Book 2: Dirt Diver’s Dance

Smoke On The Water Ch: 46

Just outside the mysterious warding circle, Ambrose was getting beyond desperate. A small man in dark armor had hammered through his formation with a mad cry

“Tenno Heika Banzai!”

He screamed, from within the chaotic mess he’d made of the orderly dead. That wild, spinning buzz-saw man in dark leather armor had seriously disrupted his formation and got the zombies milling about, reaching and grabbing with stupid, animal responses… Despite the necromage’s frantic attempts to keep the mob in line.

That cost his force a whole bouquet of hands and fingers, harvested from three full rows of morons. The fuckers didn’t even have guts to eat anything they caught… It was just dumb instinct.

“Zombies gonna zom…” Ambrose moaned through a splitting headache, before he took a big gulp from his canteen. “Bastard shook my control with that trick…” With a grimace of pain he reasserted his will, getting his force in motion at last, as the crazy man rejoined his friends inside the ward.

#

Kree came rocketing back over the lagoon at top speed, dragging a comet tail of ragged, drifting shadow in her wake. She dove hard, blasting into the yellow armored man on the battle line, without seeming to disrupt his steady, mechanical movements.

Gandree was still hacking and chopping between the two giants… And still puzzling over the sudden change in the man’s entire demeanor, once the battle began.

The phenomenon made more sense… and less, a moment after the insect girl collided with him and vanished. Shadow pooled at the giant’s feet, swiftly spreading to become the shadow that had been missing throughout the battle.

With a jolt, the battered bronze falchion began hewing the dead with more verve and even a little panache…

“Heads up!” He shouted from behind his faceless mask, his voice seeming to come from everywhere.

“Get clear, fall back to the house and pool!” He shouted, without making a target of himself. “Fall back to the pool!”

While he was busy shouting, the dead began to falter and slow, stumbling even more and beginning to stop in place one by one, even those on the outskirts, wandering aimlessly. At the same time, the fallen zombies began to tremble and quiver in some pretty weird ways that looked ominous and unwholesome.

“Where are Harry and the goblin?” Gary asked over the command channel, his voice slightly frantic.

“We gotta all join up…they have a big spell cooking!” He gasped. “Get away from the corpses!”

Liam’s calm voice took over, broadcasting on all channels. “Regroup at the pools. Amy, contact Daisybelle. Bring her in. Harry, if you can make it, join up… otherwise hold tight and link up with Belle and the pets when you can. Gary, fall back and get your head in the game.”

With an audible click of the warrior count’s teeth clacking together, the comms cut and the teams started moving.

#

Heidi and Ambrose both froze in numb shock, as the zombies under their control stopped responding. Long, silent seconds passed, the two necromancers expecting to be shredded by their own undead servitors at any moment… Instead the zeds held in place, trembling and vibrating.

“Those fucking cowards! Run Heidi… Run for the volcano… they won’t be able to catch us there… When we start moving, they might attack… don’t wait for me.” He gasped and nodded at her, their eyes locked together.

“Ambrose…” She sobbed, helplessly.

“Don’t look back… forget this life, baby…” He stood a little taller as he drew his shortsword and wand, still pale and drawn from Mana deficit and gasping for breath.

“Get m…married, make a life for yourself.” He whispered as he lunged out of their circle of immobile dead flesh, striking each defender from behind as he ran, drawing their primitive aggro response to himself.

#

On the deck of the last functional ship, Padilla raised his fist in triumph, drawing a ragged cheer from Benard… and oddly enough from Maxwell and Inverness. Both of those men had been dead, their shadow heads removed by those awful wights in the battle…

The others stirred as well, exhausted, weak and trembling, but hale. “I knew it! All witchcraft and illusion!” The squat, burly man shouted.

“Yeah… illusions…” Maxwell stammered, his eyes glazed and his face still a waxen mask.

“B… bloody captains… hiding below, working spells for nothing…” Inverness grumbled dangerously, his eyes wild and crazed, fixed on the closed companionway door.

“Gonna blame us for all this…” Padilla muttered, a feral light gleaming in his eyes. “No oarsmen, no other crew… we could…” He let the suggestion dangle, like bait in chummed water.

“Flagship already cut and ran.” Maxwell agreed. “I wondered why they were so eager to put almost everyone ashore and station the rest of us on this old hulk…”

“So… Lomax and Fernando? We talking, or we killing?” The big man grunted eagerly, deeply uninterested in the way the twice dead oarsmen were trembling in their chains. He had his thoughts on how much coin the captains might have in their little hideout.

“We’re killing. Get an ax; we’ll break in the hatch and blitz them.” Padilla commanded Bernard. “New captain’s orders.”

The big man grinned and began his work with a convenient boarding ax, chopping down the door in a few mighty swings.

“No! You fools! Don’t open the door!” Fernando screamed from behind the altar… and the splayed open ribcage of the very recently sacrificed captain Lomax.

Captain Fernando’s desperate scream seemed to act as a catalyst… Before the mutineers could advance a single step, the oarsmen all stood up as one, straining at their chains.

One hundred and sixty dead men stood, heads tipped back in a silent scream, displaying the wounds where their throats had been cut... Slain by the very officers standing among them, now petrified in fear.

“I could have survived!” Fernando gasped and gabbled from behind his blood spattered altar. “But no, you had to break the door, now we all die! Fools! Ignorant fools!”

He wailed in renewed terror, as Lomax stood from the altar just like the others, his entrails splatting onto the deck wetly.

“We’re all dead already!” Fernando wailed, before plunging his sacrificial blade into his own throat and ripping it free with a savage slash.

#

Heidi dashed for the steep cone of the volcano, as Ambrose ordered… tears half blinding her as she ran, desperately listening for Ambrose’s footfalls behind her, and knowing in her heart she would hear his death instead.

A slow moaning wail rose from her throat, fading and swelling as she drew in great screaming breaths and gasped them out, certain that she and her beloved were already dead.

When she hit the slope, she heard the sound of pursuit, spurring her to even faster flight, hurtling over bushes and leaping gaps with suicidal fearlessness.

“Heidi… they aren’t chasing… us…” Ambrose gasped several yards behind her and stumbling to a ragged, wheezing halt. As rain began to spatter onto the rocky slope. Thunder rolled on the horizon, where the sun had set early behind dark and looming clouds.

#

Daisybelle watched in horror from the edge of the jungle, as the walking dead stopped walking and the dead dead stood up, eyes staring into the dark, lowering clouds, screaming silently.

Hundreds of them, with heads or without, even the ones that were hacked in pieces or pulped into mushy wads of meat shambed back up to their feet, nubs or whatever they had left, to join the strange effect, silent and eerie beyond measure.

With startling suddenness, the two remaining necromages attacked their bodyguard zeds briefly and fled, screaming toward the trail up the volcano.

“That’s not encouraging…” Daisybelle whispered.

With a single, unified shrug, each dead man and woman began to ‘disrobe’, shedding their meat and organs like soiled clothes. Nearly four hundred skeletons stepped out into the gore-covered battlefield, to join a rapidly growing formation of bare bones; tiny red pinpoints of smoking light dancing in the legion of empty eye sockets.

The wretched piles of meat, whether goopy messes or stiff slabs of jerky, began to inch together, forming into heaps and mounds; which continued gathering as the defenders watched helplessly.

Exhausted, ragged, battered and limping, the family formed up by the hotspring pool, while the enemy did some super creepy shit.

“No, Shiro… stay with me!” Daisybelle ordered the silver and gray snow leopard. “We have orders; recover Harry from that tree. We go get him and bring him to the others!”

Shiro mewed a quiet complaint, but followed orders.

“Faugh… Kitty listens better than doggie…” She sobbed just a little, before drying her eyes with the collar of her uniform jacket.

#

“Any Ideas?” Liam asked the group at large, around one of his sugary and salty apricot things. The chewy and sticky stuff replaced much of what their bodies had lost, during the endless battle and cleansed their mouths of the dusty, cruddy residue of the dead.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

He pounded a huge mug of water, while hoping for an answer from his crew of weirdos and monster slayers.

“I didn’t plan on facing human necromancers… These undead are powered by a ritual on that ship, that makes them resistant to my usual tricks. If all else fails, we can stay in the pool…” Gary offered. “The guys on that ship were pretty shook up by my shadow-clone jutsu. With a storm coming, I doubt they’ll try anything before dawn.”

“Can you do that again?” Liam asked, ignoring Shai’s absolutely furious glare. “Shadow sneak out there and make some trouble?”

“Nahh. I’m tapped, need to grow my shadow back in full sunlight first... Kree and I have been working on that gag in secret for a while now.” He mumbled, refusing to meet his wife’s intense gaze.

“If I knew what that spell was doing I could maybe…” He shrugged. “With no Mana and no gifts, I can’t do much to them... Give me a week and I’ll have them all working in the garden and giving pedicures.” He mumbled, eyeing the rigidly disciplined undead ranks.

“The wizard was chanting, I know I heard ‘Spartoi’...” The mad witch mumbled, lost in thought.

“Dragon teeth… Born of the earth, sacred to Ares… Something about meat, or a homunculus rex?”

#

Daisibelle and her team of furry friends watched in silence, as the skellies formed up into ranks on the jungle side of the battle, covering a good swathe of the reeking land with their formation, as the first cracks of thunder rolled from the east.

She seriously disliked whatever those piles of loose meat were up to as well. She had her task to focus on, the rest could come later, when the job was done, they could count the cost and weep for the lost.

At last, the stupid things went to join the growing army of corpses, leaving the area around Harry’s hideout free of enemies who could interfere…

“Quickly, we run! Audrey! Go!” She shouted, as the wargs and Shiro sprinted for the towering magnolia at the edge of the battlefield. Mounted on Peony, Daisybelle broke cover with her party of familiars, dashing through the first raindrops, headed for the towering magnolia, just inside the warding circle.

Their movement attracted the attention of nearly four hundred red eyed skulls of the legion, locked on to her fast moving group.

The rattle and hiss of marching bones drowned out the sound of her own breath in her lungs, as they pelted for their goal, racing against the restless dead.

Harry shimmied down the tree with monkey-like grace and joined their sprint, by vaulting onto Audrey and clinging to her vines, they didn’t even need to break stride.

#

While the life and death drama ashore played out unobserved, Padilla and his co-conspirators stared at the slumped form of captain Fernando, collapsed over his altar… “Uhh… I guess that will do…” The newly minted captain Padilla murmured blandly, stunned by the unexpected turn of events.

The wet sounds of tearing flesh drew their attention to the oarsmen, who were also shedding their pitiful, scrawny flesh as if they were peeling off wet clothes.

The fallen meat jiggled and swarmed, heaping itself into a loosely humanoid pile that slowly oozed in place, just as the skeletons stood there, red eyes smoldering, awaiting instructions.

“Don’t move. Don’t speak.” Inverness whispered in a breathy gasp. “Without orders, they will attack anything that moves… Maybe something will…”

The nearest skellie slowly rotated its bare skull, fixing its lambent eyes on Inverness; within a heartbeat, one hundred and sixty of them were all looking at the pale, shaking man.

A distant thunderclap, followed by a sudden jolt of loud and raucous noise from shore drew every skeletal eye; as the entire contingent, including the two captains formed ranks and vaulted into the sea, heading for shore.

The trembling meat ball followed, squelching and rolling over the rail, leaving a bloody and reeking stain on the deck that slowly spread as the rain began in earnest.

“The fuck… I can’t believe we survived…” Inverness gasped, shivering as the evening breeze on the already wet crotch of his trousers chilled his bollocks.

#

While Gary was busy wracking his brain and coming up empty, Daisybelle, her wargs Audrey and Shiro emerged and flew with impressive speed, right under Harry’s tree. They collected the wayward lad and dashed for the group, clods of mud and turf flying in their wake.

The movement from the jungle launched the spartoi into motion, unified in movement and hammering the wet earth with their boney feet. They weren’t fast or agile, but they had numbers… since around two hundred more skellies were emerging from the wind lashed lagoon, presumably from the ship still blocking the entrance.

“You all did very well.” Ace encouraged them cheerfully. “If you sprint for the volcano now and gate out, like those two necros, you might just make it…”

“Stuff it, Ace.” Gary barked at the dummy in blue. His glare softened as he scanned the soggy, exhausted, gathering of friends and family.

That smile swiftly became the sadly confident look that Shai recognized from years before, the same one he’d had on his face on the night her world had shattered. “Nay! I’ll not allow…”

Gary turned his attention to his angry wife, sputtering and shouting at him, standing beside his oldest friend who seemed to be on her side...

“Shai, shut up. Liam, give me my old teleblaster. I have a plan…” He growled, as the goblin and his son raced for their lives, followed by a relentless tide of bones.

“Don’t you dare sting me, Kree.” He glared at the gathered family and nodded firmly.

“When Harry and the others get here, you guys run. No backtalk.” Silence fell over the exhausted gathering, as count Liam passed his mad, doomed brother the instrument of his own destruction.

Gary smiled a melancholic little grin as he stroked the familiar neck of his creation, the quiet scene disturbed only by the sound of running bones.

Baobhan sith (Cry of the Banshee), Teleblaster, unique guitar, Spiritual and etheric enchantments. Quality: Unique. Rarity: Unique. Rank: Copper.

Aura, sonic and mental enchantments, gifts and abilities of player will be enhanced when wielded by, or near a source of etheric magic.

Compulsion, command and restraint enchantments from hostile sources will erode under the influence of instrument.

*Warning* Instrument is higher ranked than player… unstable and unpredictable effects may occur.

*Warning* Use of higher ranked magical tools and weapons may cause irreparable soul damage or death.

Loud, raucous music began, ringing out from the man seated in the lotus position, his eyes slowly rolling back in his head, as he began to drone in a long breathless monotone.

All right, stop whatcha doin'

'cause I'm about to ruin

The image and the style that ya used to…

The first few bars of the ‘Humpty Dance’ hammered down on the marching boneheads, bringing them into an even tighter formation. The musician gave a silent, mental prayer to the endless universe, hoping that the ‘Digital Underground’ were thriving in their current lives, wherever they might be.

Now gather 'round, I'm the new fool in town

And my sound's laid down by the Underground!

The intense native urge of the spartoi, the imperative to maintain ranks was feeding into the sneaky spell hidden in the absolute banger he was hitting them with. Elbow to elbow and boney hip to hip, they slowed from double-time to quicktime, marching, then pacing slowly…

Soon they were marching in place locked in a loop of insensate action, driven on to their endless performance by the quickly sagging musician and their own simple, obedient stupidity.

He stumbled and almost lost the all important beat on critical tempo change, nearly bobbling the line as his vision blurred and swayed.

Just grab 'em in the biscuits!

He gasped, struggling to keep in the groove and remain conscious. Without warning, Shai’’s warm back rested against his, their armor and shirts vanishing into her storage in a twinkle. At the touch of her skin to his, Gary’s Mana, Stamina and Etheric pools began bubbling and their dangerously rapid drain slowed to a dribble.

“I’ll keep my fool boy afloat. We’ll all be getting out of this, lad.” She called over the music, as he continued his deranged song.

“Ye cheated last time, lad. Where'er ye go, I’ll be with thee.” She growled in his ear, her violin wailing in time to a hip hop hit from another world and another time. “I’ll nae be left behind thee again.”

“Yes, dear.” He gasped, flecks of foamy drool forming at the corners of his lips as his eyes turned yellow and bloodshot. The kids and familiars seemed to be running in slow motion to rejoin the worried team, waiting at the back of the yard.

The meat monster was finally standing up, a hideous, pulsating mountain of random organs, muscles and skin that had something like a humanoid shape. It fell in behind the skellie dancers, doing a slow stomping shuffle, as bits fell off and climbed back onto the monster constantly.

The runners stumbled into the open arms of their loved ones when Gary and Shai hit the song’s weird ass bridge, switching up and starting the next phase.

The madman began mindlessly stroking his thumbnail up and down his banjo’s D string, while bending the note aggressively.

He dug in hard, creating a distinctive, oscillating whooping sound that the track just had to have. He laid back into the lyrics, barking and spitting the bars as he toasted the break in desperation:

Now that I told y'all a little bit about myself,

Let me tell ya a little bit about this dance…

It's real easy to do y’all, check it out;

“Get ready to run when I change the beat…” He spat a wad of yellow bile, streaked with blood off over his shoulder between bars, unaware that a long runnel of the stuff dribbled down his chin and onto his bare chest. “No questions, no discussion.”

His eyes were glazed over and blood was leaking from his nose in a steady trickle, dripping down his chest and staining his instrument as he played on. Gary swayed from side to side as he droned out the next stanzas, pouring himself into the song as the world faded away into a green tinged haze.

#

While Gary and Shai kept the skellies dancing in place, the team engulfed the latecomers, swifty organizing themselves in a new formation, under Liam’s crisp and terse instructions; spoken where the rapidly dying musician wouldn’t be able to overhear.

“Audrey, when I tell you, scoop up Gary and Shai, together. Try to avoid interfering with their instruments and music.”

He turned to the rest of the group and continued just as crisply.

“Dannyl. Ivy, boys… instruments up we’re taking this show on the road. If they drop the beat, you need to keep it going on the march.” He clapped twice, to make sure he had everyone on board.

“Ace, you stay with us, you are coming along. No arguments. Daze and Gandree, stick with me and Tallum. Ready? Go!”

#

Gary smiled, ginning a blind, terrible rictus of pain at the skinny ass dance crew on the battlefield and their massive meaty giant; he was about to bring this thing into the next phase, if he could keep his shit together, or at least not shit his pants too early.

The world swayed and rocked on the other side of his closed eyelids, his body was inconsequential at this point, as long as he could keep his instrument singing and hold on to the beat.

First I limp to the side like my leg was broken

Shakin' and twitchin' kinda like I was smokin!

The commands landed like a hammerblow on the simple monsters, they were inside his wards, dancing to his tune… Now he just needed to keep them grooving and moving, while he brought a little chaos into the music.

He screwed his eyes even tighter shut, as he cranked his distortion, overdrive and volume to the limits and beyond.

His guitar screamed and wailed like a furious lost soul, pulling the skeletons into the song and bringing the juggernaut of jumbled meat into the rapidly forming mosh pit.

Can't stand it for another day

I ain't gonna live my life this way!

Cold sweat, my fists are clenching,

Stomp,stomp,stomp! The idiot convention!

Gary’s focused thoughts and Will shook and wavered, as his guts loosened and reeking, slimy filth poured out of his bilges. He vomited over his right shoulder, hoping to miss his beloved guitar; even though it was swiftly tearing his soul and body apart with every note and chord.

You're always in the way, like a beast on my back!

Were you dropped as a baby, 'cause brains you lack?

In his delirious and almost mindless state, Gary almost believed he could hear thundering drums, a bass that crashed like a tempest battering the shore and a sweet, soaring guitar solo, tearing up the track behind his half screamed lyrics.

Caught In A Mosh was an obvious choice, but he was beyond subtlety or wit. Now it was just chaos, as he used everything he had to turn the mosh pit onto a garbage disposal before he lost the beat.

Talking in circles, we'll never get it straight,

Just you and me in our theater of hate…

He couldn’t make it to the next chorus, never mind the long, wailing outro… Gary vomited a thick gout of reeking blood and stuff onto his guitar as he collapsed forward into unconsciousness and darkness as the music rang in his fading senses.

#

“The fuck?” Ghnash and Necro asked at the same time, as they flew on silent wings toward the swirling morass of necromantic and blood magic on the little island they were screaming toward.

‘Is that… music?’ Necro asked sharply. ‘It sounds… weirdly familiar….’

“Ah… Is thrash metal. Old school pit music.” The goblin grunted. “Is Anthrax… Good good song!”

‘Blight me, you’re right… how?’ The dragon whispered in the goblin’s mind, ‘sounding’ confused and deeply worried.

“Like this!” Ghnash grunted happily, as a shamisen appeared in his hands. The tiny instrument shattered the night, screaming out into the dark, harsh and angry.

“Go go! I smell witchcraft! Smells good!” He wailed, as his instrument joined the distant song of violence and rage.

The Necromancer tucked his vast, leather wings and dove, streaking through the dark, cloudy sky. Only a few lights flickered on the island, from a long slave galley in the lagoon entrance.

Keen night vision picked out the wrecked tangle of ships and the battlefield below, reeking to the goblin’s sensitive nose even from a quarter mile up and diving fast.

Necro burped a short jet of flame into the sky, illuminating a scene of madness and utter chaos. Several hundred skeletal warriors were milling about, battling a stupendous, towering flesh golem… at least sixty feet tall and as massive as a government building, it stomped and moshed among the smaller monsters, crushing them under foot in steady, rhythmic movements.

‘Are they… dancing?’ The dragon asked, his mental voice quavering and a little higher pitched than usual. ‘I sense no living beings in that… melee.’

“Yes yes! Big dance party, make them dance in flames brother! That’s more fun!” Ghnash screamed and gibbered, lost in the thrill and the music and going full goblin mode.

“Cities on fire with rock and roll!” He shouted wildly, lashing a solo from his instrument while standing on the back of a swooping undead dragon and capering with deranged glee. “I Am The God Of Fucking Metal!”

#

The fleeing Adventurers stumbled to a halt, halfway up the volcano’s cone… watching in fascination and horror as a fucking undead dragon swept in on ragged leather wings, belching gouts of fire into the beginnings of the storm.

“Leeee-Royyy…. Jenki-ins!” The goblin bellowed triumphantly, as fire poured over the dancing monsters.

#