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  Love sweetly taps at the door with a sugary smile. “Hello?” she beckons, winning nothing but an uneasy silence. She looks to the others and shrugs before turning back to the door to knock a little harder.

  “Good eveni-”

  *BANG*

  A shreddingly-loud sound overtakes everyone’s hearing as Ranger Minion obliterates the lock with a single shot from his assault rifle.

  Everyone looks to him, and he clears his throat.

  “In the interest of time, we shouldn’t deal with the specifics.”

  Meeo smirks. “What a bright one you are,” she says, reaching up with a little difficulty to pat Ranger Minion on his beret.

  Aoline raises a brow. “Like the difference between ‘entering politely’ and ‘breaking in’?” she says with a crass tone.

  Ranger Minion shrugs. “Specifics.”

  No sooner does he finish saying this than they are greeted by a considerable retinue of armed men— holding their well-kept blades only a meter from Love’s party.

  “Necromancers!” One of the men cries, his bow drawn intensely to the eye.

  “Begone!”

  “Who goes there?!” Come a few more voices from the group.

  Love joins her hands together and smiles. “Why, hello all you wonderful men! I’ve come here looking for Oa!”

  The hallway past the door, dense with warriors, at once relax their guards and share a laugh.

  “Idiot.”

  “What’s this bitch on about?”

  “She must be crazy.” Come more banter from about the men as one folds through the ranks to look Love and her posse over.

  His eyes are older, colder, and a great deal more sad than the others. It’s clear from the marks along his short, snowy beard that he’s seen a few good fights.

  “You’re looking for Oa?”

  Love nods slowly but with respectful enthusiasm. “That I am, sir.”

  “The first of the necromancers?”

  “Mhmm.”

  “This way, please,” the older man says, the sword at his hip undrawn, unlike the crowd of men up front. The dozens of warriors gawk at the display of the elder taking in the weird vagabonds, but they respect his choice and fall silent.

  The four step through the hall of distrustful gazes as they pass up through a gatehouse and out into the city. All around them, from every window and door, are peering eyes from the women, the children, and the elderly. It’s a great comfort to them to see the snowy man with them, but they still keep a close eye on the group as they pass through the flower-vined, deep gray streets under the evening lamplight.

  “Comfy digs,” Aoline remarks with a smirk as she eyes a shopkeeper closing up a restaurant through a window.

  Dark Arts Minion smiles. “You’re the easily side-lined type, aren’t you?” she asks with a delicate smirk.

  Ranger Minion chuckles with his deep, gravelly voice. “It’s a good observation, though, you of anyone should know that.”

  Dark Arts Minion looks over to Ranger Minion with an even wider smile. “Now is that so?”

  “Affirmative. We are to understand they have this quality of life after fighting back the necromancers for hundreds, if not thousands of years?”

  There’s a silence as the group considers Ranger Minion’s words, and the snowy man sighs.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Dark Arts Minion relents, steadily averting her gaze away to prevent looking completely embarrassed.

  Aoline nods. “See, I’m smart!”

  “The correlation wasn’t something you drew, though,” Ranger Minion adds bluntly as they near a tower, windowless until the very top.

  She sighs. “Well… well yeah, but I did-”

  “In here, please,” the elder says.

  Ranger and Dark Arts need spare only a single glance at the building to look within, in which they both immediately reach out to grab one of the ladies. Meeo loves having these types around.

  “Wh-” Aoline jolts back from Dark Arts Minion’s grasp. “What’s wrong?”

  “You want us to go in there with you?” Ranger Minion asks as he refolds his tan beret over his scalp.

  The man looks back in an indignant mix of surprise and shame. “What… are you talking about? Of course y-”

  Dark Arts Minion coos condescendingly. “Don’t you ‘what’ him, you pig meat, there’s— *ow!*— w-why?” She’s sharply nudged by Ranger Minion. She addresses him with her eyes, and he nods his head out to the town. She looks too to find several peering eyes, and dozens of listening ears - people just going about their day to day business, but slowly enough to hear the conversation.

  The man sighs. “I beg of you. I will explain everything once we get inside.”

  Dark Arts Minion looks to Ranger Minion, and he shrugs.

  “Well, it is only one,” Dark Arts Minion says, quietly, and in vague enough wording to throw off any prying suspicions.

  “I’ll take point,” Ranger Minion responds, slinging his rifle up to the hip as he steps ahead of the humans in the group.

  “You certainly will,” Dark Arts Minion says, thankful to have him around instead of one of the more annoying, less soundly-minded minions, like 'Buns and Pastries Minion' or 'Screech Loudly Whenever Something Goes Even Slightly Awry Minion', both of whom she’s had the considerable displeasure of dealing with from time to time back at Towerne.

  The four step forward at the ready as the elder opens the doors to the tower— making way into a small, dimly-lit room with a circular stairway leading upwards. All the while, the two minions are focusing clearly on a coat rack at the edge of the stairs; Ranger’s hand is on his barrel, ready for the swivel, and Dark Arts has one of her strongest disenchantment slips at the ready.

  The moment the elder closes the door behind them, the coat rack, covered in various garments, shakes. One by one, the clothing falls from the rack and draws together with thin, almost invisible piano wire. The hidden joints are connected, and a bipedal creature of clothing, metal and preserved viscera steps forth.

  “Good evening,” the coat necromancer speaks with a gurgle through a preserves jar.

  “Evening, there,” Love says with a curt nod and her ever-present smile.

  “You understand I’d never offer you the insult of trying to take your life— especially not after your rather… considerable display at the first of our workshop villages.”

  Love hangs her head low in mock humility as Dark Arts Minion grins. “So you want to talk, then?” Love asks.

  The head of the coat creature, simply the top of a jar with a single eye popping up from the surface of the liquid, bows. “That is precisely my desire. You are Meeo Letlind, correct?”

  “That I am,” she bows in turn. “What may I call you, if anything?”

  It gestures to a single chair in front of a desk at the back of the room. “You should understand us immortals are not big for names— we consider only Oa to have that right, as it is the figurehead of all of us, so to speak. I am simply an acting consort and administrator for this farm.”

  Aoline flinches as Love hums thoughtfully. She glances over to the elder, who is beside himself in self-loathing. “This is a place for harvesting humans?”

  The jar nods. “Correct. After we took over the planet a couple thousand years ago we decided it would be far more efficient to allow some of the human cities to survive. Natural circumstances and procreation is far more helpful in the creation of new parts than simple reconstruction and matching.”

  Aoline places her hand over her mouth in dread.

  Love hums, her hands neatly in her lap as she sits across from the tall coat necromancer. “And I suppose the people are not aware?”

  The necromancer scoffs. “Wisdom dies out with enough generations of suppression. They are now well under the impression that they’re valiantly fighting off our hordes with their mighty walls. They’re not even aware I exist.” The necromancer laughs as he shoos away the elder. “You may leave now, Cartan.”
<
br />   “Yes… my lord,” the old man says as he starts for the door.

  “And if they ask, you arrested the interlopers for questioning.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Cartan says again, reassuming a strong gait as he exits the tower thinly through the doors.

  The necromancer joins its wiry hands, composed of metal rods and sinew. “Now, onto business. I suppose you’re hunting Oa, aren’t you?”

  Meeo nods. “That is our goal.”

  It shrugs as it reaches for a tea set and begins pouring a pair of cups. “And by all means, why wouldn’t you. We understand why you would feel that way; we have been quite the… challenging sort of encounter for many across The Omniverse, haven’t we?” It offers Love a cup filled with a robust-smelling smoky brown liquid— she takes the cup and looks to Ranger Minion. He glances at the tea, and nods, allowing her to take a sip.

  “Thank you,” she says after a relaxed breath.

  The necromancer wave out its hand. “Of course. Now, if I may be so direct. I’d like to offer you a partnership.”

  “Oh?”

  The monstrosity of fabric and metal leans back into its chair. “You gain nothing from pursuing this obviously impossible goal, but even so it would be a thorn in our side. We say you should turn your arms against our enemies, like the O.E.L.— which is a common adversary, yes?”

  Love gently squints her eyes as she appreciates the tea’s scent; she’s pretty certain it’s a dark oolong, but she’s even more certain Chaos would know precisely what it was. “It is,” she admits.

  The necromancer raises out its hands in annunciation. “Then, we should band together and turn their technological evils into a wasteland of death and magic. They are a greater threat to us both than one of us to the other. We are willing to pay handsomely for your help.”

  “This is a ridiculous thought,” Dark Arts Minion says with a very Chaos-like grin. “As if you could truly expect us to deal with living garbage.”

  “Does everlasting immortality sound like garbage to you?” it asks with a curved tone. “Last time I checked, humans do enjoy living.”

  Only Aoline is drawn by the idea of it, and that’s simply because she’s young and still well-marked by mortal ideas.

  Love takes another sip from the cup, and leaves it half full on the desk. “Thank you for the tea. We have no interest in that. We’re here to do the right thing, not to live.”

  “You could do far more great and decent things by living longer. Don’t you realize that?”

  “Not if it means becoming something like you,” she says simply. “Not that you and I are really all that different— it’s just the means we’ve used are what sets us apart… I’m afraid this is bigger than Oa, or our humanity, or our lives, or the O.E.L., even. Oa must go.”

  The necromancer opens up further, its palms outstretched and its arms wide in peace. “You must reconsider. We of the laboratory are pursuing eternal life for all things. Not only will we preserve life, we will reverse death, bringing back ancient and lost souls to the realm of the living. Paradise will be here, Meeo Letlind. I know you’re not a bad person, and that you can understand that. Please work with us, to save people from disease, and pain, and death. It is our hope, it is my hope, that you will see the light and work to save all souls, from all realms.”

  Meeo smiles. “I have been around a bit long to be swayed by that, I’m afraid. I’ve seen what you do to people. You don’t care much for their sense of pain when you catch them.”

  “All means to an end, my dear.”

  “Those are inferior means. The precedent you’ve made is clear in all necromancers. You’re all cruel, cold, lifeless beings, gripping onto life purely to continue its preservation.” She sits up straight, and her smile dies down into a light, peaceful twinge along the rim of the lips. “I’ve never seen anything more cowardly or pathetic in my entire life— and unless you want to die, forever, right here, you will tell us where Oa is.”

  The necromancer joins its hands together as it steeples its fingers upon the desk. “Well then,” it sighs. “I suppose you really aren’t willing to discuss this?”

  “I always love to have nice chats with fine fellows, but right now I’m quite opinionated in the matter.”

  The jar looks aside. “I suppose this is war, then.” It reaches for a small phone from below the desk, markedly contrasting with the rather medieval atmosphere of the tower. It clears its throat, and suddenly its voice sounds precisely that of the elder’s. “Men, to arms! The prisoners have-”

  *BANG* is the last sound the necromancer hears as its head and brain are torn asunder by a 5.56.

  Dark Arts Minion groans as everyone looks to Ranger Minion’s smoking gun. “Really?” she asks.

  “Specifics,” Ranger Minion reiterates. “let's bounce.”

  Love sighs as well, rising up and drawing her bow. “It’s just like in the book,” she says with a hint of woe as the group makes their way to the stairs, the very moment the people of the city deliver their first strike upon the tower door.

  The group starts up the spire, passing secret prisons and workshops filled with sedated and caged denizens of the city— all the way to the top of the great structure, which holds another phone. Just as Meeo opens one of the windows, Dark Arts minion stops short.

  “Wait a moment,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Our eyes can also see electric signals. We should at least see where this phone leads.”

  Meeo draws back, her spirits suddenly raised. “Well… yes! I do suppose that’s a good idea.”

  Aoline raises a brow. “Electric?”

  “Another time,” Meeo says, patting Aoline daintily on the head.

  Ranger Minion covers the stairway. “Go for it.”

  Love picks up the phone and Dark Arts Minion, watching intently, spots the wiring signal draw all the way to the mountain.

  “HAVE THEY BEEN PERSUADED?” The immense voice of Oa speaks, spilling from the phone like a thousand cut fingers tapping upon the ears of its listeners.

  Meeo eyes about awkwardly. If Chaos were here he’d have the perfect one-liner readied in a semi-second— but her wit, however fast it may be, is only human.

  She raises her lips up to the receiver. “Oh… nooooo we killed your lackey.”

  Dark Arts Minion, Aoline, and even Ranger Minion cringe.

  “Keep talking,” Dark Arts Minion says as she squints off into the distance.

  “…MEEO.”

  “Y-yes! Mhmm! Now we’re coming for you!”

  “…YOU USELESS ANIMAL. NO NEED FOR THAT. I WOULD NOT DARE RISK YOU RECONSIDERING AND COWERING AWAY- I HAVE TOO GREAT AN INTEREST IN YOUR DISSECTION. NO, RATHER I WILL BE COMING FOR YOU.”

  At once, everyone exchanges horrified glances.

  “It’s… it’s coming from the mountain; that's the best that I can see,” Dark Arts Minion says as she looks out into the swirling blackness of the night.

  Meeo nods in recognition and returns to the phone. “Wouldn’t you rather stick over at that mountain of yours? I understand you would be a bit fearful to come out here and-”

  “I WILL SHOW YOU WHO I AM, MEEO, LITTLE FLY ON MY WALL. YOU ALL WILL JOIN ME AND BECOME ME. I AM AS LIMITLESS AS THE EARTH OF ALL EARTHS.”

  Meeo hums suavely as she considers a good reply. “Well, after all, you aren’t really the earth, so how could that b—”

  “Ohhhh— ohhh no,” Dark Arts Minion says.

  At once, everyone, including the usually focused Ranger Minion, look to the mountain— that hideous, dark thing, as it stands on two great legs formed of millions of human bodies.

  “…That’s pretty bad,” Ranger Minion observes as the mountain forces out a pair of arms to tear up a great sword forged from the metals of a thousand armies— a towering, mountainous blade fit for The First of the Necromancers.

  Meeo stares at Oa’s greatness, forging out from the ground as the mountain itself. “We’ll talk later,” she says curtly into the p
hone as she hangs up and gestures for the window. “Time to go,” she says just as the mountainous Oa begins walking toward the city, every step as a grand earthquake.

  “Where are we going?” Aoline asks, eyes wide in awe at the magnitude of their opponent.

  “Out of the city, for one thing,” Dark Arts Minion answers, picking up Aoline as Ranger Minion bounds back and leaps from the tower with them all. They soar with magic-guided airs to the top of the city walls, the very moment Oa’s kilometers-long blade is risen to weigh into the town. The instant before it’s too late, a massive, purging sound rends through the atmosphere as a great golden-black light tears across the sky. With a sound not unlike that of the world being torn and a light to rival it, Chaos smashes aside Oa’s million-ton blade with both the Kingdom Slayer and Monument.

  Love stares on in awe, and for a moment, she thinks that her bought time might save them.

  “Is…” Aoline takes a breath, “is that.”

  “Yup,” says Scout Minion, merging in behind them with a smooth, soft landing. She’s holding a mid-sized minion over her shoulder, three times her size and with antennae that look like pointed arrows. “He beat all three of them.”

  Meeo draws her bow and begins unleashing azure, powerful bolts of mana. “What happened?”

  Scout Minion grins as Dark Arts Minion fires off with her own magic and Ranger Minion opens rounds at Oa’s city-sized legs.

  “Pretty simple stuff for Poppi,” she answers.

  Chapter Eleven: The Strong and The Wise

  Just a few moments earlier, insidious, ingenious, and wounded, Chaos strikes into Order’s range one final time— cutting insanely low into her guard in a strike that would risk his head. His gamble pays off fully as he sieges the Kingdom Slayer’s night-like edge into her gauntlets, shredding her hands and ending the bout. Order leaps back, picks up Redemption, and blasts out of the canyon with him and his weapon in tow— making the tactical sacrifice of Knight Glory, still unconscious and convulsing on the ground.

  “Fly, you dove!” Chaos shouts out in triumph as Order clears the ridge-line into the woods. “It seems not even you are worth my time!” He draws in a rare breath, and returns to his kindly, grinning self.