Spires

Howard squeezed viral rounds out.

Controlled shots.

One at a time to maximize effect, conserve ammo and avoid friendly fire.

Bloated zombies filled the corridor.

They had overrun one barricade.

He couldn’t see the state of the one on the other side through the mass of pressed, rotting flesh.

People ran.

The ones that didn’t ended up with chunks of flesh in zombie mouths.

Screams cut out suddenly followed by a freshly dead person rising to join the glowing green-eyed throng.

“Fire in the hole!”

He chucked an incendiary over the leading edge.

Fire burst in the contained space.

He said a silent apology to the other people.

Even without his armor he would’ve weathered that with ease.

He could heal burst eardrums in seconds, after all.

Flesh sloughed off a zombie after he put a round center mass.

Slick with gore the skeleton put on a burst of speed.

Bone clacked against his armor.

Dripping fingers left red smears across his faceplate as he ripped the skull off the vertebrae.

The necromancer’s magic failed, causing the skeleton to clatter to the floor like a puppet with cut strings.

“Where are you? You evil bi—”

No.

He was trying to be better about that.

“Where are you? You evil murderer? Quit hiding like a coward! I’m worth a lot of points! Got a bunch for putting the clown in the ground! Gonna do you the same, eh!” He stowed his pistol to save ammo and drew a sawed-off shotgun from his bag of holding. War crimes rounds burned hot. He didn’t feel it thanks to his armor.

The sprinklers turned on.

He thanked the Threnosh for the environmental seals.

The carnage undoubtedly smelled like it looked, which for him would’ve been much worse than it was for a normal person.

The locals fled behind him.

He glanced back and saw the hard-eyed woman waving them onward before they all disappeared around the corner.

Up to Black Cat to get them down the tower.

All Howard had to do was be loud and visible.

The shotgun’s barrel glowed white hot as he squeezed out the last round.

Water and gore splashed at his boots as he stepped forward to cram the barrel into a zombie’s mouth.

One thing he was thankful for was that most of their faces were chewed up messes.

Made it easier to not see them as people.

He didn’t mind doing gratuitous violence to monsters.

A mace replaced the shotgun.

He bashed heads with every blow.

No Skills, but plenty of skill, technique and muscle.

He might not have been throw a car strong, but he was definitely squat a car strong.

Undead killing protocols seemed to be working.

Destroy the brain.

Even if the skeleton lacked a brain or most of one, bashing the skull still did the trick.

He waded into the gorefest.

The undead grasped and bit, breaking finger nails, fingers and teeth on Threnium.

He pulled another mace out.

Each step accompanied by a downward bash.

Dual-wielding at its most rudimentary.

Truthfully, one needed a Skill to make it really make it work in an attacking with both weapons way. You could attack with one and use the other defensively, like the old rapier and parrying dagger way back when people wore poofy pants and blouses with feathers in hats.

Pain shot through his body with every move.

Get hurt enough and one could learn to tell the difference between the pain of skin parting and the pain of skin closing.

Too much of the former despite the Threnosh gel supposedly gluing everything together as it healed.

A gift from the damned demon clown asshole. Fucked with his healing factor and every medical trick at their disposal. From magic to super science, nothing worked like it should’ve.

Cuts and stabbed wounds from ethereal blades opened quicker than they should’ve closed.

The rope burns around his neck still stung.

A damn ghost rope, thrown by a circus ghost of all things.

The demon clown’s claws had also bypassed his armor completely to tickle his guts.

He was one walking, pulsating pain signal.

Luckily, that just made him angrier.

So long as he could hold on to that, he could hold a weapon.

Howard lost track of time.

He passed the elevators and the barricade on the other side.

No people, just undead.

Zombies and skeletons.

It was a good thing this necromancer hadn’t specced into ghost-types.

He had a few magic and magitech items stowed on his person and in his pouches and bags of holding, but they wouldn’t have done him much good against the woman’s level.

A garbled message cut through the comms.

He couldn’t make out a single word.

The stairs beckoned.

Only one way he could really go.

No people left in the lower floors.

So, he went up.

Where else would the necromancer go?

He noticed the fog filling the stairwell halfway up to the next floor.

“This better be you, Boy,” he muttered.

The door to the next floor had been battered open.

No sound.

Didn’t bother with smell.

Something pulled his head upward.

A hint of a figure swirled in the thick fog.

It appeared to him that a hand beckoned.

Feral instincts didn’t trigger, so he shrugged and climbed.

It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that the kid figured out a new way to use his superpower.

He climbed until the stairwell began to shake.

Dust and debris rained down on his helmet.

He ran three steps at a time.

Several floors, until an explosion blew the door right over his head.

Once again he stepped into an insane fight.

Red-slicked ivory ground against Alin’s armor.

Jagged edges cut against the undersuit covering his forearm where the fishman mage had frozen the Threnium plate off.

White fat and oil smeared thick trails across his faceplate.

Not teeth… bone re-purposed.

Muscles constricted, pulling him ever downward.

Mere seconds according to the clock in his HUD, but it felt like an eternity.

His uncle was wrong.

Letting a giant monster eat you to kill it from the inside wasn’t a viable tactic.

A particularly large bone jutting out of the undulating mass of weeping red jabbed at his side as he slid past.

He grasped it with half a hand and fired his thrusters, arresting his descent.

He activated his armor’s electric field, drawing on precious power long enough to make the huge throat seize up.

Multi-weapon flared yellow, cutting through thick, tough meat.

One should never know what it’s like to be born.

Alin realized that as he slid out of the small opening awash in fluids of varying viscosity and color.

Granted he hadn’t been born in a traditional sense.

The pillar of flesh writhed over him.

It filled up the hallway like a tree that had suddenly grown straight through the floor and ceiling.

Red emergency lights cast an ominous tint.

He thickened the gray, but there was no vitality in the writhing flesh thing, at least of the kind he could drain.

“Can you hear me?” Willy said through the comms. “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. I’ve located you. I’m seeing a lot of death magic near you. Is it her? Please respond. I don’t know how much longer I can— do— fire—”

“Not her, but fire anyways! Aim high!” he scrambled away, staying low to the floor.

Projectiles tore through the tower.

Walls, desks, vases, everything in between the pillar and the shuttle shredded instantly.

Small missiles streaked down the gaping void.

Fire bloomed.

Water rained.

What was left of the flesh thing looked as disgusting as it probably smelled.

“Good hit! Copy? Good hit! No sign of necromancer. Stay on me.”

“Gotcha—”

Marian’s voice cut out.

“Cruces?”

A tiny head peeked around the corner and disappeared as quickly as it— she had appeared.

Little girls in dark places? In the middle of an active combat zone?

“I’m not falling for it, Cindy!”

He moved with his head on a swivel.

“Cruces?”

He spun, hardlight blade on guard.

A skeleton emerged from the charred flesh pillar.

Only vaguely humanoid in shape and made of bones from a variety of people and creatures it rose to its full height, looming in the dim red light.

Sickly green light filled its mismatched eye sockets.

It spoke, despite the lack of vocal chord, in a woman’s voice, echoing eerily.

“Any relation? I’ve seen and heard that name. In ownership notices for places like power plants and old military bases. In the scared whispers of hard men and women. People that aren’t scared of monsters or anything else, really. High level people. Killers, murderers, crazy nightmare types that even I watch my back around. There are bounties. Rumors of huge rewards. There are even Quests, but I’m not dumb enough to take them. So, I have a lot of questions that you’re going to answer. Give me what I want and I’ll let you walk out of here. You’re worth points, but there’s plenty in this building to keep my spot.”

“Alright. Let’s talk. Face to face. No tricks.”

The bone giant threw its skull back and laughed. Jagged protrusions cut the ceiling panels.

“Oh? You mean like those missiles that plane? Helicopter? What is it by the way? I’ve only caught glimpses, but its too quiet to be either of those things and it hovers, which means it has to be a helicopter, right?”

“How many questions are we talking here?”

“This isn’t that kind of talk. You’ll answer them until I decide we’re done.”

While they spoke zombies and other skeletons had crowded both ends of the hallway.

“How about… no!” Alin leapt.

The giant skeleton moved fast for its size.

Mace-like limb descended, meeting a rising cut, left to right.

Bone shards sprayed.

Horizontal cut, right to left through ribs and across the thick, centrally located spine.

Upper half crashed to the floor.

Jagged bone fingers grabbed his leg as a bone foot bigger than his head kicked him in the faceplate.

Oh— that’s right.

He remembered.

Magic made impossible things possible.

It wasn’t like the skeleton’s spine carried signals from the brain to the rest of its body. It didn’t have a brain or nerves. He could confirm that visually.

“You’re wasting time. It’s pointless to fight me. I can drown you in a hundred corpses.”

It was the little girl from before.

She stood at the head of the milling undead throng.

The shadows hid most of the torn side of her face.

The remains of an eyeball dangled from an oozing socket.

Her mouth was stained red.

Two voices in one.

“Cruces? It’s said that he is an arrogant ass with a god complex trying to make people live how he wants them to. Th—”

Alin cut free from the giant skeleton and lunged across the distance, thrusting blade into the zombie girl’s forehead.

The green glow in her eyes winked out as the small body clad in pajamas crumpled to the gore-slicked floor.

“—at he makes the strong cater to the weak.”

The words continued from the mouths of dozens.

“That he neuters the strong, holding us back, therefore making it impossible for us to re—”

He cut and thrust while the undead remained as still as statues with only their mouths moving.

“—claim our wor—”

Simple strikes to conserve energy and to compensate for how weak he felt, how off his grip on the hilt felt with missing fingers.

“—ld. You aren’t him, but I don’t believe in coincidences. There are so few people that probability dictates some type of relation.”

A lone skeleton remained.

“Not to mention the fact that you’re a Rayna’s Ranger. Grandson? Mom? Aunt?”

He didn’t answer.

Best not to give the necromancer anything in case of truth spell or gem.

“Another bunch of selfish interfering asses. You’d side with alien invaders against your own people.”

The skeleton lacked flesh, but he felt it sneer.

“Who’s wasting time now?” He smirked, bringing his hardlight sword into a middle guard, point facing the skeleton.

“This is where I should inform you that I don’t need you alive to question you. It’s not ideal and I won’t have as much time as I’d like, but I can just speak to your corpse.”

Truthfully, he had also been wasting time.

Buying more of it to continue his search of the tower through his gray.

A search conducted with help.

At least that was what he felt.

It was more instinctive than intentional.

He had finally gotten a sense for the necromancer’s magical signature.

It appeared to him as a dark green thread connecting each zombie and skeleton to each other in a tangled web that went everywhere. It vaguely reminded him of those silly string parties he and his friends used to have when they were kids… and for Lake’s birthday a few months back.

It tasted like those deviled eggs from one of his Philippine cousin’s wedding a couple of years ago… after they had been accidentally left in direct sunlight. And, yet, he had eaten 4 of them before he had realized something was off.

It sounded like the screaming tears of men, women and children.

Despite lacking eyes, the skeleton narrowed them.

“What is this?” It waved bone fingers through the air, sending wisps of gray swirling. “This wasn’t here be— what is this!” The necromancer snapped. “You! It’s you! Not magic… oh… no… I can’t let you go now. I. Have. To. Know.”

The skull’s jaw distended.

A second skull of sickly green energy emerged.

He flicked his hardlight blade in its path.

The ethereal spell passed right through and hit him in the chest like a baseball bat.

Armor did nothing.

He gasped, reaching for the wind that had been knocked out of him in an instant.

“Drop, turn off, whatever your laser sword and take off your fancy armor. You don’t want me to increase the power of my deathbolt. It’s hard enough to minimize it. A slight mistake could mean your instant death.”

“Yeah? No.”

Thrusters fired, carrying him up.

Ceilings and floors were like unto wet paper to his helmet.

Cindy Traynor. Necromancer. Slasher. Murderer. She had gone straight to the top while the rest of her horde took the long way.

Dead soldiers grappled him and fired wildly as soon as he breached the penthouse floor.

They didn’t have any identifying tags on their tactical armor, but their faces, what was left, gave them away.

Old America, Phoenix Dynasty.

He could have sworn the man clumsily jabbing a dagger in his faceplate had been part of the ambush at the trapper’s.

A burst of electricity locked their muscles, making it easier to lop hands with his hardlight blade.

“You found me.”

She looked like any other average woman of indeterminate age. Not young, but not old.

Fair skin.

Light brown hair.

Glasses.

The only physical feature of note were her dark green robes with what appeared to be dark gold threads in arcane patterns.

Yup.

Probably enchanted to hell and back.

They had to be if she wasn’t wearing a scrap of anything remotely resembling armor.

“Now what, little doggie. You’ve caught the car. What are you going to do with it?”

“Surrender and you can go to prison.” He put his helmet into silent mode. “Guys. Take the shot. Danger close. I don’t care. Guys?” his words were only for Marian and Willy.

No response.

The gray, he noticed, was thin despite pumping out of the vents in his armor. More importantly, the air was noticeably clear around the necromancer.

She rolled her eyes.

“Do I get a fair trial?” She scoffed. “I’ve seen several so-called courts across America. Fair isn’t high on the list of words I’d use to describe any of them.”

There wouldn’t be a trial.

His dad would use her own memories to dig out the truth of her crimes.

No ambiguity.

No question.

“You’ve murdered people. I imagine what you did here for the contest is going to go on your personal account page. The record’s going to be in the spires. A list. Anyone could just look it up.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“What? Didn’t think that far ahead?”

“It doesn’t matter. What you should be concerned with is how much stronger my spells are when I don’t cast them through one of my puppets.”

An ethereal skull screamed out of her mouth.

It clipped him in the shoulder as he tried to dive.

Lights went dark.

When they came back on he was looking up at a hazy figure in swirling gray. Faint teal in flat panes like the windows flickered in and out of existence revealed by the wisps brushing against it.

“I sense power, but no magic.” The necromancer spat another skull, which splashed against the barrier that was there and not, like a specter in the corner of his eye. “But, I’m not getting as much as I should. Enhanced Soul Appraisal.” She flicked a finger at him.

The spell took hold of him. It felt like hands touching inappropriate places, but worse.

The gray within him didn’t like it one bit.

The necromancer bit off a cry.

“Fine. I’ll do it your way. I will pry your secrets from your body and soul. Sadly, it will be a traumatic and fatal event. You should’ve taken my initial offer. First, we bring your physical form to the brink.” She beckoned to the open door leading to the bedrooms. “I’ve been preparing while the rest of my puppets drove my future puppets up this hotel.”

The doorway came apart in a shower of splinters.

A massive undead abomination of pulsating muscle and oozing sores shook the floor with every step.

He had fought a few down in San Diego.

The Bountiful Decade had spurred the encounter challenges and spawn zones. The necropolis beneath the city had gone back to producing as many monstrosities as it had during the height of the rangers’ war on the spawn zone’s undead hordes.

Always had been a terrible experience and that was when mostly shooting at them from a distance.

“Any day now,” he muttered.

The necromancer’s eyes narrowed. She immediately began scanning the room. Her glasses seemed to glint with unnatural light. Her eyes suddenly widened.

She recoiled, throwing her hands up.

Death’s Dancer stabbed his spear partially through her hastily cast magic shield.

Solid steel.

Nothing special otherwise.

Such was the supersoldier’s strength.

She dropped it.

Spat.

The skull punched him in the chest, through his armor.

Staggered, he drew an assault rifle from his bag of holding.

Full auto. One-handed.

She blocked them all. Sickly green shield barely cracked.

“I know of you. You shouldn’t wear something as identifiable as that mask. I’m not interested in fighting the government. Plus, we are in Canada. You have no jurisdiction here. Therefore, you can’t—”

“Lady, those are all technicalities and I don’t care. Only thing that matters is you’re evil and you’ve got to be removed.” Death’s Dancer fired the grenade from the underslung launcher.

Shield held, but the explosion and shrapnel gave him the instant to turn invisible.

Meanwhile, Alin ducked a fleshy limb embedded with spiked bone like a crude club.

He cut in passing.

There was no way he was going to be able to block or parry the abomination.

Too much mass backed by a surplus of strength.

He rolled under the backhand and carved a line across what approximated the abomination’s stomach. He cut deep, but all he could see was layers of solid muscle.

Skeletons and zombies poured out from behind the abomination and the hallway on the other side of the large living room. They came from the entrance.

“Grenades would be good! I’m armored.”

He heard the thump, followed by the explosion.

The shockwave pushed him back. Shrapnel pinged against his armor.

Shards of bone blasted into the walls and ceiling.

Chunks of flesh splashed red wetness over everything else.

The necromancer uttered words.

Alin looked for cover… then realized that he had been liberally splashed.

The blood ignited.

That was fine.

Temperature readings were well below his armor’s tolerance.

The zombies burned as they piled on him.

The necromancer uttered words.

What had the scouting report said?

Something about exploding corpses…

Alin fell.

The floor had given out.

The abomination tumbled in after him.

Thrusters pushed him out of the way.

Bone spikes crashed on him and promptly shattered on the Threnium.

Impact absorption and dispersion made it feel like a strong punch. The type to knock the wind out rather than crush ribs and organs.

People screamed.

The abomination lashed out silencing several.

“Get away from the blood and body parts!”

They were too slow. They had been caught off-guard. The long run from the lower floors had pushed their nerves to well past the limits a person could be expected to endure. Above meant safety and that belief had just been cruelly destroyed.

The necromancer’s voice filtered through the hole in the ceiling.

Blood erupted into flames.

Body parts exploded like grenades.

More fuel for his nightmares.

Those that could fled out of the suite, but from the sounds out in the hallway they didn’t find safety.

“Please,” he whispered, “help them.”

He couldn’t command, only ask.

All he could do was strengthen the gray around the fleeing people while keeping them from being affected by it.

He thrust his hardlight blade into the abomination’s lump of a head, then leapt over the sweeping club-like arm.

The brain could be anywhere. Probably, multiple due to its size. But that depended on the necromancer’s power and skill.

He scrambled away.

Dead eyes stared at him accusingly.

Then they glowed green, rising to claim their vengeance for his failure to save them.

Fingernails ripped from flesh as they tore against his armor.

Old and young.

Women and men.

Girls and boys.

The abomination clubbed him, turning the zombies into red smears and slamming him through the kitchen island and into the stainless steel doors of the refrigerator.

Whistling birds streaked into the suite, striking the monstrosity’s thick flesh.

Pinpricks turned into gaping holes with frightening speed.

Viral rounds ate away at biological matter while leaving microscopic particles behind.

Only a true disintegration spell left a cleaner battlefield.

It raised its club-like arm.

A round struck the tip as it descended on Alin.

Nothing was left by the time it reached him.

A second later and it had been eaten away up to the elbow.

Howard rushed around the corner and placed shots into the massive body.

The abomination was gone in seconds.

“The people?”

Alin accepted a hand.

He had been embedded deeply.

“What? You took care of them.”

“I did?”

“Yeah, kid. Cool new trick? One of those sudden power ups in dire circumstances being pushed past your limits thing, eh? Kinda jealous I’ve never had one of those.”

“I— What?”

“You’ve got like fog summons or something? Gives me the creeps though. I’m staring straight at them, but it feels like I’m looking at them out of the corner of my eyes. Wasn’t a fan of ghost shit when they weren’t real.” Howard shook his head. “No offense though, saved them people from the undead out there. C’mon. I heard your announcement, figure you’ve found the necromancer chick, eh?” He regarded the gaping hole in the ceiling. “Or she found you.”

Lights flashed and explosions sent debris raining on their helmets.

“Death’s Dancer…”

“No shit! Thought he would’ve been out for the rest of this shit show after getting gutted by the demon clown fuck.”

“He’s not at a hundred percent.”

“Well… good… cause neither am I. Let’s go before he bites it. We don’t want to find out what kind of zombie he’d make, eh?”

Howard climbed up the hole, shooting the last of his viral rounds.

They did nothing to the necromancer’s magic shield.

She blasted him in the face.

He dropped to a knee and pulled a shotgun from his bag of holding.

War crimes rounds stuck to the shield’s surface, burning away at it with every tick of the old clock against that wall that had somehow made it through the devastation unscathed.

The necromancer stomped her foot. “How? You’re classless— both of you and yet you take a deathbolt strong enough to instantly kill a bear. You’re fancy armor doesn’t matter. It’s not even enchanted.”

“Lady, you ain’t got nothing I haven’t eaten before, eh.” Howard cast his shotgun aside to draw a grenade launcher. It thumped as quickly as he pulled the trigger.

Explosions rocked the suite.

“Watch it, asshole!” Death’s Dancer said from… somewhere.

The necromancer fired another bolt at the sound of his voice finally killing the old clock.

Somehow, she could cast through her shield.

Smoke swirled with the gray.

Alin crept through the hole, staying low to the floor he went around the half-destroyed kitchen island.

Water sprayed from the broken faucet, helping clear the red, oily smears off his faceplate.

“None of you can hide from me!”

A bone spike as thick as his arm shot from her palm. Blood-flecked tip clipped him in the shoulder, spinning him around.

A translucent, sickly green skull coalesced above her head. Dark magic spewed from its cackling maw, bathing the entire living room.

Howard powered through it, crashing his armored shoulder into her magic shield.

Death’s Dancer did the same on her right.

Alin finally managed to push the gray through her shield.

A figure emerged from the swirling fog.

Faint color lashed out with a pointed thrust toward her neck.

Eyes widened.

She screamed.

Waves rippled through empty air, through the gray.

The figure dispersed. The color vanished.

Wispy tendrils snaked across the floor, caressing the hem of her enchanted robes.

She recoiled, blasting them away with another scream.

“I— I think I understand you now, Alin Cruces.” A grin split her face. “You say I’m evil? Well… you’re diabolical.”

Death’s Dancer and Howard continued to hammer away at her shield.

Cracks emerged, but disappeared almost as quickly.

She only had eyes for Alin despite how hard he was trying to conceal his presence.

“You can’t have my soul, monster,” she said flatly. “The risks no longer outweigh the rewards. But by all means keep punching away, boys. It’s as futile as all your efforts to stop me have been.” She twisted her fingers and uttered words. The floor under her feet ripped open. A jagged tear casting a sickly green glow. Ghostly hands with gnarled, desiccated fingers reached up and pulled her down. “I’ve earned enough points here to secure second place. Don’t try to come after me. You’ll regret it. Why don’t we just live and let live? As for you, Lt. List. Do pass on my interest in employment to your government. As for you two… I can’t say I’d ever willingly collab with a soultaker.”

The hole closed as soon as her head had gone through.

The shield remained in place for a few moments.

When it dissipated.

Howard and Death’s Dancer rushed forward to tear at the floor.

“Nothing. Teleportation spell.” The latter cursed.

“Wet? Tell me you can hear me?” the former said.

“You’re clear. Did you get her?”

“Negative. She teleported. Can you track?”

“Interference is lessening, but I’ve got nothing on any teleportation spells. Might be a Skill? But there’d still be some hints of a trail.”

“Status on the rest of the hotel?”

“I got this.” Marian cut in. “Sensors are good again. Movement in the floors below you. Lots of it, but not a lot of heat signatures. Black Cat’s hunkered down with some people in a conference room on the ground floor. No undead nearby.”

Death’s Dancer regarded Alin with piercing blue eyes through the American flag skullmask.

“What’d she mean by that soul taking stuff?”

“Nothing,” Howard said lightly. “Mind games. Trash talk, eh.”

“I sensed presences in this,” Death’s Dancer moved a hand through the gray, creating a swirling wake. “Thought I saw some light? Thought this was her doing. But, she was looking at you.”

Alin kept his mouth shut.

“C’mon,” Howard beckoned. “Fight’s not over. People are still alive. Undead are still killing them. You,” he jabbed a finger in Death’s Dancer chest, craning his neck back to look the supersoldier in the eyes, “can help or leave. Don’t care much either way, eh.”

“Alcaestus is fighting a boss monster at the harbor just north of here. Some kind of moose transformer. And there are survivors in the last standing building. They could use some protection. Slashers could still be lurking, waiting for opportunities,” Alin said.

“You haven’t answered a single question I’ve asked you, but… whatever. That can wait.” Death’s Dancer vanished.

“So… is he helping here? Or at the harbor?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. Let’s go.” Howard pulled a carbine from his bag of holding. “Getting down to the dregs.”

“Same here.” Alin checked the energy of his multi-weapon. “What’s the plan?”

“Get eyes on the survivors. Put down undead. Now that comms are back we can mark them for Marian. Should be quicker that way. Only thing we have to be careful about is friendly fire.”