The Power of Ten

The control radius of a ‘new’ Dark Minister was five hundred feet. This was natural, and without limit... any undead of fewer Hit Dice than the Minister was subject to its control and coming under its influence.

As it got more undead under its control, and specifically Congregants, intelligent undead subordinates, it could expand its sphere of influence up to five hundred yards. The Congregants formed chains of control in every direction that could keep control of any undead the Dark Minister subjugated.

The sign of its direct influence was the pale black flames on the lesser undead, granting them temporary Health equal to its Charisma bonus, typically +5. These points restored at a rate of one per six seconds if they were used up, which seemed minor, until you realized that even an undead that was almost falling apart could still take a blow from a baseball bat and not go down.

Worst, overlapping bonuses from the Dark Clergy – Ministers, Bishops, Cardinals, and presumably a Hierophant – all stacked, and their Charisma scores only grew higher.

In addition to that, the command auras of the Dark Clergy were considered Actively Desecrated ground. Ground under a Shroud was considered lesser Desecrated ground, granting undead a +1 profane bonus to hit, damage, saves, and per Hit die of Health. Around the Dark Clergy, that effect was doubled, just like they were standing on true unholy ground, with a Shrine or Altar there.

My one-shot kill potential of zombies inside this aura were probably non-existent right now, without some hefty odds in my favor. That was the biggest benefit of the aura... moving an undead from one-hit kills to two-hits, effectively halving your kill rate, and giving the undead more time to swarm you and kill you.

The passing undead were more organized, marching almost in step, and I realized why the road was mostly clear... the undead had shoved the cars and other obstructions out of way here at the instruction of the Dark Minister...

The sky-blackening number of stronger incorporeals fell off like a knife, and even the stronger unliving had been moved ahead of the almost solid flow of zombies now moving in unison past on the road.

I could feel the Minister’s presence like a dark sun gliding past, I was pretty sure borne aloft by its minions, and waving its arms around. It would look like a skull-headed human, with blackened skin, surrounded by the black-green necroic flames that were its armor and power, the sign that something dark out there had reached down, touched it, and made it a servant of undeath.

It ghosted across my aura of being Shroudborn, and I felt a distinct sense of casual awareness. There was a pure instinctive attempt to reach out and take control of an undead, and it simply ghosted past me, my aura didn’t react, like I was a static source of negative energy sitting there, unresponsive.

Or a weakass demon sloughing off, maybe...

The source of the feeling continued on past, while I watched the undead out the rear window.

When they slowly turned in my direction, I could only groan.

I couldn’t start a fight until the Dark Minister was well out of range with its personal horde. It could simply turn around and send the whole thing after me.

However, if I had its speed right, this should basically be the last of the mass undead moving towards the wall, so there should be no trailing awareness as long as it got out of range... and if I snuffed the controller undead here.

Which I would have to do, if I wanted to live. It would fulfill any last order, and then immediately move to catch up to its Minister. However, the Minister wouldn’t have knowledge or awareness of it beyond the five-hundred-meter range, as long as there weren’t any relay Congregants, usually incorporeals, serving to extend the control range.

As quickly and quietly as I could, using Minor TK to help lighten myself, I went up the old stairs, spreading out my weight and easing up to the second floor as the first rattling came from the front door, and a moan escaped something outside the front window.

There went my whole plan of sitting down there, sniping them off, gradually pulling back into narrow defendable areas while vivus helped burn them down...

“New plan... snipe the boss once out of control range, hope there isn’t another Congregant close by, kill the rest for as long as it takes, bail and find a new place to hole up...” I sort of muttered under my breath. I could hear the ripping and tearing as something clawed its way through the curtains, remnants of glass crunching loudly and clumsily, while I went up the trapdoor stairs, also thoughtfully lubed ahead of time.

I had originally planned to leave it down and draw stuff up one by one, or force them to find another way... but this time, I just closed the trapdoor and retreated over to the window I’d cleaned up the inside of so I could look outside, again moving slowly, carefully, and on all fours.

I even locked the trapdoor with its simple latch from the other side, just to confuse things more.

The creaking and crunching going on down below was hopefully masking any sounds I made. I glanced outside, and grimaced at a whole buncha rote zombies in all manner of ragged apparel and lack thereof gathered around the house to find whatever their boss had gone looking for.

I’d washed my scent from everything, so the ghouls shouldn’t be able to sniff me out here. I’d even replaced it with a faint odor of rotting meat, just to be on the safe side, so they’d be confused about what was here.

Making it the strongest in the basement, mostly by bringing the food from the refrigerator down there and rotting it, had been an idea. Anything to buy time and distract them.

The zombies could climb stairs. With guidance, maybe they could open doors. But they couldn’t really search. So, whatever was actually searching would be the Congregant, the intelligent thing, and so the boss.

Now I just had to hope it took a while to sniff through the place. Undead had a pretty warped sense of time, and especially if this thing had been around for years, there was no rush about anything.

I saw the black flames slowly recede from the zombies below, and they stirred reflexively as they lost the Buff from the Dark Minister... but they didn’t go away, bound to the control of a greater undead.

That would be at least a shadow, but probably a ghast or wight, although an enhanced zombie wasn’t out of line. I doubted it would spend something as valuable as a mummy on me...

The further away it got, the more outside the control radius, and the slower the alarm. Invisibility to Undead would only get me ten minutes of unseen-ness at my Level, and it definitely had the numbers to do a manhunt everywhere to find me.

Scrapings on the floor below. Heavy footsteps, didn’t sound like claws... probably a wight? Of course, that didn’t mean there couldn’t be more than one, which would mean I might be SOL... but that was the way it was.

I could only wait as it searched through the rooms below, looked under the beds, opened the drawers and closets, and things clattered and fell to the floor as it searched for signs of something.

I eyed the clock of Detect Time as time passed slowly and patiently, staying Focused, noting that the zombie stream on the road outside was basically gone, and only the horde milling around outside the house was present.

I sighed and half-relaxed. I didn’t know if the odds were going to help me, but at least something had gone right.

I waited for either something to come through the walls, while my Detect Undead watched the movements of something below, and all the zombies.

By its speed, I was betting a wight. I’d still need to Shard it to be certain of a kill. That was fine, that was what they were there for.

------

The scratching at the ceiling finally came.

It couldn’t reach the trapdoor initially, so it had two of its zombies come over and get down on all fours so it could step on them. Its bony fingers worked at the simple latch, and there was a screech and a fall of dust as the trapdoor came down.

It moved out of the way, as did its zombies, and pulled the ladder down slowly, but with obvious familiarity.

I heard the clump and scraping as it came up the steps, and as it reached the top, its head blew off before it ever actually saw me.

Burning with vivus, the stiff corpse grew stiffer, and fell onto the steep ladder, still clutching it.

The zombies outside immediately started moving around more when their controller died. They lurched towards the front window, while the ones below got near the ladder and shoved at the burning corpse of their boss, trying to make room.

Whether they could actually climb it was going to be a question, but I was sure one of them could. I calmly and quietly moved back in that direction as they struggled with the simple coordination of doing so, watching as they jostled one another back and forth a bit, trying to get up here.

I was doing the splits across three rafters as I closed on the trapdoor, straightened up with a grimace, and looked down at the zombies below, two Darts spinning around my wrist.

They looked up at me with eyes reduced to little strands of meat in their sockets, and got one Dart each right in the face, which was pretty much enough to blow their heads apart and drop them on top of their burning boss.

The wight hadn’t bothered to undo any of the doors, entering by the front window, so the zombies were hammering at them to get them open, while others stumbled slowly up through the window as had the four others in the house.

Two others, now.

I grabbed the far side of the trapdoor, braced my legs, and leaned out, gritting my teeth as my Darts cycled back up, the two in the hallway drew closer, and I popped them in the face.

As they fell, I grabbed the edge with both hands, swung my legs around, and dropped out of the trapdoor, swinging for just a second before landing on the energetically burning wight.

The zombies on the first floor were just starting to discover the stairs as they smashed the front and back doors open. Unfortunately for them, the stairs weren’t really wide enough for more than one of them, especially the way they moved.

I parked myself at the top, and as the first one started up this way, drove a glowing Dart into its chest, setting it on vivic fire, stumbling back into the foot of the stairs in front of the others, who naturally all oriented on it and came my way.

That was fine. It was time to build a heap of zombie bodies where the undead outside couldn’t see them.

I headed down the stairs, cycling up my Darts, and prepared myself to chain-headshoot a bunch of things...