“Imagine a man trying to fill a bottle with his piss while drinking from the sea and you’ve got a rough idea of how priestly magic works. DON’T GIVE ME THAT LOOK IT'S A GOOD JAGGING METAPHOR! See, a priest can tap into the power of their god right, which is near-endless like the ocean. They just can only ‘drink’ so much or they’ll drown, but what they do consume gets processed and then expelled as piss, or magic in this case. Then unless you want that urine to go flying everywhere it needs a container, which is a spell. Now skilled priests can make bigger or more complex bottles to fill, and years of experience let them drink faster, while their kidneys get used to this sort of thing. See, like I said, priests just fill bottles with piss, and then offer them all to you. So drink up!”- words of Gutter Sage Mitri.

  As Cole fell through the open air he took a deep breath and focused on the magic within his soul, drawing up the preserving cold and letting it flow through him. With every use, this spell became easier, the fortifying magic settling better into the Paladin’s flesh and bones. Still, a ten-meter drop wasn’t anything to sniff at, especially considering Cole’s bulk, and he hit hard, stumbling forward on shaky legs, but still managing to stay upright. Wincing at the dull pain going through his legs, Cole turned his unsteady landing into a jog then a full sprint as warning cries went up from the wall behind him.

  “It’s charging the gate!” came a frantic shout in dwerick, telling the Paladin exactly where he needed to go. The only question was would Cole make it in time and even if he did would he be strong enough? They’d been pushing hard since leaving the cavern of the ambush and sturdy as Cole was even he couldn’t ignore the effects of a forced march. Free hand scrabbling at his belt, the Homunculus winced as fingers found the stopgap to his problem. Uncorking the tiny bottle in a practiced motion, he downed the combat drug in a single swallow, feeling its burn flowing down his throat and into his gut. Near instantly a surge of energy pulsed out through Cole and the numbing cold of his magic fought against a static tingling of nerves set alight by an alchemical draught.

  Years ago, when he’d fought as Isabelle’s champion, potions and boons of this sort were how the Homunculus Knight stood against other inhuman monsters; his immortal biology pushed to mad heights by his darling’s creations. While Cole lacked the knowledge and ability to craft Isabelle’s pedigree combat drugs, he still knew enough to mix or purchase ugly little potions like this. That being said, a multitude of bad experiences had soured Cole on their use. Aside from often killing him or making him wish he was dead, these drugs were unreliable in many situations. Rarely did Cole have the time to down a potion before a fight, and even if he did the inevitable side effects would often leave him in dire straights even if he survived. Suffering organ failure was neither pleasant nor subtle, but now with an entire town’s worth of people in the balance, Cole was hard-pressed to find an excuse not to roll these dice. Besides, Natalie and his other allies could help him when the drug ran out.

  Feet pounding against the dirty gravel road, Cole raced against the growing thunder of the approaching monster. Dashing down narrow streets and past rows of tightly packed buildings whose occupants were roused into this new nightmare, Cole turned a corner and found himself in what had once been a market square, now put to a much more pragmatic purpose. Hundreds of patchwork tents filled the space, many now disgorging their wild-eyed and hollow-cheeked occupants; the refugees who’d managed to make it to Azyge. With every beat of Cole’s heart, the camp came awake, frantic mutters, shouted questions, and the wailing of children quickly growing into a choir of misery. By itself this tragic song was pitiful, but when coupled with the distant groans of the hungry ghouls and the drumbeat of a charging giant, it seemed the prelude to disaster. Especially considering where this market square-turned-refugee camp was located.

  Outer Azyge was a mercantile town, a trade center where the dwarven communities of the Alidonar Mountains and their human equivalents in the Greater Moravian Plain would exchange goods in a near-constant flow of commerce. Even with the town’s haphazard layout, necessity would inevitably ensure easy passage from the gate to the market. Which… meant the gatehouse being attacked by an unknown undead horror, wouldn’t be far from this makeshift refugee camp.

  Pelting between the emptying tents, towards the outer walls, Cole shouted. “Azyge is under renewed assault! Head for the inner walls, the dwarves will not harm you!”

  Silently praying Constable Gernat wouldn’t make him a liar, Cole pushed his way through the growing throngs of frantic people, trying to ignore the looks of utter terror his appearance evoked. Cloaked as he was, axe in hand, Cole must have looked like some child’s bogeyman to the roused refugees. Ironically, this started to work in the Paladin’s favor as folk shied away from him, letting Cole pass through the crowd with haste.

  Making it to the market square’s edge, still calling out warnings to all who’d listen, Cole reached a main avenue just in time for an entire hell to break loose. The gatehouse and outer walls of Azyge lay a poor arrow’s flight down the wide road from Cole, those few defenders atop the fortifications fleeing in either direction as the great floating skull came into view. Easily the size of a carriage, and formed of glistening white bone, the skull surged forward, just heartbeats away from the gate. In that split second Cole’s drug-driven mind flashed through all the facts involving this monster. The footfalls and thrown tree spoke to an invisible body, one with both mass and strength. This didn’t bode well for the gatehouse.

  No sooner did that fact settle into Cole’s awareness when the truth of it came knocking. With a deafening crash, the giant skull kicked the main gate, its invisible foot smashing the portcullis clear out of its mooring and sending the grille sailing through the air. Splintered wood, shattered stone, and lengths of split chain showered Azyge in a lethal downpour as the steel lattice of the gate cartwheeled down the main avenue. The errant grille skipped along the cobblestones, sending sprays of debris in every direction as it bounced repeatedly before hitting a pothole and jerking off course, smashing into the second story of a nearby building.

  Before the echos of this cataclysmic event could end or the screams of those wounded by it could start, another peel of unnatural thunder filled the night. The giant skull had toppled backward, its invisible body striking the earth with enough force to make windows shake. Cole spared a glance for the portcullis grille sticking out of a nearby building, seeing the tell-tale shine of silver in the lattice studs. Whatever this monster was, silver still hurt it, in breaking down the gate the creature had broken its invisible foot. Normally Cole might take some comfort in that bit of information but such a boon seemed tiny in the face of the coming tide.

  The gate was open and already the original besiegers of Azyge were flowing into the opening. Arms stretched before them, mouths slack as that horrid groan rasped free from dead throats, the ghouls shuffled forward, seeking living flesh. Gripping Requiem tight, Cole charged the swarm, desperately hoping to close the bottleneck before hungry corpses feasted upon this blighted town.

  By the time Cole reached the shattered gate, dozens of ghouls were already inside, hundreds more at their back. Waxy eyes focused on the charging Paladin, the sight of prey goading the ghouls forward with new energy. The first in the tide, a tall man whose tattered clothes clung to a withered frame, lurched towards Cole, tripping over debris left by the broken gate, the fell animus guiding the corpse unnoticing of any obstacle. The sight sparked an idea in the Paladin as he closed the distance; he’d been practicing with his newest trinket and now seemed a time to put it to good use.

  Leaning down as he moved forward, Cole let his right hand trace along the top of a piece of masonry before punching forward with all his might. The simple touch and a drop of his blood was enough to trigger the enchanted quartz tied to Cole’s wrist and the hunk of stone shot forward with all the Homunculus’s supernatural strength. Ever since slaying Petar and burning up his soul, Cole had been capable of bending metal and splintering bones; so sending a five-kilogram hunk of rock hurtling toward the coming ghouls with lethal force wasn’t hard.

  The real difficulty was getting the timing down, releasing the telekinetic grip supplied by Rellim’s trinket at the right moment so the full might of his thrust was turned into momentum. But, the days of practice while marching through the Deeps paid off and the first improvised missile shot up and forward catching one of the approaching ghouls right in and then through the ribs. As the masonry sent another two corpses sprawling, Cole nodded in grim satisfaction, he’d miss his spark-stone but this rune-charm would work well enough.

  Pole-axe in hand, Cole reached the first of the tide, swinging his weapon in slow deliberate strokes, splitting a skull or severing a spine with each strike. Long experience told the Paladin this methodology was the way when it came to ghoul swarms. Charging into the horde with a warrior’s aggression would leave one exhausted and surrounded, easily borne down and devoured by the ceaseless waves of corpses. To cut through all that dead meat, one must channel the profession most experienced in the practice, Cole didn’t fight like a warrior, he worked like a butcher. Cleaving apart corpse after corpse, using thrown debris to give himself space when needed, the Paladin hacked his way forward, stepping over bodies and reaching the broken gatehouse.

  The giant skull’s kick had torn apart the portcullis, leaving a ragged wound in the walls wide enough for an ox cart to pass through. Hundreds of ghouls fought to squeeze through this entrance, their sheer numbers and desperation to seek prey jamming the ruined gate with a seething mass of groaning corpses. Rotting bodies were pressed against each other with such force they were starting to fuse, tissue and bone compacting into a writhing bulk that spat its more intact members into the town. Dispatching some of these maimed castoffs, Cole looked at the corpse cork with disgust, seeing myriad mutilated faces staring out from the mass, all focused on him, while what functional limbs the ghouls still possessed reached out, grasping with fingers worn to the bone.

  Looking about for an intact braiser or intact lantern, Cole’s first instinct was to empty a bottle of pyre wine onto this horror and see it cleansed from existence, but other considerations stopped him. This blockage kept the tide from Azyge, and the moment it broke he’d be dealing with more than this dribble of ghouls. But judging by how the mass of corpses bulged towards him, Cole knew he didn’t have long before tidal pressure cleared the way for the town’s messy end. If he was going to buy time for people to evacuate, the Paladin needed to close the breach.

  Thankfully, there was an obvious option, while the actual steel gate of Azyge had been smashed free, the upper part of the gatehouse where some now ruined winch originally hoisted the grille up into was still standing, if only. At least a ton of broken timber, cracked stone, and ruined mechanisms hung above the breach, suspended only by their own mass pressing against each other. All Cole had to do was finish what the giant skull started and knock the gatehouse down, without being crushed of course.

  Flexing his new trinket, Cole hurled chunks of debris at what he hoped were weak spots on the half-ruined arch, while cutting down those few broken ghouls who’d made it through the blockage. After the fifth hunk of masonry hitting with enough force to kill, it became clear this wasn’t working. Grimacing, Cole stepped to one side of the breach, placing a scarred hand onto the stonework and calling on the magic within him. He’d spoken with Deborah for some time on how to better use his powers and now seemed as good a time as any to put her wisdom to use.

  Long ago, Cole learned how to temporarily consecrate a location by bathing it in his soul’s power, attuning the Aether to Master Time’s will. An act the Paladin considered a rather wasteful use of power, only good for destroying a monster’s lair and not much else; until Deborah pointed out what should have been obvious. If he could flood the local Aether with the Tenth God’s raw magic, then why not fill it with a more specialized form of said power?

  Feeling the chill energy of his altered soul, or whatever the thing inside him was, Cole reached into his core and called upon a silver of divinity that granted him holy magic. But instead of simply heaving up a great mass of altered soul-stuff, Cole pulled on a distinct ‘theme’ of the magic, one he’d gotten to know very well despite having a complicated relationship with it. Like a single color plucked from a rainbow, the magic of entropy came free of its fellows and flowed up through Cole’s hand and into the ruined gatehouse, spreading out in a steady wave of inevitability. Overhead, something large groaned, as the equilibrium found in wake of the giant skull’s attack started to come apart.

  Aetheric senses alight, Cole felt flickers of phantom sensations brush along him as his mind tried to interpret a process both subtle and ruinous. To Cole, it felt like something was giving way, like he’d been bending a dry branch or hunk of wet clay until it reached that tipping point where it finally snapped. It was that split-second sensation of knowing a break was happening, expect now stretched out and lathered across Cole’s brain. As the near-synesthesia intensified to almost uncomfortable levels, a loud crack issued from somewhere above, and debris started to drop down into the breach. Emboldened by his success, Cole ‘pushed’ harder with the magic, letting more and more of the damaged structure taste heightened entropy.

  For a few heartbeats, the top half of the gatehouse started to sag inward on itself like rotting fruit, then with a thunderous crash, it collapsed, filling the hole in Azyge’s wall with a barricade of rubble. Letting go of the masonry and the magic, Cole coughed as dust and debris swirled about him. Blinking away the eye-watering cloud kicked up by the falling building, Cole stepped back avoiding the small avalanche of pulverized building material dripping down the barricade’s sides. Head swimming from the expended power, senses still alight with alien stimuli, Cole was borderline stupified as he backed up, leading to him tripping over one of the corpses he’d just quieted, an embarrassing mistake that saved his life.

  Thunder rolled and a new cloud of dust exploded around Cole as an invisible hand slammed into the breach. Boney fingers big as spears left deep prints in the barricade, stirring a recollection in the Paladin as he regained his footing just in time for the hand’s owner to come into view. Propping itself up on one phantom arm, the giant skull glowered down at Cole, its jaw gnashing in a rhythmic constant that brought to mind a metronome. Staring up at the baleful witchfire in the skull’s sockets, Cole realized where he’d seen similar prints to what this creature had left.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Teeth bared, Cole growled. “Wolfgang had something like you, didn’t he? Are you one of his creations? Or did he just make another shoddy knock-off of another’s work?”

  The Gnasher’s response came in a woosh of displaced air and dust that Cole could guess the origin of. Leaping to the side, the Paladin watched as the corpse he’d tripped over was flattened with a horrid crunch. Gore and debris scraped along the cobblestones as an invisible hand slid towards Cole, eager to scoop him up like a dropped morsel. Lengthening Requiem into a halberd and putting extra mass into the axe head, the Paladin braced himself, weapon held high. He’d shut the breach using his newest trick, now it was time to rely on perhaps the first one Master Time offered: the power to touch the intangible, a phenomenal ability for anyone who hunted the undead.

  Bringing Requiem down like a headman’s axe, Cole cut what wasn’t present. Phantom phalanges split under the mighty blow, the Paladin chopping through two like so much dry cordwood. The only problem is the Gnasher still had three digits and they slammed into Cole, wrapping about his legs and lower body like some ghoulish mechanical crane. With shocking speed, the skull creature lifted Cole up towards its gnashing mouth. Halberd in hand, the Paladin started to bring it down to free himself but then was struck with an idea. It would be a gamble but right now Cole was willing to roll the dice if it meant erasing another of Wolfgang’s crimes.

  Reaching into himself again, Cole sought his power, he’d used up a lot on the gate, but the past few months of constant usage had strengthened his soul like exercise might strengthen the body. So now, as the Gnasher brought Cole to its jaws, the Paladin had enough magic to call upon entropy’s opposite.

  Tombstone-sized teeth slammed down on Cole’s preservation-armored torso with crushing force and had as much effect as if they’d bitten down on adamant. Stuck halfway into the Gnasher’s mouth, legs dangling in the air behind him in a way that must have looked ridiculous, Cole swung with Requiem, aiming for the palate. Enchanted steel splintered haunted bone, and Cole struck again and again, hacking away at the ridges with vicious intensity. Some part of the Paladin not busy with channeling magic and chopping away at the Gnasher found some bleak amusement in the fact he kept getting into this kind of situation. Still, even gore-splattered as they were, being stuck between this undead horror’s teeth was better than the stinking cavern of the dire bear’s mouth.

  As half the palate broke away in a great sheet of cracked bone, Cole changed targets, aiming for where the mandible met the temporal bone, trying to loosen the jaws currently failing to bite him in half. After a few heavy strikes, the Paladin succeeded and started wriggling forward, gripping onto fresh cracks in the skull with both his hand and weapon to haul himself through the jaws and up into the now exposed nasal cavity. Shrinking Requiem down, Cole continued tearing into the skull from the inside while taking out his amulet and pushing magic into it.

  As silver fire ignited across the metal hourglass, Cole levered open the gap between two of the orbital bones, letting him shove the shining amulet up into one of the witchfire spheres the Gnasher called an eye. Sickly cloying heat lapped at Cole’s reinforced flesh as he let his amulet burn brighter and brighter. All about him, the damaged skull shook and thrashed as the effects of Master Time’s fury were felt by the abomination. With this much magic flowing through him, Cole could catch flickers of the Aether around him, of the rapidly disintegrating necromantic construct inhabiting this skull. Any doubt Cole had about the origin and nature of the Gnasher vanished as his soul collided with the cast-off scraps of the unraveling monster.

  * A hundred heads, a hundred stories, a fell ritual of conjoined make. Necromancy and diabolism mixed by blood-soaked hands creating a strange beast of chimeric nature and vicious purpose. *

  * Wading across a river, blade-born orders ringing in a hollow skull. Find those who survive the tide, crush them, and let their deaths swell the storm that would crash on Crowbend *

  * The farming hamlet’s gate is smashed open, and the hungry dead flow in, adding more corpses to their relentless march *

  * A road is followed, the mountains are sighted, and at their base is prey. The jaw opens and shuts, opens and shuts, a rhythm as unending as the skull’s hunger. Closer and closer, the horror comes, breaking into a charge when it sees signs of life, life it must extinguish *

  As the witchfire eyes started to gutter, Cole felt a sense of grim relief coupled with restoked anger. This creature hadn’t been sent after him and Natalie, it was a weapon unleashed upon the relatively intact section of Alidonar; a tool to break open those settlements resisting the tide, and sow terror among those who might ride to Crowbend’s defense. Just another engine of atrocity built by those so divorced from life and sanity they’d rob entire towns of their allotted time just for a tactical advantage. Cole hated the Gnasher and everything it represented with the cold fury of a dying star.

  With renewed vigor, the Paladin hacked at the bone surrounding him, while keeping his amulet pressed into the Gnasher’s eye. Then without warning the witchfire went out and Cole became weightless, the skull plummeting down through open air with him still inside. Bracing against the more intact sections of bone, Cole refocused on the power of preservation as the skull hit the ground with a horrid crash.

  Head ringing, but body still intact, Cole looked around him trying to get his bearings. The skull had landed upside down and rolled so the brow was pressed into the ground. Managing to adjust himself so he was facing the right way up, Cole froze as a familiar scent reached his nose, that of interrupted putrification, a ghoul, no, many ghouls, were close. Scrambling about inside the broken nasal cavity of the giant skull, Cole caught sight of several corpses crawling up through the empty eyesockets and toward him. The sight of four rotting husks, grasping for his flesh sent a shock of fear through Cole, just not for the typical reason. If the ghouls were here it meant the breach had been reopened.

  Pulling himself back up onto the palate and peering through the cracked jaws, Cole realized his mistake. The experiment with entropic magic was working and the debris barricade held. But sometime while he’d been in the Gnasher’s skull, it had pulled back from the walls, and now its broken bones lay outside Azyge, in the middle of the corpse-tide, and so did Cole.

  All around the Paladin were rotting faces and groping arms, a sea of the dead singing their groaning chorus as they sought the warm flesh now mere meters away from them. Holding his amulet aloft, Cole used its light to get a better sense of his and Azyge’s situation. Close to a thousand ghouls surrounded him, forming a rotting moat around the town’s outer walls, and now pressing in at the giant skull. As Cole debated his course, something beneath him let out an ominous crack and the skull shifted. Keeping his balance, the Paladin grimaced as his options narrowed, the bone he stood upon was unnatural, and without the fell magics that once animated it, the alabaster substance was quickly crumbling.

  Cole was maybe fifteen meters from the Azyge walls and critically his stop-gap barricade in the wall. Shining his amulet brighter, the Paladin winced at what had befallen the gatehouse. The entropic spell he’d unleashed seemed to have worked a margin too well as the structure had been pulverized by the Gnasher’s arm, becoming a sloping mound of gravel, and splinters, interspersed with some shockingly wounded ghouls. The spell hadn’t affected the walking corpses, so those who hadn’t been completely squashed by the collapse were trying to pry themselves free of the barricade mound. But the lucky undead now wriggling out of the debris wasn’t the main problem facing Cole, that honor fell to the rapidly evening out slope forming in his barricade. While it was still steep enough to stymie a single ghoul, a crowd of them forming a ramp of dead flesh was a different story.

  Refocusing on the preserving cold filling him, Cole prepared to make the mad dash through the sea of hands and teeth awaiting him. It would be tricky but with his strength and durability, making it to breach and holding that slope was well within the Paladin’s growing abilities. Clambering up onto the skull’s lower jaw, Cole braced himself to leap into the tide, but then a jet of flame slammed into him.

  Surprised and knocked off balance, Cole tumbled off the jaw, his fall broken by half a dozen ghouls who quickly tried to tear into him with dull, cracked teeth. Cursing wildly, Cole battered them back, feeling incisors snap against his skin, unable to find purchase on his steel-like flesh. Pulling himself to his feet, scything out with Requiem, Cole tore through three ghouls, frost swirling about him as he fought.

  Hacking through the forest of rotten flesh, making a path towards the wall, the Paladin looked all around for whatever attacked him with fire. Cole’s first thought was some necromancer hid among the ghouls, acting like their shepherd; but that idea ran into a few problems, predominantly the Gnasher and swarm’s lack of magical support. Any necromancer capable of walking safely through a corpse-tide knew the best time to strike a foe was when they were occupied with lesser undead.

  By the time Cole had made a good five meters of progress toward the breach, a stream of fire erupted from somewhere to his left. Throwing himself to the ground and in the process tackling a ghoul that was once a gangly teenage boy, Cole dodged the flame. Getting to his feet, after dispatching the teen ghoul, Cole found several burning corpses shambling towards him, their clothing and dry tissue ignited by the fire. Grimacing at the sight, Cole struck out with Requiem, taking each of the unliving torches at the neck. Burning a body freed the soul within, but the exact specifics of how much needed to be burned varied dramatically, and here in the thick miasma of a corpse-tide it would take cooking these ghouls down to the bone. So if Cole wasn’t careful he’d find himself swarmed by flaming corpses, and the Paladin wasn’t eager to test the preserving cold wrapping him against that.

  Cutting through the burning ghouls, Cole’s sensitive noise caught a curious scent hidden within all the rot around him. Something nearby smelled like both roasting pork and rotting fruit; an utterly bizarre combination that seemed as good a sign as any he was approaching the fire’s source. A wet gurgling sound, almost like a drunkard’s belch came from beyond the next wave of ghouls and the fruit smell dramatically increased. Cole was already hitting the filthy mud when a fireball washed over the surrounding ghouls. Clambering up through the lingering heat haze and growing smoke cloud, Cole found his attacker standing amid smoldering debris.

  It was a ghoul, but unlike any Cole ever encountered before. In life, the corpse had been a monstrously fat older woman with lank grey hair and puffy swollen features. Now in death, the ghoul’s jaw was burned to the bone, and a great trough of scorched flesh ran from neck to belly, giving the impression that some flaming blade had tried and failed to cleave the ghoul in two. Noxious vapors and whisps of smoke wafted up from the creature’s face and enough of its senses remained that it now waddled towards Cole, arms outstretched.

  Another horrid belch started to issue from the monster’s ruined maw and Cole reacted quickly. With one hand he grabbed onto the nearest ghoul and hurled it forward at the creature. Normally, Cole tried to avoid such acts of disrespect, ghouls were afterall people, their souls trapped inside reanimated flesh; but necessity was ever a cruel taskmaster. The hurled corpse smashed into the fat ghoul and it tottered backward, falling down with a gurgling expulsion of hot vapors; vapors that promptly ignited the plume of gas the ghoul had been producing. A jet of fire shot out of the creature’s mouth and spread around it in a roaring wave of heat.

  As the worst of the flame faded, Cole charged forward, cutting down any of the smoldering ghouls who got close. Eyes stinging with the growing smoke, the Paladin approached the fire-breathing ghoul, part of him wondering what sort of bizarre and horrid situation must be required to make such a monster. Pudgy arms flailing, the creature in question was trying and failing to get up, bringing to mind the gorger ghouls Cole had faced upon first arriving at Glockmire. Halberd held high, Cole brought Requiem down on the creature’s burned neck, splitting the head clean from the bloated torso. As the axe blade sunk into the muddy ground a strange hissing sound greeted Cole’s ears and he looked at the now headless corpse; where the Paladin had just enough time to wonder why the body was swelling before it exploded.

  A thunderous boom shook the world and hurled Cole backward through the air, a hungry fireball chasing him with carnivorous intent. Plowing through a dozen or more ghouls, Cole hit the ground hard, his head ringing and vision blurred as scalding heat washed over him. Wind knocked out his chest, the Paladin struggled to breathe, see, or even smell; as steaming foulness covered his body. Scraping some of the smoking gore off his face, managing to take a breath, Cole felt a sharp yank on his leg and then the utterly unique agony of human teeth sinking into his flesh. Concussed by the explosion, the Paladin had lost his armor of preserving cold, something the swarming ghouls all about him were eagerly taking advantage of.

  Cursing wildly but unable to hear his own oaths over his ringing ears, Cole kicked at the offending corpse, snapping its neck and dislodging it from his leg, but not before four more sets of dead hands grabbed onto him, eager to taste him. Somehow, Cole had managed to keep hold of Requiem and now he swung madly with the halberd, but positioning wasn’t in his favor, making the blows shallow and awkward. More hands grabbed his left arm, and Cole punched out with that limb, knocking the offending ghoul away but letting two more come at his other side.

  Now a real element of fear was building within Cole; he’d been torn apart by hungry monsters before and it was perhaps the worst way to die. Brain still rattled, unable to grasp his magic, Cole defaulted to feral thrashing, which seemed to excite the ghouls even more, the animus driving them sensing weakness. A large ghoul, probably a blacksmith in life judging by the arm muscles, latched onto Cole’s head, trying to bring his face to its snapping jaws. With his free hand, Cole reached up grabbing the creature’s lower mandible and yanking it off with all his strength, a poor move that sent a shower of rotting blood into his mouth and eyes.

  Blinded and trying not to vomit, Cole felt dizzy, his mind lurching with more than a concussion. As teeth sank into his forearm, a dull thought managed to push its way through the fog filling him. The gas, the fire-breather had been expelling some kind of gas, which he’d been breathing in. Whatever noxious vapors the ghouls had been making, they were compounding with the concussion, making thinking hard and focusing impossible. Screaming in frustration, Cole bashed the ghoul eating his arm into the ground and tried to come to his feet, just for more dead weight to clamber onto him, jaws trying to get through his leather jerkin.

  Then all at once the ghouls released him, letting go and crawling off of him with shocking alacrity. Rubbing the rotting blood away from his face, Cole could only watch in dull shock as the hungry dead stood about him like grotesque statues. Just as this development started to become real, some of the ghouls moved with almost lock-step precision, parting the way for someone.

  Hearing finally starting to return, Cole heard muffled words; or more accurately a muffled snarl. “He’s mine!”

  Blinking away ghoul ichor and confusion, Cole managed to focus on his rescuer and felt a wave of relief that nearly instantly turned to deep concern. Natalie strutted towards him from between the ranks of the chastened undead, a wide vicious smile on her face and distinctly out of place sway to her hips. Standing over him, she said. “My my, you look awful.”

  Crouching down, she met his gaze, her red eyes blazing. “This won’t do, I can’t have my knight in such a sorry state.”

  Cole stared into her eyes, transfixed and fearful in equal measure. They were red, entirely red, Natalie’s sclera the same bright crimson as her irises.

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