“Bestie!” Stella yelled from across the horde of zombies. “Are you here to help stab the guy? We saw your landing and oof!”

The first thing that Stella said from across the courtyard almost made Sophie laugh. If she wasn’t working so hard on whipping vines through nearby zombies, she might have stopped for a minute to consider what was actually happening. But the situation was far too absurd. Meeting her best friend in the middle of a city of undead elves? Sophie hadn’t even batted an eye at that.

Although they remained physically separated by about a thousand zombies, Sophie reached out, casually caved in the dirt beneath them, and granted them the rest of the day off. After all, they deserved it. They’d worked so hard. The zombies, that is.

As soon as the L’s were gone, Sophie reassessed where she was in the treetops and realized that if she just tossed a Vine up and over to a waiting tree, she might swing like Spider-Man. She was pretty sure she didn’t have the musculature for it, or at least she wouldn’t without all of her card skills. She could see Bob, Stella, Brandon and the monks watching her. She shrugged and then got into the swing of things.

---

Bob sighed. While Stella and Sophie talked, he was doing his best to break through the barriers to the death knight.

“And then Bob said that this would be the best honeymoon ever, right honey?” Stella said.

Bob mumbled, not committing to any position on the matter.

“And we saw that takedown of the Dragon. Very respectful, very demure just as I would have loved to do it myself,” Stella said. “But we’re in a kind of pickle here.”

“I know where the death night is,” Sophie said. “And I know you know.”

That caused Bob to stop. With the elves shooting to trample over them, she quickly explained to him she had gotten a similar power to his pathfinding skill from the Goat lord.

“Well, at least he’s finally giving you something good,” Bob said. “Besides the goats and the Orcs, of course.”

---

Anthony couldn’t get the last dragon to commit. He had tried magic missiles. He had tried just about every weapon that they had that could reach the distance. Because it was higher than them, he couldn’t hit it without using an airship. He was just about ready to use an airship, except because the two of them were down. Other dragons had rammed into them. This meant that he was on field medic duty. Anthony ran through the flames to find any survivors of the two crashes.

The smell of death permeated. He knew it well. He didn’t like it, but he knew it. He saw Andrew lying there broken, and he wanted to help him, but the half dead dwarf chosen looked like he was using his artificial skills to repair something crucial. So he just blessed him with a heel spell and kept moving. Anthony locked eyes with him briefly and kept going. He passed a dwarf missing the bottom half of his body and could do nothing for him. In that moment, he was hoping for a spell to and someone’s paying. If it had been one goat dwarf wildly shifted into a dwarf, he hoped it could shift back. But he knew all the goat dwarfs, having traveled with them for six months. This wasn’t one of them. Them. There was no option for this person.

If only there was.

Anthony didn’t have the time to rage about it either. Several more dead dwarfs greeted him, and it was all he could hope to. None of them would rise to become zombies while they were there. They were. Their injuries were many and grave. He could finally turn his attention back to the two dragons that the rest of the chosen were working on. With Sophie somewhere off to the north of their formation, having taken one down herself, a second already being dead, it just remained for them to handle the two that were close by.

With those two gone, they could fix the remaining one.

The thought that one dragon couldn’t take him on, but three were a problem was something that he would never get used to.

One Dragon flew above them, trying to spit black flame into the formations. Just as fast as its magic went down, the chosen stopped it in its path. Though he had a handle on every Chosens magical signature, this one clearly was the work of Zan. She was keeping them at bay. He was going to have to thank her later.

Sonya was keeping the other one locked down, continually trying to bury it. As it had gotten on the ground. Attempting to eat, kill, or crush the dwarves that had accompanied them was not the way to Anthony’s heart. But seeing his girlfriend locking down a dragon, Anthony decided that now was the time to unleash his favorite weapon. He pulled out one arm, looking straight for the place where the dragon’s neck met his torso, and pumped his Mana into a holy beam.

A solid white hot magical beam extended from his finger to the top of the Dragon‘s torso as he saw through layers of viscera and bone. After three seconds, the dragon’s neck went limp and Sonya could fully cover it in layers of rock.

“I fucking love teamwork,” he yelled, whooping.

Now wasn’t the time to be quiet. He wanted to be loud and out in front of this because after? He didn’t know what was going to happen next. After this, he would put his spear into the ground. He might even call it a day. He just needed to get the death knight and mitigate any casualties he could.

With one dragon down, Sonya could help Zan and they could actually do something with it. And then an errant catapult hit the dragon, something that no one had expected. Rather than being in the place that Sonya had cast or spell, it spiraled down its entire body, landing on a secondary catapult that it was over. And just like that, Anthony was running towards the scene of Carnage, doing his best to control himself. Not throwing up. All he could do was hope that he was fast enough to save some lives. Right next to him, Sonya kept the pace. And he could see her shuffling the dragon over. He wanted to reach out and hold her hand and have a moment.

But this was a battle, and he kept going.

When he got there, he could see that there were several already dead, and he triaged the ones that he could help. One was bleeding profusely, and he checked that one before shoving it off to another dwarfs to get him out of the way. Several dwarfs with white arm bandages passed by, the Dwarven legions, medics taking them back. The Little Red Hammer on the white armband stood out, and it was a comfort. Him.

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The symbol of Yil, there in that moment, was probably the best thing he could imagine. He drew upon the power of his patron deity.

For a moment, he had more healing ability than he knew he could use and knowing that He had this shot to use it on these dwarfs; he melts. A wave of magic rolled out from him and as he could feel the dwarfs that he could save coming back to life. Life. Then something curious happened. The dragon responded. There was something going on, and Anthony was not sure what to expect.

His expectation was that the dragon would be entirely made of elf parts. He learned that was incorrect. This was an actual dragon. And in fact, it had been a dragon until recently. If his guess was correct. It looked like the death knight had just killed it recently and a side effect of the healing wave was that the dragon got up. Standing up on all four legs, the dragon blinked.

“Hold!” Anthony said.

Before, the lifeless black eyes had stared into his soul. Now, purple irises drove into him. This was an intelligent creature.

Anthony was the reason that it was alive again. Anthony was speechless. Several the dwarfs that he had thought were dead, were now back up and standing. He could feel the vast cosmic power of his deity disappearing. He had resurrected a dragon.

He slightly wished he could do more for the elves and other zombified. But if this is what the goddess was going to give him, he would take it.

Silence fell around the group. Or it was his hearing loss. As Anthony approached the dragon. It sat back on its haunches, like a giant cat.

“You saved me,” it said, a voice inside of his head.

There was no mistaking it. It didn’t speak, but its words were clear.

Anthony stepped up, and the dragon dipped its head to bow.

“I wish that I could have done more,” Anthony said, the voice both in his head and outside of him.

“This is sufficient,” the dragon replied.

“Survival is insufficient for what I have planned. Would you like to make history with me?” He said, extending a hand to the dragon.

For the first time in his life, a dragon smiled at Anthony.

---

“It’s almost like the doesn’t want to be contacted about his extended warranty,” Stella said.

“These elves, am I right?” Sophie said.

Bob continued through the horde. Because so many elephants were in the courtyard, they continually pushed its end out of their way, even though none were inside. Even as Bob controlled a horde of what had to be 300 undead. And by the time that they had begun this attack and started fighting, Bob’s control had gotten sharper and he had not expected that. He had expected little from the card, but because of how rare it was, he was hoping that it might lead to better things. He felt like he was on top of the world. And he could see why someone would want this kind of power.

It wasn’t for him, though. He did not want this power.

All he hoped for as he tossed another zombie out of his way with a flick of his wrist was to destroy this card when this was all done, said, and done. Otherwise, this might all just happen again.

Brandon and the monks were doing a great job of clearing out a pathway for the scouts. To be fair, by this time every single member that chosen was a polished weapon. Bob had expected them to go directly to the death knights immediately upon their arrival in this world. He had not expected them to divert so many times just to save their lives. But Bob was here to play the long game, and he was also ready to retire. He tossed another zombie elf out of the way. Really, the ability to control Undead was giving him an insight into elf bone structure and bodies and a way that he never thought he wanted to hear. He could snap an elf’s neck using just his fingers, although was just is easy to make it run out of the way. And so, of the elves he directly controlled, they just tossed elves like they were prizes at a carnival. How does one stow it away? Either the monks took care of it or Bob dropped one of his control delves and then snapped its neck. It was so satisfying to control them from this way like he was. Darth Vader. And that was a problem with this card. It was making him want to use it more and more, and the only way that he could use it more and more was to actually be in contact with zombies regularly.

Bob did not want to be in contact with zombies. He barely wanted to be in contact with the rest of the chosen. But Stella had insisted and the rest of the monks had arrived and he was stuck with them. He loved Sophie. She was like a sister to him. But he was just tired of it.

He was hoping that the death night was just going to fold over, but it wasn’t looking like that. In fact, for the first time, he could feel the death night moving. Or at least the icon in his vision that never shut off showed him that the death knight was actually not staying static.

“Sophie, are you seeing this?” He yelled.

“It’s moving, isn’t it?” she yelled back.

“Well fuck,” he said.

If it was close enough to move away from them, then they were going to have to keep this in high gear. A two-story wall in front of them suddenly gained a grappling hook and If I was up on top of it faster than he had ever climbed something. Just as fast, the monks flew up, Stella and Sophie behind them.

On top of the wall, he could see a building where the dragon was now landing.

“Fuck!” Stella said.

“Indeed,” he said.

It was several football fields away, by his best guess. None of his felts will work out that far. Then he remembered he had three people with him. Three people with very particular skills.

“Hey, how many of those gliders do you have?” He said.

Brandon tossed him one. It was like a bow staff except an extended out.

“Are you going to do something stupid?” Brandon said.

“If it ends the war, it’s not stupid,” Bob said, stripping down.

“Are you really going to ... Yes, you’re getting naked,” Brandon said. “Look please, just uh, return in one piece?”

“I’ll do my best. Can I get a slingshot here, guys?” Bob said.

The monks got into position. Bob, stripped down to a loincloth and a spear, extended the wings of the glider.

“Slingshot? Oh you ...” Stella said, but she was too late.

The monks created a tornado of air, focusing it on a vortex that got Bob up into the sky. Within six seconds, he was above the dragon as a small creature approached it.

“I’ve got you now, fucker,” he said. “Flame on!”

As he held the glider over his shoulders, from below his feet, he extended a large spout of flame, the energy of which propelled him towards his destiny.

---

“Your boyfriend looks like a lunatic,” Sophie said as the Bob shaped missile made its way to the landed dragon.

“My fiance.”

“Oh, congrats!”

“Thank you. You’re going to be the best woman if you’ll have us,” Stella said.

“I wouldn’t dream of missing it. Now let’s carve a path to Bob so we can keep his idiotic ideas from killing himself.”

---

With the altitude he had, and the energy that he was using, Bob knew he was going to make it, but only just. As he got to within 2 seconds of affecting the ground next to what had to be a teenage elf girl approaching the purple dragon, no one was expecting him. He was almost mad. Bob had been doing a lot to get noticed, and he had expected if not a one-on-one duel, then at least a fight to the death. But if his enemy was a death knight that took the shape of a teenage girl, he was going to have some very pointed questions for upper management.

“More, I know that we’re not on the best of terms right now, but really? A little girl?” He said. “Why did it have to be a little girl?”

Knowing this would have devastated Anthony. Bob did not want to kill any kids. But if this was the face of evil, he would do what he had to do. Landing on the soft ground, Bob rolled several times before getting the notice of the dragon. He took this second to summon his Eldritch bestie.

“You get the dragon, little one.”

He approached the dragon and the little girl who had probably been trying to escape at that exact time. She looked at him like he had told her they didn’t have the exact shoe she wanted in her size. Of course, that was when he felt the dragon unleash a spout of black flame on him.

Bob had picked a ranger class because it sounded cool. Bob had also picked the fire bending card because it sounded cool. Because he wasn’t a rogue like Sophie or Stella, he didn’t have an amazing evasion skill. He made up for it by meeting the black flame with his own flame.

What had to be a tornado the size of his house spouted up.