Victor of Tucson

Victor began to regret leaving Lifedrinker to drink her fill almost immediately. The maul was a good weapon, probably crafted of something extremely rare or powerful, but it was nothing like his axe. Lifedrinker was alive in his hands; she pulled toward his targets, was weightless on his backswings, and effortlessly changed direction with just a nudge. The maul, on the other hand, felt like swinging a Volkswagen attached to a lead rod. It was ponderous, momentous, and when he heaved it to and fro, Victor had to follow through, had to move his body to accommodate the immensely dense hammerhead.

Nonetheless, the effects of all that weight and momentum were satisfying; Victor cleared great swathes of zombies and shamblers with a single swing, putting all his strength into massive, ripping cleaves that required him to take several steps to keep control. It would have been a disastrous battle if he weren’t so tough, so well-armored, and so large. With each swing, as he smashed the undead aside, a dozen more rushed in behind him to claw and hack at his sides and back. The maul was a tedious weapon to redirect, and he rarely found himself able to put it between himself and an attacker. Instead, he had to focus on his ability to be mobile—he leaped, he charged, and he smashed pathways for himself, always turning, spinning, and dodging to relieve the pressure on his flanks.

Meanwhile, the soldiers in the Ninth fought like the rugged, resilient terriers they were. They maintained their shield wall, pulling back dead or dying comrades and filling the gap from the next rank. They used their Energy abilities to bolster their lines, to fling fire and other elements onto the hordes of undead, and, encouraged by Victor’s banner and his roaring, screaming, smashing titanic form, they slowly but surely began to turn the tide of the battle. They must have been outnumbered nearly three to one at the start, but with the quick dispatch of the ghouls and the steady whittling of the zombies and shamblers, the mounds of dead, destroyed, or maimed attackers began to grow, and the numbers of those still pressing against their shields dwindled.

Things took a different turn when the undead drummers finally joined the fray. Perhaps they’d held back, lurking in the mist, using their otherworldly, gut-twisting music to bolster the attacking hordes. Maybe their Energy was running dry, and their default next action was to attack. Or, just maybe, the intelligence that drove this army against Victor and the Ninth saw that their drums weren’t helping enough and urged them forward. Whatever the reason, six gigantic, humanoid skeletons with purple flames dancing in the sockets of their eyes charged onto the field of combat.

The skeletal drummers carried polished bone clubs in one hand and enormous bone, disc-like shields in the other. Victor knew they were the “drummers” because they came onto the battlefield, smashing those clubs against their shields, creating the low, concussive beat that had been the backdrop of the entire battle. This close, though, the concussions rolled up the slope, smashing through the undead and into the phalanx shield wall. The drumbeats had a physical presence—one of the giant drummers was down the hill directly in front of Victor, and when it banged out that note, the shockwave rolled into him, knocking him back several steps. It felt almost like a wave of water had crashed over him.

The undead knocked down by the drummers’ magic sprang back to their feet, almost like they’d been invigorated. Unfortunately, the shockwave had the opposite effect on the soldiers of the Ninth—they were knocked flat, and when they struggled to their feet, they looked dazed and disoriented. The shield wall began to crumble, the invigorated undead rushing to take advantage of the downed soldiers.

Throughout the battle, Victor had worked to kill the frozen juggernauts, and only one remained, held fast by the mages’ repeated balls of icy water Energy. Victor had smashed the skulls of the other two and had been on his way to the final one when the drummers joined the fight. Seeing the effects of their sonic attacks, he made a split-second decision and used Titanic Leap to close the distance, aiming for the centermost skeletal drummer as it climbed over the corpses of its comrade zombies toward the phalanx.

He landed behind and to the left of the giant skeleton, marveled that he had to look up to see its head, and then brought the maul, whistling through the air in a two-handed, overhead blow, down on the creature’s spine. An ear-bleeding concussion resounded from the impact, and, to Victor’s shock, the skeleton stumbled forward, and the enormously heavy maul rebounded—he couldn’t see any damage to the bone. “No way!” he said, wondering if even Lifedrinker could cleave that bone. He felt like he’d hit the monstrosity hard enough to flatten an engine block. He might not have killed the skeleton, but he’d gotten its attention.

As it turned faster than it seemed it should be able to, the skeleton lashed out with its bone club, catching Victor in the ribs. The wyrm-scales ate most of the damage, disbursing the force, but he still stumbled, though hot rage began to replace his battle euphoria. Victor needed a better weapon, and he didn’t have time to hunt for Lifedrinker. Rather than dig around trying to find something else in his rings, he gripped the maul’s handle tight and cast Imbue Spirit, sending his most abundant, potent Energy source into the spell pattern—fear.

Victor felt a piece of himself detach and flow with the spell’s Energy into the maul. The weakness and lethargy from the loss was brief; he quickly adjusted. As the process completed, he saw the coppery, dense metal of the weapon darken. Purple-black swirls of Energy began to pulse along the haft, up to the hammer. Then they multiplied, magnifying each other, creating weird, smokey discs of Energy that radiated outward from the center of the hammerhead and toward the business ends of the hammer. Victor grinned, marveling at the sudden lightness of the weapon, the sudden vibrancy of it. Why hadn’t he ever tried imbuing Lifedrinker? “Because her spirit is already in there . . .” he reminded himself.

As the skeleton staggered toward him, Victor cast Energy Charge, extending the hammer like a battering ram, and when he smashed into the undead giant, an explosion of bone fragments sprayed outward, utterly flattening the undead horde around him in a twenty-foot radius. “Fuck yes!” Victor roared, lifted the hammer high, and leaped at the next bony giant. The drummer saw him coming, lifted its shield, and Victor’s enchanted maul smashed into it with a horrific bong that exploded over the battlefield, flattening a hundred or more shamblers and zombies—thankfully, the soundwave rolled away from Victor’s impact toward the west, and not the phalanx of soldiers.

The giant skeleton staggered at the blow, its shield vibrating wildly, pulling its arm back, giving Victor room for a perfect follow-up smash in the monster’s chest. The Energy-driven hammerhead sent a wave of purple-black force through the bones, shattering them, releasing whatever Energy or spirit or malignant power drove the skeleton onward. It collapsed in a heap, and Victor whirled, looking for his next target. Panic gripped his heart as he saw the other four drummers were already assaulting the lines, pushing the soldiers back, flinging them left and right with their polished bone cudgels.

He ran toward the closest one, trying to get close enough to activate Energy Charge again, and then he heard a new sound, the susurration of rapidly flapping wings. He looked up and saw that the Naghelli had finally made a return appearance led by none other than Kethelket. They split into three groups, flying toward the furthermost skeletal drummers, and Victor took the hint—they were leaving the center one to him. When he’d closed to twenty yards, Victor cast Energy Charge, but he didn’t lead with the maul; he didn’t want to kill a bunch of soldiers with the explosion.

Instead, he slammed his shoulder into the giant’s back, sending it flopping forward, crashing into the ground, and knocking back several shield bearers who’d been bravely trying to hold it at bay. Victor hoped they’d be all right, but in his mind, they should be—no one should be out on this battlefield if they couldn’t take getting knocked around a little. He stomped over to the skeleton, kicking it down as it struggled to rise, and brought the maul down, smashing the monster into the bloody dirt. The giant’s spine shattered, and Victor drove the fragments into the ground, pulverizing a handful of ribs and the creature’s sternum along the way.

The soldiers nearby cheered, but Victor roared, “Don’t stand around! Reform the line!” Then he scanned the field and saw the Naghelli were engaged with the skeletons, baiting them with rapid attacks, darting out of their reach, leading them away from the phalanx lines. Satisfied that the immediate threat was being dealt with, Victor turned to the last juggernaut and saw that it was starting to break free of its icy prison—the mages had been killed, drained of Energy, or too distracted by the collapse of the shield wall to maintain the spell. Victor tried to leap at the distant juggernaut but found his ability unresponsive.

As he struggled to figure out what was wrong, he ran toward the monster, smashing through the sparse lines of zombies and shamblers. He looked inward, wondering if the answer was at his Core, and found his hunch was correct—his Energies were dangerously low. He was about to lose his Berserk because his rage Core was nearly empty. His fear Core was holding steady at around ten percent; had he really sent so much of it into the maul? His glory-attuned Energy was less than half, and so was his inspiration-attuned Energy—he’d been using that to power his charges. He didn’t remember his Titanic Leap ability saying anything about Energy requirements, but something in his gut told him that was the problem; with his Energy so low, it wouldn’t work.

Growling and gripping the maul tightly, Victor determined to finish the juggernaut before his Berserk faded. He primed his pathways with inspiration-attuned Energy, and when he was within a dozen strides, he cast Energy Charge. He tore over the ground to the side of the juggernaut, holding the maul over his left shoulder, and he timed a decisive blow at the monster’s chest as he streaked past. It was a perfect hit, and the enchanted maul absolutely obliterated the juggernaut's bony plate armor. The shockwave rocked the battlefield as the enormous undead creature tumbled head over heels down the slope, devoid of the Energy that had earlier animated it.

Victor was protected by the weird magic of his charge, which was probably what drained his Energy so much each time he used it; part of the Energy went into the charge, but another, sometimes more significant, part went into creating a shell to protect him from the destructive forces. Regardless, he didn’t feel the concussion of his collision, but the straggling undead nearby did; they came apart in it, their rotting flesh and armor peeled off their bones. Their limbs were torn away, their necks and backs shattered, and their weapons and shields were ripped from grasping hands.

Victor felt his body contracting, felt the rage seep away from him, and he stood there, leaning on the maul’s handle, now long enough to come to his chin. He lifted it, found it was still easy to hoist with part of his spirit inhabiting it, and turned back to the formation of soldiers. Just as his eyes fell on them, horns sounded—the signal to charge—and the soldiers holding up the shield lines parted way, allowing the third, fourth, and fifth lines to rush forth, smashing into the remaining undead, beating them back. Victor looked to the Naghelli swarming around the last of the skeletal drummers and saw that they were winning, somehow slowly draining the Energy from the giant undead, weakening the magic binding the bones.

“Victor!” Valla’s distant voice made Victor jerk his head around, looking for her, wondering how he could have forgotten her for the entirety of the battle; not once had he worried about her safety or thought to seek her out. He finally laid eyes on her, waving Midnight high above her head, her other hand on Edeya’s shoulder. The young Ghelli was gore-splashed, but she wore a toothy grin, and Victor jogged toward them. Along the way, he broke the connection to his Impart Spirit spell and sent the now-mundane maul into his storage ring. Leaping corpses, weaving between the last of the skirmishes, he saw Edeya waving her spear above her head, trying to catch his eye.

“We did it! We won!” she cried as he drew near. Valla stood over her, fatigue clear in her expression, and Victor wondered how hard she’d had to battle to keep the young Ghelli safe. Hopefully, they’d both reap plenty of rewards for the effort. Thinking of rewards, Victor turned to scan the battlefield. Only a handful of small fights were yet taking place, and it was clear most of the Ninth had survived, though an undeniable number of corpses wearing the campaign uniform littered the field.

“Another hard-fought victory for the Ninth.” Valla followed his gaze, taking in the dead.

“Let’s hope. I don’t see any motes yet.”

“Combat persists.” Valla pointed to the last of the battles out on the slope. Victor was about to reply when, with a flutter of wings and shadows, Kethelket landed before them.

“We made an important discovery,” he announced, forgoing niceties. Victor saw fatigue in his eyes, and blood spatters dotted his pale flesh.

“Good work on those bone drummers.”

“Thank you. It costs a heavy toll in Energy, but we can weaken the death magic that binds their spirits, allowing us to damage their nigh-indestructible frames. Put that to the side, though, Lord. We must discuss the keep yonder.” He pointed south into the mist where Valla had seen the stone structure.

“What about it?”

“It housed many of the creatures your army slew here on this field. When they marched past, we hid in the trees that dot the slopes near the walls. Afterward, we went inside and slew a guardian beast in the courtyard—a great rotting mound that moved with evil intent. The System then announced that we could capture the ‘strategic location.’ When I tried to do so, resting my hand upon a strange floating stone at the center of the courtyard, it said that a greater force must be present. I think we should go there, with this army of yours, before the invaders can rally more forces to thwart you.”

Victor looked at Kethelket again, at his dark eyes and shimmering swords, at his glimmering armor and glowing wings; he seemed to know a lot about death magic and seemed highly competent. He hoped he could trust him because it was damn nice being able to rely on someone else to get shit done. He glanced at Valla, took in her slight shrug, and said, “Right. We’ll get marching as soon as I speak to Sarl. Edeya, contact Lam and the others. Give them an update.” He paused, looked at the gore-splashed Ghelli, and then at Valla and said, “Where’s Thistle?”

“He took a bad gash to his haunches, and we sent him off. He’s not meant to be surrounded by undead, Victor.” Valla had seen his frown and responded in kind, as though daring him to second-guess her.

“All right. Try to call him; you guys know how?”

“I know the whistle.” Edeya demonstrated, holding two fingers between her lips and making a trilling call, the same one Victor had learned from Chandri.

“Good. Keep doing that, but message the base first.” Victor turned toward the milling soldiers, and then he saw the golden motes starting to gather among the dead. “Sarl!” he called, walking toward the captain, getting ready for the stream of Energy that would no doubt throw everyone off task while it rewarded the victors. He’d only made it a few steps before his eyes were drawn to the thick purple motes growing out of a juggernaut corpse. He turned toward it, slapping a hand at Lifedrinker’s empty harness, and hurried to retrieve her.

“Hey! Good work! Nice fighting! Gather your brothers and sisters! We march soon!” he called out to the soldiers he ran past, and then he was before the giant corpse, and he saw Lifedrinker’s haft sticking out of its hunched, rotting shoulders. He reached forward, grabbed hold of her, and, just as he pulled her gore-covered axe head free, a torrent of Energy smashed into him.

***Congratulations! You have achieved level 53 Battlemaster, gained 10 strength, 9 vitality, 4 agility, 4 dexterity, 3 will, and 3 intelligence.***

When the euphoria faded, and he fell back to the ground, Victor couldn’t fight the grin on his face or hold back his shout, “Hell yes!” He felt glorious, full of Energy, and stronger than ever. He looked at Lifedrinker and saw that she’d changed a little, too. Her blade was slightly bigger, her handle a bit thicker and longer, and more than that, he knew she was heavier. Even though she was denser, Victor had no trouble swinging her around, thanks to her spirit and the way she seemed to aid him with her movements. She ripped the air with deadly whooshes as he grinned, cleaving her left and right. “You’re feeling good too, huh, chica?”

I learned much from the dark Energy I drank from the bone-clad one we split. I grow eager to taste more of his kind; my edge itches to part their bones.

“Well, I’m sorry I didn’t get to kill all these assholes with you. I wonder if you’d like to try something sometime.”

Try something?

“How would you feel about me putting a bit of my spirit in there with you?”

I . . . I think I’d like that, Victor. I think I’d like that very much.

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