“I should have married you when I had the chance. See you around, handsome.”

Svena clicked off her transceiver, unable to bare her lover’s cry when she turned to glare at the Velociraptor darting forward, hissing in her face.

Snapping powerful jaws that radiating a vorpal sharpness that might tear through even her power armor. But not the crackling force shield she rammed into its snout, before it sent her shield slamming into her face place with an abrupt jolt. Even if it was technically weaker at 150 or so Strength, it was whipping its whole body forward where she was splayed on the hard stone ground barely covered with a splash of sand that had done nothing to cushion the bone cracking blow. And how crazy it was that she had managed to shatter her knee. At her level. With her stats. Leg splayed out, spasming with agony that sent tears to her eyes. And she didn’t dare take anything, not a damned bit of the cheap first gen pain killers they had, lest they dull the hyper reflexes that were all that were—

Duck!

Her instincts screamed at her as she twisted desperately around. But not quite in time to avoid the agony of her shoulder clamped by a second raptor that had been aiming for her skull. Before jerking her upright, shaking her, sending jolts of agony through her tortured shoulder even as the hyper-polymer armor warped and crumple into her arm all the deeper, rendering it immobile and in nearly as much agony as her knee.

Then the creature twisted and lifted her up, eager to dash her on the ground.

But not before she managed to plunge her vibroblade in its throat.

“Gotcha, motherfucker!” She forced a smile that turned to a scream when the doomed creature, spurting blood, managed to slam her to the ground even as it spasmed and bucked, its clawed hind legs catching her and sending her spinning before another pair of raptors could tear their beaks into her, which was both a win and a loss because her leg was hyper extended again, and she couldn’t hold back the scream as the pair of hissing birds charged for her while the heavens were suddenly eclipsed by the sight of a Titan Wyrm which she had only seen in holovids depicting the final years before monster swarms rendered ascending planets uninhabitable without Silver Sentinels directly intervening, which very few did.

Only it was here. In the start of year two of the ascension.

If there was one bright side to the horror of what was to come, it was that she wouldn’t be alive to see it.

She inhaled to scream the cry of her people as the pair of raptors charged in tandem, but all she could do was wheeze.

It was still enough for her to force up her crippled arm to take one final beak slamming against it before a furious lunge channeling a centuries worth of attributes and killing experience plunged into its eye, Svena ending its life with a snarl and a twist.

Before she cried out as her guts burst into flame, the final raptor taking the opportunity to strike. It’s sheering bite aimed not for her head or neck, but for her flank. To her bulging-eyed dismay it didn’t just mark and dent her armor. Unlike the first velociraptor this fucker snapped through it like it was a fortune cookie, ripping out a good mouthful of her intestines as blood and entrails spurted across the parched desert.

Her scream locked in her throat as her helm flashed desperate warnings, auto-injecting her with coagulants, stabilizers and pain killers.

She was sent tumbling to the ground, a tiny corner of her mind regretting so many lost opportunities. Claiming a Profession in a sane, stable, upwardly mobile mega corp like Blue Federation. Letting past regrets and losses go and finding a nice man to love and cherish and settle down with. Raise half a dozen happy children with. Fantasies of smiling baby boys and girls in skirts, learning her people’s dances upon windswept fields filled with golden flowers as the spring sun warmed mother and laughing children.

Bitter tears blinked away for what would never be.

But what slipped from her bloody lips wasn’t regret but a howl of rage. The fury for the creature that would claim her dreams, her hope, her life. A creature even now diving in not even to kill her, but to tear through her entrails once more.

She could sense that as well as she could her own pounding heartbeat, which mean she knew exactly how to—

A flash and a boom that sent both her and the velociraptor flying.

Slow-time kicked into full gear as she saw the monstrous Titan Wyrm that glowed with the crackling corona threatening a World Eater ascension in days… or weeks… or just hours. Only for its head to explode in an eruption of liquid flame.

She found herself blinking in confusion even as her clever vibroblade arm knew just where to plunge and twist as the velociraptor, slave to its appetites, charged for her gaping wound once more.

Because artillery strikes didn’t look quite like that, not even ones unleashed by elite Deep Bronze weapons tier platforms run by extremely elite specialists that could pierce even a Titan’s near indestructible body. What mystics declared was infused by actual essences of Impermeability.

There was no way in hell any of those weapons platforms would be—

Wandering thoughts became a jolt of hellish pain.

The FUCKING raptor had just snapped off her sword arm!

Her eyes bulged in horrified disbelief as the raptor glared at her before tossing up her armored arm and chomping and shredding it with mouth and talons, eager to get the meat out like cracking a king crab, her inert vibroblade utterly ignored.

“How! I stabbed that fucker! It should be dead! I should have won! I should have fucking…”

Svena gazed with horrified dismay, choking out a sob, seeing the scrape by the creature’s eye socket. That it was only by the narrowest of margins that she had missed. And that was all it had taken to assure that this would be her final chapter.

She clenched tight her trembling jaws, knowing that it was only her flesh that was buying her a few seconds’ time. All she could do was close her eyes and scream in her mind, knowing that she had absolutely no hope, and that only a horrific agonized death awaited her. She didn’t even have a kill switch in this cheap ass fucking excuse for mecha suit. All she could do was suffer through it.

“Fucking hell it ends like this!” She sobbed, desperate to get her one arm moving, to pivot past the crushed shoulder. She ignored the pain and agony of strained ligaments, aching muscle, cracked bone… she needed to reach her holdout blaster. She needed to do—

A deadly caw.

The velociraptor perked up from its devoured meal, blood… her blood and viscera... staining its jaws.

And now it was glaring at her as she kicked futilely for space with her one working leg, struggling desperately to move a gear-locked arm while the other shot arterial blood that the coagulants were taking too fucking long to seal… armor so badly mangled it wasn’t snapping shut… suit screaming for authorization to clamp shut at the shoulder, losing the entire arm… and it didn’t even matter, because the fucker was pouncing and Svena was screaming and—

A sudden LURCH!

She was sent flying through the air once more, screaming in sudden pain as the suit emergency clamped her entire right arm in a desperate attempt to stave off blood loss and it didn’t even matter because…

She blinked, feeling so dizzy, so weak, as her spinning body came to a jolt against hard stone once more… knowing she was suffering a concussion, laughing through her tears and broken teeth as she gazed at a sight so improbable that only here on this mad force-evolving world would she see fresh raptors launching themselves at the one so eager to feast upon her flesh.

Her consciousness was fading, yet she couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her would-be killer being eaten alive by a larger raptor with glowing yellow eyes, ripping out its throat and feasting on its flesh.

“You get ‘em, Squawk. Kill that fucker dead,” she whispered, drifting off on clouds of oblivion.

Before being jerked out of the warm comforting haze that had almost claimed her, when the piercing yellow eyes locked on her own.

The deadly predator slowly approached.

“Please. Please!” She sobbed, her broken voice pleading like a panicked child. And she hated her weakness, her terror, her exhaustion, hated sounding so vulnerable, so needy, but not nearly so much as she absolutely hated the fact that there was no heart or soul to reach. This was a beast, not a human with a shred of mercy or decency. It was a creature that saw her as nothing more than food. So why the fuck am I begging!? She screamed to herself, yet that didn’t stop her desperate lips from uttering the words.

What stopped her desperate broken plea was the sight of the creature tilting its head and turning right around.

Now it was in front of her. Not even looking her way, just glaring at the basalt rocks and whirling sands, locking onto the sight of a whole flock of velociraptors now racing across the rocky plain. And if Svena didn’t know better… she would think they were hunting.

Not her and her blood brothers and sister… but rather the other raptors.

She took a shuddering breath. Did she dare to hope that this creature was guarding her?

Much to her awed disbelief, when a fresh trio of brown-eyed velociraptors raised their heads and hissed at the sight of her… sending her heart lurching in fresh panic… her guardian lifted its beak, bloody with its own kind, flapped its proto-wings and hissed.

“You tell ‘em Squawk,” Svena said with a teary smile, her heart swelling with gratitude for this crazy bird that for some reason was guarding her.

Yet the moment she dared think there could be a happy ending for her… the three brow-eyed raptors made it clear they were hungry, and weren’t taking no for an answer.

“Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, this isn’t fair. It isn’t fucking fair!” She sobbed.

And that’s when she froze. As did the velociraptor guarding her, when the air filled with the freezing words of death itself. Ancient sibilant whispers that made her soul shiver in her broken shell of a body, feeling dark stormy winds howling with shrieking spirits, just a single dying whisper away.

Svena choked back a sob. Tasting death in the air.

Worse than death.

Undeath.

Necromancy.

A worker of forbidden arts was here.

“Surge Centuria! Imperator Imperat Tibi!”

And that’s when she saw it, a sight that filled her with existential dread.

The sky turning black as midnight, crimson lightning flashing and exploding against the barren wastelands as the air shrieked and howled with the cries of the forsaken as the monstrous Titan Wyrm, so close to World Eater ascension and quintupling in size, rose again. Only now it radiated an awful deathly presence, a half-step Silver’s killing aura that she could feel, even from here!

An aura of the living dead.

A horror beyond imagination.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

A horror radiating pressure so significant that even the trio of raptors eager to make a lunch of her and her unexpected champion hissed and turned to flee.

Before the air flashed with brilliant lines of crimson heat, and all three velociraptors collapsed, spurting blood from their neck stumps as their heads tumbled to the ground.

Svena lurched with a drugged gasp. Blinking in dazed confusion as she caught sight of the absolute last person she had expected to see.

But there he was.

An impossibly beautiful half-elf boy who belonged in her first daughter’s bed, married off when they were both 18. A century ago when she had had her first family, before the raiders had come, changing what had been an adventurer’s early retirement to a furious saga of disciplined training and bitter retribution.

And the boy’s beautiful green eyes were filled with such empathy, such compassion, that she felt herself sob with desperate relief and pain and a sudden flare of hope which made her pain all the worse. Because how? How did some kid move so impossibly fast that she, with 300 Quickness, could barely register his movements, let alone the dizzying speed of his blade?

His hand gently touched her faceplate.

“It’s okay,” he soothed. “My revenant will guard you while I take care of the rest of these assholes. Then we’ll be back in business like this shit had never happened.”

Then he actually winked.

“Trust me,” he said, before stepping back and racing away so fast he was a blur.

Almost as much of a blur as Svena’s own racing thoughts. Forcing herself to feel out the word that had slipped from the impossibly beautiful lips of her young champion. Her savior. A boy that, a century and a half ago, before she had met her first husband, she would have happily claimed as her own.

His revenant.

His.

Revenant.

It was him.

The Necromancer King who had just broken countless edicts and laws that the galactic counsel had put into place for damned good reasons… the Contender with such monstrous power that he could raise a half-step World Eater Serpent, even if it was still technically a Titan, was a teenage boy.

Earnest ‘Call me Eric’ Edgelord Slaughter.

The very one that the local Northeastern branch of the Terran Counsel was now screaming their heads off about on the unified Terra Message board open to all Bronze tier mercs. And the bounties they were now placing on the kid’s head were absolutely absurd.

Five million credits.

Ten million credits.

Twenty million credits.

Fifty million credits.

A kid who, according to her party interface, had just claimed two Bronze tier titles in under ten minutes.

A kid who had just saved her life when she had been screaming and sobbing and pleading for a miracle, a hero, someone to save her sorry, bleeding, desperate to live and start over ass.

A Necromancer King.

The very kind she had hunted so fiercely, once upon a time.

Back when roving bands of zombies, skeletons, and revenants far weaker than the monster guarding her even now had threatened to wash over her entire kingdom, so many years ago.

Only now Terra’s most wanted outlaw was a boy who had just saved her life.

And if the furious cries, shouts, and desperate cheers of her lovers and friends were any indication, he was well on his way to saving the lives of everyone still alive that she cared about. That she would put her life on the line defending.

Saved by a teenage Contender who clearly had no idea what he was doing.

Then she laughed at the absurdity of her own words, neck craning up to see the monstrous World Eater a good quarter of a mile long, gazing down at them all with its monstrous tri-fold mouth open wide, letting loose a low shriek that shuddered through her soul.

He had known enough to pull off a feat that was a centuries-old lich’s wet dream.

The half-elf boy was an abomination that had to be stopped.

And she owed him absolutely everything.

“Bennett, can you hear me?”

She smiled, feeling the drugs carry her off like a fading dream, as her lover’s relieved voice came over the speaker.

“You’re alive! Thank all the gods… YES! You crazy woman, I’ll do it.”

The words perked her up from her dreamy daze. “Bennett?”

“I’ll marry you. Were done. After this mission? We cash out. Buy ourselves one of the nice houses with the fancy yard and access to all the amenities in Freetown’s most elite quarter, and we settle down. Have a family of our own. Train the best and brightest of Terran’s contenders and open up the Battlemech and Cyberknight classes for them, and spend our nights safe at home.”

Svena swallowed the lump in her throat, sobbing uncontrollably. “Bennett. I fucking love you, Bennett. With all my heart!”

“Good! Alright, love. Our crazy unbelievable madlad of a hero just managed to slaughter seven velociraptors so fast that I’m fucking speechless. I have no words. And his Quickness… did you check his stats on our party interface? It shot up almost 90 points since we met him! It’s over 870! How the hell… and it doesn’t even matter. The kid’s as juiced as any 80th level Advanced Bronze Classer and it doesn’t even matter! Hell, Svena. We both saw those System alerts, blaring for all the world to hear, as is the case of all Bronze tier titles. We both know what it means. Especially the second title.”

She winced. Knowing exactly what he wanted her to say.

“And Svena?”

“Yes?”

“It doesn’t matter.” His words, so filled with warmth and love just moments ago, hard turn hard as ice.

Svena shivered, suddenly terrified of losing the man who now meant everything to her.

“I mean it, Svena. He saved our asses. Our lives. I know what your White-tier class was. Why you have such damned high magic resistance. Why lesser undead fall apart if they get too close to you. But I gave my oath, and he could have left us to die. Hell, he could have left us to die and raised us himself. You know it.”

Svena swallowed. “I know. I don’t have to like it. I fucking hate it. But… I know.”

“We owe him everything.”

“I know.”

“Svena.”

“I promise. Alright? There’s no way in hell I could touch that kid. But even if I could… after getting a look in his eyes when I was leaking bloody tears… I got one working limb right now, babe. The fucking raptors ate my arm! And I’m down a spleen. But there’s no way I’m going to betray the boy… the angel that saved me.”

“Svena! Fuck, just hold it together. We’re coming for you now. Okay? Don’t move. Eric’s going to be taking us all back to the compound.” He gave a shuddering laugh. “Those of us who made it? We’re all fucked up good, love. So we’re heading back.”

***

Time passed in an agonized blur for Svena, slipping in and out of consciousness on a stretcher in a protective frame she shuddered to look at, but knew was made of bone. And the look that boy had given her, when the undead straps and braces he had put on her began to dissolve...

“Really?” he had said, quirking his brow at her like her teenage firstborn when she said something particularly silly or absurd, so many decades ago.

She had swallowed, heart spiking with dead, terrified that he knew what it meant, that he would strike her dead and he raised his arm and she could sense Bennett’s flare of alarm and all he did was touch her straps, whisper words as blood dripped from his hand and suddenly her stretcher and braces were shimmering with so much life and power and how? How was that even possible? And they were real. So utterly real it was her that suddenly felt like a dream knowing what it meant. Knowing that the kid had infused raw essence and his own living blood into keeping her safe. Secure. Not holding her White-tier class against her at all.

And the whole time she was closing her eyes, trying not to look to either side, terrified she’d cry out, knowing it was absurd. She had bottlenecked as a level 20 Bronze Mech Warrior and never regretted everything it had taken just to ascend to Bronze and come this far. Infused with well over twice the strength she had enjoyed as a Level 99 Witch Hunter. Best of all, unlike poor, dear Elly, she still had access to all her spells, skills, and powers. She could still increase all her skills and rank up her abilities, even if she could never ascend another level. And that was okay. She had the best of both worlds.

Even if right now she was sick and dizzy and in critical condition with Elly squeezing her hand with such tender care. Elly, who Svena had seen being so tenderly carried in Ernest-just call me Eric’s- arms just minutes ago. Infusing her with life, essence, power. Healing something, somehow, that had been broken inside. Exactly how or what, Svena wasn’t sure. But the look Elly was giving that boy told Svena so much as Ernest gazed out to glimpse the vast horizon of dark, unforgiving stone and howling sands for miles in all directions, herds of velociraptor and distant bogs and carnivorous plants pinging off her interface in all directions. Truly, a nightmare of a red territory.

And not a single predator dared to approach them.

Probably because of the massive Titan Wyrm they were currently riding upon, all of them now a good fifty yards above the ground that the creature half swam, half slithered through.

“How are you feeling?” Elly asked gently, turning away from admiring the red-headed view to gaze down at her friend.

Svena forced a smile. “Like I came so fucking close to dying that I’ll be having nightmares for weeks. For months. And every moment I’ll be gazing at the sunrise with gratitude just to be alive. Alive and happy, with those I love.” She choked back a sob. “Even if we lost Riz.”

Elly flashed a tear-filled smile. “I feel the same.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I was so ready to enact a ritual that could have only one outcome, to fry my brittle channels with one final assault that would make even using my power armor an impossible feat. Only for that beautiful mad boy to me stop in my tracks, and before I can register anything more than his smile, the cluster of raptors eager for my flesh perished in an explosion of flame.”

Svena wheezed with mirth, though it pained her. “His Super Punch man fists of medium intensity, right?”

Elly snorted. “He called it a Power Strike enhanced Fire Fist, but pretty much exactly that.”

Svena grinned. “The child’s absurdly strong.”

“He’s not actually a child…”

“Really? You asked him how old he was?” Svena delighted in the bright flush of Elly’s cheeks. High Elves truly wore their emotions out for all to see.

“I did. He’s nineteen.”

Svena quirked an eyebrow. “Isn’t that young for an elf?”

“Maybe, but he’s also a human. He um… definitely emphasized that part.”

Svena chuckled despite the pain, eyes twinkling at her friends awkward expression. “Relax. It’s not like you’re taking advantage of him, or possibly could. Bennett’s rocking 400 in all his primary stats and I tingle with such envy… and this insane boy tops him in every one.”

“And right now we’re riding his massive third of a mile long World Eater, with a full fifty velociraptor terror bird escort.” Lone, looking after a bandaged Myl and Naje, said. “So… yeah. We know he’s not interested in me. So go for it, Elly. He clearly likes you.”

“Mind your own affairs, Lone,” Elly said, despite the twinkle in her eyes, gazing so intently at the boy patting the impossibly vast body of his mount.

A half-step Silver terror.

“So, what will you do now, Elly?” Svena asked her friend as a distraction as much as anything else.

Elly’s sighed, gazing reflectively at the mustard-tinged clouds, high above. “Well, for one thing, if we’re really deciding to call it quits? I’ll see about opening a bakery in Freetown. Maybe settle down in the neighborhood we all were looking at for cover with our last mission.”

It was all Svena could do not to squeal. “Oh that would be fantastic! We could all live close by, just like in our lodge!”

“Yup. Our home away from home. Only we’ll have two homes. One by the lake, and we’ll work in the city instead of in the field. Because when I really get into the zen of baking and gardening… feeling like an extension of my plants and my home… it’s almost as good as sex and those neuroblockers for handling the pain. And I’d rather be doing something creative and beautiful… or holding close someone beautiful, then spending my days in a drugged haze,” Elly said, enjoying the fantasy as well as her friend.

Svena sighed. “Of course we have to get home safely first.”

Elly’s gaze hardened. “That we do.”

“We took a lot of damage with that assault. Do the photovaultics still work?”

Elly gave a fierce, pleased smile. “The million plus credits we invested to actually be able to take authenticable pictures on an ascending world were so fucking worth it. Even if we had no idea we’d be using it for our own benefit and not just for our future clients’ sakes. But now we have documented proof of exactly what went down. Bennett already sent a copy to our employer and the head administrator of Freetown itself, per his insistence.” She then sighed, shaking her head. “But without Riz around to keep it and the rest of our gear in tip-top shape… gods know we won’t be taking too many pictures after today, especially with the electromana radiation oozing out of this wild territory, even without those spicy winds tearing through our gear.”

Svena blanched. “Wait, we’re bothering Lord Caliban with our petty shit? We’ll be lucky not to be kicked out of the city entirely!”

“Hardly,” Elly assured. “Remember, this was a calculated assault. Attempted murder, in fact. Using both dark rituals and information that could only have been gathered from a mole on the inside. Grievous offenses that even the most jaded and hands-off lord would want to be kept abreast of. We’re doing him a favor, and it’s per Ernest’s insistence. Between you and me… the way our employer speaks of him, I think they’re on a first name basis.”

Svena gave a thoughtful nod. “All our intel points to Lord Caliban being the farthest thing from a fool. It makes sense that he’d be on familiar terms with the up-and-comers within the Northeast Sector.”

“Still, we’re going to have to think of something once we get close to Freetown Territory, because this isn’t exactly subtle,” Elly said with a sigh, patting the Underlord’s impossibly thick scales that they were presently secured to via bone chairs, recliners, and arts that all of them were grateful for, even if they'd never dare say it aloud where anyone else could hear.