by Nick Harrow
The good news was that the ghouls’ plan to scale the battlement had worked, but it had cost them. Four of their number were stranded on the lower floor of the audience chamber. The isolated ghouls struggled to climb the sheer wall, but their brittle nails peeled off like stickers against the stone.
“Nephket,” I said. “Bring your people to the audience chamber, crossbows at the ready. Kill the ghouls you find there.”
“Finally,” she said with relief. “On our way.”
A few seconds later, eight wahket and the priestess entered the audience chamber. Their crossbow strings twanged as a volley of quarrels slammed into the first ghoul and snuffed out the blue flames in his eyes. The wahket reloaded furiously as the ghouls turned away from the wall to face them.
I felt Delsinia’s rage as she realized the flaw in her plan and sneered at her misfortune. She’d lost twice as many of her ghouls as the wahket they’d paralyzed, which gave me the edge in this battle.
“When you’ve finished those ghouls,” I said to Nephket, “head to the statue room and tend to the fallen there. Get them back on their feet, then head back to the scorpion lair.”
Now that the ghouls had moved past the passage that led off to the scorpion lair, I no longer had to worry about them finding the path between that cavern and my burial chamber. I increased the dimensions of the route between Pinchy’s house and my core to an eight-foot-high by ten-foot-wide tunnel so the wahket could reach my burial chamber more quickly.
In the brief time I’d been focused on Nephket, Kezakazek and Anunaset’s squad had taken down two more ghouls with a series of lucky critical strikes. The narrow passage the ghouls were forced into worked to our advantage. It restricted the number of creatures that could attack while allowing the wahket to maximize their defenses and put their spears to good use.
“Bored, bored, bored,” Zillah whispered in my mind. “Will I ever get to fight? Maybe I should distract myself with these delicious cat girls stuck here with me. They’re all so pretty. Maybe I could taste just one...”
“Hold your horses,” I said. “You’ll get your shot soon enough.”
“I hope so,” the scorpion queen said. “Do you think we should let all the wahket sleep in our bed? You can make a bigger one, right? Think about that. Thirty different partners, all who worship you. And the children...”
For a split second, Zillah filled my head with a very elaborate, very detailed fantasy. There was a definite appeal to her suggestion, though it didn’t seem like the best use of my ka to incarnate for a romp.
“I’m trying to work here,” I said.
“All work and no play,” she teased.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said.
The battle in the twisted passage had started to take an ugly turn. One of the front line fighters had been paralyzed, and Anunaset commanded for her to be dragged out of the way so another could take her place. It was a good call, but that momentary breach in the shield wall was the only opening the ghouls needed.
One of the undead bulled through the gap and seized one of the cat women by the arm. Its jaws clamped down hard on her bicep, and for a moment I thought we were about to lose another of our fighters. But the chainmail held, and the ghoul’s teeth splintered and broke loose from its gums.
The cat woman ripped her arm free of the ghoul’s rotted grasp and slammed her shield up under the monster’s jaw as she regained her defensive posture.
The wahket shouted in surprise at the skirmish behind their front line and rammed spears into the ghoul, but the damage was already done. The wahket were forced to step back to defend themselves. There was no way for anyone to get past them and the ghoul to plug the hole in the front-line defenses.
The shield wall was down to two cat warriors, which wasn’t enough to seal the hallway. Confusion reigned in that tight corridor as the front rank struggled to hold back the tide of ghouls while the second tried to finish the ghoul without stabbing their friends in the backs.
“Hold!” Anunaset called. Her sharp command cracked the narrow hallway like a whip’s snap. She pushed her way past a stunned cat woman to reach the ghoul that had breached the wall. With a roar, she drove her spear through the undead’s face and then dragged her spear down to the floor.
With her spear as a lever, Anunaset forced the wounded ghoul off its feet and pinned it to the dungeon’s floor. The other wahket in the second row shouted and quickly added their own spears to the creature’s body. That gave one of their sisters the room she needed to jump into the battle line and seal up the hallway before another ghoul could make its way into the back ranks.
It was an excellent move, and I would have to remember to commend Anunaset on quick thinking later. She was smart and fierce and kept her head when the shit hit the fan. I needed more like her.
Unfortunately, the ghoul on the ground wasn’t quite dead. Its claws bit into the thigh of the wahket at the center of the front battle line. She cried out in pain as blood spurted from the wound, and then her vocal cords seized up and she began to topple backward.
“Gods damn you monsters!” Anunaset shouted. She caught the paralyzed wahket by the collar of her chain shirt and held her up. Then Anunaset stomped down hard on the ghoul’s head and squirted its brains from its crushed skull.
“Fall back!” she called.
The shield wall hadn’t quite crumbled, but it wasn’t far from falling. All that kept it up was Anunaset’s quick thinking, but that wouldn’t be enough. If a ghoul attacked the paralyzed wahket she held, it would all fall apart.
The two remaining members at the front of the wahket force thrust their spears forward to give the ghouls something to think about and began their slow, cautious retreat.
The wahket behind the front turned and ran to give those at the tip of the spear room to maneuver. Anunaset dragged the paralyzed wahket behind her as she fled. The other paralyzed wahket was in the hands of two of her sisters at the front of the retreat. I wanted to order them to drop the wounded to hasten their escape, but in this narrow hallway the fallen would have been trampled to death by friend and foe alike. Better to pull them to safety where they wouldn’t die or become a hazard for others.
The two wahket from the shield wall had gained some ground on the ghouls, but not enough. They jabbed their spears at the undead who drew too near, but their thrusts had become weaker as their stamina waned. If something didn’t change very soon, they’d be worn down and overrun.
“Crossbows!” I shouted at the wahket closest to the danger zone.
Four wahket instantly drew their weapons and turned back toward the failing shield wall. They stood on their weapons’ stirrups and cocked them with a strong pull on their strings.
“Fire when you’re clear,” I ordered the wahket who stood ready. “Shield wall, step back and go low!”
The exhausted wahket thrust their spears at the ghouls a final time, then raised their shields and scrambled away from their enemies like crabs scuttling up the shoreline.
The four crossbows fired into the massed ghouls, who recoiled from the sudden assault. My trick hadn’t been enough to take any ghouls out of the fight, but it had given the shield wall a few moments to retreat. Now they had enough space from the ghouls to turn and run, which they did.
“Fall back to the burial chamber,” I ordered the first two wahket squads. “Restore your strength and ready yourselves for a stand there.”
Moments later, the wahket had retreated through the maze and rushed past Zillah and the last of their sisters. They didn’t stop until they’d reached my core. They lowered the wounded to the floor and then collapsed to the stones alongside them. Their lungs heaved as they struggled to catch their breath, and their adrenaline-fueled anger and fear filled the burial chamber with the heady perfume of battle.
“Hells yeah,” Zillah shouted. “It’s time to get this party started!”
Another anxious prickle tugged at my thoughts, and I swept my awareness through my dungeon in search of its source
. Fourteen of the ghouls were still on their feet, though several of their number were so badly wounded they wouldn’t hold up long against Zillah and her squad.
But there was another force here, too, one I couldn’t quite pin down. It flitted across my nerves with the light touch of a fire ant looking for a bare patch of skin to bite.
Rathokhetra stirred as he sensed it, too, and his memories of another time and place were lit up by a flash of primal fear.
“Another dungeon lord is near,” he growled.
No shit, I thought. I considered burning some ka for The Dungeon Reveals ability but held off. I wasn’t even sure that the other dungeon lord was actually here. Maybe I was feeling Delsinia’s presence because she was guiding her ghouls with her thoughts. I needed more information before I squandered any ka on a potentially useless ability.
“Zillah, you’ve got fourteen incoming,” I said. “Get that shield wall in place.”
“You know how to get my juices flowing,” Zillah responded. “We’ll be ready when the bad guys show up.”
“Anunaset, take the rest of your people into the raised passage to the statue chamber,” I said to the wahket arrayed before the cobra throne. “Take the wounded with you and hide far back from the main tunnel to my burial chamber. Catch your breath and be ready to strike on my command.”
I had a plan, but it was risky. I wouldn’t be able to spring it until the ghouls were already in here with me, and if I timed it wrong I’d be dead before the trap’s jaws closed.
“It’s all on you now,” I said to Zillah. “Hold the door as long as you can.”
“No sweat, boss,” the scorpion queen said. “Really. We’ve got this.”
She blew me a mental kiss, then turned her attention back to the coming undead. Zillah had arranged three wahket in a narrow shield wall before her and held her mancatcher spear at the ready. Her tail bobbed from side to side in the air behind her like a cobra prepared to strike. The rest of the cat women assigned to Zillah waited behind her in a second wall at the entrance to my burial chamber, poised to attack if anything got past their leader.
This was it. If anything went wrong here, the ghouls would be on top of my core in seconds. I could still manifest, but it would cost me dearly. And if I couldn’t keep their grubby hands off my core, well, it was a nice run while it lasted.
“Strike!” Zillah shouted.
The undead were here.
The wahket shield wall plunged their spears into the first ghoul, and it went down with a guttural cry. Zillah’s spear caught the next one in line and pinned it in place for her tail to slam down on top of its head. The stinger pierced the creature’s crown and exploded through its lower jaw like a venomous bullet.
The scorpion queen unleashed a victorious war cry and slammed the ghoul in her clutches back into the crowd behind it like a rotting club. She released her spear and whipped her tail into the ceiling. The ghoul impaled on Zillah’s stinger wailed once, and then its skull came apart and its body flew back to tangle in the arms and legs of its allies.
The ghouls wailed and raked their black nails down the fronts of the wahket shields. The furious attack would have been far more intimidating if more than two of the ghouls could attack at the same time, but their bloated bodies and weak combat skills rendered them impotent.
The wahket realized the ghouls couldn’t get past them in this narrow corridor and counterattacked with vigor. Zillah added her brutal skills to the fray, and the mancatcher spear lashed out to remove the head from yet another ghoul.
For a moment, the ghouls faltered and the blue light in their eyes dimmed. Those in the front took a step back and assessed their situation. They seemed on the verge of breaking formation and retreating in a blind panic.
I perched on the edge of my throne, eager to finish this battle.
“Press your attack,” I commanded Zillah and her team. “Don’t give them time to consider their options. If they try to retreat, run them down.”
“Loud and clear, boss,” Zillah shouted. She punched her stinger through the chest of the first ghoul in line and slammed him into a wall.
Delsinia’s thoughts brushed against mine, and I felt a thread of panic worming its way through her mind. She had a hard choice to make: push forward and try to take my core, or save the troops that remained to protect her against my counterattack.
Were I in her shoes, I’d have pulled my people out of that shitstorm and braced for whatever my enemy threw at me.
“Run.” I thrust the thought at Delsinia and hoped she got the message. I had no plans to allow her people to retreat, but I wanted her to think she had a chance to escape.
Delsinia waited, unsure of the right choice. It must have been centuries since she’d faced a battle like this. The weight of command pressed down on her thoughts, and I felt her within seconds of breaking under the strain.
“Push them back,” I snarled to Zillah. “Their command is cracking up. Shatter them.”
“Forward!” Zillah shouted. “Kill them all!”
Another ghoul went down, and another screeched in protest as spears punched through her body and Zillah’s stinger ripped out one of her eyes.
It was working. Delsinia’s thoughts dissolved into a panicked jumble, and she drew back from my onslaught. She fled from the battle, mind in disarray, and her ghouls followed her lead.
The undead turned tail and tried to escape the wrath of the wahket. Their legs tangled in one another’s and their arms pummeled their allies as they scrambled to get away from the spears that rammed into their backs.
“Run, you rotted pricks,” Zillah growled.
And run they did.
For about three seconds.
And then two of the wounded ghouls exploded in a gory blast that forced the wahket and Zillah to stop their pursuit and shield their faces from the bony shrapnel.
Light burst away from the exploded corpses, and the blue glow in the remaining ghouls’ eyes became amber fire. Their mouths dropped open, and they screamed in hellish unison as if the last shreds of their tattered souls had been stripped away.
The ghouls’ retreat stopped, and they surged toward the wahket again. The undead no longer attacked as individuals, but as parts of a single loathesome organism. Their bodies seemed to melt together as theys swarmed into the wahket like a tidal wave of rotted meat.
When the weight of the ghouls slammed into the shield wall, it drove the wahket back on their heels. The cat women braced themselves and remained upright, but the impact shoved them five feet back across the stone. Even worse, ghouls clung to their shields and dragged them down to expose the wahket to the undead horde’s raking claws.
Zillah’s tail lashed out and her spear flashed, but even killing a ghoul didn’t put it out of the fight. Its weight still bore down on the shields, and the wahket faltered. They were brave and fierce, but they weren’t strong enough to hold back a ton or more of undead flesh.
“Okay, boss,” Zillah said. “It’s time to close the door. Seal your tomb. It was a good fight, but I don’t think we can keep going.”
Icy fingers of dread closed around my heart at Zillah’s words. I could seal the tomb, which would buy us some time. But it would also pin the wahket outside where they would be destroyed by the ghouls. Zillah and my other guardians would respawn, but the wahket would be snuffed out like the last flame of a guttering candle.
“No,” I said. “Pull back to the burial chamber. Now. Set up a defensive line in front of the throne and hold it.”
“You heard the boss,” Zillah shouted. “Pull back!”
The scorpion queen used her tail to brace the wahket as they stepped backward. The wahket forced their shields back up and stepped back one small step at a time. It was a risky, dangerous maneuver, but it worked. The wahket held off the slavering, raving undead despite the long odds against their success.
They killed two more ghouls by the time Zillah reached my chamber. She positioned herself in the center of the room, a
nd the wahket took the flanks. They set up a shield wall on either side of the scorpion queen, and she braced herself for the attack.
My last line of defense was only five feet in front of my throne. I was prepared to incarnate, but if the ghouls overran our position, I wasn’t sure even my strength would be enough to save my core.
“For Rathokhetra!” Zillah shouted.
The wahket echoed her cry and slammed their spears into their shields.
And then there was no more time for battle cries.
The ghouls surged into my chamber in a vicious mob, their voices raised in sepulchral howls that reminded me of a chill winter wind wailing through a long-abandoned graveyard.
The undead slammed into the wahket’s shields, and the cat women hissed and roared into the faces of their enemies. Spears thrust and claws sliced through the air, and the air was filled with black blood and scraps of rotted meat.
Zillah’s tail darted into the mob of ghouls. Its venomous tip tore through flesh, severed arms, and shattered legs in a relentless whirlwind of destruction. Her mancatcher spear snipped off undead limbs as she pruned the ghouls like grisly trees.
The wahket held their ground, but it took three or four of their attacks to bring down a ghoul, while only a single scratch stood a good chance of taking down a wahket. It was a lopsided, ugly battle, despite Zillah’s presence.
My side killed four of the ghouls before the wahket’s luck failed. A lucky claw swipe from an undead opened a nasty cut over a wahket’s left eye. She had no time to cry out before hot blood washed over her face and her muscles went rigid. Before the wounded wahket hit the ground, another took a shot to the arm that also paralyzed her.
The crush of ghouls had pushed Zillah back, but she kept herself between the ghouls and the core. A series of precise stabs and sweeps of her tail gave her a few moments’ time to snatch a breath before the ghouls charged in again.
