336 Night of the Living Semi-Dead

For a few moments, the only thing Mike could think about was how much everything hurt. He couldn't really move, but it seemed like he'd managed to break practically every bone in his body. Honestly, considering the speed he was moving at when he finally slammed home into the hilltop, it was something of a miracle that he'd survived. Or it would have been if he wasn't some kind of semi-divine being by this point.

Thankfully, the pain receded quickly as his regeneration began to piece him back together, and he was soon able to add his own Life Magic to the mix to speed the process up. Within a few minutes of his impromptu landing he was well enough to pull himself out of the crater and have a look around.

His method for supersonic flight had left much to be desired in several key areas. The most pressing of these was the complete lack of braking or landing methods, but a close second was the difficulty he had in steering the air construct once he'd gotten going.

So, it was not surprising in the slightest that he'd missed his mark and landed somewhere away from the city. Judging by the relative location of the ocean, which he could still barely see on the horizon, he figured he must have overshot his target by a large enough margin that Giludisi was not even visible to him.

He took a moment to reevaluate the situation while waiting for the bones of his limbs to finish returning to their normal positions.

[I couldn't see much when I blew past, but I did notice a lot more smoke than should be present at this time of night. It seems likely that there is something going on…]

For the dozenth time in as many minutes, he cursed his lack of information gathering. He thought he'd improved since the last time he'd been taken by surprise, but clearly he'd gotten complacent again.

[Maybe I've been too lenient with my enemies. What's the point of having all this power if I don't make use of it?] He found himself thinking as the last traces of pain vanished leaving only a cold anger.

He lifted off the ground and started flying towards the city, thoughts turning darker as he went.

If he had been a little less distracted he might have noticed the faint laughter echoing up from the depths of his soul.

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"Hold! Hold, damn you!" The White Lion commander was yelling as the next wave of hostiles slammed into the shield wall and started clawing at the faces of the horrified soldiers.

Their fear was understandable, as the gaunt, hollow-eyed creatures with pale grey skin, long claws of hardened bone, and mouths full of razor-sharp teeth were enough to render even veteran soldiers unnerved. Especially since it was clear to these Lions that the enemy was composed of former citizens who'd undergone some kind of transformation.

Kuyana could tell with a glance that the line was moments away from collapsing. For all that the Lions were effective as a police force, they lacked real combat experience. Suddenly being pulled into fighting these monsters was taking a real toll on them. They would soon break.

"Pull the reserves from the third level and have them set up a defensive perimeter at the stairs." She told her adjutant, Barlon, who promptly commanded one of the riders following in their wake to deliver the message.

"In the meantime, let's help them out a bit. What do you say, men?" She yelled over her shoulder to the small company of cavalry that were acting as her escort. A ragged cheer arose from them, but they were clearly not at all excited to wade into that mess.

Kuyana could hardly blame them. None of their training had prepared them for facing the horde of ghoul thralls which were currently sweeping through the city.

[Gods damn them! What in the hells are those fool corpse-eaters thinking?!] She had time to think before she was in the thick of the fighting.

As the wave of enemies receded under the onslaught of a cavalry charge, one of the thralls, a former barmaid by the looks of her clothes, lept up at her. With a practiced move, Kuyana's sword flicked out of her scabbard and neatly decapitated the monster. It's corpse fell limply to the ground as her horse pushed through.

The next few minutes were a blur of hacking and slashing at angry faces with fang-filled mouths. She fell into a haze of bloodshed and violence as the number of enemies seemed to increase without end. A small, more sensible part of her began considering how best to extricate her unit from this mess.

Thankfully, her adjutant had maintained his cool better than she expected. When her escort was on the verge of being overwhelmed, he issued a few short commands, skillfully getting the group to break contact and slide back into the relative safety of the infantry's ranks.

Catching her breath, Kuyana took a moment to survey the situation again. Her brief foray into the thick of battle had bought some time for the rest of the Lions to reform their lines, but it did not solve the original problem.

Watching another young soldier go down screaming under the claws of the ghoul thralls, she understood that they would need to fall back to a more defensible location to have any hope of containing this threat. However, she also knew that any retreat attempted by the unseasoned troops would quickly turn into a rout. They were effectively trapped in their current predicament and no amount of heroics on her part could turn this around.

It was time for her to go her own way.

"Alright, men." She spoke loudly enough to gather the attention of the escort as well as those few members of the infantry that weren't actively engaged. "Strong work back there, but it will take a lot more than that to drive these monsters back. We need to cut the head off of this snake, and we can't do that by staying here."

Kuyana paused for a second to let her meaning sink in before driving the point home. "I will lead a team to find the source of these fiends and put a stop to them once and for all. This will be a truly dangerous mission, so I won't order you to follow me, but if you choose to stand beside me in this last desperate effort, know that you will earn yourself a place of honor in the memory of this city and its people."

Then without bothering to wait for them to decide, she turned her horse and began riding. To their credit, most of her escort chose to continue their explicit mission of guarding her without complaint. She was left with nine experienced soldiers following in her wake, including her adjutant.

Barlon pulled up alongside her, not so subtly asking for further instruction.

Without turning her head, she murmured quietly enough that only he could hear. "Once we get out of earshot, have the Stalkers take care of them. I can't have any eyes on me at this juncture."

The taciturn man nodded, but said nothing else. If he felt any trepidation about betraying his subordinates, he didn't show it. Of course, much like her, the veteran warrior had long ago sold his loyalties for the promise of immortality. The two of them had already done much worse in service to their undying masters.

They were now passing through an alley strangely devoid of the monstrous attackers. Kuyana could hear her men shifting uneasily on their mounts, barely audible over the ringing sound of horseshoes striking the cobblestone roadway. While they clearly were unsettled by the course of events, they trusted her leadership and judgement.

For a moment, she had a passing pang of guilt, and wondered if there might not have been a better way to separate herself from the escort, but she quickly quashed it.

[It would have been suspicious if I went on my own into dangerous territory. Even more so if I simply disappeared in the midst of a major crisis. No, I needed to have witnesses who observed me taking action on behalf of the city. Assuming we manage to deal with this situation, it will be important for me to have justification for my absence over the next few hours.]

By the time the Stalkers struck, she'd managed to harden her heart once more. It only took a few seconds for the expert killers to complete their task and vanish back into the night.

[I'll need to come up with a plausible story for what happened here...Damn, I should have let the Stalkers take their time and make a battle of it. Now, I'll need to explain how Barlon and I escaped the ambush that killed everyone else before they had a chance to even draw their weapons.] She lamented to herself without looking back at the slaughter.

"Where to?" Barlon asked quietly, a slight tightening of the only sign that he was anything other than his usual calm self.

"If anyone is to blame for this nonsense it's that disfigured priest. I don't know how he got the corpse eaters to move this quickly, but clearly he's got his own goals in mind."

"Has there been any word from the Court?"

Out of habit, she glanced down at the ring on her right hand. It was still dark, indicating that none of her vampiric masters had seen fit to reach out to her.

"Nothing yet. I assume that our esteemed leaders are probably taking their usual course of action, and waiting to see how things play out."

"Should we be interfering then?'

"I've spent the better part of a decade putting myself in a position of authority inside the Lions, all for the purpose of preparing the city for our takeover, and I'll be damned if I let that go to waste simply because some Annhilite bastard decided it was time to kick the hornet's nest." She grumbled in response.

Sensibly, Barlon let the matter go after that, and the two continued in the direction of the entrance to the undercity where they would have the best chance of finding their target. Neither one of them looked back at the massacre they were leaving behind.

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"Run!" Julia yelled, pulling on Dorn's arm as she did so. The smaller man was gasping for air, barely able to do more than put one foot in front of the other.

While debating on simply picking him up and carrying him, she nearly tripped over the broken remains of a barrel that had evidently come from a nearby cooper's shop. A shattered front window was a clear indication of its origin. From the sounds of it, there were still a few of the cannibalistic madmen fighting with the storekeeper inside.

With a start, she realized that she'd been unintentionally slowing down while she was staring at the store and quickly sped up again. Dorn gave a pained whimper between gasps, but did his best to increase his pace as well. Unfortunately, it didn't matter.

A group of slavering madmen suddenly burst from an alley in front of them, forcing Julia to slide to a halt. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw that their other pursuers were just a little ways away.

"...Dorn...I think we're trapped." She muttered as the hungry looking monsters slowly began to surround them. Frantically glancing around, she tried and failed to find some path to salvation.

"Julia...(gasp)...my dear…(gasp)...it's been an honor." He mumbled between agonal breaths.

They were forced to watch the fanged, hollow-eyed creatures grow closer and closer. Soon they would surely move in for the kill. Julia remembered the dead they'd already come across, especially the way their faces had all been twisted in howls of anguish, and felt her legs go numb.

A man fell out of the sky in front of them. There was no other way to describe it. He landed gently on the ground, a tattered cloak billowing around him as he did so. The monsters hesitated, suddenly unsure of themselves. Julia saw a few near the back of the group begin to slowly retreat. However, they never had the chance.

The man raised a hand and swept it horizontally in a harsh, cutting motion, causing a strange eddy of wind to spin around them. For a moment, it didn't seem like anything had happened, but then the leading members of the surrounding monsters toppled forward, collapsing into pieces as they did so. The rest soon followed, and in a matter of seconds the three of them were the only things moving in the street.

While Julia was still trying to process all this, the man, who was surprisingly young she now realized, turned and regarded them with his golden eyes. "Would you care to tell me what's going on here?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but was cut off by Dorn. "I'd be happy to. You see, this is all the work of the Shadow Council…"

Julia suppressed a groan.