Book of The Dead

A flicker of light shifted in the corner of Feolin Brightshield’s vision. She cursed and brought her staff to bear, words of power rolling from her tongue as she turned the magick that flowed within her into scorching flames. A ghost emerged from the building to her right, its mouth agape, screaming with silent rage. Near-invisible hands reached for her, tipped in claws. Already, she could feel the chill of its presence shock her flesh.

But only for a moment. Flames roared, and the ghost fell away, a piercing shrill, not of pain, but of fury as the spirit’s tenuous form was burned, its magick consumed by her fire.

“I hate ghosts,” she cursed, eyes flicking from building to building as she waited for the next one to emerge.

“How do you think I feel about them?” MacRielly groused. The northman gripped his sword tight in his hands as he took position behind her and to the left. “My weapons go right through them!”

“Your sword’s enchanted,” Feolin scoffed. ”At a good price, I might add.”

“Two days back in the fucking city and this happens,” MacRielly cursed. “I just wanted to visit me mam.”

“I thought your mother was dead?”

“The Magisters don’t know that.”

“They do now,” a cold voice stated from behind the two of them. “Shut your mouths and keep moving. We have three more streets to cover.”

The two Slayers didn’t feel any pain, but at those words, they both felt a tingling sensation at the site of their brand. The back of Feolin’s neck prickled, as if her scar were being prodded by an insistent finger.She scowled, a seething anger roiling in her gut, but there was little she could do. MacRielly went further, growling under his breath, but neither of the two acted out, walking forward with their guard up as unnatural mist coiled around their feet.

“We’re moving too damn fast,” the northman muttered to Feolin out the side of his mouth. “They’ve pushed the Slayers to the front, and everyone is trailing in our wake. You know that, right?”

“Of course I know,” she whispered back. “What did you expect to happen?”

Whatever her old friend said in reply was a mystery, since it was so quiet even her enhanced senses couldn’t catch it, though the malevolent anger with which he said it was perfectly clear. For her part, Feolin tried to shove her anger down and focus. All Magisters were pieces of shit, and this clown, Berod, was no exception. Every group of Gold rankers pressed into fighting were being overseen by one of these idiots, and they were all being pushed forward recklessly into danger.

She cast her eyes from side to side, waiting for the next spirit to appear. They were coming more and more frequently as they got closer to the source, and only magick would tear their bodies apart. During her career, Feolin had never been a battlemage, but thankfully it didn’t take much to defeat these ghosts. The danger came from the quantity of them.

Who’d have known there were so many pissed off ghosts in this city?

Even as the thought occurred to her, Feolin dismissed it with a grimace. Everyone knew. It wasn’t a mystery to her, to MacRielly or to the prick in the Magister’s robes behind them.

A freezing sensation shocked her out of her thoughts, and she looked down to see ethereal fingers and a grinning face emerging from the ground right in front of her. Feolin leapt, her Gold rank strength more than enough to send her ten feet into the air as she pushed forth a hand and spoke, flames roaring from her palm moments later.

The ghosts were already dissipating when she landed, but her lower legs were still stiff, causing her to stumble. She may have fallen had MacRielly not stepped forward to catch her.

“Thanks,” she muttered, shaking her feet one at a time, trying to get some feeling back. “Keep your blade up.”

“Hurry up,” Berod snapped, “we don’t have time to waste. You’re Gold rank Slayers, are you not? A few trifling spirits shouldn’t pose any threat.”

“Is that right?” MacRielly snapped, turning on the mage with a furious expression. “Then why don’t you give it a fucking go?”

Feolin quickly righted her balance just in time for her friend to collapse like a puppet with his strings cut, writhing on the ground as his curse filled his body and soul with pain.

“I warned you. There isn’t time for your foolish bickering,” Berod grunted, staring down at the struggling Slayer with contempt.

As the pain subsided, MacRielly picked himself up from the ground, breathing heavily, his face flushed and eyes wild with rage. Feolin reached out a hand and placed it on his shoulder, and his gaze flicked to hers.

He was close, she realised. Close to turning and trying to cut Berod’s head off before the brand could disable his limbs. If he succeeded, the shock he would receive would surely kill him, but the northman was a hair away from no longer caring.

Berod opened his mouth to speak, and Feolin felt a sense of defeat rise in her heart, but before the Magister could seal his own death, a low groan echoed down the road toward them. The two Slayers snapped their heads towards the source of the sound, and it came again. Wordless, almost mindless, the sound conveyed nothing, but for a single drive: hunger.

“Zombies,” MacRielly spat, turning his anger toward a new source. He strode forward, rolling his shoulders and swinging his blade from one side to another. “If there’s one thing I hate more than ghosts… it’s zombies.”

“I thought you hated driftbeasts the most.”

The author’s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“That’s only on account of Brole, may his soul find eternal rest. Secretly, it’s always been zombies.”

Like a blur, the northman slid forward, his blade snaking out faster than the eye could track. There was a flash of light, the sound of boots scraping on stone, then MacRielly strolled back out of the mist, knuckling his red moustache with one hand as he flicked the gore from his blade with the other.

“Five,” he said, clearly disgusted by the creatures. “They smelled like your feet after a trip through the rifts, with an added hint of wet dirt.’

“You were told there would be zombies,” Berod snapped. “Make sure you aren’t bitten and move.”

Unwilling to experience the unique sensation of the brand any more than necessary, Feolin began to walk forward again, her feet finally warming up, but couldn’t help giving voice to her curiosity.

“What’s the rush?” she wondered aloud. “If we’re containing ghosts and a zombie outbreak, slow and steady should be the order of the day. Isn’t that usually the case?”

Berod’s face darkened, but at least he didn’t torture her.

“I have no reason to answer your questions. You are here to do, not to ask why.”

“Sure. Of course,” she replied, but continued to think on the matter. There had to be a reason for this unseemly haste. Berod didn’t even seem to be pushing them out of a sense of cruelty, which certainly happened often when Magisters directly oversaw Slayers. No, if she were to hazard a guess, there was an ever so slight whiff of fear coming from the mage.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

A swarm of ghosts appeared and Feolin’s hands snapped out, sigils forming rapidly as she spoke. Before the ghosts could close the distance and pounce on her partner, a pillar of flame erupted, spinning as it crackled and roared, blasting them all with heat and burning away the mist that still clung to the cobbled streets around them.

“Fire Mage is a good sub-class,” MacRielly noted, a hand raised to shield his eyes from the glare.

Feolin snapped her hands down to her side and the pillar of fire dissipated in an instant as she broke apart the magick.

“Of course it is,” she sniffed, “how many times have I saved you with fire magick?”

“Well… many, but I’m not sure this one should count. They’re only ghosts.”

“Fine. You can deal with them yourself next time.”

More groans echoed down the street, and the two turned their attention further ahead. Out of the mist, dozens of undead shambled forward, eyes vacant, desiccated, half-rotten flesh hanging from their bones.

Where have they all come from? Feolin wondered. How many bodies have been lying around in this city?

A shiver crept down her spine as she considered what this meant. Corpses were incinerated in Kenmor, and yet there were likely to be hundreds… perhaps thousands of zombies. Had the crematoriums been backed up to this extent? Just how many people must have died in the city?

She’d known about the purge, everyone had, but… she couldn’t wrap her head around it. How many? This was far beyond the limits of tragedy and stepping into the realm of the absurd.

“Can you take care of them?” Feolin asked.

MacRielly snorted.

“They’re zombies, of course I can.”

“Can you take care of them without getting scratched,” she clarified with a scowl.

He only rolled his eyes as he strode forward, swinging his blade. Feolin advanced behind him, staff raised and eyes watching for any sign of spirits. MacRielly took several slow steps, then leaned forward, almost as if he were about to fall flat on his face. When his head was only inches from the ground, he flickered and vanished, only to reappear as a glittering arc of light formed in his wake.

Zombies twitched and toppled over, their heads sliced horizontally through the middle before they could notice something was happening. With another flicker, MacRielly was gone, another blinding arc of light traced in his wake.

Again and again he vanished, only to reappear a dozen metres away, undead falling in his wake. When they were all done, he strode back to her, visibly tired, but pleased.

“There! Not a drop of blood on me.”

Feolin shot a hand forward, a jet of flame roaring from her palm and searing through a ghost that had appeared over his shoulder.

“Well, fuck,” he said, patting at his shoulder. “Now I’m singed.”

“Don’t complain, or your moustache will go next,” she warned him, holding up her hand.

He clapped a hand over his upper lip, glaring at her.

“You wouldn’t dare,” he whispered.

“Try me.”

The two continued to advance at a steady pace, going faster than they would have liked, but slow enough to elicit the occasional threat from the Magister accompanying them. For the most part, they ignored him, until Berod said something they didn’t expect, causing the two Slayers to turn back to look at him.

“The warehouse is coming up,” he said. “Be ready.”

Warehouse. What warehouse?

Feolin glanced at MacRielly, who shrugged in confusion.

“Is there something important about this warehouse?” she asked. “If so, why weren’t we told about it before we set out?”

“Because you didn’t need to know until we got here,” Berod snapped, glaring at the two of them even as he twisted his staff between his two hands.

He’s nervous.

Unwilling to provoke the clearly on-edge Magister into rash action, she gestured for MacRielly to settle, and the two resumed their slow advance through the vacant streets of Kenmor.

In the gathering dark, with the cold mist trailing around their ankles, the city felt unnatural. Tall stone buildings surrounded them, two story houses with their windows shuttered, stores and workshops with no light, no warmth or laughter emanating from them. It was as if the city itself were dead, without any life held within its walls except for the three of them.

Despite knowing that there were other Gold ranked Slayers fighting only streets away, Feolin wasn’t sure she had ever felt this isolated in her entire career.

More ghosts appeared, along with more zombies, until they rounded a corner and saw a large building before them, with a name written in glowing brass over the front door.

Mistress Letty’s Crematorium.

And the street was filled with the dead. Spirits trailed and circled overhead, filling the air with their silent screams and spreading cold mist over the heads of the zombies. Hundreds of them ambled about, listless and without purpose, until they sensed Feolin and MacRielly.

How they did so, nobody knew, but they could definitely tell the living had drawn close. Low moans erupted from the closest, who turned towards them, causing those behind to follow, mouths agape, sightless eyes staring and rotting hands reaching.

“Fucking balls,” MacRielly swore. “So many?!”

“They must all be killed. Not a single survivor,” Berod demanded nervously.

The northman scowled, his temper flaring, but he contained his anger before he could do anything foolish. There was work to be done, Slayer work, and he would see it finished.

“Going to need some help for this one, Fee,” he muttered.

In answer, she raised her hands and gave voice to the words of power. Soon, there was fire.