All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 187: Finishing the Job

It didn't take long for Arthur to reach the defending soldiers. Once I had given him a brief description of the situation, he simply nodded, and the pace of the army picked up a little bit. I had left him to it as he seemed pretty busy giving orders to his staff.

Riders were sent out. Plans were drawn on pieces of paper placed over saddles and discussed on horseback as they moved. I floated in the air above the battlefield, watching it all. I could see as the column split into many parts, some moving in to flank the army while faster-moving units went to support the defending company.

Then, all of a sudden, the main force of the military accelerated until they were charging. The forces barreled into the undead, sandwiched as they were between the charge and a more stationary defensive force. The maneuver almost resembled the motion of a hammer and anvil, quickly driving a wedge between the shambling zombies and pushing them apart. The outriders and the flanks quickly took advantage to come and hit them again.

The battle that had taken hours to build up to was over in under 15 minutes. I watched and counted, but there was quite minimal loss on the human side. They could inflict long range damage without getting in too close with proper support and long-distance archery. And when someone did get hurt, they could be pulled back and healed, or at least triaged before any life-threatening injuries were to be had.

That wasn't to say that no one died. Every once in a while, someone makes a mistake or has some bad luck. The undead were relentless, after all. But I was there, and I wasn't too proud to completely avoid putting my wheel on the scale in their favor. Every once in a while, an undead that had gone unnoticed attempted to get someone's ankle from the ground. They’d quickly find a thin beam of light slicing through their head.

I don't think any of the humans even noticed, but it was a little bit of supplementary cleanup, if I would be so generous as to call it that. And it seemed to work great. I gave just enough assistance that no one risked their life more than they needed to. All in all, I was eager to finish cleaning up the mess that this whole saga had caused.

After the battle was thoroughly decided, it was simply a matter of mopping up the remaining stragglers of the undead as they mindlessly attacked the humans. I zipped down to Arthur to check on him. The commander gave me a smile and a wave, cutting his conversation with a pair of lieutenants short.

"Well, Lord Void, it seems that your information was invaluable. I can't thank you enough for your assistance. Judging based on our estimations, this was the main force of the undead. I think we still have some cleanup to take care of here. But based on your description of the elites and the giant rat, we have likely have cut off the primary source of this problem.” He hesitated for a moment. “While it's not necessary, I do have a favor to ask. I would appreciate if you would track down the rest of our forces and see if they are in dire straits, perhaps deliver a message for me. For ease of mind."

I thought for a moment. It seemed as though the majority of the threat was over, so I could probably head home soon. Should, in fact. But in the end, it wasn't too big of a deal for me to do this compared to someone on the ground.

We went back and forth a little bit, discussing the plans he had for what came next. Mainly they consisted of gathering up the army, sending scouts out, returning to the capital, setting up a base, and plugging all the exit points to make sure that the undead couldn't spread further.

The province wasn't entirely isolated by mountains like the other one was, but there were undoubtedly plenty of impassable areas along the border. Two sides of it were lined with mountains. Those were fairly difficult to cross for most, so Arthur could simply place some soldiers at the passes to catch any straggling undead. The other two sides were more akin to flatlands, but a few companies of cavalry with enough long-distance scouts could apparently cover it and at least hunt down small bands. If any larger groups of undead came through, they could send word for reinforcements.

According to Arthur, a few single undead could sneak through without too much issue. After all, there were naturally occurring undead. In small numbers it was rare for them to snowball into such a giant plague, especially without some sort of mastermind. And if he was right and we had taken care of those, then things were looking up.

He quickly wrote down a few messages on some paper and handed them to me. I grabbed them in my claw and safely deposited them in my dustbin. I didn't mind being a messenger for a bit, but I told him that after I had delivered them, I was going to head home. They didn’t seem to need me anymore.

It was time for me to see Beatrice again. All the people at the castle, in fact. I shuddered to think of what all the children had gotten up to. They surely had made a huge mess of the place. But taking care of this for Arthur on the way was no big deal, it wouldn't take me that long to find everyone. So I zipped up, leaving the last of the cleanup in his capable hands.

***

I was completely correct. It didn't take me more than a few hours of zipping around to find the first section of the army. I dropped down in front of the person who led it. Then I simply spat the paper out on him, using my air manipulation to make sure it fluttered open against the pommel of his saddle.

He looked at it, then the seal, then looked back at me, confused. But before I had to deal with any sort of human communication nonsense, I zipped up and left. Perhaps it was a bit disrespectful for me to treat a human so. Especially when these military ones seemed so organized. But I was eager to get home to Beatrice and the people back in the castle. I simply wanted to deliver my messages and move on.

It cost me another day and a half to find the other sections of the army, but none were in such dire straits that they required my help. Most hadn't even found large amounts of undead and were simply conducting sweeping searches, which I thoroughly approved of, making sure that there weren't any large pockets or stragglers that would go unnoticed. No one wanted to potentially reignite this whole issue.

After delivering my last message, I flew up and headed north.

—

Bee had to wait a minute before the thunderous applause subsided. She awkwardly smiled, stared out over the crowd, and tried to do her best to avoid eye contact with any one person while simultaneously not looking at the ceiling. She had thought her sermon was slightly better than her normal one but wasn't sure it deserved such praise.

Still, it took a concentrated effort to keep her foot from tapping in impatience. It was all she could do not to sprint up the aisle and go straight to the library. After receiving her options for her level 50 skills, she had so many questions.

Heretic was something she had expected and knew she wouldn't choose. After all this time and effort, there was no way she was going to abandon Void for what was relatively little gain. The Heretic class had its advantages in some places, but none of them interested her. She had no desire to become some dark god's lackey of disorder and chaos. Nor was she planning to dedicate her life to building stairs.

So it really left her with two choices. High Priestess was the one she had been planning to pick all along. She had expected a third class to be something unrelated, maybe something to do with fighting or something that would nudge her away from the purely religious path, but not completely alienate her. That assumption had apparently been misguided.

Companion of Void. That option was really throwing a wrench in her plans. She had already decided what she would choose far ahead of time, but now this was making her rethink everything. She needed more information.

As the applause died down, Bee started to step down from the dais but noticed that several people were lining up down the center aisle before her. Not everyone, but a few dozen at first. Then a few more. Then a few more after that. After everyone saw how long the line was getting, its growth slowed, but didn’t entirely stop. As she watched, the line began to stretch out of the great hall.

The majority of people filed out the back to return to their regularly assigned duties. Unfortunately, Bee couldn’t slip out with them. With a mental sigh, she plastered on the most genuine smile she could manage and shook the first woman's hand.

It was a woman who was maybe only a few years older than Bee herself but still had an infant on her hip. She spoke in a halting whisper and asked a question that Bee wasn't entirely certain how to answer. Something about Void's philosophy on teaching kids their letters, and at what age they should start.

It was a matter that Bee thought was entirely silly. Why not just begin as soon as the kid could learn, or as soon as they could find someone to teach the kid? But she kept her cool and answered to the best of her abilities while thinking about what a companion class was.

Bee mused. She had never heard of something like that before, much less met a companion of anything. Hopefully, there would be something in the library about it. She couldn't remember finding much about level 50 classes when she had looked through it before, but she'd never been looking specifically for this. Still, it offered something new, something interesting, and she couldn't wait to find out what.

***

After what felt like hours of questions Bee finally found herself in the library, scanning through the index tomes and looking through the organized volumes until she found a giant glossary of known classes.

She started flipping through until she reached the “C” section. Although it did list such useful classes as Carpenter, Cattle Farmer, and Concierge, it was completely barren of any Companion classes. There had been a few notes about animal companions, but that was more along the lines of a beast-tamer class or related to animal husbandry for farming. And none of those had the same sort of feeling that she got from reading the Companion of Spot class she had been offered. So she started looking in a little bit more obscure spots.

The first time she found a mention of a companion was in The Tales of Daedalus the Red. She had picked it up on a whim, back when she bad more time to read for leisure. She’d always assumed that it was simply a fairy tale, but a bit more research seemed to suggest otherwise. Not to mention that the experience with the Lieutenant made her far less skeptical of ancient stories.

Daedalus was an ancient dragon, a creature of myth that had been spoken of in tales as far back as they went. The earliest stories she could find about it were fragments from well into the Demons' rule, and those even referenced older stories that no longer existed. But one of them mentioned that Daedalus had found a companion in the Dark Times of the Demons’ Rule. A companion that had gone on many adventures with the Red.

By most accounts, they had done excellent services in the name of humanity. The powers of the companion were incredibly vague though. Apparently, he was a great warrior of flame that stood 15 feet tall and was a giant among men. Though she wasn't sure how much of that was exaggerated and how much of it was honest fact.

Still, the “companion” part wasn’t a title, a class, or anything formal. It was just a word used to refer to Daedalus’s human comrade. It very well could have just been a coincidence that she wanted to be real.

Based on the rest of the tale, she assumed that this person was mostly just a human warrior who happened to be good at swordplay with a remarkable fire aspect. Whether there was actually a Companion of Daedalus class or anything remotely similar was questionable. But if nothing else, she did tend to believe that there was a dragon at some point. The other stories about the same dragon didn't mention a companion, though they were from much earlier in history.

She leaned back in her chair. All of that work for barely a glimmer of a possible hint. It was still hard to say what she could gain from being a companion. It might be something that focused more on closeness, an honest bond with Void. If that was the case, it would make sense to take it if her goal was to adventure around with Void. Her imagination conjured up images of soaring through the sky on Void’s back, fighting monsters and exploring the world alongside her deity.

The door to the library opened. Susan stepped through, walking quickly toward Bee. “High Priestess, there’s a matter that requires your attention…”

Bee sighed and closed her book. The real question was, would she ever have time to go on more adventures?

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