Cenotaph of Bones: Chapter 22 (Patreon)

Chapter 22: Stand

It took some effort not to try and kill the damned things immediately.  Now that they were dead, the ridiculous regeneration speed would be gone.  I hoped, at least.  Usually, flesh puppets could be healed, but only by the necromancer using his own qi to regenerate lost tissue and bone.  Since these weren’t the normal version, I had no idea if that would still hold true.  Rock trolls that couldn’t feel pain and still regenerated at their ridiculous rates would be a nightmare to fight.  Either way, now wasn’t the time to find out.

After the procession disappeared down a tunnel on the other side of the cavern, I went back and rejoined my friends.  They seemed to be mostly recovered from the mist trap.  I took a few minutes to convey what I had seen, and then I sat down to try and recover.  The past few hours hadn’t been easy on me.

While cultivating, I noticed the qi in the area wasn’t as stagnant now that we were deeper underground.  The pull of the dark qi was stronger, and the increased flow made it feel more natural.  It made refilling my cores much easier, and in less than an hour I was almost fully recharged.  I would still need to refine and condense the qi to turn the quantity of energy into quality elements that evenly distributed through my body, but it was good enough to fight with.  And I had a feeling we were going to be doing a lot of fighting.

“I’m just saying, that trap was nasty.”  Chu’s voice broke me out of my thoughts.  He was cooking a meal near the entrance to the building, and talking to the others while they worked on cleaning the trap residue off of their new armor.  “Who in the world would make something like that?”

“From the grinding sound, I am pretty sure it was an old trap.”  Jamila seemed subdued.  She had been the one to trigger the trap, and was probably still beating herself up about it.  “It was probably left behind by the same people who built all this stuff.”

“If that was an old trap, I would hate to see what it looked like when it was brand new.”  Donny was inspecting the damage to the finish on his chest piece.  “How long would it have taken for it to melt us into goo?”

“Does it matter?”  Valerie was already done cleaning her armor, and was carving something into a circular piece of stone.  “We didn’t die, and there is a bigger concern out there.  An army of dead things is walking around out there, and we need to figure out a way to kill it, before it kills us.”  She frowned at the disk in her hand.  “I give up.  Donny, you see if you can figure this thing out.”  She tossed it to him, and he studied it intently.

“I see what you were trying to do here, but the runes are in the wrong order.  Have Jim try and fix it.”  He looked up and saw I was done cultivating.  “Here, see what you can do.  It’s a pretty good idea.”  Donny slid it across the ground to me, and I picked it up to look it over.

The design used a lot of air and earth runes, with a touch of fire added at the end of the rune sequence.  I hadn’t seen anything like it before.  Even my own formation plates tended to only use one or two elements.  The more complicated the design, the higher the qi costs.  It also increased the chances of the plate just not working, or outright exploding at the wrong time.

“I wanted to make something that would cling to the undead, to slow them down.”  Valerie walked over and dropped a sack full of the stone disks in my lap.  Ouch.  “See if you can fix it.  I’m tired of messing with the stupid thing.  I’m going to try and make some of those rune stamps we had talked about.”

After using a swirl of wood qi to my lower half to fix the damage, I pulled out a blank disk and started working.  I could see what she was going for, but there was too much air and not enough fire runes.  As I ate my bowl of stew Chu brought over, I finally put together a sequence that might actually work.  I quickly carved a few more examples so we could test them properly, and looked up to show Valerie what I had done.  She was gone.

“Hey, where’s Valerie?”  She wasn’t near the others, and the building was just one empty room.

“Oh, she went to see where that big army you told us about went.”  Chu pointed with his spoon out the door.  “She should be back in a few minutes.”  I felt a tremor pass through the qi flows in the direction the undead army had gone.  Stars-damnit.

I scrambled to my feet, storing the new formation plates in my belt as I headed for the door.  My intuition was telling me this wasn’t good.  Everyone else saw how I was acting and quickly stored any items we had out.  Another tremor swept past, this time strong enough that the others felt it too.

“That can’t be good.”  Donny spun up his cores, so we all followed suit.  We then pulled out weapons, and made sure our armor was tightened properly.  “We should hurry.”

“Make sure you get your helms sealed up.”  I fastened my own in place while I talked.  “If you get swarmed, you don’t want to leave yourself exposed.”  They all did as I asked while we moved to the gate.  We all used small bursts of qi to help us jump onto the top of the wall, just in time to see Valerie come sprinting into the cavern.

“They’re right behind me!”  She paused to turn and loose a qi-reinforced arrow into the tunnel at a target that was out of sight.  “Get ready!”  Her platinum hair waved behind her like the tail of a comet as she turned and streaked toward us.

Valerie’s feet had barely touched the top of the wall when the first of the walking skeletons stumbled into sight.  It was barely held together by the most tenuous remnants of dry sinew and reinforced by metal qi.  A swirl within the deep shadows of its empty eye sockets was evidence of the dark qi animating the human remains.  It lifted a short recurve bow that looked almost petrified with age, and loosed an arrow in our direction.

“What in the world happened?”  Donny steadied his fiance with one hand, and tossed a handful of poppers at the tunnel entrance with the other.  “How did they even know you were following them?”

Valerie took a swig of watered wine from a jug she pulled out of her storage ring before answering.  “They were waiting for me when I got deeper into the tunnels.  There was this giant cat thing that dropped down behind me, and while I was fighting it, a whole bunch of those skeletons came up behind me.  I managed to take down the cat, but there were too many of the other ones for me to fight by myself.”  A group of about fifty skeletons and at least twenty of the desiccated corpses grouped up behind the lone archer, who had been blasted back to the entrance by Donny’s poppers.  I had hoped it would have just been knocked into a pile of bones by the small explosions.  We weren’t that lucky.

“Well, how about Jim just throws one of those big spike things?”  Chu motioned for me to get on with it.  “That would probably fix this pretty quickly.”

“Are you crazy?”  Jamila glanced at him before turning back to face the oncoming enemies.  “That could bring this whole place down!”

“Donny, Chu, and I form a shield wall at the gate.  Jamila, you be ready to provide relief.  Valerie, get your helm in place, and then take out any archers you see.  Everyone, be sure to call out if you see one of the bigger creatures come through that tunnel.”  I pulled out my new shield and strapped it on my arm.  “This is going to be a slog, so conserve your qi as much as you can.  Make sure any formation plates you toss out don’t go off too close to the walls.  We don’t want to create a gap for them.”  My tone conveyed how serious I was, and everyone else followed suit.  Nearly fifteen to one odds made this a significant fight.

As we got in position, I was more than a little concerned to see our opponents doing the same.  They were spreading out into orderly ranks, with about fifteen archers lined up behind them.  Valerie would have her hands full.

“Hey, Val, catch!”  I tossed up two of the new formation plates to her.  “Try to get those to the archers hiding in the back!”  She gave me a sharp nod and I felt her spin up her cores.

“Here they come!”  Donny’s shout made me refocus on the line of skeletons coming toward us.  Their front line also had shields, most of which looked to be old and rotted enough to fall apart if they were jostled too hard.  The swords and spears mixed in still looked dangerous enough though, and I still didn’t know what kind of powers the undead themselves might be able to unleash.

The sudden eruption of lava from the ranks of the archers served as a nice distraction.  Not for us.  All five of us stared dumbfounded as a fountain of molten rock showered over their back ranks.  The skeletons, however, didn’t react in the slightest.  Before we could properly link shields and completely block off the gateway, the enemy was on us.

My head was rocked by the impact of an obsidian axe.  At the last second, the skeletons had opened ranks and allowed the desiccated corpses marching behind them to step through.

They were clearly more powerful than their bony brethren, and I wasn’t the only one who had to take a few steps back to reset.  By reflex, I had formed a fire whip of qi in my right hand, and I was already swinging it forward at my attacker.

The shield-bearing skeleton that had stepped aside lunged from the rear to take the blow.  It destroyed the rotten wooden shield - and most of the skeleton's arm - but the corpse was swinging for me again before I could capitalize on my attack.  I was able to catch the blow on my shield this time, and the obsidian axe head shattered on impact.

Without a weapon, my attacker jumped on me.  I smashed it with the sharpened edge of my shield, but it accepted the blow to its side and instead clamped down on the arm wielding my whip.  Then, of all the odd things a walking corpse could do, it tried to bite me.

Its teeth shattered on the vambrace protecting my forearm, but I was genuinely shocked by its actions.  Why would it bite me?  Whatever the reason, I didn’t like it.  I swung my arm hard enough to throw the surprisingly light undead off of my arm, and it knocked down the three skeletons that were almost on me.

“Don’t let them bite you!”  I wasn’t able to look over to see if anyone had acknowledged my shout, considering the growing number of enemies I was now facing demanded all of my attention.  “No idea why they want to bite us, but it can’t be good!”

I reabsorbed my whip and instead pulled out one of my new spears.  It was solid metal, and would do well as both a club to crush bone, and a pointy bit to stab the hollow skulls that contained the dark qi animating the undead.  It was time to crack some heads.