by Pirateaba
They held the line. Even as the undead ran up the hill, the Workers met them, calmly ganging up on the individual undead in twos and threes. The Antinium had no sense of fair play, and the undead were hard pressed to defend themselves against three sets of four hands stabbing at once.
A ghoul rushed past two Antinium and ran towards Knight. The Antinium raised his sword, but a skeleton leapt past him and knifed the ghoul in the chest. Toren and the ghoul fell, stabbing and biting at each other.
Erin spun. She lifted a pot and hurled it. A zombie staggered backwards. She had—she had quite a few pots and pans she’d seized from her kitchen, but she was running out. She’d hurled them into the crowd, trusting to her [Unerring Throw] skill.
Now the undead were falling, retreating. Erin stared as zombies began turning, running backwards. Was it a feint? Were more undead coming? She looked around wildly, searching for movement in the darkness.
No. No more undead were coming for the moment—they were all dead. Toren pulled himself away from the ghoul, reclaiming an arm as the ghoul jerked once and then lay still.
How many horrors had died here? A hundred? Two hundred? It felt like a thousand.
“Thirty four.”
Knight said it calmly as a skeleton fell down, skull cracked open from one of Erin’s frying pans. She stared at the Worker as silence fell and the last corpse stopped twitching.
“What?”
“We have killed thirty four of the undead. The rest have retreated. They will return in greater numbers, I believe.”
Erin stared at Knight as the Antinium calmly cleaned gore off of his sword. Around her, the Workers were helping each other to their feet, carrying the bodies down, and…digging?
Yes, the uninjured Workers were digging in the ground. Dirt flew into the air as they dug a long, wide trench around the inn. They were building a moat. A moat.
“What’s happening? What is all this?”
Erin stared at the dead, at the Workers, and at Knight. She felt dizzy; sick. And not just from the carnage. Just a few moments ago she’d been waiting for Rags, and now there were Workers with names and the living dead.
And the smell. Erin threw up a little in her mouth but refused to let her stomach heave anything else up.
Knight bowed his head to Erin again. He was like Pawn only—different. Physically they were the same, but even though they had the same voice, the same body, and both had named themselves after chess pieces, he was different. Erin couldn’t explain why or how. She just knew.
“The city of Liscor and the surrounding area is under attack, Erin Solstice. A horde of the undead emerged from the Ruins and besieged the city around an hour ago.”
Erin stared in horror at Knight. She fought to make her mouth work.
“The ruins? Undead? You mean they came from there? Did something set them—”
Her heart skipped a beat and her stomach lurched.
“Oh no. The Horns of Hammerad. They went in there. Are they…?”
Knight shook his head.
“Several adventurers reached the city alive. I do not know any more than that.”
Erin seized Knight by the shoulder, ignoring the fluids that coated his carapace.
“Any Minotaurs? Anyone with pointy ears? An Elf? Half-elf, I mean.”
Again, he shook his head.
“No such adventurers were seen. The only ones who survived were humans. A…captain of one of the teams. A woman wearing silver armor. And a few other humans. No one else.”
Erin stared at Knight, wide-eyed. Her thoughts melded together and then shut down. Knight nodded his head at her.
“I am sorry.”
She did throw up, then. Erin bent down and hurled up her lunch and dinner. She felt a cool hand on her neck, steadying her, and as she gasped and cried, Knight helped her back up.
It took several minutes for Erin to regain…control of herself. She was crying, talking incoherently, clutching Knight’s hand in a death grip as Toren brought her some water. She drank it, spat, threw up, drank some more, and finally stopped.
She didn’t stop panicking. She didn’t stop the agony in her heart or the terrible loss. But she put it inside her for a while to focus on the now. Erin looked at Knight as the Antinium studied the trench which was only getting deeper around her inn.
“What’s happening? How many zombies are in the city?”
He paused, and another Worker—Calabrian volunteered the details.
“The fighting was intensifying as we left. Over four hundred undead creatures have attacked Liscor, and the Watch fights them in the streets.”
Four hundred. Erin tried to remember how many guards she’d seen at the gates, or patrolling through the city. There were so many of them, but four hundred? More than that?
She turned to Knight.
“Should we—I mean, can we help them? How bad is it?”
He shook his head and gestured to her inn.
“Going out would not be wise. The undead fill the grasslands and will attack anything living. They have come here and will attack again, soon. We are here to protect you, but you must stay here.”
Erin stared at him in horror. She stammered and her voice cracked.
“Me? But—I’m just one person. Why me?”
He returned her gaze seriously, black, faceted eyes intent on her face.
“You are alive. That is all the reason they need.”
“And they’re out there? Regrouping?”
“Yes. Can you see them?”
He pointed, and Erin looked out. There was little light anywhere—the stars and moon were the only sources out here, but her eyes had grown accustomed to the night. She looked and the sight made her stomach tighten with fear.
Dark shapes moving in the moonlight. They filled the plains, moving slowly, a cluster of shapes surrounding something white that was approaching the inn.
“Oh gods. There are thousands of them.”
“Hundreds. They move towards us.”
Knight’s words sent a chill down Erin’s spine. She opened her mouth to say something, and then froze.
“Hold on. What’s that thing in the distance?”
Erin squinted. It was the white mass the undead were surrounding. At first she thought it was just a bunch of them moving together, but it was something else. It was far away, but coming…closer?
“Is it…a giant slug?”
—-
The Watch of Liscor fell back, fighting, loosing arrows into the undead crowd, casting spells. Fighting, retreating.
Dying.
They were outnumbered and fighting across a wider and wider area. The gates had let in the undead like a virus. And so long as they had been contained to the first few streets, the battle had been even, perhaps even in the defender’s favor.
But with Skinner’s arrival breaking their ranks and the ceaseless influx of the dead, the streets had been overrun. And more and more dead had surged down alleyways, forcing Zevara to pull her warriors back further and further or become surrounded. And as they did, the scope of the battle extended, until dozens of streets were locked in desperate combat, stretching thin numbers even further.
A sign of how the battle was going lay with the civilians. They were being evacuated to the southern section of the city, the children and those unable to fight, that was. Everyone else was fighting. Those with class levels and even those without.
They fought, Drakes and Gnolls and the few Humans, healing themselves with potions, making the enemy pay for each step with blood. But the dead were bloodless. And they just kept coming.
Zevara and twenty guardsmen fought down one of the main streets, trying to stem the flow of the dead. They weren’t enough, not for such a wide passage. But overturned wagons had barricaded part of the street and created a kill zone.
The problem was that the dead were coming over the roofs, scaling walls, running through alleys. Zevara had archers shooting down as many as possible, but the defenders would still have
been quickly overrun were it not for the human and Drake fighting at the front.
Pisces pointed and another ghoul jerked. Beneath his rotted skin, his spine twisted and broke, and the undead collapsed soundlessly. The [Necromancer] turned and more undead fell down as if their strings had been cut. He had accounted for over half of the fallen dead lying in piles on the street. The other half was due to Relc.
The Drake stood in the center of the undead mob, spear spinning around him too quick to follow. He stuck a zombie through its head with the shaft of his spear, twirled the butt up to shatter a skeleton’s jaw, ducked another skeleton, punched a ghoul hard enough to break its ribs, and then beheaded a zombie with a wicked cut from the tip of his spear.
Zevara cut down a skeleton and gasped as it cut her shallowly across one arm as it fell. She stabbed it until the lights in its eyes faded and saw the massive creature approaching Relc from behind.
“Relc!”
The Senior Guardsman spun around and hurled his spear. The Crypt Lord staggered back, the spear lodged deep within its chest. Relc ran forwards and seized the shaft of the spear. With a roar he ripped it back out, kicking the giant undead backwards as he did. The Crypt Lord fell on its back and Relc stabbed downwards, spear blurring until the bloated creature lay still.
He staggered back, and ran back towards the barricade as the undead tried to encircle him. The guardsmen opened up a small gap for him to squeeze through, and then he was beside Zevara as they pushed the dead back.
“Damn.”
Relc coughed and swore as Zevara moved back with him. His scales were covered in black bile and she instantly grabbed a potion out of one of the crates and handed it to him.
Relc took a sip of the potion, spat black liquid out, and drank the rest. He threw the empty flask over the barricade and nodded at Zevara.
“Thanks. I got some of the poison in my mouth.”
She scowled, but couldn’t put any of her usual force in her words.
“Be careful. If we lose you, our line will collapse.”
Relc grinned at her wearily.
“Hey, don’t worry Captain Z. None of those things can scratch my scales. If there weren’t so many of them this would be as easy as frying fish.”
“But there are a lot of them and they just don’t stop coming.”
Zevara hissed in fury and her tail lashed the ground as she pointed.
“It makes no sense. They’re not congregating in one spot and they’re attacking every side. Like a real army would do. And that guard they have around the gates is—”
“Not like them. I know.”
Relc’s eyes narrowed as she stared in the direction of the open north gate. Despite their best efforts, they hadn’t managed to retake it, not even with Relc. The dead around the massive stone doors refused to budge, and the gates were cumbersome enough to close on their own. Normally any attacking force would have been barred from entering long before they made it across the open plains, but Skinner’s fear-inducing gaze had sent all the guards fleeing.
“It’s that damned skin-creature that’s doing it. So long as it’s around, they’re going to keep coming. If you’d let me go after it.”
Zevara shook her head curtly.
“You wouldn’t make it out the gates before they surrounded you. And that thing is too much for you to handle alone.”
He glared at her.
“And so we’re going to leave it? I told you, it’s going after Erin—”
“Do you want me to try and save one human in this mess?”
Zevara shouted at Relc. He blinked and she continued.
“No matter what that thing is doing, we can’t spare anyone to go after it, let alone you. If we knew what it was doing, then maybe—”
“Waiting.”
Zevara and Relc turned. Pisces stumbled back towards them. His face was pale and his hair and robes were matted with sweat. He stumbled towards a cart holding water flasks and drank greedily.
The Captain of the Watch looked back towards the fighting. Without Relc and Pisces, the guardsmen were already beginning to be pushed back.
“We need you to keep casting, human. If you can’t we have plenty of mana potions—”
Pisces glared at Zevara.
“Potions do not cure exhaustion. Even my efficient spells tax me. I must rest.”
“I’ll go. The poison’s cured.”
So saying, Relc sprinted to one of the wagons and leapt. He kicked the skeleton that was climbing over it and landed on the other side, spear already blurring. Pisces drank more water and both watched as Relc kept fighting.
Zevara glanced at Pisces.
“What did you mean? That creature is waiting?”
He nodded and wiped at his mouth.
“It is clear that these dead are protecting that skin creature in some way. It may have control over the dead or spellcasting ability—regardless, they act as convenient fodder while it takes the skin of creatures to sustain itself.”
“Then why did it leave?”
“The danger. As I said, your Senior Guardsman posed an actual threat. It realized this and withdrew. It will let the undead keep fighting until we are exhausted and it returns. Remember—for each one of us that falls, it has another minion to use against us.”
Zevara frowned.
“Does it not harvest all of the dead, then? If they’re just bones and insides, they can’t reanimate.”
Pisces shrugged.
“There must be an upper limit to how much ah, flesh, that creature can carry. I surmise the rest it reanimates or stores for later, hence the undead. The Crypt Lords are likely a byproduct of that effect. So many dead gathered for so long together—”
“And why the girl? Why that Erin person you spoke of? Is she important?”
Pisces hesitated again, and Zevara wondered if he was about to lie. When he spoke, it was with clear reluctance.
“…No. She probably doesn’t matter at all. It’s simply how that creature works. He will eliminate every living being in the area and surround the city with his army. He senses her no doubt and wishes to eliminate any possible threat.”
“Well. We may have time if that’s the case.”
Pisces opened his mouth, looked at Zevara, and closed it.
“Yes. Perhaps. But we will be overrun soon if there are many more of the undead.”
It was a statement both knew to be true. Zevara shook her head. She raised her sword, feeling exhaustion in her arm. Flames trickled from around her mouth as she spoke.
“Drink whatever potions you need. Rest if you must. But get back to casting quickly, mage.”
She ran back towards the guardsmen as they struggled to hold back several zombies. Piesces stared after her and shook his head. He took a few quick steps back, and then made his way to a pile of dead corpses that archers had shot off rooftops.
The skeletons, ghouls, and zombies had taken and smashed in their skulls or splattered on the ground when the arrows had knocked them off their perches. But as Pisces raised his hands, the shattered flesh and bone reknit, and the dead rose back upwards, unearthly lights appearing in their eyes.
Six zombies, three skeletons, and four ghouls stood up, staring at Pisces. He pointed north, in the direction of the gates.
“Go. Avoid fighting until you reach the inn. Protect the girl. Kill any who would harm her. Go.”
Pisces watched the undead run towards the barricade, moving past the startled defenders. He smiled crookedly, and had to sit down as the effects of the spell hit him.
“My, my. I suppose I’m a little too invested in that girl for my own good.”
He laughed, and cast his eyes towards the sky.
“Well. A token deed. It will not amount to much. Not when…”
His voice trailed off. Pisces stared blankly at the undead fighting with the Watch. He was a [Necromancer]. He could sense how many dead were in the city and outside it, a fact he had carefully neglected to mention.
Afte
r a moment he smiled again and stood up. His blood was burning in agony, and he felt nauseous; exhausted. Even a potion wouldn’t help him, but the undead still fell as he killed them methodically.
Pisces laughed as the dead fell around him, uncaring of the toll. They would die. All of them. The few living guardsmen and citizens couldn’t stem the tide any more than Erin would survive. He laughed and cast his eyes skyward again, perhaps for the last time.
“Ah, but what a wonderful night to die!”
He waved his hand and a group of zombies collapsed. He pointed and the dead died. But they kept coming. And coming.
And coming.
—-
“Oh god. What is that?”
Erin stared down towards the white shape moving towards them. Every time it dragged itself towards her, more horrific details emerged. At first, it was just a white shape, a sickly slug. Then it was a slug with arms, and then…a creature of some kind. But then she saw that its skin wasn’t skin but dead flesh packed together. And then she saw the faces, stretched across the skin and…
The undead ran towards the Antinium, Skinner’s small army. They fell into the huge trench the Antinium had dug, breaking bones, climbing out only to be kicked back in by the Workers.
There weren’t many. Around a hundred, or less. That’s what Knight had said. As if that wasn’t enough to bury them all in corpses anyways. Most of the undead had moved back towards the city. But the creature came on, dragging itself through the glass.
It left glistening chunks of itself behind. Pieces of dead skin. It horrified Erin more than anything.
But she had to fight. Erin lifted another jar of acid and hurled it at a Crypt Lord. The massive, bloated creature shrieked and slapped itself with its clawed hands. But the acid ate away its skin, melting the massive creature’s outsides in a matter of minutes.
That was her role. Erin stood at the door of her inn, throwing jars of acid, pots, pans, knives, anything she could. She had one frying pan next to her as an emergency weapon and she’d already hurled most of her chairs down the hill.