“Whisper, with me,” Hook said lowly, maneuvering himself into the combat stance I’d seen from him so many times in training. “Hangman, Dusk. You take the rear. And remember…aim for the head.”
As Sylvia split off and joined the leader of the Nocturne Division, I turned around. Eyeing the confined tunnel we were in, I grimaced. We had so little room to maneuver in here. Luckily, I’d been so paranoid during our search that I’d had a realization about the possibility of combat in here. While I’d been practicing heavily on using the dagger forms of my weapons, I didn’t consider that my primary form of combat.
I thought of myself as a spearman. And while the corridor was so cramped that Dusk and I were practically shoulder to shoulder, so were the advancing undead.
Long, straight lines of attack were perfect for spears.
I extended my right Oninite blade and lowered it towards the advancing horde. At the same time, I flipped my left dagger around and extended it as well. While I couldn’t exactly fight with two spears, I wasn’t alone.
Without a word, I handed the spare over to Dusk. She took it with a small nod, immediately understanding my plan.
The flesh of these creatures looked too thin and weak to bother with needing The Scintillant Blade. Luckily, I had a new weapon enhancement skill.
For the first time, I activated Grinding Crimson Sunder in battle.
The blue-black blade of my Oninite spear erupted into a furious, roiling, glowing mass of ethereally vicious thorns. They clung to the edge of the blade, grinding against each other endlessly in a manner not dissimilar to that of a chainsaw.
A low whine filled the air.
To my side, I noticed that the blade of the spear that I had given to Dusk had been surrounded by its own aura. Oily black smoke engulfed it, dripping onto the stone below from how thick it was.
At that, there was no more time for words. No more time for planning or wondering where these monsters had come from.
There was only battle.
I jabbed forward with my spear as soon as the first undead was in range, the crimson light of my skill briefly illuminating the monster. While the arms of this long-dead orc were longer than my own, thankfully the added length of my spear bypassed their grasping length. However, my aim was slightly off.
The shearing length of my spear pierced through the neck of the zombie. In a moment, my Skill had worked to almost completely remove its head.
Almost.
The partially decapitated head listed to hang upside down to its left side, only barely still attached by the slightest stretch of paper-thin skin. But still, those eerie blue lights shone in its empty eye sockets. The once-orc shuffled forward one more step, paying no mind to the blade that had nearly removed its head.
I snarled in adrenaline-filled fury, broke out of my shock, and finished the job. The head fell to the floor, followed closely by the body, slumping to its desiccated knees. The undead behind it didn’t care about how I’d just finished off its fellow corpse. It just stepped forward over the beheaded mass of former orc.
Not once did any of them make a single noise. Not a moan, or a groan, or even the slightest exhalation of air from long stilled lungs. They simply shuffled forward, grasping endlessly for the living with outstretched arms, long withered from the touch of death.
I stepped forward to meet them, buoyed by how easily my new Skill had carved through the first one.
Dusk had already killed three of them in the time it took me to kill one.
Well, I couldn’t have that.
I lunged forward up under grasping limbs and repeated the job.
This process itself repeated for…I don’t know how long. It was hard to tell time like that in the middle of battle.
Lunge, jab, decapitate.
Lunge, jab, decapitate.
Lunge, jab, decapitate.
Despite the narrow confines of our environment, it almost seemed like the horde of undead was endless. Where were all of them coming from? Dusk and I had gone through dozens of them by now, which wasn’t counting what Hook and Sylvia were putting down. In a brief moment of rest, I had looked over my shoulder to find that it looked like they’d destroyed more of them than Dusk and I had. This was far, far more corpses than were contained in this one small corridor. Just how many of the resting orcs that we’d passed on the way in had been dominated by the Necromancer Hook had suspicions about?
Did they have control of the entire mausoleum?
No…
This wasn’t a mausoleum.
This was a Necropolis.
A monument to the dead, and a house of worship to the twisted and insane.
Eventually, I slipped up. I had grown too complacent, even if the thoughts racing through my head were confined to the depths of my rings. The rhythm I had fallen into was broken.
An unnaturally strong limb clamped down onto my golden left limb, concealed beneath a black leather elbow-length glove. I instantly activated Sylvan Vigor for the first time in the fight, blasting it all the way up to max power. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to break the death grip that the undead had on my false limb.
I expected the monster to try and take a bite out of me then, but something else happened. Something nearly worse.
The jaw of the zombie that had hold of me creaked open, exposing an eerie blue light at the back of its pallid and withered throat. For the first time, one of these creatures used its lungs.
It inhaled, and instead of air entering its lungs, Aether flowed into it.
Mine.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
To my alarm, I felt the very foundations of my soul begin to be drained of its vitality. Instead of trying to consume my flesh, this undead was trying to devour my very spirit. If I didn’t do anything, this monster was going to drain my soul of every last drop of Aether and I’d soon be dead.
Fuck that.
Dropping my spear momentarily, I weakly reached over and did something I hadn't done yet.
I thumbed the release rune at the base of my artificial limb.
With a clicking noise, the mechanism that held the gold and Mythril arm attached to its socket came undone. I immediately staggered back, free from the hold of the undead. The monster reeled back as well, breaking the feeding connection it had on me. As soon as I was free, I raised my remaining arm, fingers pointing toward the head of the undead that had nearly killed me.
Poisonthorn Shot.
The familiar form of my skill materialized before my fingers and immediately shot straight at my target. Its head snapped back, impaled by the nearly forearm-sized blood-red thorn. In moments, the corrosive poison of the Skill had completely dissolved its withered face. Apparently, that was enough to end it, as it slumped to its knees still clutching my prosthetic.
Shit. I couldn’t lose that. I didn’t have a replacement.
Before another undead could advance, I stumblingly grabbed my still-extended spear and nearly dived for the limb. I managed to grab it out of the hands of the inert zombie, but another was already lurching my way, arms extended. I grimaced and tried to raise my hand to fire off another thorn, but I wasn’t sure I had the strength for it right now, so soon after my draining and the other use of the skill.
Thankfully, I wasn’t fighting alone.
My other spear sailed over my head, coated in an inky smoke that sizzled in the dim light that we fought by. It neatly pierced through the neck of the undead grasping for me, severing its head instantly. I didn’t waste the chance and scrambled backward.
Dusk advanced before I could even thank her, wielding my own spear with a finesse that I wasn’t capable of yet. I wasn’t even able to thank her before the Gnoll woman had waded into the thick of the horde, gracefully dodging their grasping hands. At the same time she was using my spear with her left hand, I watched as she lashed out at nearby undead with the claws of her hand. Those digits were also trailing the same corrosive black smoke as the spear, and rapidly rotting through the dozens of undead throats. It almost seemed like she was more than able to deal with the lot of them with no help from me.
My eyes narrowed. The hell she was.
I refused to be dead weight.
Jamming my prosthetic back onto its base, I bore through the flash of pain that resulted from my nerves being magically reconnected to the false touch of my golden fingers. Flexing them, I gripped my spear and charged back into the fray.
The cycle continued.
Lunge, jab, decapitate.
Lunge, jab, decapitate.
Lunge, jab, decapitate.
A problem arose. We had killed so many undead by this point that their corpses were crowding the floor of the narrow hallway. It was impossible to advance anymore, and so we held our positions and did our best to handle the monsters as they advanced on us. Our footing was treacherous now, and it only grew more so.
The problem worsened. We were lashing out over a mound of undead corpses that were waist-high by now. But the stream of them never stopped coming. The newer ones were simply crawling over top of their fellows, endlessly grasping for the vitality inherent in our souls. I didn’t even know how long we’d been fighting at this point. For all I knew, it might have been hours. But…it couldn’t have been, right? I’m not sure I had that much stamina for such a protracted battle.
At last, the problem hit its peak.
The wall of corpses that had grown in front of us reached near the ceiling by now. Withered grey hands wiggled through the small gap near the ceiling, trying to force their way through. But they couldn’t. The undead couldn’t force their way through.
This wasn’t a good thing…because it came with a problem.
Staggering back and desperately gulping down breaths of air, I looked over my shoulder. The same thing had repeated on Hook and Sylvia’s side. There was another wall of undead that they’d created from the hundreds that had been slain by now.
We were trapped.
Now that the fighting was over, a visibly weary Hook and Sylvia warily shuffled over to join Dusk and I.
“What…now…” I managed to croak out in between panting breaths.
“I should’ve seen this coming,” Hook said tiredly, slumping to sit on a nearby funerary slab bereft of its. “This is Necromancer tactics one-oh-one. If you can’t kill your target with your undead, exhaust them. Once they’re exhausted, drown them in even more rotting bodies.”
“We can’t get out,” Dusk said quietly, leaning on the shaft of my borrowed spear tiredly. “We…might be able to force our way through the horde with sufficiently powerful Arts or Spells, but…”
“Even more undead will just move in to fill the gap left in the breach,” Sylvia picked up, shuffling over to my position. "But beyond that, it might damage the hallway too much." Uncaring about Hook or Dusk’s opinion, she slumped against me. I gladly threaded my golden arm around her back in an embrace. I needed the reassurance as much as she did, after the grind of that battle.
“But we can’t stay here,” I said lowly. “Eventually, the press of more and more bodies on the other side will cause the 'walls' to collapse and then…”
As if to punctuate my statement, a desiccated hand succeeded in shoving a loose corpse free from the wall of its fellows blocking its path. It slowly crawled halfway through it, before Dusk speared its questing head. It slumped in place, more mortar for the grisly barricade.
“We really will drown under the weight of everything we killed,” Hook said grimly, shaking his head. “They’ll collapse over us, and we’ll suffocate to death. Well, most of us.” He said, with a bleak nod of his head towards Sylvia.
Sylvia smiled humorlessly. “I would join you soon,” She said quietly. “My soul would be dined upon not long afterward, and all that would be left is the Mythril of my body.”
I tightened my grip on her at the thought.
Hook stood up abruptly then, casting a gaze over us. “Alright then,” He said briskly. “Options? There must be a way out of this.”
Sylvia raised her head. “Could one of us force our way through, perhaps? If someone sought out the Necromancer in time, would killing them cause the undead to retreat?”
Dusk shook her furry head. “No, Necromancy doesn’t work that way. They’ve been given their commands, and they’ll follow them even past the death of their master.” She paused. “But…perhaps one of us could still force our way through? We could…inform the Orcs of the Necromancer and ask them to rescue everyone else?” She sounded doubtful of her own plan.
As expected, Hook just shook his head. “No, the Orcs wouldn’t care about us. They would come down and exterminate an unlicensed Necromancer, but they’d leave everyone else to die down here.”
While they debated plans, I was stuck on something else Dusk had said earlier. “Sufficiently powerful Arts or Spells…” I muttered to myself. My gaze drifted downwards, to rest on the stone of the corridor below.
“Something to add, Hangman?” I heard Hook ask me. Raising my head to meet his gaze, I nodded slowly.
“Instead of going through them, how about we…go around them?” I asked the group. “Hook, Dusk. Do you have anything that could punch through the walls or the floor?”
Hook and Dusk exchanged a glance at that, before both of them looked down. Dusk hummed in thought, before nodding slowly. “Yes, I believe I do. I’m…not sure what is behind either, however.”
“I do,” Hook said thoughtfully. “This entire complex is shaped like a spiral with branching paths, in case you didn’t notice. Below us should just be another floor of the mausoleum. That would bring us closer to the pathway into Tlatec, which is at the very bottom. We can't do the walls, though. These are solid rock with nothing beyond them. We’ll just have to watch out for more of these bastards below, but it’s better than staying here. Yes. This’ll work. Good thinking, Hangman.”
An air of tension that had fallen over the group at our confinement that I hadn’t even noticed eased, now that we had a plan.
“Stand back,” Hook said warningly to Sylvia, Dusk, and I. “I’m going to try and make as small of a hole as I can in the floor, so the whole damn thing doesn’t collapse under us.”
The three of us shuffled as far away as we could from Hook without getting in range of any questing hands poking through the undead wall. When we were clear, Hook kneeled down with one of his daggers extended. To my surprise, it lengthened into what looked like a blade of razor-sharp compressed air. The very wind of the corridor whistled and split over its surface from the intensity of its edge. Without another word, Hook slammed it into the stone below and began to try and saw a hole in the floor.
However…
I don’t know if it was just another layer to the Necromancer’s trap, or if it was just sheer bad luck on our part
Because when the stone beneath us was pierced?
The entire thing collapsed.
I only had time to meet Sylvia’s widening eyes once, before we all fell away into darkness.