corner to look upon the High Overlord himself: he that challenges the oceans and succeeds.

  At once, the two knights and their retinue of goblins all step back behind the corner, as if it didn’t happen.

  “Shit! Do you think he saw us?”

  “…Are you off your rocks, Sam? Of course he saw us!”

  “What do we do! I’m not ready to die! Holy shit, this is it, isn-”

  “Shut the hell up, Sam! We’re knights, we have our orders! Besides, he’s missing an arm!”

  “Wait… yeah he was!”

  “He’s probably super weak!”

  “But won’t he just grow one back?”

  Knight Immaculate sighs. “True, but even so that’ll pull from his essence. He’s obviously on the ropes. We have to try!”

  “We can still escape!”

  “Come on, you won’t even be doing the fighting!”

  “Still!”

  “Say it with me: International Savior Medal.”

  Sam sighs. “…International Savior Medal.”

  “Nice attitude.”

  Sam takes a deep breath from behind the corner. “International Savior Medal!”

  “Hell yeah! That’s the spirit! Now let’s get out there and become heroes!”

  The two knights turn the corner with an army of heavily enchanted goblins at their front and sides. The green irritants
squeal and cry in a way that’s an incomprehensible mix between fear and fury, though Chaos can take an educated guess which one.

  As the formation ranks to full capacity, Chaos looks over the goblins and inspects their enchantments, something that’s easy with his ethereal gaze.

  He scoffs, causing the formation of knights and goblins to flinch.

  “H-he laughed!” Immaculate notes, his full helmet muffling his horror.

  “Don’t worry, just move forward and be ready for the draw!” Divinity encourages as she continues to channel her high level enchantments upon the army of goblins. “Your little guys can smash through steel with me! He won’t stand a-”

  “Aik’hain,” Chaos says plainly with a simple nod forward.

  At once, the entire formation of goblins dissipate back into the arcane— forcibly returned to their home realm— much, much to the horror of the now-alone duo of knights.

  “Oh well that’s that then,” Divinity coos crassly as Chaos leaps for them.

  Just over the next fifteen minutes, Chaos meets with knights many places throughout Towerne:

  He visits the Great Bakery where he overtakes Knight Generosity.

  He visits the Grand Wizarium where he overtakes Kanvane Council Members like Guron the Graphitic, alongside Shane the Shadow and Unseeable Dredge— who Chaos in fact did see and then punch in the face.

  He visits the Deep Arms Tower where he overtakes three dozen members of the Whihelmishian Special Police with but a single stroke of magic.

  From all corners of his domain there are those lurking to take all they can, at this one moment when they expect him weakest — and they are all fools.

  He searches far and wide with his undefinable eyes until every sloven opponent has been overtaken— so that his minions may come out from their cupboards and trash cans and buckets once more.

  Once he’s finished, he turns back to the center station of the main tower; the station is as big as the largest tower seen in the common realms, but here, it is only a part of the central tower— a true monument to the prowess of his corps of engineering minions.

  “Bring me Realm Security Minion,” Chaos says in a dark tone.

  As thousands of minions fold out from the cracks of the tower-city, a rather tall one with well-creased antennae steps out from the crowd.

  “My Liege,” he says with a professional tone as he looks up only a notch to gain eye contact with his master.

  “What’s the status on the gateways?”

  “Beach Party Tower, Comfy Woods Tower, and Toasty Mesa Sunbathing Tower have all been fully overrun; the enemy mages are disenchanting the planareers as we speak. We have a lot of work to do if we want to get our home back!”

  Chaos grins venomously. “Scout Minion.”

  “Poppi?” she asks, never all that far off from anything or anyone she’s interested in.

  “I have a mission for you,” he says, flicking his antennae to communicate a hundred words’ worth of information in but a single click.

  Her antennae point up sharply, and she salutes. “You got it, Poppi!”

  Chaos’ gaze sharpens brutally as he turns back to the crowd. “Bring me Chat Stone Delegation Authority Minion,” he orders outwardly.

  In not even half a minute, a minion with a sizable pack of dull, colorful stones trots up in a hurry.

  “Chat Stone Delegation Authority Minion, reporting for duty!”

  “Thank you,” Chaos addresses as he reaches for the stones, but stops halfway. He trembles slightly as he struggles to remember which one of the stones it is. In all of his mountainous realms of intelligence, he still has the memory capacity of an ant. “I…I-”

  “The small blue one, sir,” Chat Stone Delegation Authority Minion says with a warm smile.

  Chaos thanks him again as he snaps up a little blue stone, hidden deep among the others. Of course it’s the one, because there’s a crudely drawn face of an angry woman with white hair and big fangs around the stone’s chain. As per the standard for chat stones, Chaos sends a small spark’s worth of mana into the stone to activate it. It lights up, signifying the connection to its partner stone has been established, and The High Overlord raises it bitterly to his mouth as his minions usher an expectant silence.

  Chapter Sixteen: Old Friends

  A few moments earlier, a council room is in turmoil.

  “What do we do?! We’re completely compromised!” One Western Kingdoms Defensive Republic official shouts out frantically.

  “We have no clue what’s going on!” cries another.

  In the grand boardroom of the Royal Knight Headquarters in New Reinen— also considered the primary meeting place of W.K.D.R. activities— a great council of rulers, knights, and mages convene. At the forefront seat sits Knight Redemption, the one and only head of the Western Kingdom’s defense as a whole. He doesn’t look pleased, Order can tell. When he has those raised brows of bemused consideration up, it’s clear he’s just thinking about what would be the quickest way to get all of these fat officials out of his nice clean hall.

  “I assure you, gentlemen, we are doing everything in our power to secure the gates, and we’ll receive an update as soon as is admissible,” Redemption says in a clear, tired tone as he shifts his chat stone close.

  “What I want to know,” Archmage Anksang The Breeze notes, his body more mist than flesh, “is why you think it’s okay that we convene while not just half an hour ago we spotted an O.E.L. craft in our space. We need to be on site.”

  Lord Veritaino Lo Secundae of Ragnivan, who is probably the least magical and most blue-blooded at the table, crosses his arms impatiently. “Well you must understand, Daniel, they’re afraid of uncertainty— typical mage.”

  Anksang’s currents convulse in a scoff. “Peh! And just what do you know about discovering the unknown?!”

  “I know not to drop all my damn scrolls the second I hear about something zipping about the sky, that’s for damn sure,” Veritaino mentions with a direct tone as a knight-attendant silently enters the room.

  Anksang’s mists begin to circulate in rapid disgust. “You have no idea what they’re capable of, boy. The Librarium entering our realm will spell the end to our whole civilization! They won’t just walk over us like they would a minor realm— they’d tear us and our populous to shreds! We’re a threat to them!”

  Veritaino laughs as he eyes about for support from one of the other kingdom officials; he wouldn’t look to any of the knights, as they’re only good allies during fights, he feels. “You don’t need to tell me we’d be dead and gone on their behalf. I know the threats. Maybe you should get back to that library and read some legitimate books,” he counters as the knight aid leans over Redemption’s shoulder and whispers.

  “Maybe you better find yourself a legitimate lineage,” Anksang retorts, bringing up that old Ragnivanian elephant in the room.

  Sparks light in the hall as Veritaino starts up from his chair with his hand on his kingly, densely anti-magical sword. “Maybe you better find yourself a new throat you sniveling piece of-”

  “Thank you,” Redemption says to the aid, who bows as she steps off. He looks to the group. “The report’s completed,” he announces, waving the written page compiled from observer information and detection magic findings. He holds it clear in front of his face with one hand as he leans into the desk; everyone promptly calms down, and Veritaino decides to let the arch mage go this time.

  “Hrm… a large magical presence was detected above Yarseld… after the craft appeared to the far North of it. After taking out the entire North camp, the craft traveled down to Yarseld, where the heavy magic signature and it collided— causing the destruction of the craft, of which there are no remains…. There you have it, cut and dry,” he says with an authoritative tap of the paper.

  Uurd The Swamp sighs out from her heavy helmet, crafted from the skull of some unspeakable creature. “Do we know what type of magic the signature was?”

  Redemption eyes ove
r the smaller details in the footnotes. At once, his brows shoot up in shock. “…It wasn’t a magical expression, rather it was a vessel,” he reports.

  Everyone on the board room gasps and draws back in disbelief— save Order, who only shakes her head.

  “A person!?” Uurd gurgles in awe.

  “A Royal Knight!” claims a general.

  “An arch mage!” claims a mage, of course.

  A raucous clamor overtakes the room as Redemption again holds up his hand. “Yes, it’s a something, and we have good reason to believe it was what destroyed the craft. The O.E.L. vessel didn’t escape for another run, or intel, or anything. It was destroyed.”

  “Thank Rayda!”

  “Glory to the Four and its Holy Ghost!”

  “A-as expected of higher magics!” A few other voices speak up as the aid comes in through the door once more, ushering another cool breeze into their warm, candled room.

  As the council theorizes who the mysterious savior could be, the gentle voice of the knight aid reaches over Order’s right ear.

  “Call for you from your private box, ma’am.”

  Order, who’s been reserved at the table this entire time, somehow folds into herself more. There’s only one chat stone in her private box— and it hasn’t picked up or called for a very, very long time.

  “Thank you. I’ll take it privately,” she says with a nod to the aid as she slides up from her chair, still fully suited in her armor just in case something like this might happen. “If you all will excuse me.”

  “Wait!” Anksang coughs, “Surely, you know who our mysterious ship-slayer might be?”

  “Haven’t the slightest idea,” Order says with a shrug and a tucked lip to prevent a crass smirk.

  She leaves the chamber and makes her way down to the communicarium, where mass thousands of chat-stone connections are made daily amidst hundreds of operators and aids. It’s rare that someone would visit personally for a call, but this is one such, and the operators all glance in brief surprise as she passes by. In a few paces more she’s in the personal boxes, containing all the paired stones for specific personnel. She finds her own box, stashed down with hundreds of different chat stones— from royalty, dragons, self-proclaimed gods, and even one from a little girl who she saved the cat of ; most of these stones no longer operate, of course— as the owners have long passed away, and as per the law all of the lines in their possession must be broken except by necessity. Most of these ones remain as mementos in her box, though they obviously no longer work.