Robert Walker - Zombie Eyes

Suddenly the bones opened up, and Stroud found him-self on the other side of the "feast" leavings of the creature, cascading down and down, falling with a powerful thud, the skull lost somewhere atop the mountain of bones. Stroud struggled to maintain consciousness, the glow of the orange aura of the skull weak but still a shimmering outline around him.

"Esruad ... Esruad," he moaned, but the skull did not respond. He was stunned and fought for clearer vision.

Stroud saw a hideous creature burning with fire leap into view, coming straight for him. Stroud instinctively recoiled, believing the touch of the creature would set him instantly aflame. The monster reeked of decay and it burned as if made of gaseous materials, and yet it bore the look of a desiccated body. Stroud recognized the apparition as what Wiz called a lich, the single most powerful form of the undead. It greatly resembled a mummy in its tattered appearance, but those tatters and hanging strips of cloth were once flesh. The creature's eye sockets were empty, dead blackness with a green pinpoint of piercing light at each center that served for eyes. It was obvious this thing saw best in the dark. An aura of death and coldness radiated from it despite the fire all around it.

According to Wiz's books, the lich had been a wizard or priest in life, damned to an eternal hell. The bits of cloth still dangling from the soupy, lumpy body were supposedly magical. But also, according to Wiz's books, the touch of the creature could send a living man into a frozen state of paralysis, to make him utterly unable to move.

It lunged at Stroud and missed as he sidestepped, averting its touch. The bone pile it careened into turned to burning rubble, so intense was the heat of its touch. Somehow this lich had reversed the potency of its touch and commanded enough heat to sear bone or to cremate Stroud.

Stroud didn't know what to do. The creature advanced and he fired the gas, fearing the gas would also kill himself should he inhale enough of it. But Stroud found that the magical light surrounding him acted to keep the gas out. But the lich, too, was protected by the fire around it, which consumed the gas, dissipating it. It was immune even to modern charms, Stroud thought. The lich sent out a green light from its center, which took the shape of a dragonlike snake, enormous and weaving between them, readying to strike. Stroud saw human eyes in the snake-dragon's hideous head, and he knew the creature at the center of the ship was now placing all its energies into destroying Abraham Stroud, and taking possession of the skull on its own terms.

With the formation of the dragon-snake, which was as large as a helicopter, the lich's fire dimmed and receded.

Stroud backed away from the serpent creature that began to strike, first at his left, then his right. Stroud felt out of control, felt as if he were on the verge of defeat. He saw the lich circling to his other side. The two creatures were backing him along a dark corridor that no doubt would end in his death.

"Esruad!" He invoked the name again and again, searching the darkness for the lost skull when suddenly behind him there appeared another lich, more vicious and ugly than the first, but whose vestments were in much better repair, showing a nobility about them. This lich's eyes spewed forth an orange fire and its skull was neither dirty or filth-ridden, as there was no skin, hair or gooey soup streaming from it. In fact, the skull looked absolutely sleek now that Stroud could see clearly as this one neared him.

Completely surrounded now, Stroud heard the second lich speak his name. "Stroud, I am with you. It is I, Esruad."

Stroud feared it was a trick, but he looked more closely at the lich's features, and alternating with the dead skull was that of the crystal skull. The orange-eyed lich was smoking like the first one, except that it smoked with a freezing-cold air that frothed off it, and inside of this, at the heart of it, there was a visible fire.

"Defend yourself!" shouted Esruad's new form, a form that required all of the energy of the skull. In Esruad's hand appeared a sword of ice that he plunged at the fiery lich, which now backed carefully away, a fire sword appearing suddenly in its grasp, materializing from within it.

Esruad attacked, the two swords pounding overhead, ringing with a spectral clash, fire and ice shattering in all directions as the serpent with its dragon body leaped onto Stroud, whose protective outer current was losing its charge.

Stroud saw the serpent head come at him with its fangs about to strike when his own scream mingled with that of the first lich. Esruad had stabbed it through its center and turned it to stone, and then the serpent dragon fell atop Stroud like a gunnysack, dead and reeking of years of decay, molten with an oozy layer of soup that sent waves of disgust through Stroud. Barely had he gotten to his feet when another snake-dragon attacked from behind, knocking him to his knees. This one had dropped from overhead where it had been clinging to the ceiling. Stroud felt the fangs lock into his throat like two enormous meat hooks; he felt the blood gush up and out, draining down his back and chest. He was in its clutches, and it had him near death when Esruad lobed it in half with his ice sword.

Stroud, weak and trembling from the venom coursing through him, knew that he was a dead man, that there was no way out from this point on. He didn't even have the strength to push away the monster that spilled its insides over him. Esruad had to do this, too, for him.

But as Esruad did so, Stroud found the strength to drag himself away from the ugly, desiccated features of his ancient ancestor, for Esruad's appearance was as gruesome as the other lich. Esruad was a lich, a long-dead wizard who had come back to life, and he seemed to grow in strength here amid the horrors of his avowed enemy, Ubbrroxx. In fact, he almost seemed to draw his new existence from the creature, as if he was in cohorts with it and had played Stroud for a fool.

"Yes, I draw strength from this place, but not from the demon," said Esruad, reaching a spindly, dead hand to him. "You have brought me to the realm where I can flourish in order to fight our common enemy, Stroud. You must continue to believe, for if you fail to do so, I can't protect you any further."

Stroud didn't know what to believe, and yet Esruad had warned that it would come to this. Ubbrroxx was deliberately placing doubt in his mind, dividing their combined strength.

And here stood Esruad as Stroud had never seen him before, his sword gone back inside the body from which it had materialized, standing in tattered yet royal raiments that hung limply on a once noble frame below the mummified creature that had stepped from the ages.

"You have no reason to fear me," Esruad almost shouted, angry at Stroud's reluctance. "If you fear me, if you doubt me, the venom of the creature will take you. Fight your eyes, Stroud. Use that mind of yours! That will."

Stroud had been warned by the skull time and again about appearances and deceptions, but he had not been prepared for Esruad's graveyard exterior.

Esruad came closer. Stroud flinched involuntarily. Overhead and surrounding them came the laughter of Ubbrroxx as if he were watching the scene unfold. The demon's voice said, "You have lost your human helpmate, Esruad. Now you are alone."

Stroud pulled away but Esruad draped himself over Abraham. Stroud saw the flesh-peeled body black out everything else; simultaneously, he felt an overwhelming weakness overtake his vision and his mind as he slipped helplessly into unconsciousness, falling deep into what he sensed was his last sleep as the venom reached toward his brain.

"No! No! No!" shouted Esruad at Stroud. "Nooooooo!"

Ubbrroxx's laughter shook the ship, shook its own whale belly.