Monster Girl Defense Force

by Simon Archer

  When we finally flew over the wall, a loud roaring went up from ahead of us, and it took me a moment to realize that it was cheering. The people, the troops, they were all cheering at our arrival and the spark of hope that we brought.

  We did a lap around the perimeter of the castle once to scope out the area before landing on the roof. Rozmarin and I took a few moments to collect ourselves, stretching out our limbs and catching our breath before the Queen’s council met us at the entrance to the stairwell. They all looked exhausted, with bags beneath their eyes and their shoulders tense with the stress of the past few weeks. But most of all, they looked stunned and relieved.

  Except for Anix.

  She looked… broken. Not in the physical sense but broken spiritually. It only occurred to me then that they must have been expecting us days ago when we’d winnowed out of the BloodDrake’s cave.

  “You are alive.” It was Rachel who spoke first as she rushed forward to take Rozmarin into her arms, her shoulders shaking slightly. When she pulled back, she had tears in her eyes.

  “I am well,” Rozmarin replied, hugging her back before raising her head to look at the rest of the council. “We have much to discuss, but for now, we must complete the cure.”

  “Where is Sahar?” I asked, already looking towards the stairwell, eager to head to the alchemist lab.

  Silence and a terrible tension met my question. It was the kind of tension that made you dread whatever it was that you were about to be told. When I looked at their faces, some of them looked at me with sympathy, and others wouldn’t meet my eyes, fighting tears of their own.

  Anix was one of the latter. My heart plummeted to the pit of my stomach when I put the pieces together. I had loved her, and the expression Anix had on her face at the moment told me everything I needed to know about my lover’s state.

  “No,” I said, and it came out like a broken plea. My legs threatened to give out beneath me, but I reached out to hang on to Rozmarin’s arm for support, my gaze focused on the ground beneath me. “How?”

  Anix’s eyes finally rose to meet mine, and the sheer grief in them almost knocked the wind out of me. “The first horde made it into the castle before we could dispatch them. Sahar--” Her voice cracked on the alchemist’s name, and she had to take a moment to collect herself. “Sahar was in the alchemy lab when they entered through the ground floor. They targeted the lab first… It was like they knew exactly where to target to ruin our chances.”

  Rozmarin’s eyes softened, and she closed the distance between her and the gargoyle. She placed a hand on Anix’s shoulder before pulling her in for a swift, rough embrace before quickly breaking apart again.

  “She was an extraordinary woman, and I will forever be grateful for her wisdom.” I could see that she was hiding her grief in an attempt to comfort Anix.

  Anix nodded solemnly and scored her features back into her usual aloofness, but if you looked carefully enough at her eyes, you could still see the pain.

  “An SOS finally arrived from a nearby kingdom while you were away. We sent reinforcements their way just before the hordes breached the walls at full dark, last night.”

  Holy gods, they’d been fighting off the hordes for over half a day.

  Rozmarin ground her teeth together, clearly thinking of the BloodDrake. “The BloodDrake was controlling the hordes. She had been building an army of supernatural zombies in some perverse plan to conquer the continent.”

  “Was?” Aerywin asked, speaking up for the first time. Of course, she would be the one to pick out that minor grammatical detail.

  Rozmarin faced her, a grim smile forming on her lips. “The BloodDrake’s weakness was Christoff’s blood.” She turned her eyes on me then. “The blood of the Light-Bearer.”

  “But all of the alchemists are dead. The lab is probably destroyed,” Rachel said. “Sahar was our only hope of a cure.”

  “Take me to her body,” I ordered, and everyone turned to me. Their expressions very clearly expressed that they could not understand why in Constanta that I would ever want to enter the lab where one of our lover’s dead body was lying. Even I didn’t quite understand it, but I couldn’t deny the pull I felt towards my sorceress lover, even in her death.

  Especially in her death.

  They conceded, desperate for any chance at completing the cure. I briefly wondered that, if we did complete the cure, how we would distribute it to the thousands of zombies that were attacking. They wouldn’t very well stand in line to take it. It occurred to me then that Sahar hadn’t left me with a single clue as to how to wield the cure.

  Considering I was the Light-Bearer, I assumed that the duty would somehow fall to me. And I still did, though it seemed a much mightier task now that I was alone in it, without Sahar’s help.

  The council led me all the way to the lowest floor, below ground where the alchemy lab along with the armory was located. I had spent so much time down there during the past few months that I feared that the mere sight of it, blood-soaked and reeking with death, might destroy me.

  When we finally made it down there and stepped out of the stairwell, the sight that met my eyes was far worse than I had imagined. Bodies were strewn across the hall, heads torn open, and brain parts splattered everywhere. When we entered the alchemy lab, it was even worse.

  Blood painted the walls and the floors so heavily that I had to fight to keep from slipping on the thick liquid. Human, supernatural, and zombie bodies alike were all scattered across the scene. Some were stretched out across the worktables, bottles of different liquids and potions spilled and shattered around them. Some had limbs twisted at odd angles, and others dismembered entirely. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the horror these alchemists had endured in the final few moments of their lives.

  “No. No,” I said again, and this time it came out hard. Sharp and laced with a thousand years worth of pain and rage. The BloodDrake had done this, had turned all of these innocent people into man-eating zombies as pawns for her own sick game.

  Before I could let the rage envelop me into a cold, numb shell, I felt a pull to the corner of the room where I had drunk dozens of cups of tea with my friend. Where we had laughed, and gossiped, and plotted to save those we had grown to love with the cure. The cure that we no longer had because Sahar was dead, and the lab was destroyed.

  When my eyes fell upon the sorceress’s body, tears immediately pooled in my eyes, spilling over my cheeks. Still, that pull towards the corner kept tugging at me, making me drag one foot in front of the other until I stood a foot away from Sahar's crumpled form.

  Unlike the BloodDrake, Sahar hadn’t rapidly decomposed and turned to ash in death. No, she’d kept her human form, and if you only focused on her face, it looked like she could have been sleeping. But the rest of her body…

  Blood and black ichor from the zombies soaked through the red silk of her robes. Her brown hands were burnt to crisps as if she had used so much power defending herself and her team of alchemists that her own magic had charred her skin. From the positioning of her body, of the way dozens of bodies laid scattered around her, I could tell that she had spent the last few minutes of her life giving everything she had to defend her fellow alchemists.

  I would have expected nothing less.

  The Queen’s council stood silent behind me, solemn and probably a little sick. My own nausea was threatening to spill the contents of my stomach at the disgusting smell of rancid blood and death. But even standing in the middle of this gruesome scene, a foot away from my dear friend’s body, I continued to feel that pull towards Sahar as if she was calling to me.

  I stepped even closer, until the boot of my toe nearly touched her side, and bent down to wipe the dark braid that laid across her face. As soon as my clammy fingers grazed her cool skin, an overwhelming sensation of being sucked away washed through me, and darkness encased my vision. I lost feeling in my entire body, and it took me a moment to realize that I no longer had a body.

  Slowly, my
vision started to come back, but there was an odd sheen to my vision as if there was a sheer curtain over my eyes, and the angle had changed so that I was looking down. Then, it registered that I was looking down at… myself. And Sahar’s dead body. And the Queen’s council. When I looked at myself, my eyes were closed, my hand still outstretched and frozen on Sahar’s face. The council merely stood a few feet back, assuming I needed a moment alone with her.

  “My dear love,” a familiar, angelic voice called to me.

  When I looked up, Sahar stood before me. Well, not stood. She floated, and when I looked down at my own feet, I realized that I was floating too. Then, returning my attention to my friend’s face, I launched myself towards her and tried to wrap my arms around her. Though my arms simply passed through her, warmth filled me when Sahar realized my intentions. When we both stepped back, such love and wisdom and peace filled her eyes that it was almost overwhelming.

  “You’re okay?” I asked, and I realized my mouth hadn’t moved. But I definitely heard my voice. And Sahar’s.

  “I will always be okay.” Sahar smiled as she looked me up and down. “I see your trip to the BloodDrake has awoken your powers.”

  I shot her a confused look. “Powers?” I asked. “What about the cure?”

  She floated towards me and took both of my hands in hers, though they felt like nothing more than wisps of a warm breeze against a curtain. Her image flickered in and out as if her connection between this world and wherever she’d come from was slowly breaking. The thought sent a wave of sadness through me.

  “We do not have much time, Light-Bearer I have come to finish what I started.” Her voice sounded more and more distant by the second.

  I gasped. “The cure! You have to tell me how to finish the cure!”

  “Yes… and no.” Sahar gave me a sympathetic smile, almost managing to look guilty. “I am afraid there is no cure.”

  I withdrew, confused. “But this whole time…”

  She nodded slowly. “There are some things that alchemy cannot fix alone.”

  “I- I don’t understand,” I cried, feeling hopelessness course through me. “What am I supposed to do if there is no cure?”

  She smiled at me, patiently waiting for my little panic attack to subside. “Fear not, Light-Bearer.” She brought her hand up to rest over my heart, and warmth spread through my entire being at the touch. “All you need to save those you love is right in here.”

  My gaze found hers again, and I felt that well in me begin to fill at her touch, chasing the rising emptiness away.

  “Tell me what I have to do.”

  37

  Rozmarin

  When Christoff opened his eyes again, the look reminded me of when he had woken up from the BloodDrake’s spell in the cave, but that light burned much, much brighter this time, giving him an almost otherworldly essence. I was unsurprised that Sahar would come back to speak to Christoff even in death. She had always made it a point to finish anything that she started. He turned to face us, and the golden aura that glowed around him shimmered in the dark lab.

  “I know what to do,” he said, his voice holding nothing but confidence and determination. It rang with a certain ethereal otherness that reminded me of when Sahar would get into her weird trances and start babbling about some future prophecy.

  I was the first to step forward of the Queen’s council. “How may we be of assistance, my lord?”

  We sent Anix back to lead her troops in the defense effort, assuming they could use every ounce of help they could get. Aerywin continued running sweeps of the castle and kingdom’s perimeter, doing her best to map the movement of the hordes in search of a pattern for Anix to best position her troops.

  Rachel chose to fight. Though she had the petite figure of a young Korean gothic beauty, her fierceness and strength that she had gained over the ages served her quite well on the battlefield. I knew from our many arguments that ended in violence, that her preferred weapon of choice was a Wol Do, a crescent blade that she wielded as an extension of herself. She particularly loved to wield it on horseback.

  Christoff gave Sahar one last kiss on the forehead and whispered a promise I barely heard.

  "I will make you whole again."

  With that, Christoff and I made our way to the top of the castle again, where we would have the best vantage point over the battlefield that did not involve flying. Aerywin was just taking off when we made it up there, using the large, flat surface as a landing dock for her perimeter runs.

  The roar of battle echoed in the distance as our troops met the zombie hordes at the bottom of the hill to the castle. We were running out of time.

  Christoff turned to me as we stepped out of the stairwell and onto the roof, an infinity of emotions swirling in those golden-green eyes. “I love you.”

  I was not sure who said it. If it was me, or him, or both of us, or neither, but either way, at that moment, we loved each other. We both fell into each other with a brief yet soul-searing kiss. When he pulled away to lean his forehead against mine, he gazed down at me.

  “Surely, you know that I wasn’t going to survive this,” he said, and there was a distant sadness to his voice like he’d already detached himself from this world. His body. His emotions.

  Peace does not come without a price.

  Just as I was about to step back, intending to question him further, I realized that… I could not. Regret filled Chris’s eyes as he stepped away from me, and I realized that he was the one rooting me to the spot, rendering me immobile. Understanding rushed through me as I realized what he was doing. He assumed that I would try to stop him when I saw that what he was about to do would kill him.

  He assumed correctly.

  “No!” I cried, fighting the invisible hold on my limbs, but he had already turned away from me to make his way to the center of the area like something was pulling him there. “Please, don’t do this! We will find another way.”

  He looked at me, and there was a flicker of the human Christoff in those eyes. “There is no other way. I am the Light-Bearer,” he replied simply.

  As soon as his body stilled, his eyes closed peacefully, and he tilted his head up to the sky. I watched in horror as he inhaled deeply through his nose and held it. I could see him reaching inward, into that deep well of power that I had always felt in him before he realized it himself.

  After a few moments, his lips parted, and he let it out, slowly at first, but then harder, until the soft glow that had been radiating from his body focused into a concentrated stream, flowing from his mouth and over our heads. Over the battlefield.

  I had to squeeze my eyelids shut at the sheer brightness of the light and the heat that licked at my skin like the flames of a fire. I don’t know how long it was before the heat subsided, and I dared to open my eyes again, but it felt like hours. Days, even. The air seemed to pulse in that time, finally ending with the biggest pulse of all that nearly knocked me to my knees.

  A golden haze filled the air when I did open my eyes, blocking my view of the land below us. I could not even see more than a few feet in front of me.

  As I felt my way forward, finally able to move again, I made my way to where I had seen Christoff standing earlier. When I reached the spot where he had stood, I felt something soft brush my shoe, and when I looked down, Chris’s form crumpled at my feet.

  A choked sound escaped my throat as I bent down to check his pulse, only to find… nothing. No pulse. No movement. No breath. No life.

  The Light-Bearer was dead.

  I do not know how long I stayed, holding Christoff’s lifeless body to my chest, rocking him back and forth, whispering promises into his hair that I would never be able to keep. The grief, the seemingly endless pain that felt like an empty, yawning cavern deep in the pit of my soul, latched onto me and did not let go. I could do nothing, feel nothing, be nothing without knowing that my mate was in this world. We may not have officially completed the mating bond, but Christoff was my mate. And
he would be until the day I finally left this earth as a pile of ash and dust.

  38

  Anix

  I had already been fighting back the stinking hordes for most of the day, but when Rozmarin and the council agreed I would be of most help back on the field with my troops, I ran as fast as my legs would carry me out of the bloody lab, through the castle halls with bodies everywhere, and back out into the fray with my greatsword in hand.

  This was where I belonged. It’s what I lived for, not only as a gargoyle or the commander of Constanta’s forces but as the Doom Bringer. Killing the evil, stinking, horrible things was what I was made for and what I had trained for, and as long as they were inside the walls of Constanta, I would not stop until every foul rotting body lay dead on the ground.

  They had already done so much destruction to the wall, to the East Village, the castle, and now the West Village. And they had murdered Sahar.

  I let the pain of seeing her lifeless body there on the ground, where I had seen her work and smile and laugh so many times before, flow through me. It fueled me, and a red hot fire coursed through my veins. It burned and hurt, like the ache in my heart, and a guttural growl escaped from me as I let my rage out on the battlefield. My sword, already covered in the zombie’s blackish-red blood, sang as I swung it through the air. It sliced off heads and cut through bodies until I stood in a pile of zombies.

  We had sent forces off to the east right before the hordes broke through our defenses, almost like they had known we were weaker from the lack of troops. I felt stupid for not realizing a horde had been waiting on our doorstep, and in my effort to help the eastern kingdoms, I had allowed the zombies to break into the kingdom and launch their vicious attack. And now so many were dead because of my terrible, stupid error.