Chapter 74 (Patreon)

Chapter 74

Allie sat meditating in her bone garden atop what had once been one of the downtown skyscrapers under a starry night sky.  Well, she supposed it was still a skyscraper - but it’d been converted into her home base of operations and had a rather spooky feel to it after the makeover.  The building itself had an aura to it, with ripples of teal and black mana occasionally shimmering across the structure while it was being pseudo-terraformed into a death-oriented zone through ritual magic Mara had introduced her to.  The bone garden on the roof of the top floor 12 stories up, where she now sat, was also littered with bodies and intricate bone structures - each having their own unique function in producing sentient undead.

Opening her eyes as another soul passed through the veil, Allie smiled underneath her skull mask when another of the bodies began to twitch.  Slowly the ghoul began to move, examining her environment as Allie's accomplices: Nin and Vin the skeletal Skresh brothers, got up to greet the newcomer.  Their forces were growing… and now it wasn’t only the mindless minions that aided them.  Oh no, they now had fully thinking, sentient beings working on their side as they brought new life into the bodies of the enemies Allies forces had killed - born anew.  And this new bone garden had thus finally brought about a turn of tides in the war that Allie had been hoping for.

It was rather peaceful tonight, and she took in a deep breath of crisp air before pushing herself to her feet and walking over to where her friend Mara was standing.  The ghoul necromancer's dead, milky eyes panned over the city beneath them, where rogue groups of survivors still battled one another for supremacy over their little pockets of remnant civilization.  Battled over what little food and medicine they had left, or to subjugate and enslave.  It was all the same in the end, people killing other people instead of working together.

And it made Allie sick with disgust.

“You look angry.” Mara said, glancing over at Allie with a small smile.  “Still thinking about Jose?”

Allie slowly nodded, her piercing crimson eyes glaring down at the shouts and small fires in suburbs not far off.  “Humans.”

Mara chuckled and clapped a hand onto Allie’s shoulder.  “We used to be humans too, you know.”

Allie’s frown only deepened, and her eyes did not move from where she heard and saw the gunfire many stories down.  “Unfortunately you’re right.  Even when I was human though, I always felt like the human species was… gross.  Evil, even.  People in general were always out for themselves, always greedy, always eager to undercut others to get ahead.  It’s why Jose died too, those fucking bastards from Prophet’s domain thought they could just waltz right in and declare everyone subjects.”

Mara raised an eyebrow and folded her arms, turning her head to watch the firefight below and a couple blocks away alongside the woman who was quickly becoming a very close ally and friend.  “And look what it cost them.  Thousands of their holy order have died, they’ve been pushed back into the northern section of the city and they’ve resorted to allying with the other larger groups there to fight us off.”

“They claim us to be monsters.” Allie sneered, kicking a small rock off the side of the building and watching it tumble through the air to the street far below.  “Yet they were the ones who brought this on themselves.  They started this, I will merely finish it.”

There was a long pause, and the silence stretched on with only the echoes of the firefight and the sound of the breeze flowing through their cloaks to be heard.  Yet, despite all of the anger she felt inside, Allie couldn’t help but look around at their surroundings and feel a sense of awe at the majesty.  Beyond the city - snowcapped mountains loomed in the distance to reflect moonlight and starlight.  The cosmos above glittered in a way that no city back on Earth could have done due to light pollution back then, and rivers leading out to an ocean in the far off distance shimmered and sparkled.

It made Allie want to explore after this little war was over.  After she set the foundations for a new undead community in the wreckage of what had once been ‘Brightsville’.  It was abundantly clear to her now that humans would never have a place for her, she’d been shunned many times already, and she didn’t want to be one of them anymore anyways.  So she’d just make a place for herself instead - through brutality and force.

Her thoughts were interrupted when an explosion of massive proportions bloomed on the western edge of the city.  Her eyebrows lifted in surprise when crimson mana exploded upwards into the air - illuminating the buildings over that way for just a brief moment before it disappeared just as quickly as it’d come.

“What was that?!” Mara asked, mouth slightly ajar and in awe of what she’d just felt.  “Was that a magical attack?!  Did you FEEL that mana pulse!?  That must’ve been an enormous sum of energy if we could feel it at this distance!”

“Yes… That was blood magic.” Allie stated curiously, turning her body and tilting her head to the side as if to study the aftermath of mana fluctuations that she could still barely feel before they faded away entirely.  “How very interesting…”

Vin and Nin both raced over next, abandoning their talk with the newcomer to one of their undead assistants with curious clicking noises that their teeth made when on edge.

“Was that a mana signature I just felt?” Nin asked - only to get slapped by Vin across the back of the head.

“Of course that was a mana signature, idiot.  Don’t ask stupid questions.  The REAL question is who could produce that kind of power output?”  Vin turned his head and motioned to Allie.  “That kind of raw magic is on your level, Allie.  If I read the signature correctly.  To think there’d be two monsters of your caliber here!  Who’d have thought.”

“Another person to be wary of.” Mara interjected with a long sigh.  “Hopefully not someone who’ll join that system quest of ‘purge the undead’ that so many have already signed up for.  Whoever that was, I don’t want him or her on on the wrong end of a conflict with us.”

Mara, Vin and Nin all began chatting about what they’d felt, with Mara describing what she and Allie had seen.  Meanwhile, Allie continued to study the area of the western city’s edge with a curious glare, tapping her slender fingers on her bone bracers while slightly humming to herself and swaying side to side.

Perhaps she needed to go investigate.  As the others had said, that kind of power was on her level - and she couldn’t let another person that strong remain in the city if they were going to be a threat.  She had to find out just who and what that was, and she would then deal with it if necessary.

***

Normally he’d never have been able to make this kind of attack by himself, but with the army of the dead around him - he’d actually done it.  The drawback was that he’d nearly killed himself and damaged his soul during the attempt.  This would very likely not be something he tried to do again.

*CRACK*

Riven screamed in agony as his left forearm exploded.  The battlefield around him rippled and surged skywards - pillars of crimson ice spearing hundreds of the gray, ape-like dream creatures in one massive attack.  All the environmental blood was utilized, his internal mana reserves were completely drained, and he’d very obviously overexerted himself due to the backlash that’d nearly ripped his entire body apart before he’d managed to quarantine the fallout into just one limb.

He gasped, dropping his new staff to the ground and shuddering uncontrollably while his vampiric regeneration began to rebuild his mangled limb.  And above him, the pillars of red exploded in an ocean of shrapnel that blew through enemy ranks like a high-powered cannonball through wonder-bread.

Despite his agony and rapidly decaying control on the violent mana surge he’d set into motion, he did manage to angle the explosions enough to avoid himself, the hospital, and his minions.  Notifications pinged him over and over again, but he didn’t have time to acknowledge them at all.

*WOOOM*

The air current of the shockwave blew Riven over anyways and caused him to skip across the ground a few meters, only to be caught by Athela and cradled in her arms while the parking lot around them essentially blew up.  Fragments of concrete were ripped out of the ground and intermixed with the ocean of blood overhead, and the roar of noise from the mana around them was entirely deafening.  It also caused his ears to ring for almost a half minute after the initial blast was done.

Riven blinked and looked around, trying to regain his focus and shake of the dizziness he was experiencing.  He felt very weak, shaky even as Athela fetched his staff with a thread of webbing.  His left arm was still growing back tendons and flesh, or even bone in some parts, but his vampiric body was definitely resilient in the dark.  All around him, a shimmering mist of glowing red mana specs floated down from high above and landed in the devastated outer area of the medical campus grounds.  The monsters were utterly gone, the last of them decimated by the all out attack that had been in large part enabled by so many of them dying in the first place to fuel Riven’s power surge.

Azmoth’s flaming figure lumbered out from the red mist, grinning wickedly and cackling with deep demonic laughs - though Riven’s ringing ears could only make it out partially.

“I feel sick…” Riven muttered, weakly slumping down in Athela’s grasp while the demoness picked him up bodily and princess-carried him over the debris towards the still-standing hospital.  “I do not feel ok.”

Athela chuckled and softly said something with a gentle smile directed his way, but he had no idea what it was she’d said through the ringing in his ears.  Funnily enough, staring up at her while she carried him, it reminded Riven of the times when he was a child and his mother used to hold him like that to make him feel better.

The memory made him smile.

And then a roar was heard from beyond the ruined parking lot, one that even Riven in his weakened state with ringing ears could hear.  He and his two minions turned to see a large, hulking figure moving towards them at a rapid pace a hundred yards away - but Riven didn’t get a good look at it because Athela began to sprint.

With Azmoth directly behind them they rushed into the hospital, and Athela headed directly for the stairs leading into the basement below while still carrying Riven's rapidly weaking form in her arms.

***

Riven’s body was going into overdrive trying to repair his mana channels, and he’d started convulsing - but she knew he’d be ok as long as they were able to hunker down and didn’t move him around too much.  However moving him around alot while he underwent these kinds of repairs could potentially be very bad, and the safest bet they to keep him in a stable position was to seal the basement off.

Athela waved Dr. Brass down with a yell, literally threw one of the male nurses off of a nearby couch with two of her arachnoid limbs and dropped her unconscious master onto it instead.  “Hey!  Are there any other entrances down here!?”

The panicking staff and fugitives now huddled here in the basement were  some of the only ones remaining in the hospital after the surge of hive-mind creatures had arrived.  Athela hadn’t had the heart or time to let Riven know, but many of those who’d been holed up upstairs were devoured during the fight after he’d try to lure the oncoming horde his way.  It'd been a valiant effort on Riven's part, but in the end he'd only partially succeeded.

“Only the elevator, and it doesn’t work!” Dr. Brass called back upon seeing who it was before rushing into another operating room to try and save someone else dying from blood loss.

Athela gave a quick nod and crimson webbing began spilling out of her fingers as well as the four arachnoid limbs.  “Azmoth!  If that thing tries to come down before I’m done, you need to tank and buy me time!  Got it!?”

The previously flaming, four armed demon lumbered forward towards the couch.
He made sure Riven was ok, and then gave a grunt of acknowledgement before backtracking to the entrance at the stairwell.  His armored body still simmered with embers, and his large claws extended in anticipation should the pursuing monstrosity actually attempt to force its way down.  A crowd of onlookers either cried, yelled out questions about what was coming, or fearfully stood back all the while.  If these demons were running away, just what on Earth was coming for them?

Weaving the strings of ribbon in the air, Athela’s nets began lacing back and forth across one another and into the passage leading up to the first floor.  They crisscrossed and overlapped innumerable times, faster and faster as she poured out webbing in condensed layers - only to stop every couple seconds with an additional series of tighter cords and knots reinforcing the plug at the stairway with nets of his own.  Threads continued attaching from wall to wall against the heavily reinforced cement layers that were easily a couple feet thick down here in the basement area.  They weaved over and over again until Athela began to feel a real drain on her stamina reserves, with stamina being the resource she used to make these threads, and she eventually backed up all the way to the end of the stairwell where Azmoth was still standing ready for a fight.  By the end of it, the entire stairway had a 8-foot thick layer of sturdy webbing to stop whatever creature it was up there from coming down here.

She just hoped it’d be enough.  “I sure hope this holds…”

She heard a distant roar, and then felt the ground shudder.  It shuddered again and again, and she even saw slight rippled in the plug she’d made… but the resilient layers of webbing held firm.  Then she heard a pounding up the stairs again, and screams from up above echoed distantly through the ceiling.

The monster must have found other survivors that hadn’t been snatched up yet.

From her left, she felt a light tap on his shoulder and turned to see a teenage boy.  He shot his parents a look over his shoulder for encouragement and gulped, pushing trembling hands through wavy blonde locks.  “Uh…”

Athla blinked twice.  “What is it, twirp?”

The teenager gave a half-hearted and nervous laugh while fidgeting with the brim of his shirt, and looking at the floor he nodded.  “I have a mapper’s class, I like to draw maps and it was given to me by the system in the tutorial along with a few minor abilities.  One of them is that I can envision a 3-dimensional map around wherever I am… so if it’d help, I can show you what’s upstairs.  We've actually been watching parts of the fight down here with my power... But I can't maintain it for long and have to take breaks.  So...”

Athela’s eyebrows raised from underneath a couple locks of black hair, and she glanced over at her still unconscious master who was passed out on the couch nearby.  “Well, that’d certainly be helpful if not at the very least quench my curiosity.  Go ahead and do it.”

The boy nodded, held up his hand, and a spark of light illuminated the surroundings.  In an instant, Athela’s world view changed.

It was an out of body experience.  Completely and utterly.  She was looking at herself as a phantasmal projection and was able to shift around the room at will.  Her top right-hand side vision displayed a 3 dimensional miniaturized map of his surroundings too – displaying everything within a small sphere of influence.  She could see deep into the earth, all around the parking lot, and view each and every floor in vivid detail or vague detail depending on if he wanted to use his direct sight or watch the minimap.

Athela soon got a hold of her ability to zoom around.  Quickly adjusting and orienting herself to how the map worked, she enlarged the minimap and identified the happenings upstairs.  Then she zoomed in for an up close glance.

Simply put – it was carnage.

A pocket of three dozen or so survivors had come down from the second level in an attempt to run after thinking the coast was clear, and it’d been a mistake.  Fresh bodies by the dozens littered the first floor, and the entire right outer wall had collapsed – leading to that side of the small hospital collapsing with it – all three floors of the right eastern wing.  Dust and rubble filled the halls and floors that remained, and the remaining people that weren’t buried, dead or unconscious were running for their lives like rabbits from a hawk.

Chasing them was a creature that Athela didn’t really know what to make of.  It was similar to the other hive-mind monsterse that they’d already fight, but this one was a much more evolved version.  And a creepy one at that, even for her.

It was large, very wide, easily a couple tons to stand over ten feet tall, and was essentially a giant rotting humanoid with writhing tendrils ending in leach-like mouths – containing hundreds of teeth apiece . It had stark, yellow eyes and oddly enough – the face of a clown… red nose and all.  It had huge clawed hands, small webbed feet, and a thorax that looked like it’d been stitched together with sewing materials and fleshy strings alike.

“Identify.”

[Nightmare, Dream Creature]

Well it wasn’t undead then, but it certainly looked that way.  Moreso than the other dream creatures anyways.  Maggots ate at its exposed, necrotic muscles and as it tore a man in two – pieces and bodily fluids of its meal sprayed out of its throat while swallowing.

It dashed from person to person, rending and tearing people apart or picking the screaming people up to slam them into one another like bloody piñatas.  The tendrils in the meantime continued to eat anything and everything around it, living or dead, as they ripped off pieces of flesh if anything got close.  Men, women, and disgustingly enough… even children fell in violent deaths to the creature as the horror scene unfolded.