Chương 80: Chapter 60: Max - What The Fuck Is That?

The bell was still clanging when the party reached the bottom of the Wayhouse stairs. The common room had changed completely in the few hours since Max had gone to bed. Villagers were spilling through the open door from the street, some barefoot or half dressed, others clutching children, lanterns, axes, or whatever else they had managed to grab before leaving their homes. The innkeeper was trying to push people farther inside and away from the entrance while frightened voices overlapped around her.

Beyond them, the chapel bell kept sounding in frantic, uneven bursts. Someone shouted outside. Another voice answered farther east. Then came a scream. The innkeeper spotted Max and pointed toward the open door.

"Wheat road. Something's happening out by the wheat road." Max caught the shoulder of a man who had just stumbled through the doorway carrying a wood axe and turned him back toward the street.

"Show us." The man stared at him for half a heartbeat, then nodded.

"This way." They burst out into the cold night air, the rest of the party close behind. Stonebridge was awake now, doors standing open along the eastern lanes as families hurried away from the outer houses. A woman pulled two children toward the center of the village while an older man limped beside them carrying a lantern. Their guide broke into a run.

"Past the mill!" he called over his shoulder.

"Then down between the barns!" Max kept pace behind him while Cass slipped ahead, clearing a path through the villagers moving the opposite direction.

"The watch went that way as soon as the bell started," the man added breathlessly.

"Wheat road runs straight out through the fields." They reached the mill moments later. The man pointed toward a sloping lane between two barns.

"There! Follow that all the way down!" Max clapped him once on the shoulder without stopping.

"Get back to the Wayhouse." The man needed no convincing. He turned immediately toward the village center while Max and the others plunged down the lane. The last houses fell away behind them. Open ground stretched ahead, black beneath the night sky, harvested fields silvered faintly with frost. Then another sound reached Max through the ringing bell. A hard crack. Another followed. Metal striking something brittle. Max rounded the last barn and saw the wheat road ahead.

The watch had made its stand where the lane opened into the harvested fields. Six villagers and three guards were spread across the road with spears, axes, pitchforks, and whatever else they had managed to grab. Lanterns hung from posts on either side, throwing unsteady light across the frost-covered stubble. The line was already failing. A skeleton crashed into one guard's spear before the man could pull it back.

The point punched through the ribcage without slowing the thing at all, leaving the man scrambling backward as another villager brought an axe down across its shoulder. More shapes moved beyond it. Max counted as he ran. Four. Seven. Ten. Skeletons and half-rotted corpses advanced out of the fields in a loose mass, some still trailing strips of burial cloth. Two of the skeletons carried rusted farm tools, while the rest came forward with empty hands, clawing at anything within reach.

The villagers gave ground another step. Then another.

"Move!" Max shouted. Several heads turned toward them. Relief flashed across one guard's face before another corpse slammed into his spear. Max and the others were twenty yards away now. Then something moved behind the dead. Something big. For half a second, Max thought another man was coming through the darkness. Then it stepped into the lanternlight.

"What the fuck..." It was humanoid only in the loosest sense. Gray flesh stretched across a body far larger than any man Max had ever seen, the torso swollen in places where mismatched slabs of muscle had been joined together beneath the skin. Thick seams crossed its chest, shoulders, and belly, dark stitches disappearing into flesh that had never belonged together. Three heads rose from its broad shoulders. The central head sagged forward on a neck that seemed barely capable of supporting it.

Two others jutted from either side at crooked angles, their dead faces turning independently as the creature walked. Six arms hung from the massive frame. Some were thick and powerful. Others were too thin or slightly too long, joints sitting at angles that made Max's stomach turn. Clawed fingers slowly opened and closed as it followed behind the lesser dead. It shambled slowly, almost looking like it was herding them toward Stonebridge.

"This isn't just the dead rising," Elias said behind Max in gasping breaths.

"No," Borin replied. The villagers' line buckled again. A skeleton forced its way between two men, and one of them stumbled backward into the road. Max didn't slow.

"Fall back!" he shouted.

"Get behind us!" The guards needed little convincing once they saw the five armed adventurers bearing down on them. They began hauling the villagers backward, dragging one wounded man with them while the party pushed through the opening they left behind. Max stepped into the road.

"Line! Let them come to us!" They fell into place almost without thinking. Borin came up beside him at the center. Cass broke right toward the shallow drainage ditch, daggers already in her hands. Elias stopped several paces behind them with his staff raised, while Alina moved left and drew an arrow from her quiver. The first undead were almost on them. Max drew one slow breath. The noise around him seemed to pull away as Battle Focus settled over his thoughts. Only then did he Identify what was coming.

[Animated Skeleton – Level 7] Health: 70/70 | Stamina: 60/60 | Mana: 0/0 [Animated Skeleton – Level 8] Health: 80/80 | Stamina: 70/70 | Mana: 0/0 [Risen Corpse – Level 7] Health: 90/90 | Stamina: 40/40 | Mana: 0/0 [Risen Corpse – Level 8] Health: 100/100 | Stamina: 50/50 | Mana: 0/0 [Stitched Abomination – Level 12] Health: 240/240 | Stamina: 120/120 | Mana: 40/40 Max's breath caught for half a heartbeat as the information settled into place.

"Animated Skeletons and Risen Corpses. Levels seven and eight," he said quickly. Then his gaze lifted past them to the towering creature behind the line.

"Big one's Level twelve. Stitched Abomination. Forty Mana." Borin's expression hardened.

"Assume it can do more than walk," he said. Elias was already moving. He came in behind Max's shoulder and brushed one hand along the flat of his sword. Frostfire Edge took hold immediately, frost spreading across the steel before pale blue flame rose from it without heat. Elias moved on without waiting, touching Borin's shoulder next and laying Armor Ward across his mail before retreating behind the line. Beside Max, Borin murmured a brief prayer and cast Bless over the party.

Warmth spread through Max's limbs, pushing back the creeping edge of fear. Borin followed it by planting one hand against Max's shield, and the familiar earthen weight of Stone Ward settled through the iron and into his arm. The dead reached them moments later. An Animated Skeleton lurched forward with its jaw clattering uselessly. Max met it with a step and drove his shield through the ribcage hard enough to snap several bones free.

His sword followed immediately, the frostfire along its edge biting through the side of the skull and splitting it apart. Beside him, Borin's hammer rose and fell in a brutal rhythm. A Risen Corpse pushed through his guard long enough to rake its fingers across his forearm. The nails tore through his sleeve and opened three shallow furrows beneath, blood immediately darkening the cloth, but Borin barely seemed to notice. His hammer came around and crushed the corpse's skull before it could strike again.

"Cass, right!" Elias called. A Risen Corpse had slipped wide through the wheat toward the retreating villagers, but Cass had already moved into its path. It lunged for her. She vanished into its shadow and reappeared behind it an instant later, Shadowstep carrying her cleanly past the grasping hands. Her dagger slashed through the back of one knee, dropping the corpse heavily into the stubble, and the second blade drove upward beneath its jaw before it could recover.

Another Risen Corpse turned toward her, and Cass flicked her off hand sharply. Distracting Feint caught in the air between them, a brief twist of steel and magic meant to drag the eye toward the false opening she offered. Max had seen humans and monsters alike follow it almost without realizing they'd moved, but the corpse didn't. Its dead gaze remained fixed on Cass as if the Spell had never touched it. Her eyebrows rose.

"Well. That's annoying." She slipped backward before its hands could close around her. Behind the front line, Elias planted his staff." Frostsheet!" Max stopped on instinct. Borin did the same, planting his feet instead of stepping into the ground Elias had indicated, while Cass peeled farther right and Alina shifted her aim away from the space directly ahead of them. Ice raced outward a heartbeat later, and the wheat road glazed white beneath the advancing dead.

Two of the Animated Skeletons lost their footing at once and crashed onto the frozen ground, limbs tangling beneath them. One immediately tried to push itself upright, bony hands skittering uselessly across the slick surface, while the other managed to get one foot beneath itself before sliding sideways again. A pair of Risen Corpses fared only slightly better. One stumbled into the other, sending both lurching off balance as their feet slipped beneath them.

For a few precious seconds, the whole front of the advance slowed. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Elias was already repositioning. One of the corpses pushed through the edge of the frozen ground toward him, and Elias slipped aside before its hands could catch his coat, snapped his staff around, and released two quick Mana Bolts. The first tore through its ribcage. The second punched through the side of its skull and dropped it.

To the left, Alina's bowstring kept singing. One arrow disappeared through an Animated Skeleton's eye socket and cracked into the back of its skull. Another struck the knee of a Risen Corpse, buckling the joint and pitching it forward just as Borin reached it. Radiant light gathered around his hammer.

"Back to the earth!" The weapon came down through the corpse's skull. Bone and dead flesh gave way beneath the strike, and the radiance burned through whatever force held the body together. For several more seconds, the line held. The lesser dead were dangerous, but simple. They advanced without fear, pain, or self-preservation, and Borin's warning on the road to Stonebridge proved true again and again. Wounds that would have stopped a living opponent meant nothing.

The party had to break bones, destroy joints, or crush heads until the bodies simply couldn't continue. Even then, they paid for every mistake. An Animated Skeleton swung a rusted farm tool into Max's shoulder. The iron glanced off his armor instead of biting through, but the impact numbed his arm nearly to the elbow and left a deep ache beneath the plate.

Another Risen Corpse reached Borin and caught him hard across the ribs, its claws scraping uselessly over his armor even as the force of the blow folded him half a step sideways. Borin answered by crushing its temple with the return swing. Then the Stitched Abomination moved. Nothing in the heavy gait it had shown until then warned Max what was coming. One moment it lumbered behind the lesser dead.

The next it surged forward with startling speed, covering the distance far faster than something that large had any right to move. Max cut down the last Animated Skeleton in front of him and raised his shield.

"Here it comes! Brace!" But the Abomination didn't charge into them. Just before it reached Max, it bent its legs. He barely had time to realize what it was doing before the creature launched itself over the line, passing above him in a blur of gray flesh and mismatched limbs. Max spun around as it crashed down behind them hard enough to kick frozen dirt outward. The nearest villager barely had time to turn before three hands seized him and tore him apart.

The second man died before Max could take more than three steps.

"Move!" Adrenal Surge flooded his limbs, driving exhaustion and pain aside as Max sprinted after the creature. He closed the distance before it could reach another fleeing villager, lowered his shoulder behind his shield, and slammed into its side with everything he had. The impact barely moved it, but all three heads turned toward him. Good enough. One of its arms came down like a falling beam. Max raised his shield and braced as Iron Guard locked through him an instant before the blow landed.

The impact thundered through his shield and shoulder, while Stone Ward reinforced the iron beneath it. Together, the two abilities kept the shield from folding or being ripped from his arm, but only barely. Max's boots skidded across the frozen dirt as the force traveled through his entire body, leaving his arm screaming even as he managed to stay upright. The second strike came from beneath his shield too quickly for him to stop it.

Claws ripped across the outside of his thigh, tearing through leather like wet paper and opening four deep gashes beneath it. Max cried out. Hot blood immediately soaked into his trousers and ran toward his boot, and his knee nearly folded the first time he tried to put weight on the leg. The Abomination lifted another arm, but a Mana Bolt slammed into its chest before it could strike. The burst staggered it half a step as Elias ran toward them.

"Cass! The leg!" Cass darted in from the side just as one of the Abomination's arms swept toward her. She twisted beneath it with the impossible fluidity of Evasion, the claws passing close enough to catch the edge of her cloak without touching flesh. Shadow swallowed her an instant later, and she emerged behind the creature with her dagger already driving deep into the back of its left knee. The Abomination lurched. Elias planted his staff." Earthsplit! Get clear!" Max abandoned the step he had been about to take.

Borin broke away from the creature's other side, while Cass ripped her dagger free and threw herself backward. The ground erupted where they had just been standing. Frozen earth split beneath the Abomination's damaged leg, slabs of soil and stone wrenching upward at uneven angles. Its foot came down badly among them and slipped sideways, throwing the creature off balance. Borin surged into the opening.

Radiance flared along his hammer as he swung. The blow struck one of the Abomination's arms where it joined the shoulder, tearing the limb free as burning light raced through the ruined joint. The severed arm struck the ground, and the creature shrieked. Its remaining limbs lashed wildly while it struggled to regain its footing among the broken earth. Elias stepped closer." Radiant Flare!" Max turned his face behind the rim of his shield.

Borin lowered his head, Cass twisted away from the creature, and Alina pressed her cheek briefly against her raised bow arm. White-gold light erupted across the field. Even through closed eyes, Max saw the flash. The Abomination recoiled violently. All three heads snapped backward as the radiance burned across stitched flesh, its limbs faltering for the first time.

"Now!" Max shouted. Alina was already firing. Her first arrow struck one of the side heads near the temple. The second hit almost the same place, and bone cracked beneath the combined impacts. The head snapped sideways, tore free from the damaged neck, and tumbled into the wheat. The Abomination found its footing again. Its central head and the remaining side head turned toward them. Then it lunged. Max forced weight onto his wounded leg. Pain burned from hip to knee, but the leg held.

He stepped into the attack, slipped outside the sweep of one clawed hand, and brought his sword down with everything he could put behind it. The frostfire flared along the blade as the steel struck the same leg Cass had opened earlier. The first resistance was flesh. Then bone. It cracked beneath the blow, and Max drove through it. The leg separated completely. The Abomination crashed onto one side with enough force to shake the frozen ground, but Cass was already moving away from its reach.

Her daggers disappeared and the crossbow came up. The first bolt drove into the joint of one remaining arm, and the second buried itself beside it. She wasn't trying to kill the thing outright anymore. She was taking it apart. Alina understood immediately. Her next arrow struck another elbow. Cass followed with a bolt through the same joint, and the limb collapsed beneath the creature when it tried to push itself upright. Another arrow buried itself in a wrist before it could compensate.

Still the Abomination thrashed. One arm swept blindly across the ground and caught Elias across the side, lifting him from his feet. He struck the frozen earth several yards away and rolled twice before stopping, the impact driving the breath from him. He curled briefly around his ribs before forcing himself upright again, gasping as he fought to pull air back into his lungs. Another arm caught Borin across the shoulder.

His mail kept the claws from tearing flesh, but the sheer force knocked him backward and left his weapon arm hanging numb for a heartbeat. The Abomination tried to rise. It had lost a leg, a head, an arm, and most of the useful movement in two more limbs, yet it continued dragging itself forward as though none of it mattered. Borin planted his feet. His injured arm tightened around the hammer as divine light began gathering around the weapon. Not the brief radiance Max had seen in his earlier strikes.

This was more. Far more. The glow spread until the hammerhead was almost impossible to look at directly. Borin raised it over his head.

"By Durak's light," he growled. The Abomination dragged itself toward him. Borin charged to meet it.

"BEGONE!" He drove himself forward, lifted off the ground with the final step, and brought the hammer down. Divine Judgment struck the center of the Abomination's chest. The impact crushed stitched ribs inward, but the radiance went deeper. Light poured through the seams holding the creature together, burning along every line of black thread and dead flesh. Then the seams began to part, and the Stitched Abomination tore open from the center.

Mismatched flesh collapsed around Borin's hammer in a quivering heap, smoke curling faintly from the remains as the last traces of divine light faded. For several seconds, no one moved. The field had gone quiet. At some point, the chapel bell had stopped ringing. Max stood over the ruined Abomination, breathing hard, blood still running down his wounded thigh as he watched for any sign that the thing might move again, but nothing did. Cass remained several paces away with her crossbow raised.

Alina kept an arrow nocked. Borin lowered his hammer slowly, favoring his good shoulder. Elias came over beside Max, one hand pressed against his side as he dragged a painful breath into bruised ribs. Only when it was certain that none of the dead moved did the villagers begin approaching. Max looked across the field. Skeletons lay scattered in pieces across the road and frozen wheat.

The corpses lay where they had finally been put down, broken limbs twisted beneath them or skulls destroyed beyond any possibility of rising again. The Stitched Abomination remained a smoking mound in the center of it all. Some villagers whispered prayers as they approached. Others stared at the dead in silence, recognition beginning to replace fear as they looked upon bodies they had once buried with care. Max lowered his sword. His shoulder throbbed where the rusted tool had struck him.

His shield arm felt battered from the Abomination's blow, and every heartbeat sent another hot pulse of pain through the deep cuts in his thigh. Beside him, Borin's forearm was streaked with blood from the claw marks, and he kept rolling the shoulder that had taken the later hit. Elias was still breathing carefully around whatever bruising the Abomination had left across his ribs. Cass and Alina had escaped untouched. Max looked between them.

"Everyone alright?"

"Bruised," Elias said, still pressing one hand against his ribs. Borin rolled his injured shoulder once.

"Been worse." Cass and Alina exchanged glances.

"Fine," they answered together. Cass elbowed Alina lightly.

"See? Dodging." Alina nodded earnestly.

"Very useful." Max looked down at the blood soaking his trouser leg, then up at Borin.

"Any Mana left?" Borin followed his gaze.

"Enough." He knelt beside Max and pressed one hand over the torn flesh. A warm golden glow spread beneath his palm as Heal took hold, drawing the edges of the four gashes together. Max sucked in a breath through his teeth as skin knitted beneath the blood. When Borin finally pulled away, the wounds had closed. Max tested his weight carefully. His thigh still ached deep beneath the surface, but the leg held.

"Careful. Move too fast and you'll tear it open again," Borin said as he used what little Mana he had left on the claw marks across his own forearm.

"Thanks." Around them, the villagers were already moving cautiously toward the field. Some stopped beside the broken skeletons and corpses, staring down at faces they recognized beneath dirt, decay, and remnants of burial cloth. Others gathered near the wounded guards, helping them away from the road. One man reached the smoking remains of the Stitched Abomination beside them and simply stopped.

"Saints below," he whispered. Max's attention had gone elsewhere. The two villagers killed when the Abomination leapt the line still lay where they had fallen. Captain Harlan arrived with the rest of the watch only a few minutes later. He slowed as he entered the field, gaze sweeping over scattered bones, ruined corpses, torn earth, and finally the mound of stitched flesh smoking faintly in the frost.

"By the Saints." Then he saw the two bodies. Whatever else he might have said disappeared.

"Lanterns," he ordered after a moment.

"Check every one of 'em. I want every damned body counted." The watch spread through the field. Villagers joined them as the first shock began to loosen its grip, turning bodies carefully and speaking names when they recognized someone. More than once, a name was followed by silence as someone realized exactly whose remains they were looking at. Elder Rowan and Father Edwin arrived while the counting was underway. Rowan stopped beside the remains of the Abomination. For several seconds, she simply stared.

Her eyes moved over severed limbs, mismatched flesh, black stitching, and what remained of the three necks.

"This wasn't a simple rising."

"No," Elias said quietly.

"Someone built it." Rowan's jaw clenched. Nearly half an hour passed before Harlan returned.

"All fifteen." Max looked up. Harlan gestured across the field.

"Every one we was missing. Whatever they did to 'em, they're all here." Relief came first. At least none were still somewhere beyond Stonebridge. Then Max looked toward the two villagers again.

"I should've stopped it." Rowan turned toward him.

"If I'd realized what it could do before it jumped, or gotten there faster…"

"No." The word stopped him.

Rowan looked toward the dead herself before continuing.

"Two of my people died tonight. We will mourn them." Her gaze returned to Max.

"But our dead came toward Stonebridge, and you and your companions stood in their way. Without you, there would've been far more than two." Harlan nodded grimly.

"Heard what happened. Thirty feet in one jump." He looked toward the ruined Abomination.

"Ain't nobody expecting that." One of the guards who had held the road swallowed hard.

"I thought we were dead when it came over the line." His gaze passed across all five adventurers.

"Then you went after it." Max looked away. Borin rested the head of his hammer against the ground and looked toward Father Edwin.

"Your runner left yesterday?" Edwin nodded.

"Before sundown. If the roads stay clear, he should be back sometime this afternoon."

"With help?"

"Saints willing, the Bishop himself, if my message frightened them half as much as writing it frightened me." That earned the faintest grunt from Borin.

"Good." His eyes lingered on the field for a moment.

"These bodies shouldn't go back into the ground." Rowan followed his eyes.

"No." There was no hesitation in her answer.

"We'll burn them." Several nearby villagers turned toward her.

"All of them," Rowan continued.

"They were taken from their graves, dragged through the fields, and made into this." She stared at the Stitched Abomination.

"Their families shouldn't have to wonder whether someone might do it to them again." Father Edwin bowed his head.

"We'll return their ashes to Chapel Hill," Rowan said.

"And tonight we'll remember them properly. All of them." Her attention shifted toward the two villagers who had died in the road.

"And the two we lost this morning." Quiet agreement moved through those nearby. After a moment, Rowan looked back to the party.

"You should stay. Stonebridge owes you that much." Max shook his head.

"You don't owe us anything."

"We owe you our village." Max glanced west.

"We've still got another part of the contract." Rowan frowned slightly.

"Another part?"

"Greenglade. Their message mentioned bodies disappearing there too." Understanding settled across her face.

"If the same people did both…" she said.

"Then whatever happened here could already be happening there," Max finished with a nod. Rowan looked once more over the field, at the bodies of people she had known before someone dug them from the earth and turned them into weapons.

"Then go." Her voice hardened.

"Find whoever did this, and make them pay." Max met her eyes.

"We will." Stonebridge began gathering wood before the sun had fully cleared the horizon. The party returned to the Wayhouse long enough to collect their packs, replace what supplies they could, and prepare for another half day on the road. Max found Alina near the door tightening the strap on her quiver. She had been quieter since the fight.

"Hey. You doing alright?" Her hands stopped. For a moment she stared down at the buckle.

"I think so." Max leaned against the doorframe and waited. Alina looked toward the window. From there, the smoke had only just begun to rise beyond the rooftops.

"I keep seeing those two people," she said quietly.

"Yeah."

"And that thing." Her fingers tightened around the strap.

"I was terrified." Max nodded.

"So was I." That brought her eyes back to him.

"You were?"

"It had three heads and six arms, Alina." A small breath escaped her that might almost have been a laugh. Then she grew serious again.

"But I didn't run."

"No."

"I stood there." She looked down at the bow in her hand.

"And people were behind us." Max understood before she finished.

"At Crestwood, we couldn't stop them," Alina said quietly.

"My father died. The farm was burned, and all I could do was watch everything fall apart." Her thumb moved once over the wood of the bow.

"This time I could do something." The fear was still there. Max could see it. So was something else.

"I want to get stronger," she said, turning to face him.

"A lot stronger." Max straightened.

"What for?" Alina looked at him as if the answer should have been obvious.

"So next time something like that comes for people, I can stand in its way." There was no excitement in her voice. No thrill from the fight. Just certainty. Max nodded slowly.

"That's a damn good reason." She smiled faintly.

"I thought so." She tightened the final buckle and slung the bow across her shoulder.

"Come on, we should go." Outside, the pyre had already been lit near Chapel Hill. Villagers stood around it in quiet clusters while smoke rose above the rooftops into the pale morning sky. Some held one another. Others simply watched. At the gate, Harlan gave them a tired nod.

"Watch yourselves out there." Max returned it. Then the five of them took the western road. Stonebridge gradually fell behind, frost-covered fields and low stone fences passing beneath the climbing sun. Max looked back once.

The village stood quiet beneath the pale sky, the smoke above Chapel Hill rising in a long dark column before the wind caught it and carried it away. Then he turned west toward Greenglade.