Suiteonem Prime, Empire of Man, The Imperial Shield, May, 2058

  The magic shield covering one of the undead bird-monster transports exploded in a flash of light. Glassy shards fell like snow as the spell dissolved before they reached the pockmarked ground.

  Arsenalian looked up to the top of the wall in time to catch the next bright star.

  The undead creation’s head vanished in an eruption of half-frozen flesh and bone.

  Red-gold eyes gazed down at him with a demigod’s contempt.

  The youngest one. Still a girl unlike the other four.

  He longed for a duel to show his worth.

  Champion versus champion.

  However, it would’ve been more like one champion versus five champions.

  He wasn’t so arrogant as to think he could take all of the demigods.

  Two, maybe three, if it was the girl sniper and the tall artificer or perhaps the shapely mage.

  “No… don’t do that.” He castigated himself for his lecherous thoughts.

  The Lord Cross was very clear about such things.

  This was a war, not an excuse to pursue the pleasures of his partially-dead flesh.

  No.

  His purpose here was clear.

  Take the gatehouse and open up the way to the fortress.

  It was a great honor and a test.

  “I shall not fail.”

  He drew a wand from his thigh sheathe and sprayed medium-quality fireballs up at the demigod and the imperial fodder firing down on him and his undead troops.

  Better to save his personal mana for when he truly needed it.

  “You, you and you.” He barked at three of his elite undead, pointing to the top of the wall. “Engage all the demigods you find and kill the living.” He and a few of his undead mages provided covering fire as the elite’s leapt or skittered up the wall. “Push to the portcullis.”

  He charged with the rest of his heavy undead and a pair of mages.

  The imperial fodder would struggle to target him within the formation of massive armored skeletons and zombies even if they could get past the magic shields.

  “No. Not fodder. Conscripts. Unfortunate victims of the imperial elite.” He reminded himself of the inescapable truth of the situation.

  He scrambled through the pillars of partially-frozen flesh, bone and metal until he reached the iron-bars.

  The death frost had crept up the enchanted bars to about an arm’s length above his head. The empress’ magic killed anything and everything.

  Neither the enchantment, nor the iron were immune.

  “I suppose this is good enough. You.” He pointed at an armored zombie as he stepped back into the safety of the armored mass. “Charge through the bars.”

  The resulting explosion destroyed the zombie and opened a gaping hole through the iron bars.

  With the defensive enchantment dead the death frost crept deeper into the tunnel and began working on the enormous doors of living wood.

  “First rank, advance.”

  The control gem hanging around his neck pulsed once again with death and cold where it pressed against his flesh.

  A line moved forward.

  The murder holes in the ceiling and the walls remained silent.

  For conscripts they showed a discipline that surprised him.

  Wise, for their hot oil, stones and missiles would do little against his troops.

  Hidden in the forest of undead, he gave orders to the rest of his elites.

  Let the imperials think that he only had one target.

  …

  Get out, now!

  “Shit!”

  Zinna listened to the voice in her head and slung her rifle over her shoulder.

  She had learned to listen to her instincts in the short and long month of her time in the Imperial Shield.

  The lack of sergeant was an advantage because her entire squad and many of the other conscripts within earshot listened as she roared for an expeditious exit.

  Just in time.

  Something black and shiny oozed up through a nearby stairwell.

  She grabbed Dansy and Bilmyth and pushed them forward into the press of terrified bodies heading toward the next closest stairwell.

  Ettyre used his bulk to help her squad win their way forward like a bigger snow deer pushing a path through the snow for the rest of the herd.

  The black ooze grew into a large mound about half the size of a man.

  She glanced back just in time to watch it shoot a gooey tendril out to snatch a scar-faced conscript.

  The older man locked the same eyes that he had used to ogle Dansy whenever he was close with hers.

  Zinna felt nothing but satisfaction as he vanished into the black mass with a wet plop.

  More unpleasant men vanished into it in quick succession as it grew in size and began to take on a decidedly humanoid appearance.

  A conscript cast a small fireball that fizzled out as it disappeared inside the gooey undead monster.

  It lashed out at her with a tendril but she slipped on a normal patch of floor, letting it pass overhead.

  The conscript then slipped all the way to Zinna’s feet.

  “Get up and run!” Zinna helped the woman up before taking her own advice.

  The delay separated her from Dansy, Bilmyth and the rest of her squad.

  She reached the stairwell, taking elbows and shoves the entire way.

  To be fair she dealt out her fair share.

  Her fellow conscripts were going up not down.

  The reason became clear at a glance.

  A hulking undead covered half in glittering ice and half in some kind of dead creature’s bright pink shell was smashing conscripts into red paste against the cold gray stairs and walls.

  So, up she went with everyone else.

  It was fine.

  They had been on the second highest level.

  The top level had multiple ways to get all the way to the ground.

  There were lifts, stairs and vertical tubes enchanted with magic to safely stop their descent.

  At least that’s what the conscripts had been told.

  Zinna wouldn’t believe it until she saw it in action, which she was about to.

  Outside in the freezing wind was hardly a better environment than inside the wall.

  More explosions and dark smoke choking the sky.

  More fire rained from both sides of the wall.

  Flying undead creatures swarming, threatening, only to be wiped out by the wall’s defenses.

  It was all well and good, but Zinna didn’t trust. She never trusted.

  The defenses could fail or some kind of super undead bug could just buzz its way through all of it to burrow into her back and lay its undead worms, which would lay undead eggs that made more undead worms and next thing she knew she was an undead abomination all bloated and spewing more undead bugs out of all her holes, original and new.

  Focus, she thought. Escape to safety, but take in the battle. Watch and try to learn.

  The first part sounded like her.

  The second?

  Not so much.

  The screaming in her ears and the elbowing in her sides were getting old.

  It made sense though.

  What else was a low-leveled imperial conscript to do when undead fought demigods atop the wall?

  Die and fall off apparently.

  An undead with a spider instead of head spat and shit sticky, white webs all over the place, pinning fleeing conscripts in place as it skittered away from a huge demigod slashing with an axe bigger than a person like it weighed as much as a thin stick.

  Somehow none of the strikes hit any of the conscripts, in fact they managed to cut the webs mere centimeters from clothing.

  Wow!

  Zinna was impressed.

  She remembered the demigod from the brawl at the mess hall. Had thought the young woman an unskilled brute more focused on overwhelming strength rather than skilled axe-work.

  Clearly she had erred in her assessment.

  Indeed, she would’ve bet a months wages that the demigods cared nothing for collateral damage and, yet, the demigod took great efforts to spare the lowly mortals.

  The undead woman with a spider instead of a head opened up at the ribs, splaying them with to reveal that they weren’t ribs at all, but long, sharp-edged spider legs.

  The demigod parried the thrusting legs with her axe and a gauntleted arm.

  She grinned behind her open-faced helmet.

  “Now this is more fun!”

  “Less fun, more killing, Eighty.” The other demigod said from the top of the nearest shooting tower.

  Her helmet covered her face, but her voice sounded young.

  Clearly a girl, though taller than Zinna and most of the conscripts.

  Zinna could only grow jealous at the girl demigod’s rifle.

  It made her sniper’s rifle look like something a one-handed smith had pounded out of scrap iron in an hour.

  The shots were without a doubt more powerful.

  One shattered the magic shield protecting one of those large undead bird-monsters.

  The next less than a half-second later utterly destroyed the half-rotted head.

  Single shot like all guns but the demigod reloaded faster than anyone Zinna had ever seen.

  “Just worry about taking out all their birds like Seven wants. That way that limp-wristed revenant can’t escape us. Not this time.” The one called Eighty finally caught up to the spider-headed undead woman and sliced her vertically so fast that Zinna didn’t even see the axe move. “Did you see where the other special undead went?”

  The undead had burst into hundreds of tiny spiders, but the demigod destroyed them all with a flash of golden light before they could disperse and attack the web-smeared conscripts.

  Zinna realized something in the moment as the demigods chatted like they were standing in the mess hall line rather than on top of a wall under siege.

  They weren’t looking at her or any of the other conscripts.

  It was like they saw her the same way she saw the furniture back at the barracks.

  Well… whatever.

  They could do that as long as they kept killing undead that wanted to kill her.

  She searched for Dansy, Bilmyth and the rest of her squad in that order.

  Not finding them she peered down to the safe— safer side of the wall.

  A hundred meters down meant that people looked like baby rodents.

  Many ran in a disorganized mass toward the fortress at the center.

  She used a Skill to zoom in, quickly locating her squad.

  They stuck together like she had trained them.

  “Good.”

  Doubly good that the emergency exit tubes worked like command said.

  Not a single broken body down at the end.

  There were a few broken bodies laying in spreading pools of crimson scattered around, but those were conscripts that had clearly fallen off the wall.

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  The parapets were about neck high for her, which made accidental falls difficult.

  The undead tossed them over or they must’ve been thrown off by an unlucky explosion or hit from the undead artillery.

  A whistling sound drew her attention.

  “Like that one,” she muttered.

  It grew bigger.

  “Oh—”

  The explosion swallowed her curses as the wall shook and nearly sent her tumbling backward over the parapet to join the unlucky ones.

  The side of the demigod’s shooting tower exploded in spray of rent metal and broken stone.

  It listed forward, dangerously tipping to the wrong side of the wall.

  The girl demigod tossed imperial marksmen and markswomen like Zinna down to the wall before leaping off. She landed like a cat amidst a pile of groaning conscripts.

  Better a twisted ankle and bruises than falling with the tower.

  Undead emerged from the ruined tower’s base.

  The towering demigod cut their charge off with a wide slash of her axe that sent a golden arc cleaving across the top of the tower that sheared through everything within five meters.

  Smoke and dust engulfed them all.

  The sound of clapping rang out.

  A shadow emerged from the tower’s ruins.

  The shooting towers had their own dedicated set of stairs.

  Zinna wondered in horror if the living doors of the gatehouse had been breached because that particular tower was next to it.

  She glanced over the side, hoping, praying to the Gods that—

  “Thank the Gods!”

  Undead were not pouring inside.

  Although, conscripts were rushing to add more to the numbers manning the barricades and bunker surrounding the entryway.

  “Impressive,” a deep, honeyed voice sounded. “I—”

  A sudden gust of wind blew the debris cloud away to reveal the same white and red armored revenant she had seen leading the attack.

  It was a revenant, right? she thought.

  Had to be.

  They were ones that could pass for a normal human.

  She couldn’t see most of the tall man’s face through his helmet, but he sounded like one.

  “Children of a God,” he intoned. “We meet again. Your defense falls around you. Your living doors die as we speak. There is nothing you can do but face your end against the one, the only, Arsenalian.”

  The huge demigod shrugged.

  “He’s like a mid to low one, Sixty-eight. You can just shoot him, if you want.”

  The shot rang out before the breath of the demigod’s last word escaped.

  …

  Magic propelled the bullet from the demigod’s rifle with the familiar sound of wind whistling, but only for an instant as the bang of the bullet racing faster than sound itself tore the air.

  A tiny golden star bloomed in front of the white and red-clad revenant’s wide eyes followed by the twinkling of even smaller stars falling to the stone as his magic shield shattered.

  An axe blade the size of Zinna’s torso sang an arc sheathed in gold.

  The revenant fell back.

  Zinna thought for a moment with thrill and relief in her heart that the mighty demigod had slain the undead monster.

  Except she noticed that his expensive-looking boots remained planted on the stone.

  Sure enough he snapped back up with a cut.

  His blade was slender like her rapier, but shorter and curved along its single edge.

  The demigod jerked her head back as sparks trailed across her golden helm, scattering and dying just as quickly as they emerged against the backdrop of the encroaching gloom.

  Such speed and power with a flick of his wrist.

  Zinna had known that she stood no chance against any one of the empress’ dread revenants. Her Ten Thousand Fingers.

  Every child of the Empire of Man were told stories of the great evils just below the empress.

  It was enough to make one wet her pants.

  Zinna clenched, determined to die with dignity if it was her time.

  Axe and blade blurred.

  Revenant and demigod clashed across the top of the wall.

  The former was as agile and graceful as a dancer.

  The latter, while brutal and straightforward, was no less efficient in movement.

  Zinna could barely follow their movements.

  Not quite a blur but close enough that she had no chance to do anything other than make herself small and hope that she wouldn’t get sucked into the wake of their duel.

  She imagined that it was a whirlpool she wouldn’t emerge from in one piece.

  Tiny missiles flew from the revenant’s free hand. Like a swarm of red and white brightflies. They arced through the air in random directions that all converged on the towering demigod.

  She laughed, pulsing with a gold light that lined her heavily-armored body that accepted the spell.

  “Weak!”

  They came together again in a flurry of blades.

  The revenant appeared quicker to Zinna.

  His curved sword striking multiple times for each blow of the demigod’s axe.

  However, the latter hit much harder.

  Whatever she hit, she destroyed.

  The wall’s stone parapets and floor. The revenant’s magic shield.

  Nothing survived contact from the glowing axe.

  Zinna had a sudden, terrible idea.

  Before she realized what she was doing she pulled her rifle from back.

  Voices from the stairs interrupted her terrible idea.

  “That ooze undead is fascinating. Are you sure we can’t spare a few minutes to study it?”

  “I would love to do so, Thirty-two. The way it re-purposes mortal bones to create its own skeletal structure while improving upon their weakness is, indeed, interesting.”

  “Then… why not? Our lochos has things in hand.”

  “It is simple. I don’t want to be complained at again. Time better spent studying. For a backwater civilization they do have some diamonds amid the coals in their libraries. In just a few weeks I’ve advanced my knowledge of spellcraft by months.”

  They stepped out of the stairwell with as much concern and care as if it was a normal night for a boring patrol.

  Two more demigods.

  The young man was startlingly tall. Thin like the inanimate and sometimes animate guardians of wood, straw and cloth the farms used to protect against thieving birds and vermin.

  The young woman reminded Zinna of the most beautiful noble ladies she had ever had the misfortune of seeing from a distance. Except, the demigod made them look like they made her look. Certainly, the demigod’s darker skin had a noticeably smoother and richer quality than Zinna’s, which she imagined appeared like smudged dirt and mud in comparison.

  The tall demigod wore a strange pack on his back. Slimmer than Zinna’s pack and made of a material that seemed thin like cloth but held its shape and glinted like metal. It was colored like bronze or perhaps brass?

  Zinna didn’t know her metals.

  He tapped something on the underside of his bracer and a section of the pack opened up to reveal what looked like a tiny hive of metal insects.

  They certainly buzzed as they flew out and began to swarm the conscripts still stuck to the wall by the spider-headed undead’s webs.

  “The quicker we get these poor soldiers out of the way, the quicker Eighty and Sixty-eight can stop holding back, right, Fifteen… Fifteen?”

  The beautiful demigod jumped.

  “Yes. What? Huh?”

  “Are you mage eye-ing the ooze?”

  “No…”

  “Focus. These revenants aren’t the empress’ strongest, but we can’t underestimate them. Not to mention the possibility that she might decide to send her stronger ones. Remember the briefings? She is a fickle sort of calamity, after all.”

  “Don’t lecture me, Thirty-two. I have dozens of eyes watching our immediate area and passive detection spells up. We shall have ample warning in the event truly dangerous revenants come.”

  “Then help me with these imperials.”

  The mechanical insects glowed gold, dissolving the webs.

  Large skeletal hands, the metal kind, not bone, unfolded from the demigod’s odd-looking armor.

  It resembled a skeleton outside his body with gears and mechanisms that reminded her of her father’s old works.

  The unexpected thought brought a pang that briefly silenced her thumping heart.

  While she grappled with old pains, the demigod began scooping her fellow conscripts up with his giant hands to toss them over the parapets on the good side of the wall like they were trash.

  “Fifteen,” he sighed.

  “Huh?”

  “If you please?”

  “What? Oh, right.” She pointed a finger lazily at the screaming conscripts as they disappeared over the side.

  Screams turned into sobs of relief as a faint nimbus of gold surrounded them and slowed their fall.

  The two demigods worked quickly and efficiently all while the two other demigods battled the revenant.

  “Where’s Seven? He should’ve been up here by now,” the one called Fifteen said. “Perhaps he found the elite undead more difficult than ours?”

  “He’s not dead,” the one called Thirty-two said.

  “Well, of course. I could have told you that. I was merely making conversation.”

  “You, soldier!” Thirty-two barked. “You’re uninjured. Evacuate immediately.”

  “Yes, run along, imperial waif, shoo, shoo.” Fifteen actually made the motions one made to an outside pet that tried entering the house on cold, rainy night.

  Zinna bristled a moment.

  Then she remembered what she was and what they were.

  Thus, she stowed her rifle again and ran for one of the emergency tubes.

  Her boots hit the ground a breath-stealing moment later and she ran to where she had last seen her squad.

  …

  Confidence, not arrogance.

  Arsenalian remembered the words.

  He found himself guilty of both in regards to the demigods.

  He had thought he could handle two or three depending on which combination.

  It turned out that he could barely handle the one.

  The mountain of muscle moved with control and quickness.

  He wasn’t the ignorant and inexperienced warrior that thought size meant slow.

  Size was strength and strength moved things.

  More strength equaled moving things faster.

  The giant axe carving glowing afterimages in the air was proof of that.

  He relied on dodging and blocking with magic shields.

  There was no way he was going to try blocking or parrying with his blade.

  The unenchanted blade was well-made steel, but that wasn’t sufficient to survive a clash with the axe blade only a little smaller than his torso.

  A single blow would likely shatter his weapon and him for that matter.

  As a revenant the latter wasn’t necessarily the end for him.

  Although, he wasn’t going to risk it against a demigod with divine powers.

  If only the doors of living wood down below in the gatehouse tunnel would shatter.

  The damn things stubbornly resisted the death frost. Dying and healing. Back and forth like a pair of strong burden beasts pulling a single rope in opposite directions.

  At least the strain limited its attacks to sporadic lashes from its hidden thorn vines. Otherwise it would’ve devoted its energies to magics of life and healing that would’ve been a threat to even him.

  The transports were all destroyed by the demigod that kept training her rifle on him.

  He sensed the danger of even the slightest slowing of his movement.

  He couldn’t cast a shield fast enough to block a bullet and the axe.

  His elite undead had been destroyed except for one deep inside the wall battling the last demigod because another two had just climbed out of the stairwell to begin rescuing the imperial conscripts webbed to the stone.

  A tactical retreat appeared more prudent by the second.

  The thought of failure stung like a scorpion in the ass cheek.

  “Whose end was it again, corpse?”

  The huge demigod roared, sending a wave of golden cutting power with a swing of her axe.

  It was angled awkwardly for him, forcing him to leap and twist in midair to avoid it.

  Which was what the demigods wanted.

  The crack of air breaking blended in with the crack of his armor.

  Unenchanted steel.

  The better to create challenging situations for leveling.

  But it also made things more dangerous, which was the whole point.

  One didn’t level without a true challenge.

  The bullet glowed gold as it pierced the steel and the padded cloth beneath to crack a rib.

  He was still a revenant and over Level 40.

  Both things brought physical enhancements.

  The bullet’s explosion would’ve turned an armored Level 30 warrior’s chest into a gaping ruin of crimson and ivory.

  It ruined his shirt and armor, but he was already healing by the time his boots touched the stone.

  He responded with a spell to shatter the ear drums sheathed over his blade and a wave of magic missiles from his free hand.

  The former for the axe wielder and the latter for the sniper.

  “It is time for you to feel my true power.”

  “What?”

  Blood leaked down both sides of the huge demigod’s impressive neck.

  “It is time—”

  A blade suddenly thrust out of the stone between the demigod’s legs, forcing her to jump back.

  The blade blurred. The stone exploded.

  A revenant leapt out.

  Arsenalian’s lip curled.

  “Greenskin.”

  It was the first time he had been this close to the tiny greenskin.

  Strange armor of layered plates and loose shoulder guards more like window blinds than proper pauldrons like his own.

  A helmet that flared at the bottom with a facemask that resembled a snarling devil.

  And that weird weapon.

  Like a sword blade placed on top of a staff or perhaps it was a sword with a comically long hilt?

  The tips of long, knife-shaped ears peeked out of the helmet. They were covered in many nicks, cuts and notches.

  The filthy greenskin barely came up past Arsenalian’s waist but he stood with sword-staff planted on the stone like a sentinel three times his size.

  The demigod laughed.

  “You’re tiny!” Her eyes narrowed. “But you’re definitely stronger than that limp-wristed fop. Finally! A true challenge!”

  Arsenalian shielded his eyes as gold clashed with a greenskin’s devil-like smile above the wall.

  The auras threatened to push him off the wall but he held firm with his own, barely managing to will his boots to stick to the stone.

  Axe glowed gold as it clashed in a shower of sparks with a blade of pure, naked steel.

  Arsenalian grit his teeth.

  The little savage wasn’t even using active Skills.

  Yet, he forced the huge demigod to take a step back.

  Bang!

  The demigod’s bullet split in two as he cut it out of the air.

  He spun his sword-staff, creating a wall of flower petals across the width of the wall and three times the height of a proper person, not a halfling savage.

  “We head for the living doors,” the greenskin said.

  “You don’t command me, greenie.”

  “I do, in fact, command you. As General Stormpyre commanded me to complete the Quest you have forgotten.”

  The retort on Arsenalian’s lips would’ve lashed out at the same time as his blade had he not sworn to be a new, better revenant.

  The Lord Cross was watching, so he would hold his tongue despite the subhuman filth standing beneath him deserving worse.

  “Very well, lead on.”

  “No. I must protect you and buy you time.”

  The greenskin tossed a bag that Arsenalian almost dropped due to the speed and strength of the throw.

  He couldn’t see more than the yellow eyes behind the brim of the helmet and the snarling devil mask but he just knew that there was a sneer on the greenskin’s face.

  “I follow the general’s orders, but there will be a reckoning for your insults, greenie.”

  “Once you complete the Quest you are to retreat to Second Wall and then wait for further orders.”

  “But the assault—”

  “Will be left to the undead horde for the next few days. No revenants will take part until further—”

  “Yes. Yes.” Arsenalian waved dismissively.

  He leapt down the ruined tower, bypassing the stairs entirely.

  There was a surprisingly low number of dead imperial fodder on the stairs for the strength of the elite undead he had sent.

  The bag in his hand pulsed with death and frost.

  “Let’s see the living wood fight a battle on two fronts.”

  Thoughts of the greenie soured his mood further.

  Everyone knew the vicious little things were lazy and shiftless. Only roused to action when it came time to rut or attack proper people.

  “Why would the empress grant one of their kind—”

  He shook his head.

  It was dangerous to think of the empress in any sort of positive way.

  Best to leave it until he returned to Second Wall.

  Perhaps he could seek a duel with the greenie for satisfaction?

  As long as it wasn’t to the death then the Lord Cross shouldn’t be upset with him.