Suiteonem Prime, Empire of Man, The Imperial Shield, May, 2058
Second Wall fell silent.
The undead horde halted the attack as suddenly as they had started it nearly six hours ago.
Conscript soldiers praised the Gods silently or in open prayer for the blessed relief and time for food, water and the other things they hadn’t been able to do.
Zinna sat close to her shooting slit, performing maintenance on her rifle while listening to the rest of her squad talk in low whispers as they gathered around the heating gem.
It reminded her of field exercises where a roaring fire cast eerie lights and shadows across the sweat and dirt-streaked faces.
She had to admire the craftsmanship that went into a heating gem that flickered like a real fire.
The conversation stopped as their commanding officer approached with their sergeant.
The young nobleman’s clean face forced her to focus on her work lest he notice the hatred in her glare.
An unblemished face like smooth, dark chocolate? In the middle of a desperate siege?
Clothing and armor were likewise unmarred.
“Attention!” the sergeant barked.
This one was younger than the last one and also a man.
Or was the battle-hardened woman a few sergeants ago?
It felt like she was getting a new sergeant every week.
Naturally, there had been no explanations.
She rose despite the silent groaning from her muscles and saluted.
A flicker of distaste flashed across the nobleman’s face.
Fuck you! She thought. Try fighting for six hours straight!
He spoke words that she didn’t care to pay attention to before prancing off to the next squad.
The sergeant’s parting glare promised retribution for the sloppy salutes, but she didn’t care.
Odds were he wouldn’t be their sergeant for long.
Unnatural cold seeped in through the shooting slit as she returned to her rifle maintenance. It was another reason why she sat away from the heating stone her squad huddled around.
The cold helped keep the stench of unwashed bodies and unplanned pissing and shitting at a manageable level.
The barrel was still hot to the touch.
Too many enchanted bullets without a proper break.
She checked the sights, but couldn’t tell if the barrel had warped.
Her shot placement hadn’t been up to her normal standard for the last hour or two of the latest assault, but that could’ve been due to fatigue.
“You see, I’d a signed up anyways.” Dansy continued her story.
For some stupid reason the squad thought it a good idea to share their pasts.
Why?
Zinna didn’t know.
The last thing she wanted to share was her past.
It was hard enough to forget.
“Why though?” Bilmyth spoke while chewing on his nutrient brick.
Some of the white-ish mush landed on Zinna’s boot.
“I don’t want to be here,” the boy whispered.
“No one does,” Ettyre said. “That’s why we’re conscript soldiers.”
The chubby young man was somewhere in the vicinity of Zinna’s age, though he appeared closer to the rest of the kids in mentality.
“I’d a signed up because my family wanted me to marry,” Dansy said.
The others laughed.
“You should’ve done it, Dansy,” Ettyre smiled sadly as he counted off his fingers. “It’s one of the ways to get out of fighting. Married, pregnant, kids.”
“He was twice my age and he had a weasel face!”
“Still better than an undead chewing your face off, isn’t it?”
The girl’s shoulder’s slumped.
“But, I might not get my face eaten though,” she muttered.
Stories continued around the flickering heat gem for what seemed like hours.
Zinna didn’t have any way to keep track of the time aside from the darkness outside the wall.
The sun hadn’t come up, therefore it was still night.
When in the night?
It didn’t matter.
They weren’t getting out until a little before dawn.
The fatigue began to seep into Zinna like the cold.
Her eyelids grew heavy.
Silence descended over her squad as one by one they began to succumb.
A thump jarred her back, causing her to bolt upright, hands unconsciously grasping her rifle.
Alarms blared, lights flashed to life bathing them in brightness.
It could only mean one thing.
“Wake up!” she snarled. “Incoming!”
The wall began to thump rapidly like an angry giant driving in the biggest nail with the biggest hammer.
Conscripts began to jolt and scream to life, grabbing rifles and rushing to their shooting slits.
“We were supposed to get reinforcements too,” Ettyre said.
“What?”
“There’s supposed to be a huge group of soldiers coming tonight. I was hoping they’d be in here instead of us right now.”
“Yeah, I guess they’ll have to settle for getting a fireworks show.”
Undead artillery lit up the night.
“Not very helpful,” she growled against the pain of her eyes being forced to adjust.
Time seemed to slow as her eyes were drawn to a dull, gray orb shot out of the frozen forest down in the valley.
The trajectory appeared—
She turned.
Dansy stood at her shooting slit, firing with her rifle.
Before she could throw out a warning, Dansy suddenly fell and slipped all the way to the side where she slammed into Bilmyth.
The orb punched right through the wall’s fading defensive enchantment, showering them in metal and stone.
What? How?
It had appeared as if an invisible hand had just yanked Dansy out of the way of certain death.
But Zinna didn’t have time to think of anything other than the gray orb embedded in the back of their interior section of Second Wall.
The gray melted, oozing like egg yolk.
“Undead in the wall!” she snapped.
The orb stood revealed as a cage of bone that disgorged child-sized skeletons.
No!
That wasn’t correct.
It was hard to tell what species the skeletons were from, but she could see that these ones had sharp teeth.
So, not human, probably not children.
Instead of attacking, the five skeletons fanned out.
The one in the center opened its mouth and spoke.
“The living shall fall and rise. Surrender the weakness of mortal life. Receive the strength of frozen eternity.”
How they spoke without lungs or the whole throat thing?
Zinna didn’t know, nor did it matter.
The five skeletons came together, bones shifting in impossible ways made possible by the lack of flesh.
“What are they doing?” Ettyre’s horrified whisper pierced the silence.
“I don’t know.”
Five became one.
Instead of five small skeletons there stood one skeleton looming over all of them. It reached over its shoulder with a hand formed out of a skeleton’s head to draw a bone weapon shaped vaguely like a sword.
“Out! Evacuate!”
Zinna shot the skeleton in the face.
Bone flew as she knocked it back into the wall.
“But—”
Zinna reloaded.
“Shut it, Bilmyth!”
“— we need the order to do that,” Ettyre said.
“Fuck that! Everyone out!”
The skeleton leapt, swinging down at one of her squad.
She shot its wrist. Or neck?
Fuck! It’s using a skull as a hand!
She had seen some messed up things over the course of the siege.
This was definitely in the top five.
“They’re already inside! I’m not waiting for a Gods damned noble to allow us to save ourselves! Fuck that! And fuck them!”
She reloaded and shot the skeleton’s right knee.
Bone chips flew, but it continued to move as if undamaged.
The wall behind her thumped again.
Her ears rang in sudden silence and the taste of iron filled her mouth.
She thought she had bitten herself at first until she realized that it had been the enchantments in the wall finally breaking.
That finally roused her squad where her words had failed.
They ran for the nearest emergency escape hole and began sliding down the pole to the next level.
The skeleton swung at them, but miraculously missed every single time.
Zinna darted past it, leaping for the pole while keeping her rifle in her hand.
Most of the others had abandoned their rifles, but she wasn’t about to rely on just her rapier.
It wasn’t an effective weapon against the undead, especially the bony kinds.
…
Dark smoke assaulted Zinna’s eyes and throat.
She wiped the tears, but coughing brought no relief.
And she was still inside the wall.
Bodies pressed against her.
Sobs, screams and prayers joined the cacophony of battle.
The Gods left the faithful unanswered.
Or perhaps they did?
In the claws and teeth of the undead.
Someone dropped a fireball in the enclosed space.
The press shoved hard at her back, shooting her out the door like a baby really tired of her mother’s womb.
She scrambled to her feet, pushing and clawing at other conscripts pushing and clawing at her.
Dull noise thumped in her ears alongside a high-pitched ringing.
Her nostrils flared like a young quadhorn separated from the herd while a pack of gulos nipped at her heels.
Bone and fire rained.
Her own side was dropping artillery on everything between Second Wall and the next line of defense.
A sharp whistle zipped past her left ear.
The wind and heat made her flinch and nearly loose her footing.
A glance back showed her a half-frozen giant of a zombie man with gray-blue skin staggering with a huge ruin of a hole in his forehead.
Zinna wished she hadn’t done that.
The mass of screaming conscripts behind her died to the undead and imperial fire from the looming wall a thousand meters away.
“Zinna! This way!” Dansy waved from behind the corner of the mess hall the squad frequented the most.
Somehow, by the grace of the Gods, she heard the girl.
“Run!”
She could barely hear her own voice.
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They ran across the cold, gray street.
Less than half the squad.
Thunder cracked behind them in the form of the mess hall exploding.
A wave hit them with physical force, stealing their wind and knocking them to the ground.
Fire flared in the remains of the building, blooming like an orange flower.
The heat baked her back and took what little air was left in her, but somehow Zinna rose.
Dansy groaned.
The girl’s face was a wet mask.
The jagged gash on her forehead exposed ivory in the red.
“Get up!” Zinna screamed as she pulled on the girl’s arm.
Strength flooded the both of them.
Together they stumbled to the perceived safety of a row of buildings separated by narrow alleys.
Offices for the Imperial Army or stores for the soldiers to spend their wages on luxuries.
Zinna didn’t remember since she hadn’t frequented either.
A gurgling roar split the night, audible even over the booming thumps and screeching projectiles.
An abomination slithered through the flames.
Flesh and meat the size of a small house with dozens of bodies sticking out from the waist up like barnacles on a boat’s hull moved like a serpent a fraction of its size to engulf screaming conscripts.
Crimson pulsed from somewhere deep within the folds of cold flesh in a ring of light that hit Zinna and the others with what felt like physical force.
She froze where she stood.
Conscious thought fled her mind like a coward, leaving her frozen with supernatural terror.
A sudden popping sensation in her ears and she was free.
As were the others.
They ran for their lives and their deaths, for that matter.
No one wanted to be added to the abomination.
She’d lost the rest of her squad. She only had Dansy because she held the girl’s arm in a vise-like grip.
One of the army offices suddenly exploded, shooting wood and brick in a deadly spray that caught a few unlucky conscripts.
Poor bastards had gone left when they should’ve gone right.
Something huge stomped out of the cloud of debris.
Metal and steam.
Painted gold in the emperor’s colors.
Zinna had a good eye for size and scale at a distance thanks to her markswomanship.
It massed the same as two of the huge ox-like automatons people used to pull wagons, but was vaguely shaped like an armored knight from the past. If a knight had thick, stumpy legs like a quadhorn, an over-large torso shaped like an armor-clad egg and arms that ended in weapons.
The automaton— what else could it be— fixed a glare on the abomination with twin, glowing blue pinpricks in the deep black of its helmet.
It sprayed fire from the huge barrel at the end of its left arm as it rumbled forward with ground-shaking steps.
The abomination screeched as its flesh began to cook.
Zinna gagged.
Not from the smell, for it reminded her of pork cooked over flames, but from the idea that human flesh smelled like pork.
The automaton cracked the abomination with a strike from the blue-skinned barbarian-sized chunk of metal it wielded in its right hand like a sword.
Run!
Her thoughts shouted at her.
Yes.
She realized that as entertaining as the fight might be to watch she should really watch it from a safer spot.
She pulled Dansy along toward the nearest alleyway, but not before she spotted a person striding out of the ruined office.
The cloud of debris obscured the figure.
Except for the glowing crystal spike the size of a finger sticking out of their forehead.
The person stopped and raised a hand toward the battle between giant monstrosities, one of flesh and one of metal.
The spike flashed, which was mirrored by the automaton’s eyes flashing as it suddenly surged with strength, driving the abomination all the way back across the street and into the raging fire.
Zinna had so many questions, but she’d hold on to them for another day. Assuming she didn’t die.
…
Krybhats grinned behind the snarling oni mask he would never remove unless he was alone.
The battle that had led to his enslavement as a revenant thousands of years ago had left gruesome ruin to the flesh around his mouth and chin.
The empress’ magic meant that the efforts to fix the injury so far had failed.
He cut through the flesh of the undead flying beast that had carried him and his company over Second Wall with a flick of his sword-staff and stepped through.
A moment.
Ah!
He had forgotten that, as a goblin, he was less than half the size of even the smallest member of his company.
Silvery sword-staff sang in the moonlight.
Well… it would have had the raging battle not marred the night sky with its inelegant noise and light display.
“Follow me.”
The control gem hanging around his scrawny neck thrummed with power against his chest.
He glanced at his palm.
What was a vibrant green in life was now a dead blue in… whatever he was.
He clenched the haft tightly to remind himself that he was in full control of himself now.
No longer a slave to the empress.
Thoughts of his homeworld flashed through his mind.
Long-forgotten memories coming forth unbidden, but not unwelcome.
He had struggled with the question on whether or not he should attempt to make contact.
Thousands of years meant that his family, his lord and everyone he knew were long dead. The odds that his nation was still around weren’t great either.
The Lord Cross had given him free reign to reach out, but in the end Krybhats decided that his warrior mind needed to be clear and focused on the Quest in front of him.
In freeing him from the empress, the Lord Cross had done him great honor.
And he was bound to repay it.
No matter if it cost him the chance to step on his homeworld once again.
“Leave them!” he snapped at his company.
The ice ghouls were still quick, if not as quick as the regular variety owing to the added weight from the icy growths that gave them armor and added weaponry to their teeth and claws.
They had almost eaten a group of conscripts huddling in the shadow of a building in terror before he had reined them back.
No.
The conscripts weren’t his targets.
He hunted nobility and thanks to Lord Cross he knew where to go.
Uncannily, he knew exactly where to move to avoid incoming artillery from both sides.
Streets ran crimson, buildings kindled like campfires.
He smiled.
This was war as it was meant to be fought.
Not the slaughter and harvest that the empress had forced him to do in the calamities.
He remembered the Chrysanthemum War.
Now, there was a war fought with only the highest honor!
Indeed, the flag fluttering from his back was adorned with the symbol of the title he had won in that war.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the original.
That flag had been lost with his life.
Still, he was pleased with the replacement.
Despite having giant fingers, the blue-skinned troglodytes had skilled weavers.
He found his targets running across a street.
The wretches were abandoning their warriors.
Surely, their personal might and that of their bodyguards could’ve helped the weaker conscripts hold Second Wall longer.
He scoffed at their cowardice.
Goblins didn’t run!
He gave orders to the ghouls.
Spoken words weren’t necessary.
He simply wanted to distance himself from the true undead. Sharing thoughts with them had made him unclean in the eyes of his gods. Now that he had choice he would never allow himself to be tainted that way again.
His thoughts were conveyed through the control gem regardless.
One hundred ghouls split into three groups.
One stayed with him.
One moved to cut off the streets leading to the safety of the third set of walls and the fortresses behind each in self-contained cells.
One move to set up an ambush where he intended for the imperials to flee if he didn’t slay them all.
“Dishonorable wretches!” He stepped out of the shadow of the building, slamming the metal-capped but of his sword-staff on the cold, gray street. “You are the officers of this army, are you not? To abandon your warriors in a battle for your lives is— No! You are not worth my breath.”
Spells and projectiles flashed.
Ghouls leapt, unliving meat shields.
A coruscating ball of white magic leapt from one of the noble’s outstretched hand.
Ghouls began to burn and disintegrate when the light shined on them.
Krybhats felt the sting of anti-undead magic.
However, he was orders of magnitude more powerful than the ghouls and at least ten levels above the spellcaster judging by the lack of lasting damage.
Revenant Bushi of the Chrysanthemum Level 43.
“Dance of the Cutting Petals.”
He glided across the distance with supernatural grace as if the concrete was ice and he had skates on.
His sword-staff danced along with him like a partner more than a simple weapon, cutting and deflecting everything the imperials fired at him.
The moonlight glinted on the silvery blade as it rose and fell, singing in sweeping arcs through the humans.
The fortunes of one’s birth did not shield them on a true battlefield.
The nobles raised their thin blades, but they were better suited for a dueling circle.
Skills only helped them live a little bit longer or nick a little bit deeper in Krybhats’ armor.
Seconds alone in their midst.
Then the ghouls joined in.
…
Arsenalian cursed as the wall he was taking a tactical rest behind exploded, showering him in debris.
“Revenant!”
The huge girl smiled.
“Are you a revenant?”
Or was she considered a young woman?
If he remembered Lord Cross’ briefing correctly, this one was seventeen or eighteen year’s old… or was that twenty?
Damn the living! he thought reflexively.
Then chided himself for the slip.
He wasn’t supposed to hate the living anymore.
Well… most of them.
There were acceptable living to hate.
“I’ve been so bored breaking bones, but now that you’re here, I can have fun!”
How did these people determine when one went from a girl to a woman?
From his experience it could vary from town to city.
Some places took it more seriously than others.
He dived and rolled out of the way of a long-handled, double-headed axe as it crated the concrete.
“Yes! It is I, Arsenalian, revenant spellsword at your service.” He sketched a bow and flourish with the rapier he had picked up from one of the nobles he had killed.
He had his real weapons and gear in the small pouches of holding on his belt, but Lord Cross had rules to follow, which he definitely didn’t chafe under, nor would he even think about chafing. Not even a little.
In his experience, the more one thought about the chafing the more one chafed.
At least the rapier had an enchantment for increased durability, which he wasn’t sure he wanted to test by parrying the axe head the same size as his torso.
“May I have the honor of your name, mighty young warrioress?”
“Tch… you’re undead. I don’t have to give you my name. You don’t count.”
That hurt his slowly beating heart.
He took her measure in the split-second before she attacked again.
She was big and muscular, but still femininely shaped, as it were.
He wasn’t an admirer of muscular women in the lustful sense, though he could admire the dedication and effort to achieve such a physique. He was definitely not an admirer of muscular women that looked like muscular men.
Her eyes flashed red-gold. Or perhaps it was more gold-red?
The demigod glared down at him and that said a lot for her height, considering that he was known for his by—
He sighed at the thought.
Everyone he had ever known was likely dead.
There were rejuvenation potions and spells that extended life, but nothing on his homeworld could stave of mortality forever.
For obvious reasons he didn’t count undeath as valid method.
She sang with her axe. A quick song, like a viper’s hiss. Almost as quick as him.
The difference meant a cut through his breastplate rather than one through his chest.
The follow up strike blew through his parry and shaved through a good amount of his long, blond locks.
Immaculate footwork weaved him out of the way of her flashing strikes.
“You fight like a syaruman!” she snarled.
“Thank you?”
Did he know what that was?
Memory wasn’t his strong suit.
He wasn’t ready to delve into his past as deeply as some of the other revenants.
The present and the future were what mattered to him.
One step at a time. One goal at a time.
The big one was proving to Lord Cross that he was worth keeping around.
Thus, his adherence to orders and the unnatural curbing of his self-confidence.
Some would call it arrogance, but he knew that they were just jealous of what he possessed and they lacked.
Lord Cross had said that confidence was okay, but arrogance was not.
It kept the sneer off his face and kept the cutting to his blade.
Indeed, he swallowed several choice words for the demigod attacking everything from her appearance to the sound of her voice to her dubious parentage.
He wasn’t going to fumble the bottle of hundred year old wine like he had, on occasion, done… many times.
Nope.
Arsenalian was finally not going to drop the bottle of opportunity.
“Wasn’t a compliment,” she grunted as she sheared through the side of brick building were his head had been a split-second before. “Means you’re a monkey man.”
He went low and punched her with a fireball in the gut, sending her flying across the street.
The frown on her face looked more annoyed than hurt.
Her golden breastplate was blackened, but looked fine otherwise.
Haste.
Stick to the basics, like Lord Cross wanted.
Fight the demigods, but don’t maim or kill them. Make them work. Get their measure. Try not to die… again.
He reminded himself so as to not give over control to the undead part of him that hated the living and sought to kill for that sweet, sweet death energy.
It helped that he had already killed a small group of noble officers and their bodyguards.
That fight had cost him most of his ghouls.
A handful remained lurking in the shadows of the buildings and on the rooftops waiting for his commands.
“Come on!” the demigod girl stomped her armored boot on the ground, cracking the concrete.
He eyed her pretty face in her open-faced helm.
If she could regrow an eye, then it wasn’t maiming.
Was it?
He blurred across the street, aiming the point of his stolen rapier at the bridge of her nose.
Better to not risk angering Lord Cross.
Red-gold eyes widened.
She wasn’t as fast as him.
That was clear.
He turned his wrist slightly, preparing to turn the thrust into a shallow cut.
She was probably tough enough to take even enchanted steel to the face, but why risk it?
The rapier jumped, almost coming out of his grip.
He heard the sound of steel snapping before the distant bang.
“Ha!” she chopped down with her axe, burying it in the ground where he had been a split-second before.
“The same to you!”
He smirked as he regarded the rapier.
Snapped off halfway up the blade.
Lord Cross’ briefings were comprehensive.
The shooty demigod was somewhere out there.
He dashed into an alley with haste.
The sound of wind ripping past him before the distant bang suggested that she was very good.
A sudden golden wall sprang up at the other end of the alley.
“Prepare to die, revenant… again.”
Another demigod.
The mage… the very attractive mage with a perfect face and a perfectly curvaceous body, but not fat.
Just like he liked them.
The thought made him pause.
How old was she again?
And what was the age of majority on this world?
Focus! Don’t drop the bottle!
A thought sent through the undead control gem dangling from his neck sent the ghouls at the mage.
It only took her a few seconds to blast them to ash, but that was all he needed.
He broke the black crystal carved into the shape of a demonic skull at his feet.
Black, evil smoke billowed out, surrounding him in a comforting embrace.
Two more demigods appeared from above.
The young men.
One posed on the rooftop like some kind of broody night haunter.
The other hovered with a strange device. A bronze-colored harness backpack out of which something like dragonfly wings buzzed.
Their red-gold eyes gleamed in the darkness.
“You die here, revenant,” the first said with a voice richer and deeper than Arsenalian’s.
Irrational hatred born of jealousy surged through the white and crimson-clad revenant spellsword.
No one should’ve looked and sounded better than him.
No! No! That is arrogant! Do not be arrogant! Be confident! There’s a difference!
He tipped a nonexistent cap as he fell into the black smoke.
A minor pillar of the dead would take his place.
It would spew about a hundred skeletons to keep the demigods busy while he traveled in a near instant to where the pillar had been hidden.
Arsenalian stepped out of the office behind a group of imperials huddling in a dark alley.
Perhaps they were gathering their courage to fight to the end to retake the Second Wall.
Or perhaps they were waiting for the way to safety to open up.
He regarded the house-sized flesh abomination in the distance.
The latter seemed an unlikely possibility.
He cleared his throat
“Noble officers…”
They spun, weapons and hands ready to fire.
“Chain lightning.” He pointed a finger.
Part of him wanted to watch them suffer at the fleshy hands of the abomination, but he was a new and different revenant!
Killing them filled him with death energy and that was enough.
