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I STUDIED THE CLOSEST zombies as I listened intently for Ruen’s signal. They stood as still as statues, with their long chins resting against their chests. The rank stench of rotting flesh filled my nostrils, but trolls weren’t disgusted by bad smells. Not even the sight of their bones peeking out through their putrid flesh bothered me.
One of the inert zombies suddenly twitched, then stirred. Others also began to show signs of waking from their slumber. Ruen had moved out of my sight, but I could sense him near the mausoleums. He was so close to the guardian that he should have spotted it by now.
A low moan came from one of the walking dead. It took a step towards the crypts and a chunk of flesh fell off its leg to splatter on the ground. It seemed it had been a long time since the overlord had sent any of his soldiers to the graveyard. This was the first time they’d awakened in at least a few years. I figured Ruen’s close proximity to the scroll had triggered them into action.
The undead began to move all around me. One of them spotted me and let out a loud, rasping noise. Its vocal cords had rotted away, but it was enough to alert its master about the intruder.
“Run!” Ruen shouted in panic as the entire army of zombies turned in my direction. “The guardian is a lich!” he added, then raced around the throng towards me.
“Gra scro?” I asked, but he couldn’t understand my question if he’d grabbed the scroll.
The vampire barreled past the shambling horrors with a look of pure dread on his face. He looked over his shoulder as I felt the guardian coming closer.
I caught a glimpse of a tall, shadowy being, but the fog was too dense to see it clearly.
Ruen grabbed hold of my arm and tugged me into motion as fleshless, bony hands reached for us. I took off running, but couldn’t sense any magic on him. He didn’t have the fragment and we couldn’t leave without it. I had no idea what a lich was, but it seemed to be controlling the zombies.
My ex-partner didn’t realize I’d stopped and had turned back. I felt him speeding away as I circled around the increasingly aware corpses. The lich moved closer until I could see it clearly. It had to be a ghost of some sort, since it was floating a foot above the ground. Its face was skeletal beneath the shroud of black mist that surrounded it. Lifting a hand, it pointed at me. “Kill,” it ordered in a hollow, lifeless voice.
“Saige!” Ruen shouted in annoyance.
“Scro!” I shouted back. He let out a screech of frustration when he figured out I intended to steal the scroll rather than flee like he had.
“Don’t let the lich touch you!” he called out over the moans, groans and other noises the undead army was making. “It’ll steal your soul and turn you into one of its minions!”
He didn’t have a soul, or so I imagined, so I wasn’t sure why he’d run away from the lich. I was surrounded by zombies by now, so I swung my hammer to decapitate the closest ones. They fell, but the lich used death magic to piece them back together. Some were missing limbs, but they were still functional.
The lich swept through a large headstone, proving it was insubstantial. Its eyeless sockets were fixed on me, accurately guessing I’d come to steal its prize. Hands grasped hold of me and fingers became tangled in my long fur. The zombies were trying to hold me still so their master could reap my soul and turn me into one of them.
Swinging my hammer in an arc, I cleared the way ahead, then broke into a lumbering run. Zombies clung to my back and dismembered arms hung from me like grisly trophies. I yanked the clingers free as I careened through the shuffling mob. They were strong, but even stupider than I was. I might have been in trouble if they’d been capable of working together. Since their brains were soupy black liquid, they didn’t have the capacity to plan. The lich couldn’t give them complex orders, even with all of its powerful dark magic.
I blundered through the boneyard, dodging around the tombstones. My hammer swung constantly, forging a path through the throng. They were so dense around the crypts that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fight my way through them.
A small crypt was just off to the left, so I bunched my muscles and leaped up onto it. I felt Ruen speeding towards me, but I also sensed the lich floating closer.
“Scro?” I shouted, hoping the vamp would give me some insight into where the fragment was.
“It’s in the biggest crypt, a hundred yards directly in front of you!” he called out. “I’ll distract the lich, you get the scroll!”
I grunted in acknowledgement, then sprang onto the roof of the next mausoleum. Ruen’s knives lashed out, slicing into his foes as he cackled in mad delight. The lich veered towards him, but it didn’t try to attack him. Just as I’d figured, the spirit couldn’t leech out his soul, because it was already gone. I’d never heard of vampires being reanimated as zombies. They turned to ash when they died, so maybe that was why.
Leaping from crypt to crypt, I lost my balance when the roof I landed on sloped sharply. I slammed the hammer into the stone before I could slide to the ground, creating a large hole in it. Pulling myself upwards, I reached the top, then took stock. The largest mausoleum was just ahead. Made out of thick stone, it loomed in the fog. The door was made from stone as well and it didn’t have a handle. Not even Ruen would be able to smash his way inside it.
The lich drifted past my perch and vanished through the door to guard the parchment. “Frugging frug,” I muttered.
Ruen leaped up onto the top of the crypt to land next to me. He was splattered in noisome fluids and gobbets of rotting flesh. “You should have run when I told you to!” he scolded me. “Lord Gilden will kill me if the lich turns you into a zombie!”
I rolled my eyes, then gestured at the stone building. “Scro!” I reminded him.
“I was going to go back for it once you were safe,” he said in annoyance. “The lich can’t harm me.”
I gestured at the hundreds of zombies that had gathered around us, then looked at him in sardonic expectation. We both knew he wouldn’t have been able to fight his way through all of them.
“I would have come up with a plan,” Ruen muttered. “Now the lich is back in its lair and we have no way of getting into the crypt.”
Holding up my hammer, I mimed swinging it at the roof. The roofs weren’t as dense as the rest of the structures, so it would be the only way to get inside.
“Hmm,” he mused. “I guess that could work, but you’ll have to be quick. Smash a hole big enough for me to climb through, then run before the lich can touch you.”
I nodded in understanding, trusting him to retrieve the parchment. He might hate me now, but he wasn’t going to let Drake down. It seems our boss still felt something for me if he’d threatened Ruen with death if I died during the mission. He’d have to get over it soon, since he was betrothed to someone else.
Thinking about the dragon I loved marrying the bimbo was enough for my anger to flare to life. Had he been courting her the entire time we’d been flirting and having occasional bouts of sex? I felt like a fool even though I’d known deep down that I didn’t stand a chance with him. Well, he’d had his fun and now it was over. I would fulfil my duty to save our world, but that didn’t mean I had to put myself through the agony of seeing him again.
“Are you ready?” Ruen asked.
I nodded in grim determination, then sprang into action.
