Erin pov
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Why do the dead try to kill the living? Is it hatred?
Do they seek to defile the living, to drag them into the same unending torment of their lives? Do they envy those who still draw breath? Or is it a greater mystery? Do the undead simply want others to join them, to add to their endless numbers?
Maybe, perhaps. The dead simply resent the living. Maybe they remember the past, and it hurts them. Or that they can understand the living and wish to ease their suffering.
It could be they just know how ugly they are and don’t want anyone to look.
Erin screamed as an almost completely decomposed Gnoll came close. He had no face. Nothing that she would use that word for. Just—rot. Horrible, black innards that still twitched and slapped together wetly as he lurched at her.
A hand seized the zombie around the remains of his ruined head. Ignoring completely the flesh and other things that squelched around his fist, Knight tightened his grip until something crunched and the zombie jerked and fell still. The Worker dropped the corpse to the ground and kicked the body away. He stood, protectively shielding Erin at the entrance of the inn.
Around the hill, the dead were struggling with the living. But there were no screams. At least, the Antinium did not scream. The dead did. They howled, or made ghastly sucking sounds or sometimes groaned, but the screaming was what terrified Erin. She felt they shouldn’t be able to. The dead should be silent.
But they weren’t. If anything, it was the Workers who more closely resembled silent reapers. They moved in unison, fighting, blocking, forming a living line as they fought against the undead. Sometimes they spoke, but with a terrifying calmness of their own.
“Die.”
“Suffer.”
“Perish.”
Two Antinium gripped a zombie by each arm and tore him apart. Another seized a skeleton with two hands and ripped out its ribs with the other two.
They fought like machines. Uncaring machines that took apart the undead like a child taking apart legos. Sometimes it was a clean dissection. Other times they smashed the dead bodies to make them fall apart.
But for all that, they were like children. None of the Workers knew how to fight. They were extremely strong, but clumsy. And the undead may have been rotting, but they were all killers.
A Worker staggered back, arms grasping as a skeleton slid forwards, bashing at the Antinium’s head with a mace. It nimbly dodged the Worker as it strove to seize a bony arm and raised its mace to crush the Antinium’s skull.
“No!”
The skeleton looked up and a flying frying pan crashed into its face. The yellow flames in its eyes dimmed and the Antinium took the chance to seize it.
Erin watched the Worker begin to dismantle the skeleton and stared at her hand. She hadn’t even realized she’d thrown the frying pan. But more undead were charging up the hill towards the inn.
“Stay behind me, please.”
Knight pushed Erin back as more undead crashed into the line of Antinium, this time from the back. The Antinium wavered as they struggled to hold the dead back. Erin saw one of the Workers slip and fall as a ghoul tackled him. The undead began tearing at him.
He had a name. He’d told it to Erin. Magnus. Magnus as in Magnus Carlsen, a name taken from the World Chess Champion. He fell down and Erin saw his blood. It was green.
“No!”
She tried to run forwards, but Knight seized Erin by the waist and lifted her up.
“You must not. You must not put yourself in danger. We are here for your protection.”
Magnus fell, shielding his face. Erin pulled harder, but Knight refused to let go.
“He’s dying!”
“Yes. The enemy surrounds us. We are at a disadvantage. This must be rectified.”
Knight pulled Erin back and raised his hand. He spoke calmly.
“[Defense Formation].”
‘Bang’
Daniel had shot the ghoul in its head with his gun, leaving Magnus to scramble behind the line. as the drake ghoul became unmoving once more
“[Attack Formation].”
Erin felt the effects of the two Skills hit her as she raised another jar of acid and threw it. She felt lighter, so much lighter! And it seemed as though she had suddenly grown a pair of eyes on the back of her head. She was aware of the undead around her, just as she was aware of how the other Antinium were moving.
They held the line. Even as the undead ran up the hill, the Workers met them, calmly ganging up on the individual undead in twos and threes. The Antinium had no sense of fair play, and the undead was hard-pressed to defend themselves against three sets of four hands stabbing at once.
A ghoul rushed past two Antinium and ran towards Knight. The Antinium raised his sword, but a skeleton leapt past him and knifed the ghoul in the chest. Toren and the ghoul fell, stabbing and biting at each other.
Erin spun. She lifted a pot and hurled it. A zombie staggered backwards. She had—she had quite a few pots and pans she’d seized from her kitchen, but she was running out. She’d hurled them into the crowd, trusting to her [Unerring Throw] skill.
Daniel for his part had been shooting at any undead when they were close to overwhelming the line of antinium.
Now the undead were falling, retreating. Erin stared as zombies began turning, running backwards. Was it a feint? Were more undead coming? She looked around wildly, searching for movement in the darkness.
No. No more undead were coming for the moment—they were all dead. Toren pulled himself away from the ghoul, reclaiming an arm as the ghoul jerked once and then lay still.
How many horrors had died here? A hundred? Two hundred? It felt like a thousand.
“Thirty-four.”
Knight said it calmly as a skeleton fell down, skull cracked open from one of Erin’s frying pans. She stared at the Worker as silence fell and the last corpse stopped twitching.
“What?”
“We have killed thirty-four of the undead. The rest have retreated. They will return in greater numbers, I believe.”
Erin stared at Knight as the Antinium calmly cleaned gore off of his sword. Around her, the Workers were helping each other to their feet, carrying the bodies down, and…digging?
Yes, the uninjured workers were digging in the ground. Dirt flew into the air as they dug a long, wide trench around the inn. They were building a moat. A moat.
“What’s happening? What is all this?”
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Erin stared at the dead, at the Workers, and at Knight. She felt dizzy; sick. And not just from the carnage. Just a few moments ago she’d been waiting for Rags, and now there were Workers with names and the living dead.
And the smell. Erin threw up a little in her mouth but refused to let her stomach heave anything else up.
Daniels pov
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“We need, more than a moat. get the rest of the tables from inside and the beds from upstairs, we can use them to make barricades”
Daniel pointed out where he wanted the barricades and the workers who were not digging did as he told them.
“HEY TOREN, come here for a second”
Toren stopped in his dismemberment of the corpses that had fallen around the inn and came towards Daniel.
“Okay, so you are the only one of us who can run around behind enemy lines, which if you do the job I have for you right, we might just stand a chance.”
Toren followed Daniel as he walked into the inn, more specifically up to the bar.
the bar that was very much filled with Things for Erin to throw
Daniel took the bucket Toren had been collecting water with and placed it in Toren’s pelvis. It was then fastened further with an extra bit of cloth.
As he was working, Daniel told Toren what he wanted him to do.
“right so i want you to do what you have been doing up until now, however, if you see anything stronger than ghouls or zombies, I want you to prioritise those”
Daniel was putting a lot of cloth into the bucket now alongside a dozen or so hand-sized bottles of fly acid.
“now if you are having trouble with those stronger ones, I want you to break one of these on them. like miss Erin does”
When he was done packing the bottles into the bucket he looked at Toren’s face.
If the way Toren’s eye fire had brightened, the Toren was Eager to follow this order.
Great, Daniel had just invented a reuseable guided missle.
“do you understand this order”
Toren nodded almost gravelly.
“Good, then I want you to go towards Lizcor until you find the other undead, advance with them as you cut them down”
Toren just nodded and walked out the door, sword and knife in each hand.
As Toren left the inn and Knight were comforting an Erin who was breaking down.
Daniel laid out the ammunition he had brought with him from home onto the bar.
he reloaded them as he listened to Erin and knight with half an ear.
something about horns and a crypt, undead attack the city, a gate that hadn’t been closed.
In short the chaos of war.
while Daniel had never been in active combat before, he had served as a radiographer for the Danish army and had been on a tour to Irak. which meant that he had been talking with several soldiers who had. soldiers whom he hadn’t spoken to again.
They had died. violently.
“Oh gods. there are thousands of them.”
“Hundreds. they are moving towards us.”
Erin’s words had brought him back from remembering dead friends, and Knights had brought him back to battle mode. never again
“hold on. What is that in the distance?”
Erin and Daniel Both squinted. It was the white mass the undead were surrounding. At first, she thought it was just a bunch of them moving together, but it was something else. It was far away, but coming…closer?
“Is it…a giant slug?”
-----
“Oh god. What is that?”
Daniel looked through his scope, it was a heavy one for all that it couldn’t zoom much, it had another advantage. Night vision.
so in shades of green Daniel could see the slug-like thing quite clearly, he could see how its ‘skin’ was that of The dead, how it pulled itself forward by its long thin arms.
he moved his sight from ‘the slug’ to the hulking beasts that moved around it.
Standing to people high, they towered over the ‘regular’ undead. with massive maws filled with broken and jagged teeth.
“come on, Toren where are you.”
Daniel was sweeping the hordes of undead in search for the one undead that was on his side.
They were getting close now.
Suddenly the giant slug recoiled and clawed at its skin, it tore huge chunks of dead flesh from one side and then the other.
“where is, ha way to go Toren”
“Wha-what is happening
“Toren is what is happening, here take a look”
Daniel gave the rifle to Erin so that she could have a look.
“I, what is he doing”.
“he was the only one that could infiltrate the undead so I gave him a bucket of acid and told him to take out the strongest ones he could find. the worm thing qualifies as the strongest thing”
she handed the rifle back.
“but won't he be destroyed like that?”
“Erin, if that thing gets here, it’s over?” he sighed, “but Toren is the only one of us capable of getting close to that thing, so…” the rest of what Daniel was about to say was whisked away as the horde of undead started sprinting towards their lines.
“Lorte lort” #Shitty shit. “listen up we got deads coming in fast so ready for impact”
the first to ram their moat and barricades where the faster ghouls, they clawed wildly as they were torn apart by the antinium. But every now and again they would score a hit, and an antinium would fall.
by the time the ghoul's ferocious charge had petered out and the moat had been filled with their corpses they were hit by the slower by more numerous skeletons and zombies. 20 Antinium had become 16.
the worst of it was the crypt lords. As they lumbered forth, they spat poison from range that gradually weakened the workers to the point where the zombies and skeletons could take them out.
Erin and Daniel did what they could. Erin throwing everything so could get her hands on and Daniel tried to shoot crypt lords that were coming to close for comfort.
the rifle did little to deter them and the handgun was equally ineffective. only the shotgun could do actual damage to these horrors.
a Screech rolled over the inn and both Erin and Daniel’s gaze moved to the now much Closer Worm, as Toren tore out an eye from the thing.
a Wave of absolute terror washed over David in a Crucial moment. As one of the few remaining Ghouls capitalised on Daniels frozen state, and clawed him across the face with one of its claws
one moment, and Daniel could see no more.
he felt chitinous hand grip him and drag him back. he was laid carefully on wooden floor.
something was slouched against his face that made it sting like all hell.
his hands rushed to his face.
It was mangled beyond belief and every time he rubbed at a wound it seemed smaller until the wounds had closed fully. the ich was gone, but his sight did not return.
'How the fuck am I supposed to do this blind' was the last thing daniel thought before he passed out.
[Gunner level 6]
[Skill - Eagle eye obtained]
[Skill - Power shot obtained]
[Tactician Class obtained]
[Tactician level 3]
[Skill - Home Field Advantage obtained]
[Skill - Bolster Morale obtained]
[Skill - Deep Strike obtained]