Chapter 39.2: Necromancer’s Playground (2)

Alyssa skidded to a stop twenty meters from the yellow glow — from a tired Cecilia. It smelled of blood. Zombies surrounded Cecilia. It took a split second later for Alyssa to noticed the tired Amani, holding a rifle like a bat by the barrel, and then another split second to realize that Jiraya was fighting a woman with a longsword.

She’ll do this quick. She floated a pistol into her hand, and took aim at the zombie closest to the tired Amani. For all the rest, Alyssa took normal aim; pistols floated behind her, adjusted bit by bit until she the confidence that enough of them would find their targets.

In a single volley, eleven bullets from eleven pistols found eleven zombies, but only nine went down dead. The other two were from the outer reaches of the enclosing ring of zombies — a second volley from two more pistols got them, too.

“Cecilia!” Alyssa shouted. She took a step forward, but —

“No you don’t!” the woman shouted mid-swing. Alyssa realized her presence too late, barely managing to step aside from the line of attack.

— But it still grazed her.

It felt like something searing to the skin, and the next thing she knew, she was looking at her own body. It was falling sideways, and she — or rather, the projection of her will — watched on, failing to comprehend what had just happened.

Just as quickly, she felt something sucking her back into her body. For a moment, there was darkness — and then a head-splitting hurt in her temples. She opened her eyes, but all she saw was a blurred sight. She felt the grass under her palms, and it was all she could do to get up on uncertain feet.

It all still didn’t feel quite real.

The necromancer woman blinked. She’d determined Alyssa to be the most dangerous one here, and so she’d marked her not as prey, but as a threat to be killed the soonest. That was why she concentrated her instant death magic a little more than she usually did … but it didn’t work. She’d clearly killed her, but she was up again? On her feet? What’s going on!

No, it’s okay. The threat was still dazed. She dashed forward, sword poised in the air, at neck level. If death magic didn’t work, she could sever the spine, at least. No magic there, right?

“Miss Rainsworth!” Jiraya shouted. He threw himself between Alyssa and the woman, flying through the air, somehow managing to parry the incoming attack, deflecting the woman’s sword skywards.

The woman winced, but Jiraya had fallen to the dirt, giving her the opportunity to bring her sword back around and resume the attack. She’d kill Alyssa.

From the sky, slicing down to earth, her sword — met the wood of a rifle’s buttstock.

It took her a short while, but Alyssa was awake now. Her sense of sight was still slightly blurred, but not so blurred that she couldn’t make out a sword coming down at her. All she had to do was fly a nearby rifle against it, parrying it out of the way.

Alyssa squinted at the woman. “You tried to kill these ladies, right?” she said, her voice level and cold.

“No use talking, girl,” the woman taunted.

“You’re right,” Alyssa said — discreetly picking up all the guns littered around the field with Guntalker, keeping them as close as possible to the ground.

She fired. Most of them weren’t loaded, managing only two shots off, shots which the woman had anticipated and evaded.

Seeing Alyssa run out of bullets, the woman took this as her opportunity to get in close and finish the job. Although her initial attack had been parried with a rifle, of all things, who was the more proficient melee fighter between them? The woman, of course.

That’s what she thought as she rushed in — straight into Alyssa’s trap. A rifle tripped her foot, and as she stumbled, another rifle beat down on her. She parried that one away — leaving her back exposed to yet another one. Its stock got her on the shoulder blade, knocking her forward once more — into the stock of another rifle.

A gun without bullets was just a fancy club. Fear the woman who could manipulate dozens at a time.

Alyssa knocked her around like a cat playing with its food. Blood started to spurt with every knock and bash, and the woman started to lose her coordination.

Cecilia watched on as her friend committed such … cruelty. For her sake, at that. The golden glow of her staff had long disappeared. It may have been for the better. There was only the green glow of the light orbs that hung far above them. At least blood wasn’t colored red under those lights.

“Amani,” she absently said.

Amani’s ears turned towards her, though her eyes remained glued on Alyssa. She felt something cold slide into her hand, and when she looked, it was a small pistol. Cecilia’s hand withdrew from it, and she looked up at the priestess’s eyes to ascertain her intentions.

Well, they were fairly obvious.

Before the next rifle bashed the necromancer’s back, Amani put a bullet in her head from ten paces away.

The sound of the shot brought Alyssa back to reality — making her realize what she’d done. She looked towards Cecilia, seeing — and regretting to see — her frightened eyes.

“Sorry,” was all she could say. There was a tennable silence between the two of them as they averted their eyes from each other.

Even if the truth was that Cecilia was, even just a little bit, happy deep inside.

A crash of crumbling stone in the distance caught their attention.

“Ah,” Alyssa muttered.

“Miss Rainsworth, the necromancers!” Amani shouted. Jiraya was already up and scavenging for a pistol and some ammo; he scavenged faster.

“Don’t worry. Lord Wiz has gone turncoat and is fighting on our side,” Alyssa said — then remembered something. “We also have a necromancer gone turncoat, fighting on our side.”

The glow of attack magic lit up one side of Alyssa’s face while everyone just stared at her.

— A few moments ago.

The remaining knights fought back-to-back against waves of their former comrades. The emblems on their uniforms were part of the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd Companies.

The knight captain grit his teeth bitterly as he decapitated Captain Riley. He had no doubt that the remnants of those rifle companies had already retreated to defend the fence gates. It was the sensible thing to do.

At least, he could still hear gunfire from the perimeter, which meant they were putting up a decent resistance. That didn’t bode any better for his own situation, though.

He and his twelve remaining knights were faced with two necromancers and their minions. The woman had blazed past them to cause chaos in the rear lines — he could only pray for the priestess’s safety — leaving the necromancers by the door and on the balcony for them to contend with.

If only they could actually see them.

The necromancer on the balcony was the one responsible for raising new undead, but in the captain’s opinion, the one by the door was more troublesome. Every now and then, he would cast some kind of magic that afflicted the minds of all the knights: narrowing vision, amplified sounds, intensified smells, and sensitivity to motion. It threw off their coordination better than a horde of undead ever could. They couldn’t even stay in any kind of formation because of it.

Good thing a little bit of scratching and biting couldn’t get through full plate. The same couldn’t be said of getting dogpiled and having one’s helmet pulled off, though.

“This is getting boring,” the necromancer by the door said. He usually enjoyed watching people freak out and panic whenever he used Bellophobos — followed by screaming — but the knights were keeping together roughly enough that their zombies couldn’t yank them out of line, and the only screaming he’s heard so far had been spirited war cries affirming their comaraderie.

Cute, but boring.

Maybe it was time for a little bit of Friendly Fire?

One of the knights cut down a zombie, but when he turned to check on his comrade, he felt unease. He wasn’t acting right, moving in all the wrong ways — had he been corrupted? He didn’t put it past the necromancers to do something like that.

The knight’s unease turned into fear as his comrade turned to face him. The flesh of his face was melting off, exposing the white of the bones underneath.

Truth was, both knights saw the same thing of each other. With panicked shouts, at once expelling dread and summoning courage, they attacked each other, parrying each others’ blows.

The knight captain saw this, immediately realizing that the sight of two undead fighting each other didn’t seem right. He just barely had the mind to realize that this, too, might be another of the enemy’s schemes — but even with that thought, what could he do when he, too, was overcome with a shaky heart and the sight of one of his own men charging at him?

The face of the charging man had a jaw hanging loose, dropped so low that it reached until his chest. From his gauntlets grew fingernails that were so long, they curled around the hilt of the sword poised to strike the captain down.

Wiz had seen this before — and he hated having the same trick pulled on him twice.

With the snap of a finger, a pressure wave of mana swept the field, dispelling the illusion. Well, strictly speaking, it wasn’t an illusion, but the overstimulation of the human brain’s fear organ, causing the rest of the brain to hallucinate things that weren’t even there. Anti-illusion magic wouldn’t work on it.

The knights all quieted down, confused that everything had returned to normal. The approaching moans of the undead snapped them back to reality, even if they felt nervous to cooperate with one another once again.

“The enemy’s illusion is dispelled!” the knight captain shouted. “Be on guard! It may happen again!”

Good move, good man, Wiz thought as he walked right past the knight captain, utilizing his own illusion magic to keep the Order from bearing down on him. He was, after all, technically still an enemy in their eyes. It wouldn’t do to introduce himself poorly.

A fashionable entrance, one where the knights could immediately tell whose side he was on, would be leagues better, wouldn’t it?

Wiz walked right past the zombies amidst their horde, just as much as they walked past him. He aimed for the middle ground between the knights and the necromancers. Any closer, and he might trigger a trap set by the door. Any farther, and too many zombies would obstruct his attacks.

He stopped, staring at the man under the cathedral doors’ archway. The man’s expression grew more and more vile as time passed — good. He hadn’t noticed.

Wiz drew a thin line in the air, a line which gave off a correspondingly thin glow, taking care in keeping to artisanal precision … so as not to damage the door behind the necromancer.

With a snap, a flat ray of white light shot forward, as thin as the line’s width, and as wide as its length. It bridge the whole distance between Wiz and the necromancer’s neck faster than a blink. The flash it produced was bright enough to light up the whole face of the cathedral, enough to be visible from a mile away.

It made a sound like a long, drawn-out gunshot — as would be expected of a huge flame, compressed until it turned white, then propelled faster than the speed of sound, only to be instantly stopped before it ever singed the door.

In the necromancer’s perspective, all he saw was a bright flash. Naturally, he stumbled backwards — but it was strange, because he started spinning sideways more times than what should be possible with just a stumble.

He hit the ground. It didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. The last thing he saw was his headless body beside him, partially obscured by a bright speck in the middle of his vision.

The knights’ attention was drawn to the flash for a split second, but they didn’t have the time to look and ponder. The undead were still upon them.

Wiz, meanwhile, dispelled his illusion magic, leaving only a bit to obscure his face, then diverting the freed mana into short-distance flight. He hovered far above the ground, confronting the necromancer on the balcony at equal elevation.

The necromancer was surprised, of course, but not in despair. Wiz fired off high-speed fire bullets at him, fast enough that his deflection barrier didn’t have enough distance to meaningfully steer the bullets away.

The bullets hit … only for the damage to be transferred to hapless zombies below via Dead Pass. The necromancer bore a grin. “What can you do!” he taunted … though he fully knew that he couldn’t do anything, himself.

Rather, couldn’t that be Lord Wiz? What was he doing attacking them? He should be fighting in the castle!

With no way to attack such a powerful enemy, he had to content himself with relying on Dead Pass to see himself through this.

Unfortunately for him, Dead Pass was such a common necromantic Skill that Wiz had plenty of ways to get past it.

In this case, however, he wouldn’t do any sophisticated attacks that circumvented the Skill. He’d like to help the Order for a little bit here, you see, and killing the necromancer didn’t kill their minions.

Fortunately, for a mage with his power, Dead Pass meant that he didn’t need to do any area-of-effect attacks.

The entire horde could be whittled down just by attacking a single man.

Hundreds of little flame bullets, like stars and candle lights, dotted the space around Wiz. The necromancer on the receiving end took a second to realize just what was about to happen.

Then it rained. Each bullet had enough power to blow a fist-sized hole in a man’s chest. Well, a zombie could still move around with such an injury, but with five? Ten such injuries? Would they even have limbs left after that?

For ten long seconds, fire blanketed the necromancer’s vision. He couldn’t even open his eyes from the brightness of it.

In desperation, he ordered his dwindling forces to pick up their arms and try to snipe the damned mage. They were slow to do so, fumbling as they did, and only some of those were successful, and only some of those even remembered how to fire.

A sparse few bullets grazed Wiz. For a moment, the necromancer held hope, but the moment he saw one of the bullets stopped beside the mage’s head, trembling there like it didn’t even want to touch the man … he resigned himself to death.

The sheer volume of fire, once a wall that covered the space in front of the necromancer, collapsed and rushed in like a deluge. Wiz stopped flinging magic as soon as that happened. There were only the necromancer’s shoes left where he once stood.

The knights stood slackjawed. When the zombies around them started to explode into charred bits and pieces, so much that they suddenly had room to breathe, had they finally traced the odd torch light to the man in the sky, busy shooting what looked like dragon’s breath straight at the enemy on the balcony.

They only knew that zombies all around them were dead, and the mage hovering far above them wasn’t their enemy. They’d like to keep it that way.

The victory was short lived. A shot of red-and-black death magic splattered against Wiz’s chest, right over his heart — stopping it completely.

He didn’t think he’d die of a heart attack in this fashion at all.

As his soul watched his body fall to earth, a bunch of rifles banded together to make a rough net, catching Wiz and slowing his descent. It was a surreal sight, to say the least, and it made him wonder if Heaven’s symbology shouldn’t actually have more firearms in them.

His soul vacuumed back into his body, and he woke up with a gasp. The first thing he saw was an angel.

“Get up, old man,” Alyssa said. “We’ve drawn out most of them. The rest is up to my assistant.”

Above them, five silhouettes lined the edge of the cathedral’s roof.

They didn’t have to win. They just had to survive.