The world outside the shattered doorway was messy, chaotic, and violent. Everything that moved seemed to be fighting. The air was chilled by the sound of clattering bone, furious roars, and the eerie wails of figures Femi couldn't make out from this distance. But for a single, suspended moment, the world narrowed between him and Varga; her emerald eyes, narrowed on him.
The faint grey sheen she'd noticed had faded, vanishing like a trick of the eye. Even though Varga was sure she had seen it. And his eye, that grey ring around the pupil was still there, and it seemed to swirl with an intensity that matched the fury on his face.
"Bloody skeletons."
Femi cursed, truly he couldn't tolerate these walking abominations; how could these decorated failures continue to frustrate his life. Already angry and without wasting time Femi hefted the makeshift club, which was just a piece of debris from the shattered door. Yet in his grip, it felt like the hammer of Ogun poised to deliver divine retribution.
The first skeleton, its empty eye sockets fixed on this new living warmth, clattered toward him. Its rusted hatchet raised high in a mindless, predictable charge.
Femi took a step forward, his linen bandages straining over his brown-furred chest and with an exhale, he bolted forward. There was no need for finesse, when dealing with walking ribcages only the pure, unadulterated physics of impact.
CRUNCH
The wood connected with the skeleton's skull with a sound that was immensely satisfying. The skull exploded into a cloud of white fragments and dust; the headless body crumpling into a pile of bone at his feet.
"Rubbish!"
Two more advanced, flanking him with coordinated movements. One thrust a spear in a reckless lunge, the other swung its sword in a wide sweep.
Varga started to move to intercept, but Femi was already reacting. His movements though hampered by his injury, were unnaturally precise. He twisted his torso, letting the spearhead slice through the cold air an inch from his bandages. At the same time, blocked the sword swing, before bringing his club down hard on the sword-arm of the second skeleton, shattering the wrist bones. The sword clattered to the trampled snow.
"Nonsense!" he taunted, his whiskers twitching in glee.
The spear wielding skeleton compromised balance, allowed Femi to take advantage by spinning his club around to disarm it, and then jammed one end straight into its ribcage. He didn't try to pull it free though. Instead, he leaned his weight into it, using the impaled skeleton as a shield against the next attacker, slamming it into its comrades to create a stumbling pile of bone.
He left the club embedded and snatched up the fallen sword. A pitiful thing, rusted and chipped, yet with no choice, he tested its weight with a flick of his wrist. I really miss my axe.
Femi sighed.
"Come, you unbreast-feeded goats," he mocked as another skeleton lunged, jaw clacking mindlessly. He sidestepped, hooked the sword behind the skeleton's leg, and yanked. The creature's feet flew out from under it, and it landed hard on its back with a rattle. Femi didn't even look down as he stomped once, his foot coming down on its skull with another definitive CRACK.
Varga finally reached his side, her axe cleaving through a skeleton that was about to strike him from behind, splitting it from shoulder to hip. "Femi!" She parried a stray spear thrust, kicked the skeleton's legs out from under it with a powerful sweep of her boot, and crushed its skull with a swift stomp.
They were now both back-to-back now, which gave Varga a moment to scan the battlefield, taking in the broader struggle. The main Krag line, inspired by Goruk's and Dana's counter-attack with the treated weapons, was slowly pushing the skeletal tide back.
Their blades now burning with fierce, hungry flames dipped in fat and resin as Femi called it, flared, casting long, dancing shadows. The damned souls shrieked as they were repelled by the fire. The tide was turning, but the fight was far from over.
Varga's gaze snapped back to Femi as she instinctively smashed another Skelton that was about to stab him. With the treat gone she couldn't help examine the ratling.The change was undeniable up close. It wasn't just the grey-tinted fur that had somehow disappeared. He was slightly taller, stronger too, if him stomping that skull was any indication. And as she grabbed his shoulder, it felt broader, the muscle denser under her grip. And his left eye... the grey ring seemed to pulse with a faint light of its own, like a tiny, captured storm.
"Varga, why are you assaulting me in public?"
"What?" Varga asked, her brow furrowing.
"Why are you grabbing my soft body like that?" Femi said, covering himself with his arm in a gesture of protecting his modesty.
She stared at him as if he were mad, her mouth slightly agape, but decided it wasn't important. Not with death clattering all around them.
"Femi, how are you... alive and... like this?" she said, her voice tinted with concern and curiosity.
He glanced at her, his strange eye flashing briefly. Then he groaned, stretching his body; a series of pops and cracks echoed from his spine. "Ah. Yes, the new look. A bit dramatic, isn't it? The grey doesn't really go with my complexion." He gestured vaguely at his own face.
"Femi," Varga pressed, her tone leaving no room for jokes. She decapitated another skeleton with a clean, whistling swing, sending its head spinning into the darkness. "Now is not the time for your games. I... I thought you were dead…."
"What happened in there?"
Femi looked at her with his strange mismatched eyes, then sighed.
"A conversation for after," he said, his voice losing its playful edge. "When we are sure there is an 'after' to have it in." He gestured with his rusted sword toward the relentless horde. "First, we survive. Then, over a warm meal and a bottle of something strong, that I will not be sharing with you or Victim." He paused, thinking about Melin. "I will tell you a very strange story."
"So," Femi continued, taking a step forward into the fray, "it time to get busy. Right now, the most practical thing is to make sure none of these walking calcium deposits interrupt our future conversation." He pointed his sword toward a group of three skeletons breaking from the pack, heading straight for them. "So, if you would please? My body is currently filing a formal complaint with Uncle brain."
Varga stared at him so intently that Femi thought she would kick him. But all she did was let out a snort, that sounded like half a laugh, half a sigh of exasperation.
"You are infuriating... but right. The mystery of your…. change would have to wait."
"Good, well then I will be going first. I can't let those skinny legs escape."
And like that he was gone, rushing toward the skeletons. His brown fur and tattered bandages and leather shorts cut a strange heroic figure, making Varga doubt if it was really Femi…. until he started to fight.
He used every dirty trick imaginable. He tripped them, shoved them into each other, kicked piles of snow into their eye sockets. He used their mindless aggression against them, parrying and dodging blows so that the skeleton's own axe buried itself in the skull of their comrades beside it.
"Am I not kind?" he cackled, in a wild almost unhinged sound. "See? I am helping you make friends!"
But, as he mocked them another larger skeleton, probably once a Krag judging by its heavy frame and tusk, barreled toward him, a massive stone maul in its hands. A serious threat. Femi saw Varga tense, ready to leap in, but he stood his ground.
"Ah, a big one. You must have been important. Let's see if you still are."
The maul came in a crushing swing meant to marry him to the ground. At the last possible second, Femi dropped into a low crouch, wincing as the movement pulled at his wound. The maul whistled harmlessly over his head, stirring his fur. As the skeleton leaned into its swing, off-balance, Femi lunged upward and jammed the rusted sword straight up through its jaw, pinning its mouth shut. The creature staggered back, clawing at the blade in its face.
Femi didn't wait. He scooped up a fallen femur and, with native catapult level aim, slammed it into the Krag skeleton's knee joint. The leg buckled sideways, and it fell to the snow.
With a wide grin, Femi started to bash the fallen skeleton's skull while laughing.
"Fool! How do you like that? Hahaha!"
CRACK
"Sweat eh!"
CRACK
"You want more?"
CRACK
"Hahahahaa!"
He kept bashing with relentless strikes until the Skelton stopped moving completely. With a satisfied sigh, Femi left it after a final kick totally releasing his stress and turned toward Varga, who was holding off three skeletons at once.
"Varg! You need help!"
Varga, despite the situation, felt her lips twitch. She dispatched one opponent with a devastating chop that split it to the breastbone, spun, and swept her axe in a horizontal swing that took the remaining skeleton's head clean off its shoulders.
"No need then," Femi said, while picking up the stone maul the large skeleton had dropped, grunting with the strain.
"Na wa, this thing heavy."
He hefted the maul, his body seeming to struggle with its bulk, and turned to face the next wave, his stance wobbling. The handful of skeletons that had broken through were nearly gone, decimated by the combined effort. The immediate threat to the infirmary was over, the snow around its entrance littered with the evidence of their defense.
"Now let's…." he started, before a wave of dizziness washed over him, the adrenaline receding to reveal the true cost of his exertions.
"Femi are you okay." Varga asked as she placed a hand on his shoulder to steady him.
He gave a weak, shaky shrug. "Ah, it seems this uncle don tire." Then his knees buckled. The maul dropped, and he would have collapsed into the snow if Varga hadn't caught him.
"We need to get you back inside," she said, trying to steer him toward the relative safety of the shattered infirmary.
Femi, however, planted his feet, his claws digging into the snow. His mismatched eyes were fixed on the heart of the battle where Arieus and Goruk fought. The strange spectral wails of creatures he couldn't make out, were being cut short by the War Chief's cleaver and the flaming Krag weapons, but the pressure from the endless skeletons was immense.
"No," Femi said, pointing a clawed finger toward the distant, robed figure who stood impassive beyond the sea of bone. The necromancer. "I not sure why this place is being ransacked by skeletons, but I am sure that unless someone deals with that juju priest's, we may not see tomorrow."
"Femi, you can barely stand and you are sprouting nonsense," Varga argued, her axe moving almost on its own to deflect a stray arrow that clattered harmlessly aside.
"Dey play, I will show you something new." He bent down, about to pick the maul, but stopped after a second thought, and picked up a skeletal arm that still clutched a short sword. He tossed the sword to Varga, who caught it reflexively. "Here. A spare. I'll take the club." He snatched up the femur he'd thrown earlier.
"We meet again, old friend," he said, testing the bone's weight. "Now, I am more mobile. Let's go have a word with the man in the dress."
Varga paused. It was madness. She was under orders to hold the left flank, and she had already disobeyed. Now she was contemplating escorting a critically injured, delirious Ratman on a charge across a battlefield. It was simply fool hardy.
Yet the cold dread she'd felt when the ward was breached was gone, replaced by a fierce fire. This strange, infuriating creature saw the true enemy.
And he was right.
"By Kraggoth's blade," she growled, but she shifted her grip on her axe, her decision made. "Stay close to me.
"So generous and kind of you, Varg," Femi said, his smirk returning.
"Stop calling me Varg, you rat."
And so, they made their way forward, Varga acting as the spearhead, her axe forming a series of sliver arc, shattering ribs, severing spines, clearing a path. Femi acted as rear-guard and flank, using his femur to bash skeletons away while he tried to recover strength.
As they moved a skeleton lunged at Varga's blind spot; its dagger aimed for a gap in her leather armor. Before she could react, Femi slammed the end of his femur into the skeleton's ankle. It stumbled forward, off-balance, and Varga crushed its skull with a backward swing without breaking stride.
"I not going to lie, I am enjoying this."
"Just keep moving!" she shouted, parrying a spear thrust and driving her spare short sword into the attacker's eye socket.
Varga carved through another dense group, her chest heaving, and breaths pluming in the frigid air. The immediate space around them was clear again. The song of combat, Goruk's bellows, the ethereal wails, seemed to press in from all sides.
Femi peered out into the fray, his eyes assessing the battlefield. He squinted, the grey-ringed eye seeming to see things in a different light. Since he got it, he had begun to see strange things, and also perceive something in the air he couldn't explain.
He watched as a Krag warrior, his weapon ablaze, desperately swiped at a flickering entity that darted just out of reach, its mournful cry seeming to sap the fighter's strength, his swings becoming slow and clumsy with every passing second.
"Wetin be that... wait, Varga, are you seeing that evil spirit, or have I lost my mind?"
He slowly took a step back and... suddenly froze. His whiskers twitched violently, as a dreadful feeling assaulted him. Not very far away, a new flickering entity had materialized from nowhere, its form writhing with visible anguish as it fixed its hollow eyes directly on him. A low moan vibrated through the air, making the fur on his neck stand up.
In one fluid motion, Femi spun on his heel, his back now to the advancing specter. He looked up Varga, his mismatched eyes wide with sudden relief. Without another word, he shuffled quickly behind her, using her larger frame as a shield. He peeked out from around her waist, pointing a clawed finger at the approaching apparition.
"Varga! There's an evil spirit. Go, Cast and bind it!"
Varga stared at him, torn between utter disbelief and the overwhelming urge to laugh at the sheer audacity. The unashamed behavior was breathtaking. Yet, she couldn't help but smirk. He might look different, but he still was that same ratling she found.
Varga sighed. No time for that now. The Damned Soul let out a piercing, mind-rending shriek and shot toward them.
She stepped forward, putting herself firmly between Femi and the spirit. "Just stay out of the way!"
"Kuros"
Varga's voice rang with power.
"Partial-Enchantment"
Her axe flaring with sudden brilliant emerald energy as she met the charge head-on. The Damned soul shrieking as it swung with its ethereal claws.
"Crushing Axe!"
Her enchanted axe slicing through the spectral form. The spirit screamed and dissolved into motes of light.
As the last of the light faded, she glanced back over her shoulder. Femi was cautiously emerging from behind her, tapping his chin with a claw as if analyzing her technique.
"Excellent form," Femi said approvingly, nodding. "Very efficient. You made that look easy." He then pointed his bone-club toward a group of four skeletons clattering toward them. "Now, these fellows... these I can handle. A much more honest day's work."
He got his femur ready, adopting a low, ready stance, to resume his role as the skull breaker.
Truly a more enjoyable job.