The Zombie Master sent hundreds of Kinarian zombies shambling forward with a lazy wave of his hand.

“Kala, target the Zombie Master. I’ll keep the horde back,” Cechon threw a wide arc of fire from his hands.

The flames caught the first few closing ranks.

Kala’s PDW sent a beam that splashed against the dark dome of magic over the Zombie Master.

Cracks formed instantly.

“Hmm… powerful weaponry. Somehow I don’t think you’ve got it set to stun,” the Zombie Master said.

“Luun, get to higher ground, until we have eyes on the zombie outworlders I want to hit him from multiple directions,” Cechon said.

Cechon drew his PDW and lanced a second beam into the Zombie Master’s magic shield, even as Kala did the same.

The cracks grew, while the Zombie Master’s face twisted.

“Braal, add fire!” Cechon barked.

Braal’s much larger PDW spat a beam that temporarily turned the darkened interior of the cavernous dwelling into day. It shattered the shield sending dark smoke billowing out in all directions.

The sentinels dared to hope that the Zombie Master had been destroyed.

“That took me down to 40% energy,” Braal said.

Luun ran up the side of the wall to get to a platform with a better view of the Zombie Master’s location. “I can’t confirm the kill. No body, just a dark cloud that—” she pulled back her focus, “that looks like a grinning skull?”

Braal switched her forceshield into a dome that surrounded her, Cechon and Kala.

The zombies shambled forward, some on fire, and proceeded to claw at the translucent shield.

“Don’t worry, Kala. I can hold these weaklings back for days,” Braal said.

“I wasn’t,” Kala said.

“Of course not,” Braal said lightly.

“Focus!” Cechon said. “Luun, I need information. Can you get a clearer look?”

“Understood.” Luun ran across the platform and leapt to another, then another. She tried to find an angle that wasn’t obscured by the smoke, but it seemed to shift and block her view purposefully.

A zombie stood on the platform ahead.

Luun readied her blade and jumped across the void.

The zombie reached taloned arms out as if to catch her.

Luun pulled her arm back.

The zombie suddenly exploded in a shower of blood and gore.

The Zombie Master stood in its place.

Luun slashed.

Only to have her blade skid off a dark shield around the Zombie Master’s upraised arm.

The Zombie Master reached out with a bare hand.

Luun was too fast. She dodged around and laid a dozen cuts all over the Zombie Master’s shiny, black armor.

“Aura of Fear,” the Zombie Master hissed.

Luun stumbled and almost dropped her blade. The fear that coursed through her was overwhelming. She fell back, scrambling on her hands and knees to get as far away from the source of that fear as she could.

“Death Missiles.”

Grinning skulls appeared at his hands and streaked at Luun.

There’s a saying common in many worlds that fear often times lent wings to one’s feet.

Luun was already supremely fast.

She got to her feet and ran.

The skulls trailed after her as she jumped across the platforms.

She reached the dwelling’s wall on the opposite side from her team and cut a sharp turn to one side.

The skulls slammed into the wood and showered her in jagged splinters.

“The outworlder can appear out of zombies and has some kind of fear inducing magic,” Luun gasped into her communicator, “minimum 30 meter range.”

“Mark the target,” Cechon said.

Luun looked back. “I lost him…” she spat. “Apologies, strike leader. I won’t make the same error again.”

More grinning skulls of dark magic struck out of the darkness. This time they impacted on Braal’s forceshield.

Cracks began to form.

A beat.

The skulls struck again. This time from the left, many meters away from the first strike.

“How?” Kala said.

“Translocation via not-dead bodies?” Braal said. “Magic,” she grumbled.

“The smoke from the flames should be obscuring our position,” Cechon said.

More skulls.

Braal winced as the cracks grew larger. “Strike Leader, I can’t hold up to much more unless I reset.”

“All zombies are utterly mine,” the Zombie Master’s voice echoed out of every nearby zombie. “I speak through them. I see through their eyes. I hear through their ears. Their very bodies are mine to do with as I wish. As an example… Corpse Explosion.”

The zombies surrounding Braal’s forceshield exploded in a powerful spray of blood, bone and organs.

Braal screamed as the already weakened shield shattered. It couldn’t stand up to the magical explosions released through the zombies.

The three sentinels were showered in the remains.

Disgusting, but nothing more.

Their armor was impervious to the jagged bones, while the forceshield had taken the brunt of the blast waves.

Braal picked herself up off the floor.

Cechon sent out fire as more zombies shambled closer.

Kala crouched on one knee and scanned the shadows for the Zombie Master.

“We need the shield back!” Cechon said.

“I… can’t. Damaged my connections.” There was no laughter in Braal’s voice.

“All of them or just forceshield?”

“Forceshield is gone, as for the others, I won’t know for certain unless…” Braal shrugged.

“Kala, switch Braal to her choice of power,” Cechon said.

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“Megamorph,” Braal said.

“Right away,” Kala said.

The zombies suddenly stopped moving toward the sentinels.

“I’m intrigued by this, so feel free to take all the time that you need,” the Zombie Master spoke through a dozen zombies at once.

For several minutes the only sounds were that of the growing flames and Luun’s boots cracking wood as she ran in search of the Zombie Master’s position.

“Done,” Kala whispered as he almost fell over if not for Cechon’s steadying hand.

“Braal?”

“Access is… good, strike leader,” Braal said. “I have megamorph.”

“That was it?” the Zombie Master sounded perplexed. “I saw no magic through my Mage Eye… something else then. Is it superpowers? Or technological in nature? Well, I suppose I’ll find out when I dissect your corpses. It’s time to bring this to an end.”

The zombies suddenly spasmed.

A reddish glow seemed to settle over them for an instant.

Quick enough that Cechon wasn’t sure that he had seen it.

The zombies charged.

No longer slow shamblers, they ran and leapt in what was the closest approximation to what living Kinarians were capable of.

Cechon burned the closest ones with an intense gout of fire from his hand, but he couldn’t keep that sort of energy drain up.

“Braal, you’ll have to get us up to the higher platforms,” Cechon said.

“Understood,” Braal said.

Braal’s armor plates ejected from the inner layer, which stretched to accommodate her rapidly growing form.

3 meters. 6 meters. Stopping at just over 9 meters tall.

Now a giant, Braal kicked at the charging zombies, buying a moment so that she could grab Cechon and Kala, one in each hand.

The zombies clawed and bit at her feet and ankles, but the material of her inner suit resisted them.

She stomped and kicked as she moved to the closest upper level platform. She destroyed dozens of zombies with each step.

“I can’t hold this size. This will have to be good enough,” Braal said as she carefully placed Cechon and Kala on the platform. “I’ll deal with the zombies. Even at half this size they won’t be a problem.” She slowly began to shrink.

The zombies threw themselves at Braal.

They might as well have thrown themselves at a mountain.

Braal battered them with ease.

Each swing of a tree trunk sized arm crushed the zombies by the handful.

Each kick scattered them like dried leaves.

Cechon took the momentary reprieve to consider their tactical situation.

Something was bothering him.

Namely, the lack of zombie outworlders, like the two they had destroyed on the bridge.

He had no illusions. The battle would’ve been long over had the remaining eighteen been present from the beginning.

So where were they?

Was the Zombie Master actually being honest when he had said that he wanted an evenly fought battle? Like this was some sort of test or game?

Over confidence.

The Zombie Master didn’t believe that he would lose.

Cechon was beginning to realize that he had made a mistake by bringing his team here. They should’ve left on the boat with the Kinarians.

Their options were dwindling alongside their internal energy and the energy in their PDW’s.

Even now the instruments in his helmet were informing him that Braal was losing millimeters by the second.

The only question was if she could destroy all of the zombies before she shrank back to her normal size.

As if reading Cechon’s thoughts, the Zombie Master appeared in the middle of a tightly packed mass of zombies keeping back behind the horde throwing themselves at Braal.

“I can’t wait to find out how your powers work,” the Zombie Master said.

“You’ll never have that opportunity,” Braal laughed.

She scattered the horde in front of her with a mighty kick and charged.

“I’ve been waiting for the chance to try this one out,” the Zombie Master smiled and whispered something that was swallowed up by the sounds of battle.

What happened next defied anything the sentinels had ever encountered before. Some of them, like Cechon, had been in active duty for nearly two centuries.

The mass of zombies surrounding the Zombie Master dissolved into a disgusting amalgamation of muscles, bones, organs and skin. The goop flowed to the Zombie Master and began to cover his body.

More and more engulfed him until he was lost in a foul mound.

Suddenly, the mound began to take the shape of a man. A crude one with misshapen arms and legs. Along with a grotesque mockery of a head and face.

The shape continued to grow until it was the same size as Braal.

“Strike Leader? What is that?”

“I don’t know, Kala,” Cechon said. “A construct made out of zombie bodies.”

“Magic,” Braal grunted as she warily stepped away.

“I don’t have a clear shot, Braal’s in the way,” Kala said.

“Braal!”

“No need to tell me, strike leader.” Braal moved.

Kala’s PDW sent out a bright beam that tore a hole in the center of the flesh monster.

The Zombie Master’s grinning face was revealed. Blood and gore covered the ghastly visage. The light of madness danced in his eyes.

Cechon had seen its like in the past.

“Close, but you won’t get the same chance twice,” the Zombie Master winked as the hole quickly closed.

Kala fired again at the same spot.

The Zombie Master wasn’t there.

“He can move about inside,” Cechon said.

“My PDW is down to 8% energy,” Kala said.

“Fight me, big girl!” the Zombie Master said through hundreds of mouths as the flesh giant raised its bloody fists.

“I’ll handle him. You have your own concerns,” Braal pointed to the closest wall to the platform Cechon and Kala were standing on.

Zombies were climbing fast.

“We have more problems. I see two outworlders coming from above,” Luun said over the communicator.

Cechon turned his gaze skyward.

Enhanced visual modes painted the outworlders rapidly jumping down platforms in their shiny black armor.

“I won’t even enhance them. A fair fight, as promised,” the Zombie Master’s voice echoed.

“There is nothing fair in combat. Victory or defeat, nothing else,” Cechon said as he drew his PDW and blew one of the zombie outworlders to pieces. The full power blast drained the PDW to near useless, but he wasn’t going to allow the zombie outworlder the opportunity to grow like the ones they had fought on the bridge.

“I’ll take the last one,” Luun said.

She ran up the side of the wall, burning tracks into the wood with the friction of her speed pushed to the limits of what the Armory could provide and what the enhancements to her body could tolerate.

She leapt up on an intercept course to the falling zombie outworlder, who had underestimated her speed, if it was capable of true thought.

Her curved blade sliced at the elbow, where there was no armor plating.

An arm fell and scattered bloody droplets like a fine drizzle.

Luun hit a platform running. She circled back, jumping from platform to platform.

The zombie outworlder had landed on another platform and was turning to face her when a blade cut through his neck.

She was moving so fast that the head stayed on his neck for a split-second before slipping off.

Head fell over a hundred meters to the ground, while the body flopped down to the platform.

Luun stared down at the motionless body with disgust. “Decapitation works,” she said as she turned to survey the battle below. “Moving to supp—”

A heavy weight grappled her from behind, sending her plummeting to the ground.

She had time to register arms and legs wrapped tightly around her body like chains before the rapidly approaching ground was all she had eyes for.

“Kala! Quickly!” Cechon pointed.

Meanwhile, Braal punched the flesh giant in the stomach, reasoning that the Zombie Master was somewhere in the torso. She grabbed a handful of flesh and tore a chunk out even as the flesh giant’s fists battered her head.

Dozens of jagged bones scratched her helmet’s faceplate, while smeared blood threatened to obscure her vision.

Braal stomped a foot down on the flesh giant’s knee.

It bent back the wrong direction, but like soft clay simply reformed in a few moments.

Braal sent a fist rocketing into the flesh giant’s head.

She went to pull it back for another strike, but found it mired inside.

“Curious, you seem to be shrinking by the second,” the Zombie Master said.

Braal knew the words were truth.

She looked and listened.

Luun was plummeting to the ground.

A horde of zombies surround Cechon and Kala and were close to reaching them.

Time was running out.

Definitely for her, but maybe not for the rest of her tetrastrike.

Instead of continuing her efforts to pull away she embraced the disgusting flesh giant.

All sentinels were equipped with a last resort to prevent their precious secrets from falling into others’ hands.

Braal had already initiated the countdown.

“You control them?” Braal said to the Zombie Master.

“What are you doing?” A tinge of concern crept into the Zombie Master’s voice.

“You must sustain them somehow. What happens when you can’t do that anymore?” Braal looked to her team. “The Great Intellect must know of what happened here. Of what we faced. It’s been an honor serving under you, Strike Leader.”

The countdown hit zero in Braal’s head.