Demonic Magician

The human mind was a fascinating thing. Even now, standing atop a house and watching an impossibly giant zombie rise from the ground, I didn’t feel any less sane. Maybe it was the gradual changes. A world that was similar to mine but with a video game slant. An elven princess akin to classic pop culture. Talking bear. Demonic powers. Eldritch beings. War against a cult fighting for control over this world. Love.

Taken at face value, this was as horrifying as it got.

Even the head of this corpse was thirty or so feet tall. I could sense the rest of my Party was frozen in indecision. The sheer size. It was unbelievable in a way I thought was amusing. My disbelief had been suspended long ago, to a degree that I’d accept anything. Unflappable to a detrimental degree.

A smile across my lips as the face of the undead rose up to my level. Two large orbs of yellow bore down on me like twin moons. The stench of decay washed over me as a wide mouth opened - large enough to take a chunk from this house, let alone consume me.

As more of its body displaced cracked stone and thick dirt, steam ran from the gray-green skin of its torso. The sanctified ground burning at him but the damage paling in total compared to the whole.

The reason for my grin was twofold.

I knew where the necromancer was. A simple matter of allowing the power surging my arm a place to want to be, like a divining rod. Inside the skull of the giant zombie. Piloting it like a macabre robotic suit, only made from a corpse way too large to be anything natural.

The second reason was another truth I somehow knew, as if being in close proximity to another Guardian enabled shared knowledge to be wedged into my mental bookshelf.

Whoever kills a Guardian receives their powers.

Not really here or there. I was killing him, whatever happened. If one of the Party got the powers, then it might be more efficient to divide up the powers - but if I lucked into them, then so be it.

[Max: Necro inside the skull.]

No sooner as I had sent the message, there was a burst of power as Ren shot the zombie with a radiant bullet. A handful of decaying flesh dropped down to splatter on the ruined outpost, and the eyes of the monster turned to where she had shot from.

It wouldn’t find her. An odd role for the pair - the elf had been sent to the outside walls of the outpost, riding atop Wolf. A last-minute change of plans once we saw what our audience would be. Given her shots had more downtime than when using a bow, she could fire and then they’d arc around the outpost, keeping to the blind spot of our biggest fan.

The large undead instead turned focus back to me, a giant hand swinging through the air intending to knock me into next week. I clapped my hands.

From a different rooftop, I watched the building I had been standing on burst into loose tiles and collapsing wooden supports. From within the wreckage, my demonic cannon fired, the angle now slightly off - but my Spear of Luck imbued with radiant energy slammed into the corpse.

Rather than take a disliking to the damage wrought, the zombie instead burst into translucent black flame. An effect that gave it… incredible agility. Rather than the obscenely large corpse being lethargic, it had now become spritely - a fist now swinging down toward me as it twisted in place.

A trio of cards flung from me, twisting and gouging marks down the arm as it cratered down onto me. Cooldowns were rather unfair sometimes. My body was pulverized, shattering as it became sandwiched between giant fist and collection of obliterated wood.

My real body exited a nearby alleyway. Couldn’t dazzle the monster, which was unreasonable. Lucky for me, the presence had the same effect on my Power meter as demons seemed to - although at a slower rate; it was only a matter of time. No Dazzles, but there was a debuff from an idol Tanya had left amongst the rubble.

Hand out, I put the extended version of on the zombie. A sniper shot blew another chunk of flesh from the head that was turning down to see me - Ren’s debuff skill adding an icon.

A long leg extended out of the crater now opened up in the center of the outpost, the arm still within the smashed building helped push the Monster all the way to be standing up outside of the confines of the underground place it had… grown?

Easily two-hundred feet tall now. My circling cards hacking away at a lower leg did nothing to move the needle. As their hand raised, they took a handful of loose tiles from the debris up with them.

My right eye twitched as the giant lashed around, sending the shards in a spray to clatter in an arc just beyond the walls. No doubt at my Party. I trusted that they were safe and had dealt with it in a suitable fashion. The crack of Ren’s rifle told me that I was correct.

Atop one of the houses, two Imps began casting their fireballs. I drew the attention of the zombie by flickering my cards in front of his face. A large foot lashed out at me, drawing up loosed rocks from the ground. I spun away, my Card Fan preventing my bones from breaking, but the force still sending me into a wall. Air knocked out of my lungs, I watched as a large fist drew back into the sky.

He froze in a figurative sense, as my Shuffle switched to a literal Stun. A brief thing that he recovered from in barely two seconds - but it gave me time to move. I darted down the alleyway, circling in between buildings to be out of sight. My mundane deck followed me around like a cloud, obscuring some of my movements.

The building I had just passed exploded, the massive foot of the zombie kicking the top floor and roof clear out of the outpost. I slid across slick cobblestone in time to see the twin fireballs strike the zombie, the twitch of pain following up by a wide swing of his fist. I’d already sent them back to Hell. Instead of Imp, the zombie caught a handful of lanterns next to a campfire Quinn had set up in the loft of the building.

As he drew back a hand now alight, a radiant sheen flooded over his body. Cannon fired, pelting the zombie with a sackful of pebbles I had gathered. Pulses of pain ran through the giant as chunks of rotten flesh burst away from the skeleton beneath. My cloud of cards zipped towards him, one of them burning bright red as I had hit the lucky critical.

Dipped my health into it before it struck, regaining my charge of . It exploded just as the rest of my basic cards turned to ash against the Monster. Ren’s ability faded away to reveal we had shredded that leg almost completely. A rifle shot struck it, chipping the bone.

Any small celebration was short-lived, as the necromancer had clearly had enough of us. Hand slammed down into the ground, crushing the stables, and then he dragged it in an arc - the flaming fist destroying building after building in an attempt to completely level the place.

Healing potion to my lips, I had maybe eight seconds before I’d be smashed on the warpath. I looked at my hands to see that they were now in white gloves. We were getting closer.

And speaking of…

A rush of air, and I was standing on the head of the zombie. Footing was uncomfortably squishy beneath my boots. With narrows eyes, I could see that Ren and Wolf were bloodied, but still moving. If only we had Quinn’s boomerang again, I could get through this thick skull. There didn’t seem to be a handy hatch.

Some irony not missed in the fact that I had to break a skull to win. Should be a cinch.

Left arm out, I used the [Scroll of Fire Wall], followed by [Scroll of Air Gust]. The shimmering green waves of air fanned the flames to spread across the head, as I jettisoned anything flammable from my Inventory. Clothing, straw and hay, parts of wood - and a couple of lanterns.

Missed my chance to switch back with my hell-bird, and I wasn’t keen on finding out if worked on fall damage.

Actually, yes I was.

Just like much of my debris, I slid off the front of the raising zombie’s head. A smile on my face as I dropped past his view. [Scroll of Water Spray] covering his dry eyes in fresh dampness - how kind of me.

With a whistle that rushed by my ear, a rifle shot struck the zombie in the eye - this one empowered with ice damage. Wet from my attack, they both froze solid. I fell and ran my mundane deck around me, a fool’s errand - but it softened my fall enough to land on something soft.

“Back on stage, Max.” Quinn placed me down on the ground, and with a nod, he left. Quite the catch, I’d have to admit.

“Imbecile,” a loud voice rang out. “How are you this relentless?”

I grinned as purple arcs of electricity ran around my body. “Time is running out, why don’t you leave your toy and…” My mouth opened and closed, but few words came out.

Black dots flickered in my vision as I looked down and pulled the arrow from my neck. In the blurry distance, a group of figures. Reinforcements maybe? Or people who were in the hole? How rude.

I looked up to see the fist above me, increasing in size.

“Now perish!”

My body became pulp, and the real me walked away with another potion already halfway down my throat. Pretty sure that was one of my one-liners. Was I cliche? Well, more than usual? The added Players were a complication to the plan… yet also a boon. I tilted my head from side to side, and then was gone.

Appeared outside the outer wall, to find all four of my Party there.

“Tough crowd,” Ren said, hopping down from the bear. Her shirt on the right side was split and residual blood from a wound that had healed covered the area. Bruising on her head, too.

“I’ve had worse.” I shrugged and smiled. “Things are going to get dicey. More Players and the big guy isn’t dropping.”

“Plan?” Tanya asked.

“Why, we’re going to put on a good show, of course.” I looked up at the zombie, who was trying to use what remained of the fire to thaw out his eyes. “I have a plan, but I don’t know if it’s a good one.”

Ren frowned. “It’s not going off on your own and getting nearly killed, is it?”

“Oh, no.” I shook my head. “I’ll be taking you along with me.”

Not really used to fighting titans of necromancy, they were all willing to give my plan a try. Worst that could happen is that we’d all die.

And so, as Tyler regained sight in his giant, and Shuffle gave him five percent less Intelligence for a bit, he turned to see us running across the open field where he had blown up all his corpses.

The bear with two figures atop and two flanking either side of him. He fancied his chances of catching us up - what with those long legs of his.

So, as Ren and I sat huddled up against a shadowed portion of the outside wall, we watched the corpse stomp past us. Our hastily constructed faux-selves seemed to do the job, and Wolf did well not to jostle them off of his back.

Not long after we were well behind the giant, we heard the murmurs of talking and thuds of boots against stone. The interloping members of the audience who did not have tickets to the opening.

I grinned and gave Ren a nod.

“Let’s Dazzle the shit out of these motherfuckers,” she whispered.