Chapter 17: The Lord of Skulls
On his knees, his forehead resting against his staff, Dal felt sensations he'd never before experienced: a mingling of pleasure and pain, of death and darkness. There was something strangely freeing about all of this.
It was a shame that it would all have to come to an end fairly soon.
Time Remaining: 4 minutes, 11 seconds
As Dal reached inside of himself and dug out the magical power within, he began to breathe more heavily. He could actually feel how much effort conjuring the Lord of Skulls was going to require. Yet while it might drain him, it would all be worth it, as it would bring about a swift, rapid death to the demon—and anyone else who opposed him, should such people exist.
I feel better than I've ever felt.
All his life, Dal had been on the run; all his life, he'd feared death. But there would be no running anymore. He was a Necromancer. Death was his friend. What had he been afraid of for so long? Death held no terror for the man who commanded it.
And so, with that thought, he opened his eyes as sweat dripped down his face. He realized he was now radiating a dark, smoke-like aura, and so too was his staff as he continued to feed more and more of his energy into the summoning spell. But with the process this far along, he realized he no longer needed to devote his absolute concentration to the task. Essentially, all he needed to do now was let his energy drain into the spell.
Thus, he set his eyes on his minions, watching how they fared.
At the moment, his fur-covered fiend was viciously snapping and nipping at the demon, which was attempting to get back to its feet. But it soon found itself flat on its back as the fiend tackled and got on top of it, switching off between a combination of angry face punches that knocked out one of the demon's teeth and the occasional bite. As the demon struggled on the ground with the bloodied fiend, which it had stabbed more than twenty times through the chest with its sword, the skeletons and three shambling zombies were drawing near.
As though aware of the peril it now faced, the demon, in a display of survival instinct, released a desperate screech and then flipped its entire body backwards into a roll, throwing the fiend off itself while continuing with the motion in order to spring itself back up onto its feet. The fiend then crashed into an apple cart with enough force to completely destroy it; a loud crack followed, and then apples spilled all over onto the main road. But the fiend, undeterred, scrambled up, got on all fours, and took off running towards the demon.
This, it seemed, was a mistake.
With another loud, screeching hiss, the demon timed its next attack, pausing until just the right moment before striking, which in this case was an instant before the fiend tackled it once again. Showing that it could be patient, the demon simply stood its ground, unmoving. Then, at the last possible second, it jumped to the side while simultaneously ripping its blade from left to right, delivering a cut that contained enough power to fully decapitate the fiend's head.
Shockingly, the fiend continued to run in a straight line for nearly another two hundred feet before it eventually collapsed and skidded to a halt next to a stranded horse-drawn carriage, whose owners were still inside and began screaming. And as the headless fiend bled out onto the street, the demon stared directly at Dal, a mixture of fear and anger in those hateful, goat-like eyes.
"You're surrounded," Dal said to it as he continued to put more and more energy into his summoning spell.
Though it had killed Dal's fiend, the two sword-armed skeletons and the three zombies now had it completely entrapped. The demon flapped its wings to try to fly above Dal's conjured minions, but two of the zombies were able to reach out and grab its feet, with each zombie holding a single foot with both hands.
Working together, the two zombies then spun around and made a downward rowing gesture with their arms, which resulted in slamming the demon headfirst onto the concrete. But the demon suffered very little damage, and all that this seemed to do was anger it—anger that it then vented on the two skeletons, which were approaching as though to stab it while it was on the ground.
Flipping over from its belly to its back, the demon unleashed a vengeful, frantic swipe of its clawed hand, one that struck an approaching skeleton so hard that the skeleton's entire body shattered immediately into a pile of bones upon impact, its sword dropping uselessly to the ground.
Then the demon used its opposite, sword-bearing hand to bash the second skeleton with even more force; not only did this one also shatter, but several bones were knocked so far away that one broke through the bedroom window of a two-story house just off the main road.
"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" the demon screeched as it flapped its wings to propel itself towards the three zombies. Now, it swung its blade wildly—with a dizzying speed that seemed built upon raw aggression and hatred. And while the zombies might have been very strong, physically speaking, they were incredibly slow and could do little more than endure what the demon unleashed.
One strike after the next, the demon's blade severed limbs, fingers, toes, and three decayed heads. It reduced all three zombies to scraps and pieces while spraying green, chunky blood all over the road. Yet, unlike everything else that the demon had killed this morning, the individual pieces of the various zombies continued to twitch, rattle, and move, which blurred the line between living and dead. Regardless, a pile of scraps was of no threat to a demon, and so obviously, it once more turned its sights on Dal.
The demon approached.
"Protect Dal until he can summon!" Prince Alain Erickson shouted as he dashed in front of Dal, his weapon glowing with holy light as he raised it and assumed a fighting stance with his left foot in front of his right. He held the weapon near his ear in both hands with the sword pointed straight up. It was a rather aggressive posture. Both his knees were bent, clearly readying him to spring forward if necessary. Rethi joined him, her staff gripped tightly as she occupied the space to his left. Lord Ashmere also ran over, the Dragon Knight standing to the prince's right.
Finally, Denin rushed to join the prince, and once there, he pressed his scepter against his chest for a moment and then extended it in the direction of the demon. The ruby embedded into the tip began to glow a bright red, and then, following a brief flash, a round, dome-shaped, and golden barrier made of a thin, visible light enclosed all five of them inside—well, six if you counted Ravenia.
"I doubt that'll hold for long," the familiar said, following her words with a squawk. "A shame you're not a High-Priest. A tier-4 Holy Battle Class would've been perfect against a demon."
"We'll just have to make do," he said with an all-too-innocent smile. He even reached behind himself with his free hand and petted the top of Ravenia's head, which she shockingly not only allowed, but rewarded with a click and a whistle, which Dal took to be approval.
Denin's expression turned serious as the rage-filled demon began swinging its sword and clawed hand over and over at the barrier, causing it to flicker while perspiration leaked from Denin's forehead. Several beads of sweat also dripped down from his blond-colored hair, and he gritted his teeth as though straining with the effort of keeping the barrier erected.
"I'm not at full strength," he said. "I'm still exhausted from before."
"We all are," the prince replied. "But we must hold out!"
Almost there, Dal thought, once again closing his eyes, but only for a few seconds, and only to send a prayer to the King of Darkness.
The demon, screeching with each powerful, relentless strike, at last caused the barrier to shatter, and despite being made of light, it actually resembled glass as it broke apart, sending shards of light in every direction; these shards then fell to the ground but vanished upon hitting it.
"My prince!" Denin cried as the demon, no longer held back, went straight for him, practically pouncing on the young man. The demon moved so fast that not even Lord Ashmere could hurry quickly enough to intercept the vile creature, which was making right for him.
But it was now too late.
In the back of Dal's mind, like a sudden burst of awareness, he realized that the time had come. He could feel it. And he had paid a price for it, too. He, like the prince and his cohorts, was now also drenched in his own sweat, though it was nearly impossible to see on his all-black attire. Thus, using his own staff for support, he groaned as he picked himself back up into a standing position. And then, raising his staff high above his head, he slammed it back down onto the pavement—calling forth his minion.
With a palpable sense of urgency, the demon, but a moment from striking the prince, stopped right in its tracks and then dashed backwards and away.
From out of nowhere, a blue-and-white pentagram contained within a circle appeared on the road—right in between the prince and the demon, and upon its appearance, smoke in the same shape as the circle began to rise up and into the air along with something else—something that came from within the circle, something that Dal doubted any of them had ever seen before or would ever see again. And unlike the way in which his other minions had appeared, the creature that now emerged did so without disturbing or breaking the ground. No, it seemed to rise up through it as though phasing up from the pentagram itself.
And God below, this thing was huge.
Standing nearly ten feet tall in height, and with a horrific, monstrous visage that was somehow even worse than the demon's, there was now a creature that looked like a combination of a zombie and a skeleton if such creatures could be brought to their absolute most unpleasant states.
Incredible, he thought.
Its skull was made of pure bone, but it had eyes as opposed to empty sockets—milky white eyes that were blank rather than hateful like the demon's. Yet its mouth…its mouth was by far its most terrifying aspect, for its jaw was opened wide such that the top of its mouth was more than a foot away from the bottom, and the top and bottom were connected by needle-like, wire-shaped teeth, and they looked like the only things that were stitching its head together in one piece. They also wiggled like worms, constantly moving.
With a clang, the Lord of Skulls banged a metallic axe in its right hand against a metal shield in its left. This tall, powerfully built creature was also covered from head to toe in a suit of iron armor, and Dal, having become so enchanted by the sight of it, forgot that he actually needed to command it in order for it to do anything.
"Kill the demon," he said, backing up his words with an activation of his Command Minion skill.
The Lord of Skulls offered no audible reply; in fact, it made no discernible sound whatsoever. It simply began to move—in the direction of the demon.