Madoc

Madoc collapsed the tunnel behind him, creating an icy firebreak to keep the horde back for a few minutes. His aether channels felt absolutely drained; small trickles, to what had, moments before, been raging rivers. He nearly fell as he staggered out and into the camp. He swept the camp carefully, his eyesight slightly blurry, as he took in its decrepit state.

A sanctuary from the jungle, the plant life is kept back around the edge of camp by a series of aether arrays still functioning even now. A large arc of sandy soil that led straight to the river, the buildings were all rusted hulks. Docks, warehouses, and the remnants of a boat launch. In the center of the camp, someone had started to experiment with a large sarcophagus.

Madoc wasn’t the sharpest sword in the armory, but he knew better than to dig up sarcophagi. It was a dumb idea, the amount of curses on the entombed dead was infamous around the universe. It was a damn trope for gods sake. Someone hadn’t gotten the memo, and had managed to set up a nine foot long ebony casket in the middle of a lot of ritual preparations.

Madoc took it all in, the candles, chalk lines, aether cores, and dead animals. He was going to head back to the orphanage and forget about his own problems. There was nothing wrong with being a sword teacher after all. The rest of the group didn’t seem to care as much about the creepy ritual with the dead body. Gom was stalking forward, hands out to his side and eyes sweeping along the buildings. Nobbs disappeared into the shadows, and the old dwarf finally unlimbered his ax.

Madoc stood close to Sam. They let the heavy hitters move toward the center of the camp, while they looked back to Madoc’s flickering barrier. The blue flame had faded enough that they could see the horde pressing against it. They rushed, one after another into the flame. The flame ate into them, freezing them till they broke apart under their own weight.

Huntley was rallying his people, Lloyd still nested into the heart of their formation. The goblins were hurrying as they reloaded their weapons, changing out the batteries and refilling the pellets the rifles used. Ilyria had disappeared somewhere, Madoc didn’t have time to look because the fire gutted out and the first of zombies rushed at them. The ground cracked under its feet, slashing the skin and causing blood to leak out of the wounds as it sprinted at them.

Sam corrected its course with a single swing of his hammer. Bone crunched and the zombie was tossed like a ragdoll to the side. More were coming and Madoc forced his tired body into action. His blade drank and soon aether roared through his channels again. Sweat slicked his hands and burned his eyes, as he slew undead after undead. They were forced back from the sheer press of numbers, corpses building walls that the zombies had to scale over before reaching them.

Madoc risked a glimpse behind him and wished he hadn’t. Something was coming out of the lake. It had tentacles, bones, rotting flesh, and too many teeth. The old dwarf was fighting with his ax, each blow severing a limb that splashed into the river, only for the creature to twist and reveal another corrupted limb. Gom was kneeling by the sarcophagus, aether boiling the air around him as he worked to unravel the ritual.

“How we looking?” Sam asked through a smile. Madoc didn’t know how the big man was always smiling and laughing. There seemed to be a grim joy to what he did, whether that was killing zombies or running from them. That was about all the experiences Madoc had with him.

“Not great,” Madoc told him truthfully. It didn’t look great, whatever it was that had come out of the river. If the flesh monster that the old timer had crushed was big, then the river monster was titanic.

“Huntley, go and help them. We will stand firm!” Lloyd said, his voice cracking in the middle. Huntley rolled his eyes, but did as ordered. The loss of the veteran knight was noticeable immediately, the press of corpses pushing them back quickly. They were running out of room to retreat, soon they would be in range of the tentacles or walking over Gom as he worked on dismantling the ritual.

Sam roared, the sound reverberating, shaking the world. The zombies broke apart, rotting tissue breaking and falling away to splash on the ground. Madoc looked at the big man and had to once again re-categorize him. Some type of sound aspect? That roar had aether weaving through it, and that wasn’t something one just thought up on the spot. If he had a sound aspect though, maybe what really broke all the frozen zombies earlier hadn’t been resonance, but the percussion of the hit? Madoc had to shake those useless thoughts away.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Sam had only bought them a few moments at the cost of exhausting himself. He was leaning against his big hammer, the head wedged into the soft dirt as he panted. His ever present grin was thinner than normal, but he was still smiling. Lloyd looked behind them and paled, gulping nervously as he turned to look back to the jungle.

“The rest of you, go and help Sir Huntley. We will stand firm,” his voice was hardly above a whisper as he ordered his security away from him. The other knights looked at each other and then back at the fight going on. It took them a second before they were launching themselves at the river beast and a series of concussive blasts announced their arrival.

The sound of water splashing, if one could consider the tidal waves the creature was causing a mere splash, nearly drowned out the sound of Gom crying in delight. Madoc looked back to watch the chalk faded away, sinking into the earth as the aether cores dissolved, and the animals rapidly decayed turning to black goop. The splashing stopped and the creature sank beneath the river instantly. The horde fell where they were, collapsing all around the jungle.

“Bout time,” the old dwarf grumbled as he walked away from the river's edge. He was drenched, his clothes sodden and his white hair plastered to his skull. Everyone started to crowd around casket now, staring down at the carved wood. Nine feet long, five wide, and four deep. Carved into the center of the casket was a face that was roughly humanoid.

“Anyone recognize the face?”

“Naw, must be an old god. One of those that fell early into the fighting. Before they started to cannibalize each other.”

Madoc looked at them in horror. The gods had eaten each other? How fierce was the fighting where they would need to consume each other?

“Think there’s anything in there, Brask?” Huntley whispered.

“No, if there was a god core in there, everyone would have died fighting the guardian. Someone set up the ritual to run off of the leftover energy just from the sarcophagus,” the old dwarf, Brask, said.

“Who would do that?” Lloyd asked.

“No idea. This was set up weeks ago for them to have collected so many undead. They could be long gone by now,” Gom said, though he didn’t sound certain about them being long gone. Madoc didn’t really care, they had destroyed the horde and he was going to collect his payday from Captain Fisher.

“Let’s get back to the ship, we can discuss it with Fisher. Who wants to carry the box?” Gom said, deciding for all of them.

“Why are we bringing the cursed casket?” Madoc voiced, what he though, was a very reasonable question.

“A god moldered in this. It’ll be a great tool if you can purify all the undeath. Might even be able to form an extra layer or two to a core if consumed,” Lloyd explained instantly. A hunger was radiating from his eye as he stared at it.

“And if it’s not purified?” Madoc asked, he was starting to think this group had a few screws loose.

“Living undeath. If you’re lucky,” Sam said with a smile. He put his hammer on his shoulder and started to walk away without looking at the casket. The rest of the party were drawing lots to see who was going to carry it. The winner got to carry it, not the loser. That’s when Madoc decided the jungle full of rotting zombies had more common sense and trotted to catch up with Sam.

Merille

“Cadet! Did you just lose the pirates we’ve been tracking for two days!?” Paladin Thurun roared as he marched down the length of the bridge. The towering orc was, as always, overexcited. For the last year and a half, the cadets of squad eight had been trained by the rambunctious orc. They got regular healing for their damaged hearing.

“No, sir. We have lock on them. They followed the Jolly Walker to a lost world. We are a day behind them sir!” Merille tried to match the orcs' enthusiasm with pathetic results. Her own human lungs paled in comparison to Thurun.

“Excellent cadet! Justice shall be dispensed! With my sword!” Thurun was a big fan of dispensing justice with his sword. Something their other trainer, Paladin Alleina, often pointed out. Serving Golthon required many things, but Thurun focused mainly on things that allowed him to solve problems with his sword.

“Yes, sir!” Merille replied, knowing it was what was demanded out of her. In less than a day, they would arrive at a lost world and finish off the craven pirates who had attacked a corporate ship. Thurun would be in a good mood for a week. Merille gently rubbed her ears at the thought.