Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 88: Speedrunning The Lich’s Castle

****Reginald, AKA Barrel of Monkeys***

“Hey boss, I was wondering…” Brett asked, gritting his teeth as a lumbering zombie gnashed its teeth futilely against his shield.

“Eh?” Reggie answered, giving the rotting corpse a front-kick to give them some room to chat.

“Have you ever seen Polla reload?” Brett asked.

Reggie frowned and glanced over at Polla, who was in a groove. She was twirling on the balls of her feet, her crossbows reloading every time they were out of his field of vision.

She was practically spraying death at the surrounding undead.

“Best not to worry about it.” Reggie decided. “She’s on our side.”

“Sancho will not be defeated by a mere corpse.” Sancho said, effortlessly hewing down the creatures. One leapt up from behind and gnawed on the olive-skinned man’s face, its teeth sliding off like it had tried to chew armor.

Reggie’s brows furrowed.

Something was off. Was it them, or was it the ruined capital they were fighting their way through? They were doing better than the ‘chosen ones’.

“Stay on your side!” Clank yelled, shoving Gerome.

“I need to be in the center for Turn Undead!” Gerome shouted back.

“Well, you’re leaving a huge gap in the wall! Jocelyn almost got hewn!”

“I don’t like being hewn, Gerome!” Jocelyn said, fire spewing from her fingertips like a living thing, searing through a half dozen zombies at a time. “My character’s skin is too fine to be marred by battle.”

“Well excuse me, princess!” Gerome shouted, clambering over Mars and raising his sword high.

She’s a princess? Reggie thought, brow raised.

A beam of divine light descended from above, piercing the omnipresent gloom that cloaked the ruined city.

Every undead touched by the beam of light burst into white flames and began running away like it had regained its sense of pain.

Reggie and his team slumped against the broken and weathered masonry of the ruined capital, catching their breath and groaning in relief. When Jocelyn slumped down beside him, Reggie tried to spark up a conversation.

“So, are you actually a princess?” he asked.

“Oh, no, I’m not really a person, much less a princess. Gerome asked if I’d like to come over to his vacation spot and play some D&D, and I figured it might be fun.”

She gave him a dazzling smile. “So far it has been quite enjoyable.”

Reggie gulped.

“What do you mean, not a person?”

“Well, I mean, my character is human, she was born to parents who were murdered when she was little, unlocking her sorcerous origins. She used her powers to claw her way off the streets, and formed an adventuring party with those three.”

She pointed at the others, who were rooting around the ruins, looking for loot, seemingly tireless.

“So who are you?”

“Should I stay in character?” She asked.

“Nah.” Reggie said.

“I am a cosmic entity that exists beyond human understanding, whose true form can, and has, made limited beings go mad as their minds tear away from the safety of three dimensions, their bodies bulge and swell with mass and growth as they thrash uncontrollably through time.”

“My name is-“

Reggie’s heart skipped a beat as the sensation of being watched from every direction flooded his body.

“But you can call me Jocelyn.”

Reggie should’ve run then and there, but his machismo couldn’t tolerate it.

“So you’re single, then?” he asked, pulling out a cigar.

“Are you just asking that because your primitive human brain interprets my character’s form as a suitable vessel to procreate?”

Reggie glanced to the side for a moment, then shrugged. “Yep.”

Jocelyn broke into uproarious laughter.

“How narrow in mind. Yes, I am single.”

***Perry***

“This is gonna be rough,” Perry muttered.

The four of them were perched on the mountain ridge overlooking Norodor’s castle, which was concealed in a valley that was literally filled with the undead.

Zombies, revenants and wraiths were packed nearly shoulder to shoulder outside the castle, shambling back and forth in tight, elbow-constraining formation.

Ghosts weaved through the crowd with ease, roaming like sharks among a tide of rot.

Atop the castle’s walls were mercenaries clad in black armor, polished to a mirror shine. They marched back and forth with crisp movements belying both training and a pulse.

“I’ll take that half, you guys take that half,” Heather joked.

A man could spend a month hacking away at the shambling undead outside the castle and not make a significant dent in their numbers.

“M-maybe we could plow through them if we make some more horse armor and come back later?” Natalie asked.

Perry thought a moment. “These monsters aren’t important. They’re a red herring meant to distract a group of ‘players’ from the ‘objective’ long enough for the lich to summon his god in a climactic sequence near the end of their ‘game’.

“We still have to get through them, don’t we?” Anne asked.

Perry glanced around the mountains, filled with sickly, warped trees, rocks, and moss, with the occasional blueberry.

“Not if we can figure out a way to avoid them completely.”

How can we avoid them, though? Perry thought. There was only two directions that weren’t guarded. Above and below. The only problem was, they could neither fly nor burrow at a rate that would allow them to beat ‘Gerome’ to the sword.

How does flight even work? Perry thought, squinting at the gnarled trees around them.

He felt like he was scratching on something buried in his mind. Something locked away from him, and behind a wall of stone.

Perry took the problem in reverse.

Birds fly. How? They have wings. How do wings work?

Perry’s head got hot as his mind began working at full capacity, examining and discarding ideas at a blistering pace.

Stability 5->1

Nerve 7->11

“Air is a liquid, the difference in air pressure creates lift,” Perry blurted as the starry void began to consume the sky and the distant vistas beyond their immediate position.

“Huh?” Heather asked.

Perry walked up to one of the gnarled trees, stubby, short and twisted from decades of exposure to wind and the lich’s evil presence.

Nerve 11->7

Attunement 26->30

Perry leaned down and closed his fist around the small tree. Its roots unclasped from the surrounding rocks, gently writhing like an animal as he picked it up.

You will be my wings, Perry thought, the world narrowing down to the object in his hand. He scraped a fingernail along the tree, feeling it straighten under his touch, becoming longer and flatter. The changes rippled forward beyond Perry’s reach until the bush, previously the height of a man’s waist, was over three times longer than Perry was tall, its leaves rearranged into an overlapping feather-like pattern.

The individual branches wove through like wings veins through the skin of a bat’s wing, thin as a man’s thumbnail.

It might’ve been possible to mulch the tree into a paste and cover a similar area with a razor-thin coating of paper, but somehow, Perry had done so simply by wishing it.

What is reality, anyway? Perry wondered. If shape holds no meaning, then what is the truth of my being?

“PERRY!” Heather’s voice in his ear penetrated Perry’s musings.

Attunement 30->22

Stability 1->9

“Huh?” Perry started.

“What is that witchcraft, huh?” Heather said, pointing at the bush that had transformed into lifelike wings with straps for the arms to hold onto.

“Umm…” Perry shrugged. “I don’t know. I just fell into a bit of a trance, and it became what I needed it to be.” He tugged the wooden wings back and forth, feeling the resistance they created in the air simply from their sheer size, but they couldn’t have weighed more than a stone or two.

They were almost the size of a small sail, rather than wings.

“The same thing happened with my horse armor,” Natalie said, nodding.

“Brendon did say you were both ‘Tinkers’.” Anne said with a shrug.

“I think the important thing is, can you do it three more times?” Heather asked.

“We’re going to find out,” Perry said, nodding.

Perry successfully converted three more wizened trees into wings, strapped them all in and stood on the edge of the mountain.

Below him were jagged outcroppings eager to smash his bones and tear him asunder, and beyond that was a valley filled with undead, ironically also eager to smash his bones and tear him asunder.

In the middle of all that was a lich’s castle, manned by vicious mercenaries, mindflayers and sentient undead, the size of a pinhole in the distance.

The odds of flying into it were miniscule, and yet, somehow Perry felt like there was no chance they’d miss.

“Are you sure-“ Anne began.

Perry jumped.

The wings made of wood and leaf caught the wind with a snap, and suddenly he was slicing through the air, dangling from the wings like a flopping salmon in the claws of an eagle.

I just have one note. How do I steer this thing!? Perry thought as he desperately threw his weight around, trying to control the rapidly steepening angle of his descent.

Just before he wound up a statistic, the wings leveled out moments before they caught an updraft, making his stomach sink as he rose rapidly before descending again.

Glancing behind him, Perry could make out the other three trying to control their flights with differing levels of success.

Anne seemed to be either terrifically lucky, or a natural born flier, as she was shrieking with delight, navigating the invisible currents with grace.

Heather was doing fine, being able to shift her bodyweight fluidly enough to control her descent easily.

Natalie…was going to crash. She was too light for her wings, and was unable to steer effectively, or act as ballast.

“HELP!” Natalie shouted as she fell behind, her wings beginning to tumble.

Heather stretched out her foot and wrapped it around Natalie’s wings, stabilizing its flight and tugging it along behind her like a paper kite.

In the process, the rest of her body grew thin enough to slip out of her wing’s harness, causing Heather to dangle from Natalie’s wings while her own tumbled off to the ground without ballast keeping them straight.

Perry tilted his weight back and slowed down for a moment, hoping to get close enough for Heather to grab on.

Just one set of wings wasn’t enough for both girls, but two sets might be able to carry all three of them to their destination.

“Grab on!” Perry shouted, glancing between them and the rapidly approaching castle. They were gliding through the air at such a pace that the formerly distant castle was about to jam itself up their noses.

“Hold on!” Heather shouted. She flipped backwards, flinging Natalie forward with her feet, then landing on top of Perry’s wings.

Natalie made it over the wall: Perry and Heather didn’t.

The world devolved into a mess of rotting body parts as they plowed into the ground, just feet away from the wall, dismembering dozens of zombies with the sheer force of their tumultuous landing.

Ground, sky, ground, sky, zombie, sky, zombie, zombie.

HP:5

“GAH!” Perry pulled himself out of the wreckage and stared up at the wall of the castle looming above them.

“Come on!” Heather shouted, holding a hand out to him, her other hand extending up to the edge of the wall.

A moment later, Perry was flying against, his tattered clothes fluttering as Heather reeled him in like a weightless minnow.

The two of them overshot the wall, landing beside Natalie, who was cradling her elbow with a wince, limping away from her wings.

WHAM!

Perry hit the ground, absorbing the shock with his arms and legs, scrambling forward before the mercenaries had a chance to recover from their shock and pepper them with arrows.

Perry snatched up Natalie and ran for the closest door, a heavy-looking oak door with a rough-hewn handle.

Perry hit the door at full speed, both feet first, straight as a board.

Crack! The heavy door gave way, and Perry slid into the room, the rough stone floor abbraiding his left side even as arrows pinged off the stone behind him.

“Well, we’re inside.” Perry said, glancing at Heather and Nat.

“Where’s Anne?” Natalie asked.

Perry risked a glance outside and saw the wings of Anne’s glider dangling off the tallest tower.

“She hit the target perfectly,” Perry said, ducking his head back, the shouting of the mercenaries growing louder. Perry glanced over at Natalie, who was still frowning, clutching her arm.

“Are you okay?”

“I can move it. Too light to break anything, it’s just going to bruise pretty bad.”

“So where’s the sword?” Heather asked. “We need to get it and use it to get back out.”

Perry consulted Brendon’s notes.

“Either the tallest tower or deepest dungeon, they couldn’t decide.” Perry muttered.

“Let’s regroup with Anne, then the four of us will either be at the sword, or ready to find it.” Natalie suggested.

Perry nodded.

“Now, how are we going to do that?” Perry muttered to himself, scanning the room behind them. In the dim lamplight, Perry could make out sacks of grain, tools, rope, oil, lamps. They were in some kind of universal storage room for tools and excess food.

Perry glanced over at the lamp, and back at the sacks of grain, feeling buried pieces of knowledge bubbling up like crude oil.

“Dust explosion?” Perry asked, glancing back at his compatriots.

“What’s a dust explosion?” Heather and Natalie asked in tandem.

“Let’s find out,” Perry said, grinning as a heavy weight began to slam into the storage room door.

***

Outside the room, no less than a hundred mercenaries lined up, ready to capture the strange people who’d ridden the very wind into their master’s sanctum.

They snarled with eagerness as their vanguard slammed a heavy statuette against the door, trying to shove the person holding it back so they could stream into the strage room and engage in combat.

These men had been cursed to guard this castle for decades, with not a hint of battle. No company but the undead. They were practically drooling to get their hands on something that could suffer.

Suddenly the door gave way, allowing the first men to charge in.

They were brought to a halt by an assault of fine white powder that engulfed them and spread through their ranks.

“Is this flour?” One of them had time to ask before the entire courtyard erupted into an explosion.

The magnitude of the explosion could only properly be witnessed from the sky as a massive chunk of the castle exploded outward, propelling the wall out into the mass of undead, crushing hundreds and dismembering thousands more.

Massive stone slabs as big as horses carved gory paths through the assembled creatures as they stared uncomprehendingly at the shattered castle, suddenly missing a third of its mass.

***Perry***

HP: 4

That was…more energetic than I was thinking.

Perry was not expecting a single bag of flour to nearly kill all three of them and blast a hole in the side of the castle big enough to build a house in.

Dangerous stuff, baking, he thought.

“Are you okay?” Perry asked, letting go of Natalie and climbing out from behind the hastily assembled barricade.

“I think so. Most of the force was directed outward.” Natalie said.

“Agh, my hair’s all fried,” Heather said, patting her smoking hair.

The men in shiny black steel were nowhere to be seen, as was a great deal of the castle.

RUMBLE.

Crap, Perry thought as he felt the walls tremble around him.

“I think we should get out of here, now.” Perry said, taking Natalie’s hand and sprinting for the newly-remodeled entryway,

Heather sprinted alongside them, her legs lengthening to give her the lead. Moments later, she grabbed the two of them and flung them forward as the walls of the ominous castle finally gave way and began to collapse.

From their vantage point in the courtyard, they watched as the tallest tower began to teeter with Anne on top of it, first one way, then another, until it finally began to topple towards them, prompting them to run sideways as the massive pillar of stone slammed through the courtyard and the wall beyond, devastating the remains of the castle itself, along with the army of the dead beyond.

As the echoes of the thunderous noise bouncing off the mountains began to subside, Anne landed gracefully right beside them, having snatched up her glider in the fall.

Perry glanced around at the collapsed castle and devastated army.

“I’ll never look at flour the same way again.” Perry muttered. He’d only been intending to distract and incapacitate the people breaking down the door, allowing them to make a break for the tower…but now there was no more tower.

“That was far stronger than it should’ve been,” Natalie murmured. “Perhaps it’s part of your powers.”

“Maybe. We’ll know for a fact when we get our hands on that sword.” Perry said, meeting Anne’s gaze. “Did you by any chance see a magical sword at the top of the tower?”

Anne shook her head.

“Damn, I guess we gotta-“

“MORTALS! What have you done!?”

The lich, Norodor stepped out of a shimmering panel that looked something like the surface of water flipped on its side.

The empty skull atop the seven-foot frame didn’t have any eyebrows, but Perry could tell he was furious as he glared down at them, scintillating gemstones glittering where once were eyes.

“He did it,” Heather said, pointing at Perry.