Darion watched the four reach the outer wall of the barracks and stop. They pressed flat against the stone. He had trained them to do that, and it worked, they did it smoothly, no awkwardness, like their bodies already knew how.
He was impressed with the smooth compliance. All his hard work hadn’t been in vain after all.
He kept the spyglass on the guard at the entrance.
He was still asleep. Head down on his chest. His spear was propped against the wall next to him at an angle that said he’d put it down, not that he was holding it.
He moved the glass to the far corner. That guard had given up pretending to watch anything. He was just sitting there now, back against the wall, arms folded.
He looked back at his four.
They were waiting. Still and patient. Their green eyes glowed dim in the shadows. He could feel the binding from here in a way, the connection steady in the back of his mind like a held breath.
He kept his voice below a whisper. Barely moved his lips.
"The door. One at a ti. Wait for the one before you to clear the entrance before you follow."
The first one moved.
It went to the door slowly. It wasn’t hesitant or deliberate. Each foot placed carefully before putting weight down. There was no scrape of boots on stone, no crunch of gravel either. The sleeping guard two feet away didn’t move. The undead passed him, went through the door, and disappeared into the dark.
Darion watched the entrance guard for ten seconds.
Nothing.
He breathed out.
The second one followed. Sa movent. Sa care. Sa careful footsteps. Through the door then gone.
Third.
Fourth.
All four inside. Entrance guard still asleep. Far corner guard still sitting. The empty torch spot still empty.
Darion settled his back against the branch and kept the spyglass on the door.
He couldn’t see inside the barracks. That was the part of the plan that needed the most trust. Once they were through the door, he was working off his commands and whatever instinct they still had left. He could only direct them from outside based on what he saw out here and what the binding told him about how they were doing.
He had given them the main instruction before they went in. He had repeated it three tis before coming here so it was stuck deep in the binding.
Move through the room. Don’t wake anyone. Bite once, move on. Don’t linger.
The venom made this work. The bite itself was just pressure. No pain. The venom went in during the first second of contact.
The person getting bitten would barely notice, just a vague brush of sothing in the dark, the kind of thing a sleeping person turns into a dream and doesn’t wake up for.
The venom took two minutes to start working, so by the ti anything felt off, the undead was already three beds away. And what they felt at first was subtle...a little heavy, a deeper sleep than usual. They’d just think they were sleeping well.
The real effects ca much later, this was what Darion learnt from the system.
Unlike the snakes which the venom worked in ten to twelve minutes, this one worked much more slower because Darion’s undead was like a copy of the snake.
It could eventually get to fast ti of the Pachian snake but that would be after nurous and all.
So now, this was a bad thing. But at this mont, it was a blessing.
Darion didn’t want it to work fast, he wanted the opposite.
Hours later stuff. When the barracks was fully asleep and Darion was already riding back to Percvale. That’s when the venom would do what it did to his four knights in the forest.
He kept watching the outside. Entrance guard and far corner. The two torch spots he could see. The ground between the barracks and the trees.
Nothing moved.
Five minutes passed. Ten.
He checked the binding. All four still there, all four moving, he could feel the difference between an undead walking and one standing still. The connection felt slightly different. They were working through the room.
Fifteen minutes.
He was starting to feel sothing like cautious hope when the binding on the second undead went weird.
He couldn’t see inside. He put the spyglass to his eye and scanned every window he could see from his spot. They were small and high up on the wall, ant for air, not light. The nearest one had a faint orange glow from sothing inside. Probably a low torch at the far end.
Then he heard sothing.
Not a shout but sothing quieter.
"Fuck! If only I could see Inside!" Darion muttered.
He had actually hoped to be doing a lot of seeing but alas! Fate!
He heard soone waking up confused and not sure why. He shouldn’t be hearing a detail as tiny as this but everywhere was so silent he would be able to hear a very low whisper clear and audible.
He heard a voice, low, saying sothing he couldn’t make out from the tree.
Then another voice. Closer to the door.
Darion’s hand was already moving.
He unsummoned the only undead in that place wherever it was standing. The green light collapsed inward and the thing just stopped existing.
The two voices kept going for a bit. He could hear them now. Confused. Guys who had woken up from deep sleep and were trying to figure out what woke them. Sothing scraped and soone sat up.
He stayed absolutely still in the tree.
Damn!
’Hope this ruins nothing’
’Did they see him?!’
The entrance guard stirred, lifted his head and looked at the door with that blank look of soone not really awake yet.
One of the voices inside said sothing. The entrance guard said sothing back. A pause. Then the sounds of people settling down again, the sound of soone convincing themselves it was nothing and deciding that was good enough.
Darion decided that was close. And the reason they weren’t alard is because the guards perhaps just caught a glimpse of the undead or thereabout.
The entrance guard’s head dropped back toward his chest.
Darion waited three full minutes before he moved or gave another order.
The other three were still inside. Still. Waiting in the dark for him to tell them what to do. The bindings felt steady, no more weirdness.
He noted that this skill was actually a really cool one. He hadn’t anticipated getting sothing like this. And feeling so faint connection... biding, he was just surprised.
Without this skill he was certain that almost near miss wouldn’t be certain but actually sothing to ruin this for him completely.
He sighed slightly, put the spyglass back to his eye and checked every spot outside again.
It was quiet and still, the torches burning normally. There was no new movent.
He let out a slow breath.
Well...one down, three still inside. Operation was still going and there was no alarm.
He looked at the entrance one more ti.
The guard’s head was on his chest again.
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