Necroepilogos

Six new arrivals burst from the breached wall and swept into the gravekeeper’s chamber.

Eseld did as the voice had ordered. She kept her head down, body pressed to the floor, armoured hood pulled up to protect her skull. Her chest and stomach ached with deep tissue bruises and cracked ribs from where her armour had turned away the bullets. Cyneswith was screaming and sobbing, clutching at Eseld in manic terror. Eseld pinned her down, covering Cyneswith’s body to shelter them both from debris and shrapnel.

But she could not look away. She peered out from beneath the flimsy cover of her armoured hood.

A miracle was unfolding. She was being rescued.

At the vanguard of the six was a cackling flash of black-and-red bionic limbs, blonde hair, and ballistic shields — a petite little zombie bounding ahead of her comrades. All four of her limbs were high-grade cybernetics; her legs terminated in a pair of bird-like feet, each toe tipped with a razor-sharp talon. A matching bionic tail whipped out behind her, ending in a bright red spike. She had a ballistic shield strapped across her back and another one clutched tight against her front.

She used the shield as a battering ram, smashing straight into the massed mob of Lykke’s hounds. Half a dozen revenants went tumbling to the floor, crashing into those beside them, dragging others down as they went. The little berserker jerked an automatic shotgun out from behind her shields and fired into the crowd — boom-crunch-boom-crunch-boom-crunch. Slug rounds cracked armour plates and knocked more hounds aside, blasting holes in torsos and bursting limbs asunder. The zombie’s black-and-red tail coiled outward like a striking snake, ramming the spike through the back of a fleeing opponent.

The hounds recoiled, some scrambling to their feet, others taking cover around the side of the grey metal pyramid. Return fire plinked off the berserker’s ballistic shields; she closed herself up like a tortoise inside a shell.

Close behind the berserker came a giant, nine or ten feet of the most heavily armed and modified revenant Eseld had ever seen. She was clothed in curtains of dark robe and rag, draped with sheets of hanging armour and bulletproof material, all covering glistening underlayers of skintight fabric, colours shifting like oil on water. She was like a statue in a deep forest, hung with a mantle of ivy and moss. She wore an eyeless helmet of smooth black, pointed like a beak. Six arms carried a miniature arsenal of esoteric energy weapons.

The giant opened fire on the fleeing hounds. White hot flashes blurred across Eseld’s vision, leaving eye-searing contrails in their wake, followed by the ear-splitting crack of anti-materiel rounds crunching into the side of the pyramid.

A third revenant advanced in the shelter of the giant’s wake. She was unassuming — long black hair, light brown skin, terrified eyes peering out from behind a full-face visor, wearing some kind of scanner strapped around her head. She had a tomb-grown coat over her shoulders and carried no weapons.

Four more of those strange little silver-grey oblongs orbited her, darting through the air, the same as the one which had somehow saved Eseld. Drones.

Three bullets bounced off thin air in front of the terrified revenant, as if deflected by an invisible forcefield. She flinched, then hissed with irritation.

Behind the giant strode a woman who did not look like she was on a battlefield at all. Head held high, eyes calm and composed, dark skin untouched by sweat or concern. She wore a tomb-grown coat as well, the front wide open on her naked chest. She held a submachine gun in one lazy hand. Bullets whizzed and cracked through the air around her, but she didn’t even blink. She raised her submachine gun and casually sprayed one of Lykke’s hounds in the back.

In the rear, braced against the breach in the chamber wall, was a hump of shapeless black robes, topped by a hint of pale flesh. She held a sniper rifle in a trio of spindly arms, bracing herself with another half dozen stick-thin limbs.

The giant’s firepower pinned down the hounds who were trying to dislodge the beachhead established by the berserker with the ballistic shields. The berserker took the opening, darting forward again with a shrieking cackle and a click-boom-click-boom of her automatic shotgun. Behind them, the sniper rifle cracked and barked, picking off any who threatened the berserker’s advance.

Firepower poured into Lykke’s hounds, disrupting their attempts to regroup, knocking down the ones in powered armour, tearing apart the unprotected.

As individuals, Eseld saw little difference between her would-be rescuers and Lykke’s unwitting minions. This was just another gang of heavily-armed revenants with extensive cybernetic and biological modifications. Just another pack of predators, another way to die. There was nothing special or new about these six, nothing Eseld had not seen before in some other form, dozens of times over.

But they were greater than the sum of their parts.

The six moved as a single organism, without apparent orders or jostling for position or arguing over who got the best kills or who got to claim the most meat. The actions of each were backed up and supported by the other five.

Eseld had never seen anything like this before. It would have been beautiful, if the violence was not so terrible.

The turtle-backed berserker disrupted the loose formation of Lykke’s hounds, throwing off their firing arcs and smashing them into each other, acting as the tip of a spear. The giant provided fire support, preventing the massed mob from regrouping to repulse the berserker. The sniper in the rear picked off the high-value targets — downing revenants in powered armour, shooting the legs out from the ones clever enough to flank the berserker or fast enough to disengage from the pack to circle around. Eseld did not understand the function of the terrified revenant or the one who didn’t fear bullets, but they must have served some purpose.

And then there was the leader, the one who had shouted the orders.

She made herself known last of all, striding through the breach in the wall behind her comrades — leading from the rear while her soldiers exposed themselves to danger.

The leader wore a full-body suit of carapace battle armour, similar to the one Sky had taken from the armoury. But this suit was white, once gleaming, now dirtied to grey by soot and damage and age, scuffed and scorched and battered and burned. Her face was concealed inside a matching helmet with dark eyepieces and a rebreather grille over the mouth. A tomb-grown coat lay over the armour plates, layering more protection atop the slender lines of the suit. 

The carapace chestpiece was daubed with a symbol in shining green — a crescent intersected by a pair of lines, like a tower silhouetted by moonrise.

She carried a coilgun, supported by a rig strapped around her hips and locked to her armour. The backpack alone would have required all of Eseld’s strength just to lift.

The leader strode past the sniper, past the giant and the pair in her wake, out into the battle.

Shouts broke out from Lykke’s hounds — “Cover, cover, now!”, “Shoot that one! Shoot her! Bring her down!”, “Fuck, fucking run—”

The leader walked straight into a storm of gunfire. Bullets slammed into armoured fabric and ceramic plates, ricocheting away or falling to the ground. She strode through the bullets like raindrops, though she must have felt the impacts like hammer blows.

She ignored it all and raised her weapon — the rifle-like receiver of the coilgun. Her backpack hummed with a spike of power. The leader aimed into the thickest remnant of Lykke’s hounds, where they were trying to regroup in the cover of the grey metal pyramid.

Eseld saw the logic and realised her mistake. The woman in armour had not been leading from the rear, safe while her comrades risked themselves.

The leader had joined the battle only when the hounds had begun to regroup from the initial shock of combat, as they had started to take cover and regain their cohesion, as their massed return fire had begun to find targets. Her armour, her weapon, her mere presence as she strode forward, unflinching before a storm of gunfire — it drew all the attention, all the return fire, every eye in the chamber. She took the pressure off her comrades just by her existence.

And for what?

To rescue Eseld and Cyneswith and Sky? All for the sake of this pitiful defeated meat, this strange flesh she had never met before? None of this made any sense to Eseld; powerful revenants did not do things like this, did not harbour motivation for altruism or kindness or heroic mercy. This action did not belong to the empty world left behind after God’s death. This was the moral act of a person who still felt the clean wind and saw the clear skies, a person who held true to the sunlit uplands when God still sat upon the throne of heaven, the days when angels watched over the world, instead of scrabbling in the dirt for scraps of meat alongside the lost and the damned.

Cowering on the floor, aching from bullet bruises, with her armoured coat dusted by debris, Eseld began to cry. Tears ran in twin tracks down her cheeks.

Lykke was a demon; Shilu was a fallen angel. Neither required the presence of divinity. No matter how good Shilu’s intentions, no matter how hard she had tried, whatever her secret plans, she had said it herself — she had failed. And Eseld had watched Shilu give up.

But this, whoever this was, she was still fighting.

Eseld decided she was being rescued by a saint.

The leader stopped, feet braced wide, sighting down the receiver of the coilgun. “Stand down or be cut down!” she howled through her helmet.

Bullets plinked off her armour. She fired.

A thump of magnetic discharge shook Eseld’s guts. A round from the coilgun slammed straight through a revenant’s hips, exploding her into a shower of gore, then carried on into the ground, throwing up an explosion of grey metal fragments and debris. The shock wave tossed a dozen more zombies aside, peppering them with shrapnel, leaving them bleeding and reeling, screaming and yowling, staggering and stumbling. Their return fire was broken, their line scattered, their cover ruined.

Just as the leader had said, they were done here.

Eseld stayed down, head pressed to Cyneswith’s shoulder. Cyn was sobbing, clinging to Eseld, mewling terrified questions.

But Eseld couldn’t answer. She couldn’t look away from the saint and her disciples.

She’d never seen revenants work together like this before; even the sustained glimpses she had gotten of the most well-armed and well-fed groups were not like this, not led from the front, not operating in concert. The saint and her disciples overcame many times their own number by application of teamwork and tactics, not superior armament; they weren’t even wearing powered armour, after all. The berserker cut down revenants up close with shotgun and tail, while the others worked inward from the edges, herding the remaining hounds into crossfire, so the giant and the sniper could take them down from opposite sides. The leader fired her coilgun twice more, always to disrupt attempts to regroup. Bullets and energy bolts slammed through the air; blades bounced off ballistic shields and snapped under the berserker’s claws. The coilgun tore through powered armour with the clarity of a divine lance.

Within thirty seconds the battle was over. All but one of Lykke’s hounds lay dead or had turned tail and fled. Only a couple had escaped — thrown down their guns and sprinted for the breach in the wall, shown mercy by the saint’s followers. The floor was littered with corpses, lying in pools of blood and gore, smeared around by bootprints and the crash of toppled bodies. The side of the grey metal pyramid was splattered with crimson spray. Great chunks had been torn out of the metal ground, pockmarked by bullet holes, scorched black by energy weapon discharge.

Only one hound remained, a power-armoured zombie almost as tall as the six-armed giant. The last zombie standing, about three meters diagonally from Eseld and Cyneswith.

The final hound raised a massive gatling gun toward the newcomers. “Not down yet, morons!” she bellowed. The barrels began to spin.

The leader — the saint — stepped forward and aimed the coilgun receiver. “Drop it or die.”

The gatling gun barrels went click-click-click-whirrrrrrr—

The terrified disciple, the one surrounded by the drones, now looked more exasperated than afraid. She snapped: “Elpida, just fucking shoot her!”

—whirrrrr-bangbangbangbang—

Gatling rounds tore through the air. The first one slammed into the leader’s chestplate, scuffing the tower-and-moon symbol. The next three rounds bounced off empty air, deflected by the invisible power from the silver-grey drones.

The saint fired the coilgun, squeezing the trigger three times in quick succession. A trio of magnetic discharges rocked Eseld’s intestines.

Three coilgun rounds hit the final hound. The first shot broke her powered armour with a high-pitched crack of metal and ceramic. The impact rocked her backward; the gatling gun bullets whirled up the side of the pyramid and tracked across the wall. The second round punched through the armour and ballooned the back of her suit in a spider-webbed mass of broken plates and elastic underlayers. The third shot burst her apart. She exploded in a shower of gore and shrapnel.

The last of Lykke’s hounds clattered to the floor, followed by fragments of her suit. Debris plinked off Eseld’s armoured coat. A chunk of steaming forearm landed in front of her face, still wrapped in armour, fingers twitching. Cyneswith muffled one last scream in Eseld’s side.

“Hold fire,” the saint ordered. “Repeat, hold fire. Targets clear?”

“No!” said the terrified revenant. “No, we are not clear. We are very, very far from clear. Elpida, do you not fucking see that thing over—”

“I know. Hold fire, stick to the plan. Sound off. Any wounded?”

“All good!” snapped the berserker.

The leader, the saint, the saviour in a battered and burned suit of armour — ‘Elpida’? — strode forward, carapace boots ringing against the grey metal floor, splashing through sticky puddles of blood and viscera. Eseld stared upward at her, eyes wide, panting with instinctive fear and religious awe. This monster was no different than thousands of others she’d encountered in all her many deaths and rebirths. Black eyepieces concealed any proof of humanity inside that once-white helmet.

But this was no predator. This was a saint.

Elpida stopped just short of Eseld, staring across the gravekeeper’s chamber. Eseld realised with a lurch of horror in her chest, and turned to look.

Lykke was staring back.

The demon had gone untouched by the brief battle. She was crouched atop Sky like a bird of prey upon a bloody carcass, gore-wrought wings held high, raptor talons clutching Sky’s armoured thighs, drooling a line of white fluid from her perfect bow-shaped lips. Her cloud of pustulent flies formed a pulsing aurora about her body. Sky lay limp, face streaked with blood. Her eyes were open, rolled back into her head, showing only bloodshot whites. She twitched and jerked as if trapped in a nightmare, snorting and wheezing and gasping for breath. Her armour was cracked and broken, pieces of it tossed to the floor. A single bloated white fly crawled out from between her parted lips and wriggled up her left nostril.

Lykke smiled at Elpida with perplexed curiosity.

Elpida spoke quickly: “Kagami, talk to me. What am I looking at?”

The terrified revenant — Kagami — snapped, “Nanomachine readings like the heart of the fucking sun! I don’t know, but we can both make an educated guess. And it’s not cloaking anything, it’s not trying to hide!”

Elpida said: “Atyle, your opinion.”

The fearless revenant answered this time, submachine gun loose at her side. “I concur. The devil is out in the open. She hides not.”

“Kagami,” Elpida said. “Do it.”

Kagami hissed through clenched teeth. “Really? You’re serious? We can’t just—”

“Do it,” Elpida ordered. “Now.”

Four of those silver-grey drones darted outward from Kagami. Three of them surrounded Elpida’s disciples in a triangle pattern. The fourth shot upward, hanging above the group.

A sharp crack-hum of electrical power pulsed through the air. Eseld blinked. She tasted iron.

Lykke’s curious smile curdled into a frown.

Suddenly the black-robed sniper appeared next to Elpida. She was massive, taller than Eseld had expected from seeing her crouched in the breached wall. She flowed like a centipede, back hunched, limbs tucked inside her robes. The lower half of her face was concealed behind a metal mask, the top half dominated by red bionic eyes. A boxy weapon emerged from beneath her black robes, clutched in four spindly arms, pointed toward Lykke.

Elpida said: “Serin, hold.”

“Coh-mannder,” Serin grunted. “This is a Necromancer. There is no doubt.”

“You’ll get your chance,” Elpida said. “Stick to the plan, keep her covered. Hafina, you help, eyes on the Necro. Atyle, Ilyusha, we have two survivors here. Get them on their feet.”

“One more back here!” screeched the berserker.

The fearless revenant — Atyle — stepped around Elpida and pulled Eseld to her feet. The little berserker must have been Ilyusha; she grabbed Cyneswith and yanked her upright. Cyneswith screamed and flailed, battering her rescuer with flapping hands. Ilyusha hissed with irritation.

“H-here, here!” Eseld yelped, hands out. “Give her to me, give her—”

Ilyusha shoved Cyneswith into Eseld’s arms. Cyn clung on tight, weeping and shaking, gaping at the carnage spread out across the floor, then up at the unfamiliar faces, then over at Lykke perched on Sky’s limp body.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Eseld hissed, though she was not sure she believed that herself. “We got— they’re here for— we’re okay—”

Atyle crooned: “Come come, babes in the woods, away from the slings and arrows.”

She gently led Eseld and Cyneswith a few paces back, behind the leader and the giant and the sniper. The little berserker helped, holding up her ballistic shield in Lykke’s general direction. Eseld felt hysterical fear crawling up her throat. What good would a shield do to stop a demon? Saint or not, they had to retreat, they had to leave before Lykke made a move, they had to—

A familiar figure was hunched in the rear, naked and bleeding from a score of wounds, her long black hair in blood-streaked disarray.

“Shilu!” Eseld panted.

Shilu no longer wore her true face, her scarecrow-machine of razor edges and black chrome. She had transformed back into her disguise, with soft brown skin and wide dark eyes.

She said nothing. She stared at the back of Elpida’s head.

Eseld and Cyneswith and Shilu were tucked in tight behind the front row of their would-be rescuers. To one side, the gravekeeper stared straight ahead, insensate and silent inside her upright resurrection coffin. Her papery skin was splattered with blood. Atop the grey metal pyramid, the perfect black sphere looked on like a hole in reality.

Elpida said: “Kagami, talk to me.”

Kagami looked the trio up and down from behind her visor, then snapped, “These three are fresh, yes. No major wounds. The naked one is bleeding but it’s all surface, she’ll keep.”

Shilu croaked, “I’ll be fine.”

Elpida said: “Serin, Hafina, keep eyes on the Necromancer.” Then she turned her head to look back. Dark eyeholes swept across Shilu and Cyn — then paused on Eseld. 

Elpida’s hidden gaze lingered, on and on and on. Eseld stared back, cheeks still streaked with tears.

“You’re … ” Eseld croaked. She couldn’t even see Elpida’s eyes, but that didn’t matter. “You’re not here to eat us.”

Kagami huffed. “Obviously not. Well done. This one is clearly a genius. Great catch.”

“Nope!” Ilyusha said, cracking a toothy grin. “Lucky you!”

Eseld didn’t even look at them. She just started into those blank eyepieces set into Elpida’s helmet.

“Thank you,” she croaked. “Thank you. I … I don’t … ”

Elpida just kept staring.

Ilyusha snapped, “Elpi?”

“It’s alright, Illy,” Elpida said. She nodded to Eseld. “Names, quickly.”

“Eseld. This is Cyneswith. That’s Shilu.”

“Just you three? Any other survivors?”

Eseld shook her head. Cyneswith panted softly, her panic finally ebbing. She ducked her head in wordless greeting or gratitude, but said nothing.

Shilu pointed across the chamber, at Sky. “Her.”

“Yes,” snapped Kagami. “I think she’s a little bit fucking beyond us, thank you very much!”

“Never say never,” Elpida muttered, helmet turning away.

On the far side of the gravekeeper’s chamber, Lykke was climbing off Sky and rising to her feet.

Her wings of living gore stretched out wide, tips touching the wall and the metal of the grey pyramid. Her talons clicked against the floor as she advanced, hips swaying inside the stained and ruined fabric of her white sundress. Bloated flies crawled from her many wounds, adding their glistening pale bodies to her buzzing aura.

Eseld’s awe and relief turned to ice in her guts. All this heroism, all this effort, all this blessed benevolence — all of it was going to be destroyed.

She reached out and grabbed the back of Elpida’s coat, bunching a fistful of armoured fabric in one hand.

“No!” Eseld wailed. “N-no! You can’t! You can’t fight her, she’s a demon! She’s not a zombie like us, she’s something else. She’ll kill you all, there’s nothing we can do, nothing! Shilu, can’t we—”

“No,” said Shilu. “We can do nothing.”

Eseld stared at Shilu in shock. Shilu just shook her head, totally calm.

Kagami hissed: “The freshie has a point. Elpida, Commander, I don’t know if this can hold. Look at that fucking thing! She’s— it’s—”

Elpida murmured, “Can you hold it, Kaga? Can you do this for me?”

Kagami clenched her teeth. “Yes, of course I can. Fine.”

“Keep comms open,” Elpida said. “Just in case.”

Serin rasped behind her mask. “No running this time.”

Ilyusha made her shotgun go click-crunch. She shouted at Lykke. “Fuck you, reptile shit-eater! Bring it! I’ll shit on your face!”

Eseld panted with growing panic. These revenants could not stand up to the demon, whoever and whatever they were. No armour, no faith, no bullet would avail them.

“It’s impossible!” Eseld said. “Please— E-Elpida? She’ll just paralyse us, she’ll—”

“No,” Elpida said. “She can’t. Not us, not here, not now.”

Lykke stopped about a dozen paces away. She cocked her hips to one side. Her aurora of white flies followed the gesture, flowing outward. Their putrid bodies mirrored the ebb and flow of the storm outdoors. The hurricane washed over the tomb in deep, slow, standing waves of furious drumming, filling the air with so much rainfall it became distant static pressing in on the whole world. The wind whipped around gargantuan metal walls, howling like a voice from the pits of hell.

Lykke glanced to the group’s left and right, then upward. A wry smile creased her face.

The demon was examining the silver-grey drones, the points of a miniature pyramid which surrounded Elpida and her disciples.

Elpida said: “You can’t access our bodies from the other side of this firewall.”

Eseld’s jaw dropped. She was wrong; Elpida, the saint and her disciples, had found a way to fight a demon.

“Alright,” Lykke said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’ll play along for a little while. At least this is somewhat original, though I’m not impressed by the extras. Nice trick.” She raised her hands and mimed a tiny round of applause. “It’s been a long time since anybody pulled this particular move. Did you figure it out yourselves, or did you have some help?”

“All home grown!” Kagami snapped. “As if I’d need fucking help to figure out basic electromagnetic firewalling.”

Lykke snorted and rolled her eyes. “That’s hardly believable, considering your company. And you do know it won’t actually help you, yes? I can’t access you via the network through that, but your flimsy little wall can’t stop me from walking up to you and pulling your guts out.” She flexed a blood-glazed hand and narrowed her eyes. “I could also destroy the drones themselves. I doubt you could do anything to stop me, you jumped-up handful of worms.”

Eseld couldn’t believe her ears. Lykke was genuinely pissed off.

Elpida said: “Are you the same Necromancer?”

Lykke spread her hands. “The same Necromancer as what? What are you talking about, you filthy little scrap of flesh? As if you have the right to ask me questions! Oh no, this is just in poor taste, I’m growing unimpressed with this already.”

“I’ll chalk that down as a no,” Kagami rattled off. She swallowed hard. “Elpida, we’re not going to get anything out of her that she doesn’t want us to know. She might be, she might not. Who cares?! What does it matter?”

Atyle — the confident one, naked beneath her coat — said: “Did you bring the storm, she-devil? I see hidden hands behind your back.”

Lykke huffed and tossed her blood-streaked hair. “One more question and I’ll slay you where you—”

Elpida said: “What do you want, Necromancer?”

Lykke’s irritation vanished with a sharp smile. She gestured at Eseld, Cyneswith, and Shilu. “Those three! Those three you’ve so heroically rescued. They’re mine. I was already done here, just having fun in the vinegar strokes. I have no reason to spend more than a single second on the rest of you, whatever you’ve been convinced you are. Not that I won’t tear through you like tissue paper to get this finished. I am beyond bored and being distracted from the one thing here that was remotely interesting.”

Elpida said, “If we hand them over, will you leave? Will you let us loot the tomb armoury, and keep all these bodies?”

Eseld’s blood froze. She shared a glance with Cyneswith; Cyn was wide-eyed in fresh terror. Shilu’s expression hadn’t changed.

Why was Shilu hiding her own divine nature? Why not reveal herself to the saint, and fight together? And she was staring at Elpida’s back, as if she could see through the coilgun pack and the armoured coat and the carapace beneath, as if she was boring into Elpida’s flesh and reading her soul.

“Ha!” Lykke barked. “Is that part of your little play? Is that what we’re doing here? Do you need me to push a little so you come quietly? As if you’re in any position to make deals! Darling, the only reason I haven’t already torn you apart is because I’m humouring all this. Buuuuuuuut.” Lykke smiled like a little girl and put a fingertip to her lips. “Sure! Hand me my targets and I’ll be gone. I can even leave the bodies for your bellies. Though … that one?” She gestured back at Sky, lying in a heap of her own broken armour, twitching and shivering. “She’s coming with me, for some personal time.”

Elpida fell silent for a long moment. She took one hand off her coilgun receiver and tapped her chestplate twice, over the tower-and-moon symbol.

“No deal, Necromancer,” she said. “We’re leaving with these three. Kagami, tell the others to be ready for us. We’re leaving.”

Kagami clenched her teeth and hissed: “Commander—”

“No need to whisper, this thing can hear everything we say, no matter how quiet. Go ahead.”

Kagami said, “Even if we can get all the way back to Pheiri with this fucking thing following us, there’s nowhere to go. We’re pinned by this bastard storm. And it’s gotten worse since we got down here. Pira says Pheiri’s sensors read winds of almost eight hundred miles an hour. Even he can’t go out in that! It’s blasting the whole fucking city flat for miles around and flooding the remains! We’re trapped!”

“Understood,” Elpida said. She sounded perfectly calm. She tapped her chestplate again, once, twice, three times. “We’re sticking to the plan. You three.” She glanced back at Eseld and the others. “Did you secure any raw blue from the armoury?”

Eseld tightened her grip around Cyneswith. Cyn was still wearing the backpack full of cannisters over her armoured poncho. None of the cannisters seemed to have broken in the fight. “Y-yeah. Yes. We have it all. I’ve got guns and bullets too. If that matters.”

Kagami snorted. “And this one has been drinking the stuff. She’s glowing.”

“I needed it!” Eseld hissed.

“Good,” Elpida said. “Hafina, how many corpses can you carry?”

The giant rolled her upper shoulders. “Three. Four?”

Lykke burst out laughing, her mirth rolling off the grey pyramid in waves, echoing from the walls and ceiling. Elpida’s disciples tensed up. Ilyusha showed her teeth and swished her tail. Kagami went pale and crossed her arms over her chest. Serin’s spindly pale fingers tapped against her strange boxy gun. Atyle just tilted her head. Only Hafina didn’t react.

“Hold!” Elpida raised her voice above the laughter. “Stick to the plan. Everyone hold.”

Lykke’s laughter died away. She sighed and fanned her face with one hand.

“Zombies, hello?” Lykke said. “Little ones, that shield cannot protect you from me. If you know what I am, then you know you can’t fight me. You cannot retreat from here with those three in your possession. This is getting very old, my amusement is wearing off, and I’ve had enough of playing along.”

Elpida spoke slowly: “We can ward you away and cut your access. Do you believe that is the limit of our capabilities?”

Lykke smiled in a different way, hungry and curious. “Oh. Oh my. That confidence is real, isn’t it? You’re more than just playing along. How very spicy, very rich of you. And here I thought I’d already drunk my fill for the evening. I wouldn’t mind a private dance with one like you. Can I try you on for size, once this absurd little farce is concluded?”

Elpida barked with a sudden laugh. “Ha! Step off, bitch! I’ll bite your throat out!”

Lykke blinked, perplexed and put off. She put her hands on her hips. “What is this? What are you doing, zombie? Are you trying to get me to charge at you, because you think you’ve got some trick up your sleeve?”

Elpida’s voice snapped back to normal, calm and collected. “Are you sure we don’t?”

Lykke narrowed her eyes, lips pursed with venomous distaste. “This is just sad, very sad. Pitiful, really. I can’t tell if this is an attempt at survival or just some sad little game. What’s the point of this?”

“You’re going to let us go,” Elpida said. “Or you’re going to attack us, and find out what we can do. Your choice, Necromancer.”

Lykke sighed a very long sigh. She closed her eyes, then snapped them open again.

“Alright,” she said, cold and harsh. “I’ve had enough of playing along, I’m bored now. Come out and let’s finish this properly, or I’ll murder all your zombie pets and reanimate them as my own drones for the next couple of millennia. How does that sound for a credible threat?”

In the corner of Eseld’s eye, Shilu raised her right hand, fingertips pointing at the back of Elpida’s helmet.

“ … Shilu?” Eseld whispered. “No, n-no—”

Elpida said to Lykke, “Who are you talking—”

Lykke interrupted. “I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve by this pathetic show with these random zombies, but I’ve had enough. Stop pretending to be one of them, Shishi. It doesn’t suit you.”

Shilu’s right hand and forearm shimmered, transforming into black chrome; a knife-point of lightless metal cut the air, a spear tip glinting in the grey.

Shilu’s naked blade shot forward, aiming for the rear of Elpida’s armoured skull.