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CHAPTER 31: Duel with the Damned
A ragged, heavy breath tore itself from Xiall's lungs. In. Out. The rhythm was a frantic drum against the silence of the vanquished. His knuckles were bone-white where they gripped the lance, its point still buried deep in the thing he had just put down. He had done it. He had killed it.
A part of him, the part that remembered a softer world, waited for the nausea to hit. For the moral vertigo that should follow the act of taking a life, even a monstrous one. But it never came. There was nothing. Just a hollow, unsettling normalcy, as if he'd swatted a fly rather than run a creature through. Was this some primal survival instinct kicking in, overriding his humanity? Or had he already, in the depths of his mind, stopped seeing these things as living beings with any inherent value? His thoughts were a turbulent sea, waves of elation at being alive crashing against the shores of a cold, clinical relief.
The absurd urge to just collapse onto a nearby stool and bask in the momentary victory flickered through his mind. He snuffed it out instantly. Now was not the time for glory. The tavern's main door, a poor barricade of aged wood and iron, was moments from surrender. From outside, a cacophony of thuds and crashes hammered against it, a relentless tide of pressure. The sharp, occasional shriek of something metal--a blade or perhaps a claw--scraping and piercing the wood from the other side set his teeth on edge.
He closed his eyes, just for a heartbeat, and pushed his Perception outwards. The world sharpened, the solidity of the tavern walls seeming to thin into a translucent haze. Beyond the door, he didn't so much see as sense them. A seething mass of fifty or so humanoid shapes, packed tight in the street. They were not whole. His heightened sense painted a grotesque picture: figures with limbs hanging by shreds of tendon, jaws unhinged and slack, chests caved in as if by a giant's fist. They moved with a jerky, marionette-like agitation, their collective aura a chilling void of hunger, devoid of thought or pain. A low, guttural chorus of moans and rasps was their only language. Fifty. This was going to be strenuous.
A movement at his feet snapped his focus back into the room. The corpse he had pierced with his lance was *wriggling_. A dry, rustling sound, like a sack of sticks being dragged over stone. His gaze dropped, surprise jolting through him. He was certain it had been dead. How in hell was it still moving? Its limbs, one half-severed at the elbow, twitched and scraped against the floorboards, its body arching in a pathetic, uncoordinated spasm.
He squinted, and for the first time, he truly saw the details he'd missed in the frenzy of the fight. The armour, a standard-issue boiled leather cuirass, now cracked and filthy. The solid, unadorned helm. This wasn't some bestial monster. It was human. Or, it had been. But how could it be alive? The injury was ghastly, a mortal wound by any measure. No one missing that much of themselves could move with the speed this one had shown earlier.
His eyes were drawn to the helmet's face-guard, to the sockets within. The eyes… there were no eyes. Only a sickly, milk-white film, like spoiled eggs, clouding the voids where sight should have been. A cold, definitive certainty washed over him. They were dead. These were the very corpses he had seen littering the streets earlier, the ones he'd stepped over and around. But how in all hells were they moving? A more terrifying thought followed, a domino of dread. If this one was animated, did that mean every single corpse he had seen out there could rise? That they could number not in dozens, but in hundreds?The colossal Soul Tree really went all out on this one..
A cold wave of pure, undiluted fear shot down his spine, tightening his gut. He forced it down, swallowing the metallic taste of panic. Stay calm. Breathe. Stay calm--
His internal mantra was shattered by a final, deafening CRACK! The door, its central beam splintering, burst inwards. The poor bloke had finally given in. A multitude of these… things, these walking deadhis naming sense was truly terrible--poured into the tavern.
They were a gallery of nightmares. A man in a tattered merchant's tunic, his belly ripped open, trailing grey ropes of intestine that snagged on the doorframe. A woman whose arm was a mangled ruin of bone and flesh, her mouth stretched in a silent, perpetual scream. Their skin was a palette of death--waxen grey, bruised purple, and the greenish tint of advanced decay. They didn't run so much as lurch, a mad, desperate scramble, their milky eyes fixed on him with a singular, ravenous intent. Their movements were a horrifying parody of life, all jerking limbs and clumsy, staggering steps, driven by a hunger that was palpable in the air.
The thought of bolting, of making a break for the shattered door and the dark outside, was terrifyingly tempting. But the image of running blindly through pitch-black streets, chased by hundreds of these hungry undead--now that was a good name for them--made his blood run cold. It would be nothing more than a protracted, terrifying game of hide and seek, expending his heightened senses just to stay one step ahead. No. Killing these fifty in the confined, defensible space of the tavern, and maybe catching a blessed moment of rest afterwards, was by far the better option.
The slight, almost imperceptible sound of a rusty blade parting the air reverberated through his heightened senses. He ducked. A curved sword whistled over his head, so close he felt the wind of its passage stir his hair. That was too close, he breathed inwardly. His eyes scanned the chaos for anything to use as a weapon. Then, another one launched itself at his face--a little kid, no older than eight, its face a porcelain mask of death, growling with a ferocity that belied its size, thick, black-tinged saliva pouring from its blue lips.
His heart clenched. He caught the small body mid-air, the impact jarring his arms. It was shockingly light. Without a second thought, driven by pure survival, he hurled it back like a discarded doll. It crashed into a trail of others rushing in, a tangle of limbs and snarls that momentarily disoriented the advancing horde, buying him a precious second. A pang of bitter resentment, sharp and acidic, crept into his chest. Kids don't deserve to be on a battlefield. This poor bloke deserved a pyre and prayers, not… this.
Instinct screamed at him again. He flanked sideways, his body moving almost before his mind registered the threat. He felt a strand of his hair trim and float away, severed by a hairsbreadth. A sword traced a perfect, deadly crescent in the space where his neck had been a moment before. It crashed into the wooden floorboards with a solid thunk, digging deep. He glanced up. It was the same one who had taken the first thrust at him. This motherfucker was persistent.
Grabbing a heavy wooden stool from a disheveled table, he pivoted and smashed it sideways against the thing's face. The impact was brutal, the sound a wet crunch of bone and wood. The undead's head snapped to the side at a grotesque, impossible angle, dangling oddly from its neck. Its hands came up, fingers twitching, trying to reposition the ruined skull. Seizing the moment, Xiall hurriedly kicked the sword from its slackening grip. It skittered across the floor, coming to rest near his feet. He snatched it up. The blade let out a silvery glint. "Quite clean for an undead," he muttered inwardly, the thought absurd amidst the gore.
The creature was still fumbling with its head. Xiall didn't give it another chance. He stepped in, the new sword feeling foreign but capable in his hand. He delivered a powerful, precise crescent strike, putting the full weight of his body into the arc. The blade sheared through the already damaged neck with a clean, final strike. The head popped off and rolled across the floor. He immediately kicked it, sending it spinning like a grisly football into a dark corner of the tavern. The headless body stumbled, its hands patting blindly at the air where its head should be, disorientated and confused. It was a macabre, pitiful sight.
He heaved, his breath coming out in raspy mists in the suddenly cold air. But there were still multitudes of them, pouring through the broken doorway. He held the sword in a two-handed grip, his hands quivering not from fear now, but from building fatigue. They were advancing, their collective footsteps a slow, dragging thunder as they drew nearer, a wall of death and decay. The otherworldly glow in his own eyes, a gift or a curse of his heightened state, brightened intensely, a sure prerogative for the coming tempest.
Then, they clashed.
The tavern became a whirlwind of dismemberment. Xiall moved like a force of nature, his sword an extension of his will. He fought with a brutal, efficient grace, his every movement a study in controlled violence. He didn't waste energy on fancy flourishes; each swing was a calculated, decapitating arc. A headless corpse bearing a rusted axe was split from shoulder to hip. One with missing ribs and a gaping chest cavity was sheared in two at the waist. It didn't matter if they were armed with farming tools or bearing only their blackened nails, they fell before his onslaught. The air grew thick with the grand, gore-filled theatre of his defense. Black ichor, thick as tar, sprayed across the walls and pooled on the floor. Severed limbs flew, landing with wet thuds. Heads rolled under tables, their milky eyes still staring.
He danced a bloody ballet across the sticky floor, his balance impeccable amidst the carnage. He used the narrow space to his advantage, ensuring they could only come at him a few at a time, their numbers nullified by the bottleneck of the tavern's layout. Still, he pummelled and hacked, his muscles beginning to scream in protest with every swing. He smashed another wooden stool into the face of a ravaging undead--this one a female folk, her long, lank hair matted with blood, a tattered dress hanging from her skeletal frame. Her skull departed on impact, splitting into two uneven halves like a rotten melon. It fell with a definitive thud.
He breathed, the sound harsh in the sudden, relative quiet. No more growls. The tavern was a charnel house, a landscape of twitching, squirming bodies. But they weren't staying down. As he watched, a severed hand began to crawl, fingers digging into the floorboards like a spider. A headless torso pushed itself up onto its elbows. The ones he had dismembered were… regenerating. Not healing, but re-knitting, the black ichor bubbling and sizzling as it tried to pull the pieces back together. And they were doing it quickly.
"Ugh…" he groaned, the sound one of pure, exhausted frustration. "How the hell do you kill the dead?" What was the purpose of this entire fight, this exhausting, soul-draining struggle, if the opponent never truly died? For a moment, a wave of utter hopelessness threatened to consume him. He almost gave up, the weight of the impossible pressing down on him.
But then his eyes, scanning the room for any answer, any way out, flew to the bar counter. Most especially, to the rows of liquor bottles lined up behind it. A plan, desperate and beautiful in its simplicity, slipped into his mind. Something that could kill them thoroughly. Not a physical dismemberment they could recover from, but an eradication. An Exorcism. A real, Fiery one.
A sly, grim grin appeared on his face. It was a terrifying, mad sort of smile, but it was the first genuine expression he'd worn since the door had broken. He had a plan....one that could take this persistent fellows to hell..