u/Richardtheartist

To preface, as this is set within a world within a game (still in development), there might be names or terms that might not make sense. Thank you for your time.
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>"As above they fall, those below shall rise"

The Lady's scribe had occupied the desk opposite our guard post for longer than either Shells or I had been dead. His russet-stained bones left little ambiguity as to how many centuries he had spent in her service. He wrote constantly and rarely spoke; recording every campaign, conquest and catastrophe carried out in the name of the Madam. Unfortunately, acquiring any of those stories from the old, tight-lipped bag of bones was considerably more difficult.

"Tight-lipped only if you're too scared to bribe 'im"

Shells wasn't the type to mince words, or really care about what stupid nonsense comes out of his mouth. Often we would be paired up for guard duty in the outer eastern chambers, and he was more than happy to mouth off even during fights with the invaders. I always assumed he died at the hands of his own comrades, specifically the one who finally grew tired of listening to him. And now I share in their despair. Unfortunately stabbing him now would accomplish very little. The blade would pass between his ribs, and he would probably critique the attempt.

Luck would have it, however, that adventurers who reached our post were usually exhausted enough to knock off only one of our heads before the other finished them. Regardless of whose head, it was a blissful ten seconds of peace before the Lady's magic would bring us back up.

"And how d'you reckon we bribe someone who won't even look at us?" I couldn't help chuckling.
"Hell, what do we even have to bribe? Last I checked, we don't even have any property of our own!" I said, gesturing all around us.

We possessed nothing, it would have made little sense for us to do so.
Sure, when you get resurrected you might still have the belongings from before our timely end, but we are brought back with no interest in who we were, only our habits and partial memory of what we've done. We remembered events without always remembering where they belonged. A voice might remain after its owner vanished from memory; a face might linger without a name; we could even recognise a sword from life and still fail to recognise the hand that killed us with it.

Shells leaned towards me and tapped the side of my skull.
"C'mon Maxi, i thought you were meant to be somethin' smart."

I am smart. Or rather, I died a smart person.

"Stories, lad. The only thing important to someone who writes stories are new ones."
"New, n' interesting."

"Heh, and you reckon he'll trade stories from the Lady for ours?"

"Don't get me wrong Maxi" He said.
"Blessed be the word of the Madam, but i think our pal could risk sharing a tale of her campaigns if we give 'im somthin' worth writing down."
"Question is, who has the better story?"

Story? And what kind of story could either of us possess that was worth writing down? Do i have a story? Who had I been before-

"Now i think I have a right banger of a tale!" Shells announced, entirely disregarding my train of thought.
"So I used to be part of the Corpus, right? Major of the Valente's sub-unit, In charge of blasting down the walls of any bastard stupid enough to build anything in our way"
"Structural weak point, they called it. I called the bit we aimed the bloody cannon at"

Blasting made sense, and that does explain the name.

"There weren't a thing we couldn't tear down, as long as we 'ad enough Cap Flies, those noisy buggers."

"Cap Flies" He said fondly. "The Cappers squeezed those brave little bastards tight enough to fit in a cannon. Fire 'em at a wall and all that mass expanding makes quite a dent."

He mimed an explosion with both hands.

"Mostly at the wall."

The corpus never ceases to amaze me. Mostly in the sense that I can't believe that throwing part of their ranks is considered the first option. The Cappers would work in pairs, one responsible for the initial compression, and the other in charge of holding the magic until it hit it's target, the latter being pivotal to prevent a premature explosion.

"The buzzing is no joke either." Shells continued as he looked up, seemingly reliving the action.
"Seeing a shrieking bloody mass like that blowing down walls, it was downright beautiful"

Shells scratched where his chin might have been, possibly trying to remember something.

"So one night we get ordered to handle the situation down at Tury, who were dumb enough to kill the messenger we sent for an offer of peace and favourable trade"

"Tury? Do you mean Castle Tury?"

"Exactly. Problem is, by the time we got there, there weren't so much as a tower standing"

"You arrived after the battle?" I asked

"That's what we thought."
Shells raised one finger.
"Then we noticed the walls"

"What about them?"

"They were lying on the wrong side."

I stared at him.

Shells spread his hands as though that explained everything.

"Walls fall inward when you knock 'em down from the outside, Maxi. That's how walls work. Tury's were scattered halfway across the bloody countryside. Whole place looked like it had tried to run away from whatever was inside."

Frightening.

"Our orders were to secure the castle, and imprison the Duke and his army. If they were still alive in the end."

"Was there anyone left?"

"Oh sure, there were plenty" Shells grinned slightly.

"Just none of 'em in a single piece"

Shells explained that the Valentes advanced through what remained of the outer gate, followed by all their cannons. As they were too big to go any further, both the cannons and the cappers stayed behind while Shells and the rest went further.

"We was in the courtyard. Full of bodies, Tury soldiers mostly. Some still 'ad their swords out, other looked like they died praying."

He scratched beneath his jaw again.

"Strangest thing was, every single bloke was facing the same direction."

In the center there had been a solitary woman standing over a dead man. She wore no crest, no banners or colours that Shells could recognize. Instead she wore a vibrant green dress, a skull over each shoulder, and an emerald jewel embedded in her crown. Strangely, He couldn't exactly remember her face. A pale complexion, a few gold adornments along her ears and eyes a piercing colour of danger.

Something in his description troubled me, though i couldn't recall why.

"Thought she was a survivor," Shells said. "So naturally I told her to get back before someone mistook her for a target."

"Considerate."

"I was an officer."

"You fired living soldiers out of a cannon."

"Professionally."

Shells had stepped ahead of his men.
"Oi!" he had shouted. "This territory is now under our control! Identify yourself and kindly step away from the corpses!"

"You are late." The woman said, as she looked towards him.

Shells paused in his retelling.

"That was it?"

"At first"

"What did you say?"

"Told her we'd arrived exactly when we intended."

"You were late, weren't you?"

"Strategically late. Completely different thing"

The woman turned away and looked back down at the man. While the other soldiers around her had no visible damage, that man in particular stood out as he was the only one lying in a pool of his own blood, prompting Shells to draw his sword.

"I was all manner of polite. I even asked which religion she practiced!"

"And?"

"She said 'Mine.'"

A green mist now started to circulate the courtyard, with the corpses at her feet opening their eyes. Armor scraped against stone as dozens of soldiers had risen, skin shedding off like snakes. One by one, the dead soldiers stood in formation.

Shells insisted that he did not panic. He merely issued several commands in rapid succession, at increasing volume, while retreating towards the cannons for "strategic" reasons.

The first Cap Fly struck the courtyard before the dead had properly found their footing. He explained how at that short distance, that probably he shouldn't have done that as him and his men were well within the compression blast radius.

The buzzing noise rose to a shriek, and then came the impact. The soldiers made no effort to dodge or defend, they didn't need to. Broken soldiers dragged themselves free. Those who could not walk crawled, Those missing arms used their teeth. Whenever the soldiers fell, the woman simply commanded them to rise again. And so, one after another the dead would reassemble themselves.

"Second Volley!" Shells shouted.

Another chorus of disgusting masses screaming filled the sky.

The woman in green had now started moving. She walked through the smoke and green mist towards the men. The second volley struck right behind her, tearing down the corpses she had just raised, who were, at this point, stripped of all armor and skin, an army of skeletons.

It did not slow her as she made her way towards the front line.

Every Valente who fell joined the advance from the opposite direction.

"Bit unsporting, really" Shells muttered. "Every soldier we lost became one of hers. Terrible for morale."

His cannons fired until their barrels glowed, the woman continuing towards them.

Spears and swords cracked against something invisible before reaching her, cannon shots stopped in the air and dropped harmlessly at her feet. Men brave enough to charge her managed three or four steps before their bodies failed before them. And of course, they would stand up moments later.

Shells lost half his unit before she reached the first cannon line. He lost the other half shortly after.

"And naturally" he said, drawing himself upright, "I was the last man standing."

"Naturally."

"I had a single cap shot left. Big bastard. Could hear him screamin' inside the barrel before I even lit the fuse."

"You loaded it yourself?"

"I was the major. Course I didn't. But the loader had recently developed a severe case of being dead, so circumstances forced my hand"

The cannon was already pointed directly at the woman in green. Things looked bleak as the Capper responsible for holding the shot was gone, at that distance, firing it was almost as dangerous to Shells as it was to it's target. Almost.

The woman stopped several paces away, and for the first time her expression changed. Shells couldn't remember what the expression had been. Mild amusement or pity perhaps? Maybe it was the weary disappointment of seeing someone make a very obvious mistake.

"Major" She said flatly as Shells' finger tightened around the firing cord.
"You should step away from that cannon."

"I told her," Shells said, "Madam, I have never stepped away from anythin' in me life."

"That sounds... Unlikely." I said, confident that whatever replaced my eyes were rolling to the back of my head.

"Mate look, It was a dramatic moment."

He pulled the cord. Flash. No buzzing, instead, a loud bang followed by the sound of metal being ripped apart. Last thing he saw was the butt of his cannon inches from his face.

After that Shells remembered nothing until he awoke within the Lady's dungeon with a sword in his hand and a peculiarly shaped dent adorning his skull.

He finished his story with arms spread wide.
"So there you 'ave it. Major Shells, last defender of the Valentes. Took on an entire army and died at his post."

"You died by your own cannon."

"Unconfirmed."

"There's a cannon-shaped crack in your skull"

"Could've been anything. "

"You said you saw the cannon flying back."

"Battle's confusing."

"You were standing behind the cannon."

Shells folded his arms.
"Jealousy is an ugly habit, Maxi."

Against my best efforts, I laughed. Unfortunately, that was admittedly a better end than what I had in mind, and now I have to find a story just as good.

"Your turn."

"I don't think I have one."

"Everyone's got a story."

"Not everyone remembers theirs."

"Remember enough."

That was the problem. I did remember a story, it's just a story that might not be right for the occasion.

A room atop the highest tower, shelves of glass vessels and books lining the walls. I could still remember the scent of burning copper and preserving salts. In the middle of the room a diagram within a circle drawn in white chalk across a stone floor; the symbols made sense to me back then, but looking back now i could not have explained a single one.

"i was a Scholar." I said.

Shells leaned against the wall.
"Knew that already."

"No, you assumed I was a scholar because I speak in complete sentences."

"Sure thing, mate."

"My name," I said, ignoring him.
"my name was Maximillian. I believe I worked under castle Tury."

Shells slowly stopped smiling. I hoped he still didn't feel the urge to carry out his duties post-cannon death.

"The same castle Tury?"

"Likely."

The laboratory had occupied every floor of the tower, and since what me and my fellow scholars did was considered holy work, we had the utmost protection. Doors thick enough to survive fire, siege and the occasional demon trying to escape.

My work concerned restraining holy figures; angels, demons, imps and anything else that can be summoned, really. Restraining a holy figure means a serious advantage dealing with the upper echelons of any of the Gods' servants. An Archangel that cannot move, is dead weight.

The Duke of Tury wished to acquire this spell so that he could launch attacks of his own, or in the worst case, sell this information off to whoever had the heaviest pocket. Right now, we had successfully bound a Warren-spawn. The arcane chains were bound so tight, it couldn't so much as pass wind without permission.

On the night the castle fell, I was alone in the laboratory. At least I thought i was. The warning bells had stopped several moments earlier, there was screaming all around, followed by a series of sounds I couldn't describe. Then silence fell.

I remember trying to dispose of my notes in order for me to leave and reach the next town over, my research was valuable, in turn, so was I.

I watched as most of my remaining journals were pushed into the furnace; years of diagrams curled into blackened fists, the ink bubbling away before the flames consumed them.

The spawn watched from the center of the room. It wasn't an unpleasant creature to look at, but any close inspection would reveal it's bestial nature. Spawn usually start as a seemingly normal looking human, but end up with more twisted proportions the longer they are alive. This one in particular notably had an appearance of a middle-aged woman, with unbelievably long hair that partially covered it's face; a young being relatively speaking, possibly around 100 years old.

"You find this amusing?" I asked.

The creature showed me it's teeth.

It had already threatened to hollow me out and offer my skin as a rug to the Warrinian Church on several occasions. This evening however, the creature had it's head hung, not a single word was uttered. It was distracted.

No, not distracted, was it scared?

I turned to a woman standing inside the laboratory. I did not hear the door opening, in fact, all the locks and seals were untouched behind her. She was hard to make out in the harsh light of the binding seals in the floor, but what was clear is that if the Warren-spawn was scared, that I rather not take any chances.

"You're not permitted to be here." I said.

She looked towards the furnace.

"I could have you in jail for trespassing, this is work overseen by the Duke himself! Entering this chamber without his written permission carries a punishment of-"

"The Duke is dead." Her words like ice, there was no discussion, only certainty; the Duke was likely dead.

I glanced towards the door. Maybe if I were to release the creature, I would have enough time to undo the seals and make my way to the nearest horse. Only problem was that my courage might as well have burned up in the furnace behind me, as I could not even muster an ounce of strength to even move a leg.

"Well, shit. That does complicate the matter of written permission"

She walked around the room, her attention moving across the laboratory: the diagrams covering the walls, the instruments upon my desk, the broken fragments of previous binding stones. Finally, she fixed her gaze on the Warren-spawn.

The thing pulled against it's restraints more feverishly than I'd ever seen, but it wasn't towards her, it pulled away. Away. "You've come for the creature" I said.

No answer.

"It would be a poor decision, dangerous temperament, limited intelligence, dreadful conversationalist, plus, these things can't affiliate with any other rule aside from their own God. You'd be better served just attempting to make your own." Still nothing.

She crouched beside the binding circle, her fingers hovered above one of the outer symbols without touching it. "The circle is stable." I said. "The distortion along the edge is intentional; a corrective measure against transposition, these creatures have a terrible habit of attempting to return to their originating realm."

Her eyes followed the line of chalk. I could tell she knew what this was, what this magic meant. I also became conscious that I was explaining my work to the woman who had apparently murdered my employer. Perhaps i thought that if I kept talking, there might be an opportunity to run.

"This one." The woman said, pointing at one of the outer anchors of the circle.

"That symbol is not part of the original rite." I said. "I added it. The traditional configuration restrains the body but does nothing about the subject's connection to Warren. Eventually that connection pulls it back. The anchors interrupt that process."

I hesitated for a moment. "Temporarily."

"So far, it has held for four months, longer than any previous attempt. The Duke's theologians predicted three days before structural integrity would be too strained, but theologians are rarely burdened by practical experience."

She rose. "And who designed it?"

"I did."

"Who else?"

She wanted this research, and that meant there was space to bargain. All i had to do was to make sure me being alive was part of the deal.

"My colleagues possessed a functional understanding of the spell" I said as I moved close to my desk. She just stood there, waiting. "They understood as much as I instructed them to. Most of them just copied the symbols in my journal"

Her eyes were fixed on me, as if she was deciding whether if was worth just killing me and stealing what was left of my notes. And as if prompted, she moved to stand a few feet in front of me. Just behind me, atop my desk, was the last journal i had left to burn.

"Anyone who would attempt to reproduce the spell would likely invert the containment field and pull themselves inside the subject." My mouth had become intolerably dry. "You appear to possess some familiarity with this discipline, which is fortunate. It should make our negotiations easier."

"Negotiations?"

The way she said it made the word sound foreign.

Had I overstepped? There was no doubt in my mind that i would either be tortured for what I knew, or killed and have my only legacy remain in this journal. The journal had to go, at least then I had a chance to be kept alive. I grabbed the journal atop the desk and rushed towards the brazier near the window and chucked the bloody thing inside the flames. Strangely, she made no effort to stop what I did, instead slowly walking towards me.

"You need me." I said "The complete sequence exists only in my memory."

"Yes."

"You cannot threaten it out of me, torture would only compromise my concentration, and killing me gives you nothing!"

She kept walking, forcing me to an intimate contact with the window. Surely she didn't consider it?

"You can't kill me! If I die now everything you came here for is gone." My back now pressed on the window pane, the lady in green inches away from my face.

She grasped my chin, raising my head to look directly at hers. Every nerve in my body tried to repel itself in an attempt to escape on their own; her gaze holding me still as if she had a binding spell of her own.

"You are mistaken."

"Bloody 'ell mate" Shells sighed. "And then what?"

"I was still alive by the time I hit the courtyard floor, but not for long. After that, I had a staff in my hand and was told to guard this post."

"Good thing the Madam found you then, would've been a sorry way to go."

"Yeah." I said. "It's strange how I couldn't recall her face, as if my memory deemed it not important, or simply to mock me."

"Castle Tury." Said a voice behind us, sounding like dry leaves dragged across stone.

Shells and I looked back. The scribe had left his desk and decided to stand behind us, parchment and quill still in hand, still writing.

"You both remember the day you died." His empty gaze making no attempt to address us.
"She remembers the day she recruited you." The scribe's hand lifted, pointing his quill towards me. "The lady did not come to Castle Tury for it's Duke, it's walls, or the creature restrained within it's tower. She came for knowledge to bind what death could not yet claim."

Then he turned towards Shells.

"You were merely what she found on the way out."

Shells straightened, conflicted on whether he should be proud or embarrassed. Even the loud-mouth Major of the Valentes had nothing to comment a-

"So," Shells said. "which one of us had the better story?"

The scribe considered the question.

"Neither." He rolled the parchment shut. "You told the same one."