“Why did you save me?” Elina asked Maxmilian.

They were confined within the protection of the Rho’s sphere. She could see the towering beast outside. The Chosen Prince made no effort to smash the sphere. He paused, examined the swollen flesh of his breastbone, and ran a finger along it, restoring its smoothness. Shapes moved in the green mist. The Avengers refused to leave the hall, holding their positions and facing the leaping shamblers. Skillfully, they caught the undead on their blades, but empowered by the presence of their master, the afflicted no longer died as easily as before.

Claws raked against the reinforced alloy, lacerating it and trying to reach the vulnerable flesh within. Grievous wounds were ignored. Even when a gladius cleaved through a shambler’s head, the thing would still push on, clawing and biting, kicking and gurgling, refusing to die. They piled on at the Avengers, trying to bury them beneath a mass of writhing bodies, and the Trolls retreated, dancing to their own tune.

Their paths of retreat often collided with those of an ally, and a joint effort of two fighters fighting back-to-back saw many bodies sliced into ribbons. A moment later, the shaky unity would break, and the Avengers resumed their well-coordinated fallback, drawing the ire on themselves and letting the civilians run. Though their numbers were dwindling, the elite crusaders still controlled the flow of battle.

It won’t last. Elina knew it. More and more bodies were rising from the ground, the maladies overtaking the still-living Numbers, twisting and changing their bodies. Spasmodic remains of downed shamblers crashed into each other, and unnatural agues merged with the ends of destroyed bodies, creating new and more dangerous versions of shamblers, evolving them in the same way a virus would evolve to overcome an immune system.

They stood, a new version of shamblers, guided by the newest strands of mind- and body-altering viruses. Some had four arms, with two covered by thick bone coverage meant to stop the blade’s blow and the other two being agile whips of flesh capable of bringing black claws to the rubberized openings in the space between Avengers’ gorgets and heads. Others formed tentacles for legs and moved in blurry speed bursts, staining the flood with slimy ooze, halting the Trolls for their fellows, and entangling the crusaders in battle.

“Saved? Prolonged is a more accurate word. Once I left Augustus armless and legless, bleeding to death and tormented by the knowledge that all his friends would soon die. It failed to break him. Perhaps the death of his students before his eyes would do the trick?” Maximilian replied. He pressed a finger to his lips, examining the horror outside. “Interesting. The thing’s body naturally tries to regain its original form, using non-lethal diseases as a substitute to cause sporadic evolution. Cells are burning through protein, trying to rebuild the original bone structure, and muscles have evolved to withstand the virulent infection. But it can’t; it collapses in on itself, unable to replicate the miracle that was its original body. It is dying, dying because of its own power, unable to handle the rot. Ha! I was right, after all! A strong mind needs a strong vitae to exist.”

“Are you mad?” Elina stopped clasping her hands. This close, her shockwave would reflect off the barrier and flatten her as well. “Augustus is your son! What sort of person does that to his child?”

“A god.” Maximilian turned to her. “People often conflate god with an all-powerful deity, when divinity is never about power. It is about being honest with yourself and acting on your own desires. I am not crazy, merely stopped pretending, unlike you lot.”

“Screw you!” Elina punched at the androgynous face.

Maxmilian caught her by the wrist; his leg swept off her footing, and the girl found herself on the ground, coughing blood. The bastard was strong! She sprang out of the metal body print, and he lunged at her. The trainee had planned to punch him straight in the face, but he ducked. She tried to kick him in the face, bringing his head back into the line of the blow. A hand cupped her knee, and another hand wrapped around her torso, throwing the trainee back at the floor, and a mighty kick dented the armor on her ribs and ricochetted her body off the hardened space, landing her face down several paces away.

A grappler. She was a fool to expect her opponent to stick to mighty blows. Both Argus and his brother preferred to disable their enemies by twisting off their ankles and wrists, breaking bones, but never killing them. At least when they served as the Elites. Blood gushing off her mouth after two throws taught Elina that the fallen Elite tolerated her existence.

“You say ‘pretending’?” She coughed, rising on her wobbly arms, her organs shaking. How? How did she suffer such damage after two throws? “The only one who is pretending here is you. You claimed humanity will descend into an era of barbarism, that we’ll start killing each other and cause another Extinction. Wrong! There have been wars, and yet even the Reclamation Army is calming down a bit.”

“There was a time when I believed the same,” Maximilian said. “I too fought for a day when all people could abandon the silly notions of race, tribe and would let go of blood vengeance and grievances of the past.”

“Until your grandfather poisoned your mind,” Elina gasped, struggling to regain breath.

“Don’t tell me you too believe Argus’ delusions?” he laughed. “Every day he proves even more foolish than I thought. Ever the optimist, ever thinking someone had led me astray rather than accepting that I made my own choices. No, the choice was mine. Grandfather believed in human supremacy; he had this foolish idea that once we rid ourselves of mutants, everything would be fine. He thought he was the one controlling me. Moron. I’d have killed him myself, but Argus beat me to it.”

“He seems to beat you to a lot of things,” Elina said. She ignored the flash of rage in his eyes and continued, too tired and desperate to think of survival. “Why do you think humanity is bound to destroy itself? My best friend is a mutant. I work side-by-side with a Malformed…”

“Because I know,” Maximilian cut her off. “My power allowed me to disassemble, absorb, and alter anything, living beings included, through physical contact. I am Officer Rodriguez, who all his life feigned acceptance of the mutants, but deep down wished they were gone. I am Doctor Yordanos, who never got over his aversion to white people, even as he worked to save them. So many lives and they all lies, all of them never believing in the Iternian or any other ideal. As long as there are two people left in the world, they are bound to be at each other’s throats at the dawn of time. Peace is a lie. Understanding is impossible.” He smiled. “You want to prove me wrong? Give your body to me. Let me see your thoughts. If you believe in the haranguing gospel you preach, I will spare you. I may even surrender…”

A bloated carcass rose, its arms turned black by crystalized coverage, reaching to its shoulder blades. It stood almost as tall as the Chosen Prince, stomping on the cloven legs, and the swipe of its mighty arm opened a Troll’s power suit. The shambler could no longer clench his arms, but in exchange, he gained impressive armor, and a gladius bounced off the dark finger.

Elina wanted to scream in rage when she noticed Carlos maneuvering between two shamblers, grabbing the creatures by the heads and twisting their necks. He picked up Eliza’s mancatcher, wielding it like a scythe, and carved himself a path to the super shambler, dodging its swings and opening pus-filled channels in its fat hide. He was supposed to run away and live; why is he fighting so close to these deadly fumes? Carlos steered away from the swirling mists, stepping in only to save an ally or lead the large shambler away, darting back to safety before his nanobots suit could be corroded.

“No.” Elina rejected the offer, stepping away from Maximilian. Thank God, Carlos used his brains for once and fought at a distance, using the mancatcher’s lengths in full. “There are… foul thoughts in my head. I viewed Lizzie as someone who was weak and told lies about me, as someone who needed to change, someone who was too naïve and stupid to be my equal. I am afraid of my other friend, shuddering at his inhuman visage.”

“So you admit it.” Maximilian didn’t smile. “Humans are incapable of coexisting. Remove the big irritations; the small ones will grow into intolerable ones. And on and on, the circle of racism, hatred, irrational phobia will move on. A single imperfect specimen must rise and wipe out the rest for the world’s sake…”

“It doesn’t matter what we think,” Elina told him. “What matters is how we act. Are we perfect? No. But our forced cooperation is better than your honest degeneracy. Because unlike you, we haven’t given up. We often can’t control our thoughts and emotions, but we are responsible for our actions. We… I promised to make one step at a time, striving to be a better person.” She invited him with two fingers. “So come on, coward. I may die, but I plan to go out swinging.”

“You’ll go out whining, begging, and crying,” Maximilian told her.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Who… are… you, pest?” She froze, hearing the dry, commanding tone.

The Chosen Prince snapped out of his comatose state at last. He inhaled, paying no more attention to the surrounding battle than a man to an insects’ struggle. His eyes, two dying green stars, focused on the orb, illuminating the Rho, who bowed with casual indifference.

“An accidental ally of yours, Chosen Prince. I am Maximilian Rho. A man who will end the human race. I applaud your intention to cling to this pitiful existence of yours, for it furthers my goals, both directly and indirectly. As a reward, pay no attention to me. Indulge in your most vicious instincts, claim what is yours, consume as many…”

“Killing humanity is your goal?” The Chosen Prince reached out and grabbed the sphere with his blueish hand. Black veins formed and dissolved under the skin, rupturing and swelling his limb with pus. “You are no ally of mine, mongrel. I am a human too, filth. I ought to end you where you stand for threatening the existence of my eternal kingdom.”

“A heap of rotting synapses calling me filth…” Maximilian sighed. “Humanity? You don’t even realize it. Pathetic. And you dare to claim yourself a ruler? Rulers see; rulers know. Puppet, that’s all you are!”

“Explain your stream of babbling,” the monster demanded.

“You are a lingering ghost of identity.” Maximilian pointed at the distorted face, at the bones jutting from the cheek, pushed back by muscles. “You are dying. The Chosen Prince is dead, killed by Lord Steward. Whatever you are, clone, replicant, no matter, you are not the original.”

“I see you are no ruler.” The Chosen Prince burped, vomiting a stream of maggots on the sphere’s surface. “You are blind. My other half is dead. I am very much the same; my essence is preserved. And in time, I shall have the lost memories back.”

The sphere trembled under the pressure of the closing hand, and Elina understood it was sinking them. Maximilian stood unbothered at the fumes pouring from the hand — the purple smoke that ate the edges of the floor, reducing it to ashes. She clenched her hands, intent on leaving at least a single bruise on the cracking and healing face threatening to close on her.

Carlos screamed, stumbling and falling, when a hand of the enormous shambler split in two. The crack ran all over the darkened skin, shattering the unbreakable armor, revealing untangling muscles and uncurling bones. The limb reformed itself fast enough for a new two-fingered hand to miss the trainee and for the three-fingered hand to grab him, pinning the teen against the floor. Massive jaws opened, and the creature leaned.

Suddenly, all sounds disappeared. Moan of the super shambler. Tremors made by the Chosen Prince. Even Elina’s heartbeat. A single ear-piercing sound devoured them all, and a side of the room disappeared, broken by a bone shard flying in and bisecting the Chosen Prince’s hand at its wrist. Tendrils of flesh shot off from the shard, and the purple mist turned them into hardened crystals as the monster recoiled, pushing out new bones out of his stump and covering it with flesh and muscle.

The virus devouring the flesh tendrils stopped in the middle, and a ripple of flowing flesh passed over them, absorbing the damaged appendages inside the bone spear as it shattered, reforming far too fast for Elina’s eyes to follow.

“Pity. I had hoped for more time…” Maximilian’s hand closed around her neck, and she felt the metal crumble. The hand almost broke her neck when a wave of white sliced his hand at the elbow, connecting the two cut parts through a membrane to the standing man dressed in a leather jacket, a vest underneath, and cargo pants. “What in blazes… how did you get past the barrier?”

“Shut up,” Lord Steward said through a toothless horizontal opening serving him for a mouth.

His face was still forming, hair pushed out of the pink mess, and the front size of his jacket poured out like a waterfall, enveloping Maximilian, clinging to his body, melting arms, legs, devouring everything until a brain remained, trapped in a collapsing skull, stripped of every last bit of flesh. A rolling knot passed through the mass and gulped it down, bringing the brain safely to Lord Steward’s body.

“I am the man of miracles,” he told the shocked Elina. “And I refuse to let my people die.”

The barrier around them fell, but the deadly mist didn’t reach her. Lord Steward’s body stretched, covering the girl in a cocoon of flesh, capable of keeping her safe. Behind them, Augustus and Ludwig charged into the hall ahead of everyone else. The instructor blocked the hit aimed at Carlos’ face, stopping the tip of the claw a centimeter from reaching his faceplate. With a flick of his hand, his second saber pierced the eye of the closing massive head, rupturing the brain. Ludwig buried his sword under the creature’s ribs, prying one away and pushing the beast back.

“Stay safe and worry over nothing.” Lord Steward patted Elina and stepped toward the Chosen Prince, leaving a biological cocoon around her. He regained his humanoid form again, a normal human walking to the towering giant. “I felt your army awakening, thousands of bodies crawling to the surface.” Lord Steward looked above at the dark clouds. “Thank you. It would’ve taken us months to find them. Do you know that during a battle between Dominator and Ravager, he elbowed her with enough force that a droplet of blood pierced through a soldier’s forehead, and the sheer speed of the projectile tore a hole in the poor thing’s cranium? It gave me an idea. Velocity is just as important as hardiness. If one can do it, then how about several hundreds, raining down on the exposed targets?”

He glanced at the Chosen Prince with a cluster of windowed eyes that reflected the chaos in the room. Tentacles erupted from the smooth surface of his back, grabbing shamblers and yet unchanged Numbers, dragging an almost dead Troll along, hollowing them of everything but their brains. Several tendrils slithered close to the Chosen Prince and disappeared into nothingness, devoured by unleashed flesh-eating infections. The monster itself restored his hand and tested his fingers, then met Lord Steward’s eyes.

“The engines you reactivated give off enough heat to be spotted from the sky. Did you know that the spine mites of the Ravaged Lands have evolved to detect heat emitting from a human from miles away?” Lord Steward tapped his rapidly elongating jaw. “Wolfkins have similar, albeit much inferior, abilities. Yet theirs can discern a difference between human heat and that of an engine.” An amber eye opened in his forehead, his back merged with the jacket, and Elina saw several spinal columns bulging underneath the skin. “And insectoid queens are capable of guiding thousands of their drones, collecting information straight out of their eyes. Combining these traits, I have sent out several small biological satellites to pinpoint the location of your filth. And do you know what I did next, princeling?” He spread his jaws wide, showing fangs. “I expunged thousands of bone shards, propelling each at Mach 20 and aiming them directly at the working generators.”

“Do you plan to bar my path again, usurper?” the Chosen Prince finally addressed him.

“Bar? No, I plan to end you.” Lord Steward answered, his body was still gaining in size, black fur started growing over the torso, the head protruded forward, one hand turned out to be a black sleeve ending with white claws, a centipede tail pushed out of his back, his two legs shapeshifted into reverse-jointed chitin-covered legs, and his right hand transformed into an oversized Troll hand.

“Avert your eyes, everyone!” Ludwig cried out. “This… the indignity!”

“Ludwig, his excellency is not naked.” Wivin said.

“It’s not that, countymeister!” Ludwig wailed. His voice remained calm, but the noble Avenger pushed his vocal cords, struggling to break his indifferent tone. “The shame, the utter shame! Pray, abandon this form, President!”

Elina understood what exactly brought the Troll into a state of panic. The Reclamation Army and the Oathtakers had a long and bloody history, clashing for years in wars that claimed over a million lives. Even despite the recent help, the crusaders undoubtedly felt unease at witnessing the Ice Fangs in Stonehelm.

And Lord Steward copied Ravager’s torso and arm, changing his head into a perfect mockery of her skull. Even as a copy, Elina felt a tingle of fear gazing at the unreasonable butcher of monsters. Ravager, the progenitor of the Wolf Tribe and the one whom the Ice Fangs call their second mother! If the President-Elect can mimic her abilities, then the enemy stands no chance!

“Foolishness. You have abandoned the wonderful strength you had gained in our battle,” the Chosen Prince announced, not bothering to take a defensive stance.

“It started weighing me down,” Lord Steward said, using his Troll arm to pop up a muscle in his shoulder. “And you don’t look all that great yourself. Caught something, warmonger?” He pointed at the boils growing over the blue face. They exploded in pus, healed, and started growing anew.

Slits opened in Lord Steward’s flesh, over a hundred hungry mouths inhaling the air in unison. The poisonous fumes, pieces of the dead and dying, broken walkways, and ruined and corroded metal all flew into them, and the arriving Avengers had to help several of their wounded, keeping them from being sucked into the impatient rifts. The air cleared and both organic and inorganic matter was broken and sucked into the S-class Abnormal’s body, breaking down into nutrients to increase his body mass.

The pillar of filth reaching the sky disappeared, sinking back into the Chosen Prince, who started gathering his own might as well.

“Thanks for the snack,” Lord Steward purred, tensing the muscles in his arms. The side of the Chosen Prince’s body inflated, growing the size of the balloon. Elina noticed a hint of irritation in the monster’s eyes. And the President-Elect didn’t miss this chance.

He made a thrust, a perfect hit, moving faster than even a rail gun’s projectile could. Aimed at the blue neck, it should’ve ended the battle in an instant. If the Chosen Prince hadn’t missed his own chance. The air clouded in front of the claws, turning the wolfkin’s limb into a crystallized pillar, and the blue arm struck at Lord Steward’s abdomen as the tyrant dove to the side.

The crystallized limb exploded, shedding the outer shell and revealing a bone drill inside. The punch aimed at the solar plexus was met with an open secondary maw, but the fangs turned yellow and crumbled before they could pierce the skin, and the Chosen Prince saved his hand. Lord Steward’s drill struck true, slicing through the inflated portion of the giant’s body, and it exploded, spraying a shower of blood against the nearest wall.

And in its opening, there was someone who stopped Lord Steward’s hit. Two bodies — connected to the main body by veins — clung to a breathing lung. Skinless, their bones and muscles exposed in many places, and yet Elina recognized the remains of a tail and the broken claws of another.

“Eliza! Vasily!” She shouted, using a shockwave to shatter the cocoon of flesh and rush toward them. Carlos joined her, and Augustus closed in from behind, saving his words.

They won’t let their friends die.