Storm of Prophecy: Book 1, Dark Awakening (27 page)

Like a false start to a race, Rick and Stacy immediately unleashed a deadly volley of magic before their foes could. Fire erupted into the night, brightening the rain and darkness as Rick’s blaze engulfed several black robed figures in screaming, burning agony with some screams sounding like they came from men, others like they came from women. Simultaneously, blinding flashes of lightning streaked forth in rapid succession from each of Stacy’s hands, knocking their targets from their feet and causing a whitish fluid to burst
from their faces. Vincent realized it was their eyes exploding. Stacy’s and Rick’s attacks were only just clear of their hands when a thick wide sheet of black sodden dirt and rock tangled with tree roots rose up from the ground in front of them, barely in time to block a huge retaliatory barrage of eerie green fire and a few attacks like theirs.

Before they had time to think, a gang of zombies closed in on them from behind, grabbing and biting at Rick and Stacy. In a panic, Vincent turned and elbowed one in the face that was nearly on top of him, immediately swinging his sword to remove its head afterward. Desperately, he attacked and removed the head of an undead peasant woman about to lunge at Karl, who stood fixed in place with his back to her, clenching his raised fists and straining to hold up the impromptu barrier that had just saved their lives.

“Get off me!” Stacy screamed in a high pitch.

Vincent turned to help her and Rick but had to swing and behead another that almost had him. Rick was on his knees, struggling and using the back of his head to hit the face of the one trying to bite his neck while blood was already flowing down Stacy’s left shoulder. The biting zombie tried to tug at her like a mountain lion trying to tear the flesh from its prey’s throat. Vincent rushed over as fast as he could, and took only one frantic split second to aim his sword for a careful horizontal swing. The blow barely missed her neck, and that was all he needed to know; he hurried and did the same to aid the beleaguered pyromancer. Rick pulled the undead person’s arms off him before standing to his full height.

“Look out!” Rick yelled as he turned around. Vincent ducked as he sent a compressed fire spark over him at something behind them, and from the sound didn’t need to see it to know that Rick had hit. When he saw Stacy still struggling to get up and shrug the beheaded corpse off of her, he noticed that the severed head still hung on by its teeth that were sunk in her neck.

“Get this thing off me!” She pleaded.

“I’ll take care of it,” Vincent said anxiously, “Rick, watch our left flank.” Rick made no acknowledgement and instead moved quickly past Karl to guard the left edge of his dirt wall, shooting flame sparks at foes who were trying to come around on that side, and occasionally ducking back to avoid their blasts.

Vincent hurriedly stepped over toward Stacy and stuck his sword point in the ground, warily glancing at his right to monitor the other undead still coming toward them from further away in the dark. “Hold still,” he cautioned. With his hands, he carefully grabbed hold of the forehead and jaw, slowly prying it open.

“Ow!” Stacy complained, her face contorting in pain.

“I’ve almost got it off,” he said in reassurance. After it was, her blood on it’s stinking, rotting face and yellow teeth, he tossed the disgusting thing to the side, pulled the body’s arms off her and shoved the rest out of the way. As he wiped his hands on his pants, Stacy cupped her left hand to her neck where she was bitten and pressed firmly but was still bleeding a small amount despite it. “Are you alright?” He asked her.

“It hurts, but I think for now I’ll be…”-a black robed figure in the distance suddenly came past the edge on that side and lifted his hands-“get back!”

They both slammed their backs into the muddy, wet wall behind them as a ball of green flame larger than his fist whizzed by. Keeping one hand firmly pressed on the wound, Stacy immediately used the other to meet the attack in kind and hit the cult member with a lethal bolt of lightning. Steam rose from the corpse before it even hit the ground. To combat several approaching others, she sent a windblast that flung them through the air into the nearby trees. One was impaled by the sharp stub of a dead branch as they landed. The zombies came closer. Vincent reached forward to grasp the hilt of his sword and pulled the blade out of the soggy earth.

Chapter
XI

T
he hunkering forms were nearly invisible in the dark, shaded from the campfire as they were by the wall Karl had erected. Vincent sent his magic into his blade to make a brief burst of flame all around it so he could see them better. He didn’t want to keep the illumination prolonged; it would only help the cultists pick him out.

And it would interfere with what he wanted to do.

The brief burst of light had told Vincent exactly what he wanted to know. Boldly, he got up and left the protective layer of earth to attack the oncoming undead. He was able to behead two, feeling the impact of his blade passing through their necks before he had to flare his sword again.

Another fell to his blade.

Karl looked over his shoulder. “Are you crazy! Get back here!”

“Just keep silent!” He yelled back. “I know what I’m doing!” Karl kept quiet, not wanting to call any more attention to himself in the dark. Or to Vincent.

Vincent flared his sword once more and then intentionally ducked and rolled to the side once it was dark again. It had the desired effect. Two blasts of green flame streaked by, crisscrossing over one another as they passed. One flew off toward the forest while the other hit a zombie and blew it apart in a shower of burning green bits. He knew exactly what he was doing: He was keeping the zombies off his friends backs while diverting enemy fire. It was risky.

Unleashing his full fury at the undead, Vincent swung mercilessly and aimed for their necks. Three more fell in quick succession but more kept coming. He only flared his sword if it was absolutely necessary; otherwise he kept it dark to avoid giving his enemies a clear shot.

The cultists seemed to take notice of the fact that one of them was in the midst of the undead, hampering them, and began to start shooting at him amongst the crowd. The flames were hitting zombies nearby. Many missed him by only a hair. Mortal fear seeped into his core. Vincent wasn’t quite sure how they were able to pick him out. He brushed his dark blue cloak back out of the way as he turned to retreat a few steps.

His cloak.

As if it were crawling with snakes, Vincent tore off his cloak and threw it toward a pack of zombies on his right. Several green fire blasts streaked over it as it fell to the mud, killing more zombies. Those that weren’t claimed by the misses rushed in to meet him, and Vincent soon found himself heavily embattled on all sides. As he kept stepping back toward his friends, he sent magic into the blade to make it light and fast and kept swinging and swinging, taking off any head that came close enough to offer itself to him.

What was made clear to him amidst the fighting, was what had happened to all the missing or murdered people he had sought justice for; he was fighting most of them right now. Every time he flared his blade, faces described to him by people he talked to were lit up. The cult had obviously gone beyond that though; there were far more here than had been reported.

Vincent was losing more and more ground. Soon he had none left to give and was right up against his friends, protecting them by swinging fast with every last ounce of strength. He knew they weren’t going to make it yet kept swinging as hard as he could out of sheer terror, frantically severing one head after another. When he turned for only an instant to kill one on his right, he saw the red flash and heard the screams from several more cult members being consumed by a large blaze from Rick. Behind him as he swung, he heard the pandemonium of shrieking winds and the crack of lightning bolts from Stacy, who was keeping them at bay on the other side.

He kept fighting and fighting, and after a time, he was no longer able to put magic into his blade to make it fast and light; he had to rely purely on his body alone, which was waning against the endless onslaught. They were going to die, he was realizing as he kept up his frenzy of decapitating swings. There was no preventing it. The murderous fanatics would prevail. The one thought that gave him the heedless determination to fight beyond utter exhaustion was that he and his friends were going to make them suffer as much as possible, cost them as much as possible.

Karl faltered at holding up the defensive wall of stratum only long enough to send a large cobble from it at a zombie’s head, crushing through and bursting it’s skull even as it came close enough to try to bite Vincent’s neck. The blood sprayed all over him, including his face and eyes, the disgusting coppery taste of it getting in his mouth. Vincent had to spit and blink furiously even as he breathed hard and swung madly, snatching only small glimpses of his foes before striking. A glimpse was enough.

When they were beyond all tolerance, when Rick and Stacy had to divide their attention between the cult members and the endless zombies, and when Vincent’s swings came almost simultaneously with the rotted hands grasping at his flesh, there finally came a spark of hope in their favor. While Vincent cut relentlessly, his blade showering and flicking blood with every swing, the bodies piling, he dimly heard voices among the din of flames, explosions, and his own scything. Unless it was his crazed mind playing tricks on him, it seemed that the enemy was beginning to lose their nerve.

“Clyde…”

“
General Clyde
,” the voice of their leader corrected, “Lord Kargoth has bestowed me a place among his honored.”

“General, might I suggest that fighting these heathens is too risky right now. A number of our faithful have already fallen. Perhaps we should retreat and dispose of them through some other means.”

“Hmm, they are a little stronger than expected,” he concurred. He raised his voice to the remaining others. “Alright, all of you pull back and let the zombies do their work. There’s no need for you to die…prematurely.” Vincent couldn’t make out much else after that and had trouble concentrating on it because of the fighting. A fat zombie in farmer’s clothing tripped on a dead body as it lunged toward Stacy, and Vincent was only barely able to bring his sword down on its neck in time for the bloody stump to crash into Stacy’s wet dress, smearing red all over it. Crazed, Vincent kicked sideways to his right out of desperation to keep from being overwhelmed and brought his sword around to claim all but another that Karl once again had to cranially pulverize in a red spray. Thankfully, most of it splattered Vincent from behind his view and spared his eyes. After the sound of the head bursting, he thought he heard Clyde say something about it being ready and to “hand him a cup to scoop it out.”

The black robed cultists continued shooting green flames as they retreated, until they were behind the edge of the raised dirt and rock. The reprieve granted Rick and Stacy, whom he could tell were exhausted, the opportunity to turn more fully on the oncoming undead. Still cupping her left hand to the bleeding bite on her neck, Stacy first used a powerful gust of wind to knock back all the closest ones. After that, she only let loose an occasional lightning bolt, appearing too week from fighting and blood loss to do more. Rick blasted apart several with small compressed fire sparks that caused their bodies to explode on contact; his attacks were also becoming more infrequent. Vincent’s breath was ragged and hard, his face and clothes drenched with rain and blood, and he could barely lift his sword any longer, but for the first time in the course of the battle, he felt hope. He held his sword up toward his foes, readying himself while feeling the blood and water dripping down the blade and onto the top of his hands.

His hope died instantly when he heard more talking between Clyde and his subordinate as they were leaving. His subordinate seemed in a fret. “General, what of the nonbelievers? Our zombies won’t be able to finish them. They must still pay for all they have slain. They have seen too much.”

“It won’t help them,” Clyde assured him, “concern yourself with it no longer. The zombies merely require some small assistance, and I have something that they won’t be able to dispatch so easily.”

“You don’t mean the…?”

“I do. We only need to escape while it does our work for us.” Vincent heard him putting his fingers to his lips and blowing with a loud, shrill whistle. After that, there were only footsteps amongst Rick’s explosive fire sparks which punctuated the rainy stillness of the night. The zombies were starting to get closer, but were still far enough away that Vincent wasn’t needed again just yet.