The Fortress in Hell (2/2)
And so, Kaalhyme puts his Will troops completely on defensive, while he runs Haalfrin ragged retaking territory. After all, no Ant formation shenanigans can actually stop the Commander from stomping his way through and pulverizing entire sectors.
The only reason Haalfrin's presence doesn't guarantee them the maze is because the Queen is doing the same thing; she constantly travels through the maze and obliterates his Wall Formations – giving the ANTS more territory in turn.
The only time the battle is free of the two opposing powerhouses is when they both get too exhausted and go to sleep.
The Queen is apparently more casual (if put kindly), and is less disciplined (if put critically), so she usually sleeps longer than Haalfrin…
… To be fair, sleeping longer than him is easy, since he can get by on 3 hours of sleep, with the occasional power nap throughout the day.
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The Ants and undead Spirits of the fallen get so used to fighting here that pretty soon, the battle evens out.
When the Ant and Will walls clash, the Ants win about 80% of the time. (Yes, Kaalhyme has some analysts make charts and calculate the odds to help him strategize.) However, his people are able to hold out long enough with their stalling tactics to allow their powerhouses to regain territory.
… But because Haalfrin is more mobile than the Queen, and because he sleeps less than her, he's able to take more territory than her personally. Plus, he habitually separates from Dakka and lets the dragon spirit do the same work as him.
With He and Dakka conquering more territory than the Queen, but the Queen's army winning the fights more often in the countless halls, the battle evens out.
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Because the fighting is so unending and aggressive, Haalfrin notices that even though he has many spatial bags worth of weapons, his army's stash of spare weapons aren't going to last too much longer.
To compensate for this terrible news, Kaalhyme orders the forces to pull back their lines and occupy a smaller territory, so that they can use less weapons at a time.
The downside to this is that things get a LOT more dangerous for Haalfrin, as the Queen has a much better idea of where he is. With his lines withdrawn and him having less open space to hide in, the Queen is close on his tail.
In order to barely survive, Haalfrin is forced to constantly move.
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Pretty soon, Kaalhyme figures out how to maximize their efficiency in keeping mobile. Rather, Kalastros is getting so familiar with the Master Key's map that he's able to point out the most strategic choke points for them to hold.
What makes the best chokepoint?
Since the maze is designed to hold the majority of castle supplies, as well as lead to all the cannon rooms at the bottom of the fortress, there isn't a single, defined path through the maze, like a normal maze puzzle you'd find.
Instead of only one path leading forward and the rest being dead ends, the halls constantly intersect, split up, and loop around. Eventually, all paths lead to a dead end, with the dead ends being the supply or cannon rooms.
Because of the way the basement maze was designed, a single point could have multiple exit routes.
So, to maximize mobility while minimizing danger, Kaalhyme and Kalastros pick choke points that have fewer Ants on the other end, while having more exits to flee to; that way, their path through the maze will be less predictable, and the Queen won't be able to keep up with them… barely.
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Despite apparently being ahead, Haalfrin has to work a lot harder than the Queen just to stay ahead of her. Soon enough, he starts to grow so mentally drained that he feels himself growing delirious. Some growing part of him just wants to lay down and accept death the easy way.
Still, he feels the faith all the Wills have in him, and his former comrade's fervent desire for revenge. Even more, he knows that once he dies, the barrier from his Syl Name that is trapping them all will disappear, and the Queen will commit an even greater genocide.
Giving up now would be a heavy sin on his soul; he knows this.
Thus, he keeps fighting, despite the unwilling portion of his spirit.
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After a few weeks, Haalfrin finally receives some welcome news. "Haalfrin!" Fisco finally calls, "I got your first shipment of swords!"
"Good!" Haalfrin smiles, "Just send them over through our soul."
"…Just be warned," Fisco says slowly, "the emperor isn't very happy with me, and he confiscated most of my wealth. He's also very suspicious of me. The fact that I'm gathering a huge amount of weapons will make the him and the royal court VERY unhappy with me, and it'll give them solid grounds to hang me for treason."
"So…, are you going to stop giving me weapons soon?" Haalfrin asks.
The Wills listening in on this conversation shake in anger hearing this, though they can't say anything more than that.
"No," Fisco says, "I'll just be a lot slower with the shipments. I have to keep my head down, after all. Plus, since I don't have a lot to work with, the weapons and shields will be very simplistic."
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Indeed, the weapons ARE simplistic – just like Fisco said they would be.
Instead of being well made and balanced, all the swords are just sharpened slabs of metal with a pointy end. A small part of one end of each blade remains dull, and it has a black cloth wrapped around it, as if that were supposed to be the handle.
Seeing this, Haalfrin doesn't actually mind. Sure, a living person with normal hands wouldn't be able to hold these blades and swing them around effectively, but since these sharpened metal shards resemble swords close enough, the Wills are still able to possess them.
Since the Wills directly manipulate the blades without needing to actually hold them anywhere, it doesn't actually matter if they have a hilt or grip.
"Well," Haalfrin shrugs, "this certainly IS the cheapest way to make swords for my army. He probably doesn't even need to grab competent forage masters for this; that'll make hiding his actions from the royal court a lot easier.
And thus, with Haalfrin's army having a fresh supply of reinforcements, they can finally expand outward again.
With them going back to aggressively claiming territory, Haalfrin finally has breathing room again, and the Queen is kept a more comfortable distance away.
With Fisco secreting supplies to him, and the Ants providing an overabundance of Death Aura, it looks like Haalfrin and his army can finally fight the Queen indefinitely.
…And just like this, the battle stretches from days… to weeks… to months. Haalfrin loses track of time, and the Queen was never counting.
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Never before in either world has there ever been such persistent bloodshed – such a thick Aura of Death.
With the Threshold walls and floor being laced with Spirit Stone, the Ants' Death Aura doesn't get to spread out in the open air.
Like a miasmic poison, it's far more concentrated and deadly in such a confined space.
The Aura is at its thickest near Haalfrin, as it all flows through the narrow tunnels like a fowl wind – ultimately being pulled towards Haalfrin.
Since Haalfrin is struggling to absorb the Aura faster than its coming in, the Aura density is getting thicker and thicker.
Near the man, the Aura gets so thick that even HE feels suffocated at times. The only reason he isn't slowly choked to death by the Aura is because he's gradually getting used to it.
You see, even with Haalfrin using his Fel Name to keep his army up and ready to constantly fight, Kaalhyme is so good at keeping his people fighting at optimal efficiency that the Aura he has to spend keeping them in fighting shape pales in comparison to what the Ant deaths are giving him.
Obviously, since he's getting stronger, the thickening Death Aura around him is harming him less and less.
Haalfrin looks down and grips his fist tightly in excitement. "I can feel it. I'm growing stronger. Much stronger." He looks down a floor, where he knows the Queen is right now. "I wonder how long it'll take for me to be strong enough to challenge you directly?"
Since Haalfrin is constantly getting so much stronger, why, might you ask, is he not using his advanced Yiir Name to make long, deadly tendrils (the way he did back in the Pit) to kill the Ants…?
The Answer? He's actually already tried it, and it didn't work; his thick Aura brushed the Ants, yet they weren't effected one bit.
Evidently, the Ants have a remarkably potent Death Aura resistance – probably because they're getting killed over and over again. With their entire lives being constantly exposed to Death, it only makes sense.
Even for those who can't see Death Aura, the maze is a hauntingly morbid battleground…
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Truth be told, the Queen could've unsummoned the excess blood spilled from her dead children as well, the same way she unsummons the corpses to preserve mana. But, she actually feels it's a better idea to keep it as is.
You see, all of her "children" are "technically" clones of herself… but this isn't entirely true.
More accurately, her clones are tiny slivers of her own soul. Because her soul can only be diced so small, she can't summon an infinite number of children – her army is capped at about 10,000,000 Ants.
So… what's she going to do with all the excess mana she's getting from this battle? Her own mana pool is only so large – just like any normal mage. She can't stuff an infinite amount of mana in her soul.
Thus, she uses her children's blood to store her "spoils of war"; since this blood was manifested from her soul, it can hold her mana.
Because of the magical property of this blood, the blood the Queen allows to remain is glowing an eerie red.
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Over and over again, the Ants spend YEARS marching to their doom through the halls, and the possessed weapons spill their blood.
With so many Ants dying so close together, their blood flows ankle deep in the upper floors of the maze, and knee deep in the lower, since all the blood inevitably flows downward.
The only reason the maze isn't completely filled with blood is because of the cannon hole openings at the bottom of the floating fortress.
Like a salt shaker held upside down, the fortress has countless holes carved into the bottom, and constant streams of blood are spouting out and falling to the cavern below.
Like a giant basin, a lake of blood starts collecting on the bottom – making the Threshold look like a city in hell that's afloat on the blood of the tormented.