Baddie Boom

“OK,” said Rosalind “, I have good news and bad news for you; which do you want first?”

“What are you rambling about now, Princess? I know that you would do anything to protect your precious empire, but you can’t keep them safe from me.”

“Well, all things considered, your skeleton siege would be a clever trick”, Rosalind snapped. “Because the Burg-akin empire was overthrown about 300 years ago.”

“WHAT?” Snarled Mitch, his face contorting from the shock in ways no mortal one ever could. “You’re obviously lying, trying to save your own sorry skin. Well, it won’t work; there is no way the empire collapsed without me; I’m not buying it.”

“No, it didn’t collapse without you bonehead; it collapsed because it was rotten through and caused their own people to overthrow them.”

“And you just happen to know this? How?”

“Princess, remember, do you know how many boring and never-ending classes on history and geopolitics. I’m subjected to on a regular basis? Here’s a clue, a lot. Hard to forget that particular one, too, given that it was about how the Harmsworth Kingdom rose from the ashes of one Burg-akin empire. Course, I don’t think it’s an unbiased lesson, history isn’t that cut and dried, especially given that only the victor gets editing rights, and usually, the ones who write it down are not nice people, but yeah, that particular lesson was memorable. Gory battles, a lesson on why not to be a knob to your subjects, minimal talk about inbreeding, that always makes a change when it comes to royalty, oh and a reminder as a royal that if you act like the world revolves around you, it tends to lead to revolution over you. So all things considered a pretty good class.”

“And you expect me to just believe this nonsense? Take your word for it, is that it?”

“Nope, you want proof, right? Then talk to our construct friend Addy. They’ll be able to help you get the facts. They’re just up on the surface, and you can take as many of your friends as you like.

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Up on the surface, everybody was a bit on edge, probably something to do with the battle sounds, then silence. Now the noise was starting up again, and it sounded like 50 rattles on the march. Everybody was carefully stationed between the exit and the Sporeling town (except Rascal, who was, of course, taking a nap in the carriage given that forests full of flammable spores, plus burning kitty with poor impulse control was not what you would call a desirable outcome.) The Sporelings were getting increasingly stressed and agitated; they had figured out a few days ago what lurked in this tomb was not going to be hit by breathing in their defensive spores, and poking with spears tends to require you to be able to hit something. (A stabbing is somewhat less effective if the jabby tool of choice had enough room to rattle around, and the Sporelings were just a tad vertically challenged for blunt weapons to be particularly useful to them. *&£* was considered leggy as far as Sporelings went, at a whopping 2 and three-quarters feet tall.)

Whatever was down there, there were a lot of them, and they were coming up, accompanied by the occasional sound of a trap going off, followed by some irate rattling, then the sound of whatever it was restarting their journey surfacewards.

Addy was not happy; in fact, without the others nearby, they were downright scared. But whatever emerged from the depths, she felt compelled to face it. Though she was unsure if it was a lingering remnant of her core coding or active emotion, adding a delightful dose of existential crisis to the already heady mix of fear, concern about her friend's welfare, homesickness, protective instinct over small creatures her code had deemed “cute” oh and wondering if they counted as human, and whether that had influenced her decision. At this point, had they been the owner of an organic computation unit, they would probably have given careful consideration to booze. But given that, that wasn’t an option (them lacking taste buds and all, which all things considered with the quality of booze available locally may have been considered more of a feature than a bug, really.) So instead, they had settled for the go to’s when booze wasn’t on the menu. To start with, while things had been quiet, they had tried cleaning, with the result that everything was now gleaming, and they were still nervous. Then they’d tried training; of course, in the absence of any kind of training equipment, they had settled for what they could rig up from their local environment. Long story short that had ended after the Sporelings made it fairly clear in their own unspoken way that they did not need or want another clearcut area or crater. So after that, they had swapped to drills, literally. Training their blocks and strikes with their inbuilt excavation equipment.

Now, of course, with the unknown surfacing from underground, Addy no longer had that luxury, having replaced said activities with a constant patrol route near the exit to the tomb where they could keep a close eye on what was going on. Now it was becoming fairly clear that whatever it was was magical in nature. The ethereal signature stirring and massing was becoming bigger and, by extension, scarier by the minute. Addy had not seen an ethereal signal with this much necromantic energy since the birth of unit Grark. So they patrolled and waited, weapons at the ready until, at last, something emerged from the dark. Something that looked suspiciously like Cluster unit Mibbet/Rosalind.

Sure enough, that was confirmed a moment later when Alba pounced, ignoring unit Mibbets horrified, screeching, and licked her. Then turned once more to the tomb with a ferocious growl as another figure emerged. A lich heading up what can best be described as a horde. Addy was about to fight when Rosalind stopped them.

“Actually, I have a request that may clear all this up; I want you to teach this guy how to use the network.