While Kuraim’s head rose on the shade’s blade-like arm, his endless horde of zombies fell, some several tens of thousands of them in one synchronised motion. The action created a booming thud which dragged on for a long second before all was still. Just a moment ago the battlefield had been chaotic and packed and deafening, but now it looked like some nightmare scene out of a post-apocalyptic movie. There were massive gaps between every standing man, who peered at each other in confusion and shock, but this space wasn’t empty; rather it was filled with bodies long dead and decomposing.

But the pause only stretched on for so long before the defenders rediscovered their bloodlust, staring at the ten thousand or so live members of the horde. They now outnumbered them about one to four, and the pack mentality immediately showed as the defenders recklessly charged forward, while the horde survivors scrambled away to escape.

At the same time, Kuraim’s entourage, which had slowly but surely been falling, lost the last of their courage on seeing their leader die. They were quick to join their peers in running, even though the Sovereigns doggedly chased after them. Zafeera was among this number, her motorbike circling back for her, which she leapt onto before blasting into the sky. She soared up before anyone could stop her, although Klope shot spears of water at her and Ajit sent a score of shades after her.

“We’re done here,” Ajit said aloud, idly tracking Zafeera’s mad ride into the sky as she shrunk into a red speck in the endless blue. He instinctively knew this was the time for a grand victory speech, but none came to him. Although this was a weight lifted off his chest, the war wasn’t over yet. There was still an obstacle left, and just as he thought this, he sensed mana stirring over the battlefield.

He followed the disturbance with his eyes and found several focal points, four by the rampart, half a dozen on the battlefield itself and at least two near his current position. The ambient mana was being sucked into these vacuums at ridiculous rates, creating general turbulence in the atmosphere. Something big was coming, and Ajit had a good guess of what it was. Fortunately, he wasn’t alone in noticing these massive disturbances as the defenders all turned their attention from the fleeing horde to the dozen focal points. They rushed into formations around these areas, but they could only go so fast when they were exhausted and with the terrain littered with death.

For this reason, there was no surprise over what happened next, although there was a lot of dread and panic. The mana disturbances finally gave way to reality as the threads of space began to split at these spots, ripping from bottom to the top as if great void beasts were pulling their way out. But as these formations began to stabilise, their looks became more reminiscent of the System’s portals through which the monster hordes came weekly. Different shades of blue and purple swirled inside the rips, which were each wide enough to fit twenty men standing abreast and tall enough to engulf Ulysses without an issue.

There was no time for preparation as Brightmoor’s army descended from the dozen portals in unison, lines and lines of armoured men and women crashing out in devastating waves. The defenders buckled under the strain, and their lines opened up as Lucian’s soldiers hacked their way through. Although they were all similarly levelled, the defenders were already exhausted and injured, meanwhile the newcomers were fresh and equipped in the best mass-produced equipment on Idroa.

The sheer amount of chaos was too much for Ajit to keep track of, so he focused on the enemies arriving from the nearest portals, sending his shades to butcher them as they came. He heard a giant uproar in the distance and looked to see the mycelia advancing to the rampart, the alien fungal creatures and their undead thralls putting up a fierce fight. He was just about to turn away when suddenly half of the visible rampart simultaneously collapsed, forming a cataclysmic avalanche of stone and mud and flesh. The noise was dreadful and the damage worse, crashing into the battlefield and crushing several hundreds of defenders on contact.

Ajit knew at once who had done this as a group stuck out there, running along the edge of where the rampart had stood, heading for the remaining half that still held. That had to be Matteo Rivera in a team of other Terramancers. They were clearly intending to collapse the second half too, and the defenders underneath this section were well aware, and so it became a race against time as they tried to escape before being buried under several thousand tonnes of earth. But even though Ajit witnessed this, he had no way of helping as there were tens of thousands of enemies in between them.

Sucking in a ragged breath, his gaze flicked down from the rampart as he sensed several more Sovereigns gracing the battlefield. There was a portal beside Dlyo’s clan, and from it streamed out the Astors, led by Astor herself. She shot forward for her counterpart, and although he initially tried to escape, he quickly realised it was pointless and instead turned to face and clash her. Ajit knew Dlyo had no chance of victory; the best he and his clan could do was hold the Astors down for a while and hope the other defenders won their battles and came over.

Unfortunately, that was unlikely to be the case. The army from Palyul Monastery assaulted the drakkar, headed by Sandip Mand, the Windwalker, who was making a mockery of Folding Winds and Peryn of Dragonfire as he tore into them. The thing was that Brightmoor and its allies only amounted to about 30 000 troops in total, and yet that was more than enough to deal with the ragged and separated defenders. The defenders couldn’t match the newcomers’ viciousness or energy, even though they were doing their damn best.

Despite all this, Ajit maintained his position, waiting for the man of the hour to reveal himself. Lucian would certainly come, and chances were that no one here would be able to deal with the Warlord then. All the same, Ajit trusted in his abilities and refused to fall without trying. He looked over his shoulders to the two portals whose outflows he was stemming and saw his shades getting beaten back by a high-levelled vanguard of tanks. Out of them, he identified their leader as Taika Ngata, the Bulwark, and he was just deciding on what to do when a considerable portion of his remaining shades suddenly exploded.

Searching for a cause, he was quick to spot Sophie Chandler, the Demolitionist, stepping out of the portal. She had perfect pale skin and dark hair tied up in a topknot, her lips the colour of freshly spilt blood. She wore sleek light armour and met his gaze with the kind of look you would give an insect. If she was here, then…

Lucian followed her out of the portal, softly nodding as he advanced. Lucian Grimes, the Warlord. He had skin like burnt caramel, glittering black eyes, and a muscular physique which contrasted with Ajit’s own. He, too, wore armour in the same sleek light style as Sophie’s, and when she said something to him, he turned to grin at the Warlock, offering a dazzling smile that deserved to be on the front cover of a magazine.

“You fucker,” Ajit said, finally calling on his last reserves of mana. But he noticed the power couple’s attention was elsewhere as Chloe pointed up to where Zafeera had flown, and he sensed that although the Blood Ripper was diving down now, she was still a distance off. So why were they focused on her? He felt there was something he was not getting, and so he refused to make any hasty actions, instead materialising a mana barrier around himself. He glanced up.

The dot of red was growing exponentially, Zafeera diving past the speed of sound, zipping down like a meteor promising destruction. She plunged through the sky, bisecting it with a line of red at which point she finally jumped. Her motorbike exploded into the ground, shooting bullets of blood in every direction, piercing through numerous sorry souls who were too late to react. But Ajit wasn’t amongst them, so he kept watching his surroundings with his guard up, not so much because he wanted to but more so because he was worried about why Lucian was acting so meek after teleporting in. What was he—

Then Ajit sensed it, and he knew his senses spoke truly even though what they were saying was impossible. He tried to tighten his mana barrier to defend himself, but it was pointless as the surprise attack ravaged through his barrier and tore out his heart. He fell where he stood, life draining from his body, and nearby a headless corpse rose up.

Kuraim Jaffer (human), the Necromancer, has killed Ajit Ghost (human), the Warlock.

24 Sovereigns remaining.

****

Kuraim telekinetically hooked his head to himself and propped it back into place, meanwhile Zafeera walked up to him, cackling madly. Her good humour spilt over to him, and he turned from her to meet Lucian’s fading smile with a truly crooked one, all the more humoured by the Sophie’s severe expression. “Why, hello there. You’re just in time. Don’t worry, I heard you’d be late, so I pushed my timetable back.” He winked, and his undead horde stood, the puppetmaster pulling at their strings once more.

****

Necromancer (rare)

Unlock conditions: remove the soul from a dead organism before it naturally dissipates. Have at least overwhelming arcana and high perception relative to your race’s average

Abilities

Raise Zombie - place an artificial soul inside a dead organism and raise it under your control. Creating souls requires mana, the amount depending on the quality of soul, but maintaining created souls does not require mana.

Bomber Imps - place your artificial souls inside temporary husks made of earth. On expiration, the segment of soul inside the husks will explode and be unsalvageable.

Soul Gem - transfer your soul to a gem, which you must store inside your body. This will allow you greater control of your zombies, and enable artificial souls to be produced at lower mana costs. Moreover, this will allow you to maintain a store of artificial souls to be used on demand, the size of the storage depending on the size and quality of the gem.

Abominator - fuse your zombies into greater functional beings. These units require a constant mana cost to maintain them. This mana drain rises exponentially with each additional iteration of fusion.

Soul Ravage - blast a portion of your artificial soul reserve at an opponent, causing damage if the attack hits. Magnitude of damage depends on the magnitude of artificial souls expelled.

Conquering Death - you can maintain life with only your soul from hereon. Following bodily death, you can survive inside your soul gem and return to life any number of times. There is no mana cost to this ability, but it requires you have to possess an active soul gem to use.

+20 arcana, +10 perception.

System