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HOLDING MY WEAPON READY, I leaped through the air. I landed on the roof of the crypt where the lich was lurking and swung the hammer as hard as I could. Stone shattered, but it took two more blows before I made a hole large enough for Ruen to squirm through.
“Get out of here before the lich catches you!” the vampire called out.
I sensed the guardian rising and jumped onto the roof of another mausoleum. Using the rooftops to stay above the undead army, I had no choice but to descend when the crypts came to an end. Launching myself at a bunch of zombies, I bowled them over and glanced over my shoulder. I saw a brief glow of fuzzy blue light on the roof of the lich’s lair and figured Ruen had already nabbed the scroll.
Undead hands reached for me, trying to pull me backwards and slow me down. The guardian was drifting towards me, but it couldn’t move very fast. I fought my way free, then put my head down and picked up speed. Knocking my opponents aside as I barged into them, I swung my weapon in a continual arc to clear the way.
I followed my own scent back through the graveyard. Aurora had moved from the spot where we’d left her. I picked up on dozens of pimples and boils near the entrance to the cemetery, then sensed a carbuncle. It seemed the overlord of the realm once again knew we were here and he’d brought soldiers for backup.
Ruen had used his vampiric speed to blast past me and zoomed back to Aurora. I could feel the overlord and his lackeys heading in their direction as I neared the boundary of the cemetery. A fight was inevitable, so there was no point in delaying it. I roared in challenge as I burst through the gate, then charged at the soldiers.
“Troll!” one of them screeched in terror.
“Kill it!” the overlord ordered, turning to face me.
Screams of shock and pain rang out as I collided with the guards. They all wore metal armor and carried a variety of weapons. My hammer smashed through their feeble protection with ease to stave in ribs and crack open skulls.
I worked my way to their ruler until I could see him clearly. He stood head and shoulders taller than the others and wore ornate armor. A weird black vapor hung around him, giving him an unearthly appearance. His face was shadowed inside his helmet, but his eyes glowed with pale gray light. The vapor reminded me of the mist that hung around the lich, but he didn’t have the ability to use death magic.
My newest nemesis swung his sword at me, but I knocked it away with my hammer. I could sense the lich slowly moving towards us. A soldier’s spear tried to pierce my back, but couldn’t penetrate my thick fur and skin. I was surrounded by dozens of enemies. It wasn’t going to be easy to delay them for several minutes on my own.
A shrill shriek shattered the eardrums of the soldiers who were guarding the overlord’s back. More were captured by a sex fantasy that knocked them out after they climaxed. My companions had come to my rescue when they’d realized I wasn’t going to flee.
Ruen’s knives flashed with eerie speed. He cackled with murderous delight as he slaughtered his opponents. Aurora grimly stabbed the unconscious soldiers to death before they could rouse from their comas. The overlord shouted orders at his minions, but they were too terrified to listen to him.
I lashed out with my weapon, fist and feet, ignoring the occasional stabs that had no effect on me. The overlord snarled in fury and shoved his minions aside to engage me again. We traded blows, with mine leaving huge dents in his armor and his sword doing little damage to me. A few of his swings stung a bit and he chopped off some of my fur. Ruen and Aurora were decimating his army, but more were arriving. I sensed at least a hundred more guards joining the battle.
“You’ll never succeed in your quest to obtain all nine pieces of the scroll,” the overlord said in a low, gloating tone. “We will invade your world and become its new masters and no one can stop us!”
“Frug ylu,” I said, unable to tell him that he wouldn’t be ruling his own realm for much longer, let alone my world.
He drew his arm back to skewer me with his sword, but his time had run out. My arms were longer than his and I could move a lot faster than he realized. I caught hold of his wrist before he could thrust his weapon at me, then spun around and hurled him through the air.
Seeing the lich floating towards him, the overlord screamed and futilely tried to stab the specter. The lich reached out with an insubstantial, bony hand and tore my foe’s soul out of his body before it hit the ground. I felt magic emanate from the corpse and dissipate, then frowned when the guardian paused. It bent to peer at the armored body almost quizzically. Instead of raising the overlord as a zombie, it shuddered, then appeared to be caught in an internal struggle.
Zombies lurched out of the cemetery to target the soldiers. Ruen and Aurora broke off from fighting and called out to me. I knew it was time to go, but something weird was happening with the lich. It doubled over, then jerked and gasped. It lifted its hand as if it was trying to grasp something that I couldn’t see. It wailed in anger and dismay and almost seemed as if it had lost part of itself.
“Let’s go!” Ruen said, appearing beside me and yanking on my arm.
The guardian howled in fury and turned on the overlord’s minions. It swept through them, reaping their souls and killing them instantly.
Turning away from the slaughter, I felt panic licking at me. Something very strange had just happened, but I didn’t know what the hell I’d seen. I tossed Ruen onto my back, then raced over to Aurora. She had all of our gear, including the spell fragment Ruen had handed to her. The demon clambered onto my back, then the good ship Saige got the hell out of there.
I raced away from the cemetery, following our scents, since my eyesight was so poor. Aurora and Ruen kept looking backwards to make sure we weren’t being pursued. I already knew there would be no survivors from the battle. There never were. All witnesses were wiped out, except for the guardians and their helpers when they had some backup.
My energy ran out after a few hours and I had to stop. Ruen went in search of food, while I hunkered on the ground to gnaw on meat Aurora handed me.
“How can the overlords still think they’ll invade our world after we’ve stolen half of the spell fragments?” Aurora asked in bewilderment. She’d heard the overlord’s smug comments while I’d been fighting him.
I shrugged, then opened my mouth for more food. She tossed a large chunk of feline meat into my maw.
“Five of the rulers are dead now,” she mused. “We’ve only got four more pieces of the scroll to find, then the danger of invasion will be over.”
A chill swept through me despite that fact. I mused about the lich’s reaction after it had reaped the overlord’s soul. I’d felt like something had been off about the rulers of the realms ever since we’d begun these missions. They might differ wildly in appearance, but they were similar in other aspects. They all wore ornate armor and magic was released from their bodies when they died. I didn’t have answers to the questions that crowded my mind. I couldn’t even voice them in my troll form.
Ruen returned with food and I ate my fill. His belly sloshed with blood as he and Aurora butchered the carcasses. My bestie found a stream for them to wash up in after she refilled her waterskin. Once we were ready, I ran until dawn, then continued on long after the vampire was safely stashed in his sleeping sack.
