The Grim Legion

by Kindred Ult

  Skull's cackle turned to a shriek of delight as the two headless bodies crumpled to the ground and the last werepyre facing him abandoned its sword and charged at him with its claws. Skull stood in place and waved his open-palmed hand at the werepyre who shot at him with unearthly speed. Suddenly, the werepyre came to a complete halt, as if it had hit an invisible wall, before falling to the ground. Skull held his hand out like he were pushing something away from him, and then flicked a finger. As soon as his finger moved, the werepyre stood up like it was a marionette. He flicked another finger, and the werepyre put its claws into its stomach and pulled them across it, exposing its bowels to the air. Skull let out a little evil chuckle as a whimper escaped from the werepyre.

  "Do you know what I'm doing?" He asked between bursts of laughter. "I'm controlling your skeleton before its out of your body!"

  Skull lifted his hand, raising the werepyre into the air, and then clenched it into a fist. The werepyre's body stiffened all over, trembling under the arcane power that bound it, until Skull finally flicked his hand open. His fingers splayed out, and when they each reached their apex, the werepyre's skeleton burst from its body like a butterfly from a cocoon. Seeing the spectacle broke all inhibitions Skull once had, and he doubled over in mid-air laughing hysterically. He rolled about screeching in delight and holding his stomach with both hands. His laughter echoed over all of the battlefield, like the call of the grim reaper, and even those on his side could not help but feel a shiver run through their bodies.

  His laughter abruptly stopped, however, when he felt a presence behind him and turned about. Lueke was slowly descending from the sky with something dangling from his hand. Once he got closer, Skull saw that it was the body of one of the vampire captains. He did not remember which one it was, but he was pretty sure it was the big one. The vampire captain was dead, with his entire chest cavity ripped open and his heart being eaten by Lueke. Countless wounds, both shallow and very deep, were scattered along Lueke's body, but even as he ate, they began closing. He slowly flew over toward Skull with a nonchalance that made even Skull uneasy. When he reached as close as Skull would let him get, he spoke.

  "You seem quite skilled Lich. I had not counted on fighting one as powerful as you. You must die."

  Skull liked how abrupt his opponent was. He looked him over, sizing him up. "Well, shall we take this fight to the ground? Fighting in the air is so uncivilized."

  Lueke shrugged, threw the corpse to the side, and began descending to the ground. "Very well."

  As soon as they touched the ground, Skull spread his arms and pointed his palms towards the earth. As he slowly lifted his arms, small portals shot up all around him and bones spewed from them like fountains. The bones covered the immediate ground, and when Skull's hands met above his head, they pulled themselves together and coalesced into twisted skeletons of every shape. They were his personal army, which he had painstakingly crafted over the years and into which he had poured every ounce of his ingenuity. He hated to use them in a situation like this, but he knew that regular skeletons would not even serve as an effective roadblock for one such as Lueke, and he needed time.

  While still a necromancer, he had made countless special skeletons. His natural curiosity had caused him to experiment with far more than he could normally control, and as such he had kept those not being animated in a storehouse. Now, however, he had full control over every skeleton he had ever created, and when he looked up, a small army of twisted abominations stood before him. With a snap of his fingers, they charged Lueke. The lack of concern in Lueke's eyes worried Skull just a bit, but he forced himself to concentrate of what he needed to do.

  The moment Lueke met his skeletons, however, Skull knew that he would need a different plan. His laughter was dead in his throat as he watched Lueke literally butcher his army. Skull had expected strength and efficiency from the faux-werepyre, but what he was seeing was unreal. Lueke exuded more power than the five Skull had fought earlier altogether, and his fighting style was remarkably economical. Every movement he made destroyed skeletons into dust, and it seemed as if there was nothing they did could damage him. He slashed five out of existence with one sweep of his claw before slamming the other down into the ground and shearing two others in half. Using his grip on the ground, he flipped himself over and killed fifteen more with his snapping tail and wings, while killing a final three simply by landing on them. Their weapons stuck through his body when he stood up again, but he smiled and stiffened his body. The weapons were expelled like splinters, as he laid about him with his bare hands and made skeletons fly into the air or simply vanish in puffs of cloud.

  "I hope that you still have blood inside you, lich," he called out while taking an explosive bone into the stomach fired by one of Skull's bizarre creations. He swiftly charged, spun, and whipped it and several others with his tail. Their pieces went flying as the magic that held them together reached its limit. "Because all of this violence without bloodshed is a real turn off." His tongue unconsciously lolled out of his mouth and ran along his lips as he spoke.

  Skull grimaced in return. For the first time he began to feel actual fear toward his opponent. "You are a very creepy person, you know that?" With a wave of his hands, more skeletons—ones of the generic kind—burst from the ground, and as they charged forward, he floated back just a bit. With how easily Lueke was dealing with his special skeletons, he knew that these would last an even shorter amount of time. He needed more time than they were going to be able to give him, and as he looked around for an answer, he saw it and smiled.

  Clutching his necklace with his ephemeral hand, the only piece of jewelry on his person, he cast his thoughts inside it and found that the souls inside it were eager for battle. He slid his thumb across the black jewel embedded in the necklace and in a moment his guardian and half a dozen abominations, monstrous amalgamations of hundreds of bones that moved like blobs, appeared in front of him and charged the fray of battle with Lueke. Skull once again hated losing these precious creations of his, but they would buy him enough time to do what was necessary.

  His guardian had been upgraded since its complete destruction at the hands of Sophella's. He had been toying with the idea of completely reworking for awhile before then, but had been loathe to part with it. Now that it had been destroyed, though, he had been given complete freedom to reinvent his original design. He liked what he had first, so he kept the same basic form, but now it was intensely reworked. Instead of four bodies on one swivel, he had three different sets of four bodies all connected to the same middle but tilted to the side so that all three were sticking out. Instead of two axes, each skeletal body had one large ax in its hands. So now there were twelve axes, twelve skeletal whips, and and dozens of legs holding it up. It was not anything much to look at, but Skull knew its strength.

  Before doing anything else, he sketched a quick glyph in the air in front of him. It took a matter of moments before he was done, and it was gone before one could blink. That done, he began to truly think about his opponent.

  'Now then, no sense in wasting effort.' He raised his hand toward Lueke, clenched his fist, and spread it quickly. Nothing happened. He had felt the miniscule amount of energy leave him related to working one's skeleton while still inside the body, but Lueke still fought as if nothing impeded him.

  "Hmmm," Skull was thinking aloud at this point. "he must have some kind of wards placed on him, and some pretty damn extensive ones too if they include the artificial animation of his skeleton. I'll have to see just how extensive they really are."

  At about the time his guardian began spinning in circles, with each of the groups of four spinning on its axis and with all three spinning on one more axis, and his abominations began oozing their ways over the bones all over the ground, absorbing them into themselves, Skull began to meticulously cast every single spell he could think of at Lueke. Psychedelic beams and flashes of every color flew from his hands, mouth, and sometimes eyes and went straight at Lu
eke. It was a truly dazzling experience, and Skull had always thought it fitting to let the last thing a person sees be a true delight to the senses before everything went black. Unfortunately, everything he sent simply fizzled out of existence once it reached about two feet away from Lueke. It did not matter if it was a destructive spell, a maiming spell, he even sent a spell that would dye his hair pink. Not a single spell reached him.

  "Well, either he has a wizard protecting him, or has one damn powerful dispelling artifact on him." Now that he thought about it, Lueke did have a weird, diamond-shaped medallion hanging around his neck by a thick metal chain. The medallion was golden in color, and had red precious stones inlaid around the edges with one large one in the middle of it.

  'So it's safe to say that that thing is what is blocking all of my spells.' Skull was now thinking so that everyone else in his mind link could hear him. 'At least I think so.' Unfortunately for Skull's experiment, Lueke had just finished the last of his skeletons and was sparring with his guardian and the abominations. He was, at the moment, still puzzled by the large white blobs that had surrounded him and slightly put off by the whizzing contraption of death that was constantly moving toward him. At first he made as if to strike at the guardian's legs, as Sophella's guardian had done, but Skull had learned from that mistake, and with their added flexibility, the twelve bodies tilted on their axises until their axes were practically cutting up the ground, and perfectly protected their flimsy legs. Once Lueke was back up, they shot back up to their original positions again, and by this time the abominations were everywhere around Lueke and where even now swarming their bodies around him, sticking him inside their bulbous frames and trying to devour him.

  It looked promising, but Skull had a feeling that the blocks were only temporary. He knew that he had to throw out everything he had in this moment, and he could only be glad that he had prepared his extra protection in the likely event that Lueke broke past his last lines of defense. He had to begin preparations as soon as possible. He went back even more than before, creating as much distance as possible without getting out of range of his skeletons, and began to really work and mold sigils in the air around him. He moved with supernatural quickness, working the area all around and behind him, and the lines of powers flew from his fingertips until he was almost engulfed in a sphere of red writing.

  Just when it looked as if he might finish in time, Lueke seemed to finally lose patience. He was mostly engulfed by several abominations, with his legs and one arm trapped within them, but he was far from finished. With a roar, he brought his one arm back, clenched his fist, and slammed it into the abomination directly in front of him. Normally, any blow would simply be absorbed by the gooey mass, but instead, the entire abomination blew to pieces. Guts and sinews and bones burst apart like a stomach that has finally eaten too much, and once his other arm was free, Lueke wasted no time in blasting the life out of one of the ones at his feet.

  Skull's guardian was on Lueke now, his axes spinning like a whirlwind. With one abomination still holding tight to his foot, the was nothing Lueke could do save devote his energy to destroying it. He spun, cocked back his opposite arm, and laid waste to another abomination. When he turned around, however, he turned directly into the axes. The blades, spun at intense speeds and slicing from countless angles, tore into his flesh, and in seconds his bones were open to the air. It was only for a second, though, because all Lueke had to do was step forward and wrap his arms around one of the groups. His forearms were as ragged as his chest, but once he got a grip, the entire guardian stopped dead in its tracks. Moments later he had ripped it to pieces.

  "Getting really tired of this." Several abominations were still moving toward him, but Luke ignored them and took to the sky. His wings carrying him up just until he decided to dive bomb down at Skull. He could tell that Skull was up to something, as Skull could barely be seen amidst the red glyphs, runes, and sigils surrounding him, and he was resolved to stop it before it became something even more annoying. Just as he was about to smash the strange lich, however, he was rammed from the side, and a familiar pain coursed through him as he felt four horns dig into his side. He looked over and saw Samael pulling his head out of Lueke's ribs. Before he could speak or attack, Samael squared up with him and started throwing everything he could at him in midair. He smashed his fists into him with the force of a lightning bolt, and he even forced him back.

  Meanwhile, Skull spared a moment to think that it was a good idea to heal Samael enough to keep him from dying just yet. He was filling his role nicely, but he would not last very long. Unfortunately, Skull had no time and not enough ability to do so. Samael's previous wounds were too severe, and Skull's remedy too rushed. Also, healing really just is not a necromancer's strong point. As if to accentuate his point, Lueke was now pushing Samael back, and blood was flowing from Samael like a waterfall. He was battling on with only Skull's magical support and his own indomitable strength of will. Had he still had his weapon with him, he might have been able to mount up a more significant offense, but as it was he was only speeding his descent back into death. His counter-attacks came slower and slower, until eventually the light left his eyes one last time. Before it did, however, he turned to Skull and sent one last thought through the mindlink.

  'Thank you for giving me one last chance at life, necromancer.'

  'No,' Skull thought back, as he finally finished the spell that was all around him, 'thank you.'

  Samael smiled before being smashed to the ground by Lueke's fist. He hit it with a dull thud and bounced upon impact. Before his body had even finished the bounce, Lueke had Samael in his hands and began ripping him apart. He held the pieces up over his mouth, but the blood had already completely drained from them, and was soaking the ground even as Lueke made sure Samael would not be resurrected again. Once his deed was done, Lueke turned upon Skull with eyes that brimmed with blood lust and supreme aggravation. His anger turned to worry when he saw all of the runes around Skull begin to coalesce in from of him, and he quickly charged the necromancer as fast as he could. He probably would have caught him too, had the few abominations left not just caught up to him, and forced him to destroy them before charging back once again.

  Despite his fastest being very fast indeed, Lueke was still not able to reach Skull before all of the runes condensed into a small, read and black ball in front of him and then spread out in a two-dimensional circle between the two of them. The portal was huge, with red outlines bearing countless engravings and sigils, and with only pitch-blackness in the middle of it. Still Lueke charged, and he had almost reached the portal when it began to spew forth bones at an alarming rate. The portal was easily thirty feet in diameter, and every inch of it was filled with pelvises, thighbones, skulls, ribs, fingers, toes, and all other various bones possible and impossible. It was a veritable flood of white, and Lueke was consumed by it.

  He was blown back and covered in the first moments of the attack, and even though it never let up but kept on spraying forth vast quantities of bones by the second, eventually he found his footing and began to advance once again step by step. Fortunately for him, he had not been blown back very far, and so he was relatively close to the portal. Unfortunately for him, his progress was considerably slowed due to the huge sea of white flowing into him. It seemed as if the flood would never end, but eventually Lueke found himself right in front of the portal. With a cry of delight he raised his left hand and slashed it into the portal. Five lines appeared across the face of the circle, and then it shattered to pieces just as one last pelvis bone flew out of it ricocheted off of Lueke's head.

  After it was destroyed, Lueke wasted no time in lunging at Skull, overtaking him, and slamming him into the ground. He was satisfied that his hands could touch the ephemeral being, and even more satisfied by the sound of bones cracking under the strength of his fury. If the lich could feel the pain, however, it did not show on his face, and even though his chest was practically flat to the ground, there wa
s no sign of distress or discomfort on his face. In fact, all that Lueke saw was satisfaction on the face of his enemy.

  "What's there to be so happy about?" Lueke was annoyed at the lack of satisfaction he was getting at his triumph.

  "Look behind you." Was his enigmatic reply.

  Lueke knew that he should not look behind him. Even though he was in a dominant position, he knew that the lich was powerful, and he should devote every bit of attention to him. However, his curiosity, and also the huge shadow that was growing in front of him, won over his better senses, and when he looked behind, he was glad that he did, because all he saw was a huge white hand coming ever closer to him. With a curse he flung himself to the side. He tried to keep a hold of the lich, but soon found that at some point Skull had placed a portal under him on the ground and was now out of his grasp.

  What worried him more, however, was the huge bone monster that was towering over him. He now realized that Skull must have summoned hundreds of thousands of bones, because the beast that stood in front of him was easily over one hundred feet tall. As his gaze swept over it, he saw Skull standing on its shoulder making another spell that was even now adding more bones to the beast.

  "Ah, still no blood." Lueke's voice was dark with rage and lust as he leapt into the air and began flying toward his opponent.