"Mistress?"
"Yes?"
"Say ouch."
Asha used her levitating spell to shoot straight back and up at a forty-five degree angle. Petriana was driven before her as their speed increased super fast. She put as much mana into the spell as possible.
"Agh!" Petriana cried upon impact.
She lost her hold on Asha, who spun around and brought her knee up with brutal force. The drow was already dropping straight down, so her knee slammed into her jaw. Asha dropped down after her foe, kicking the drow sorceress in the head three more times to be sure she was down and out. And then she quickly hogtied Petriana, before gagging her.
"Somehow, I think you're going to enjoy being tied up like that."
After double-checking the jam in the portcullis mechanism, Asha slipped out of the gatehouse and circled the inner ward. Once back to the main gate, she turned her attention to the main keep. Part of her wanted to go in search of Lord Kathro. If she killed him, then the castle would belong to her. Owning a dungeon had to be worth something in that world.
God only knows how much mana this place has stored up.
Since it was a dungeon that meant it stored up mana. There were probably spells and other benefits available to the castle's master. Whoever was master of that castle would have access to all of its spells.
A chill slithered up her spine before she could take a step towards the keep's entrance. She had the oddest sensation. Really, more of a premonition. Was another mage seeing through her magic invisibility?
Asha looked left and right. No one was paying any attention to her. The undead guards on the curtain walls were all looking outward. And then something pulled her eyes up.
"Welcome to my lair, said the spider to the fly," a large, scary looking man said.
Kathro. Drow necromancer (Lvl 102). -81 Dark. PK: 119.
"Oh no."
"Oh yes, Elven Sorceress Asha," Lord Kathro said. He grinned with wicked delight. "And while you skulked around my castle, I took the opportunity to send a force of undead knights to kill your friends."
Chapter 36
"How long has she been gone?" Killum asked
"Three seconds longer since last time you asked," Fergus said. "Jesus. Did you worry about me like this when I was out scouting the castle?"
Killum leveled cool eyes on the ranger. "Who are you?"
"She has been gone longer than you," Tiana said.
"That only means she got past the zombies on sentry. She's probably chopping Lord Kathro's head off right now, winning the castle without any of our help," Fergus said. "Asha's more of a glory hog than Rand."
Rand opened his mouth to protest, but a distant thunder reached them. Killum turned northward, looking up the road. The sound was vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. It definitely wasn't Asha, unless she was being chased by…
"Horses!" Killum cried. "Cavalry?"
"Knights!" Tiana shouted when a double column of mounted men topped the hill.
His eyes locked on the rider in the lead.
Human knight (Lvl 12). Undead.
In fact, every one of them came up as Human knight, undead, of various levels when Killum checked them out. And there were a lot of them. Easily twenty or more.
"Zombie knights? Now I've seen everything," Rand said.
Killum cast Temporary Blindness at the charging knights. It didn't faze them. They continued charging down the road, swords and lances pointed at him and his friends. With a heartfelt, "SHIT," Killum hurriedly cast Gatecrasher.
That blew a hole right through the middle of them, scattering knights and screaming horses in all directions. About a third of them fell, but it didn't kill any of them.
"Even the horses are zombies!" the battle-mage warned. "Scatter into the woods."
Mounted knights were all but useless in heavily wooded terrain. That tactic would force them to dismount, and that would give him and the others much needed time. Rand followed him to the east side of the road, while Tiana and Fergus went west.
Fergus' arrows started ricocheting off the knights' armor. The battle-mage checked his stats. Gatecrasher took away fifty mana points. He quickly drank a Mana Restoring potion.
The undead knights all dismounted and split up. He saw one of them giving the orders. His armor had lots of gold and silver decorations. When Killum checked him, he came up as just an undead knight. He was half expecting the zombie to be a king, or duke, or general.
"Rand, get ready. I'm going to hit them with Disorientation. Blindness didn't affect them, so I'm not sure if this spell will work or not."
"Hit them!"
Killum stood up and stepped out to have a clear path to the charging zombies. He cast the Spell of Disorientation. About half of them tripped and fell, whereas the others stopped running and swayed. Rand whooped with battle joy and charged down, with the battle-mage fast on his heels. They hit the undead knights with all they had.
Rand couldn't reach their heads, and decapitation was the only way for him to kill them since their hearts were so well armored. So he chopped off a leg at the knee, before turning to attack another's legs. Then he'd go back to the first one who was down on all fours and behead him. And back and forth he went, leaving death and destruction in his wake.
Killum shook his head, impressed with his friend's ability to level the playing field. The kid is a savage.
He'd left his Wolfsheart Spear back with the mule, so just had his Lightning Ring and Power Sword. The battle-mage discovered the lightning bolts worked much better up close, and could literally blow the zombies apart. His Power Sword, though, could blast through their thick helmets, allowing him to slaughter them.
Tiana streaked between them and a zombie, leaping on the back of one coming up behind Rand. She angled her sword up under his helmet and thrust it up through his brain. And then Fergus caught his attention, darting in from the forest to dart back and forth between their foes. His curved elven sword left bloody ruin, and a lot of headless bodies, in his wake.
"Ugh!" Killum cried when an undead knight thrust a lance into the back of his left shoulder. "Son of a bitch."
The pain was exquisite. The worst pain he'd experienced since he got a compound fracture falling off a bike in 7th grade. Not counting the fifteen seconds of Purgatory he experienced the one time he died in that realm.
The knight yanked the lance out and prepared to thrust again. Killum spun and smashed the lance aside with his now almost useless left arm. He brought his sword down on the lance and cut it in two, before rushing the zombie knight and thrusting through an eyehole of his helmet. The enchanted sword made the monster's head explode.
Quickly drinking a healing potion, he immediately felt the edge taken off the pain. Yet, the pain was still too great and his arm hung limply at his side. More than half the knights were dead, but he and his friends were still outnumbered.