The Vampire’s Templar

After talking about the risks and possible rewards of seeing for themselves what the tower that supposedly sprung up in the middle of the Border Forest looked like, Fleur, Anne, and Justin all agreed that there was no need to look. The equation was completely unbalanced.

All they would get from taking a look was satisfying their curiosity, while at worst, the risk was being captured, killed, and abandoning everything they’ve done for the past few weeks. That was unacceptable.

But when they actually got to the forest, they realized that there was no risk at all. Despite each tree in the ancient forest nearing fifty meters tall on average, the ivory tower stood well over the treeline, perhaps seventy or so feet tall. From afar on a cloudy day, perhaps the tower might’ve blended in with the white in the background sky, but when Fleur finally saw it, the mysterious white tower almost glowed in the sunlight.

“It’s true, there really is one,” she whispered.

“There’s no reason to lie. But it is surprising that something that big can just appear overnight…”

Justin nodded. “Its existence is not the thing to call into question, but how it came to be. I don’t think that something that big can just appear out of nowhere, but since rumors tend to sprout from truth, I wonder what’s the truth behind that rumor.”

Having seen the tower for themselves, they tried to come up with a possible explanation for the tower, but none of the ideas seemed even remotely close to the truth. The best they had was that the tower was a “secret weapon of the vampires,” suggested by Anne, but Justin disagreed on the virtue of the tower not being red.

 Finally, after a moment of hesitation, Fleur raised her hand to get the others’ attention. The discussion between Anne and Justin halted and they both looked at her. “Do you have another idea?”

“Maybe the Church built it? Maybe? I mean, the rumors said that the Church was investigating it, right? Maybe they got it wrong and the Church people they saw around the tower were actually building it?”

Justin frowned. “Putting aside why they might do something like that, does the Church even have the ability to build something like that in a week or even a month?”

They’d decided earlier that a month was the maximum amount of time for a “sprang up overnight” rumor to appear. Even that was stretching it, though.

“Our branch can’t, that’s for sure,” Anne said, shrugging. “But then again, thanks to how far we are from headquarters, we never had the most funding, so who knows?” The limits of Moltrost’s construction capabilities was repairing their cathedral, and even that was a major undertaking. Building a massive tower in a short period of time was unthinkable. “But if it was multiple branches…”

“Still, why would the Church do something like this?” Fleur asked. That was the inexplicable part.

“Who knows why the Church is doing anything nowadays,” Anne scoffed. “Orders from the undead or something? Drain our resources in preparation for war.” Her words reminded Fleur and Justin of the undead uprising in the north. She might’ve actually hit the nail on the head.

“That, or it's a show of force to show the demons that we’re still fine after our defeat. I bet it’s a great watchtower too, being that tall.”

“...In the end, we don’t know unless we ask the Church, huh?” Anne asked.

“Yeah, not happening. I still want to see Camilla. Let’s hurry,” Fleur said. 

The other two nodded and they hurried toward the forest and by the end of the day, they had disappeared into the trees. They didn’t just walk-in without a care since none of them want to fail on the last leg of their journey.

Instead, they avoided the tower and gave it a wide berth on top of hiding their mana to avoid detection, not just from any keen-sensed Church members, but also to prevent any mana beasts from being attracted.

Slowly and cautiously, the trio made their way through the treacherous border forest. However, uneasy as they were, they were never attacked by anything for their first few days in the forest. The same could not be said for other locations.

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“Major Bulwark!”

The templars in front of and on top of the Moltrost walls raised their shields against the incoming dark missiles. A golden film spread across the surface of the beaten and dented metal before the priests standing behind them raised their scepters under the direction of an archpriest. Bright golden light struck the backs of the templars and wreathed them in a warm aura. 

Working together, the magic melded together and expanded until the Bulwark art’s effect formed a huge barrier that shielded the entire wall. With hellish shrieks and howls, the dark spells reeking of undeath collided with the shield and exploded. Dark tendrils spread over the golden shield and the whole barrier dimmed. A second wave consisting of a few dozen black missiles slammed into the barrier, corroding the barrier until it was almost transparent.

The feedback from the spell slammed into the templars and they staggered. For many of the templars, young and inexperienced, it was their first time seeing the Bulwark spell come close to failing. For them, Bulwark had always been a spell that could be relied upon to save them as long as they could cast it in time, but now, that illusion was shattered.

“Shit, it won’t hold for much longer! We need to refresh the spell!” Barsig shouted, then immediately winced as the movement of his mouth stretched the dreadful scar on his face. He groaned into his gauntlet, but he didn’t let the pain keep him down. Waving away his lieutenant, he stood up straight again. “Can your priests keep up a barrier by themselves while we recast Bulwark?” he asked the old man standing next to him.

The elderly archpriest, Ravonn, nodded. He peered at the undead army situated across a no-man’s land. Even older than Demuur and aging nowhere as well, the old archpriest had come out of retirement when news of the outposts that guarded Amaranthine Point falling reached the Church.

A master of barrier magic, he proved invaluable to the defense of Moltrost and even Barsig could not help but admire his skill. Whenever he spoke to the old archpriest, he could not help but lower his head and cast aside his pride.

“I’m here. Do what you must,” Ravonn said.

The lack of hesitation in his scratchy voice bolstered Barsig’s confidence as well. Perhaps things will really be okay.

It’s not like he wanted to take command, but he had no choice but the step up to the task. Reinhart had died in the battle at Amaranthine Point. Until their stronghold sends a higher ranking templar, he was in charge by default. However, he knew better than anyone else that he had no talent in leading. All he had was his charisma and that only worked while morale was still high.

Morale was not high.

He touched his scar again before he shook his head to clear his mind of doubts, renewing his conviction once more. Moltrost must not fall.

“Templars, recast Bulwark as soon as the priests create a temporary shield! On my mark, five! Four! Three…!”

A holy flame washed across the surface of the existing Major Bulwark shield to cleanse it of the corroding death magic at the same time as a second translucent barrier appeared over it. Now was the time.

“Two…!”

Before he could get to the last number, his voice caught in his throat as a wave of fear washed over him. A dark cloud appeared over the undead army, spiraling like a tornado of smoke. 

Even from so far away, he could clearly feel the power of a newly arrived undead. 

A ball of dark magic streaked across the no-man’s land in an instant, effortlessly smashing through the holy shield cast by the priests with barely a pause. It crashed against the waning Bulwark spell, boring a huge hole in the spell that shattered the whole shield, sending dozens of templars reeling.

Just before the ball hit one of the templars standing on the walls, Ravonn clapped his hands and a multi-layer barrier appeared between the ball and the templar. Five of the seven layers broke; the ball paused at the sixth layer; as the ball was about to break through the seventh, the whole barrier spell exploded, annihilating the ball of darkness.

The young templar, whose short life flashed in front of his eyes, fell onto his butt in fear where he sat frozen as if unable to believe that he was still alive.

Sweat poured down Ravonn’s forehead. He coughed. “That was close…” When Barsig didn’t reply, he looked over at the templar. “Barsig? Don’t you have something to do?”

“Huh?” Barsig came to with a start and he quickly nodded. “Oh, right… yeah. Thank you very much. Templars, Bulwark now, before it’s too late!”

His order broke the other templars out of their daze and they scrambled to their feet and raised their shields, preparing for another wave of dark spells cast by the liches and zombie mages on the other side.

Only when a brand new shimmering crystal wall appeared between the enemy army and Moltrost did he dare breathe again. His mind drifted back to the appearance of the new undead and he could not help but shiver. 

“Father Ravonn, did you feel that just now?”

Ravonn squinted at him. His mouth opened and then closed with unsaid words before he finally nodded. “I have… it’s been decades since I last felt something quite like it,” he said. “This is the power of a lord-class undead mage. There’s no one archpriest that can stand a chance against one of those, as you can see…”

Six out of seven layers of the barrier spell that he cast broke in a few short moments and was only neutralized when he blew up the missiles. And before that, the spell destroyed two large-scale barriers, going through them like they weren’t even there.

Although such huge barriers weren’t effective against concentrated attacks like that ball of death magic, it was still cast by a dozen templars and priests working together. Of all the things that can appear on the battlefield, it had to be a lord-class…

Barsig sighed. He had been afraid of that. 

“You don’t seem very surprised.”

“Well, I did guard Amaranthine Point for a bit. It’s common knowledge that there’s at least one lord-class in there, probably more. I just hoped that it wouldn’t come out…”

“What if I told you that there’s something even higher up that might be in there?” Ravonn said in a hushed voice, and Barsig shuddered. He clamped his hand over the archpriest’s mouth and shook his head. The archpriest laughed. “Well, whatever. As long as this is all the force they can muster, I think we’re fine.”

“Fine? No, this isn’t fine,” Barsig said. “We don’t have enough manpower to guard these walls forever. We’ll eventually have to launch an attack and try to cut down on their numbers!”

Ravonn said nothing, and even Barsig realized how stupid he sounded.

What he proposed was simply infeasible for a simple reason: they already tried, multiple times, and failed each time.

When the Amaranthine Point outposts first fell and the undead army poured out the gates, scattering across the land, the Church and the Orders sent forces to corral them. It didn’t work.

Even when they tried to concentrate their force, the undead army gathered under the command of a few greater undead and pushed the templars and priests back again and again. Countless lives were sacrificed, yet they could not even stop the advance of the undead.

Barsig had no idea how the other cities near Amaranthine Point fared, but he knew that around a third of all the undead that were once sealed within the dark fortress had headed toward Moltrost. 

Everything had happened too quickly. Only a few days passed between the battle at Amaranthine Point and Moltrost coming under attack. The civilians had not been evacuated, and even now, they were still stuck in the city, forced to remain while an undead army was at the gates.

He gritted his teeth and shook his head.

“Is there no way out?” he muttered. “Ravonn, are you not worried at all?”

The archpriest just laughed. “Look at me, young man. How long do you think I have left?”

Barsig understood the meaning behind the archpriest’s words; they were quite clear. Ravonn had already given up.