1927 Long Live the Queen (Part 3)
"Manohar must have had a bad day if someone pathetic and insignificant like you managed to kill him. He was a genius mage and fighter, just like your brother. They are the kind of people I would entrust with my armies.
"An idiot like you, instead, isn't even capable of cleaning a chamber pot without getting dirty." Thrud actually considered both Lith and Manohar two massive thorns in her side.
Yet she knew that by badmouthing Orpal's greatest success and comparing him to his hated brother, he would lose himself to envy and do something stupid.
"Manohar was in perfect shape and I destroyed Leech's life just like I'm about to do with you!" Those words struck at the Dead King harder than any slap and drove him insane.
His pride couldn't allow such defiance.
Not after the utter defeat he had suffered by Jirni's hand. Not after the Undead Courts had betrayed him, bending the knee to an inferior woman. Not after he had once again been measured to Lith and found wanting.
'Stop, you idiot! You're playing right into her hand.' Night had understood Thrud's game, but her warning came one second too late.
Moonlight appeared out of a dimensional tunnel, sucking the world energy in the room and using it to empower its master.
"I don't care what kind of equipment you have or who you think you are. When a mage meets another with a tower, there's no challenge." Orpal's wound healed instantly and his strength grew to the point that he managed to push Thrud back.
"I couldn't agree more. That's why I'm taking yours." At a snap of Thrud's fingers, several of his Awakened soldiers appeared out of Spirit Warp Steps.
They trapped Horseman and steed inside a Sealed Space, cutting their connection. Yet it wasn't enough.
From the fight of the Horsemen against the troops of the Kingdom, Thrud knew that the crystal horse would return to their master whenever the link between them was cut off by an external influence.
It was the reason Iata and the others conjured the Spirit Spell Griffon Fetters and restrained Moonlight, using their weight to anchor the steed on the spot.
"The most idiotic thing about broadcasting your feats is that you have shown me how to defeat you. Your tricks, your steed, your Blade Spell, I know everything about you." Thrud walked into the Sealed Space, cutting off any escape route.
"Come on. Do your worst."
Orpal lunged with Thorn, but Thrud was faster, grabbing the polearm and throwing it away. He then touched the wall, using the connection to bypass the Sealed Space and reactivate the defensive arrays of the building.
A flicker from Arthan's Sword took the control away from him.
"How does it feel being powerless inside your own home? How does it feel walking a mile in your victims' shoes?" Thrud kept walking forward until Orpal's back touched the wall and the breastplates of their armors touched.
He activated Frozen Soul, but Thrud already knew about it from the Undead Courts. He had killed many people just to flaunt his powers so she had been informed about how to deal with it.
The Mad Queen conjured the silver lightning of Life Maelstrom stored inside her body and hit Orpal with a fist as heavy as a freight train. First, she shattered his armor, and then she broke his bones one by one before ripping them off.
She broke his body, mind, and spirit. Night tried to regenerate her host enough to control him, but Thrud was relentless. On top of that, inside the Sealed Space there was not enough energy for the task.
Even the darkness element she fed upon was scarce and thin.
It took the Mad Queen a bit of work, but she reached the black crystal that was the Horseman's core.
"I only need your tower." She said. "Once it loses your imprint, it will be mine for the taking. You are nothing but dead weight, Night, just like Orpal."
The Mad Queen chanted the spell needed to destroy the crystal that Baba Yaga had spread far and wide in the magical community, taking Night's defenses apart. The spell restricted her and sealed her ability to sacrifice her host.
Empowered by Focus Point, the claws of the Arthan armor pierced deep into the crystal, making it slowly crumble. Yet it wasn't just a way to prolong his suffering. Thrud was methodical in everything she did and took no risk.
"Stop!" Jormun said. "It's just as you suspected. Moonlight is part of the same crystal from which Night has been carved. Even while she's inside the Sealed Space, once the cracks become too severe, they spread to the tower as well."
He pointed at the cobweb of fractures that were opening all over Moonlight.
"How brilliant of Baba Yaga." Thrud sent a spark of Life Maelstrom inside Night's crystal, even letting enough world energy in to heal her wounds but not enough to open a dimensional fissure.
"If anything happens to her children, all of her secrets are lost as well. A Horseman and their steed are nothing but two sides of the same coin."
"That or the spell that she so generously shared was intended to get rid of every trace of her work from the beginning." Jormun pointed at Night's broken equipment.
After Thrud had started chanting the spell, the Black Rose armor had stopped regenerating and Thorn's Davross had become brittle.
Thrud would have liked the squash the Horseman and her host like the cockroaches she considered them to be, but her sense of pity stayed her hand.
"It would be a pity to lose something as powerful as a tower just because of my personal grudge against Meln. I'll commute his sentence from death penalty to imprisonment, at least until we figure out how to make mage towers of our own." She said.
"I think we would be better off killing him and getting it over with." Jormun said, but Iata and the other beasts disagreed loudly.
"Are you insane? You have seen how powerful a loser like Meln has become thanks to such a simple version of a mage tower." Iata said. "Imagine what our Queen would become.
"Our troops would become unstoppable even if we managed to make only one but that retains the steed's enchantment to share its master's bloodline abilities with the troops."
"I'm sorry, dear, but I agree with Iata." Thrud shook her head. "Mage towers are legendary artifacts that don't come by easily. I might never have another opportunity like this.
"If we crack Moonlight's secrets before the end of the war, our victory will be certain. Even if we succeed on a later date, the conquest of Garlen would be just a matter of time."
"My liege, Dawn has been trapped for hundreds of years yet she managed to escape." Tethre the Vampire said. "Are you sure you can contain a Horseman?"
"The Golden Griffon may not be a Fringe but is the next best thing." The Mad Queen replied. "Jormun, move both prisoners to our stronghold and keep them in a Sealed Field array.
"I want Night to receive as little darkness element as possible and no food. If she regenerates Meln, I don't want him to use Invigoration or Accumulation during his stay. We'll keep him alive, but barely."
