I wasn’t sure why I was so happy. Despite the exhaustion knocking on the door, I felt electric. Perhaps it was the fact that I’d be stepping up on stage with a full Party soon enough, and after all we’d been through, this was our reward.
Below me, Ren ceased the cast of her acid cloud. I reached down and our bloody hands slapped into each other so that I could help pull her up onto the makeshift ramp of the various furniture I had acquired over the journey. It wobble under our combined weight, and the elf shuffled her body into mine.
Was enough of a distraction to have me forget about the hygiene issues of us mashing our self-inflicted wounds together.
“I can read that face, trickster.” She smiled, leaning slightly away so that she could look up into my eyes. “There’s a passive that grants me proficiency in all ranged weaponry.”
That explained that then. It had been an oddity that she had taken to using the firearm like it was no different to her bow. Appreciated, and something I yearned for an explanation for - now I had it.
“What I want to know, though,” she continued, pressing herself closer to me again. “Is why you find it so attractive? You like me handling this long object? Is it the power that I have to erase your enemies with a quick flick of my nimble finger?”
My tongue caught in my mouth briefly. “Fucking hells, Ren. After the show, okay?”
She pulled away and bit her lip, the smile on my face enough to let her know I wasn’t deflecting her advances… but we did have a show to put on.
“Crowd is waiting then, trickster. I’ll follow your lead.”
My bravado knew no bounds, and I had chosen the most overt way to enter the outpost now that the suppressive fire from above had ceased. With a hop across a chair - and then a second - I was atop the stone wall, leaping immediately onto a wooden beam that I clambered up.
I had seen it from the sky. Wooden scaffolding for a house currently under construction.
A quick push and then I was at the flat roof. Basic wooden boards were my stage. Now I could see the damage that Ren had wrought. Stone and wood throughout the area had scoured lines through them. A couple of small stalls had collapsed from the damage. If any vegetation had survived the decaying power of the necromancer, it had now been melted to mush.
Three figures remained in the outdoors, but there was a broken hatch leading into a dark tunnel in the center of the outpost, giving a hint to where the rest of the audience were hiding.
On stage left was another fighter type. Shield held with lines running down it - he had managed to escape most of the damage. Stage right had the dying body of who knows what. They had not managed to get into any worthwhile cover, and their body was a mess of exposed muscle and bone. Center was a spellcaster, who was looking rather annoyed at me.
“Greetings, and-” I paused as my feet burst into ice, pinning me to the thin wood. If I had a gold coin for every time this happened… but instead, I raised my hand up, two fingers aimed toward the mage like a gun.
He was charging up a spell in his hands. Looked like an icebolt or similar.
“Bang,” I said.
His head flung back, brains splattering against the drab building behind him. I blew my fingers as Ren faded out of invisibility, crouched down not too far from me.
“Didn’t know you could do that,” she murmured, working the bolt to eject the empty casing.
I held my left hand out, cracks in my skin oozing fresh blood. “I’m not supposed to.” Purple eyes, aglow with the elation of the show, looked down at her. “But I do what I damn well please.”
She shuddered. “Fucking hells, Max. After the show, okay?”
Any grin that graced my face was soon shaken away as the structure we were perched upon trembled and groaned. With expert dramatic timing, it became untethered from the wall behind us and slowly tipped toward the outpost center. The fighter had cut through some supports, clearly unimpressed with Ren’s acquired weaponry.
The elf stood, taking my hand, and she twirled into my grasp as if we were in dance.
“Is it concerning that violence has become our love language?” she asked.
I shrugged and ran a finger down the side of her face to push some errant hair out of the way. “It doesn’t matter, as long as we live.”
The building tipped further, obscuring us both in a cloud of wood and disturbed flour from the soaked floor. To the side, the fighter stood ready with his shield up and a spear pointing toward our landing place - waiting for the debris to settle to take a jab at us both.
Quite a large shield, as well - clearly a defense focused Player. A pair of growling hounds behind him caused him to turn to address the new threat. Rookie mistake.
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The dust around us blew away with the rush of Ren’s rifle firing. Into the back of his shoulder, piercing through the metal plate. His shield went lax in his grip, and I was already beside him. He lashed out with his spear, a billowing cloth appearing in front of me, taking the brunt as it skimmed my side. Jar of treacle smashed into his face, briefly blinding him.
As he slumped over dead, confetti burst through the air and I took a bow. In the background, my hounds were finishing off the Player on death’s door.
“Fuck bows,” Ren snorted. “This thing is obscene.”
The three other members of our Party clambered through the part of the wall previously destroyed. Wolf struggled a little, but managed. Looked tired. We all did.
“Beats me how you both fell from a building and are okay.” Quinn frowned at all the debris across the ground.
“I sprained my ankle, actually,” I stated. “Same one as back at those steps. It’s agony… but in a way, I like it.”
He exchanged a glance with Tanya, the latter of which brought out a painkilling idol for me to sequester away.
“Actually, it’s also the ground here. Can feel that the holy energy has seeped through.” I shot a glance over toward my hounds and realized they were pacing uncomfortably now that they had finished the other Player off. I sent them back to Hell with a quick apology.
“Nice when bullshit actually works, huh?” Ren looked around the outpost to ensure we weren’t missing anything.
She may have consecrated the ground from further zombies rising up around us, but that didn’t stop people hiding away in the buildings or those lurking below the earth.
Wolf sniffed at the air, and I joined him walking around to the hole that had been dug in the middle of the ground. An ugly blight to what must have been a very pleasant outpost at some point. Now everything was drab, as if Tyler had been erasing the very vibrancy and color from the area. The dark sky certainly didn’t help, but at least the rain had all but stopped.
A shadowed pit a good fifteen feet wide, that vanished into the unknown once the dim light of day failed to pierce through more than a dozen or so feet. More rounded at the peak and flatter on the bottom - which made sense for walking down it.
“Many smells. More death,” the bear huffed and sat down to glare at the pit of definite danger.
“No way of knowing how extensive or deep the tunnel is,” Tanya said as she came to join us. “Could try flushing them out, however.”
Part of me just wanted to reach in to the necromancer and split his head in half like an orange. The other part wanted to do the same, but on a grand stage, surrounded by my group. Still, the less of me that got maimed the better - it would certainly make the celebrations with Ren a lot less awkward if I remained in one piece.
I gestured for the fateweaver to continue.
“I could make some gas idols, and you could use the cannon to fire in a torch in after them." She tilted her head in thought. “That means taking away both your current idol and the anti-zombie one on Wolf.”
Currently, I quite liked the amount my ankle didn’t hurt - even if it still ached a little. If we went down there as a group, then there would probably be traps. I wasn’t keen on being stuck underground. Didn’t really have any bullshit for that unless every collapsed rock was small enough for my Inventory.
“They obviously have something important down there,” I eventually said. “To avoid direct confrontation with us and allow most of their groups to be killed off… it can’t be good. Likewise, he isn’t likely to be hiding away in a corner, hoping we leave him alone.”
“Entering the hole would be playing into his hands,” Ren agreed, nodding as she ran a hand slowly up the sniper barrel.
For some reason, I lost my train of thought for a second, before I looked between the rest of the Party. All eyes on me. Waiting to see what I would determine the best course of action. The leader of the group - if only because my bullshit kept me alive despite all odds.
I held my right arm out. Still aflame with purple energy - the necromancer was still here. “Seems pretty simple, actually.” I smiled.
A few moments of silence passed between us before Quinn sighed. “Fill us in then, Max.”
“Oh? Oh, yes.” I shook away my roving thoughts and centered myself. “Simply put, we will do exactly what we came here to do - put on a great show.”
Tanya nodded. “Pragmatic.” She filled Quinn in on the exposition, as he still looked a little lost. “Either they have a way out of the hole, or they don’t. We might as well wait them out and keep our advantage of being able to ambush.”
“Precisely.” I clicked my fingers. “Out here, we have the time to set up a stage. Prepare our performance on our own terms.”
“And if it drags out and gets boring,” Ren added, “we’ll just collapse the tunnel and see what they do.”
Wolf huffed. “Hopefully just die. I detest the undead.”
We could only hope. I shared his current feeling on the walking corpses. Despite blunting the main force of the necromancer, I didn’t feel like we had accomplished much. Our strikes had been powerful and decisive, the Crimson Shadow getting caught up in underestimating how overpowered our little group was.
They could have sent the sniper woman out to assassinate us, surely - but perhaps her stealth wasn’t that great - or they thought she was more important standing around this cesspit. If there was one thing our enemies excelled at, it was making terrible decisions.
I started ordering everyone around. A little more assertive and controlling than usual - but this was the big piece, a book-end to our latest struggles. Victory wasn’t just for our survival, it also painted all our turmoil with validity. It would be hard won, I was sure. No one-tapping Tyler in the head with the rifle, or watching him become pulp beneath Wolf’s paws.
Something had been itching at the inside of my skull ever since we fought the living stagecoach. Our enemies had their own cards up their sleeves - bullshit of their own that only a few held tight to their chest. Tyler was one such individual, and all the roving corpses had been just distraction. Grass to hide the snake in.
Just as we all got into position, things hastily arranged and plans set - the hiss of said snake rolled through the area.
Yet instead of being a sharp tinny noise, it was a low grumbling. A thunder that shook the very cobblestone we stood upon.
The ground started to vibrate and shift, as long cracks ran across the outpost.
As a wave of putrid death washed through the area, any cocky grin I tried to maintain faded away to cold disdain.
The necromancer sought to bring giants against me, not understanding that I was a titan that stood above all.