Len opened her eyes after hours of restless sleep. She was miserable, she was tired, and she had no option but to get out of bed. The trio had already packed up their gear, looked loose and limber for what was coming. They ate a light meal in the mess hall, no one really talking, there wasn’t much to say. About the only thought running through Len’s head was relief that the first fight was bound to be easy.

  She didn’t pay much attention to things as a few other fights took place. Nothing about them stood out enough to snap her out of her daze and no reaction from the crowd indicated that she was missing something obvious. She just sat there and tried in vain to wrangle the headache under control. Theoretically, she’d accepted that it was just an inescapable consequence of using the ability, but that didn’t keep her from hoping against hope that there was some magic trick that she was missing. She was snapped out of her reverie by a tap on her shoulder from Moe, it was time.

  They made their way down to the arena proper, still not saying much. Len herself moved in a daze, guided by the trio and generally saving her energy for the fight. Couldn't take things too much for granted, after all. When they were all assembled, Len took one deep breath, clapped her hands on both sides of her face, and stared down her opponents. Temporarily, at least, she was back in command of herself.

  The four Orcs looked rather listless, all things considered. They showed no more interest in the speech that the Demon Lord was giving than she was. In comparison, her trio were in rapt attention as she spoke. Something was tickling at the back of Len’s consciousness that she didn’t like. She couldn’t place it, but there was something not right going on here. She was pretty sure that they’d done the typical groveling after their last fight, so why didn’t they seem to care this time?

  “All right, guys, we should be able to take them without any extra tricks. Just focus on taking one down as fast as possible, just like last time.”

  The trio nodded, and they waited for the signal to start. It came, and the four of them charged their foes, eager to get this over quickly. The three crashed into the leftmost Orc and struck deep but not fatal blows on his limbs that would probably heal with enough time. As they’d practiced, they spread out and away after their attack had finished, each engaging one of the remaining opponents. Len hung back, ready to support any goblin that needed it.

  It was only because she did that, that she saw the danger coming. Rather than being felled by their initial onslaught, the first Orc seemed to have only been inconvenienced. Jerkily, it rose back to its feet, black ooze pouring out of the wounds that had been inflicted. Gasping, Len managed to put herself between it and Larry before it could strike.

  “What the hell’s going on with you,” she asked.

  The creature might have been an Orc yesterday, but today it was decidedly different. Up close, she could smell the rot on its breath and see the milkiness of its eyes. This was had to be necromancy. Sure, she had very little specific knowledge of the art of animating the dead, but there weren’t a whole lot of alternative explanations for what she was seeing here.

  The creature lashed out at her, claws raking at the air in front of it. There wasn’t intelligence here but there was fierceness all the same. She managed to catch its right wrist and spin it outward. She stepped close to it, hooked a leg behind one of its, and drop it. She then shifted the mount into an arm lock and wrenched with all her might, tearing the limb out of its socket. It made no expression of pain, not even an acknowledgment that she’d done anything to it. She rolled away as it tried to swipe at her again and the two rose to their feet.

  The thing didn’t seem to notice that one of its right arm now hung limply at its side, it just lurched towards her again, functioning arm swiping wildly. It took her a moment, but she was able to repeat the process on that arm and leave the creature unarmed in the most technical sense of the word. Even this didn’t cause it to alter its tactics much or slow its attacks. Now, though, it focused on trying to bite her. She’d seen enough zombie movies to know that nothing good came of letting it do that, so she splintered its legs at the knees and left it an impotently gnashing mess on the ground.

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  Her goblins had not fared as well as she’d managed. Larry had been clawed across the torso and was laying in a bleeding mess. Moe was struggling desperately to keep away from both his Orc-thing and Larry’s. Curly was holding his own at the moment, he’d apparently decided to swap from dagger to quarterstaff (keeping him a bit closer to that pacifist ideal he was striving for), and it was serving him well against the Undead Orc. He’d managed to do serious damage to one of the creatures legs and was now keeping it at bay while scoring occasional blows to breakable bits.

  Judging Moe to be the one in more need of her help, she bellowed a challenge and barreled into one of the two that were chasing him. This had the desired result of knocking it to the ground, but left her off balance when the other reared and struck her with the back of its hand, sending her to the ground as well. Head shrieking in protest, she got her feet underneath her and looked around to catch her bearings. The creature she’d knocked down was back on its feet and staggering towards her, still deathly silent. The other remained focused on Moe, but he had a better chance now. Gritting her teeth, she moved to face the one coming for her.

  It wasn’t any faster than the last one, it wasn’t any stronger, yet somehow it was so much more difficult to beat this one. Any time she moved for a grab, it seemed to be just barely out of reach, just slightly angled in such a way that she couldn’t land her grab properly. To make matters worse, she was slowing down. Each attack was taking more out of her than it would have earlier. She was still keeping ahead of its attacks but being unable to score anything decisive was costing her.

  Slowly, inevitably, she started losing ground. Where once she’d been able to push it back with her attacks, now she was desperate to even hold her ground. Again and again she had to back away to avoid a deadly strike, and any time she scored a blow, it was ignored. She felt like panic SHOULD be setting in, but somehow she was just entering a detached state. It was almost like she were watching the fight from the outside. She could see how badly she was struggling here, but it felt almost unimportant when weighed against the enormity of all that had happened up to this point. She was missing something and it-WHAM!

  The thought was shattered by a blow to the head. All that detachment that she’d been feeling evaporated and the blinding bolt of agony grounded her in the here and now completely. The creature closed as she reeled, moving for the kill. It might have done just that if not for the quarterstaff that came out of nowhere to sweep its legs out from under it. Curly offered her a hand to steady herself with.

  “Thanks,” she said. He nodded and got back to dealing with his enemy.

  It was starting to rise again, but she had no intention of giving it that chance. Slipping behind it, she pulled out her dagger and drove it into the base of the creatures skull, all the way to the hilt. Standard zombie rules seemed to apply and the thing dropped like a sack of potatoes. Good, that left just two and with the help of Moe and Curly, that shouldn’t be a problem. She turned to see how they were doing and saw that they had both fallen.

  “Okay,” she muttered. “That’s not ideal. C’mon then, boys, let’s see what you're made of.”