Zeke surged ahead, but the tide of zombies shifted around him, flowing to the side and avoiding his measured swing. Then, they attacked from the flanks and from behind, their sharp claws and teeth scratching against his metallic body. Then, even as he tried to turn, the first few leaped onto his back. Reaching up, he snatched at an arm, but when he pulled, the limb came free. Its owner cackled in glee – a first for zombies, as far as Zeke had heard – and bit down.
He barely felt the attack.
But what he did feel was the weight of dozens more as they followed their comrades’ lead, leaping onto his back and burying him beneath tons of dead flesh. They latched on, digging their grasping claws into his body, one after another. Hundreds followed suit. Then thousands. Before Zeke knew what was happening, he found himself at the bottom of a mountain of decaying meat, and his ears were filled with harsh and high-pitched laughter.
It reminded him of how, what felt like a lifetime ago, Pudge had nearly died. Because of Abby’s betrayal, hundreds of zombies had caught the dire bear off guard and piled upon his back. Pudge had fought back, but back then, he was too weak to resist so much damage. They’d ripped him to shreds, and they would have killed him if Zeke hadn’t intervened.
That was the biggest factor in why Zeke never intended to forgive the woman for her betrayal. He could endure dangers aplenty, and he’d never placed his own well-being high on his list of priorities. However, when it came to people endangering his friends – or Pudge, who exceeded that label by a wide margin – he was entirely unforgiving.
Yet, Zeke was not Pudge, and the weight of a mountain of zombies was nothing to him. So, with a massive heave, he pushed against the mass of undead monsters. At first, nothing happened, but after only a moment’s worth of effort, the ambulatory corpses shifted. Zeke continued to push, harnessing his massive strength.
All the while, the creatures bit and clawed, and the collected effort began to bear fruit. It would take hours for them to dig their way through his metallic flesh and find anything important, but the fact that they’d wounded him at all was proof that they were far more dangerous than most zombies.
Still, it was just pain.
Once, Zeke had heard a wise man say, “Pain don’t hurt.” At the time, he had thought it senseless. But with his racial pain tolerance, it was more true than ever. So, what should have been an debilitatingly agonizing experience was only mildly annoying. It did not divert his efforts, and with another great heave, Zeke exploded upward.
The zombies never stood a chance.
He burst through the first layer, obliterating them completely. The second later didn’t fare much better, though they remained much more intact than Zeke’s first victims. The third and fourth layers were a little less impacted, and by the time Zeke got to the fifteenth layer of zombies, his momentum had been spent.
He fell.
And the zombies fell with him, collapsing in on him a second later. Once again buried beneath the weight of a thousand zombies, Zeke gathered his willpower and repeated his actions. This time, his way went a little easier, but the end result was much the same.
So, he did it again.
Each leap burst a few hundred zombies, but those deaths were nothing compared to the sheer number of undead that had piled atop him. Yet, Zeke was nothing if not persistent, and he continued pushing. One leap after another, with each iteration carving a little closer to the apex.
Then, finally, he exploded free. Clear of the impediment represented by thousands of bodies, he soared all the way to the ceiling. Then, he started to descend. However, Zeke was prepared for it, and he increased his weight as much as he could. More, he lead the way with his hammer, crashing back into the mass of zombies with the force of a fallen meteor.
The results were predictable.
The cackling monsters exploded, sending a wave of dead flesh crashing toward the edges of the room. The floor burst into a crater, and the entire chamber shook with the impact. Zeke picked himself up, wheeling around to face any stragglers.
And there were plenty willing to meet him. They surged from the edges of the room in a massive wave meant to once again bury him beneath a pile of necrotizing flesh. However, with the extra room he’d managed to create, Zeke was in a much better position to defend himself.
He did just that, too. Swinging his hammer as he charged. This time, he refused to stop. Unwilling to let his momentum dissipate, he carved a path through the mass of zombies until he was brought up short by an enormous, sweeping hand that caught him by surprise. The backhanded attack from one of the giant flesh abominations hit with unnatural power, cracking metallic bones before sending Zeke to tumble through the chamber and back into the mass of zombies.
Stars flashed before his eyes as the opportunistic undead piled atop him.
But Zeke was done holding back.
Often, he fell into the habit of fighting without his skills. It was the result of, for so long, having so few active abilities. He had plenty now, though. He only needed to remember to use them, and as more than a last resort. So, as he used [Touch of Divinity] to clear his head, he activated [Storm of Hammers]. The whirlwind of spectral weapons erupted into being, and with the wisp of his Will he’d infused into the skill, they tore easily through the zombie horde.
At the same time, Zeke repeated his previous actions, leaping through the monsters and finding freedom much more quickly than before. As soon as he tasted open air, he used [Unleash Momentum], sending a wave of force to rip through any zombies who’d managed to endure [Storm of Hammers]. When he landed, he did so with a stomp that sent a wave of hellish destruction along the floor, only to erupt a moment later into a geyser of corrupted earth and fire, bathing the horde in destructive force.
He used [Storm of Hammers] again. And again. Three more times, and the entire chamber fell under the influence of the skill. When the dust settled, the horde had been almost entirely destroyed. A few zombies had managed to survive, but they were so broken that they posed little threat.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“That was amazing!” crowed Catherine from her throne. It remained entirely unaffected, though hundreds of zombie bodies – all ripped to shreds – had been piled at the foot of the pedestal where the throne was located. “Bang! Pow! So impressive.”
Zeke shook the remains of a zombie from his hammer. “You act like this is all a game,” he growled, loud enough for the woman to hear. “These were people. They all were.”
“Oh, that’s actually an interesting philosophical debate,” she said. “To me, they ceased being people the moment they died. There are no souls to violate. No true minds to torture. No – they’re just collections of rotting meat, and no one really cares what happens to meat.”
“That’s not true.”
“And you know? Are you an expert, then?” she asked. “Or perhaps you should listen to the professional in the room, huh?”
“You?”
“I am a necromancer. More importantly, with the slightest flick of my Will, I can completely subjugate any of these undead. They are mockery’s of life, Zeke. Nothing more than that, and certainly nothing less. They deserve what they get from me,” she insisted. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. This is a world of the strong. There’s no room for compassion, is there? No place for silly laws and policies that prop up the weak. You and me – we’re the same. We’re not afraid to take what we want. What we deserve.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Zeke demanded.
“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t,” she pointed out. “Regardless, I’ll give you three options. A choose-your-own-fate sort of thing. The first is that you keep on fighting, and my lovely flesh giants will splatter you against the walls. It’ll take a while, but believe me, they can do it. I’ve spent years building them up, and I can assure you, that time was well spent.”
She waited for a moment, but when Zeke didn’t offer a response, she went on, “Or we can go with choice number two – surrender. Work with me. I can promise you won’t regret it. We’ll lay waste to this whole realm. It will be incredibly fun, I can promise that.”
“And the third choice?”
Catherine leaned forward, a wide grin on her face. “Give up and let me use you for my experiments. I can promise you won’t survive to regret it. You’ll just be a husk. Whatever makes you an individual will be long gone,” she promised. “But your body – oh, it will make for a wonderful material. I can make a masterpiece out of you that makes my flesh giants look like children’s toys. You’ll be so much more than you are now. So much better because you won’t have that pesky sapience to worry about. You won’t be able to think at all. You’ll just be gone. A blissful end to a life difficultly lived. You will have peace. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“You don’t really expect me to go along with that, do you?”
“No,” she admitted. “But I feel obligated to at least ask. Who knows? Perhaps one day someone will agree to give me their bodies. Do you know how much time and effort it takes to reverse the damage of a true battle? Ugh. It would be so much better if people would simply recognize when they’ve lost.”
“But I haven’t lost.”
“Oh, not yet. But you will. They always do,” Catherine insisted. “But I can sense that you won’t take the noble route. Join me, then. As equals. You of all people should know the danger represented by an uncontrolled horde of zombies.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t be coy. I know all about your misadventures in the Mortal Realm. Abandoning all those people? For shame,” she said. “That was your fault. You could have simply left things as they were, and it would have been fine. Some people would have survived. But now? Unmitigated death. Think of all the people who are reborn into that situation. They won’t be strong enough to resist, either. All because you couldn’t control your little friend who, in turn, couldn’t recognize a goddess’ lies for what they truly were.”
Zeke didn’t want to hear about that. He’d already processed his issues with Abby, and the last thing he needed was to revisit them. So, he said, “I think you know my answer.”
“I need you to give it voice.”
“I intend to fight you until my last breath,” he said. “No compromise. No surrender. Just battle. Is that what you needed to hear?”
She sighed. “Very well.”
Then, the enormous flesh giants – each one was at least fifty feet tall and with builds reminiscent of power lifters back on Earth – rumbled forward. The ground shook, and Zeke stepped forward, ready for a battle.
But then, he thought better of it.
“I’m going to do the thing,” he said inwardly. “Are you okay with that?”
“One hundred percent. I’ll survive if you do.”
“Good,” Zeke said.
Then, he commanded his mana into the rune associated with [Wrath of Annihilation]. For a brief moment, he blazed with energy, but that passed quickly as he released the skill. However, he didn’t do so without strict control. Instead, he clamped down on it with his considerable willpower, keeping the skill from taking from his Path of Arcane Destruction as it required. He limited the flow of that ephemeral energy to barely more than a trickle, starving the skill of its most potent fuel.
When he released the skill, the results of his constraint were dramatic. The black sun that manifested was much smaller – barely more than twenty feet across – but it still pulsed with destructive power. Immediately, the implosion began, sucking all the mana from the room.
The flesh giants staggered, but they were too stupid to know how to react to the sudden pull. They toppled forward, then were sucked through the air, all in the direction of that throne. They splatted against some transparent barrier, but Zeke could see the cracks that had already begun to show on the shield.
It shattered a second later, and Catherine screamed something unintelligible.
The flesh giants collapsed atop her, then were sucked toward the black sun. The white fire wreathing the sphere went wild, creating a blinding corona, the heat from which burned his eyes.
Before it had a chance to explode, Zeke turned and ran. Normally, he would have used [Shifting Sands], but because of the building’s enchantments, the skill was entirely inaccessible. He could use it, but it just wouldn’t do much more than change his perception of time, which was useless in his current situation.
So, he did the next best thing, harnessing his high attributes to charge toward the door. He slipped through the doorway and into the hall as the black sun reached a crescendo, and he narrowly managed to turn the first corner before it exploded.
The building shook, and Zeke was thrown forward by the shockwave. However, he wasn’t nearlya s impacted as he might have expected. Instead, it felt more like a mundane explosion, which was more than a little disconcerting, considering how much power he knew was contained in the skill.
A few seconds later, he picked himself up and returned to the scene of the skill. Upon turning the corner, he saw that a huge layer of stone had been stripped from the walls – and that was just in the hallway. The chamber beyond had been entirely destroyed. Some bits and pieces remained, but the roof was completely gone, and a crater had appeared beneath the location of the black sun.
However, at the base of that crater was a small body.
And it was moving.
“She probably used those flesh giants as a shield,” Eveline suggested.
Zeke shrugged as he descended the slope of the crater, coming to a stop beside the necromancer. She was not in good shape, with large swaths of her skin having been stripped from her body. Much of her flesh had gone the same way, exposing bare bone.
She coughed out a laugh. “Did not see that coming. Impressive,” she croaked. Then, she opened a single, bloodshot eye as she asked, “Couldn’t convince you to leave me be, huh?”
“Not a chance,” Zeke said.
“Eh. Not a bad end. But if you think this is over…well, I’m just one of many. And the master is far more difficult to kill than I could ever hope to be. You’re going to be knee deep in mindless undead before you know it, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us.”
“I can think of one thing,” he said, hefting his hammer. Then, he whirled it around, bringing it to bear in a sledgehammer strike that cracked her head open like a melon. When he did, an influx of kill energy enveloped him, driving him closer to the next level.
“One of many,” Eveline quoted. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“No. It doesn’t,” Zeke agreed. But for the moment, there was nothing else he could do. So, after rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck, he set off toward the exit, hoping that he wasn’t too late to deal with the necromancer’s companions.