by J M Hamm
It was convenient that I just gained an ability that allowed me to replenish stamina in battle. I still found it odd, but I wouldn’t let my unease stop me from exploiting the ability to its fullest.
My thoughts were interrupted as the Peacekeepers began to slow. We were only a few hundred yards away from the transport at this point, and Boss Lady had come to a halt. She held a closed fist above her left shoulder as a signal to the others.
In the same moment, the charging soldiers stopped and fell to one knee. Rifles jumped to the ready with the heavy clang of metal on metal. The change in position was almost instantaneous and was carried out with it a practiced grace.
I planted my feet and skid to a halt with decidedly less grace. I was unsure what to do so I began to create large, hexagonal shields. A thin membrane was beginning to take form when Boss Lady stopped me by holding out an open palm and shaking her head in disapproval. As soon as my shields were dismissed, she threw three small orbs about fifty yards in front of us. She then repeated the action behind and to each side of us. As soon as the last grenade left her hand she turned and made eye contact before giving me a quick nod.
Everything gained a slight red haze as my shields solidified around us. I looked forward, taking a deep, desperate breath. Before I could fill my lungs again, the air was knocked out of me by what felt like a train driving through my chest.
Pillars of fire and light rose up into the air as multiple shockwaves converged around me, sending tremors through me that shook my bones. My shields did little to dampen the force, but it was over quickly. I fell to one knee, as I struggled to draw breath. Air came in short, fitful gasps that felt like hot needles tearing through my lungs.
Nothing moved. The only sound was the drumming of my own heart. The only things I could see were bright specks and swimming lines of light. I gently rubbed my eyes, but it did little to help. The quiet stillness seemed to drag on forever, and I could feel the pre-fight fear beginning to grip me. The sweat running down the back of my neck turned cold.
I turned my head, my eyes darting back and forth feverously. I envied the calm control of the women around me. They remained unmoving as they gazed into the quickly darkening fog that surrounded us.
Soon, shifting shadows filled the mist once more. Clacks rang out as rifles were pulled against armor, but no one fired. Boss Lady stood up, a closed fist held above her head with her rifle down at her side.
My heart raced, every instinct in me cried out to fight. I had to either destroy the danger around me or flee. I needed to act, and I really only had one ability that would be helpful.
I focused on slowing my breathing as I waited for the fight to begin. It calmed me, if only slightly. The calmer I was and the more clearly I held the image, the more powerful the construct would be once conjured. Luckily for my chaotic mind, a sharpened pole is one of the most basic forms imaginable.
As the shadows began moving towards us, Boss Lady kept her arm upraised. The shadows were beginning to take form and were slowly moving forward. I noticed them take a strange, tilting gait — a half step that was almost falling, followed by a short lunge. It created an unnerving two-beat rhythm.
Before I could fully make out what the creatures were, Boss Lady threw her hand down and drew her rifle up to her shoulder. The Peacekeepers responded with an unending barrage of bullets. I maintained my shields, while also conjuring a rain made of dozens of fencepost sized spikes. After a volley, I’d release control of the energy, allowing each projectile to slowly unravel to free up my focus for the next round.
I repeated this process several times before I finally saw what I was fighting. One of my spikes impaled the head of a creature while a hail of gunfire cut through its torso and limbs. As it fell to the ground there was no blood, instead a pile of splintered bones rolled forward.
The bones might have been from a goblin, or even human. The forms they had been shaped into were not. As I looked up from the pile of loose bones at my feet, several more of these creatures became visible. What I saw resembled shambling mounds of bones crafted into only the barest hint of a humanoid form. They were not skeletal, merely made from bones.
Every part of these golems was created from tightly packed bone, with no regard for original function. One creature had a pile of skulls making up its chest, while its head was made of a rib cage and a broken pelvis. It ambled forward on thick legs of coiled bone that moved with jointless dexterity like powerful, supple worms. One hand was like a massive club, and the other ended in a long, thin blade made from a sharpened femur.
I redoubled my efforts, straining my focus as I continued to conjure lances of chaotic energy. In my shock my focus slipped and a wave of backlash washed over me, driving me to my knees and setting my ears ringing. Still, I continued.
Spears of energy littered the field of battle and countless bullets shattered bone. The golems would continue to move forward despite broken bodies and shattered limbs. Even destroying the head was not enough. One such creature was slowly approaching when I shattered its head and tore off both legs with a hail of spikes. Despite these injuries, it continued to drag itself forward with barrel-thick arms made of mismatched bone.
Boss Lady switched positions, taking the shield directly in front of me. She dispatched the crawling bone golem with a single shot using some form of explosive round, before taking out three more of the creatures in less than a second. When she was finished, she turned towards me, a cloud of gun smoke clinging to her figure.
As I looked up at her I saw her expression fall as her gaze became far away. She reached out and grasped my shoulder with a strong, long-fingered hand and drew me towards her. I looked up towards her eyes, violet surrounded by flecks of gold. She looked down at me with a predatory stare. Unlike most Peacekeepers her face was smooth. Rather than bumps and ridges, she had a group of three small scales at the corner of each eye and in a thin line around her jaw.
She barked an order at me in a gravelly voice and physically moved me so that I was looking in the opposite direction. There I saw the silhouette of two massive columns growing into the sky. They twisted and swayed like grass blown by a gentle wind. My first thought was that someone must have dropped some magic beans.
I almost couldn’t control my laughter, even surrounded by a literal field of bones.
That fantasy was quickly broken when the twisting vines began to fall towards me. As they came crashing down, I threw up another layer of shields and directed everything I had left into a volley of spikes. Boss Lady’s rifle began to shorten as its barrel widened; within moments she was firing grenades towards the twin, monstrous limbs. Each shot hit its target with a thump and a thin sheet of flames that clung and began to spread across the moving pillars.
The remaining soldiers were directing their fire towards the pillars as well, ignoring the shambling bone golems that were still advancing on our position. Grenades, automatic fire, and heavy shots that shook the air with the force of a cannon — none of these stopped the speeding descent. The sky grew dark as the shadow enveloped us completely.
The pillars became fully visible in the seconds before their imposing bulk swallowed us completely. Each was a pale white tentacle made of tightly packed bone that writhed and spun like millions of maggots crawling over each other. The bones clinked together producing an ear-splitting rattle.
The world went dark.
Chapter Fifty-five: Our Lady, Who Art in Hell
“Wake up, Gussy Gus.”
The voice was low and lilting; it was feminine and seeped in mirth and half-stifled laughter. It was as if the words were spoken during the discovery of some great delight, like a greeting between two friends long parted. I had the sense, however, that this amusement was born of malice rather than joy.
I tried to look around to find the speaker, but I couldn’t move. I was surrounded by something heavy that pressed down on me from every side. The weight shifted as I tried to move, causing the pressure to bear down on me all the ha
rder. As my body struggled, my mind reeled at the smell of rot mixed with chalk that permeated my tomb. My eyes saw only black.
I was not truly blind, however. I could sense a thick cloud of energy, made of a combination of the familiar red-black eldritch and the strange death-flavored energy. It had sunk into everything around me. It hung over the battlefield like a heavy cloud, seeking to drown everything beneath it.
At the center of that cloud was a beacon of energy too radiant to look at directly. It was as beautiful and intense as the sun, but consumed life rather than sustained it. I could feel small, pulsing channels connecting it to every creature in the area, alive or dead.
I was no exception.
I pulled back, using my senses to map the contours of the objects closest to me. I seemed to have been buried beneath a large pile of rubble. It was made of small, brittle objects that had broken into irregularly sized pebbles and long, jagged shards. I searched for Boss Lady and her squad beneath the rubble, but they couldn’t be found.
“Fisher!” I yelled more than once, but no response came. It seemed I was still alone in my own head.
“I know you can hear me, you fucking bird!” The only answer was silence, and an increase in the weight that bore down on me.
The weight and darkness began to erode my will. Flashing system updates failed to illuminate the darkness, instead warning me that I was injured and that the drain on my stamina had increased in speed. I battled an urge to give in, to just fall asleep and never awake. What was left to save? There was nothing that could be done, best to sleep …
No, not yet.
I pushed aside my loneliness and despair and did what I do best — I lashed out blindly and violently at everything I could touch.
My right arm narrowed and elongated into a whip ending in five razor-sharp claws. I thrashed and spun, using the weaponized arm to crush the rubble into a fine powder. As I created more room for the limb to maneuver, I slowly inched it toward the surface.
At the same time, I created a skintight barrier around myself and slowly began pushing it outwards. The weight was intense, and it took all my focus, but the pressure on my body slowly lessened as the shield expanded. This gave me room to move and allowed me to strike with more leverage as I tried to dig myself upwards toward the unknown sky. Perhaps, I would have been better off hiding in my tomb.
Eventually, my clawed hand broke through to the surface and I saw light. It split and scattered as it reflected off dust, breaking through the dark with visible lines of alternating greys and red.
I worked to widen the tunnel, and several small objects rolled towards me, creating clinking echoes. As one came to rest beside my face, I recognized it, and with that realization so too did I understand the nature of my surroundings.
I reached over and picked up the small, chipped knuckle bone. I held it in front of my face, before focusing on the dome of white and yellow that hung above me. It was bone; all of it a mountain of skeletal remains. Most were broken and crushed, but under the pale red illumination they became recognizable. Half-intact skulls were wedged between cracked ribs and shattered femurs. The ridges of a severed spine could be seen under the crushed remains of an ulna and other bones too small and damaged to identify.
To be surrounded by that much death made we wonder in awe at the power of whatever had caused it. It reminded me of the fragility of my own life. Rather than be horrified, however, I mostly just felt unclean.
I had an urgent desire to be free of it, and to scrub away the rot and death. Despite each bone being fleshless and dry, I felt as if I were covered in a layer of slimy filth. I retched silently, but the action only served to remind me of how long it had been since I had eaten.
I stuck out with a strength born from blind panic. I continued my efforts until the tunnel was just barely wide enough for me to slide through, each inch slowly and painfully gained. My barrier kept my passage open until I broke through the surface, after which the tunnel collapsed inward while expelling a cloud of white dust.
I breathed in large ragged gulps. The air was sweet as it filled my lungs, and cool as it gently brushed my face. I closed my eyes, allowing myself a brief moment of blissful denial before standing to survey my surroundings.
I stood on a small mound amid a field littered with desiccated corpses, and sun-bleached bone. What had felt like a mountain as I clawed and scraped my way free, was no more than a half-dozen yards tall. Dozens of similarly sized piles were visible, and many more existed beyond the thick fog that limited my range of sight.
Above me, a glowing orb of red and black dominated the sky. It formed connections to everything within sight, slowly draining the living and empowering the dead. I could see this connection as forking channels, like black lightning frozen in time.
I was being drained as well, which just meant I needed to find something to kill. Re-kill? Hopefully, the Herald of War feat wouldn’t make a distinction between killing and re-killing. It was quite considerate of the budding death goddess to provide me with handy arrows pointing towards everything in my immediate area, alive or dead.
I leaped from the mound of bones, sliding down an incline while leaving a trail of crushed ivory behind me. There was no solid ground to land on, just a thin layer of remains to crush under my boot. I ran across this field of white, aiming in the direction a particularly dense group of the undead. I was unsure, as it was hard to tell the difference, but there seemed to be a small group of the living in the area as well.
As I ran forward, the large sphere only grew larger. I seemed to be aiming for a point directly below its center. The field of bones grew thicker, no longer could small glimpses of brown earth and blackened grass be seen between cracks and gaps.
The air was full of mist, gentling the deathly imagery though obscuration. To uncareful eyes, I might have been running through snow-capped hills. It even crunched under my feet, much like the snow I remembered from an almost forgotten Christmas my family had spent in Vermont.
Once I approached the area under the sphere, I noticed a change. The bones were vibrating and slowly sliding across the ground, and a deep rumbling could be heard within each mound. Some of the piles seemed to be growing upwards as if fed from some underground source.
“That’s it,” I yelled. “There is no way I need to be here.”
I came to a stop, realizing for the first time that I was charging into a graveyard that was likely to be my own. My entire body shook. Even my eyes began to water, but I sighed and continued forward. I wouldn’t call it bravery, just a stubborn refusal to change course — I was Ahab chasing my whale. I was determined to find some meaning, save some corner of a world that had been changed irreparably.
These sound like likely reasons, but the truth was I was terrified and wanted to turn back. I cried and shouted at myself. I fought, but like an addict watching the needle slowly plunge into his vein I felt powerless to stop my relentless charge towards death.
My pace became slow and stuttered.
I was capable of incredible speeds, but the bones made for unsure footing and I was constantly making turns to avoid the mounds that seemed to be growing larger and more frequent the further I ran. Within a few minutes, however, I rounded a hill and came face to face with an army of bone golems.
They were a wave that had surrounded a small island. I could see the top of a Peacekeeper transport. Golems constantly crashed into its sides, their smashed bodies adding to the growing pile that threatened to consume the vehicle.
Boss Lady had somehow found her way here and was fighting alongside two of her squad. The rest were missing, or worse. An unmoving form lay at her feet, a blue-scaled face atop a mass of black armor.
“Catayla,” I yelled.
“Boss La … I mean, fuck. Hey you!” I stammered over what to call Boss Lady but decided the best course of action was to get her attention the old-fashioned way. Violence, lots of it.
I launched myself forward, the eldritch energy that served as my p
rosthetic arm turned into a whip-like blade that was carving through reanimated bone with ease. As I moved, the crowd filled in behind me — striking at my unguarded back. Sharp jaws made from shattered ribs latched onto my left knee and dragged me to the ground.
I once more felt entombed, but I was saved as a large blast of fire and concussive force struck both me and my attackers. Bone crumbled, but I was left mostly untouched — other than a twinge in my left knee and a burning pain that ran up my spine and down my left arm.
The pain should have been crippling, but I was no longer soft enough to let it stop me. When this whole thing was over, I’d sleep for a few days — make that a few weeks. Right now I needed to keep moving.
Rather than continue to fight my way through the horde of reanimated bone, I gathered as much energy as I could stand into the muscles and ligaments in my legs. They shortened and bunched as the power slowly grew, and then I leaped.
I whooped in joy as I soared above the battle, but I was not aiming forward. Instead I launched myself upwards, to get as much height as possible. I was nearly fifty feet above the ground, when I felt my momentum slow. Right at the moment where I hung in balance at the top of my jump, that moment of almost complete weightlessness, I reached out.
My right hand shot downward, trailing behind it a long cord of sinewy, black flesh. Two wings grew out from my back, reaching their maximum length at the same moment my clawed and twisted hand buried itself in the steel hull of the massive Peacekeeper vehicle.
I glided above the dead, my ropelike arm slowly reeling me in towards the befuddled Peacekeepers. Boss Lady stared up at me, mouth agape, but was not taken by surprise when a skeletal hand grasped her ankle. Without even looking, she struck downwards with the butt of her rifle. Bone shattered and exploded into fine dust.
I was within a few yards of the transport when I released my artificial wings, they bubbled and turned into ash and large, twisting funnels of mist. My feet hit steel with a thud, as my hand came free of the tank — leaving behind a large bloom of twisted steel in the hull of the vehicle.