Great Undeath

“You think this will stop me?!” Dilara disintegrated several of Anna’s former students, punching large holes into each that collapsed them into unmoving piles of flesh and fungus.

The duchess was immediately answered as another massive braided tentacle pushed up from along the edge of the plaza.

“Anna, together!” Dilara shouted over her shoulder.

Green, purple, and silver magic all struck the base of the tentacle in unison.

The massive limb shuddered and fell backwards, collapsing a former inn along the plaza’s outer perimeter.

“Sleep tight!” the stylus snarked.

“I. AM. INFINITE!” the wind boomed.

The earth shook beneath their feet, causing the group to scatter as the next enormous tentacle pushed up from the earth.

“We can’t keep repeating this!” Anna yelled.

Clara sent a series of pastel knives at the base of the tentacle. They bounced off harmlessly, blinking out of existence.

The tentacle swung for Clara in a massive overhead chop.

A gust of emerald green wind blew Clara out of the way.

The tentacle slapped the ground hard, shaking it.

Another tentacle pushed up from the earth. It swung around for Dilara. She deftly leapt aside with a jet of silver air.

The tentacle struck multiple armored zombies instead, hurling them like toy soldiers across the plaza.

The first tentacle turned its interest from Clara to Dilara. It chopped down at the duchess.

A pastel yellow disk popped up, shattering on impact, but deflecting the swing enough that the tentacle slapped the ground harmlessly near Dilara’s position.

A third tentacle rose forth from the earth.

“Get of out of here!” Dilara yelled to Clara.

Clara started running for the carriage, grabbing Anna’s arm along the way. “You have satisfied your sentence!” she yelled.

Anna shook Clara off. “I’m not leaving Dilara!”

“This is hopeless!”

The wind laughed with pleasure.

All three tentacles turned on Dilara.

“I. SHALL. SAVOR. THIS.”

The tentacles started swinging in tandem for the duchess.

Dilara focused entirely on evasion.

Emerald shields popped up to block what she couldn’t avoid.

“She won’t last long!” Anna cried out.

“We have enough time to escape! Regroup! Try again!” Clara reasoned.

“No, no more summons. No more tries. We end this today!”

“How?!”

“I-I don’t know!”

The wind continued to laugh heartily.

Anna looked at the noblewoman near her feet. She fell to her knees. “I am sorry I don’t remember you,” she pleaded. “But I need your help again. I don’t know what to do. Can you tell me anything? Anything at all to make this not a terrible ending?!”

Anna wrote in oil on her palm.

The purple and black letters left her skin, dancing in the laughing wind, before swirling down around the cloaked face of the fallen noblewoman.

“Anna.” The feminine voice was soft and gentle.

“Yes?”

“Be at peace. You did your best,” she soothed.

“No, I need to stop it! Did we learn anything?!”

“You must strike the heart.”

“What heart?”

“Nearby.”

Anna looked up. Steam billowed from the churchyard.

In the foreground, Dilara continued to dance about erratically, using one gout of wind after another to avoid being smashed flat. Green shields now only partially formed, crumbling easily.

“Clara, get your quill to Dilara.”

Clara looked to the carriage, then to Dilara. “I cannot do both.”

“You have to choose,” Anna replied softly. “You can make it back to Clayton, I know you can.”

She shook her head solemnly, tears forming. “I am not leaving without you, Anna d’Hachimi.”

“Then I ask you, dear friend, get that quill to the duchess.”

Clara nodded.

The humble baker sprinted off.

“You consigned her to death,” the stylus said.

“Can you at least say something helpful for once?” Anna snapped angrily.

“Magic cannot defeat it.”

“Then how can we possibly?”

“Strike the heart,” the noblewoman repeated.

“I did already! It will simply regenerate!” the stylus barked. “It is hopeless!”

Clara rushed towards Dilara, quill held high overhead. “I have ink!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

A gust of faltering green wind lifted it from Clara’s fingers.

The wind carried the quill part way to Dilara, until a tentacle came crashing down on it.

Helpless, Clara turned for the nearest cover, rushing towards one of the skeletalized trees.

The tentacle that crushed the quill now sought out Clara.

It blocked out the sun as it rose up like a cobra, aiming for the tree.

Seeing it, Clara froze in place, lifting her forearm to her eyes. “I have run the race.”

The tentacle lashed out.

Death magic severed it midsection, sending the third meant for Clara sailing off across the plaza.

Anna panted with anger, palm outstretched.

One of two tentacles still bullying Dilara turned its attention on Anna.

Whipping around, it coiled about one of the skeletal trees and ripped it free, flicking it at her in one quick, fluid motion.

Anna’s eyes went wide as the tree flew at her. She tried to leap aside but it struck her directly, throwing her to the ground and pinning her underneath.

She coughed, the wind knocked out of her, instantly tasting blood.

Anna squirmed, trying to get free. She was pinned.

She started sobbing, coughing blood again. Sorrow swept over her like a dark pall.

Anna wasn’t sure which was worse. Dying again or failing again.

She looked at the stylus still clenched in her hand. “Well, this is it.”

She violently coughed blood onto it.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” a female dispatcher asked calmly from afar.

A voice answered but in her fading consciousness it was distant and garbled.

“EMS is on its way. Keep her awake.”

Clara raced to Anna’s side, falling onto her knees, wincing from the pain but ignoring it.

“Anna! Anna!”

Anna faded slowly in and out of consciousness. “Have to… stay awake,” she murmured.

“Then stay awake, you fool,” Clara laughed sheepishly, shaking Anna’s shoulder, tears streaming.

“Apply pressure to help stop the bleeding,” dispatch said.

“Apply pressure. Bleeding,” Anna echoed softly, fighting the urge to sleep.

Clara looked around, horrified. “There is blood everywhere! I do not know where to press!”

A pair of bloody periwinkle toned hands took Clara’s hand, directing it to Anna’s side. “Press here,” the stylus said.

Clara looked up. The apparition stood over her, casting a shadow.

“Forelorn, we fight on,” the spirit said with determination. Stooping, he extended his fingers for the stylus still held in Anna’s hand.

His bloody slender fingers touched the length of the tool, no longer ethereal.

“I’ll be taking this now.”

Anna smiled softly, releasing her grip.

Weapon in hand, the apparition levitated, waving the stylus in large letters, writing in the air with luminescent dust, his face grim.

Thunder boomed as black lighting forked across the plaza, striking the tentacle that had hurled the tree. The tentacle spasmed violently as one billion volts of electricity ran through it. Internal moisture vaporized, causing the limb to bloat before it tore open all over, releasing hot gases.

It collapsed.

Dilara turned, wide eyed, looking up at the levitating semi-material apparition. “Anna’s soul?!”

“Works for me!” the stylus shouted.

The skies darkened suddenly as thunderheads rolled in, boiling kinetic rage and violence.

Rain mixed with hail started falling as the skies boomed.

A black bolt of lighting came down from the heavens, striking the last tentacle. It spasmed and thrashed, then dropped dead.

The hail rapidly increased in size, becoming baseballs that pelted the zombies within the plaza, driving them away from Anna and Clara.

Anna could hear a siren in the distance.

“Stay awake, stay awake,” Clara chanted, pressing her red soaked hand tightly against Anna’s side.

Dilara shook her quill in hand and tossed it aside. She reached into the pall and pulled out her reserve. “Last one!” she called up.

“Let’s make it grandiose then!” the stylus laughed manically.

Dilara rose from the ground on a silver levitating disk to join him, the gauzed hand gripping at her shoulder, quill gone, spent. The side of her neck was bleeding, scratched open and raw in multiple places. Her left hand trailed blood.

“You look terrible,” the stylus toned.

“You look pretty good.” She smiled coyly. “Pretty.”

“Shut up.”

Dilara shook the quill she had in hand, gauging the reserve.

“Not much.”

“Let’s go out blazing then.”