Killstreak Book One Read online

  The woman nodded, then hurried back into the townhall, and the quest was accepted.

  “What level was Santo last time you saw him?” Kadorax asked. He didn’t mean to interrogate the woman, especially considering what she’d been through, but he knew that trying to sound concerned would only come off as condescending.

  “I don’t know,” Brinna said flatly. “I didn’t keep a roster of everyone in the town.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the captain mercifully cut in. “We’ll bring him down just the same. I’m sure an upstart necromancer is well within the Grim Sleeper’s abilities. And there’s bound to be some good experience in it for all of us.”

  Kadorax let the issue drop, content with the promise of quick leveling, and the group set out from Coldport with a bit of hurry in their steps.

  They didn’t have to reach the village to know they were too late—far too late. The stench of death clung to the air, and several of the buildings farthest from the village center had been burned. Most of them looked like farms, now just skeletal husks of charred support beams, fallen roofs, and corpses.

  “There, the windmill,” Brinna said as she pointed to a tall structure in the distance. “That’s the heart of Assir. If Santo is still here, that’s where we’ll find him.”

  It was just after dusk, and four of them were tired from the trek. The fifth, the Grim Sleeper, didn’t show any signs of physical fatigue at all. Instead, she continued her relentless pacing and muttering.

  “Will she be alright?” Kadorax asked.

  Lord Percival considered his withered charge for a moment, his fingers lingering around a silvery necklace tucked under his shirt. Kadorax filed the bit of information away in the back of his mind in case the Grim Sleeper ever turned on him. Destroying the phylactery, assuming his guess at the necklace was indeed correct, would be the only way to stop her permanently.

  “We should camp here for the night,” Percival said, pointedly avoiding the question at hand. “I don’t want to run into a necromancer’s domain in the middle of the night. That feels… unwise.”

  When he looked closely, Kadorax could see a bit of greenish-grey fog drifting up from the vanes of the windmill. A handful of second thoughts crept into the back of his mind.

  “Good idea,” Brinna agreed. “There are some hunting lodges farther to the west. We can stay in one of those for the night.” She looked at the warlock, ever distrustful. “I’d prefer if she… that thing… stayed outside.”

  Lord Percival stifled an awkward laugh. “Yes, well,” he said, “she does not sleep. Not that I’ve ever seen. She shall stand guard outside. Now, take us to these hunting lodges.”

  The lodges turned out to be little more than a collection of wood and thatch huts with cots, some hunting trophies, and doors that didn’t lock. Still, it was better than sleeping on the ground in the elements.

  When dawn broke, the Grim Sleeper had worn a bare line into the weeds outside the hut’s door. From left to right and back again, always jabbering to herself, the warlock had spent the entire night without complaint. A few black splotches—perhaps blood, though it was impossible to know—dotted the trail she had made.

  Lord Percival sorted out a cold breakfast of rations from the ship.

  “What does she eat?” Kadorax asked when the captain failed to give the warlock any hardtack.

  “By the gods, you do not want to know the answer to that question,” came the reply.

  Kadorax couldn’t even begin to imagine what horrors the well-to-do captain had witnessed in the warlock’s presence. He thought to his own Bond score resting at eight and wondered if it was a smart idea to stay with the Grim Sleeper. Thankfully, his Encroaching Insanity debuff had still not progressed beyond the first rank.

  “Well,” Syzak began when they had finished their rations. “We should get moving.”

  They approached Assir from the northwest, staying low to the ground and using what remained of the buildings to hide their advance. Everywhere, covering almost every single inch of Assir, was a blanket of torn, mangled corpses.

  “Something else was here,” Kadorax whispered.

  Brinna visibly shook in her boots. The bodies they passed were her friends, citizens of Assir she had grown up with and known most of her life—people she had been elected to protect.

  “A plague doesn’t rip bodies apart and throw the entrails all over the village,” Syzak observed. He had a bit of his shirt from under his leather vest pulled up to cover his mouth. “This isn’t right.”

  At the end of the short column, the Grim Sleeper was barely trying to hide her presence. She walked nearly upright, and she didn’t give a second thought to cover. If Santo was looking for their approach, the elf wouldn’t have a hard time spotting her.

  “Oh, shit…” Kadorax said under his breath. The group crouched next to a ruined wall two streets from the center of town and the windmill. On one of the vanes, slowly going round and round in the gentle, cold breeze, was half of an elf.

  “How many other elves lived in Assir, Brinna?” Lord Percival asked.

  “None,” she muttered, standing upright. “That’s him. That’s Santo. He was the only elf.”

  “Whatever he summoned did all of this,” Syzak said. The snake-man’s voice wavered as he spoke. “I’m not ready to respawn again. We need to go.”

  Four of them—all but the Grim Sleeper—took a few steps back toward the way they had come. The ground beneath their feet shifted. It jolted to the side like an earthquake, then lurched back and settled, and a few pillars of steam broke free from the newly created fissures all over Assir. Except the steam wasn’t grey or even black—it was a putrid green color, and it smelled like an open sewer of death and disease.

  “Run!” Kadorax shouted. He broke toward the west, vaulting over bodies as he moved. Behind him, Syzak and the two humans followed suit.

  The Grim Sleeper remained standing in the center of the street like she was in some sort of a daze. Lord Percival turned to call to her, halfway between the warlock and the other three. “Come on!” he shouted. “We can’t stay!”

  The Grim Sleeper started to cast a spell. Her mouth made no sound, but her hands moved in deliberate, rapid motions. From a deep pocket within her tattered robe, she produced a small wooden charm, a talisman carved into the shape of an oval with cryptic writings covering its surface. Grinning, the warlock turned. Her eyes were ablaze with magic and fury. Then she ate the wooden relic, and her grin grew wider.

  Assir rumbled once more. The tremors didn’t subside after one or two waves. They kept going, only gradually fading, and a new noise joined the tumult: groans.

  Throughout the entire village, the bits of strewn people began to animate. Arms and legs climbed together and melded to form all manner of hideous amalgamations, each one scrambling toward the windmill at the center of it all.

  “Are those… things… Are they friendly?” Kadorax asked. He jumped out of the way of a skittering monster that he could barely describe. The reanimated collection of bones and meat had once been a person, probably someone tall, but it had been reduced to nothing more than a spine, ribs, and enough muscle to propel the corpse along the ground like a misshapen spider.

  No one had an answer. Brinna shrieked as one of the creatures brushed her legs, and Syzak swatted them with his staff when they got too close. Unaffected by it all, the warlock remained vigilant in the middle of the street, facing away from the insidious windmill.

  None of the bone horde went within three feet of the woman as they progressed into the city. Kadorax knew their avoidance was significant, though he didn’t have the time or the intellect to figure out exactly why. Stranger yet, the windmill seemed to be gaining speed. Before long, the creatures were scaling the stone walls of the mill and ascending to the top of the highest vane. As the vanes turned, the creatures continued to pile on, riding it around like a giant, sickening festival attraction.

  “Seriously, we have to leave,” Kadorax urged. />
  “What is it?” Lord Percival muttered.

  Before he even finished his question, the answer started to emerge. The windmill broke apart under the weight of the grotesquery hanging from it, revealing an undead creature within. The whole scene reminded Kadorax of watching a chick hatch from an egg, except the egg was forty feet high, dripping human gore, and the chick was actually an enormous centipede made from tombstones held together by strands of human innards.

  Kadorax had heard of grave golems before. They were constructions formed by powerful necromancers, held together by magic and armored in an entire cemetery’s worth of headstones. The thing that emerged from the fallen windmill was similar to a grave golem, but it was distinctly biological.

  “A grave… centipede? Gods, we have to run!” Kadorax said again. That time, everyone agreed.

  Everyone except the Grim Sleeper.

  The warlock still stood transfixed, her gaze vacant beneath her dark cowl.

  “Did you do this?” Lord Percival demanded of the woman. “What did you summon?” If the creations had been demonic in nature rather than undead, a warlock certainly could have been their overlord.

  Until that moment, Kadorax hadn’t thought it possible for the captain to lose his composure. The captain raved at his slave, yelling and screaming at the warlock, who simply refused to answer or even acknowledge the verbal assault. Finally, Percival pulled the silver phylactery from under his shirt.

  The centipede noticed them.

  Percival held the phylactery aloft in the warlock’s direction. His knuckles were white. Kadorax didn’t know exactly what it was made of, or if the man would be strong enough to crush it in his palm, but that was certainly the threat Percival conveyed.

  The centipede crawled over a building, its hundred legs carrying it closer to the group.

  “Come on! We hav—”

  “I’ll kill you!” Percival yelled at his slave. “Tell me what you did, or I’ll shatter your soul right here! By the gods, I’ll do it!”

  The centipede scurried around the base of another building. It was close enough for Kadorax to make out some of the details of its carapace.

  “Tell me!” the captain screamed. His voice was starting to go hoarse.

  The centipede reared back on half its legs, bringing its head roughly in line with the center of the second floor of the nearest building.

  “Pyre!” the Grim Sleeper bellowed, spinning and falling backward all at once to align herself with the oncoming centipede which was only a few paces from devouring her where she stood. A gout of magical flame burst from the warlock’s hands. It shot toward the undead creature, engulfed it, and staggered it for a few moments.

  Then the flames subsided, and the centipede raged onward, only marginally burned.

  The warlock began casting again, not that Kadorax and the others waited to see what would happen. They ran, abandoning the Grim Sleeper to her fate. At the end of the street, they had two options: either jump a gaping chasm rent in the street, or make their way through the ruins to escape.

  “I won’t make it,” Syzak was quick to point out. He turned first for the ruined building on his left, and the others didn’t hesitate to follow him. The gravestone centipede wasn’t large enough to topple the house with its body, but they all knew it would easily be strong enough to batter down the door without any trouble.

  “Batten the Hatches!” Lord Percival called, activating his talent.

  “We’re not on a boat!” Brinna yelled back at him. Thankfully, the spell didn’t appear to care. The aura became active, and all four of them felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to start piling up debris against the door.

  As they threw all manner of furniture in front of it, Kadorax honestly couldn’t tell if he was actually moving faster or not. Regardless, he was happy for whatever boons he could get. When everything heavy was heaped in the same general space, they turned and resume their run, heading down a narrow, smoke-filled hallway to a door they all hoped would take them outside.

  Sadly, they were wrong.

  The door led to a badly crumbling staircase. Brinna was in the front, and she didn’t slow down on account of the unexpected direction. Instead, she led the group to the building’s second floor, most of which had already been destroyed.

  The top of the building was strewn with broken boards, the last warm remnants of a recent fire, and more than a few bloody body parts. In the center of the street, the Grim Sleeper squared off against the gravestone-armored centipede with spell after spell. The warlock released fire, darkness, and something that looked like lightning in the centipede’s directions.

  Twisting and turning, the undead creature dodged almost all of the assault. It took most of the dark-based attack on its armored shoulder, and one of the gravestones covering its body fell to the ground, shattering against the cobblestone street. The creature roared and bent back its head. When it came forward, it spewed a heavy stream of dark green ooze from its maw.

  The Grim Sleeper was far from quick. She didn’t even try to dodge the oncoming acid that melted her clothing and sizzled her flesh. When the attack subsided, she was still standing. The woman let loose a stream of curses, pointing a boney, emaciated finger at the centipede.

  Dark runes skittered across the centipede’s armor. They glowed bright purple in the morning light, reflecting the sun in a crisscross pattern that almost made the hideous creature hard to see. Kadorax didn’t recognize the curse. Focusing on the centipede’s head, he brought up its stat sheet. Without magically augmented vision, he couldn’t read most of the stats, talents, and conditions, but he could at least see what the warlock had done to it:

  Curse of Vulnerability (Dark): Rank 4 - The target’s ability to resist dark, fear, and damage-over-time effects is greatly diminished to be that of a similar creature eight levels lower.

  Gibbering Runes: Rank 5 - Runes of confusion whisper vile secrets and profane bits of misinformation directly into the target’s mind, interrupting casting and causing erratic behavior. The effect is more profound on unintelligent targets.

  Kadorax drew his whip and crept toward the edge of the second floor, where the wall had crumbled into the street below. He didn’t have any athletic talents to let him jump the entire distance to the centipede, but he hoped he wouldn’t need to make such a leap. The undead creature snapped forward at the warlock with its huge mandibles, catching the Grim Sleeper’s shoulder. Bones crunched, and the arm dropped a sickening few inches downward as the shoulder came loose.

  Scrambling down the slanted ruins, Kadorax reeled his arm back and let his whip fly. “Torment!” he yelled. The corded leather came alive with shadowy energy. The weapon connected with the centipede’s side, issuing a loud crack.

  Kadorax didn’t let up the onslaught. He discarded his whip back over his shoulder and drew his sword, twisting his shoulders to put all of his weight behind a more direct strike. The stolen bandit blade found a soft, gooey section of the centipede unarmored by its gravestone carapace, and Kadorax’s Bloodletting talent went to work. Though the blade’s fuller was shallow and pitted, insect blood flowed down its length in hot spurts.

  The creature reeled. Its mandibles clicked together in the air, and its feet thrashed out wildly. Some of them, maybe even a dozen or more, managed to hit Kadorax in the chest and arms. The bastion’s Cage of Chaos reacted violently to the strikes, shooting four shots of magical ice directly back at the flailing legs.

  Behind him, the Grim Sleeper had stumbled down to the ground. She was heavily wounded, but the pain didn’t seem to slow her casting. Another burst of fire erupted from her fingertips and engulfed the centipede.

  The undead backed away, its head swiveling quickly from Kadorax to the warlock, completely unsure where to send its next attack. Confusion created delay, and Kadorax didn’t waste a moment of it. He dove forward with his blood-soaked blade in one hand and his fingers outstretched on the other. “Chaos Shock!” he yelled. His mind flashed for a split second,
showing him visions of Ligriv and the chaos where he drew his strength, and then a small, almost incandescent fragment of metal was in his left hand. Kadorax drove the metal forward with all his strength.

  A shower of lightning erupted from the point of contact, boring a fist-sized hole into the insect’s abdomen. Unfortunately, Kadorax felt the full effects of the electricity as well. The magical force rattled up his arm and into his jaw, making his muscles contract and his teeth clack painfully together. Somewhere in the wild cacophony of the centipede’s unhallowed screams, Kadorax lost his sword. He clutched at his head to try and make the pain go away, stumbling backward into the rubble below the others at the same time.

  The centipede recovered faster than Kadorax or the Grim Sleeper could respond. It slithered forward, legs clicking against the stone, and fell right into Syzak’s Spike Trap. Though the magical spikes weren’t large, they were certainly plentiful, and the centipede had not seen the trap at all. It was completely stuck, impaled dozens of times, its blood filling the fresh indentation in the ground.

  Brinna and Percival jumped down next to Kadorax. They moved in tandem, advancing to the left of Kadorax and the right of the warlock, staying far enough from the wounded woman to be out of her debilitating aura.

  With the centipede held in place on the spikes, unable to focus and rapidly leaking blood, Brinna was able to deliver two solid strikes to the beast with her daggers without taking so much as a scratch in return. The beast roared and spewed green acid indiscriminately into the air above its head. A good bit of the toxin fell on Kadorax and Percival, spattering them with sizzling globs of pain.

  “There’s still the… the things!” Kadorax shouted. Behind the centipede, from the direction of the ruined mill, a horde of amalgamated body parts began marching toward the fight, as if commanded by some unseen force.

  “The centipede controls them!” Syzak called back, though it was obvious from his voice that it was just a guess. “Kill it! They’ll die!”