Rebirth of the Undead King: Book 2

by Ink Bamboo

  “There’s a confusion effect attached to that magical formation,” explained Amro. “I simply strengthened it while you were distracted fighting. Forgive me, but none of them would even realize it if you were to fall dead.”

  “Damn it!” yelled Alexandra, flashing away in an attempt to escape.

  “There’s no way I’ll allow that,” mocked Amro, disappearing from where he was to block her path of retreat. “A fragment of your consciousness is not enough to stop me or my plans. Fight if you wish to prove me wrong. This time, however, it’s only you and me.”

  Without any alternative, Alexandra raised her sword, begrudgingly accepting that she would have to confront her old comrade for a chance to withdraw. She had no other way to escape, at least not with the current state of her body. Leaving her Chosen behind was not an option. Separating her soul from it would leave her vulnerable to all of Amro’s attacks. Even if she was only a fragment of her true self, she could not risk such a thing. She understood very well what Amro was capable of doing to her true body if only a part of her essence landed in his hands.

  Frustration started clouding her mind, for hindsight allowed her to see every single thing she could have done differently. Small choices that could have changed the flow of events. Amongst them was her carelessness. Sure of her previous victory against Amro, she had not even considered the possibility of him being alive. At best, she thought the trace of his aura was caused by a legacy or even an illegitimate descendant.

  Thus, she couldn’t help but wonder, Was this fate?

  “So, are you not coming?” taunted Amro, breaking her away from her thoughts. “I thought your innermost desire was to see me dead.”

  “No,” answered Alexandra, lowering the arm in which she held her weapon. “I will accomplish nothing by fighting you as I am. At best, I’ll give you some injuries, but even that won’t be enough.”

  “What then, do you propose?” asked Amro, his interest piqued by the unexpected decision of his opponent.

  “A time-out,” answered Alexandra, her essence vanishing as the body of her host starting to burn with golden flames. “I might not be able to inform the pantheon, but that doesn’t mean I’m out of options. I’ll just have to make it so they look into it themselves.”

  “Wise choice,” said Amro, watching as she corroded a fragment of her soul into nothingness. “I can respect your courage. Even if you are only a piece of your true self, this move of yours will take at the very least a decade to heal. You are bound to garner everyone’s attention this way.”

  “Why aren’t you stopping me then?” asked Alexandra, her voice gradually fading.

  “Because there is no need to,” insisted Amro. “I already told you, there’s no way you will be able to stop my plans in time. Even if you use this method to call the attention of the other gods, it will be too late by the time they piece the clues together.”

  “As arrogant as always,” scoffed Alexandra. “I hope you don’t come to regret it.”

  “I have never regretted my choices,” said Amro. “Living your life with determination is the first path to a meaningful death.”

  *Thud.*

  Dropping to the ground, Erin’s body returned to its former state. No longer covered by the golden-white robes made from divine essence, even the grievous wound on her chest started to resurface. Amro could tell she wouldn’t live for long. Combined with the injuries she had sustained while fighting Argent, there was no way to heal her in time.

  “What a shame,” said Amro, looking at the young Chosen coughing up blood on the ground. “Her potential is almost as good as the boy’s. She would have made a fine addition to his future troops.”

  “Now then,” he continued, approaching the limbless body of the king. “Do you mind if we have a conversation?”

  ✽✽✽

  Magnus looked through the battlefield, an odd sense of discomfort filling his senses. For the past few minutes, he had been feeling like everything was wrong. Muddled, like reality itself had become a mirage.

  Looking towards his opponents, however, told him he had no time to waste on such thoughts. The men he was facing were no easy targets. Weak as they might be, their coordination proved to be a powerful asset in combat. Even more so when they were fully willing to risk their lives with every attack they delivered. Not even after wearing them down could he risk easing his guard.

  Fortunately, he had two ‘allies’ during this fight. Arkus and the cardinal. One was his former rival, a man with courage and values that matched his own. The other was the opposite. A man who incarnated everything he detested. For now, however, they had the same goal. A goal that would allow to save his granddaughter.

  Working together, they had managed to stop the apostles from running rampant, going as far as to kill four of them, partially restraining the remaining two by consistently targeting their limbs.

  “How much longer do you plan to resist?” asked Arkus, his sword pointing towards the ground. Blood dripped from the tip at the rhythm of his breath, slowly starting to get traction. “At this rate, you will all die. Do you not care for your own lives or those of the ones you’ve sacrificed?”

  “Do you forget who we are?” asked one of the apostles. “We’re followers of death. Everything we do can end only in one way.”

  “You call yourselves that,” stated Magnus, his consciousness one step away from falling dark. “But it doesn’t mean you are. Even now, you can step away and make a different choice.”

  “Nothing gives you the right to define us,” said the other apostle. “We’ve fought for this. The path of death is what we have given our lives for.”

  “Listen to them,” said the cardinal. “They want to die. Let’s just give it to them so we can get back to our own business.”

  Magnus prepared to answer back, even now trying to suppress his desires to murder the cardinal. However, Arkus’s hand stopped him from doing so. The man wasn’t willing to waste any more of his time dealing with their opponents, much less calming down his allies. Something he let them know by taking the apostles’ sentence into his own hands. “Death it is.”

  Running towards the apostles, Arkus raised his sword one last time. And with it, a battle-cry. A roar complaining to the heavens for the lives his kingdom had lost.

  Not long after came a simple strike. A single step accompanied by an unrefined horizontal slash towards his left. The most basic move Arkus had practiced during the course of his lifetime. One that left no room for error.

  *Slash!*

  Following the passing of his weapon, both of the apostles heads were separated from their bodies. Thus, two new individuals were added to the list of casualties. Their names forever forgotten because of the side they had chosen to take.

  Perhaps that was a kindness, for deep within them, that’s what they really craved. Death. The liberating release of reaching one’s own end.

  “It’s over,” said Arkus, turning around to face his two temporary ‘allies’. “It’s finally over. I can only hope you can honor your side of the deal.”

  “We will,” confirmed the cardinal, turning to look to his surroundings. Most of the church’s troops had already been killed in combat, only a few overzealous ones retaining their lives. This wasn’t a state in which they could go to war. For now, they would need to lick their wounds. Their original plan would have to wait.

  Feeling at ease, the cardinal kept looking around, trusting his goddess would have been equally capable of dealing with her opponent. Sacrificing a Chosen had been a small price to pay for this victory. As long as he could take information about the magic inscribed in the city, however, the church’s headquarters would surely reward his efforts.

  Unfortunately, as time kept ticking, his nerves started to rise. He couldn’t see her anywhere. Erin, the avatar of his goddess was nowhere to be found.

  “Where is she?” he finally asked, turning to look towards Magnus. If someone knew where she was at any given time, it was the man who was
willing to die for her at a moment’s notice.

  The old mage disappointed him, however. Not paying him the slightest of attention, Magnus sighed, falling to the ground on his behind. He was tired, exhausted in fact. Even now, he was actively fighting to prevent his consciousness from being dragged from his body. If not for his need to see everything through to the end, he would have already accepted the embrace of deep slumber.

  “I asked you where is she?” repeated the cardinal, this time loud enough to break Magnus from his reverie. “Our go — Erin, where is she?”

  Hearing the familiar name, Magnus found part of his alertness restored. Immediately, he started scanning the city, a need to answer the same question echoing in his mind. But just before he managed to focus, someone broke his concentration. The same man who had requested it just a moment ago.

  “Agh!”

  Covered in golden flames, the cardinal fell to the ground. His screams echoed against the partially destroyed buildings, acutely describing a pain that burned not in the nerves of his flesh, but in the depths of his soul. Much like the cries of a child or the weeps of a mother, his reaction was something that was beyond description.

  But even before Magnus could take action or come an explanation, others followed.

  The priests, the paladins. Every surviving member of the clergy fell to the ground, following after the cardinal in his tormenting symphony of pain. One after another, their bodies lit up with the same golden flames, a phenomena Magnus remembered from several years before.

  It was during the dusk of the gods, a day many of the heavenly beings had stopped responding. Back then, several members of the clergy had been caught in a much too similar phenomena. After years of research, scholars and pursuers of the forbidden had all reached the same conclusion. Their death was caused by having their souls forcefully torn apart.

  Remembering this, Magnus’s mind immediately ran through a thousand different conjectures, eventually settling on the answer his instincts provided.

  Erin.

  Something had happened to her.

  Chapter 31

  Rise.

  Back in Amro’s soul domain, Zaros was busy cutting his way past a few unintended targets. The prince’s guards had reacted poorly upon the man’s death. Angry and confused, they had become desperate to take revenge against the one responsible for killing him. Amro’s recreation of reality was thorough enough to include their reactions as part of his play. One entirely designed to separate Zaros from the truth.

  After dealing with the last of the guards, Zaros went into hiding, merging once again with the troops of undead. Busy fighting against the mind-controlled citizens of the kingdom, no one else had managed to notice a hint of his actions. Something he felt fortunate about. Especially so since he still had one target left — The King.

  For as much as the prince was responsible for ideating the plan, his father was to blame for its execution. Now, having both of them in the same place, Zaros refused to leave things as they were. They needed to share the fate of his villagers if he was ever to fulfill his promise. Only by bringing about their end with his own two hands would he be able to close this chapter of his life.

  Unfortunately, the king’s current whereabouts were about to make this considerably harder.

  He was not alone. No, he was surrounded by dozens of individuals covered in armor, fighting a young girl covered in golden white robes. Their clashes brought about flashes of golden light and darkness, constantly leaving destruction in their wake.

  After a few moments of lurking behind them, Zaros remembered the girl. He had seen her once before in the midst of the rebel camp. Young and lonely, her eyes still conveyed the same emptiness as before. It was a gaze that reminded him much of his own.

  “You can’t defeat her,” said Amro. As much as he was willing to sugarcoat part of this false reality for Zaros, there were some things he wasn’t willing to do. Giving the boy a false sense of his own abilities was first amongst them. “Not her nor the man she’s fighting.”

  “I know,” answered Zaros. The projection of their power was enough to warn him about the dangers of confronting either one of them one-on-one. By all measures, he was not their match.

  This was something Amro had made sure to recreate to the finest of details, for this part of the truth was something the boy needed to see with his own two eyes. Argent and Alexandra were individuals Zaros would eventually learn about on his own. The events of this day were certainly bound to spread far and wide. Intentionally hiding anything about them from the boy would most certainly be a mistake. One that could eventually come back to bite him.

  *Crash!*

  Their battle continued, and for a long while, Zaros observed them with care. He could only reach a compromise with himself after confirming there was no way of achieving a victory on his own. “Can I trust you to do it?” he asked. “Would you do this one last favor for me?”

  Surprised, Amro took a moment to scan through the thoughts of his host, finally understanding what he meant. “You’ve grown,” he eventually said. “You’re no longer the same naïve young boy. I hope I can someday reciprocate your trust.”

  “Go,” said Zaros, entrusting this task to Amro. “I didn’t live through hell in your soul domain to remain as stubborn as I was. We’re partners. If you are the one who deals with the target of my hatred, then I can live with that fact.”

  “What about the girl?” asked Amro. Zaros might have not known about it at this time, but her identity was far more troublesome than that of a simple Chosen. He wanted to see up to what point it was that his host was willing to compromise. Something he would make sure to follow.

  “I don’t know,” said Zaros. “There’s something different and dangerous about her. I’ll leave it to your discretion.”

  I might have underestimated you, thought Amro, realizing he might have been too dismissive of his host. Perhaps I’ve grown too callous. This time, I’ll concede.

  “Fine,” said Amro, assuming control of Zaros’s body in his simulation of reality. It was time to gradually expose his host to some of the truth. “You might hear some things when I fight them, and you might see me make some choices you don’t agree with. When the time comes, I hope you’re ready for what they entail.”

  “I will be,” said Zaros. “Do as you see fit.”

  ✽✽✽

  Towering over the limbless body of the king, Amro’s gaze behaved like a pair of daggers, carefully dissecting every detail of the man before him. Even if he was a puppet, part of his controller’s soul had been infused into his, letting most of his demeanors reflect the true nature of the man behind him. A man Amro had never approved as the leader of his church, and therefore, a man who had overextended his authority by naming himself the pope.

  Only after being satisfied with his analysis did Amro bother breaking their silence, finally easing the pressure he was exerting to a point where Argent was able to speak. Weakened by his fight with Alexandra, he wouldn’t have been able to do so otherwise.

  “Who gave you permission to claim my church as your own?” asked Amro. Straight to the point, he wanted to hear Argent’s goals from his own mouth.

  “My lord,” said Argent, carefully trying to show a respectful facade. “I was appointed by the survivors of your church after that accursed day.”

  “What day?” asked Amro.

  “The day you went silent, my lord.”

  Amro thought about it for an instant, recalling the day when the other gods had invaded his domain. Back then, his last order to his followers included a request to sacrifice those who were willing. Through the essence released upon their deaths, Amro had been able to replenish part of his strength, enough to eliminate an even greater number of the gods invading his realm.

  “I see,” said Amro, still maintaining his dominating demeanor. It made sense for his church to have experienced a restructuring after the events of that day. “What about your predecessor?”

  “Dead
, my lord.”

  “And the vaults?”

  “Open, my lord.”

  Short and concise, Argent kept answering Amro’s questions one by one. He knew he had to keep it brief, for the less he spoke, the better his chances were of getting away with hiding his true intentions. A problem that stemmed from his lack of critical information. Information that included the true state of Amro’s condition, for example.

  Whether the boy before him was an avatar or the real thing inhabiting inside a mortal’s body could very well determine the future of their interactions. If the first case was true, then it meant that his god was in the process of healing, still resting in the upper realms. Inhabiting a mortal, on the other hand, would imply he had been forced to run away from his domain. Both situations had different implications, and therefore, different paths available to him.

  Being ignorant of the truth, however, forced him to assume the worse, leaving him with no option but to lower his head.

  On his side, Amro remained indifferent about Argent’s inner turmoil, limiting himself to nodding every time he received valuable information. He wasn’t foolish enough to believe everything he was being told, but even lies were significant in their own way. At the end of it all, he simply raised his hand, smiling as he spoke his final verdict.

  “Very well,” he said. “I apologize for having interrupted your duel. I had pending issues with her, you see. And those needed to be taken care off, regardless of pride and honor. I’ll make it up for you somehow in the future.”

  “No need,” said Argent, shaking his head while he rested against the ground. During the duel, he had felt his connection with his body and the magic of the formation in the city walls faltering, something that had allowed Alexandra to press her advantage. It could be said it was the main reason for his defeat. Facing someone whom he could not see through, however, gave him no room for complaints.