“Like shooting zombies in a barrel,” Dwin said with a chuckle as he reloaded his crossbow. He’d been turning the shuffling corpses into pincushions for several minutes now. That this in no way slowed or stopped them didn’t seem to bother the goblin.
Rae had seen this before. Unlocking the System seemed to energize mortals, some became daring and a little too reckless. She’d had it explained to her as a shift in their brain. If they had a malfunction, it would be fixed and then they’d be given a massive boost to motivation. The sudden shift had a euphoric or addictive quality.
Dwin lined up another shot and fired, the tower-made crossbow having enough force that the bolt went straight through the zombie and then skittered off the road. He giggled. Maybe he really liked shooting things.
“Try aiming for the head,” she offered.
The four guards were having a far less fun time of it. They struggled with the bulky crossbows, which looked like they’d been sized for humans. One after the other shot went wide as they struggled at even a moderate distance.
“It might be better if we go down there and you fight them with your spears.”
As one, the guards looked at Rae as if she were mad.
“Those are monsters. They can rip us apart,” explained the oldest one.
“Those are slow-moving monsters with little in the way of intelligence and I’ll be there to aid you. As long as you remain calm and your hands steady, you should be able to best them. Have you not fought a monster before?”
The guards shrugged their shoulders and nodded ‘no’s.
“What do you do when you see a monster breach the perimeter?” she asked.
Jorkim pointed to the silver alarm bell. “We ring it.”
“That’s it…?”
“People know to hide indoors when they hear it. Any monster will depart at dawn.”
Rae thought back to the night before last. She’d killed several monsters inside the courtyard and there hadn’t been one alarm bell.
“You missed it!” cried Dwin. “I got one clean in the dome.”
“Excellent work.” The downed zombie had dropped like a puppet with cut strings. Its companions now walked over him with the same plodding indifference they did the stones. “See, it’s not that hard. Let’s go out there and take one down.”
The guards didn’t budge. “But, can’t you just destroy them all?” asked one.
“Yes… yes, I can fight them.”
They looked at her expectantly. After a moment, she gave in and dropped from the wall onto the road below. One more, she formed her bracer into a long polearm, at one end was a heavy heavy fan blade for chopping and the other a curving forked structure for pinning a beast down. Rae understood she was asking a fair amount from the goblins. They were small, weak people who’d survived thus far by cowering. For several generations, being brave had likely been rewarded with a horrific death.
At the same time, it was time for them to change. Rae needed the mortals to bolster the environment, expanding and connecting with Shal. While her abilities were significant, there was no way she could save the world on her own.
Rae swung her heavy polearm as the line of corpses approached. They were all about the same height and she was able to slice through three heads at once. Several lunged at her and she darted away, her footfalls light on the still warm bricks of the road. One stumbled to the ground but quickly righted itself. Only those in the front seemed aware of her or at least responded to her presence–those in the back all had the same mindless plodding rhythm and vacant gaze.
A crossbow bolt skittered across the ground to her left.
“Best practices are to refrain from firing while an ally is in melee range of an enemy,” Rae called up.
She readied her weapon and darted in to decapitate two zombies and then pulled back when they charged at her. There were about thirty in total so she continued to do so, slowly cutting them down.
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The question at the back of her head was who or what had sent them. Or was this a simple emergence from her clearing the roadway and disturbing their rest? It was night, so a bunch of zombies had risen, and there was only one path for them to take. It also might be a lingering command. Long ago, someone had told them to attack and now they were reawakened and doing so.
After she’d taken out about ten, Rae felt a chill run across her skin. She took a step back, away from the obvious source of icy Necrotic, and focused. There was something else in the night, slowly approaching from her right side. Interesting.
She pretended to be unaware and went back to whacking at the obvious group in front of her. Whatever this was moved slowly, creeping forward every time she attacked the group and then stopping when she stepped back. Sweeping the area with her aura sense, Rae only felt a single instance of this presence. Now that she knew it was there, it was easy to track. She wondered if it was a truly intelligent undead or had more of an animal cunning.
When there were ten zombies left, it struck. She stepped back as Dwin tried out and ran the bell above. A massive form crashed through the ruins and howled at her.
It was a blob of rotting flesh covered with mouths that hissed and snapped their teeth. Rae jumped to the side and landed atop a building as it plowed towards her. It had two frail-looking arms that it used to pull itself forward as it dragged along the ground. As it smashed into where she’d been and continued forward, Rae noticed a thick, clinging green slime it left in its wake.
This was the most powerful threat Rae had seen so far, a Fallen rank monster. It slammed into the tower’s wall, finally coming to a halt, and rolled over to face her. Was this a coordinated attack? What was it using for sense? Rae hopped from her perch back to the zombies. A few of them feebily grabbed at her and she ignored them.
A crossbow bolt shot from the wall and pierced its flesh before sicking into the rolling blob. Three more followed. With a target was so large, even the guards could hit it. The creature didn’t acknowledge the hits but screamed again, the sound a blend of male and female, young and old, as it poured from the dozens of mouths.
Rae’s muscles tensed as it rushed forward, she felt teeth on her arms and shoulders as fingernails tried to tear at her, but they were nothing in her mind. A moment before it hit, Rae jumped straight up. The blob didn’t stop but crashed into the zombies. A few went flying but most were crushed under its bulk.
Rae dropped from the sky, angling herself to avoid the wide slime trail. A quick check told her that the zombies were properly crushed. Their bodies were so weak that even the three that had been tossed aside had broken and Rae quickly dispatched them.
Rather than wait for the monster to turn again, she jogged after it. Rae could feel the Necrotic within the slime trail but had no time to analyze it. Instead, she simply avoided it as she ran. This time, the monster had run out of momentum. As it slowly twisted back to face her, Rae fed a touch of Radiant into her weapon and slashed at one of the monster’s thin arms. It flopped to the ground, the wound cauterized so as to not spew any dangerous liquids.
The monster’s cry was not of pain and anger, and it immediately rolled in an attempt to crush her. She scrambled to get out of the way as it rolled in circles in the area, flattening all the ruins in the area and leaving a slime-covered depression in the earth.
She hung back, waiting for the monster to tire before Rae remembered that it was undead. It never tired. If she let it, this thing would roll around all night. Possibly all day depending on its reaction to sunlight.
Rae focused on avoiding its massive body and took opportunistic slashes at its grotesque bubbling hide as it passed. When she cut it, soft tissue squeezed out like filling from a sausage. Unlike the exterior, this was a jumble of boneless body parts. Though Rae’s slashes were long, it wasn’t slowing in its fury-filled destruction. As she watched, some of the ‘filler’ lengthed and hardened into a rough arm to replace the one she’d chopped off.
It stopped suddenly, steadying itself with its new limb, and then howled again. Rae tensed to jump and was unprepared as the open maws vomited a jet of fluid her way. Something thick and foul splattered against her and she jumped back on instinct. As she landed, Rae frantically wiped the muck from her. It had caught her full, soaking her almost from head to toe. She spit and energized her aura, burning away the disgusting fluids. It smelled putrid, like the belly of a rotting body. She wanted to be sure none of it fell into her eyes but had nothing to clean herself with.
As her [Purify] washed over her, Rae shivered. The liquid became cold and hardened on her like a thin layer of froze. She could feel it draining some of the Radiant she used to power her ability.
Then the monster crashed into her. One moment, she stood and the next she was pressed into the ground with a putrid mountain of flesh atop her.
‘I handled this poorly,’ Rae thought. She’d landed near the flattened area, letting the monster slip along its own slime pool to silently get to her. A tongue extended and she was pulled into the creature’s mass. Flesh clamped around her–squeezing her, smothering her–as Necrotically strengthened acid tried to digest her. ‘Why are the undead always so disgusting?’
Eyes clamped shut, Rae pulled her legs to her chest, forming a ball as the monster dragged her to its core. Once there, she ignited her aura, flooding it with burning Radiant and forcing it outwards in a [Divine Wave] of energy. From where Dwin stood on the wall, there was a thundering boom, a golden sphere of light blazed for a moment, and then rotting chunks of flesh began to rain from the sky.
Rae lay on her back in a small crater of purified ash. She sat up, clean and naked save for her rings and gauntlets. Returning to the courtyard in this state would be less than dignified, so she rose and headed for the shrine.
Once there, she ordered another set of clothing and checked on Vuuthas. He was fine. The snake was wrapped in on himself, head tucked under a tail, gently hissing as he snored.