What do we know about choice? Well, everyone has one. Sometimes its consequences are unpredictable, and even more often, extremely painful. And most importantly, there is always a choice.
Audita thought as she stared at the large mirror that was broadcasting the battle in the capital live. Her ward was standing in front of a half dead lizard and for some reason was in no hurry to finish it off.
"Why is he standing there?" Audita asked nervously, shifting irritably from foot to foot.
"He's probably thinking about how to sell this kingdom to the necromancers." A slight chuckle flickered across Mina's face.
"No he wouldn't, he's come all this way." The girl's eyes began to water, but hope, hope still lingered in her heart.
"I guess we'll see everything now."
Both girls were staring intently at the mirror, it seemed that if they looked even more intently, they would burn a hole through it.
The black figure slowly approached the half-rotten dragon, a short phrase, and he continued on his way as if nothing had happened, the dragon only slightly moved his muzzle, but did not interfere with him.
Tears flowed from Auditha's eyes, she fell to her knees and began to hammer the stone floor with her thin hands in despair.
"Again, again failure, why, what am I doing wrong?" her interlocutor just stood by her side, she realised perfectly well that it was better not to approach now.
The square in front of the gate...
Bondrewd made his choice, and with a confident step was heading to the rear of the dead army, the lizard was satisfied with his answer and lost interest in the 'Lord of Dawn', and very in vain, it was his last mistake, walking a little ahead and not reaching the first row of undead that patiently waited for the order for a new assault.
Bondrewd decided to try one of his new techniques, in the abyss there is no time, or circumstances do not allow, but now everything is like in the textbook, the conditions are ideal, there are enemies all around, and allies are far away, and even if they get them, it is not terrible.
The helmet of Dawn of Lord flared vivid purple, and that was the last thing the necromancer saw with his side vision, realising the futility of his situation he only managed to exclaim angrily.
"You promised, didn't you?"
"I lied," Bondrewd said in a mundane tone and spun round sharply 360 degrees.
And every second of his way from his narrow band on his helmet, thin violet rays rained down like a cornucopia, and it seemed that there was no number to them, hundreds of even weakened clots of pure energy, tearing both the half-dead dragon and the horde of the dead behind him into smoking bloody ribbons.
"Don't get me wrong, I support your point of view, and your plan is not bad, it's just that the result for me comes first and I can't take any risks, and I would never trust someone like me." said the Lord of Dawn, walking calmly through the square chopped into a hellish pilaf.
"And now it's time to finish," the man began to accelerate towards the city gates, which were still holding by some miracle, but as expected, the army of the dead did not notice the loss of a fighter and came through the breach in a steady stream.
With a decent acceleration, Bondrewd climbed the ruins of the tower in three powerful leaps, passing the wave of undead. His hands drew bombs from his pockets, three in each hand, ready to be detonated, with only the flick of the torch.
The weighty sticky balls made a great arc, followed by a light plume of lit gunpowder, which was synchronously printed into the adjacent, undestroyed sections of the wall. The explosion, though not very impressive, but its task was fulfilled, the bombs synchronously collapsed the neighbouring pieces of the wall, raising a sea of dust and burying under them and the breach and all those who were in it.
The guardsmen and soldiers, at first a little frightened by the incomprehensible rumble, did not understand what had happened, but the realisation came quickly enough, and the first guardsman raised his halberd upwards, the others followed suit, shouting victory cries, but Bondrewd knew that the battle was not over yet, the leader of the entire undead army was there behind the wall, surrounded by his henchmen, watching the agony of the city from a convenient hillside.
The lord couldn't see the dawn, but he could sense its location, it was a serious opponent, and he had to be killed as quickly as possible.
There were no undead left in the square, so the attack would be unexpected, the man sharply raised his hand and directed it into the wall, a strange act at first glance, and at second glance too.
The man's hand lit up like a small sun, scattering hundreds of sparks, preparing for the final blow in this battle.
The beam flew out of Bondrewd's hand, and in an instant burned a hole in the wall, as if it were not stone, but paper, a huge beam of pure death swept away the entire hillside, and half a kilometre of forest behind it, looking through the hole in the wall melted at the edges, the Lord of Dawn was quite satisfied with the result, and turned to the defenders. Who were already celebrating their victory, Bondrewd quickly ran his eyes over their ranks.
"Someone is missing."
The House of Interest...
Dick had fought with revived armour before, and he saw nothing terrible in them; they stuffed some poor man's soul into a tin can, breaking it on the way. And go ahead, chop and shred whatever they tell you to, for the glory of us, your masters, of course. But this one was different.
Usually golems, sluggish and slightly sluggish, there was always inertia in their movements. Their blows could hardly be combined into combinations, and most often resembled mindless waving of weapons in the direction of the enemy.
But Dick's opponent was a real master, his movements were precise and full of grace, his blows, as expected from a golem, were incredibly strong, and what was not expected was that this strange type could use combat skills, and not worse than Dick himself, which for living armour was beyond the limit.
"What the fuck do we do?" Dick thought, while fending off the blow of the assertive opponent, the fight lasted only a couple of minutes, but the former centurion was already exhausted, his hands were burning fire in unison with the lungs, and the most meagre forces to maintain the aura of acceleration will be enough for another three minutes.
At the right moment, Dick stepped back slightly, and the living armour followed him, with his sword drawn, waiting for the last moment before he struck and almost shitting in his trousers. Dick somersaulted to the side with his hand in his pocket. The light smoke, the pungent, bitter smell of gunpowder, and the wiry hand that threw the sticky charge of destruction took only a few seconds.
Dick came out of the roll sharply, and having unluckily rammed his face into the thorny bushes, with a scream and a scratched face, dived out from the other side, and without switching off the acceleration hid behind the corner of the house, tight against the wall.
Another two seconds passed, and....
Nothing happened, but Dick did not care, he was catching his breath.
'I feel as if I were wrestling with a bear,' flashed through the mind of the ex-tenant, and though it was far from the truth, it reflected the situation quite objectively.
"Let's go on," Dick muttered, the edge of his bald head showing around the corner of the house, sword at the ready, but the forest robber could not think of what happened next.
A hand, clad in black ribbed armour, pierced the stone corner of the house as if it were a rotten plank and grabbed him by the neck. Dick had no time to react, the blow came from his blind spot, the ice-cold fingers clenched and cut off his oxygen supply. The warrior's body lifted off the ground, the living armour seemed to have no trouble holding a man of eighty kilograms on its weight.
Dick tried to break free, but all in vain. His blade he dropped from the unexpected attack, unable to reach the bomb.
"Is this really the end?" mentally asked Dick, looking into the empty eye sockets of the dead armour, only a slight red glow coming from the slits in his helmet was his mute answer, and the past events flashed before his eyes: the massacre in the camp, Bondrewd, the attack on the walls, and the fights in the streets, the old rascal Ritor, and Linda, Linda....
'I'm sorry I couldn't keep my promise.'
A crossbow bolt whistled right in front of the hapless romantic's nose, and stabbed into the shoulder of the black knight, an ordinary living armour would not have even scratched, but this one was not quite ordinary, and as if a man had loosened his steel grip on Dick's neck for a moment, The living armour lost its balance and finally let go of the bandit, and he was knocked back a couple of metres.
Dick by inertia turned and he fell on the paving stone, in front of him literally in 5 steps there was his blade and the bandit crawled to it, as a saving thread, his leg hurt like hell, probably fractured, but it didn't matter.
"Bitch... just a little more." Dick jerked his body with all his might and gripped the handle with a steel grip. A boot came out of nowhere and sealed the bandit's arm tightly into the ground. Dick's eyes darkened with pain, and he struggled, trying to pull his arm out, but to move his assailant or to do him any harm at all was, in this situation, out of the realm of fantasy.
A stream of air went straight for the blade of living armour, a swing...
The ground shook and an unbelievable, literally knocking down the streets of the city, travelling through all its nooks and crannies. The victim and the executioner synchronously turned towards the source of the sound, as if mesmerised. And then followed an incomprehensible live armour as if hovering, half a minute he just poked in the direction of the city gates, where as Dick noted to himself actually lacked two towers. After that, he abruptly snapped out of his seat and, ignoring the already defeated Dick, ran away, disappearing around the nearest corner.
"What the fuck was that?"
"Fuck it, it must have been Bondrewd." The bandit tried to get up, but realising his poor physical condition he gave up the idea.
"Ritor!" He shouted. The wooden shutters rattled, and from the open window of the second story a familiar dirty face looked out at Dick.
"What are you shouting, you moron? The undead are coming here from all over the city." Ritor yelled back, as if not noticing the volume of his own yelling.
"No one's here, that creepy guy's gone, help me!" Ritor stuck his head out of the window and looked round, nodded silently to Dick and closed the shutters. Dick made sure that everything was all right, leaned his head back on the soft grass and looked at the clear azure sky.
"Had they really won?"