The Grand Battle II! [Happy End!]

Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.

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SpoilerTop Five Longest GB Posts Ever

1. Baphomet, TBM, 2737
2. Sruixan GBII, 2552 - this one
3. Baphomet, TB, 2380
4. Sruixan, GBII, 2148
4. Baphomet, TBM, 2071

Check my facts, since that was done in five minutes, but I dare say that's pretty accurate. And worrying.

“So, um, hello, my name's Maxwell Deakin, walking brain, supposedly affiliated with the rest of a body but you know what happens when a relationship gets put under a spot of pressure; contact diminishes in frequency and you kinda drift apart… um, by the by, I might be a little mad at the moment and for that I do apologise – moral crisis and all that…”

Konka Rar's attempt at introducing himself was rudely halted by a groan from the floor-bound Urisian. The necromancer tried again, but this time it was Maxwell that interrupted:

“Well well well, you two, um, what's it like being, you know, undead then? I can't exactly call you peeps by such a derogatory term as “zombie”, but still…”

This caused a little surprise to creep onto the face of Clara, whereas Konka Rar just rolled him mechanical eye.

“Look, neither of you have breathed yet. If you're holding it, you're doing a remarkably good job of not turning puce, I must say… mind you, not sure a skeleton can turn puce, to be honest… I suppose if you had the right kind of dye…”

Galus's latest bout of grumbling was accompanied with at attempt at standing up, but after getting his first good look at Konka Rar, he decided not to bother rising any further.

The lich cleared his non-existent throat.

“…I've never exactly…” (at this point, he couldn't help but sneer somewhat) “…tried dying my body, but I'll bear that in mind.”

He extended his left arm out to Maxwell, a courteous motion that only served to plunge Galus back to the floor once more. The genius seemed remarkably unfazed, although quite whether he truly comprehended the metal hand he saw fit to shake a tad too rigorously for comfort is anyone's guess.

“Konka Rar, necromancer and ro-“

“Ooh, are you the chap responsible for these pesky, um, pests that ar-“

A little infuriated by the impolite mannerisms of Maxwell, the lich barked his response; “No, not in the slightest.”

“Pity, I thought I had it sussed for a second or two there…”

“So did I when I met him, but still; I'm Sister Clara, of the Church of Schleier and, as you rightly guessed, a necropolitan.”

”Hmm… I knew a chap called Schleier once. Well, to be fair, it was actually Schleicher; he had the decency to stick a couple of consonants in there at the end so you don't have to roll your mouth around like you're eating candyfloss to pronounce those vowels… he had a friend called Schneider, which was a bit of a pain, especially that one time I had something of a cold, that was quite a day that was… in a bit of a roundabout way, that cold almost got me kicked off the grounds of the Gutenberg Universität, but oh dear, I'm rambling again, I'm sure of it...”

Maxwell's meandering monologue had given Galus enough time to upright himself. With his face now visible, the emerging suffusion of red about his cheeks, already a brash pink from over-exertion, gave away his feelings.

“…sorry, he really has… gone… insane. He wasn't too bad… earlier, but… um, it's… it's a long story…”

Clara, with her impossibly amicable attitude, batted the awkward air the conversation so far had created aside, making an attempt at comforting the shattered Galus, placing a motherly arm around him. Konka Rar, on the other hand, was less benign, exhibiting a brief snarl before turning to business.

“Now, what do you two know of the Cultivator, or, perhaps, the Monitor?”

These words set Maxwell's face alight. With some slight ecstasy, he nudged Galus in the ribs, chuckling as his companion squirmed.

“See, what did I tell you? Actually, hang on, did I tell you? I can't remember, it was a long time ago… it might have been Cabaret or Vyrm'n, I'm really not quite sure…”

The revelation was almost expected, but the necropolitan pair were still caught a little off-guard due to the ease with which the words passed the man's lips. The lich, a little uneasy with the repetition of events, grimaced.

“Not another one… although, actually, I don't suppose you've had competition from a vacuum cleaner, have you?”

”Sir, I've had many strange things attempt to kill me these past few hours, but I'm happy to say a vacuum cleaner has not been one of them! Were that the case I'm sure I would have admitted defeat many rounds ago…”

Galus was having a merry time comprehending what he was hearing.

“Maxwell, what are they saying? The Observer's not the only one holding a battle like ours?”

”But of course! He did say, I think. I wrote it down somewhere, somewhen…”

This time it was Clara who was struggling to come to terms with events.

“If you two are in the same battle… have you seen any of your other competitors in this Mall yet, dear?”

Maxwell, with a slightly disconnected look in his eyes, gave a chuckle with his reply. “Well, I think Gestalt was fumbling his way up the theatre steps when we left, right Galus? And Vyrm'n's probably off killing zombies somewhere over… there…”

Maxwell's gesture, a finger extended towards the water park, led Konka Rar to put two and two together.

“That creature up there, that black…” (here there was a pause whilst he searched for a word to explain Vyrm'n with) “…monstrosity, is one of your contestants?”

Maxwell spun round to face him, letting a little anger seep into the otherwise blissful look on his face.

“Hey now, don't be so harsh! Vyrm'n's not that bad, once you get to know her. Alright, maybe she can be, how shall I put it… a little feisty at times, she can be rather charming, honest!”

The idea that the paltry fool in front of him could progress to such an advanced round, having been pitted against such a potent force would have made Konka Rar's face contort in pure amazement, if he had had one. Instead, another one of his scornful looks had to suffice. Clara, however, could now see quite how the genius had gotten quite so deranged…

Before she could utter a word, though, there was a wail from down the corridor. Some of the mindless undead were getting restless again, stirring for no other noticeable reason bar the fact they could. With a slight sigh, Clara reopened the tome she'd let shut itself, tutting under her breath as the horde died down somewhat. Galus meanwhile was fixated on the runic inscriptions within the battered book before him. Seeing Galus agape, Clara smiled.

“It's a ceremonial tome, by nature, but there are a few bits of magic in here concerning necropolitans…”

From Maxwell there came an admonishing exhalation at the mention of magic, but his expression turned to bemusement before the sentence finished.

“We've been wandering off on a couple of tangents, haven't we? Ah well, ‘suppose it can't be helped, what with half the participants of this conversation being incomprehensible at best. That's us two, by the way; no offence to you guys, which is a stupid thing to say, but anyway. Yes, now, we've gone off on so many tangents I believe we've just about come full circle – what are the chances of that? But before I digress much further, if there is even a second between now and another scatterbrained perusal of a paltry little point on my behalf, I do wonder how our non-living friends over there came into being. I wonder a lot, you see. It's a bit of a drag, but bearable, I assure you…”

The irksome Maxwell was starting to exasperate Konka Rar, but at least he was showing an interest in the world around him…

“Well, I'm not certain. You'd need an awful lot of magic to get a couple of thousand corpses re-animated. Doing them all at once would require a lot of energy. You haven't come across another necromancer so far, have you? Otherwise I'd have to chalk it up to our grandma-“

Once again, Maxwell interjected the lich's musings, this time with a clicking of his fingers. It almost provoked a response from him, but the disrupter got in first.

“Of course, of course… you know what, it's actually pretty obvious, if you think about it hard enough. I know as much about magic as I do about plumbing (believe you me, Galus will surely testify that the latter is terra incognita for me), but I'm allowed make a couple of educated guesses, right?”

Behind Maxwell's back, Clara motioned silently to her companion, pleadingly asking for him to keep calm.

“Recently deceased in our canon, you two, is one Samuel Therion who, before his admittedly rather deserved demise, in an act of egocentrism, explained to me the nuances of his powers; namely, the control of what he called “karmic energies”. It's a little disconcerting, but it's “life energy”, right? Energy that allows a creature to live, determining its lifespan and life. Sounds a bit like a soul, but not exactly, I assure you. Galus, I'll summarise this at the end, probably. Konka Rar, I can see you're about to interrupt, but don't, please. If you derail this train, it doesn't go back on its tracks…”

The lich had no idea quite how Maxwell had known what he was about to do, considering that the man had been looking the other way at the time of his comment, but another hasty glance from Clara stopped him intervening.

“So, if you do look at it as energy, which I suppose from my non-magical viewpoint I am forced to do, it'll do the normal energy kind of stuff, I guess. So that means you can store it, which is what Samuel did, somewhat, for the prolonging of life and, if he could stomach it, so I'm told by the horse's mouth, the gaining of abilities. Regardless, from his lecture I am reasonably sure he'd gotten his hands on an awful lot of that energy over goodness knows how many years.”

In his explanations, Maxwell was starting to use hand gestures. None of those around him had the faintest notion of their purpose (including Maxwell himself, for that matter), but it seemed to help.

“So, if you store energy, it's potential energy, which, as the name so rightly suggests, has the potential to do stuff. You can store it reasonably indeterminately; you can't quite do it forever, but that's a complete and utter tangent. Point is, Samuel is currently doing a remarkably spiffing job of being stone cold dead. Upon his death, at his own hands or mine, whichever way you choose to look at it, all that stored energy is no longer bottled up within his body, on account of it lacking much of a head. I bet you that was released in one nice big explosion of life, which is a bit of a funny juxtaposition, but there you go, can't be helped.”

Noting that Konka Rar was nodding subtly, Maxwell continued.

“Well, I expect it was a lot of energy, but there were an awful lot of people in the blast radius too. Somehow I doubt that amount would have been enough to turn a couple of thousand corpses into a couple of thousand decidedly bewildered, living, breathing people. In fact, guess what? I can prove it to you that it wasn't; all you have to do is look around you. With that “karmic energy” spread so thinly, nobody was reincarnated properly. There was just about enough to make them undead, but not enough to make them living. A final act of revenge from Samuel.”

At this point, Maxwell took a bow. Clara nearly clapped, but thought better of it. A still rather scornful Konka Rar, however, appeared quite impressed.

“Not bad for someone with no understanding of how necromancy works. Your terminology was abysmal, your descriptions fanciful and your explanations… unusual. You're not exactly correct, but, yes, the death of someone like Samuel might have caused all this…”

As Konka Rar encompassed the motley knot of zombies loitering around Splash World, Maxwell allowed a grin to light up his face. Scanning the mall a tad absent-mindedly, the only human present felt rather proud with himself…

…and then, in an instant, the smile evaporated, revealing a new look, surprise with just the tiniest, minutest possible dash of worry. Shifty eyes glanced back towards the theatre, then back towards the water park, before the concern was replaced by a faux smile.

“Now we've got that sorted, might I, um, suggest that we get moving on a bit? You know, preferably to somewhere reasonably safe…”

Clara, misinterpreting the man's remarks, smiled and held her tome aloft.

“Ah, I never did explain this, did I? The magic in here should stop us from coming to harm at the hands of the zombies; it makes us pretty much invisible to them, so we can pass through them with ease.”

“…good, good, we could do with getting through that lot up there, actually. I don't suppose, on an off-chance, you happen to have found a reasonably safe place somewhere on your travels?”

Once again, his statement was misunderstood. Konka Rar sighed as his parsing of it cemented conclusions he'd hypothesised the moment he'd set eyes upon Maxwell.

“Well, the Atrium is practically sealed up. I expect, if you were spineless enough, you could barricade yourself in there comfort-“

“Perfect, perfectly fine. Honestly, I couldn't care less, as long as it's a bit out of the way…”

Galus, finally feeling a little bit refreshed, eyed his acquaintance with an air of curiousity.

“Is everything alright, Maxwell? You seem a bit uneasy to me…”

Spinning round to face him, his coat aflutter, Maxwell's face was the picture of calm.

“Oh no, no worries at all…”

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

In the theatre, things were returning to normal. The myriad of particulates and dust, thrown into the air by the intruders to their realm, were beginning once more to settle on their surfaces and coat the place in a fine layer of speckled white anew. The spiders, hardly batting any of their eyelids at the destruction of their cobwebs, set about rebuilding their traps and so the flies enjoyed a brief respite from the usual dangers. A respite that was long enough to traverse the newly trashed corridors towards a novel scent for them – death.

They flocked towards a door, located at the very rear end of the backstage, left ajar as the trespasser fled so long ago. The light was on in that room; a glow, already dimming as the bulb suffered the strain of being functional for the first occasion in a remarkably long time. Between the rotting frame and the decaying door, it was the only thing that escaped the chamber; all the flies were immigrants, arriving to feast upon a banquet most splendid, the first treat in living memory. Admittedly, that wasn't much, considering that we're dealing with the memory of a creature that rarely lasts to see the summer if born in the winter, but still.

And then, reverberating about the hollow shell that the Observer had left behind, they began to buzz again, a cacophony that lasted merely a minute before silence reigned again.

A door creaked.