Chapter 61 - Monster Is A Relative Term

Don’t ask me how the skeletal remains of a sixty-something million year old dinosaur was able to roar. I haven’t the foggiest idea. The only answer I can give is ‘magic,’ and I doubt that makes the whole thing any more comfortable. Might as well try explaining how it was walking around, while we’re at it.

In that moment, though, I wasn’t thinking about any of those things.

I’ve seen all the ‘Jurassic World’ films. Who hasn’t? I used to chuckle when I saw people freeze after a big dinosaur appeared. Like, run, you idiot, RUN! But no, they’d freeze in place while this titanic thing roared overhead, then generally leaned over and ate them. Any self-respecting hero runs from the dinosaur. We don’t freeze.

In practice? Dude, I totally froze, and you would have, too.

Luckily I had a lot of undead with me.

My minions did not freeze. They saw a threat to my safety and engaged. Hope landed herself firmly between me and the monster, and howled. The howl didn’t stagger the tyrannosaur like it might have a lesser creature, but it did make it take a step back. Instead of chomping on me, it turned and bit another of my skeletons in half while the others formed ranks between it and me.

That monster was going to tear right through them. I felt its tier level—four. Nothing I had was going to take it down. Maybe, my entire force could beat it, working together, but my undead would be decimated.

They bought me the precious couple of seconds I needed for my brain to reboot and kick back on, though. I was moving again, thinking more or less clearly again. I’d been expecting a pile of bones, and had hoped to try using Animate on them. With the fossilized bone being so old, I hadn’t even been sure it would work, but figured it was worth a try. The last thing I’d expected was to find the damn thing already awake!

But I had a spell for that, too. Control Undead was my first spell. In a lot of ways, it was still my strongest and the one I was most familiar with. I reached for that power as the T. rex took down two more of my tier one skeletons. I was running out of the things, but they were less armed, with crappy shields compared to my fancy tier-two shield wall, so the dinosaur was focusing on the easier pickings.

It turned out that wasn’t the worst thing in the world. As I started casting Control Undead I realized that tier four dino was going to eat up eight tiers worth of my Control capacity. That was half of what I had! Hope was two; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern one each. And the last two tier one skeletons were the only other ones I was controlling—the tyrannosaur had killed the others. It left me more than enough to control her.

A rush of black fire leaped from my hand toward the beast. It roared again, and I almost lost control of the spell, but hung on, maintaining focus with all the Will I could bring to bear. The flames reached the dinosaur and swept over it—only unlike the other undead I’d Controlled before, she fought back!

It was like trying to play tug of war with an elephant. I felt overmatched, like I couldn’t possibly win, like she was going to rip herself free at any moment and then tear me apart. There was something primal and devastatingly strong about this skeleton that I hadn’t felt from any of the weaker ones.

“No way, lady,” I told her, stepping forward as I continued to pour magic into her. “You are mine!”

The tyrannosaur roared a third time, but I was getting used to it already. I stepped forward again, feeling stronger. She backed away from me, this time. With a smile, I kept coming.

“It’s okay, girl,” I told her. I had the sense she was far smarter than most of the undead I’d run into. As smart as Hope, at least—probably more. “We’re going to be friends. Allies. Partners, even.”

There was a sensation like a click in my mind, and the magic settled over the creature, my Control locking her down as a minion. I wasn’t sure, but I had a sense she’d heard my words and relented, which made me feel better about the whole thing. What Colonel Turner was doing with his Charisma had left a bad taste in my mouth; the last thing I wanted to do was enslave intelligent beings, even if they had been dead for sixty million years.

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“Good girl, Sue,” I said, calling her by the name the Chicago museum had given her. I figured she’d been called that for a long time now, so who was I to change her name? “Come on. We’re going to get out of here. And I’ve got a lovely hunting ground for you to visit. We’ve got some bad guys to dispatch.”

Getting her out of the building turned out to be pretty easy. I had no idea how they’d gotten her inside, as big as she was. Probably a special door somewhere, or maybe they’d brought her into the building in pieces and then reassembled her there? Either way, those weren’t options for me, and weren’t necessary anyway.

I just ordered her to walk out through the massive windows at the front of the building. The glass didn’t hurt Sue at all, and it didn’t slow her down, either. I had no idea why she’d stuck around that building rather than go elsewhere. Near as I could tell she hadn’t even left the room where she’d animated. Maybe she’d only ‘come back’ recently, and she hadn’t had time to explore yet? There was no real way to know for sure, but I’d been lucky to find her.

There was one more thing I wanted to do, before I rejoined Alfred, Kara, and the rest of them. For style points. Because it was badass. And if I was being honest with myself, because in the back of my mind I was still on fire with rage at the goblins for everything they’d done. All my anger over the entire Event was now wrapped up in that small, hot ball of fury.

“Down, Sue,” I commanded, and she knelt. That brought her back close enough to the ground that I was able to step up her leg and clamber onto her back.

Some sort of saddle was definitely going to be in order in the near future, but this would have to do for the time being. I settled myself in about midway down her spine, a couple of feet from her hips. Sue shifted underneath me, and I felt awe at the raw power I felt in her bones.

She was so much more than just a skeleton. Magic infused her, flowed through her, connected all her pieces together. On the smaller skeletons it wasn’t so obvious, but for Sue, the bands of magic were visible in the darkness, glowing with a faint blue light at each connection point between her bones. It was stunning, beautiful, amazing. She was a creature of magic, and an enormously powerful one.

And she was mine.

“Let’s go, girl,” I told Sue, sending mental commands to her. I wanted to go back to where Alfred and his people ought to be waiting by now, and I wanted to make sure she didn’t hurt other people, so I gave her the same standing order I gave the rest of my undead—no hurting humans unless they’re trying to hurt me.

We set off at a lumbering pace across the grounds, Sue slowing herself down so my other undead could keep up. There was speed in her bones—I felt it, there for me to command. She could run a hell of a lot faster than I could, when she wanted to.

I rounded the corner of the Aiken Center and was disappointed to see no one outside. I glanced around, wondering why they weren’t there, when a voice called out from inside the ground floor.

“Selena? Is that you?” It was Alfred! He stepped outside, holding his shield up, weapon at the ready.

I chuckled from where I sat atop the undead titan. “Yeah, it’s me. I made a new friend. Say hi to Sue—don’t worry, she won’t hurt you.”

Alfred dropped his guard and laughed. “Sue, huh? Shit. I completely forgot that exhibit was here!”

“Me too,” I admitted. “Saw a flier while we were looking for you.”

“We’re all down from the roof,” Alfred told me. “We felt the ground shaking and I hurried everyone back inside to hide from whatever it was, but we’re ready to go.”

I was impressed. That was pretty fast. “All your gear packed and everything?”

“We didn’t have much left from the last time we fled. What we had, we kept ready to move again, just in case.”

I nodded my understanding. They’d been through a lot and lost a ton. Now, I was going to have to ask for even more faith from them. “Okay. Let’s get your people together and get ready to move them out, then.”

“What’s the plan? We going to go south around the forest?”

I shook my head. “You guys can try that, if you want. I’ll understand if you do, and with Kara you’ll have good NightVision to make the trip. But I need to end this, and now I have the power to do it. Before, I had no way to take out that goblin stockade in the woods. With Sue? I do.”

“You want to attack them head on?”

“Yup. They killed Kat. They killed Lords. They’ve killed how many others? The goblin force has grown in size and strength each time I’ve come through here. If we let them continue getting stronger, eventually they’ll be an enemy we can’t beat.”

I’d given this a lot of thought. I had no idea my hypothesis about the goblins being former squirrels turned into magical beings was right or not, but wherever they were coming from, they were growing in numbers and getting stronger. The Guard wasn’t going to get out here to deal with them anytime soon, which left it up to me.

Alfred hesitated before replying. “Most of my people aren’t fighters.”

“I don’t need them to be. Have your people stay well back of the fight. If you have some who want to join me, they’re welcome. But I’m planning to do this alone.”

“Not gonna happen,” Kara said, stepping out into the night. “I’m with you.”

“Me, too,” Alfred said. “We have other people who will want some payback, too. If you think we can do this…”

I gave Sue a little mental nudge. She lifted her head skyward and roared into the night, the echoes carrying back and forth between the buildings.

When silence reigned again, Alfred was laughing, a big, hard laugh. “All right, then. Let’s do this.”

I grinned, glad to have direction and purpose. It was way past time to make those goblins pay for what they’d done to my friends!