Peter ducked as a pair of Rahashelian human enforcers walked past his hiding place. He was positioned with the Spearhead team: Julian Gerrets, his two hunter maids, and three hunter valets, Director Stegeman, and himself. Getting back into Stalpia was surprisingly easy. After all, who would want to go into Rahashel’s den?
The population grew more dense the deeper they got. The landscape’s aggressive corrosion was especially foreboding, given the new context that it had all happened in just under a year. Something about Court Rahashel’s presence was toxic to the very earth.
There wasn’t a civil populace in Stalpia. Anyone without a specific purpose was a crop, and they were dying off quickly. Peter assumed their bodies were taken to be dressed and converted into ghouls who stood as sentinels over the city. At least Rahashel didn’t waste resources.
The enforcers passed, and Julian motioned Peter over. Peter jogged across the street and entered the empty doorway with broken hinges. Up ahead, Director Stegeman signaled them.
“Two ghouls,” Julian interpreted the gesture. “You’re up.”
Behind Peter and Julian, dark figures from the Operations crew jumped on the enforcers. The struggle was brief and soundless. The soldiers dragged the now motionless enforcers out of the streets. Peter didn’t watch the operations crew swarm behind them. It was one thing to kill a ghoul. They were already dead. But Peter was still disturbed about killing living men, even if they betrayed humanity.
Peter strode out into the street, jamming a hand into his pockets to hide his nine fingers. He passed Stegeman at a safe distance and turned the corner.
The empty street had two sentinels standing across from each other. The mummified bodies had wrappings across their entire bodies, and their black eyes shimmered as if they were reflecting purple light. Armed with long spears and short swords, they stood silently watching Peter. They made no move against him as they observed. They had no idea he wasn’t just another enforcer; how could they?
Peter stopped and turned to one. This was tricky. If only they had been standing together. Now that he faced one, he had the other at his back.
Peter stepped up to the ghoul, and the leech siphon lit up. Peter jumped at the ghoul and grabbed it by the face. It tried to bite his hand, but Peter was well practiced with avoiding teeth at this point. The ghoul dropped its spear and seized Peter in a bear hug but dropped lifelessly a moment later.
Where was the other one?
Peter spun to see a spearhead being thrust at his eyes. He knew he couldn’t die, but immortal or not, taking an implement to the face was no one’s idea of a good time. Peter dodged and grabbed the spear shaft, and the ghoul pulled back, jerking Peter closer simultaneously. The street lit up with purple flashes and conducted the chorus of gasping souls that sounded with every leech. The Bedorven was an interesting choice for a front-line weapon in a stealth operation, considering the sound and the light show it presented every time Peter used it.
At close range, the ghoul reached for his short sword, but Peter grabbed its wrist, trying to hold it back. The ghoul was surprisingly strong, and Peter was old, but he had much more control over his new body; plus, his compact training session made a dramatic difference.
He didn’t have to stop the ghoul from drawing its weapon; he just had to hold it off long enough to —
The ghoul dropped to his feet.
Peter smiled to himself. He’d done it, and he hadn’t even died once!
He turned and signaled Director Stegeman, who would relay the message to the rest of the operations team. Peter jammed his hands into his coat pockets and strode down the middle of the road; Julian jogged up to him and kept pace.
Two enforcers rounded the corner and stopped when they saw the two intruders. Their eyes flickered from Peter and Julian to the prone ghouls behind them. They started to reach for their guns.
“You!” Julian snapped, his face twisting into a snarl. “Would you care to explain what happened to these ghouls?”
They stopped.
“Who is the overseer of this street?” Julian demanded as he stalked up to them, carrying himself with authority.
“Um, it’s — ”
The other grabbed the speaker’s arm. “Who are you?” He demanded, then his eyes sought movement behind them.
Peter froze as he saw dozens of men from the operations team pour into the street.
The overseer drew his weapon. “Intrud —”
Several dark shapes hissed from one side, and both men dropped, bristling with crossbow bolts.
Julian gave a salute of gratitude to the roofline. That would be the support team.
Stepping over the bodies, they continued to the next street, and Stegeman caught up to them, staying a safe distance from Peter.
“We need to go faster,” he hissed. “Julian, your people and I need to take out any overseers or agents who come our way. Van Suer, you need to prioritize the ghouls.”
“Understood,” Peter said as they continued walking down his home's streets. The sharply peaked thatched roofs of the buildings on either side of the street were frighteningly alien.
Court Rahashel’s enforcers didn’t wear uniforms. In fact, in many ways, they looked just like the Nine Fingers operatives. Sneaking three men into this city was easy — but a hundred hidden fighters would be harder to conceal.
Dark figures darted and hurried down the street behind them, and a caravan of horse-drawn wagons also entered the scene.
The Spearhead team turned down another stretch of road. This one had two ghouls ahead and a pair behind. An overseer and two of his agents were arguing, which was good for purposes of distraction, but they had another problem. Peter’s stomach dropped when he realized that there were at least ten crops on the street. The aged, ragged, and putrid figures wandered without aim with glazed-over eyes.
“Ready?” Stegeman said.
“Wait,” Peter hissed. “I can’t get to the two behind us without leeching those eight crops. The street’s too narrow.”
Stegeman cursed. “Do it anyway. They don’t have much time left. They’re basically dead already.”
Peter recoiled. “You’re right. They don’t have much time left. I’m not going to kill eight innocents to get to those ghouls.”
“I’ll get those two,” Julian said, his voice strained in urgency.
“I need you for the overseer and his agents.”
“Call in support,” Julian said. “I can do this.”
“There are two of them,” Stegeman growled. “Let me remind you that you can die.”
“I’ve got them,” Julian said. “Now go.”
Peter turned and headed up the street, passing the overseers without sparing them a second glance. He tried to dodge a pair of crops, but one of them stepped into the danger zone, and Peter leeched a whiff of time off of him. It was faint, but luckily, the overseer didn't seem to notice.
“What do you want?”
Peter saw that Director Stegeman had confronted the overseer and his two agents. Julian hadn’t reached his two ghouls yet.
Peter looked back at his task. The two ghouls were moving for him, their polearms lowered and topped with elaborate blades.
Peter panicked and braced for impact, but they moved past him, going for Stegeman. Peter could almost see the surprise in their lifeless eyes as light siphoned from them into him. Peter grabbed them by the shoulders, and the light flared like a gas canister opened in a fire. The enforcer's faces twisted in horror at the flickering court light drawing into Peter.
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Moments later, the ghouls dropped, and the overseer and his agents were on the ground as well, with black crossbow quarrels lodged in their bodies.
Julian also stood over his own motionless ghouls. He held an old-fashioned sword with a cross-guard and thicker blade, now speckled with black blood.
“Clear,” Stegeman said. He held a knife, but he didn’t move to clean it; it hadn’t been used at all. Support had reached the overseers first.
They listened for any sign of alarm, but nothing had happened except for the crop, which herded away from the violence at a casual shuffle.
“Okay. Now, onto Hill View. We’ve gotten as far as we could with stealth. It’s time for the up-front approach. Can you do it, Van Seur?”
Peter scooped up the weapon one of his ghouls had dropped. He supposed it would be called a spear, but he was aware polearms with elaborate blades often had specific names. This weapon was like a spear but with a short sword mounted to the shaft instead of a conventionally small spearhead.
“Of course I can,” he said quickly, but even Peter didn’t believe himself.
Peter turned down Hill View. The long road had at least twenty sentinels lining the street — workers and overseers dotted the street. Down the stretch where Elm Way crossed, the Nyamarian Estate peaked over the surrounding buildings as it stood several stories higher than its neighbors. It was time to empty the street.
Peter ran up to the first ghoul and got a hand on it before it reacted. He held on and leeched it until it dropped, and all eyes turned to him.
Workers fled. Crops shuffled away. Overseers cried out. The ghouls charged.
Peter held the spear like a staff and tried deflecting an oncoming thrust from another spear, but the ghoul was strong.
Peter gasped and staggered back as the spear punctured his chest. The ghoul ran him several steps back. Being held by the length of the shaft, it took six long seconds for it to drop.
Peter didn’t register the pain until he pulled the spear from his chest. He gagged and nearly collapsed but righted himself as his wounds vanished.
Two more ghouls were nearly on him. He jumped back, battering away a pair of spears as hard as he could this time. He misjudged his timing, and both spears ran him through.
Peter screamed; he felt these ones. Another spear appeared and deflected off his cheekbone, opening a long line along his face. Peter didn’t see that spear’s owner. He did see a spray of his blood. Peter slumped to his knees, his vision tunneling to a pin-prick. His mind grew heavy as the leech chorus died away. What was he doing again?
Peter leaped to his feet, staggering in a disoriented shuffle as he pushed ghouls off of him. The two spears that had impaled him clattered to the ground in four pieces as they burned out of him.
Five ghouls lay on the street at his feet. Peter’s adrenaline pumped, dead ghouls at his feet, facing fifteen oncoming sentinels on his own, and he had only been brutally murdered once.
He had killed nine ghouls — well, the Bedorven had — but he was the one paying the price. Despite his track record for blocking attacks, he grabbed a fallen spear and faced the upcoming line charging ghouls.
“Wait!” An overseer cried, and the line of ghouls skid to a halt, blocking off the road with a semicircle of leveled spears. The overseers’ faces were twisted in horror and disgust. Peter was no fighter, but they had witnessed something grossly unnatural.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” the overseer asked from behind his line of ghouls. “The lich who stole from Court Rahashel?”
Without an answer, Peter leveled his spear in a way that felt natural.
More ghouls filtered in from behind, and several enforcers shouldered rifles. Perfect. The more dense they were, the better he would be able to take them down.
“Court Rahashel wishes an audience with you. He wishes you to join him, to grant you great power by his side.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Peter said. Peter was a court, and this man was visibly terrified of him. It was as terrible as it was awesome.
Thirty ghouls and men had arrived with leveled weapons. Not that they could stop Peter; he had received his orders and promised he would obey. Peter started forward.
“What, are you crazy?” the overseer demanded.
Peter twitched. This was going to hurt.
He screamed, threw the spear blindly, and charged the tightly packed enemies. Premernox gas hissed as bullets, slugs, and blades tore through him. The street flared with bonfire purple brightness as twelve different leech flares of the closest ghouls and men were sucked into his body.
Not awesome, definitely not awesome! Peter corrected himself as he fought back hysteric sobs. Despite what he had been through, it seemed to come as a fresh discovery that pain was still a horrible thing.
Ghouls dropped, and Peter screamed again as he stepped into the line of spears. Peter tore at the spears that had fallen from dead fingers but were still buried in deep. He pulled one out and dropped it on the corpses underfoot.
New ghouls stepped into the place of the fallen ones, and the men fell back several paces. The ghouls acted without fear; the men did not. Falling back and frantically reloading rifles, they made a second line behind their necrotic dolls.
More ghouls dropped, but Peter screamed as his agonized body grew heavy from the weight of the implements.
The ghouls pushed him back several steps, and five more dropped, quickly being replaced.
The stupid band; the stupid, rotted, gas blasted Bedorven. Peter hated it. Why did he volunteer for this?
More ghouls dropped, and a volley of rifle fire ripped through him, killing him instantly.
All the metal in his body vanished as if burned away. Spear tips disappeared, bullets vanished, and those weapons that no longer had hands holding them clattered to the cobblestones and corpses.
Ghouls pulled back their spears, looking at the flat tips in confusion. Purple light vapors continued to rage into Peter.
Peter laughed deliriously and charged with a renewed strength from the reset.
He grabbed ghouls, and they dropped. They dropped the fastest if he could touch them. Others drew short swords.
One ran him through the back, and he died. The blade tip stuck through his coat and dropped to the ground, and the ghoul was left with just the pommel. Peter snarled as he grabbed the ghoul, and it fell. More ghouls attacked, and enforcers fired another volley. Peter reached out blindly as bodies pressed into him. His nervous system, body, and mind fell out of sync, and his vision went fuzzy.
Ghouls slumped around him, leaving him half-buried in their motionless bodies. The Overseer and his men watched Peter in horror as he stood up and pulled a sword out of his abdomen.
Peter’s clothes were tattered and shredded. His skin was bloodied, but there were no wounds. Peter panted as he looked at the men. Every fiber of his being felt ready to be done; he didn’t want to get shot again. He hated getting shot.
The estate loomed behind the human Rahashelians. Its grey stone, spires, gargoyle rain gutters and flying buttresses always had drawn several long looks from Peter. It was grand and majestic. Today, Peter hated it.
“Guys!” Peter pleaded through his fatigue. “I could use a breather!” Peter wasn’t physically tired, as he had recently reset, but he was exhausted in ways he hadn’t previously been able to comprehend. The ability to face certain death had a price he couldn’t define. Whatever this unknown currency was, he was in debt.
A volley of gun gas shrieked, and Peter flinched, but nothing hit him. Instead, the overseers cried out as many of them dropped. Plumes of Premernox spat from all around him: the windows, the ally, the roofs. With a scream, a swarm of dark-clad fighters rushed the streets. The Nine Fingers had entered the fight.
He sank to the rough cobblestone road and stared at his bloodstained hands. At least there were no more crops on the street. They had enough sense to shuffle away from a battlefield.
Julian ran up to Peter from behind. “Nice work, Peter, but we’ll probably need you to help clear the estate.”
The estate doors swung open as he spoke, and ghouls poured out. They quickly cut down three men who had gotten too close to the estate’s entrance. Peter moaned in protest. Facing them was the last thing he wanted to do. But the Nine Fingers men who had just died couldn’t get back up. He could.
He forced himself up and ran for the estate doors, preparing himself for the inevitable suffering.
Peter accidentally leeched a sip of time from a couple of men as he ran, but it was diluted by distance. He threw himself on the ghouls, no longer focused on any preservation strategy. Just to let them do what they do and hold his breath until they ran out of juice.
Peter was cut, hacked, slashed, speared, and killed over and over again. He cried out and screamed, flailing blindly as the estate guard tore into him. Peter closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of himself being slaughtered. He heard ghouls drop to the ground, but that wasn’t his doing. Just the stupid piece of jewelry Peter insisted on keeping. He cried out and screamed for what felt like a full minute before finding himself on his knees on the estate steps.
He gazed absently at the face of a lifeless ghoul beside him. Its dried-out features were undeniably human but hidden behind the mask of tar and wrappings. Who had it been? He couldn’t look away from the monster. Was he supposed to create those? How could he? He felt fine physically, but he couldn’t stop shaking violently. Even if his body could endure it all, his mind could only take so much.
“Peter?”
Peter snapped up with a growl but relaxed as he saw Julian looking down at him. How long had he been sitting here? Nine Fingers agents darted back and forth. Several converted the carriages they pulled into the city into barricades, several of which were already burning in hopes of keeping out the undead.
Others carted full sacks of something heavy to another empty carriage — the tiles.
“How long have we been here?”
Julian frowned in concern. “Peter, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Peter said, but his vision was splotchy at the edges. Why was it so cold? Peter’s teeth rattled his skull as he hugged himself tight with numb hands. Noise that should have been clear immediately around him was distant and vague. He shivered violently, unable to look at the high steward.
“All right, you’re done,” Julian decided. “You’ve done well; just rest and leave the rest to us.”
Peter nodded gratefully but couldn’t relax. He just felt numb.
“I wouldn’t relax just yet if I were you, Van Seur.” Director Stegeman said grimly as he looked up the road. Peter and Julian stood to see something approaching in the distance.
Peter had heard the marching before he saw them.
Peter slumped back to his knees in despair. Side by side in ranks that spanned the wide street, hundreds of ghouls marched in heavy armor. Peter wasn’t ready for that.
“Damn, did they cross the channel already?” Stegeman cursed.
“No, this was too easy,” Julian muttered. “They were ready for us.”
Peter disagreed emphatically. Nothing about that skirmish was easy
“All right, let’s hustle! The after-party is about to start!” Stegeman barked.
The Nine Fingers ran frantically, dropping sack after sack of tiles into the back of the carriage.
The thunderous synchronized steps grew devastatingly loud. The army marched down Hill View. Julian put a hand on Peter's shoulder. The simple touch made Peter choke back a sob. “I spoke too soon. I’m going to need your help with this.”