T Lain - The Living Dead

Then he felt a pair of strong arms hook him under the shoulders and drag him away from the monster. Devis raised his battered head and looked at Diir, who somehow maintained his balance on the crumbling bridge as he dragged the bard away from immediate harm. With a grunt, the elf heaved and tossed Devis to the south shore of the river with his free hand. The rough landing left him staring at Hound-Eye’s fur-booted feet.

Diir shouted over the noise of rushing water and cracking timbers, “I’ve a plan. Hit it with everything on my word!”

Devis heard the ring of elven steel cut through the roar of the river. Diir, he guessed, had just drawn his magic short sword. He noted absently that his friend’s vocabulary was growing by leaps and bounds.

The little gnome cleric scampered to his side with a clank of armor and loose vials. Zalyn helped raise the bard into a sitting position and knelt on the ground behind Devis to prop him up. As soon as Devis opened his eyes, he immediately wished Diir had left him to slide into the crocodile’s belly. At least that would have been quick, and he would have known his friends had outlived him, if only for a few minutes.

He tucked his knees and pushed off with his palms, forcing his body forward, and rolled onto the balls of his feet. Zalyn grasped his hands before he could roll backward, and helped him stand.

Devis flicked a leather strap from his right shoulder. The battered lute dropped into his hand from the carrying strap he’d contrived from a “sling of protection” Zalyn pointed out in her non-stop travelogue through the temple armory. She promised it would deflect arrows, and apparently it had worked.

Devis winced as the convex body of the lute pressed against what was probably a broken rib, but he strummed a chord anyway. The sound was ugly and out of tune.

Without haste, Devis twisted a peg at the end of the lute’s neck and plucked the offending string again, his focus on the crescendoing twang. He picked it twice, listened. Devis fretted the chord, hit each string in turn with his thumb. Then he picked up speed, plucking with flying fingers, now and then pausing to turn a peg or bend a lute string with his thumb, still in desperate pursuit of harmony.

Diir, Mialee, Takata ,and Hound-Eye stood shoulder to shoulder in the cold spray at the edge of the bridge, staring down the gargantuan reptile. The crocodile now covered half the bridge, and what wooden planks remained behind the monster had been reduced to a tangled snarl of broken lumber. Hefty chunks of the structure had already broken free and floated downriver.

They needed inspiration. Devis launched into a ballad of ancient heroes, stalwart men and women standing tall, courageous in their resolve, the usual themes. He hated falling back on the standards, but circumstances didn’t allow Devis the luxury of calling forth a new song from scratch, and in this case, the words of the music had very little to do with the magical effect he wanted.

The mist carried Devis’s voice—cracking now and again, but serviceable—to his companions at the water’s edge. Takata and Hound-Eye straightened and seemed to grow just a little bit taller as they held their short bows leveled at the croc, arrows nocked and ready. Diir twirled the gleaming, engraved short sword and shifted into a loose combat stance.

Mialee raised her right hand and Devis saw a ball of golden fire flare around her fingers.

Zalyn truly took Devis’s song to heart. She loaded her small crossbow, pulled her feathered helm snugly over her head, and dashed past Devis to join the others with a war cry that made the bard’s ears ring.

The remains of the shattered bridge cracked and popped with the crocodile’s every shifting step. If the thing had been intelligent, Devis might have wondered if the creature was trying to drown out the bard’s music with the cacophony of breaking lumber. The half-elf peered intently into the crocodile’s black sockets through the swirling water spray.

Devis blinked and momentarily stopped strumming the lute. The crocodile’s eyes had flashed blood red and the bard felt a blackness grip his soul. Devis’s voice faltered, and he suddenly found himself fumbling for the lyrics to a fighting song he’d known since his eighth summer.

The bard wobbled with sudden vertigo and watched as his companions’ resolve wilted. Zalyn visibly slumped in her armor, and the fire in Mialee’s hand dimmed ever so slightly.

The crocodile chose that moment to charge, jaws flung wide. Jagged yellow teeth the size of a boar’s tusks glinted in the filtered sunlight as the eyeless beast lumbered out of the mist. Heavy wooden slats snapped and flew into the foaming current as the croc’s obsidian claws and considerable mass tore the bridge apart.

Diir held his ground and stared down the reptile’s open gullet.

Devis felt an icy hand release his heart, and an entirely new ballad swelled inside him, demanding to be released. The words erupted uncontrollably and he swung his hand down to strike the lute strings so hard that his fingers bled. Devis’s new tune magically drowned the sound of the river and the snarling, undead reptile that barreled snout-first toward the bard’s most taciturn ally. He saw the others swell with martial pride.

Diir raised a gloved hand. The crocodile’s jaws would close around him in seconds.

The elf’s glove chopped the air. “Now!”

At his signal, Takata and Hound-Eye frantically pumped arrow after arrow into the creature’s open maw. Zalyn’s crossbow twanged and snapped as she fired and reloaded with surprising speed.

The bard rounded the second verse of his spontaneous melody and headed into the third movement.

Mialee shouted the last word of her spell and threw the ball of golden energy overhand into the crocodile’s throat. The missile exploded and sizzled. Foul black smoke spread from the crocodile’s jaws and mingled with spray from the raging river. Devis continued singing even as he lost sight of his companions in the haze.

Mialee and Takata emerged from one side of the cloud to Devis’s left, while Zalyn and Hound-Eye circled out of the smog on Devis’s right to flank the beast. Diir had disappeared.

No, there he is, Devis corrected himself as the monster’s black-scaled jaws emerged, snarling, from the smog, followed by the rest of the enormous croc. Diir sat astride the crocodile’s neck like a pixie on a warhorse. The bard backed away as quickly as he dared, leaving the third chorus behind and diving into an extended, improvisational bridge that let him lend some attention to where his feet were going.

The monster’s jaws snapped shut with a deafening clap and the creature shook its neck like a wet dog, trying vainly to dislodge its unwanted rider. A real, living crocodile would have simply rolled into the water, but this undead creature seemed leery of exposing its underbelly to its opponents. The thing was fighting with intelligence, the bard realized, and hoped that Diir—who seemed to be a natural strategist and a hell of an acrobat—could hold on. Blast after blast of energy slammed into the creature’s side from the tip of Mialee’s wand while Zalyn and the halflings peppered the croc’s thick hide with arrows.

Devis saw the croc-riding elf look him in the eye as the song rose to new heights. Diir raised his arms, staying connected to the crocodile only by virtue of his straining leg muscles. The elf twirled the short sword in his right hand so it pointed down, grasped the hilt in both fists, and raised the sword over his head. In one motion, Diir drove the point into the crocodile’s brain.

The immediate effect on the crocodile devastated what remained of the span. The crocodile’s massive tail slapped the wooden timbers into splinters. Water, smoke, and gore splashed around the leviathan’s twisting body. The 30-foot reptile flung itself up onto its hind legs, thrashing and writhing. Bolts and arrows slammed into the monster’s pale underbelly. Black gore welled up from the wounds.