Unified Dead

by M B Reid

  The figure turned to face them, bathing them in the warm glow of sunset. A gemstone set in the figures chest pulsed with mesmerising light. Azoth fought to pull his eyes away from the stone to focus on the lethal blur of curved daggers.

  He barely raised his shield in time to block the flurry of blows, his momentum grinding to a halt as the unknown figure lashed out. Trent had performed a perfect somersault to one side, landing to slash down again with his glaive. Somehow the figure stepped away from Azoth in time to block the incoming strike.

  That’s when Azoth had a chance to see his opponent for the first time. He took in the figures gnarled talon-like fingers wrapped around the flourishing knives. He saw boots that were worn through and bursting, as if the creature had grown several sizes while keeping the boots on its feet. Wiry chords of muscle decorated it’s arms where they poked through the black and gold chitinous plate mail. An unkempt silver beard decorated a masculine face framed by long scraggly hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in months.

  The man knocked Trent backwards with a well placed kick and turned his attention back to Azoth. Their eyes met. Realisation hammered over Azoth like a wave.

  It was Rudy.

  Not the Rudy he had known, the legendary captain of the guard. This was a shadow of that great man, a twisted wreck that had somehow been reshaped by the amulet. Azoth knew, though he couldn’t say how, that the glowing gemstone set in Rudy’s armour was all that remained of the amulet and it’s ritual magic.

  “Stop!”

  The word escaped Azoth’s mouth before he had a chance to think about it. Trent was already launching his next flurry of slashes, the glaive twirling through the air in a blur of silver. A red streamer dangled from the middle of the shaft and Azoth couldn’t help but watch it. Rudy deflected the blow as if it were nothing, knocking Trent aside again. It was almost as if he didn’t want to kill the man. Azoth was certain Rudy could have found an opening to cut flesh if he’d wanted to.

  Everything fell into place. The guards hadn’t wanted to attack their former commander, it wasn’t that they were wholly incompetent. They were trying to get the best possible outcome here. Azoth stepped closer, keeping his hands at his side. Whatever had happened to Rudy over the last few weeks had been intense. Azoth didn’t trust Rudy enough to put down his scimitar. Not yet.

  “Everybody, stop!” Azoth demanded again.

  To his astonishment the guards fell still. Sure, they hadn’t wanted to be a part of the fight, but he hadn’t expected them to stand around waiting to see what would happen. Rudy’s eyes darted between Azoth and Trent. His lips curled back in a demented smile, revealing cracked and missing teeth, and he began to laugh.

  “Rudy, buddy. It’s me, Azoth. Remember?” Azoth kept his shield between them as he took a tentative step forward. The gemstone embedded in Rudy’s chest emitted a rapid-fire pulse for a moment and then dimmed slightly.

  “How about we put down our weapons? We can talk” Azoth knelt and placed his scimitar flat on the ground, but didn’t yet release his grip. He forced his eyes to divert from the gemstone, looking at the wickedly curved daggers in each of Rudy’s hands. Rudy hadn’t made any motion to lower them.

  “Come on buddy. We can all walk away from this. Trent, put your glaive down.”

  “Not until -”

  “Please.”

  Trent gave Azoth a hard look but he retreated a few more steps and set his glaive on the ground. He remained crouched next to it, clearly ready to pick it up again at a moments notice.

  “Come on Rudy. Put the knives down, you don’t need them here.” Azoth pleaded.

  Rudy took a step forward and it took all of Azoth’s self control to keep from rising with his scimitar in hand. He’d never been any good at debating. He’d spent his entire life avoiding any sort of public speaking wherever possible. How was he supposed to negotiate with a guy wielding two gnarly looking daggers. A guy who seemed to have lost his memories, perhaps even his mind.

  The gemstone in Rudy’s chest pulsed brightly again. That was all the warning they got.

  Rudy lunged forward, both daggers striking towards a guard who stood with his spear pointed toward the moon. An expression of surprise crossed the guards face for half a moment before the blades tore his throat open, pouring his life onto the street. Someone screamed.

  Azoth’s vision became a tunnel of red. The other guards fell away from him. Even Trent ceased to exist as Azoth’s brain became an inferno of fury. He was doing his god-damned best to help Rudy, there had been no need for that kill. Hell, the guard hadn’t even been a threat. He might as well have been an unarmed civilian. Whoever this man standing before Azoth was, he wasn’t Rudy any more. He was just another murderous monster.

  Azoth activated his Bull Rush ability, his rage defaulting him to his most aggressive skills. His skull itched for a moment as horns of bone burst from his head. He lurched forward, the magic of the ability propelling him with immense speed. Azoth raised his shield arm as he charged, aiming to collide with both his horns and the slab of metal.

  Rudy slashed out with one knife, the blade sending a shower of sparks as it glanced off the shield. Azoth’s horns tore through his muscled bicep, striking just below the armour. Blood gushed as Azoth tore the bone free, but Rudy didn’t make a sound. Azoth could feel hot blood dripping onto his forehead.

  Rudy completely ignored the damage he’d sustained. He hopped to one side, twirling his daggers menacingly. The gemstone in his chest pulsed again, and he began to laugh. What the hell had happened to him since they faced had off against the rat king?

  “Your time is up, dead thing” Rudy growled.

  His words were guttural, almost mispronounced. As if he hadn’t spoken in an eternity. Something about them put Azoth’s teeth on edge. Even through the haze of anger, there was something unsettling about that sentence. Instinct took over before his mind could waste another second trying to decipher it. Azoth slashed down at his former friend.

  Rudy crossed his daggers above his head and caught the descending scimitar. Then he grunted, in both surprise and pain, as a ball of purple energy punched into his chest. His armour smoked, but the magical missile didn’t seem to have penetrated. Logan had joined the battle!

  With a violent twist of his knives Rudy wrenched the scimitar out of Azoth’s grip, sending it spinning through the air. Azoth scrambled backwards, trying to put distance between himself and Rudy's whirling daggers. An extraordinarily brave guard stabbed at his former commander only to have his spear shattered to splinters by the blur of blades.

  This was not going well.

  Chapter Nineteen

  In the months leading up to the latest patch, Voria had become pretty well acquainted with Liorel Online. There had been nothing good happening in her real life, so she’d thrown herself into the virtual world with reckless abandon. She’d explored the frost caves to the north, fighting ice trolls and wyverns. She’d sailed amongst pirates on the southern seas. She’d completed some tasks that were scarcely better than fetch quests, and others where she’d led an uprising against tyrannical guild leaders.

  When she finished her personal storyline she had deleted her character and started playing again from scratch. Where she had previously been an honourable knight, she had made herself a scheming thief. She’d embraced backstabbing and darkness. She had once been a hero, and she’d made herself the villain.

  Despite everything about her that had changed, one thing remained.

  She still remembered how to fight.

  Rolling up a new character wasn’t exactly a clean slate. In a game without character levels, completing the personal story was the closest one could come to reaching the proverbial level cap. That knowledge was as important as any skill granted by equipment. So Voria knew, on a more intimate level than most, how a conventionally trained swordsman would fight. In her short playtime as a rogue that knowledge had served her exceptionally well.

  Tonight, it was the only t
hing keeping her alive.

  Voria whirled away from her foe, switching to a conventional grip on her daggers so she was holding them both point up. This wasn’t the time for flair-over-function fighting styles. A sword slashed downward through the air she’d just been occupying and the wielder grunted in frustration. It wasn’t the first time he’d missed.

  Going on the offencive Voria launched herself at him. Both daggers lashed out. Her right in a wide sweep designed to catch his attention and distract his sword. Her left punched forwards in a blur, the thinner blade piercing the thick leather jerkin the guard wore. He stumbled away before she could inflict mortal damage, but she knew she had him now. He had to choose between retreating or bleeding out. Only one of which might save him.

  “Run” She whispered, her voice almost pleading. The guard glared at her, and Voria found herself whether he’d interpreted it as a threat. Should she be the one to back away? The sounds of fighting were still ringing through the streets. Whoever had started the fires was nearby, and she wanted her revenge on them.

  “I don’t want to kill you”

  That one was a warning. The guard understood.

  Voria turned away from her fleeing foe and tried to gauge the distance to the church. She couldn’t make a straight line towards it, scorching flames were licking across the narrow road ahead of her.

  She started retracing her steps, looking for another alleyway that could lead her around the worst of the fires. Still the streets were empty. There was nobody to fight the flames.

  Should she really be rushing into battle? That’s something the old her would have done - the knight her. The one that had fought for good. Not the one who had murdered her friend, the one that was consumed by rage.

  Who was she now? The murderer, certainly. That taint could never be cleansed. But the rage was gone, the fury that had driven her to commit such horrible acts. And she was trying desperately to redeem herself as best she could. Did this make her a third incarnation? Something new entirely, she liked the sound of that.

  Could she be a better person now?

  Her feet were carrying her toward the sounds of combat. That was surely a point in her favour, she was acting in the best interests of the townsfolk and not herself. Though, if she were being honest she felt more alive fighting against that guardsman than she had in the last week. There was something about combat that made her heart sing.

  Maybe that’s what really drew her toward the church. Perhaps it was entirely selfish after all.

  Voria rounded the final corner and saw the carnage unfolding.

  The guardsmen were standing in a sparse half-circle. They seemed to be spectators in a grand-finale between a zombie armed with a scimitar and a shadowy human-monstrosity hybrid. The latter spun daggers so fast Voria could barely keep track of them. It was enough to give her pause. What good would Voria bring to that fight? She was watching titans duel.

  And yet, neither seemed so incredible to her. Was that the voice of her previous character talking? Whilst the fighting was furious it wasn’t impossible to track each combatants movements. A thrust there, a riposte here. It was like a dance, and Voria felt like she was learning the moves just from watching. This wasn’t the clashing of titans. No, it was the struggle of mid-tier characters. Her previous incarnation would have wiped the floor with both of them. She wasn’t certain her new character could outfight either of them.

  As Voria struggled to decide whether to lurch into battle, another figure threw himself at the creature. He was a well muscled man, bulky, though he launched himself through the air with impossible grace. As he glided past his foe he unleashed an aerial barrage of stabs from his glaive. The monster they fought brought up one hand, it’s curved dagger spinning like a saw blade on it’s palm. Ignoring all laws of physics it caught the incoming glaive and twisted it aside, deflecting the first strike toward the ground. As the glaive-wielder fell toward it, the creature lashed out with it’s second dagger. Blood splashed across the cobblestones. Before it could attack again Azoth charged. They collided with the metallic crunch of shield hitting armour. The monster was knocked backwards giving Azoth’s companion time to get back on his feet.

  Fear gripped Voria. She hadn’t expected the creature to stave off the incoming attack so easily. She’d underestimated it, and if she’d been attacking in that moment she would have been killed. She forced herself to focus, studying the creatures form. Azoth was driving it backwards with a furious onslaught that was both terrifying and crass. He had no finesse, but the sheer brutality of his attacks kept the creature from regaining its footing. If Azoth had someone else helping him, something flanking it from the other side…

  A bolt of purple lashed the creatures back. It ignored the magical blow, the spell seeming to fizzle out against its armour. Magical resistance of some sort? Smoke wafted away, but she couldn’t tell if the spell had scorched the black plate.

  Movement caught Voria’s eye. There was someone in the creatures blind spot, right where they needed to be to flank the creature. Azoth continued his assault. Now was the moment, Voria could tell. The figure behind the monster stepped forward, rapier poised.

  Then the impossible happened.

  The creature lashed out behind it, the curved blade homing in on its target. The man with the rapier, confident that he was about to strike unnoticed, was completely unprepared. The dagger slipped through his guard and buried itself in his chest.

  Three things happened in rapid succession.

  Azoth’s scimitar caught against the other dagger, and a whip of bone lashed out from his wrist and slashed across the creatures face.

  The glaive-wielding warrior screamed a name Voria didn’t recognise.

  And, perhaps most importantly, Voria felt the need to flee.

  Whatever they were fighting had just done the impossible, it had seen behind it. Whilst completely focused on Azoth attacking it from the front. It had reacted as if it had been watching all around it the entire time. Voria glanced down at the daggers in her hands. They weren’t of much use in a traditional fight, not like the sword she’d used to wield. This rogue character was built around dealing out extreme damage and then retreating and repeating. If she couldn’t back-stab this thing, was it worth risking her life to fight it?

  Voria stood as still as a statue as the creature yanked its knife down, gutting its victim. The old man gurgled as he sagged to the ground.

  She made her decision.

  Chapter Twenty

  Azoth blinked.

  What the hell had just happened? He slashed out again with his scimitar, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  Rudy knocked it aside with a sneer. Then, still holding one hand behind him, he disembowelled the Old Man.

  Azoth instinctively hoisted his shield into position to withstand the assault he knew was about to begin, but his mind was moving at a glacial pace. He hadn’t even seen the old man sneaking up until Rudy had struck him down. How could that be possible?

  Azoth had held Rudy’s full attention. He’d been certain of that, how else could his former captain have blocked the onslaught of attacks? Was Azoth seriously outclassed?

  The rage that had been driving Azoth through the fight had faded away now, both the icon indicating the in-game buff and the razor-focus of violence had deserted him. The old man was dead. Was there something else Azoth could have done to save him? He was barely aware of Trent somersaulting through the air, vaulting over Rudy to tend to his master. Azoth was less hopeful. He’d seen the Old Man’s intestines fall free. That was a death sentence.

  Something clunked against his shield.

  Hard.

  It twisted the wall of metal in Azoth’s grip, wrenching it aside and exposing his right side. Azoth watched this happen in slow motion. His brain was screaming for him to react but his scimitar was too slow coming up. He saw the flash of the blade, that horrid curved dagger, and then it plunged into his shoulder. A bleeding icon flashed into view, but the normal stamp blotting
it out never came.

  He was bleeding. His undead gift had betrayed him.

  Azoth activated his Tentacle Whip ability, the ivory tendril lashing out from his wrist to force Rudy’s arm away. He didn’t inflict any real damage, but it was enough to buy him some space. Rudy took the dagger with him as he retreated. Azoth stumbled back a few steps, struggling to settle into a fighting stance. His health was still seeping out through his shoulder wound. The unexpected danger of bleeding damage was something he hadn’t had to deal with in this game before. How the hell did he stop bleeding effects?

  Behind Rudy, Trent screamed bloody murder. The Old Man must have passed away. Azoth watched as Rudy turned away from him, focusing on the flurry of blows that Trent delivered. Azoth could barely track him as he leapt to one side, slashed out, then somersaulted in the other direction. Trent was a moving target, impossible to hit, and Rudy’s entire focus was dedicated to protecting himself from the furious strikes.

  It was time to move.

  Azoth activated Bull Horns and charged forward. He wasn’t propelled by rage any more, instead his heart felt of ice. This was a cold and calculated mindset that Azoth hadn’t encountered before. There were no icons on his HUD to indicate that there was a game ability attached to it. Is this what a vendetta felt like? An honest-to-god wish for murder?

  Azoth stumbled through the spot that Rudy had just occupied. The captain-turned-abomination had sensed his approach somehow, and twisted aside. With no foe to break his momentum, Azoth staggered a dozen paces further from the battle. As he turned he saw skeletons claw themselves from the ground around Rudy. Logan had clearly stepped back into the fight. The razor-sharp claws of the dead proved far more effective than any of the spells he had thrown so far.

  Azoth watched as Rudy dodged around attacks that came from every direction. He moved like water through rapids, violently diving and twisting to avoid the worst of the blows. Still, Azoth could see that some were connecting. A splash of blood there, a gash across the arm here. Azoth ran toward the fight, not daring to waste any more mana on abilities that might be dodged.