Grogar emerged into one of the countless tunnels that ran throughout Polybia’s hive at the edge of his new tear in the earth. The luminescent fungus used for lighting these dark passageways cast heavy shadows across the scattered rubble and a few broken bodies in all directions.
For the moment, he was alone in the tunnel, though the sound of hundreds of heavy hooves echoed throughout both ends of his current passageway. His newfound freedom was not as exhilarating as one might think. The past few weeks had seen him remain in that tightly bound prison without any food.
Though his undead body felt no fatigue in the traditional sense, his bodily energy was by no means at its peak. Grogar leaned heavily on the side of a boulder, trying to marshal his power out of the bells. So Polybia only sought to contain the bells rather than drain them. A wise precaution… at the time.
The oncoming swarm started to rattle the loose stones on the floor, causing a few to bounce down the hole he had created. There’s no point in wasting energy to run.
With Polybia still glowing like the sun to his eyes, Grogar saw that the northern end of the tunnel was a more or less direct route towards her for the time being, and started marching forward. That is until he took note of the runes and wards painted on the walls. To anyone else, they would have been nothing more than a passing curiosity, but not to him. His eyes narrowed while a humorless smirk cleaved his muzzle. “It appears my efforts have born fruit.”
Scanning the complex diagram of runes, sigils, and markings, Grogar used the blood from a nearby crushed drone to make some alterations. He didn’t get very far when he saw a squad of silver armored drones round a corner and close in to confront him with gleaming spears at the ready. “I’d ask you to come quietly Grogar,” Polybia chided behind her puppets, “but I don’t need you alive anymore.”
Without any further preamble, Polybia’s drones charged in the attack. Grogar’s thin humorless grin remained as he finished applying one last addition to the wall-wards, and poured all the power he could spare into it.
With lightning speed, black magic surged along the lines of the wards that coated the majority of the hive’s tunnels from the deepest bowels right up to three of the entryways to the outside. The cacophony of thousands of leg sized spikes crashing all throughout the hive rolled through the stone like ripping fabric it was so fast. All of the magic Polybia had poured into the wards was now being directed to cutting down thousands of drones, from warriors to workers, and even dozens of eggs that were still in transit.
Kreesus herself barely escaped certain death from the countless arcane spikes by having her stolen drones throw her into the hatchery right before they were cut down to the last. Polybia only had the briefest moment of shock cross her puppets’ faces when the wave of magic washed over them. A blackish purple spike impaled the puppet’s skull, with more of them killing the rest of the puppets behind him. Not only that, but numerous locations along the wards exploded in toxic clouds of black magic.
Grogar’s limbs threatened to fail him at such a release of energy, but he would rectify that soon. The spikes from the wards lasted only an instant, just long enough to work. The closest warrior to Grogar had been only a scant few feet away when it died, its weapon clattering down the hole Grogar had carved earlier.
Amazing how similar a ward against necrotic magic is to a spike wall trap. Those explosions shouldn’t have happened though… Grogar took a moment to admire his handiwork, wrought through Polybia herself. The incorrect rune placements, slightly askew sigils, and his personal favorite, a sort of ‘backdoor’ trigger that only he knew how to both see and activate. She’s so focused on how my magic impaired her judgement, that she can’t see the subtlety of it all.
The act, coupled with his forced starvation over the past few weeks, gnawed at him like a ravenous beast. The scent of so much freed blood called out to his demonic nature, drawing his gaze to the pile of corpses. His mouth watered at the sight of it. “A pity I don’t have time to cook.”
Far above the hive, the Steamrunner lingered among the clouds. The steel cruiser’s lower deck gun turrets tracked random passing drones to pass the time. Luna idly watched the pair of fire control gunners, allowing herself a moment of distraction by the marvelous idea of a centrally directed fire control system thanks to an ingenious use of mirrors, lenses, and gearing, over the individually hoof-aimed and fired cannons of mainstay Equestrian ships.
With no word from Twilight or Rainbow Dash, and nothing of note occurring in the hive below, some of the tension of the crew had started to degrade into boredom. A fact that not even Luna could escape. Though not through lack of trying. Be it through an unhealthy amount of coffee, short power naps, and even the occasional jaunt in the dreamscape, the threat of Grogar always lurked at the back of her mind, keeping her grounded in the here and now.
Such was her curse.
And there she might have languished for days upon weeks, drifting in that nebulous period of time were it not for one of the command consoles starting to flash red with a high pitched alarm bell starting to ring. Luna shot to her hooves while the nearest changeling operator threw himself into the chair in front of the console.
He was quick to slap a lever down to silence the ringing, and started scrutinizing the wall encompassing readouts spreading from eye level to the ceiling. Luna was at his side shortly thereafter, and noticed dozens of the usually idle needles in the gauges were pushing wildly in the wrong direction. The operator pressed a series of buttons and a different lever, causing all of the gauges’ needles to return to their original location.
I should have asked what these were for. Luna’s silence was cut short by the operator’s worried face morphing between panic and dumbstruck confusion. “What’s going on, Gearbox?”
The purple drone squeaked with spiking worry at just now noticing that Luna was practically right on top of him. “T-the - ah - spell detectors, your highness. T-the things we use to make sure no pony’s trying to sneakily cast spells against us just registered a massive wave of dark energy from below. Apparently the hit was brief or we’d still be picking up a reading.”
“How massive are we talking about?” Luna pressed, her face inches from Gearbox's own.
“I-if the r-readings were accurate…” He did the math in his head, “enough to flatten a village and then some.”
“Report this to Twilight immediately,” she barked with enough iron to jumpstart Gearbox. “And get Captain Placeholder to ready the troops!”
Grogar finished consuming his grisly meal with an alacrity that boarded on the edge of madness. At least for a mortal. He proceeded to use a fiery spell to cleanse the filth off of him, blackening the ground around him in the process. Now that that’s been taken care of. Fully expecting Polybia to be hightailing it out of the place, Grogar cast his gaze back to her last known location, only to be dismayed that she was exactly where he left her. Strange. I didn’t think my magic had given her delusions of grandeur to the point where she’d stay where I can reach her.
A trap no doubt.
Grogar empowered his one remaining horn, concentrating his renewed vigor into a spear of pulsating dark magic in front of him, and aimed directly at Polybia. This time the very rock in front of the charging spear started to deform and pull away as if the spear was offensive to the very earth. Growling with demonic fury, Grogar’s right foreleg took on a blackish purple sheen. With one smooth motion speaking of centuries of practice, he grabbed the hilt of the spear. The magic in his foreleg coated the mystical weapon, causing it to thrum with power. “Let’s see if you’re playing games with me.”
With a yelling heave, Grogar threw the spear straight at the wall. The rock and earth vaporized in an instant, with the spear blasting all the way through to the surface, and sailing well in sight of the Steamrunner’s crew. The new gaping hole was seven feet wide, and just barely passed by Polybia and her throne, giving Grogar a brief moment to look upon her before she scurried out of sight. Good, you survived. I wouldn’t want to end this too quickly.
Not even waiting for the surrounding stone to stop hissing from the intense heat, Grogar started performing leaping bounds to make his way up the new, and decidedly more direct, path to his former captor.
He cleared the first few meters upwards without trouble. Yet as he landed inside what remained of a storehouse, a dozen drones, all bearing Polybia’s eyes, started flinging spells and charged him with blade-like limbs. Grogar was prepared for resistance, and erected a purplish black shield, warding him from the worst of the magic. Without so much as a word towards Polybia, he rang his bells, warping the air itself with their magic. His casual, almost uncaring expression morphed between surprise and concern when the drones’ souls were not ripped from their bodies.
The momentary surprise cost him his other horn as the closest bladed drone easily carved through his energy shield. With renewed anger, his eyes burned like hot coals as he slammed his left forehoof into the offending drone, and used telekinesis to ram his severed horn into the drone’s chest.
Grogar didn’t get a moment’s respite as the spell firing drones now assailed him with a barrage of mana bolts that sapped him of power with every strike. Bringing his energy barrier back up, Grogar telekinetically retrieved his horn, and then threw his severed horn like a throwing axe at the next melee drone now that he was protected again. “Do you honestly think you will best me this time, Polybia?” he asked the next melee drone with a finality of expected victory. “You should take this time to flee, while you can.”
The third melee drone feinted a charge, and instead pulled back at the last second and swatted Grogar’s flying horn with a heavy parry of its bladed forelegs. “My salvation to this rogue curse lies in you, demon,” she spat venomously. “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me.”
As she spoke, a cascade of more warrior drones crawled into the storeroom, pelting Grogar with an increasing fuselage of magic while more and more melee drones threatened to cut away at his shields with laughable ease. “You overestimate yourself, old goat.” Grogar was forced back several meters and down a little into the hole he had torn through the hive.
Grogar found a ledge behind him, and jumped over to buy himself a few precious seconds as the drones methodically pursued him. With his back to the wall, he cast a wave of dark magic out like a balloon passing over everyone in the room. Polybia quickly weaved a shield spell for each drone present, causing the spell to seemingly pass right by. When Polybia detected no harm was done, she dropped the shields to glare at Grogar with contempt. “You are powerful, Grogar, but I will not let you have a moment to unleash that power again.”
Much to Polybia’s paranoia, Grogar responded by dropping his shield and giving a slow mirthless gravelly chuckle. “Oh but Polybia, you already have.”
Before Polybia could react, the two drones Grogar had killed snapped into action, slicing the next two closest drones straight to the heart. By the time Polybia realized what was happening, the fresh undead withdrew their bladed limbs to attack the next closest victims. The two they had just murdered didn’t even start falling to the floor before they too started attacking their former siblings with both blade and spell.
Polybia’s control over the room broke down even further when Grogar capitalized on the initial confusion to rush the nearest drone and bite down on its jugular, and tore the flesh away to effect a quick kill.
Polybia scoffed and had the drones closest to the undead hold the rest back while the spellslingers readied to cut them down with ease. Yet before the first spell was fired, every last one of the hundreds of drones killed by the spikes throughout the hive rose up and began killing anyone in their path.
Seven crawled up into the storeroom from the hole Grogar had made earlier, and assaulted those pressing down on Grogar with tooth and blade. More poured out from the other entrances, severing any reinforcements and cutting a swath through Polybia’s warriors. So many more came rushing in that the bodies were starting to clog the room.
With no immediate threat pressuring him, Grogar began weaving a new spell by ringing his bells in a haunting melody. All the living drones were stunned where they stood, completely immobilized by the music, the undead however, were not.
With no resistance against them, the undead methodically killed each drone they came across in the most efficient manner to keep the body more or less intact. For barely a moment after each killing blow, the slain dead heeded Grogar’s dirge of the restless grave. Within minutes, all thirty eight drones in the storeroom were under Grogar’s command, along with the hundreds scattered throughout the hive.
Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash were flying at speed towards the bow of the Long Shot’s flightdeck, ready to unleash a verbal beatdown on Polybia’s envoy. The biting wind of the mountain threatened to drown them out every so often, but neither queen was willing to let Polybia have a look inside of the carrier.
The skies around them were turning dark from the stormclouds several teams of pegasi were forming to help wash away the unholy taint the battle had left behind. Nearly half of the fleet’s crew and marines had to partake in the herculean effort to bless enough storm clouds with holy power. In its dying hours, the rain gave Fluffy some measure of comfort as it waited for the end.
In addition to keeping Polybia away from sensitive information, the edge of the flight deck provided a panoramic view of the corrupted land, giving both queens a constant reminder of the danger Polybia, and by extension, Grogar represented.
As soon as Rainbow Dash got within arm’s length, she shoved her muzzle right into the face of Polybia’s puppet with murder in her eyes. Twilight loomed over the drone with equal indignation. “You worthless dishonorable amalgamation of chunky worm-riddled pus!” Rainbow growled with spittle flying, and a drop or two of salve. “You said you could handle moving Grogar! So why is it your hive is lighting up like a necromancer’s fireworks show!?”
“What are you?” Polybia had to take a moment to pull her thoughts together. “H-how do you know anything of what’s going on in my hive?” Polybia shot back, trying to gain ground.
Twilight moved in to be adjacent to her sister in bearing down on the puppet. “Did you honestly think we would be stupid enough to not keep tabs on your progress?” the sisters asked spitefully in unison. “How we know is irrelevant!”
Realizing she wasn’t going to be able to lie about it, Polybia switched gears. “I’ve kept him contained for close to half a decade. If you want to blame someone for him breaking containment, it was Chrysalis. She’s the one at fault here!”
Twilight and Rainbow shared a glance with Rainbow flashing far more irritation. “We can deal with Chrysalis later,” Rainbow stated sharply.
“Right now, I am not going to let your pride allow him a chance to disappear into the jungles.” Twilight backed off a bit, and in passing, nudged her sister to do the same.
Polybia shook off the unsettling nature of two queens speaking in perfect unison, and growled right back at them. “I will handle this! Our agreement still stands, Grand Matriarchs. Allowing you to do my job for me would render it void.” Polybia did everything in her power to keep a growing edge of terror from creeping into her voice. At this rate, that damned goat will cost me most of the drones in the hive, and any egg reserves he comes across.
The very real prospect of losing to a combined might of Chrysalis, the Long Shot, and this new mystery security leak, Polybia was not about to let the deal slip through her figurative fingers. “I still have two weeks to deliver him.”
Rainbow scoffed with a flourish of her tail at the notion. A mental nudge from Twilight and a few silent words made Rainbow Dash’s train of thought switch tracks. “You’ve two options, Poly Pocket, so you listen and you listen good.” Rainbow punctuated her statement by jabbing the puppet with a hoof.
Twilight spoke without missing a beat. “You can either die by Grogar’s hoof and have your soul be his personal plaything, or you can let us go in there, and take him ourselves.”
Polybia smacked Rainbow’s hoof away, growling through her teeth. “Only to be killed by you and your allies? Not a chance!” She looked Rainbow dead in the eye, occasionally shifting to cast a withering glare at Twilight. “I can’t stop you from breaking your word on interfering, but you will always know that you’re word will never be worth the time it’d take to listen to it.”
Polybia barked one last time before either queen could rebuke her. “Now, I have a goat to catch, you’ll hear of my success by day’s end.”
Twilight’s gaze went unfocused as she mulled over her options. Rainbow Dash on the other hand kicked the air out of frustration. “How can anyone been so stubborn and stupid!?”
“I bet you could have answered that yourself a couple of decades ago,” Twilight commented with some dry humor. Rainbow glowered at her unwanted teasing, not that it was necessary for Twilight to remain on track. “Stubbornness or not. We can’t let Grogar escape.”
“Right,” Rainbow was sluggish to let the scowl fall, so it instead shifted towards nobody in particular. “I’ll get the Steamrunner’s troops to deploy to the surface of the hive. All Poly has to do is get him above ground so we can take it from there.”
Twilight nodded approvingly. “Good idea. I’ll have Rorke create a portal trap on the ship so he can’t slip away.”
Rainbow stood relatively still as she sent off a slew of orders across the hive mind. “Will that work on demon portals?”
Twilight gave a curt nod. “That demonologist’s price was rather agreeable to that bit of knowledge. Grogar’s not going anywhere.”
Controlling undead was not like running a hive mind. There was no real communication between the necromancer and individual undead, no complete loyalty that pushed into the realm of divine worship. Instead it was more of a passive awareness passed down to the master, and a domination of will. The latter of which was generally easy given the simple minds and weak wills of the typical undead.
So it was, that Grogar plowed through the hive with ease, for each felled drone only added to his growing army. At least that was the idea. Grogar was roughly halfway up his path towards the throne room when the flanks of his army stopped heeding his commands.
For the first few minutes of climbing, he dismissed it as Polybia ambushing his new troops, as expected. Only... Polybia had not moved from her original location. Before he could ponder on the oddity, his scattered undead forces were assaulted en masse all throughout the tunnels. An entire collection of undead drones vanished from his control in one fell swoop, while others winked out of his consciousness in rapid succession.
Not that he cared for the losses, only in how it was happening. I don’t sense any real presence of holy magic, and Polybia would have to be in close proximity to forcibly take control of my thralls…
Is she actually capable of stealing them through puppets? The prospect sent a kernel of doubt in his assumed victory. I haven’t lived this long by being arrogant.
Grogar’s path led him straight into a football field sized hatchery that was strangely quiet. Aside from the jagged hole in the floor, from which Grogar and his rotting entourage were emerging from, and the gaping hole in the ceiling that was spilling forth a sliver of sunlight, the hatchery was still. Half of the wall to wall alcoves were empty, others near the hole had been burst open, half-formed drones laid on the floor dead or dying.
Yet there was no sound of the living scurrying away, no noise of eggs being spirited away, not one hoofstep or wingbeat to be heard. “Are you so uncaring of your brood that you would think to ambush me here?” he announced loudly with a touch of magic to make sure it carried throughout the hatchery.
He waited as long as he was able for a sign. Grogar couldn’t make out anything as his undead started piling up rocks and wax to allow their master to continue up to the ceiling hole. Given the rapid nature of their turn to undeath, the vast majority of the drones’ wings were flaking away into dust, leaving climbing the only option he could think of.
As for himself, Grogar’s demonic eyes swept the hatchery for threats. While Polybia’s location was painfully obvious, the rest of the hive and its denizens were by no means free of his mark. And therein lied the problem, with everything marked, it was impossible to identify individual threats.
He was about to start empowering a wide sweeping spell when he spotted something out of place. In a pile of broken and leaking maturation pods was a pocket of air devoid of his magic. if she thinks she can strike me with my back turned again, I will have to educate her on such folly.
Fearing he’d be too vulnerable casting a larger spell, Grogar opted to lash out with a quick ice spell that sent a blizzard of sharp hail upon the pile of broken pods. The frozen daggers sunk into the pile, producing the shattering sound of breaking chitin rather than embedding themselves in wax.
With a calculating slight frown, Grogar watched as three drones dropped their disguises and slumped to the floor in death. A much larger figure desperately heaved itself out of the pile, and away from Grogar.
The necromancer lifted a single eyebrow at apparently finding a different queen than the one he was hunting. He spotted one of the jagged icicles had buried itself deep into her left thigh, keeping her from doing little more than stumble forward and give muffled cries of pain.
With a curt jerk of his head, two undead departed the rest and grabbed the struggling queen, heedless of her struggles to escape. “Well well, the famous Red Queen,” Grogar grumbled with his gravely voice. “To hear Polybia boast, you should be her docile slave by now.”
No queen was gifted with powerful physical strength, which wasn’t helped at all by Kreesus’ current muscle weakness. Nevertheless, she constantly tested her two jailers with jerking motions to try and free herself, no matter what little good it would do. “Just get it over with, necromancer! I’d rather not have two prolonged deaths in a single week.”
He ignored her final request and skirted around her before yanking the icicle out her thigh with a single mighty pull of telekinesis. “Your fate will be of your own making, Red Queen.”
Kreesus hissed in a mixture of pain and relief at the ice’s removal, only to cringe in disgust as she watched Grogar lick the ice clean of her blood. Grogar tasted the sins upon her blood with a hum of curiosity. “Profound betrayal marked with mutual reconciliation, more or less. I can't remember the last time I tasted that.” Even stranger that her culture almost mandated her actions.
When Kreesus said nothing, waiting for the end, Grogar had her jailers release her. Not expecting that, Kreesus face planted the ground with the undead drones shambling off to guard an entrance Grogar spotted while sampling Kreesus’ sins. “You are free to leave, assuming you don’t get in my way.”
Kreesus rubbed her pained snout. “J-just like that!?” Kreesus inwardly chastised herself to looking a gifthorse in the mouth, yet she hesitated to flee. As much of a threat he was, Grogar was currently less so than the waves of hostile drones and undead outside the hatchery. The sound of fighting was already echoing from the multiple entrances along the entire north face.
Grogar ignored her, and instead focused on trying to glean some reason as to why nearly all of his soldiers outside of the immediately area were already down to less than a tenth of their original numbers. These queens are solitary creatures as far as intelligence is concerned, so why does it feel like I’m surrounded by multiple necromancers?
It seems I will have to reinforce the minds of those I still control to keep them in line. Taking his severed horn into his right foreleg, Grogar channeled his power through it and into the various zombified drones around him. These things are already little more than flesh golems, but I always keep an ace in the hole.
Outwardly, Grogar didn’t look like he was concentrating all that much, simply holding his horn as waves of dark magic flowed outward and into the undead.
After letting her hammering heart calm down a notch, Kreesus tried to make herself as small as possible and out of Grogar’s sight. Don’t know, nor do I care why he’s not killing me, I just have to get out here.
Her first thought were the exits, however Grogar was already sending undead to guard them, or was pulling more of his scattered forces in. Okay, so that’s not an option. Knowing that Grogar was bound to leave soon with the rocks piling up in short order, the idea of staying here for Polybia’s swarm to come up behind him was not appealing either. Without an escort to protect me, I’d never be able to commandeer a drone if Polybia is directly puppeting it. ...Which only leaves one choice doesn’t it?
Steeling herself, Kreesus stepped towards Grogar who was testing the new ramp’s stability with a few undead going on ahead of him. “If you aren’t going to kill me, can I at least follow you outside? I don’t exactly have an escort anymore.” She glanced at the pile of dead drones where she had been hiding.
“... Well aren’t you the brave one,” Grogar said at length while turning to stare at her with uncaring eyes. “Or perhaps foolish if Polybia’s precedence is common among you royals. As I said, don’t get-” He paused as an idea crept into his head, making him reevaluate the royal changeling standing shakily before him. “Perhaps you can be of use to me after all.”
I should have just played dead. Kreesus took a step back as several undead began to circle her.
“How about we broker a deal, Red Queen. I will ensure you survive the day, and you provide me a new body. A royal changeling body to be precise.” Kreesus’ eyes dialated to the point where Grogar was amused by the idea of them popping out of their sockets. “We can work out the details later.” Kreesus’ pride kept her from backpedaling any further, but her conscience screamed to not make any deal.
“I think I’ll take my chances alone, thank you.” Kreesus turned to leave, only for the undead to block her escape.
Grogar took a step forward, stomping a hoof loudly enough to grab her attention. “The last queen I made this request towards ended up capturing me and turned me into a font of power.” Kreesus trembled at the sight of the amassing undead forming behind Grogar. “Clearly if you are not willing to cooperate, then I must assume you will stand in my way.”
“I - I,” Kreesus stammered with her backed into a corner. “I can’t. I don’t have a hive anymore, Polybia destroyed it.”
“You’re still alive though, and from what I hear, you can give rise to a new hive all by yourself.” Grogar moved in to lord over Kreesus, using his natural demonic aura to intimidate her. “How about I sweeten the deal. You get me my new body, and I will protect you from the jungle until you can support yourself.”
That brought Kreesus up short, allowing her heart to stop trying to hammer its way out of her chest. She fixed him with a quizzical look. “You’re desperate for this, aren’t you? Why?”
Grogar’s attention briefly shifted to one of the south entrances where the sound of detonating spells shook the ground, causing dust and loose stones to start falling from the ceiling. “We can speak of my reasons at a later time.” With a flash of his eyes and a single high pitched chime of his bells, an open scroll burst into being wreathed in hellfire. “By signing this contract, you and I will come to an agreement on the means by which you will give me this new body in exchange for my protection. Nice and simple.” One particular explosion sent pebbles and dust roaring out of one the southern exits. “I suggest you come to a decision quickly.”
A hollow ring of fire materialized on the contract in the shape of a hoof with the word ‘signature’ emblazoned above it.
All it took was the angry buzzing of drones closing in on the hatchery and the silent threat of murder from Grogar to make Kreesus’ decision for her. “Not much of a choice is there? Very well,” she said while trying to strike up some dignity. “A proper queen always keeps her word.” Besides, it’s just an agreement to come to an agreement, I can work this in my favor if Queen Twilight Sparkle or Rainbow Dash just so happens to kill Grogar before we have a chance.
Her escape plan already formulating, Kreesus pressed her hoof on the signature circle. Upon removing the hoof, a seal formed over the spot and the whole document burst into flames.
“The contract is sealed,” Grogar stated with a heavy sense of finality. “Now stay close and keep your head down.”
Kreesus couldn’t shake the feeling some minor thing had been left attached to the bottom of her hoof, but an inspection revealed nothing. It must be my imagination. Quick to avoid personal danger, Kreesus obeyed and made her way to the now completed rockpile up to the ceiling.
As Grogar was climbing the first steps, the guards on the southern entrance growled a challenge at a foe in the tunnel beyond and charged in. A moment later, a mighty thwack of bone on breaking chitin heralded one of the undead being sent flying back into the hatchery with the other undead being silenced a moment later.
I won’t get far if my back is exposed. With that in mind, Grogar opted to stand his ground and had his remaining spare undead form a defensive ring in front of him.
A massive bipedal form ducked its way into the hatchery. Kreesus immediately identified it as a minotaur, but only a mockery of one. The minotaur’s bull horns were gone, replaced by a crooked changeling horn instead. The bull’s pupil-less eyes were solid blue and much of its massive frame had patches of chitin and swaths of missing fur. Finally, its muscle bound arms had holes starting to form all over both of them.
The minotaur shouldered a massive warhammer made of bone and chitin that was caked in ichor and bits of meat. The minotaur made no immediate threatening move, only to step forward enough for a growing number of undead and living drones to file in behind him. “The great and powerful Grogar,” the minotaur grumbled with disdain. “I’ve been wanting to kill you ever since my queen brought you in.” He brought his warhammer into both hands and dug into the dirt with a hoof. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally punish you for what you’ve done to her.”
“A quasi!?” Kreesus half asked/shouted. “Is Polybia so desperate she’d let you actually fight?”
The quasi-minotaur snorted derisively while not breaking his gaze on Grogar. “Is the answer not self-evident enough for you?”
Kreesus took a brief moment to actually think about the situation with Grogar. Yeah… okay, fair point. Not that she’d dare admit that aloud.
Grogar sensed a great deal of necromantic magic swirling within the minotaur, yet oddly enough, none of it was bound to Grogar. He must be the cause of my dwindling army. He’d make a fine servant. “If you wait the other necromancer should be here any second.”
As if he’d been waiting for that cue, the eastern most entrance exploded in a cloud of dark magic and a storm of dust and flying ichor from the broken pods. Kreesus had enough magical strength to shield herself in holy magic before the blast wave hit her while Gorgar stood there and endured it like an admiral.
A second pressure wave cleared the dust for the most part, revealing a griffon flanked by drones, both alive and undead. At least that’s what Kreesus and Grogar assumed it to be at first. A second look revealed that the newcomer only had the head and flared wings of a griffin while everything else about him from his legs and body looked no different than a drone. “I hope I’m not too late.”
“Not at all, Talon,” the minotaur snarked. “You get to see me take credit for his head,” minotaur grinned while gesturing his warhammer towards Grogar.
Grogar ignored their boasting and casually brushed some dust off his chest. “Since I know you can hear me, Polybia,” he calmly yelled at the minotaur. “I’d like you to meet some old friends of ours.”
The proclamation gave the quasi pause as Grogar focused his power inward while his bells started ringing a song so haunting that it gave everyone, Kreesus, the quasi, and Polybia visions of what each of their personal hells looked like. Suddenly, all the bells chimed in unison as silvery spirits poured out of Grogar’s mouth. Several dozen split off and took the shape of various species ranging from ponies to sphinxes and every race who had a known civilization.
“You didn’t honestly think I consumed those prisoners entirely did you?” Grogar looked up to the dozens of spirits above him. “The ambient dark magic saturating this hive of yours has given them renewed strength, as it has for me as well.” He rang a single bell which forced all the ghosts to focus on him and him alone. “Slaughter my enemies this day, and you shall have your freedom. But you leave Polybia to me!”
The ghosts started cackling at the proposal, a haunting humorless mirth that spoke of madness that suppressed a sane mind screaming for the embrace of death. Both quasi took a step back at the soul-chilling sound as the ghosts seemed to fade in and out of sight. “Weeeee ooobey.”