Arcane Dropout 3

by Edmund Hughes

  Lee ran his hands through his hair, deflating into his chair. He shook his head, unwilling, no, unable to answer Kei’s questions.

  “What if the lich forces you to fight her?” asked Kei, with slow, gentle intonation. “Would you throw down your life in hopes of sparing her to live on in her current state? To what end? If she truly loves you, Lee Amaranth, this would not be her desire. This would be a betrayal of her wishes.”

  “Please,” said Lee. “Just… stop talking.”

  Kei said nothing else as they ate. Lee hadn’t been paying attention to what he’d grabbed, but he couldn’t taste the food, anyway.

  Mattis met up with them as they finished, and a brief discussion took place about how they would spend the day, leading up to the evening. Mattis and Kei were both adamant that they search for Hornbell’s Report. Lee could see the logic in their suggestion, though he barely added anything to the discussion.

  He listened just enough to know that he’d be searching through the dormitories for the rest of the afternoon. Neither Mattis nor Kei said anything related to his emotional state, which was both a blessing and an oddity. Lee understood why Kei was giving him leeway, but he wondered if Mattis knew more than she was letting on.

  He went through the motions of searching for the book in the dorms, knowing that he wouldn’t find it. A student would have eventually come across the tome had it been stuffed underneath a bed or behind a shelf. It wasn’t Tess’s style to use a hiding spot like that, regardless. She was clever, mischievous, and playful. She would have picked a place more like…

  He knew where it was. She’d all but shown him the exact spot. Lee left his dorm and headed straight for the library. It was later in the afternoon than he’d realized, almost nearing sunset. He felt a deep certainty that the lich would mount its real attack that evening. They didn’t have much time.

  The door to the library was unlocked, and Lee felt a flash of nostalgia as he remembered his first day at Primhaven, and the night he’d met Tess. She’d helped him in his attempt to get into the Archives in exchange for a promise of a date. It felt like so long ago. Had it really only been a couple of months?

  It wasn’t hard to find the secluded corner of the library where he’d seen Tess eating lunch during the memory she’d shared with him. It had been her safe place when she’d been alive. A place where she could hide from her tormentors, and in the same vein, hide a book from someone she’d grown to fear.

  Lee checked each of the shelves, opening every volume that vaguely resembled the size and shape of the book he’d seen Tess reading. He brought a step-ladder over, using it to check the very top of the bookshelf. Nothing. He checked underneath the shelf in the tiny gap between the bottom shelf and the floor.

  A canvas-covered bundle the approximate dimensions of a book was stuffed deep under the center of one of the bookshelves, right up against the very desk Tess had been sitting at during Lee’s glimpse of her former life. He untied the string and pulled out the book, recognizing the dark leather cover of Hornbell’s Report at a glance. He flipped it open to the first page.

  PROPERTY OF: RICHARD HORNBELL THERESA HOLLOWAY

  The text didn’t shift or change for him, as it had for Tess. The pages were empty, and the book was essentially useless outside of the value it held to the lich. He chewed his lower lip, considering his options and coming to a conclusion.

  “I have the book,” he said, out loud. “If you want it, you know what I’ll trade in return. Come and get it.”

  He wasn’t expecting a response, which made it all the more surprising when he received one, though it didn’t come in the form of spoken words. A loud, glass-shattering crash came from the other side of the library, where the windows looked out onto Primhaven’s orchard.

  The evening had arrived in earnest and the sunset was already underway. Lee knew from the lich’s earlier patterns that this was how it operated, capitalizing on every second of darkness it could get. He ducked low as he moved through the library. Another crash came from the same direction as the first. Lee leaned around the corner of a bookshelf and caught sight of what he was dealing with.

  Two shambling corpses had intruded into the otherwise-silent space. One wore a ruined business suit, complete with a set of trailing suspenders and polished shoes that had held up better than its decayed face. The other was a woman in a jogging outfit with only small amounts of blood and rot marking her as undead, which didn’t bode well for Lee if he decided to make a run for it.

  He slipped deeper into the library, thinking through the situation. The lich knew where the book was, or perhaps it just knew where he was and had realized, on its own or from Tess, that Lee would be the most likely candidate to work out its location. Had Tess really not known where she’d hidden it? Maybe she had just been too terrified of how its discovery might escalate the situation.

  Lee put as many library shelves between him and where he’d last seen the zombies as he could and dropped to a sitting position to reduce his visibility even more. He pulled out the summoning scroll he’d rightfully earned from his work with Instructor Escher.

  It was handwritten in his instructor’s messy style, with even the conjuration runes looking a bit like a doctor’s signature after a few post-work martinis. The parchment paper was thick, but pliable, one of those impractical, artisinal varieties. Unless the thickness of the paper somehow affected the spell contained within?

  Lee knew he was stalling, hoping a brilliant plan would strike down on him like a lightning bolt from the heavens. He had a few ideas, most of which he sensed would get him killed. He breathed slowly, focusing his will on the scroll. Without Tess, he wasn’t even sure that it would work for him.

  He felt a slight fluttering sensation when he reached for her essence, more akin to surprise than a plea for help. It was her. The lich hadn’t absorbed her at least, though he’d expected as much. A crash came from a nearby library shelf. It was a nice reminder of how screwed he was if he didn’t manage to cobble together a small miracle.

  The summoning scroll glowed with the same purple neon intensity that was common to most conjuration spells. It formed a portal of the same color just in front of him, a portal that hung in the air for a few awkward, lonely seconds. Then, Widow poked her head out.

  “The one with the delectable smell,” whispered Widow. “Oh my. I was expecting the afternoon to be a routine affair.”

  Lee held a desperate finger to his lips, signaling her for silence as she stepped through the portal and to his side. She wasn’t as creepy as Tess insisted, though there was a certain… quality to her. She reminded him of one of the over-sexualized female combatants in a fighting game.

  The core areas of her body—arms, legs, breasts, and butt—were still essentially human. She had the requisite number of extra limbs to qualify as an arachnid of sorts, thin black spider legs extending outward from the sides of her abdomen.

  Her face was the singular aspect of her appearance that pushed her into the category of beings that Lee wouldn’t necessarily want to run into in a dark alleyway. Widow had red eyes reminiscent of cursed rubies, and far too many of them, at that. Her skin was pale purple, and her lips were inky black. Her mouth was normal, a fact Lee had discovered in the best possible way during one of his sessions with Escher.

  “I need your help,” he whispered.

  “You wish for me to distract the undead hunting you?” asked Widow.

  Lee shook his head. “I’ll distract them. You need to take this.”

  He pulled out Hornbell’s Report and passed it to her. Widow clutched the book in one of her spider arms, curling it in to hold it tight against her body.

  “You simply wish for me to hold this for you?” she asked.

  “Not just that,” said Lee. He gestured for her to lean in closer and whispered his idea into her ear. Widow let out a small, high-pitched laugh.

  “It will be done,” she said. “You have such a fantastic smell. You will grant me a small taste if I�
�m good, will you not?”

  “Depends on what you mean by that,” said Lee. “Now go. There’s no time.”

  “When you’re ready, you may summon me with this,” said Widow. “Snap the silk and I will appear momentarily.”

  She reached down and behind herself and pulled out a thin length of webbing, the motion reminding Lee of a woman taking off her panties. He accepted it with a raised eyebrow. It didn’t seem to be connected to her, but Widow nodded slowly, emphasizing that it was bonded to her through other, perhaps magical means.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Be careful.”

  The monster girl nodded to him and disappeared around the corner with silent steps.

  CHAPTER 35

  With Lee’s focus on Widow, he’d lost sight of where the zombies were within the library. The sun had finished setting, and the deep shadows each and every bookshelf cast could have hidden any number of gnashing, undead enemies.

  He kept to the library’s far wall, his kris dagger in his right hand, the Walther P99 in his left. He kept each step he took as silent as humanly possible, going completely still whenever his foot triggered a creak in the floorboards.

  He needed to find Kei and Mattis. The attack didn’t make sense. The school’s wards should have kept the lich and the zombies from getting over the wall, which meant that they would have had to come in through the front gate.

  It wasn’t technically impossible for him to imagine a scenario in which the lich had found a way to open the gate. The Dealmaker, along with Zoe and his other followers, claimed to have trespassed into the college in the same manner. However, Lee distinctly remembered hearing from Mattis about new wards being placed by the Order of Chaldea in the aftermath of that attack.

  He put his concerns out of mind as he peeked around a library shelf. The business suit zombie was stumbling past the library exit that led to the Seruna Center with uneven, shambling steps. Lee waited, hoping the zombie would continue far enough past the door for him to sneak by unchallenged.

  Instead, it turned around after a few feet. Lee pulled back, hiding and listening, considering his options. As much comfort as the idea of emptying a few silver bullets into the undead scourge offered on the surface, he was all too aware of how quickly the noise would draw the lich and other zombies.

  He didn’t have to go rushing into danger, now that he’d used Widow to remove Hornbell’s Report from the equation. He could wait in the library, focus on remaining unseen. Maybe hide in a broom closet.

  No. Leaving Tess with the lich, not just in danger, but tormented by a literal demon of her past, was unacceptable. He clenched his jaw, feeling a numb certainty about how he felt, who he was, and what he needed to do.

  Seven steps, the first three slow and silent, the last four with bounding, predatory enthusiasm. It took him seven steps to close the distance to the zombie blocking the door to the Seruna Center. The corpse spun to face him as he came within striking distance. It was fast, faster than Lee had been expecting, but not fast enough to dodge the point of his kris dagger completely.

  He aimed for the monster’s temple but struck its neck instead. Against a human or a ghost, the blow would have still been adequate. The zombie merely gurgled in response, twisting its head and upper body for a chance at sinking its hideous teeth into Lee’s forearm. The movement backfired, only forcing the dagger in even deeper.

  Lee drew back, pulling his weapon loose. Footsteps were pounding toward him from elsewhere in the library. A low, rumbling chorus of moans came from outside one of the broken windows, confirmation of the fact that there were more zombies on campus in addition to those he’d encountered so far.

  He didn’t have time to continue his stealthy approach, as much as he preferred it. He lifted his pistol, aimed at the zombie’s head, and pulled the trigger. He couldn’t remember whether he’d left the safety on. The jarringly loud bang and blinding muzzle flash answered the question for him.

  He wasn’t practiced at marksmanship, certainly not practiced enough to shoot accurately with his non-dominant hand. Luckily, it was hard to miss at that range. The silver bullet tore through the zombie’s skull with mesmerizing precision. The monster went instantly limp, falling to the ground in a pile of its own blood with the wet thud of tenderized meat.

  More moans and rolling, inhuman snarls came from both outside and within the library. Lee pushed his way forward through the door, passing into one of the Seruna Center’s hallways. He took off at a sprint, lacking the time he would have preferred to listen and get a sense of how deeply the zombies had infiltrated the school.

  Again, he felt the impulse to hole up and ride the situation out begin to coopt his adrenaline. If he could make it to the infirmary, or perhaps Instructor Escher’s private office, he might be able to find safety behind a locked door. He’d already hidden the book. The lich would eventually give up on searching for it, wouldn’t it?

  The thoughts were cowardice disguised as common sense. Lee slowly shook his head, annoyed and ashamed of his own trembling hands. He hated zombies so very much, but the lich had Tess, and that was all that mattered. He was an idiot, a shortsighted, lovesick fool. Someone with the gall to risk his own life for a woman who, strictly speaking, was already dead.

  Kei had said that the Walther’s chamber held sixteen rounds, down by one after his first skirmish. Fifteen silver bullets, his kris dagger, possibly a spell or two, though he wasn’t counting on that. The odds were against him, but it didn’t really matter.

  He stayed focused. He had to assume that Kei and Mattis were still alive and just preoccupied elsewhere. He hadn’t seen or heard any of Mattis’s bonded animals, and he doubted they’d stay quiet if she were to fall during a fight.

  Lee was in the midst of creeping down one of the Seruna Center’s hallways when a gunshot sounded from somewhere to the north of where he was, from outside the building. He’d been wondering about Kei and getting to him seemed like as good of an objective as any. Two guns were better than one, especially when facing down a horde of zombies.

  He made his way to the Seruna Center’s rear exit, pushing the door open a crack and peering out at the situation awaiting him. A group of about a dozen zombies was gathered a short distance away, heading in the direction of the library. It was too dark now for him to see much farther into the distance. He needed to move.

  Lee had only taken a couple of steps into the open when the howl of a loud, furious wolf sounded from the southern side of the college, closer than the previous gunshot. A few of the zombies began lumbering in the direction of the disturbance, and so did Lee, though with more stealth and grace.

  Finding one of Mattis’s bonded animals would be nearly as good as finding Mattis or Kei, possibly even better if the animals were clumped in a single group, as he remembered they tended to in times of battle. Curiously, the majority of the zombies by the library stayed where they were. Lee watched out of the corner of his eye, tensing as he noticed a single figure amidst the group moving with intelligence and purpose.

  The lich had worked out where the book was, or at least where it had been. Lee tried not to let his imagination and fears run wild as he considered what that meant for Tess. Had she been forced to talk? Had she been tortured? His hands clenched the grips of his weapons as a pit formed in the depths of his stomach. He had to find her. He had to save her.

  A low, bubbling moan came from the corner of the Ewix Center as Lee passed by, and a zombie rushed out quicker than he could change course. He hesitated, knowing that firing a shot would be alerting the lich and the rest of the undead to his general presence. The zombie wore a set of overalls and lumbered toward him with outstretched arms.

  His attempt at a silent takedown consisted of trying to rush forward and slam his dagger point-first through the monster’s eye. Had the zombie been an instant slower to react, it would have worked. It grabbed him by the shoulders before he could lean his weight into the attack, preventing the dagger from dealing more than a tickling poke. />
  The zombie gnashed its teeth an inch or two away from its shoulder, winning the strength war as it pulled him closer. He threw his earlier commitment to trigger discipline out the window, pushing the barrel of his Walther P99 against the monster’s forehead and pulling the trigger. It was loud, and it was messy, and it only amplified his need for haste.

  Lee hated zombies so goddamn much. Putrid breath, stumbling steps, rotting flesh, he could practically write a cursed poem about them. There was literally no facet of their existence that he appreciated or found endearing. Worse was the fact that he didn’t have nearly as much experience with them as he did with typical ghosts.

  There were ghosts on campus, too, he began to notice: specters that hovered around the wall, watching, moving with lackadaisical purpose. Ghosts were unpredictable like that, which could be annoying in their own right, but they were also communicative and occasionally malleable. Zombies were unthinking, indomitable, psychopathic binge eaters. They were violent automatons, monsters at their most basic, a walking, swallowing Occam’s Razor of evil intention.

  Fuck zombies.

  CHAPTER 36

  Lee was down to ten bullets by the time he made it to the Spell Range, which was where he’d heard the most recent wolf howl emanate from. He’d fired two more bullets on reflex into the face of a zombie who’d been lying in a bush, waiting to grab his ankle. Another he’d used in an overly optimistic attempt to draw a larger group out of his way and off toward the dormitories before looping back around.

  He thought he’d been stealthy enough, or at least fast enough, on the way across campus, to keep himself out of trouble. The undead had been slowly following him at a distance, gathering on all sides before mindlessly closing in like a boa constrictor surrounding a fox.

  He’d reached the Spell Range, but the even perimeter of zombies around him meant that he wouldn’t be leaving it as easily as he’d arrived. He had a few options, and none of them were all that appealing.