William King: Shadowblood

"Rik, beware," shouted Tamara. Even as she spoke, Xephan sprang forward. To any other eye than Rik's, his moments would have been so fast as to be invisible. Even Rik was taken by surprise by his speed and barely managed to throw himself to one side. A fist, enclosed in armour of flesh and bone, smashed into the wall beside him, sending chips of solid rock flying through the air. Rik shuddered. If that blow had connected, he would have been dead. Its sheer power would have knocked his head from his shoulders.

Tamara leapt forward. Her blade smashed into the undead armour but did not break it. Xephan laughed and struck out at her, sending her flying down the corridor, to smash into the wall and lie still. Rik found himself standing face to face with the monster. Xephan's smile was creamy, as if he had enjoyed hurting Tamara enormously.

His hand stabbed out and connected with Rik's shoulder. Bony claws extended from each finger and bit into Rik's flesh. A moment later agony followed as poison was injected. Desperately, Rik invoked the spells to neutralise it, praying he was not too late. Even as he did so, Xephan's fist smashed into his chest, breaking ribs.

"I can see I'm dealing with a master sorcerer," said Xephan conversationally. "You know how to neutralise venom and very quickly."

Rik switched his attention and try to heal the broken bones, fusing them back together. As he did so, he saw Xephan draw back his fist for the killing blow. There was nothing he could do to avoid it. Something flew over his shoulder and embedded itself in the Terrarch's eye. It was a small dagger and Rik realised that Tamara must have thrown it. At least she was still alive and Xephan was momentarily distracted.

Rik continued to draw on his magical power, healing himself and enhancing his physical strength and speed. He tried to twist himself from Xephan's grip but the armour granted him too much strength. Xephan's hand came forward, much more slowly than Rik had expected, and he allowed himself to hope that Xephan was crippled. When the Terrarch's fingers closed on his flesh he realised he had made a terrible mistake.

Xephan's touch was cold and leeched the strength from Rik. Now he knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of thanatomancy from something closer to a human being than a Quan. It felt as if his soul was being sucked from his body and devoured. Unlike most people however, he had an advantage in this situation. He had been here before and he had survived.

Rik reached out with his own right-hand and placed it on the rotting flesh of Xephan's chest armour. He invoked his own powers of thanatomancy and felt Xephan's shock as he made contact. The situation was different from his encounter with the Quan. For one thing it was far easier to make contact with Xephan and understand his thoughts. There was an odd moment of blurred vision when he seemed to be looking out of the Terrarch's eyes at his own face and seeing the odd, ecstatic, horrified expression there.

He sensed the strength within Xephan and knew that any advantage he had gained from surprise was momentary. He needed to strike now to take advantage of it. He invoked the Quan's spell and began to imbibe Xephan's strength. He felt the strength draining from himself reverse its flow. The feeling of weakness left him and he felt the Terrarch begin to squirm with panic.

Xephan had never experienced this before and did not know how to react. He thrashed around, letting go of Rik for a moment and letting his concentration slip. Rik pressed home his advantage, determined to make the most of this opportunity. Every moment he became stronger, every moment his foe became weaker.

Memories began to flood into his mind, random images and feelings that he knew did not belong to him but which were part of another's life. He remembered a childhood in an old, rundown mansion in the backwoods of Sardea. He remembered parents full of bitter pride, telling him tales of ancestral glory and filling his head with the idea that it was his duty to regain his family's rightful place in the world.

He recalled his initiation into the Brotherhood at the hands of Lord Malkior and he remembered his thirst for sorcerous knowledge and how he'd slaked it under the corrupt old wizard's tuition. He remembered the kisses and caresses of an Empress.

He recalled sinister operations in which the products of the blackest magic were implanted in his body to make him strong. He remembered staring into the Black Mirror and how the thing within it had stared back into him. There was something in that memory that made Rik scream. He saw once again the vision of something ancient and dark and horrible.

He tried to block out that knowledge even as he stripped Xephan of his power. He fought off any further contact with that corrupt thing. Energy, potent and cosmic filled him, flooding his awareness, letting him know what was happening to the Black Mirror. He knew now that Xephan shared his awareness and understood what Asea was doing. It was Xephan's turn to scream now. He desperately tried to fight what Rik was doing but he was too weak now and the advantage lay with the half-breed. Rik continued to drain him, memories and knowledge flooded in and then Xephan was extinguished. The Terrarch’s face was ashen and corpse like. It matched his armour. Rik looked down horrified and elated, wondering what he had done.

A rotting body tumbled in through the window only to be beheaded by the Barbarian with a swift savage blow of his blade. The big man turned and rose, uncoiling his huge body so that all his weight was behind the punch that sent another walking corpse tumbling backwards through the window.

The inside of the cottage was filled with powder-smoke. The battlecries of the men echoed around the interior. Some walking corpses had managed to get inside and were swarming over the soldiers. Whatever hope Sardec had in his heart died. Up till that moment he had managed to fool himself into thinking that they had some chance of survival but now he knew that whatever slim chance they had was gone.

They could make their stand here or make it above, it did not matter. It was sheer native stubbornness that made him give the order to withdraw in fighting order up the stairs. The men began to throw themselves back, moving faster than the walking dead, scuttling up the stairs with their rifles held ready, bayonets fixed. Sardec and the Barbarian were the last up, stepping backwards up the old stairs. As they reached the head of it, the main doors gave way and the walking dead poured into the downstairs area, filing the room up, covering the floor and the bedrolls and the gear like the sea covering a beach.

In a matter of moments the undead were at the foot of the stair and shambling and stumbling their way up it, their arms outstretched as if they sought to give their victims an obscene embrace. He stood shoulder to shoulder with the Barbarian and prepared to meet the first of the oncoming monsters. He exchanged feral crazed grins with the big man at once appalled and rather touched by the fact that the Northerner’s ugly face would be the last human face he would ever see. Who would have thought it mere months back?

The walking dead came on, and Sardec braced himself.

At the gateway a tear had appeared in the fabric of reality, a black gaping wound that seemed like an opening into the very mouth of hell. It swallowed the brilliance of Asea’s form like sand soaking up spilled water.

The roar of charging men echoed down the corridor. Rik braced himself to meet them.

“It is done,” said Asea. “Go get out. Get away from here.”

A sense of terrible wrongness swept over Rik. Asea had done something to the monstrous energy of the Gate. It felt as if a thousand shadow-walkers were materialising all around him. He turned to look at her.