The Liches entered the defensive arrays’ area of effect, feeling their bodies become heavier as the surrounding world energy started resisting the call of their spells and slowing down the vigorous mana that allowed their corpses to move.
The crazy undead gasped in surprise for a fraction of a second before forgetting it wasn’t their natural state. With their prize at hand, their madness knew no bounds.
The Liches never hesitated, never doubted themselves, and never considered the consequences of their actions. They clung to the Wood Golems like ticks, kidnapped Librarians, and collected the wooden fragments lying around after the Twilight Blast.
“Don’t let them touch you!” Az’mar yelled to Librarians and regular elves. “No matter the cost, don’t let a Lich touch you!”
The limbs of his Wood Golem shapeshifted into massive hammers that Az’mar used to pound the nearby Liches into dust. Whenever one of the frenzied undead jumped at him, the leader of the Chroniclers had the Golem cover its surface in spear-thin long thorns to impale the Liches.
The thorn would be shot on contact, sending the undead crashing against the ground and protecting the Golem from their draining touch. The other Chroniclers too received the World Tree’s anti-Lich strategy and enforced it with extreme prejudice.
The Liches were all bright violet-cored Awakened empowered by the most perfected version of undeath, but the Wood Golems were 40 meters (132′) tall and made out of Yggdrasill wood.
Its physical and magical properties were second only to Davross and the Golems had been enchanted by the World Tree. The Liches came in droves and fell in droves.
Librarians and elves sought refuge behind the Chroniclers, witnessing with pride how the defenses of even the strongest Awakened amounted to nothing in the face of the power of their master.
Mostly because there were none. The Liches charged ahead with no care for their physical vessels and accepted the enemy attacks like they were gifts.
“This is not your lab, you gods-damned morons!” Aylen shouted from the safe area while imparting orders to her army of Emperor Beasts. “Dodge and block, dammit! It’s not enough to attack. You must also defend yourselves.”
The Liches gasped in amazement at her brilliant suggestion, instantly gaining enlightenment. Or rather, they remembered a few of the many things they had forgotten about fighting and the tide of the battle changed again.
“Right, block!” A Spirit Barrier erupted from a Lich’s defensive amulet, intercepting a barrage of bolts of black lightning and buying him the time to reform his body.
“Dodge!” A Lich sidestepped a Golem’s fist and scraped its bark with his bony fingers.
It dealt insignificant damage to the construct but temporarily bestowed upon the undead the properties of Yggdrasill wood. The word Lich came from leech, because this race of undeads sucked their victims dry and borrowed their powers.
His bones turned into wood and bark, bringing his mental clarity to new heights and allowing him to merge his spells in unique ways.
“Hey, guys, look at this!” A Naga Lich grabbed one of the energy lines of a gravitational array and drained its power to rebuild her broken body at a speed visible to the naked eye.
“Neat!” Many Liches thanked her with a nod of the head and followed her lead.
They hijacked the energy of the magical formations and turned it into tier five spells at no cost for their mana cores. A living being would have been fried by channeling so much mana at once and with a foreign energy signature at that.
The Liches burned and sizzled but they were already dead. The mana they stole healed them faster than the arrays damaged them and since undead felt no pain, feeding off the arrays was a “win-why do I smell barbeque” situation.
Not only did the phenomenon hasten the undead’s regeneration process but it also temporarily bestowed upon them the same powers as the array they fed upon, making them immune to it.
“Damn if those guys are morons.” Apep the Eldritch Apophis didn’t need to roll his dice to judge the Liches’ performance. “What do you want me to do, woman?”
“Dig underground and clear the Yggdrasill’s roots on our path to the Yggdrasill.” Aylen pointed at the battleground. “Without them, the Golem can’t recharge and the World Tree can’t perform sneak attacks.”
The Liches were being smashed almost as fast as they regenerated, bringing their charge to a halt.
Whenever a Golem or a group of elves was cornered, the Yggdrasill turned their roots into wooden spikes that erupted from the ground at the critical moment of a clash. The spikes shielded the elves and impaled the Liches, pushing the undead back before they could break through the defensive lines and giving the Golems the time to come to the elves’ rescue.
“Let’s see.” Apep rolled his dice like the Maker of All Liches had seen him do countless times while she was Inxialot’s guest in his moon laboratory.
She wasn’t stupidly naïve like Inxialot so instead of crossing her fingers and hoping for luck, she used a sliver of Spirit Magic to get the critical success roll she wanted. Apep had no Life Vision and no way to notice her meddling.
“I’m going all out!” The Eldritch turned into his real form, that of a colossal snake made of Chaos over 50 meters (166′) long.
The Apophis squirmed in joy as his scales drained the world energy from the Fringe, quelling his eternal hunger. He cleared the safe area from roots first, ensuring there were no infiltrations from the World Tree before moving on to assist the Liches.
“You are a moron too, kid, but the kind of moron I like. The kind I can manipulate with ease.” Aylen noticed too late that she was thinking out loud. “Dammit! What’s our next move?”
“The Liches won’t last five minutes.” Sinmara replied. “The good news is we’ve forced the Chroniclers to show some of their best cards. The bad news is there’s a lot of them.”
More Golems kept sprouting as the Chroniclers spread throughout Mogar returned to the World Tree’s Fringe as fast as they could.
“We are ne next diversion. Let’s make it count.” She and Surtr bolted to the front lines while Baba Yaga’s tower grew in size, taking the form of a colossal wooden puppet 50 meters (164′) tall.
Silverspire shapeshifted into a silvery humanoid giant that matched the puppet’s size and was armed with a sword and a shield.
“Three towers, five white cores, and we are the diversion?” Aylen scoffed.
She knew the plan but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
“Deal with it.” Dawn said, unleashing her Blade Tier spell, Rising Sun, as her opening salvo.
It cut through the defensive arrays, charred a few golems asunder, but stopped before reaching halfway to the World Tree.
“That’s what we are against. Even a white core like you doesn’t amount to much. Yet.” The Horsemen pointed at the Fire Dragons who breathed wave after wave of Primordial Flames, weakening the defensive arrays and diverting the Yggdrasill’s focus and energy from the battlefield.
The Golden Dragons used Golden Radiance to step inside the array unharmed and breathed more Primoradial Flames directly on critical runes until the pressure from gravity magic forced them to retreat to the safe area to recover.
