“They’re undead! Kill them!” Bokaj ordered and began firing arrows into the crowd of monsters.
A couple of them staggered, but without silver or some kind of holy spells, we would be hard pressed. The vampire help moved so fast it was difficult to keep up. It was almost all I could do to keep the damned things away. A few minutes of fighting and I got more and more pissed off as they kept picking on me. What was left of my right arm was cut and bleeding again.
“Gather together back to back,” Yohsuke barked and shot an Astral Bolt at one of the undead fuckers, and it shot back down the hall.
We grouped up and set about killing them as best we could. It took casting Aspect of the Owl on myself to be able to anticipate their movements, but as soon as I did, I was able to call shots to my friends. Bokaj was fine, somehow. He could see and easily predict their movements, but Falfyre’s flame began to make the spell even more worthwhile.
Soon enough, the help was a pile of dust and a source of irritation for me, but oh well. Can’t blame them for going after the guy missing the majority of his damned arm.
The experience was negligible. Sure, it was a drop in the bucket, but it seemed like all of these creatures were lesser somehow. Like summoned creatures didn’t give all that much experience in video games because it was the summoner who mattered. Even the hag had given an okay chunk of experience, somewhere close to a thousand or so. It had been difficult to pay attention with the lich bitching at us.
I cast Mass Regrowth, and we healed ourselves as we went further on down the hall to a staircase that led up. This one looked like it was used by the staff of the place, and it was easily accessible if we went up one at a time.
“You guys want to go up or explore the other side?” I asked.
“No time, we need to get Jaken.” James shook his head. He was already six steps up the stairs before the rest of us made our way to them. The top floor was a myriad of bedrooms and offices that weren’t guarded, nor did they hold anything of value. Not a single copper. No items. Just this warped reality.
After doing our due diligence and searching each of the rooms for potential enemies, we crossed the bridged balcony that we had seen from below into the other portion of the wing. This wing had more than a dozen suits of armor lining each side of the hall. They were black and white like the knights that we had fought the last time we had dealt with the lich.
The armor stood on raised pedestals on the edge of the carpeting a foot and a half from the wall. The only thing they could possibly have been guarding was the set of double doors at the end of the hall.
“Fuck…” I groaned. “Not these assholes again. There are so many of them!”
Muu tapped his foot before snapping his fingers and tapping on my shoulder. “You want to do a large fastball special?”
I gathered what he had planned and grinned at him. “Make it an extra large.”
I shifted into my fox form and jumped into his arms. He cocked back with his right arm and grinned at me savagely. “Using the bracelet. As soon as you’re close, I’ll shout, and then you shift. I’m going to see what I can do about the other side of the hall too.”
I nodded once and settled my body in for the flight. He launched me forward, and the wind flying around my body seemed to squeal as I broke through the calm air.
“Now!” Muu bellowed.
I shifted into my Ursolon form and crashed into the first four suits of armor and thrust the last one into the others. They managed to stay together, but they were knocked down. I shifted to fox before scampering away from the armor as fast as my three good legs would allow. A clatter to my left drew my attention. I saw the suits of armor on the opposite side of the hall drop, their helmets gone. I looked toward the end of the hallway, and Muu’s spear wobbled with them pierced straight through.
“There’s more!” Yohsuke warned before all hell broke loose.
Doors hidden by alcoves on each side opened, and the shambling dead came out—half-rotted corpses who hungered for the flesh of the living. They wore any number of bloody, decayed garments that barely covered them anymore.
I jumped as high as I could and shifted into my panther form, hoping the size and muscle would help me get back to my friends. A sharp pain pierced my left hind leg, and I turned to see an arrow sticking into the bone; the leg went numb, then I listed to the right, overbalanced before dropping. I fell closer to my friends but not close enough.
Suddenly, James was there, snapping his fists into faces, and he barked, “Go, fox!”
I did, and he scooped me into his arm; then we blurred toward the others. He pulled the arrow from my leg, and Bokaj cast Purify on me before I shifted back.
“Thanks,” I huffed. “Step aside—I’ll blast these guys away with Phoen–”
“You cast that spell and you could blow the whole place,” Muu warned. “We go in the old fashioned way,” he punched his left hand with his right, “like men.”
I laughed at his serious demeanor and simply commented, “Sploosh.”
He growled and lunged forward, punching an undead in the jaw so hard that the skin tore and the gooey bone turned into a projectile that smacked another undead in the face.
“No more punching!” Muu shouted, clearly kind of freaked out more than proud over that.
Thinking to preserve my mana a bit, I stabbed Falfyre into one of the dead where I left it, reached into my inventory with my now-free hand and pulled out Magus Bane.
“Here!” He looked my way, and I tossed it to him. “Look near the top—axe side cuts, hammer side, just hit shit!”
“Ooooh!” he cooed in delight before swinging the great axe like a scythe in front of him, mowing down the undead in a path of gore that wasn’t quite the ideal situation. Some died again, but the upper portions of the still-animated dead began to grasp at his legs as he stepped through. Coal scampered behind Muu. As the Dragon-kin swung, the flame wolf stood on to his hind legs and crushed skulls here and there like a fox pouncing after something in the snow.
I began to follow along while keeping the monsters from flanking him. The others followed me, and soon, we had a working murderous congo line. Every person covered a different section of the bodies coming at us and dealt with the dead as swiftly as they were able. It was brutal work but efficient.
We took cuts, scrapes, and even a couple of nibbles here and there, but it was much better than being overrun. Arrows flew over our heads, not really getting too close. The creatures who died—again—were only downed by severing the spinal cord at the neck or severe brain damage. So those like Yohsuke, Bokaj, and James were able to rely on precision to get the job done. I carved through my enemies and finished those who fell close to me with quick stabs.
It took us ten minutes to get midway to the end of the hall, and it was hilarious watching the suits of armor. They simply stood there, unable to move in the horde of dead. Except for the one in the back with the bow who now had a clear shot at us as the dead parted!
“Bow!” I shouted and threw Falfyre at the armor archer, hoping to stop that shot.
A gauntleted hand snatched the weapon from the air and stopped the momentum completely. The armor began to take on a reddish hue, then I willed the sword to burst into flames, melting the armor and peppering everything up to twelve feet from it with shrapnel. The weapon was gone, but I could always summon it again.
But rather than wasting the time, I simply took the hand axe I had acquired from Rowland’s and cast Star Blade on it. The weapon took on a dark hue like the night with multicolored stars along the cutting edge.
I turned to the others and grunted, “Either we get in that room right now, or we take care of the armored assholes.”
“Get inside,” James and Bokaj answered together before Bokaj finished, “there are too many of these assholes, and they just keep coming from the rooms.”
Sure enough, they did. They had no qualms about stepping on their dead—deader, fuck if I knew the right term—comrades, tho
ugh many of them fell on the uneven terrain.
“Let’s get you to your weapon then, Muu.” Yohsuke sighed.
All of us were starting to feel the effects of the continued battling, but our friend was in danger, right? We do everything we can together, and we were gonna do our damnedest to see him freed.
We got to the door, huffing and puffing from having to continually beat ass to get there. We had Bokaj paying more attention to the archer. He would fire and force one of the protectors to get in the way of the incoming shot.
Muu pulled his spear from the wall with a grunt and then gave us all a nod before opening the doorway to the room at the end of the hall.
We filed through the door into a darkened room, turned, and threw several shitty weapons that we had collected from other fights into the door handle and I melted them with my flame mana so they were stronger and welded to the door.
“Bad move, you guys,” Jaken’s voice echoed behind us.
The sound of air being cleaved in two erupted, and a sickening crunch greeted us. I looked over to see James pinned to the wall by a large, black greatsword as lights burst to life all around us. Except they weren’t lights.
They were luminescent souls, their mouths open in silent, terror-filled shrieks. They flitted from the floor to the ceiling where they began to coil and spin with a growing flow in a circular spirit cloud above us.
“Why is that?” Bokaj spat. “And who the hell threw that? Where’s the lich?”
I pulled the blade from James’s chest and rapidly cast Heal and then Regrowth on him. His health shot back up from half to three-quarters full and rising. While he was healing, I looked about our surroundings for the threat.
The room was empty except for couple things—a desk that served as a holder for books and papers that I couldn’t make out from this distance. It was a mid-sized room, maybe thirty by fifty feet. Then there was a throne that looked comfortable where Jaken watched us from.
His skin was pale in the light, and his mithral armor had been traded away for a set of black plate armor and a helmet that looked like a skull cast in metal. His hair was down and over his shoulders, and the way he sat just wasn’t him. It seemed off.
But I mean, if you had been held captive, you may be a little high strung or out of sorts too, right?
“So you finally deemed to come and find me?” His voice held sardonic mirth, ignoring Bokaj’s questions entirely. As if the fact that we had arrived was something he had doubts about but was pleasantly surprised to see come to pass.
“Of course we did, puto,” Yoh grumped. “We’ve been looking for you for a bit now. We were lucky to find James before those hounds did.”
“I see.” He leaned his head to the side like his head was falling, and it just stopped bouncing slightly, then stopping completely like some sort of clockwork puppet. “Well, I can’t say that I believe you. Out there collecting all that ‘experience?’ I mean, we’ve been hunting for ways to get stronger while we ‘tried’ to find a way to get to the Hells for Balmur, right? While he’s stuck there going through who knows what?”
“Hey, man, you know that’s what we’re doing!” Bokaj stepped forward angrily. “No one wants him back with us more than I do! You and I have had countless conversations about this.”
Jaken’s head rolled down until his chin rested almost-drunkenly on his chest before he looked back up at Bokaj.
“Talk is cheap.” He lifted his hand to stare at it before waving it at us angrily. “I’ve been enlightened on the things that have been going on outside in the world. The army’s massing against us. The Children group. The Mages. Hell, even the little city north of here is out looking for us, and all because we weren’t powerful enough to protect our own—because we couldn’t take what was rightfully ours! How many times has Zeke, Muu, or any of the rest of you gotten in our way for moving on? Becoming so distracted by petty things?”
I cast my eyes down. Was that true? Those things had been necessary evils, right? Something we had to do in the moment so that we could be accepted and supported. We wouldn’t make it here on our own. We needed our allies. We needed each other. And seeing some of the glances my friends were throwing around… they didn’t seem to feel the same.
But why now, of all times, would Jaken bring these doubts to light? That wasn’t him. That wasn’t like him at all.
“No more. I’m taking what I learned here, and I’m going to get Balmur back. With or without all of you. Because I’m stronger now.” He held up his fist and clenched it. The armor creaking in protest, then quieting. “So much stronger. Stronger than I’ve ever felt. And no one will stand in my way. Never again. This world will bow. All will bend the knee!”
As the last words left his lips, I got a good look at my friend. I saw an ethereal light around his body, and the eyes that stared back at me weren’t Jaken’s.
“Get the hell out of my friend, you dead asshole!” I roared and shot forward, my vision cloaked in red almost instantly.
Something took my legs out from beneath me, and I fell backward despite my forward momentum. As I flipped, I saw the black greatsword hurtle into Jaken’s outstretched hand as he stood looming over me now. My righteous rage was gone, replaced by worry and doubt.
How could this have happened to my friend?
“And there are sacrifices to be made to see this through,” the lich hissed from my friend’s throat.
A spell clanged off his armor, getting his attention away from me for a heartbeat, long enough for me to take the hand axe in my hand and slash at the armor. There was small nick in it, but it filled back in almost instantly. Fuck.
I scrambled away from him on my hand and feet just as the sword came down where I was supposed to land. James was pulling me by my shirt, and I threw my hand axe at the lich’s face to see if it would help.
“Got an idea!” Bokaj called behind us. “Muu, for the trick shot. Screwball, corner pocket!”
I looked over in time to see Muu raise his shield in time to deflect one of Bokaj’s arrows into Jaken’s neck. The man flinched but pulled the projectile out. The shot had taken a sizable chunk of health, but it was going up so fast, it was like he was healing. Then I saw a flash of radiant light spill around me from behind, and there was a cry of anguish.
“The souls above are healing him! That’s his po–” Jaken’s voice was panicked for a moment; he was straining, in pain. Then he grimaced and spat. “Ow.”
Jaken was gone, and I heard a grunt of pain and saw Bokaj flying through the air above us before landing on the other side of the throne. He hit the desk, and the whole thing toppled over. He wasn’t moving; then Tmont was over him, licking his face hurriedly. Her tongue glowed a little, but it could have been the souls around us making it seem that way.
James was instantly next to the lich, punching him full on in the armor. I heard portions of it crumple and snap like tin cans, then a grunt of pain. Jaken’s health dropped a bit, and this time, the recovery wasn’t as quick. It was fast, don’t get me wrong, but it didn’t seem as fast as before.
I summoned Falfyre, then stood. I cut a soul to my left in half and started to move toward the lich in Jaken’s body. I began to weave through a system of sword attacks that was surprisingly easy.
I’m lying. I cut the soul in half, and as soon as I stood in front of him, he started to wallop me with that damned sword he was swinging.
“You got some overcompensating issues going on there, duke?” I teased as he pushed me yet another foot back. He didn’t seem to care about James or even Yohsuke who had begun to attack him from behind. For a full five seconds, I just tried to keep him intent on me. 56 MP returned, and I kicked the asshole as hard as I could.
He slid back a couple feet, then Muu was instantly on top of him, thrusting his short spear as fast as he could, forcing the lich to back away.
I thought better of my original plan when I saw our opponent’s eyes slide to me and simply stabbed my sword into the ground and cast Phoe
nix Burst into the gathering spirits above. Then again. 21 MP left now. Time to get up close and personal.
I lumbered forward and began to channel my rage into my sword strikes. I would stab and parry while we attempted to overwhelm him. The damage was starting to add up, and his crazy regeneration was nowhere near where it had been.
We fought him down to half health before he screamed in frustration, and an unseen force picked us up, threw us against the walls like an angry child tossing away a toy, and held us there. Was I going to have to kill one of my best friends? How were we going to get him out of this one?
“You dare stand between me and my destiny?!” The lich’s face came more to the fore, and Jaken looked to be in extreme anguish. Tears fell from his eyes as he bit back a cry of pain.
No room for doubt, Zeke. Put in the work, and have faith. I tried to center my tumultuous mind and quell my aching heart in vain. I would do my part. The others needed me to be in this moment with them. And I, them.
The lich held out a ghostly hand and tugged at the air in front of him like pulling a weight from the ground. The souls began to gather faster and faster. It had only been twenty seconds, so I was at 245 MP; five more seconds and I could fuck with him. I didn’t dare let go of my only viable weapon to drink mana potions, but if those spirits healed him anymore, the weapon wouldn’t be of any great help.
I willed Falfyre to go forth and harry the lich and the spirits while he was distracted. I pulled two of the newer, more potent mana potions from my inventory, pulled the corks with my teeth, spit them out, and downed them both at once. My mana replenished by one hundred points, and I instantly cast my new spell at the growing nimbus of light above us once more. As soon as the spell was cast, the souls burned with purifying light, and a great sword was shoved savagely through my stomach.
I was down to little more than a quarter of my hit points after that blow, and the pain was immense. My eyes went bleary, and everything was dull now. I used my stored spell, Heal, and recovered 100 HP. That was better.
A howl of anger came from Coal, and he bum-rushed the evil specter and began to bite at him.
Into the Hells Page 17
