Content Warnings

Torture (sort of)
Vomiting
Insects in orifices

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The saint crushed the demon’s throat in a grip of burning iron, howling wild laughter into her face; Lykke could not escape, kicking and flailing, screaming and screeching, pinned like a moth with a nail through her abdomen. Her wings of gore lay broken upon the ground. Her aurora of bloated white flies formed a carpet of tiny corpses, like greasy ashen snow settled upon the grey metal and the crimson blood and the scattered bodies of Lykke’s former hounds.

Elpida — monster, cannibal, revenant predator, a true devil of the corpse-city, clothed in the false armour of righteousness — held Lykke at bay with nothing more divine than a single bare fist.

Eseld wanted to screw her eyes shut and deny what she saw, but she was not permitted even that slender mercy.

She remained paralysed, her body frozen, her eyes wide.

Lykke tried to hit Elpida in the face, now that Elpida’s helmet had been knocked aside — an open-palmed slap, poorly aimed, fingernails hooked to rake across the saint’s exposed flesh. Elpida caught the strike on the vambrace of her free arm, smashing Lykke’s hand aside with a sharp crack of broken bones. Lykke screamed in fresh pain and manic alarm, her remaining eye wide with terror and running with blood-streaked tears.

Elpida howled again. “Never learned to fight without an advantage, did you?!”

Lykke squealed, choking on her compressed windpipe, both hands flailing, trying to slap at Elpida’s face and head. One bloody hand landed true upon Elpida’s skull, then tightened and gripped a fistful of white hair. Lykke yanked, ripping snowy strands from Elpida’s scalp.

Elpida reared backward — then jerked forward, smashing her forehead into Lykke’s face. The demon’s nose exploded in a fountain-arc of blood, choking her cries beneath clotted gurgles and wet splutters.

The force of the blow ripped Lykke free from Elpida’s grasp, but the saint’s fist was stronger than Lykke’s demonic flesh; Lykke’s throat tore open, pale skin ripping and parting with the sound of rending meat. A chunk of Lykke’s body came away in Elpida’s naked fist.

Lykke reeled back, staggering for balance on her white talons, putting distance between herself and Elpida. She raised both hands to ward off the saint. A waterfall of blood emptied from her open throat, cascading down the front of her ruined white sundress, bubbling up through her lips and glazing her chin with sticky crimson fluid. Her wounds oozed and spluttered as she heaved for breath, one eye bulging, jaw hanging open. The ruptured flesh of her throat did not raise or reknit or renew. Her wings stayed broken. Her flies did not stir.

“What—” Lykke gurgled, then spat a gobbet of wet, red, quivering tissue from her blood-glazed lips. “What did you— do to me?”

Elpida raised the bloody chunk of Lykke’s throat to her teeth, then took a bite. She tore into the raw meat with a sideways flick of her head, then chewed with an open-mouthed grin, crimson droplets running down her copper-brown chin.

“It’s not the size of your network access that matters,” Elpida said through a mouthful of meat. “It’s how you use it, babe.”

Shilu still stood a few feet to Elpida’s rear, arm-blades raised, positioned for her own aborted confrontation with Lykke. She said: “Zombie, that is Necromancer flesh. That—”

“You stay the fuck out of this, you oversized cheese grater,” said Elpida. She did not look away from Lykke. “Unless you want the same special treatment? Want me to bounce your stupid metal head off the floor a few times until you find your marbles? This is between me and this bitch cake here. Shut the fuck up and wait your turn.”

“Understood,” said Shilu.

Lykke stared down at herself, at the terrible wounds all over her body, the bullet holes and burn marks upon dress and her skin, the massive blown-out portions of her chest and her hips. Her gore-wrought wings twitched and jerked, as if trying to rise on shattered bones. She kept gasping — sharp, hard, tight little hitches of breath. She shook all over. Tears ran in a bloody track from her one remaining eyeball.

“W-what—” she croaked. “What is— what is this … this sensation? N-no, no … ”

Elpida crammed the rest of Lykke’s stolen throat-meat into her mouth, chewing and swallowing with obvious relish. She licked her middle finger with a loud, wet pop.

“Pain,” Elpida said, grinning a wide and blood-soaked smile. “Pretty cool, huh? Not the full load, sadly. I can’t bring you all the way down to our level, but I can jam your own nerves open. Stuck a few other tricks in there too, screwed up your polymorphics and your cellular control and your ambient nano-draw. And hey, looks like you aren’t lofty enough in this hierarchy of mega-bullshit to override your own settings.”

Lykke tried to laugh. The sound emerged as a gurgle of choking pain. “And— if I r-release you z-zombies, you’ll l-lift this—”

“Nah,” Elpida grunted. “If you want the pain to end, you gotta fuck off. Fuck all the way off and suck a log of shit out of your own arse. Pretty sure you can twist that way now, what with no spine or guts or anything. Go on, get bending, girl. Pucker up for some anal self-suck.”

Lykke’s face blossomed with rage. “You— I can still f-finish you o-off. P-pain is n-nothing, you filthy bag of flesh and—”

Elpida reached down and unclasped the coilgun support rig from around her waist. She wriggled out of the backpack and lowered it to the floor, then straightened up again and rolled her shoulders.

Lykke narrowed her eye. “What are y-you doing— zombie?”

Elpida raised her fists — right one naked, left still clad in a gauntlet of metal and ceramic. “Come at me then, bitch tits.”

Lykke blinked, then gurgled: “W-what?”

“You and me,” Elpida said. “One on one. No tricks, no nanomachine crap, no shape shifting, no back up. Isn’t that what you wanted? You wanted to dance, right? Well, cunt-face, I’ve got my fuckin’ dancing shoes laced nice and tight to go up your arse. Let’s rock.”

Lykke gulped down three great lungfuls of air. The demon was hyperventilating in panic, losing control of her emotions.

She screamed, raised both hands, and flew at the saint.

Elpida’s right fist crashed into Lykke’s face. Lykke’s head snapped back, blood arcing into the air from her broken nose. Elpida followed with a second punch from her gauntleted left hand, smashing into Lykke’s jaw with a compound crack-a-crack of shattering bone. Lykke reeled backward, hands pressed to her face, sobbing and spluttering and heaving for breath. Elpida leapt forward, grabbed a fistful of Lykke’s hair, and dragged her upright. The demon’s hands came away from her face, flailing at Elpida’s armour, revealing a mask of split flesh and flowing blood and one terrified eyeball. Elpida ignored the flailing slaps and punched Lykke in the face twice more, breaking her jaw again, splitting her lips, cracking her eye sockets, fracturing her skull. Elpida slammed an armoured knee into whatever was left of Lykke’s guts. Lykke doubled up, squealing and wailing. Elpida grabbed her by the back of the neck and yanked her upright a second time, then punched her in the face again, and again, and again, and again, right arm pistoning back and forth.

“You wanted to dance with Elps!?” Elpida shouted. “Too fucking bad, bitch! You got me instead!”

Eseld realised the implications of what she was hearing, even through the spectacle of the demon’s fall from darkly divine grace.

There was more than one Elpida.

The first was the Elpida who had rescued her, who had strode into the tomb under fire, who led her companions from the fore; that Elpida was perhaps worthy of sainthood. That Elpida spoke with calm confidence, showed respect for her soldiers, and compassion for the ones she had rescued. That Elpida was a shining beacon, beyond anything Eseld had imagined in all her fifty seven deaths, or even before, in her true life.

The second was this Elpida, who revelled in cruelty, and held the power to banish a demon.

With an almighty kick and a desperate backward shove, Lykke managed to tear free from Elpida’s grasp. She staggered away, face reduced to pulped meat and shattered bone, running with a waterfall of blood, hacking and wheezing and whining and heaving. Her broken wings dragged after her, brushing aside the carpet of dead flies.

“I—” she coughed and gurgled, spitting a spray of blood. “I hate you! You were supposed to be mine!”

Elpida’s face ripped into a blood-soaked grin. She opened her mouth and howled a war-cry, then leapt at Lykke. The demon could not escape, she was too slow now, too wounded, in too much pain. Elpida’s gauntleted fist smashed her face aside, driving her back, once, twice, three times.

After more punishment than any human or zombie could have endured, Lykke gave up.

Her body deliquesced instantly, turning into a thin blue soup. Elpida’s final punch passed through empty air. The pale blue mass slapped to the floor and soaked through the grey metal in the blink of an eye. The corpse-carpet of white flies did not follow, lying dead upon the floor and the corpses of the fallen zombies, little insect bodies fouled in the pools of blood.

Silence settled over the gravekeeper’s chamber, backed by the roaring static fury of the hurricane beyond the tomb’s walls.

Lykke’s paralysis broke. Zombies jerked back into animation.

“Fucking hell!” Kagami shouted, still cradled in Hafina’s arms, struggling to sit upright. Her lips were black with tarry blood and her eyes were shot through with crimson veins. Her coat and lap were littered with white flies; she raked the tiny bodies out of her hair with shaking hands. “Fuck that! Fuck all of that! Fuck! Fuck!”

The little berserker — Ilyusha — shook herself like a dog, throwing down her ballistic shield and spitting out a mouthful of dead flies. Atyle merely inhaled deeply, filling her lungs before she chewed and swallowed; she stuck a finger into her mouth and pulled out a single half-crushed fly, bringing it upward to examine the tiny corpse with her peat-green bionic eye. Serin started laughing — a deep and raspy metallic sound behind her half-mask, even as she swung her boxy weapon up to cover Shilu; flies fell from the inside of her robes, as if shaken free from secret folds inside her body. Only Hafina seemed mostly unaffected, doing her best to cradle Kagami and stop her from trying to rise to her feet.

Cyneswith wept and shuddered in Eseld’s arms. Eseld retched out a mouthful of dead flies, snorting them from her nose and shaking them from her russet hair. She cringed at the feeling of the dead insects on her skin and inside her mouth.

On the other side of the gravekeeper’s chamber, Sky drew in a deep, rasping breath, then began to hack and cough and convulse. She was surrounded by the shattered pieces of her armour and her broken gun-rig. Her eyes stayed shut. Thick blood bubbled up out of her mouth, carrying a wave of dead flies upon a crimson torrent.

Elpida straightened up. Her right fist was grazed and bruised; her mouth and lips were streaked with blood; a clump of her perfect white hair was tangled and matted from Lykke’s grip.

Kagami shouted: “You did not know that would work! Commander, don’t you dare pretend otherwise! That was a fucking gamble and I hated every second of it!”

Elpida turned around. Her purple eyes were bright with victory. “Howl was right,” she said. “It works. We can fight Necromancers.”

“No!” Kagami snapped. “Howl can fight Necromancers. The rest of us have to sit back and choke on flies!”

A nasty grin — the other Elpida, ‘Howl’? — flickered across Elpida’s face. “You’re welcome, Moon cunt.”

Kagami let out a great huff, shaking her head and spitting out more blood.

Elpida returned to normal as she glanced at Shilu. “Are these flies dangerous?”

“No,” Shilu said. She lowered her blades. The swords transformed back into hands and forearms of black chrome and serrated metal. “Lykke has abandoned the biomass. They’re inert.”

“The Necromancer bitch is correct!” Kagami shouted. “They’re nothing now. Ugh. Ugh! Nothing except vile!”

“Elpi!” Ilyusha snapped as she straightened up, aiming her shotgun at Shilu. “You hurt?”

Elpida shook her head. “I’m not wounded. Illy, hold your fire.”

Ilyusha hissed between clenched teeth. Shilu stared into the mouth of the shotgun, no expression on her pale polymer face.

Elpida snapped out orders: “Illy, go help Cyneswith and Eseld back to their feet. Grab the backpack full of raw blue. Haf, you take one cannister and get it down Kagami’s throat. Kaga, you stay still and concentrate on rebooting the drones. Get me a sitrep from Pheiri, we need his ETA. Atyle, take a look at the other zombie, see if we can stabilise her. Give her some blue.”

“Sky,” said Shilu. “The injured one is called is Sky.”

Elpida nodded. “Serin, cover the … cover Shilu. Don’t shoot her unless she moves. Shilu?”

“Yes?”

“I suggest you don’t move.”

“Understood.”

Elpida’s disciples hopped to their orders. Ilyusha scurried over to Eseld and Cyneswith, pulled Cyneswith to her feet, then got the backpack of raw blue off Cyn’s shoulders. Eseld assumed the disciples were about to claim the cannisters for themselves, but Ilyusha took only two from the bag, then left the rest at Cyneswith’s feet.

Ilyusha paused for a second, staring at Eseld. “You hurt? Hey? Heeey?”

Eseld felt nothing.

Her internal metaphors of sainthood and divine intervention and demonic power had collapsed into sand and trickled away between her fingers. What use was that flimsy framework of comprehension when a monster like Elpida was the only force capable of banishing a demon? What kind of former world did Elpida truly represent, what salvation did she offer, when she had butchered Eseld once before, as a predator in the guts of this rotten, abandoned, Godless world? The inside of Eseld’s chest was empty and hollow. Her skin was numb. Her heartbeat was gone. Yet she could not tear her eyes away from Elpida — from that white hair and those purple eyes, that healthy, glossy, rich dark skin, that commanding height, that presence of power, that clarity of action.

All of this, from a false saint. A monster. A cannibal — no different to Eseld herself. No different to any other zombie.

Ilyusha cracked a grin. “Yeah. I know, right? Serious though. Wounded?”

“ … no,” Eseld croaked.

Ilyusha scurried off. She handed one cannister of raw blue to Hafina and the other to Atyle. Hafina helped Kagami sip from the open cannister. Atyle skirted around Shilu and headed for Sky.

Cyneswith helped Eseld to her feet. Warm little hands touched Eseld’s wrists, then her face, trying to cup her cheeks.

“Miss Eseld? Miss Eseld? We’re delivered! We’re safe. We’ve been saved. Miss Eseld?”

Elpida and Shilu faced each other. Serin covered the latter with her boxy grey gun, and two other weapons besides — new guns that had appeared from inside her cloak, clutched in additional spindly arms. Ilyusha joined them, scowling at Shilu.

Shilu stared back with wide dark eyes.

Elpida said, “Well then, Necromancer. Here we are. Mutual enemy defeated. What now?”

“I do not know,” said Shilu. “You seem to be in command here. I surrender myself to you.”

“How long do we have until Lykke returns?”

Shilu blinked. “I cannot be certain. She requires a full permissions reset. The conditions of the hurricane are likely interfering with the network. Hours. Perhaps days.”

Elpida nodded. “I have a lot of questions for you, but we can’t ask them here. We need to secure the supplies from this tomb and return to our vehicle.” Her eyes flickered to the gravekeeper, to the half-a-zombie inside her upright coffin, then upward toward the perfect black sphere cradled in the apex of the grey pyramid. “Though I would prefer to attempt communication with the gravekeeper.”

“I do not recommend that,” Shilu said. “It is not communicative. I have tried.”

Elpida smiled. “Right, not unless it’s Lykke. So, Necromancer, will you come with us, or will you try to stab me in the back of the head again?”

“I don’t know,” said Shilu. “But I’m not going to assassinate you.”

“Glad to hear that.”

“I have … questions for you, as well,” Shilu said.

Kagami spluttered. “Commander! Elpida, you cannot be serious about taking this thing back to Pheiri! You—”

“This is intel,” Elpida said. “Highest priority. Best we’ve ever gotten. And she doesn’t have to come inside. Kaga, sitrep from Pheiri?”

Kagami huffed. “He’s gone as deep as he can. Passages get too small. The entrance is overrun with zombies trying to escape the storm. Winds have hit eight hundred and fifty miles an hour, and still climbing. Hailstones enough to strip flesh from bone.” Kagami swallowed. “Commander, Elpida, I don’t know what the fuck is happening out there. That’s like the surface of a gas giant! This storm should be impossible!”

“None of us understand,” Elpida said, then nodded at Shilu. “Except maybe her.”

“I have no information on the storm,” said Shilu.

On the other side of the chamber, Sky rolled onto her side and vomited up strings of sticky white mucus; Atyle was crouched next to her, dripping raw blue onto Sky’s lips. Everyone looked round, including Elpida.

“Atyle?” Elpida shouted. “How is she?”

Atyle called back: “This tin soldier is in poor condition. Her paint flakes. Her metal is bent. Something burns inside her.”

Sky’s eyes were swollen shut. She vomited again, retching stringy masses of white gunk into a growing puddle on the floor.

Eseld stumbled out of Cyneswith’s gentle hands. She cast around nearby while the others were distracted, her feet lost in the swamp of corpses and blood and drifts of dead flies.

Shilu said, “Lykke may have compromised her. I can purge her internal nanomachine permission strings. Or perhaps you can do that too, Elpida?”

Eseld located her submachine gun, down on the floor. She pulled it from a pool of blood and brushed away the flies. She slipped the magazine out with shaking hands — empty.

Elpida said, “I think that’s beyond me. What do you need to do, Shilu? Touch her?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“I’m not moving without your permission.”

Eseld dropped the submachine gun. She had taken more weapons from the armoury earlier — a pair of pistols, a PDW, a combat shotgun, and those grenades. The shotgun was in her backpack, which she had lost at some point. The PDW was too unwieldy, strapped beneath her coat. She reached into her pockets to grab a grenade, but her hands were slick with sweat and shaking too much; she could not hold one of the metal spheres.

Eseld finally managed to get her right hand around the grip of a lightweight pistol. She pulled it from inside her coat, racked the slide, and flicked the safety off.

Cyneswith’s hands touched Eseld’s shoulder. Perhaps she murmured Eseld’s name, but Eseld wasn’t listening.

“Serin, Illy,” Elpida was saying. “Cover her while she moves. Let her touch Sky. Atyle, back away, give her room. Kagami, any word from Ho—”

Eseld turned around and pointed her pistol at Elpida.

“Look at me,” she said.

The disciples reacted first. Ilyusha spun on her clawed feet, baring her teeth, aiming her shotgun at Eseld. Hafina twitched upright, half her guns coming up, limbs locking her weapons in Eseld’s direction. Kagami spluttered in surprise; her drones twitched where they lay on the ground, half of them jerking into the air. Atyle raised her eyebrows with curious interest. Only Serin stayed absolutely focused on Shilu.

“Hold fire!” Elpida shouted. “Hold fire, all of you! Illy, Illy, stand down! Kagami, drones back. Hafina, that goes for you too. Hold fire, stand down.”

“Commander!” Kagami spluttered. “She’s pointing a gun at you, you—”

“She’s earned the right.”

“What?!”

“It’s her. One of the four. She’s the one I finished off.”

Elpida’s disciples looked upon their leader with baffled confusion, then with slowly dawning realisation. Kagami’s eyes went wide behind her visor, staring at Elpida, then at Eseld. Ilyusha hesitated, then lowered her shotgun, squinting at Eseld in disbelief. Hafina did as ordered. Atyle broke into a smile.

Had they not known? Did they not know their saint’s sordid and sadistic past? Or were they all in on it?

“Fucking hell,” Kagami growled. “Commander! Commander, what are the chances of this? A billion to one? You think this is a coincidence? You have an assassin standing at your shoulder, and you think this girl is a coincidence—”

“I don’t care,” Elpida said. “She’s earned the right.”

“Look at me,” Eseld repeated. “Look at me!”

Elpida looked.

Purple eyes met Eseld’s gaze, within a face dirtied by demon’s blood.

“I see you,” said Elpida.

Eseld’s hands and arms were shaking hard. Her palms were slippery with sweat. She could not hold the pistol steady, could not keep her aim true. She wrapped her free hand around her wrist. A weight like a millstone lay on her chest, crushing the breath from her lungs. Cyneswith murmured something, trying to touch Eseld’s arms, but Eseld shook her off with an angry hiss, baring her rows of sharp teeth. Cyneswith stumbled back, silent and gaping.

Eseld stared into those glowing purple eyes, searching—

For what? For meaning? For answers? For a reason?

She had expected the other Elpida to rise to the surface, the cruel one, the one who could never be a saint. But it was the first Elpida staring back at her, the confident commander, not the devil clothed in flesh.

“You … ” Eseld tried to speak, but she could barely whisper. “You recognise me.”

“Yes,” Elpida said. “I do.”

“Why?”

Elpida took a deep breath. “Because I have spent every day for the last forty one days staring at pict-captures of when we killed you and your friends. Because I have etched your face into my memory. Because you did not deserve to go unremembered or unmourned. None of us do.”

Eseld couldn’t breathe. She could barely stay standing or hold onto her gun. The weapon felt as if it would slide out of her grip, though her fingers hurt from squeezing so hard. She shook her head, jerking it back and forth. “Wha—what? Why? What are you— why? Why?!”

“Because—”

“Is it not enough to eat me?! You had to … to stare at … my … my face?! What—”

“I kept your skull, too.”

Kagami let out a long hiss, squeezing her eyes shut. Ilyusha looked away, gritting her teeth, as if in shame. Atyle just kept smiling. Serin may have laughed, but Eseld could not be certain through the ringing inside her head.

Eseld said, “My skull?”

“Yes,” Elpida replied. “All four. Yours, and those of your three companions. I had hoped to one day place them in some kind of reliquary, or shrine, or simply bury them with proper headstones, grave markers, when we could be sure the nanomachine ecosystem would not eventually erode or destroy them. Something along those lines. A memorial. The skulls are held inside our vehicle, our home. I can take you there and relinquish the skulls to you, whatever else you decide. You have an absolute right to them.”

Tears fogged Eseld’s vision, running down her cheeks, yet she did not know why she was crying. Elpida’s words made no sense. Was this cruelty? Was the false and hateful saint simply lying to her? Or did God — and God’s remaining instruments, those who had outlived his death yet stayed true to the world — work in ways Eseld could not begin to comprehend?

Was Elpida a saint or a demon, a devil hiding inside a person, or something else? Eseld didn’t know. Saints and demons didn’t really exist, only nanomachines and God’s empty throne. Was Elpida aiming for that throne, by any means necessary, even through preying on the weak?

Had Eseld not realised that she would do the very same, if given the opportunity?

As Eseld hesitated, the sound of the storm steadily increased. Though the gravekeeper’s chamber lay deep in the core of the tomb itself, perhaps even deep underground, the fury of the wind and the rain and the hail penetrated the layers of black metal as a growing static voice pouring from the heavens. Great slams and cracking sounds creaked and pinged through the warren-like guts of the tomb. The wind howled like the voice of a demon trapped beyond the walls. Perhaps it was. Perhaps Lykke had joined the hurricane.

Sky coughed up another gobbet of stringy white vomit, shaking and shuddering in Eseld’s peripheral vision, behind Elpida.

Kagami cleared her throat. “That zombie is going to expire. Elpida, your obsession is going to cost us.”

“Eseld,” Elpida said. “May Shilu—”

“Yes!” Eseld spat. “Yes! I don’t care! Help her, kill her, whatever! Go on!”

Shilu nodded to Serin, asking permission. Serin nodded back. Shilu strode across the room, clicking on the spear-tip points of her feet, and then knelt at Sky’s side. Atyle watched her with naked curiosity.

Eseld ignored all of that.

Elpida said: “We won’t hurt you, Eseld. We certainly won’t eat you, not again. We wouldn’t have expended all this effort to save you, just to do that. Do you believe me?”

Eseld couldn’t decide what she believed anymore, if anything at all. “So … out there you eat us, but in here you save us?”

Elpida took a deep breath, then nodded. “Yes.”

Kagami hissed, “Great answer, Commander. Yeah, wonderful. That’s really going to convince her not to shoot you in the face! You, you, what was your name, Cyneswith? We’re not going to eat you, okay? Come over here, come away from her, don’t get yourself perforated because of these fucking fools, you—”

Elpida said: “Are you going to shoot me?”

Eseld panted, staring into those purple eyes. “I … I … ”

“There was no justification for what we did to you,” Elpida said. “There is no justification for any of this.”

“The—then, why … ”

“The meat in our bellies came from your body. Our strength was once yours. You and your three companions fed us all, which allowed us to be here today. Without your meat and the meat of your friends, we would not be here to save Cyneswith there, beside you, or Sky. We would not have been here to fight Lykke. None of those things would have happened.”

Eseld’s head spun. “Is that your excuse?”

Elpida waited as if for Eseld to continue, then shook her head in the storm-tossed silence. “No. It’s not a justification, it’s just what happened. We owe you. We’ve been developing alternative sources of nanomachine supply, ones that don’t rely on killing and eating other people. But we couldn’t get there from a standing start. We had to sustain ourselves in the meantime. But I have no power to compel you to accept any of this.”

“Then why … ”

“I’m telling you because, above all else, you deserve to understand why it happened, why we did it. You deserve answers, possibly restitution, maybe even revenge.”

Eseld felt a great sob building inside her chest. “What … what are you?”

Elpida took a step forward, hands raised, palms open. The boots of her carapace armour crushed white flies to powder beneath each footfall.

“She’s a fool,” Kagami said. “But she’s not lying. We’re not going to eat you, you moron. We did what we had to. Now we don’t. Put the fucking gun down.”

“Yeah!” Ilyusha snapped. “Put it down!”

Elpida gestured with a chop of one hand. “Stop, both of you. She has a right to this.”

Eseld said, “Answer me yourself. Answer me! Are you a—” Eseld almost choked on the word. “A saint? A servant of God? Or just another demon? What are you!?”

Elpida took another step forward.

“I’m a promise,” she said. “I’m a promise that there will always be a place for all, no matter the mistakes and missteps we make. I’m a piece of a living promise, handed down all the way into this nanomachine afterlife, into this curse, this madness, and I am still that promise, even if my flesh is undead and I’ve killed and eaten others who did not deserve to die. None will be left behind, none will be abandoned. That’s why I kept your skull and memorised your face. That’s why I want to know the names of your three friends, so I can remember them too. Do you understand, Eseld? Even in death, I was not willing to abandon you, though I’d never met you before, though I had wronged you, and eaten your flesh, and ended you. I am a promise, and that promise is called ‘Telokopolis’.” She lifted her naked right hand to the symbol on the chestpiece of her armour — the spire-like tower silhouetted by an arc of moonrise. “Have you ever heard that name before?”

Eseld shook her head.

“It means a place for all,” Elpida said. “Where none will be left outside or forgotten.”

Elpida took another step forward; she was only a few paces away now. Eseld pointed her gun directly at Elpida’s face, finger coiled on the trigger. “That doesn’t answer anything!” she hissed. “What— what are you? What—”

Elpida took another step. Eseld stumbled back — but Elpida surged forward, and pressed her forehead to the muzzle of the gun.

“Elpi!” Ilyusha snapped.

“Commander, for fuck’s sake!” Kagami joined in too. Even Atyle said something and Serin grunted out a word or two, though Eseld was not sure what they meant.

Elpida’s face shifted, as if somebody else peered out from inside her flesh, wearing an expression alien to her musculature — darkly amused, lips curling upward, eyes narrowing tight.

This was the other Elpida, the one who had beaten and tortured Lykke, and banished the demon. Elpida called her ‘Howl.’

Howl’s eyes burned with purple flame beneath the grey gunmetal of the pistol’s muzzle, looking down at Eseld. Up close she was so very tall.

“Serious answer?” Howl rasped. “I’m not gonna lie to you. Not that Elps was lying, but shit, she can’t do this. She can’t even say it. She’s too kind. Doesn’t wanna admit what we’re turning into. You really wanna know what we are? There’s no going back, if you do.”

“Y-yes.”

Howl grinned. “We’re the best chance in forever that any of you zombies got to stop fuckin’ eating each other.”

“ … what?”

“Even if we did have to eat you once before.” Howl winked. “So you got a choice, girl. Be one of us, or go back out with the predators and the monsters, all alone. And that’s up to you. With that gun in your hand. You’ve got the choice. Take your pick.”

Eseld stared into those burning purple eyes and that face-splitting grin. The silence of the gravekeeper’s chamber turned to deep static and the howling of the wind around the walls of the tomb, pressing in on Eseld’s skull. The storm felt like the inside of her own mind. She could not think.

She sobbed, and squeezed the trigger.

Howl smashed Eseld’s arm aside; the gun discharged into the air, bullet slamming into the wall of the gravekeeper’s chamber. Howl grabbed Eseld’s wrist in the gauntlet of her carapace armour and held the gun high; Eseld squeezed the trigger again and again and again — bang! bang! bang! Howl tightened her grip, crushing Eseld’s wrist so hard that the bones creaked. Eseld cried out. The pistol tumbled from her fingers and clattered to the floor.

“Sorry, zombie,” Howl said. “But I can’t let—”

Eseld lunged forward, shark-toothed maw open wide, aiming for Howl’s throat.

Howl caught Eseld’s teeth on her bare right arm. Eseld bit down, puncturing the healthy, glossy, copper-brown skin, sinking her teeth deep into the meat. Blood exploded into her mouth.

Howl tried to shake her off, so Eseld wrapped her legs around Howl’s waist and bit down even harder. Howl slammed her to the floor, knocking the wind from Eseld’s lungs. Still she bit down, deeper and deeper, slicing and tearing through the meat. Howl tried to pull her forearm free, so Eseld wrapped her other arm around Howl’s back, clutching and clawing at the cold plates of the carapace armour. Eseld sobbed, salty tears mixing with the hot blood running over her cheeks and chin.

She met Howl’s burning purple eyes.

But Howl was gone.

Elpida smiled. She showed no pain or anger, only a distant melancholy.

“Bite as deep as you need,” Elpida said. “Take as much as you want, flesh or blood, it’s yours. You’ve earned it.”

Elpida let go of Eseld’s wrist; Eseld wrapped her other arm around Elpida’s back, against the cold metal of her armour, clinging on tight. Elpida cradled the rear of Eseld’s skull in her gauntlet.

Eseld cried, hard and wet and messy, wracking her body with each convulsive sob. She bit down and down and down, anchoring herself in Elpida’s flesh, clenching her jaw until her teeth met bone.

Saint’s blood flowed down her throat, rich and dark and hot, like liquid iron.

Eseld’s world dissolved in the taste of tears and blood.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Biting biting biting biting you. For therapeutic reasons? Eseld sure could do with a chew toy after all this, at the very least …

And with that, arc 11 comes to an end! Eseld’s wild ride through the tomb turned into a true solo-POV, which I really didn’t expect when this one started. It was meant to switch back and forth with several different POVs as the arc progressed. But I think this worked out really well! You know what worked out less well? Lykke’s face beneath Elpida’s (well, technically Howl’s) fists. All those guns and all that technology, and in the end this Necromancer gets driven off by nothing more sophisticated than an old fashioned punch up. Lykke’s gonna remember this. Uh oh.

Next week we are onto arc 12! We miiiight be doing a one-chapter interlude, but I just finished drafting it about half an hour before writing up this author note, and I think it’s actually going to be the first chapter of the arc, instead of an interlude. But that might change during editing, we’ll see! In any case, the storm is not about to abate anytime soon.

Meanwhile, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! Right here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I am still very much trying to build up some kind of a backlog of chapters, and when I do, I’ll be sharing more chapters ahead with patrons. I hope!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which heps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you for reading my little story! Thank you all, dear readers, because I couldn’t do any of this without all of you. Thanks for being here! Our lost zombie girls plunge deeper into the hurricane of undead flesh; what horrors await them in the eye of the storm? A moment of calm, or the watchful gaze of a blind, mad god? Ahem. Seeya next chapter, and next arc! Until then!

Content Warnings

Insects/entomophobia/insectoid bodily invasion

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Eseld lunged at Shilu.

She crashed into Shilu’s side, fouling her aim — but not enough. Shilu’s arm-blade of lightless black metal punched forward, moving so fast it became a blur, the point aimed at the rear of Elpida’s helmet, to puncture the saint’s armour and split the skull beneath.

Elpida’s head jerked aside. Shilu missed by several inches.

Eseld clawed at Shilu’s sword-arm to prevent a second strike, nails raking bloody scratches down Shilu’s soft brown skin. Momentum carried them both to the floor, landing in a tangle of kicking legs and slapping hands and the loose sides of Eseld’s armoured coat. Eseld found herself on top, knees buried in Shilu’s gut. Her hands flailed, trying to catch the blurring shadow of Shilu’s weapon.

“No— Shilu— don’t— don’t!”

Shilu wore no expression around her wide dark eyes.

Eseld did not know why Shilu had tried to kill Elpida, but she knew she could not let that happen. Eseld did not know who Elpida really was, or what she looked like under the dirty grey helmet of her carapace suit. She knew nothing of the sins Elpida may have committed in her past, or what unsavoury methods she may have employed to gather and bind her disciples to her side. None of that mattered, not beneath the blazing light of hope, an emotion Eseld had not felt with such clarity in all her infinity of fifty seven deaths, not since the warm days of true life. Elpida had strode into battle against overwhelming numbers, itself an act of madness, for nothing more than to save the meaningless lives of fresh meat. Elpida had not only scattered the opportunistic cannibals, she had also refused to retreat from Lykke, after all else had failed and all hope faded. Even Shilu had given up and declared defeat. But not Elpida.

A living saint stood in defiance against the very absence which lay at the heart of all creation since God’s death. Her actions redefined Eseld’s world.

Whatever Shilu’s metaphysical disagreement with the saint, whatever protection and kindness Shilu had offered, none of it mattered. Eseld would throw herself upon Shilu’s blades rather than stand by and watch the murder.

She knew she was dead now. Shilu was strong and fast in a way that no mere zombie could hope to match. Another heartbeat, another breath, and Shilu would slice Eseld open from throat to gut, then toss her aside and attack Elpida again. But perhaps Eseld had bought Elpida enough time to react. Perhaps her sacrifice would not be in—

Eseld caught Shilu’s sword-arm in both hands, just above and below the elbow. She gaped, stunned by her own success. This was impossible; Shilu must have allowed her to win.

Then she slammed Shilu’s arm to the floor, pinning it with all her strength. Her nails dug deep, drawing beads of blood from Shilu’s skin.

Elpida’s disciples were turning toward the scuffle, shouting confused questions or snapping requests for orders, levelling weapons, backing away.

Shilu stared up into Eseld’s eyes, and said: “Are you certain?”

Eseld hissed, “Yes! Don’t kill her, don’t—”

Shilu bucked. The world turned upside down.

Eseld hit the floor face-first, cracking her chin off the metal, biting through a chunk of her own tongue, knocking the wind from her lungs. The impact rang a chorus of agony down the patchwork of bullet-bruises across her chest and belly, scraping her insides with the jagged ends of her own broken ribs. Her vision blurred, eyes blinded with tears, throat choked with an uprush of bile and acid. She drooled long strings of sticky spittle from slack lips. A pounding pulse inside her head drowned out all sound.

Cold metal hooked beneath her chin, dragging her upright. Eseld clawed at the arm around her throat, breaking her fingernails against black chrome.

“Be still,” said Shilu.

“No—” Eseld wheezed, kicking against the ground, choking for breath. “Don’t hurt— not her—”

“Be still.” Shilu paused. “I don’t want to kill you. Please.”

Eseld stopped struggling. The metal arm slackened the chokehold. Eseld blinked to part a veil of tears.

Shilu had dragged her clear of Elpida’s formation, over to the foot of the grey metal pyramid. Eseld could feel Shilu’s true body pressed against her back through her armoured coat — a landscape of sharp metal edges and cold black chrome. One of Shilu’s arms was wrapped around Eseld’s throat; the other was a blade, poised in front of Eseld’s face.

Elpida and her disciples were about twelve feet away. Eseld realised with scant relief that she was still within the pyramid-shaped protective barrier formed by Kagami’s silver-grey drones.

Elpida’s disciples retained their coherence despite this surprise from their midst. The giant — Hafina — swung half her exotic energy weapons to cover Shilu, splitting her attention between Lykke and this new target. Kagami squinted and blinked at Shilu from behind her full-face visor, lips moving in silence. Ilyusha brandished her shotgun and spat a string of colourful insults: “—cuckfuck traitor shit-beak—” Atyle merely stared, curious and unmoved. Only Cyneswith was paralysed and speechless, mouth agape, tears running from her eyes, hands fluttering in helpless panic.

Serin — the tall one wrapped in black robes — levelled that boxy grey firearm at Shilu.

Perhaps that mysterious gun really would harm Shilu through her shield of tattered divinity. But at this range it would also rip Eseld apart, unless Serin was an expert shot. The muzzle of the gun was a wide mouth. It did not look very precise.

Eseld turned her head and squinted, bracing herself for the shot, for the end, for yet another death. At least she had used this life to protect something worth her sacrifice. At least Cyn would survive, sheltered by the saint. And if Lykke could be defeated, perhaps Sky was not lost either.

Elpida snapped, “Hold fire! Serin, hold—”

Serin’s finger compressed the trigger. Eseld screamed between her clenched teeth.

Nothing happened.

The smooth grey gun didn’t even make a sound, not like Sky’s ‘EMP’ weapon or the microwave rifle. Serin flickered the muzzle up and down, as if painting Eseld and Shilu with an invisible beam or cone of power, but Eseld felt nothing.

Serin grunted behind her metal mask. “Huh.”

Kagami hissed, “I keep telling you, that fucking thing doesn’t work! The gravitic engine is broken, or misaligned with the grid. Give up, for fuck’s sake, especially right now! We have more important targets, don’t you think?!”

Serin pointed the gun at Lykke again. “We’ll see.”

Elpida raised an armoured glove. The dark eyeholes of her helmet faced toward Shilu and Eseld. “Everyone hold fire! Kagami, talk to me, tell me what I’m looking at.”

“Nothing!” Kagami spluttered. She gestured at Eseld and Shilu. “Normal zombie, as far as every reading is concerned. Which is obviously bullshit, fine, yes, but that’s all I’m getting. Slightly more nanomachine density, sure, but not like her over there.” She jabbed a finger toward Lykke.

Serin rasped, “They hide. She’s a Necromancer.”

Elpida said, “Atyle?”

The fearless one — Atyle — was staring at Eseld and Shilu with her right eye wide open, a solid green sphere of bionic augmentation.

“She is alone,” Atyle said. “Unstrung. Not the same. Are you trapped, like us?”

Lykke let out a giggle, a high-pitched bubble of bloody mirth. She had one pale hand pressed to her mouth, eyebrows raised, her remaining eye gone wide. She held her gore-wrought wings swept backward to keep them out of the way, their surfaces flowing and gurgling with boiling blood and organ meat and chips of bone. Her aurora of white flies pulsed and buzzed to a silent heartbeat.

Elpida turned her helmet to acknowledge the laugh.

“Oh, please, don’t mind me!” Lykke said, voice tinkling with breathless amusement behind her delicate blood-glazed fingers. “Do go on. I’m dying to see where you’re taking this, Shishi! This is positively original!”

Kagami hissed a curse beneath her breath. Ilyusha spat on the floor and sneered at Lykke.

Elpida ignored that. “Eseld,” she said. “Are you wounded? In pain?”

Eseld croaked, “I’m okay.”

“Thank you for the help, Eseld,” said Elpida. “That was quick thinking. Quick reactions. Well done.”

Shilu spoke from behind Eseld’s shoulder. “You didn’t need it though. You dodged. And that helmet doesn’t have a rear head-up display.”

Elpida answered with a smile in her voice: “I had an early warning. Nice try.”

“Thought so,” said Shilu. “You have network access.”

“Not quite. Shilu, yes? What are we doing here, Shilu? Answer me quickly. Talk fast.” Elpida nodded sideways, toward Lykke. “She’s not going to stay entertained for long.”

“Ha!” Lykke laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “Oh no, no no, I’m deadly serious, please do take your time. Bravo, Shishi, I never expected this of you, of all people. You were always so—”

“I was sent here to kill you,” Shilu said to Elpida.

Eseld’s stomach lurched; vomit tried to climb up her throat. Her head throbbed with a dizzying rush of blood. Shilu was an assassin? All this was part of a plot to slay Elpida? All this death and madness, this false hope, the predators in the resurrection chamber, the storm outdoors, all of it? And what manner of being would ‘send’ something as powerful as Shilu? Did this mean Eseld herself was part of the same assassination plot? And what did that mean for Lykke? Was the demon on the same side as the saint? What were the sides, what did any of this mean?

The religious metaphors to which Eseld had clung for the last few hours began to fall apart; she knew they were not literal, they were merely her own inventions, but they made the horrors of this Godless world easier on her mind.

She started to hyperventilate. Her mouth filled with the taste of bile. Her heart raced faster and faster and faster. A terrible weight pressed on her chest.

Shilu was still talking. “I was placed in your path so you would stumble upon me. You, your group, the rogue Necromancer you met, those are my targets.”

Elpida said, “Who sent you?”

“I’m not sure.”

Kagami scoffed. “Fucking hell!”

Ilyusha growled and spat, pawing at the metal floor with one of her clawed feet. Atyle shook her head, a sad smile flickering across her lips. Serin’s attention did not waver from Lykke. Cyneswith let out a whimper.

Elpida said, “And now you’ve changed your mind about killing me.”

It was not a question. Sweat ran down Eseld’s face. Her mouth was full of vile-tasting saliva. She wanted to vomit. Her chest felt as if it would collapse and crush her heart.

The sound of the storm outdoors filled the silence. A standing wave of static hissed and hummed beyond the distant walls of the tomb.

Shilu did not reply, so Elpida continued: “I saw the bodies when we entered this chamber. You’d already killed a dozen revenants, single handed. That wasn’t the Necromancer over there, she was too occupied. If you wanted us dead, you would attack us right now. You don’t need a hostage. You’ve changed your mind. Save us both the time, don’t deny it. Just make your point, and make it quickly.”

Shilu spoke again. “This whole situation is wrong. My current state, without network access. The storm outdoors is not natural, something summoned it. The tomb is armed and active. The Necromancer to your left is named Lykke. She should not be here. And now you.” Shilu paused. “You are not what I expected.”

Elpida said, “What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know.”

Kagami snapped, “Seems like there’s a lot of things you don’t know!”

Elpida gestured for Kagami to stop. “Kaga, please.”

Shilu said, “I knew I was being used. I’m used to that. But now I’m not certain that completing my mission will get me what I want.”

“Why?” Elpida asked.

Shilu paused again, then said: “The falcon cannot hear the falconer. The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

“And what do you want, Necromancer?”

“To be dead, and remain so.”

Kagami hissed, “Great. Just fucking great. This one is no more sane than the first.”

Ilyusha barked a nasty laugh. She made her shotgun go click-crunch and pointed the big black muzzle at Shilu, right through Eseld. “We can do that for you, reptile fuck! Put you back in the dirt!”

Elpida raised a hand for silence. Her disciples stopped. “What are you proposing?”

Kagami hissed, “You’re fucking joking! You have to be fucking joking, Elpida. Commander, it’s a Necromancer! It could be doing anything! That’s not even its real face! We are being lied to.”

“I know,” Elpida said. “Shilu, what are you proposing?”

“Lykke has network access,” Shilu said. “I don’t. I can’t beat her. She was sent to stop me, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she knows who you are, or that she is restricted from killing you or harming you. I do not know why she was sent. She refuses to stand down. Can you really fight a Necromancer, or was that a bluff, zombie?”

Elpida was silent for a long moment, eyes hidden behind the twin lenses of her helmet. Behind her, Serin started to chuckle — a long, low, rasping sound behind her metal mask. Kagami went very pale and swallowed twice, eyes darting to glance at Lykke. Hafina and Atyle didn’t react at all. Ilyusha grinned and made a biting motion toward Shilu.

Lykke broke the silence. “Of course they can’t! Shishi, don’t be so—”

“Yes,” Elpida said. “We can disable her. However, we will need an opening. She needs to stay still when we act.”

Shilu said, “I can hold her for a few moments.”

“What happens after we defeat our mutual foe?” Elpida asked. “What happens then, Necromancer?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

Elpida laughed inside her helmet, surprisingly warm and easy. “I’m gonna need you to release Eseld first.”

“I won’t hurt her,” said Shilu. “I just don’t want you to shoot me yet. I’ll let her go once we start.”

“Commander!” Kagami hissed. “Elpida. We cannot trust that thing! Every word it says could be a lie! They could be working together, playing with us for some sick shit! We are in too deep, we need to extract, now.”

Atyle let out a soft hum. “Mmmmmm. Even the smallest of devils will play tricks on the mind. Lead the unwary traveller astray.”

Ilyusha shouted, “I vote we blow her open! Fuck her up!”

Kagami said, “We need to pull out. Leave this behind. Commander, we cannot fight in here!” She gestured upward, past Eseld, toward the grey metal pyramid topped by the perfect black sphere. “I don’t know what might happen if I use gravitics in this place. The last thing we want is that AI substrate feeling threatened. Commander, we cannot fight here!”

Even the giant hesitated, swinging her armoured head back and forth, as if waiting for the order to disengage.

Elpida sighed. Eseld saw the subtle rise and fall of the armoured plates of her carapace suit. The saint was listening to her disciples, preparing to make sacrifices. And then Eseld would be left behind with Shilu and Lykke and whatever was left of Sky, denied her salvation, denied this one chance to be something more than meat. They had to work together, Elpida and Shilu. Eseld’s heart hammered against her ribs and she wanted to vomit up her own intestines with fear and disgust and worse. The weight on her chest compressed her broken ribs into her lungs.

She tried to wheeze, “She— Shilu helped— protect—”

“Shilu protected us!”

Cyneswith’s voice was reedy and weak. She clutched her hands before her, fingers interleaved, like a supplicant in prayer. Her eyes were upturned, pleading with Elpida.

“Please!” Cyn went on. “I do not understand what is happening, what manner of fairy mound we are within, or what terrible wars have disordered your realm so badly. But Miss Shilu protected us during our descent. She saved us when we climbed from our coffins! She fought Lykke when Lykke turned into a beast. She led us here, without abandoning us. And she could have! She bid us clothe and arm ourselves. She tried to protect us. She fought for us. Please, please, trust her. Please don’t leave us behind. Don’t leave Miss Eseld or Miss Sky behind. Please, I beg you, great warrior. I beg you.”

Serin snorted. “Fresh meat. Clueless.”

“Yes,” Kagami hissed. “Clearly. Elpida—”

“Alright, Necromancer,” Elpida said to Shilu. “You have a deal. We fight our mutual enemy, then we talk. Are you ready?”

Lykke burst into peals of laughter.

Her mirth echoed off the grey metal walls of the gravekeeper’s chamber in deafening girlish giggles and guffaws, snorts and snickers, rolling through the carpet of corpses and the pools of drying blood. Eventually she trailed off into little hiccups, waving a hand as if her laughter was smoke before her face. She ended on a big sigh, filling her lungs and puffing out her chest beneath the fabric of her stained and torn sundress; blood bubbled from several of her wounds, followed by the squirming bodies of yet more white flies, emerging to join her pestilent corona of bloated insects.

She smiled, and said, “You’re serious! You’re actually serious, golly gosh gee I’m such a lucky girl sometimes, I never thought I’d see the day! I’m sorry if I seem rude, it’s just that I assumed this was all an elaborate joke, not the real thing. Shishi, this is just ridiculous. You can’t be doing this for real, can you? You must own up to the hands behind the curtain, this is too silly. I’m awed, really! Look, you even got a genuine laugh out of me. We’re equal! Come on, sweets, let’s just go back together and let bygones be bygones.”

Shilu said, “I’m ready.”

Elpida nodded, then turned to face Lykke. She raised the coilgun receiver and took aim. “Kaga, tell Pheiri to abandon his position and start moving deeper. Holding the gate no longer matters, there’s no other survivors.”

“Done!” Kagami snapped. “Less walking, good!”

“Be ready,” Elpida continued, her voice calm and confident. “Haf, you’re on catcher duty, don’t worry about firepower. Illy, Atyle, back me up, don’t move if you can help it. Serin, you know when, just in case. On my count.”

Lykke sighed, shoulders sagging, all her good humour vanishing in an instant. “As if!” she snapped. She gestured upward, at the silver-grey drone hanging at the apex of the loose pyramid formation which protected Elpida and her disciples. “I know exactly what you’re going to do, zombie. You aren’t the first to figure this out, nor even the first to attempt it. You’re going to squish me with gravity and cut me off from the network. It’s been done before and it’s very boring! And that!” Lykke gestured at Serin. “That’s not even a new technique, and it doesn’t work. I don’t know what you hope to achieve by disrupting my intracellular connections, but any satisfaction will be very short lived. I am bigger than this body. How do you zombies have such trouble with that simple principle? Ahhhhh,” she sighed. “I was hoping for better than this. You got me all riled up and ready, Shishi, and now you’re just disappointing me.” Lykke paused, put her hands on her hips, and looked Elpida up and down. “And you’re even worse, zombie. I thought you were up for a bit of spicy tango, but you’re just—”

“We’re going to put you in a cage, Necromancer,” Elpida said. “If you break out, I will personally strangle you to death. This is your last chance to flee. You have until my count. Three.”

Kagami took a deep breath; she was visibly shaking, wringing her hands together. Hafina turned all her guns toward Lykke, ignoring Shilu. A grin ripped across Ilyusha’s face as she pointed her shotgun at the demon. Atyle shrugged and waved her submachine gun vaguely in Lykke’s direction.

“Two—”

“One!” Lykke roared. “Too slow, here I come!”

Lykke cracked her great wings of hanging gore and frozen blood, propelling herself forward with a gust of noxious wind. The reeking air drew tears from Eseld’s eyes and burned the lining of her throat. A cloud of flies surged forward, smashing their tiny, glistening, greasy bodies against the invisible shield strung between Kagami’s drones. Lykke launched herself from a standing start like a bird of prey from the skies, cackling at the top of her lungs as her taloned feet sliced through the air, razor-sharp points aimed straight at Elpida.

“Go,” Elpida said.

The disciples opened fire. Bullets and shotgun rounds pounded into Lykke, tearing gobbets of steaming flesh from her body and wings. White-hot flashes from Hafina’s energy weapons seared patches of Lykke’s dress, melting the skin beneath and turning her muscle to cooked meat. Elpida fired the coilgun. The magnetic thump shook Eseld’s guts. The round punched a hole clean through Lykke’s belly and blew out her lower back, her spine flopping free like a dead snake, pelvis shattered into a million pieces, strung out behind her like the train of a wedding dress.

But the demon could not be stopped. The many wounds did not even slow her down; her flesh simply rose again, reaching outward in tendrils of ragged muscle and prehensile feelers of blood and bone. Bloated flies poured from her wounds in their thousands, crashing against the invisible shield in thick waves of white.

Lykke cackled, claws descending toward Elpida’s armoured helmet. “I can’t believe this play was for real! You dirty little minx, maybe I will have a little dance with you!”

Eseld bit back a desolate sob. Even the saint did not comprehend that mortal weapons could not harm a demon.

Kagami was the only one not shooting. A convulsive shiver passed through her body. She squinted hard, eyes scrunched tight. A bead of blood ran from her nose. “Commander!” she screamed. “I need a second to—”

Shilu’s arms left Eseld’s throat.

Eseld collapsed to her knees, choking and wheezing, pressing one hand to the tiny cuts on her neck left behind by Shilu’s sharp edges. She raised her other hand toward Elpida, desperate to help, to throw herself in the path of the demon, to buy her saviour that one second.

Shilu shot across the grey metal floor and exploded through the wall of white flies. She had transformed back into her true self, her scarecrow body of black chrome and razor-sharp lines, balanced on a pair of spear-tip feet. The insects swarmed over her, suffocating her black metal skin beneath a living carpet of slick and shiny flesh. The flies tried to press themselves up her nostrils or wriggle past her lips or jam their tiny bodies into the corners of her eyes. Shilu’s pale polymer face went blank and flat, transformed into a featureless surface to deny Lykke’s filthy swarm their ingress.

Shilu raised her arms, a pair of lightless black blades.

She caught Lykke’s twinned talons on her swords, black edges tangled in white claws. Lykke flapped her gigantic blood-and-organ wings. Each beat was like a breath of the hurricane from beyond the walls, tearing at the corpses on the floor, shivering the pools of blood as if beneath a storm.

Elpida hunched, locking the joints of her armour to resist the terrible downdraft. Kagami collapsed with a strangled squeal; Hafina caught her in two arms before she could hit the floor. Atyle sheltered behind Ilyusha’s shields; Illy dragged Cyneswith into cover beside her, pressing Cyn to the floor. Only Eseld was alone, down on her knees, then smashed to her front again, with the reek of the wind filling her mouth and nose and lungs with the stench of rotting meat and boiled blood and fear and sweat and putrid flesh.

The force of Lykke’s wing beats drove Shilu to her knees.

Lykke cackled. “What are you even trying to do, Shishi?! We had this fight earlier, and I won! You think some zombies with a few busted grav-tricks can actually contain one of us?! Look at you, playing down in the mud with the meat! You’ve gone mad! Let me put you out of—”

A crack of electrical power passed over Eseld’s skin in a painful tingle. Her mouth filled with a fresh gush of iron, gums bleeding freely, washing away the foul reek of Lykke’s downdraft wing beats. The flies pressed up against the invisible shield spasmed and fell, a wave of tiny white bodies floating to the floor like pale ash.

The silver-grey drones — the four points of Kagami’s protective pyramid, the only thing that kept the demon from paralysing Elpida and her disciples — hinged froward, like a paper toy unfolding into a new shape. One drone whipped past Eseld’s face, moving so fast it made the air pop with pressure. The two other points raced forward, matched by the drone at the apex. Thousands of surviving white flies were swept away and gathered up as if caught within an invisible net.

The drones surrounded Lykke and Shilu in a much smaller and tighter pyramid than before. Lykke’s great wings folded up, crushed inward by invisible force. Thousands upon thousands of flies were compacted down into a tiny space, plunging Shilu and Lykke into a miniature swirling snowstorm of greasy pale bodies and buzzing wings.

Lykke tumbled to the ground, landing in a tangle of limbs, blanketed by the gore of her own broken wings. Shilu stayed kneeling, frozen in place.

“Cease fire!” Elpida yelled, lowering the receiver of her coilgun. Her disciples obeyed. “Kaga, do you have them?”

Kagami was collapsed in two of Hafina’s arms, but she was still conscious. Blood ran from her nose, smeared all down her lower face, wiped across one arm of her grey coat. Her hair was stuck to her scalp with sweat, she was shaking and shivering as if in the grip of a fever, and squinting as if exerting every ounce of strength in her petite little body.

But she was grinning. “What does it look like, Commander? I’m a genius!”

“Kaga,” Elpida snapped. “Report.”

“Fine, fine! Yes, they’re both in the cage. And it’s stable. Points locked, drones externally stabilised via the remaining two. I can keep them there for six to eight hours, give or take. We have them. Fuck me backwards and sideways, I am done. Ugh.” Kagami slumped, scrubbing her bloody face on her sleeve. “I’d give my left tit for a bath.”

Eseld couldn’t believe her eyes, nor her ears. The saint and her disciples had put the demon in a cage? It was true, everything Eseld had hoped was true, and more besides, miracles she could not have imagined.

She started to weep slow and silent tears. The others emerged from cover, straightening up from behind Ilyusha’s ballistic shields. Elpida locked her coilgun receiver to the support rig strapped around her hips. Cyn crawled away from the disciples, scrambling toward Eseld and worming into her arms.

Inside the cage, Lykke lay still. The white flies were so thick that Eseld could not see any expression on the demon’s face. Shilu was coated with the insects too, still and silent.

Elpida said: “Haf, get Kagami secured. Illy, help the other two up, get them on their feet, grab their gear, double-check the raw nanomachines. Atyle, head around the cage, check on the other one, the one Lykke attacked. Tell me what you see, tell me if we can save her. Kaga, isolate Lykke, please.”

The others all started to move. Kagami just sighed. “We’re really letting the other one free? We—”

“Please do it, Kagami.”

“Yes, yes, do this, do that, jump here, jump there. Ha!” Kagami spat a bitter laugh. “This one isn’t like the other one, Commander, I can’t just—”

A tentacle of shimmering heat-haze unfolded from the perfect black sphere at the apex of the grey metal pyramid.

It descended like a falling leaf, slow and fast at the same time. Eseld’s insides rocked with a sudden wave of nausea. Cyneswith doubled over in her arms and vomited a mouthful of bile onto the floor, whimpering and wheezing. Eseld’s head span, blood pounding inside her skull.

The gravekeeper — the zombie inside the upright coffin — said: “We are suborned by those never born.”

The heat-haze distortion brushed against the demon’s cage, then vanished.

All four of Kagami’s drones clattered to the floor. Kagami screamed and writhed in Hafina’s arms, then twisted sideways, vomiting a stream of black blood. The rest of Elpida’s disciples were reeling to regain their balance, shaking their heads, clenching their eyes against the same effect Eseld had felt. Ilyusha spat a string of vomit to one side. Atyle sagged and grunted. Only Hafina seemed unaffected.

“Hold!” Elpida shouted, choking for breath. “Everyone hold!”

Lykke flowed back to her feet.

Her wings billowed upward to take her weight, her aurora of flies swirling to mirror the curves and lines of her body. Shilu staggered upright as well, lurching backward, arms raised to ward off the resurgent demon.

“Can’t keep a good girl down!” Lykke crooned. “I told you, Shishi, the tomb is mine, and that does include—”

Serin raised her boxy grey gun and pulled the trigger.

Lykke screamed.

The demon’s body juddered backward, like paint smeared across a canvas by a careless hand. Her flesh, her white dress, even the flies of her putrid aurora, they all flickered and jerked, turning jagged and angular, as if Lykke was an image projected upon a surface, and the surface been been torn and ripped by a fistful of knives. Her skin flickered and flashed, turning a hundred different colours in the blink of an eye, all shades and hues running into each other, then exploding outward into naked muscle and bleeding tissues, her body sprouting into uncontrolled growth. Her white dress melted into fluid, then seemed to meld together with her flesh, the layers of fabric and skin floating through each other like cloud or mist upon a hillside. Lykke’s hair suffered the same fate, mixing into her skin, then hardening into chitin or bone, then floating free like tissue paper. Her face ran like hot wax, her eyes cycling through a dozen colours and shapes and sizes.

The demon was not Lykke anymore. She was a hundred people, trapped in one body. A legion of souls.

Only her bloody wings escaped the disruption; the effect of Serin’s gun was not wide enough to erase the coherency of the boiling blood and blackened bone.

Then, Serin released the trigger.

Lykke returned to normal, her body sucking slowly back into shape. She blinked several times, smoothing her bloody hands over her wide hips, smearing the gore in slick red swoops down her sides. She took a deep breath. Her cloud of flies reformed, whirling in a spiral and settling above her like a great halo. She breathed out, purring into a smile.

Nobody was saying anything. Nobody was moving except Hafina, her helmet twitching back and forth, and Shilu, who was raising her lightless blades once again.

Eseld realised she couldn’t move. Her lips, her tongue, her limbs, even her lungs, all were frozen.

She was paralysed, exactly as she had been before. They were all paralysed — Eseld and Cyneswith, Elpida and her disciples. Serin had not released the trigger; Lykke had forced her to stop shooting. Lykke had taken control of all their bodies.

Lykke had won.

Eseld wanted to weep, but she could not. The demon had snatched victory so easily, dashed whatever faint hope had been kindled by the saint’s arrival and the clever mechanical tricks deployed by her disciples. Eseld did not understand how Hafina could still move, but that didn’t matter. Firepower alone could not halt the demon’s designs.

All zombies were nothing but meat before the ragged remnants of heaven’s host.

Eseld felt her sense of self drop away, falling into a dark pit, descending back into the animalistic hell she had occupied for fifty seven deaths. Hope and humanity fled together. She was meat; she would always be meat. There was no escape, not in death, not in sainthood, not in service, for there was nothing left to serve but one’s own appetite and hunger. Nobody and nothing was coming to save her. No way out, for ever and ever.

Lykke spread her wings with a sharp crack. Her halo of white flies exploded outward, filling the gravekeeper’s chamber with the greasy mass of their tiny bodies, flooding every cubic inch of air.

Thousands of flies landed on every disciple, crawling across their exposed flesh, swarming over their armour and coats and clothes and weapons. Eseld saw Elpida’s carapace suit buried beneath an avalanche of white. Cyneswith and Eseld were blanketed a split-second later. Eseld felt thousands of tiny feet coat her face and scalp, worming down beneath her clothes and into the fold of her flesh, forcing their way into her mouth and jamming themselves up her nose, wriggling hard to penetrate the corners of her eyes.

Lykke’s voice rang out, high and girlish. “Now, Shilu, let’s finish this tedious errand and go home! Let’s go—”

A voice interrupted, audible over the drone of a billion flies.

“You’re sure?” said Elpida.

Before anybody could answer, Elpida moved. She reached over with her left hand and unclasped the buckles of her right gauntlet and vambrace. The armour plates clicked free and slid away, clattering to the floor, revealing a muscled forearm beneath, the skin a healthy pale copper-brown.

Lykke’s bloated white flies burst outward from Elpida, as if repelled by a breath of clean wind.

Elpida strode forward, walking free and untouched.

She stepped past Shilu and reached out with her exposed right hand. It happened so quickly that Lykke and Shilu could not react. Lykke’s eyes flew wide at the last second, mouth gaping open.

“W-what?! How— you should be—”

Elpida grabbed Lykke’s throat, fingers digging into flesh, squeezing the demon’s windpipe.

Lykke jerked as if hit with an electric shock. Her wings whirled, trying to pull her free, but her muscles weren’t working properly — the wings drooped and flopped, organs and bone and blood collapsing to the floor. Her flies fell like rain all around; Eseld felt them tumble out of her nose and go still inside her mouth. Lykke shrieked and wailed, bucking and kicking, trying to yank herself free of the saint’s burning gasp. She flailed with both hands, smashing her fists against the front of Elpida’s armoured helmet.

One of Lykke’s strikes landed true. Elpida’s helmet was knocked free from the neck-clasps which locked it to her suit of armour. The helmet tumbled off, landing with a hard thump upon the floor.

A waterfall of pure white hair. Copper-brown skin, clean and glossy. A pair of glowing purple eyes.

Not a saint. Not a saint at all.

Eseld recognised that hair, that skin, those purple eyes. She recognised it all, from the monster who had inflicted her own most recent death.

Eseld needed to scream. She could not even whimper.

And the monster — Elpida, or whatever spoke through her — was grinning, her mouth wide and full of teeth.

“Surprise, bitch!” Elpida howled into Lykke’s face. “Told you I’d choke you out!”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Awoooo-owww-oww-owwwww!

Gosh, um, lots of things unfolding here, at great speed and with much import! I wasn’t actually certain if like 2/3 of the main points of this chapter were even going to happen, let alone happen here, now, so quickly all of a sudden, when so much of this arc has been defined by my outlines being thrown into chaos. But here she is, Elpida, revealed to Eseld’s terrified eyes. And choking out a very nasty Necromancer. Or is Elpida not the one actually doing the choking? Guess who …

Anyway! In a big surprise, the next chapter is actually the last chapter of arc 11! I wasn’t sure if this would happen until I finished editing it (which I just did, literally five minutes before writing this post-chapter note), so! Time to find out who’s got the better CQC training.

Meanwhile, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! Right here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I am still very much trying to build up some kind of a backlog of chapters, and when I do, I’ll be sharing more chapters ahead with patrons!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which heps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you! Thank you for reading my little story! As always, I am flattered and delighted that so many people are out there enjoying Necroepilogos! We’re approaching the end of the beginning of this second narrative movement, and I have such sights to show you, as we descend deeper into the heart of the hurricane. Until next chapter! Seeya then!

Content Warnings

Gore, the usual, you know.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Six new arrivals burst from the breached wall and swept into the gravekeeper’s chamber.

Eseld did as the voice had ordered. She kept her head down, body pressed to the floor, armoured hood pulled up to protect her skull. Her chest and stomach ached with deep tissue bruises and cracked ribs from where her armour had turned away the bullets. Cyneswith was screaming and sobbing, clutching at Eseld in manic terror. Eseld pinned her down, covering Cyneswith’s body to shelter them both from debris and shrapnel.

But she could not look away. She peered out from beneath the flimsy cover of her armoured hood.

A miracle was unfolding. She was being rescued.

At the vanguard of the six was a cackling flash of black-and-red bionic limbs, blonde hair, and ballistic shields — a petite little zombie bounding ahead of her comrades. All four of her limbs were high-grade cybernetics; her legs terminated in a pair of bird-like feet, each toe tipped with a razor-sharp talon. A matching bionic tail whipped out behind her, ending in a bright red spike. She had a ballistic shield strapped across her back and another one clutched tight against her front.

She used the shield as a battering ram, smashing straight into the massed mob of Lykke’s hounds. Half a dozen revenants went tumbling to the floor, crashing into those beside them, dragging others down as they went. The little berserker jerked an automatic shotgun out from behind her shields and fired into the crowd — boom-crunch-boom-crunch-boom-crunch. Slug rounds cracked armour plates and knocked more hounds aside, blasting holes in torsos and bursting limbs asunder. The zombie’s black-and-red tail coiled outward like a striking snake, ramming the spike through the back of a fleeing opponent.

The hounds recoiled, some scrambling to their feet, others taking cover around the side of the grey metal pyramid. Return fire plinked off the berserker’s ballistic shields; she closed herself up like a tortoise inside a shell.

Close behind the berserker came a giant, nine or ten feet of the most heavily armed and modified revenant Eseld had ever seen. She was clothed in curtains of dark robe and rag, draped with sheets of hanging armour and bulletproof material, all covering glistening underlayers of skintight fabric, colours shifting like oil on water. She was like a statue in a deep forest, hung with a mantle of ivy and moss. She wore an eyeless helmet of smooth black, pointed like a beak. Six arms carried a miniature arsenal of esoteric energy weapons.

The giant opened fire on the fleeing hounds. White hot flashes blurred across Eseld’s vision, leaving eye-searing contrails in their wake, followed by the ear-splitting crack of anti-materiel rounds crunching into the side of the pyramid.

A third revenant advanced in the shelter of the giant’s wake. She was unassuming — long black hair, light brown skin, terrified eyes peering out from behind a full-face visor, wearing some kind of scanner strapped around her head. She had a tomb-grown coat over her shoulders and carried no weapons.

Four more of those strange little silver-grey oblongs orbited her, darting through the air, the same as the one which had somehow saved Eseld. Drones.

Three bullets bounced off thin air in front of the terrified revenant, as if deflected by an invisible forcefield. She flinched, then hissed with irritation.

Behind the giant strode a woman who did not look like she was on a battlefield at all. Head held high, eyes calm and composed, dark skin untouched by sweat or concern. She wore a tomb-grown coat as well, the front wide open on her naked chest. She held a submachine gun in one lazy hand. Bullets whizzed and cracked through the air around her, but she didn’t even blink. She raised her submachine gun and casually sprayed one of Lykke’s hounds in the back.

In the rear, braced against the breach in the chamber wall, was a hump of shapeless black robes, topped by a hint of pale flesh. She held a sniper rifle in a trio of spindly arms, bracing herself with another half dozen stick-thin limbs.

The giant’s firepower pinned down the hounds who were trying to dislodge the beachhead established by the berserker with the ballistic shields. The berserker took the opening, darting forward again with a shrieking cackle and a click-boom-click-boom of her automatic shotgun. Behind them, the sniper rifle cracked and barked, picking off any who threatened the berserker’s advance.

Firepower poured into Lykke’s hounds, disrupting their attempts to regroup, knocking down the ones in powered armour, tearing apart the unprotected.

As individuals, Eseld saw little difference between her would-be rescuers and Lykke’s unwitting minions. This was just another gang of heavily-armed revenants with extensive cybernetic and biological modifications. Just another pack of predators, another way to die. There was nothing special or new about these six, nothing Eseld had not seen before in some other form, dozens of times over.

But they were greater than the sum of their parts.

The six moved as a single organism, without apparent orders or jostling for position or arguing over who got the best kills or who got to claim the most meat. The actions of each were backed up and supported by the other five.

Eseld had never seen anything like this before. It would have been beautiful, if the violence was not so terrible.

The turtle-backed berserker disrupted the loose formation of Lykke’s hounds, throwing off their firing arcs and smashing them into each other, acting as the tip of a spear. The giant provided fire support, preventing the massed mob from regrouping to repulse the berserker. The sniper in the rear picked off the high-value targets — downing revenants in powered armour, shooting the legs out from the ones clever enough to flank the berserker or fast enough to disengage from the pack to circle around. Eseld did not understand the function of the terrified revenant or the one who didn’t fear bullets, but they must have served some purpose.

And then there was the leader, the one who had shouted the orders.

She made herself known last of all, striding through the breach in the wall behind her comrades — leading from the rear while her soldiers exposed themselves to danger.

The leader wore a full-body suit of carapace battle armour, similar to the one Sky had taken from the armoury. But this suit was white, once gleaming, now dirtied to grey by soot and damage and age, scuffed and scorched and battered and burned. Her face was concealed inside a matching helmet with dark eyepieces and a rebreather grille over the mouth. A tomb-grown coat lay over the armour plates, layering more protection atop the slender lines of the suit.

The carapace chestpiece was daubed with a symbol in shining green — a crescent intersected by a pair of lines, like a tower silhouetted by moonrise.

She carried a coilgun, supported by a rig strapped around her hips and locked to her armour. The backpack alone would have required all of Eseld’s strength just to lift.

The leader strode past the sniper, past the giant and the pair in her wake, out into the battle.

Shouts broke out from Lykke’s hounds — “Cover, cover, now!”, “Shoot that one! Shoot her! Bring her down!”, “Fuck, fucking run—”

The leader walked straight into a storm of gunfire. Bullets slammed into armoured fabric and ceramic plates, ricocheting away or falling to the ground. She strode through the bullets like raindrops, though she must have felt the impacts like hammer blows.

She ignored it all and raised her weapon — the rifle-like receiver of the coilgun. Her backpack hummed with a spike of power. The leader aimed into the thickest remnant of Lykke’s hounds, where they were trying to regroup in the cover of the grey metal pyramid.

Eseld saw the logic and realised her mistake. The woman in armour had not been leading from the rear, safe while her comrades risked themselves.

The leader had joined the battle only when the hounds had begun to regroup from the initial shock of combat, as they had started to take cover and regain their cohesion, as their massed return fire had begun to find targets. Her armour, her weapon, her mere presence as she strode forward, unflinching before a storm of gunfire — it drew all the attention, all the return fire, every eye in the chamber. She took the pressure off her comrades just by her existence.

And for what?

To rescue Eseld and Cyneswith and Sky? All for the sake of this pitiful defeated meat, this strange flesh she had never met before? None of this made any sense to Eseld; powerful revenants did not do things like this, did not harbour motivation for altruism or kindness or heroic mercy. This action did not belong to the empty world left behind after God’s death. This was the moral act of a person who still felt the clean wind and saw the clear skies, a person who held true to the sunlit uplands when God still sat upon the throne of heaven, the days when angels watched over the world, instead of scrabbling in the dirt for scraps of meat alongside the lost and the damned.

Cowering on the floor, aching from bullet bruises, with her armoured coat dusted by debris, Eseld began to cry. Tears ran in twin tracks down her cheeks.

Lykke was a demon; Shilu was a fallen angel. Neither required the presence of divinity. No matter how good Shilu’s intentions, no matter how hard she had tried, whatever her secret plans, she had said it herself — she had failed. And Eseld had watched Shilu give up.

But this, whoever this was, she was still fighting.

Eseld decided she was being rescued by a saint.

The leader stopped, feet braced wide, sighting down the receiver of the coilgun. “Stand down or be cut down!” she howled through her helmet.

Bullets plinked off her armour. She fired.

A thump of magnetic discharge shook Eseld’s guts. A round from the coilgun slammed straight through a revenant’s hips, exploding her into a shower of gore, then carried on into the ground, throwing up an explosion of grey metal fragments and debris. The shock wave tossed a dozen more zombies aside, peppering them with shrapnel, leaving them bleeding and reeling, screaming and yowling, staggering and stumbling. Their return fire was broken, their line scattered, their cover ruined.

Just as the leader had said, they were done here.

Eseld stayed down, head pressed to Cyneswith’s shoulder. Cyn was sobbing, clinging to Eseld, mewling terrified questions.

But Eseld couldn’t answer. She couldn’t look away from the saint and her disciples.

She’d never seen revenants work together like this before; even the sustained glimpses she had gotten of the most well-armed and well-fed groups were not like this, not led from the front, not operating in concert. The saint and her disciples overcame many times their own number by application of teamwork and tactics, not superior armament; they weren’t even wearing powered armour, after all. The berserker cut down revenants up close with shotgun and tail, while the others worked inward from the edges, herding the remaining hounds into crossfire, so the giant and the sniper could take them down from opposite sides. The leader fired her coilgun twice more, always to disrupt attempts to regroup. Bullets and energy bolts slammed through the air; blades bounced off ballistic shields and snapped under the berserker’s claws. The coilgun tore through powered armour with the clarity of a divine lance.

Within thirty seconds the battle was over. All but one of Lykke’s hounds lay dead or had turned tail and fled. Only a couple had escaped — thrown down their guns and sprinted for the breach in the wall, shown mercy by the saint’s followers. The floor was littered with corpses, lying in pools of blood and gore, smeared around by bootprints and the crash of toppled bodies. The side of the grey metal pyramid was splattered with crimson spray. Great chunks had been torn out of the metal ground, pockmarked by bullet holes, scorched black by energy weapon discharge.

Only one hound remained, a power-armoured zombie almost as tall as the six-armed giant. The last zombie standing, about three meters diagonally from Eseld and Cyneswith.

The final hound raised a massive gatling gun toward the newcomers. “Not down yet, morons!” she bellowed. The barrels began to spin.

The leader — the saint — stepped forward and aimed the coilgun receiver. “Drop it or die.”

The gatling gun barrels went click-click-click-whirrrrrrr—

The terrified disciple, the one surrounded by the drones, now looked more exasperated than afraid. She snapped: “Elpida, just fucking shoot her!”

—whirrrrr-bangbangbangbang—

Gatling rounds tore through the air. The first one slammed into the leader’s chestplate, scuffing the tower-and-moon symbol. The next three rounds bounced off empty air, deflected by the invisible power from the silver-grey drones.

The saint fired the coilgun, squeezing the trigger three times in quick succession. A trio of magnetic discharges rocked Eseld’s intestines.

Three coilgun rounds hit the final hound. The first shot broke her powered armour with a high-pitched crack of metal and ceramic. The impact rocked her backward; the gatling gun bullets whirled up the side of the pyramid and tracked across the wall. The second round punched through the armour and ballooned the back of her suit in a spider-webbed mass of broken plates and elastic underlayers. The third shot burst her apart. She exploded in a shower of gore and shrapnel.

The last of Lykke’s hounds clattered to the floor, followed by fragments of her suit. Debris plinked off Eseld’s armoured coat. A chunk of steaming forearm landed in front of her face, still wrapped in armour, fingers twitching. Cyneswith muffled one last scream in Eseld’s side.

“Hold fire,” the saint ordered. “Repeat, hold fire. Targets clear?”

“No!” said the terrified revenant. “No, we are not clear. We are very, very far from clear. Elpida, do you not fucking see that thing over—”

“I know. Hold fire, stick to the plan. Sound off. Any wounded?”

“All good!” snapped the berserker.

The leader, the saint, the saviour in a battered and burned suit of armour — ‘Elpida’? — strode forward, carapace boots ringing against the grey metal floor, splashing through sticky puddles of blood and viscera. Eseld stared upward at her, eyes wide, panting with instinctive fear and religious awe. This monster was no different than thousands of others she’d encountered in all her many deaths and rebirths. Black eyepieces concealed any proof of humanity inside that once-white helmet.

But this was no predator. This was a saint.

Elpida stopped just short of Eseld, staring across the gravekeeper’s chamber. Eseld realised with a lurch of horror in her chest, and turned to look.

Lykke was staring back.

The demon had gone untouched by the brief battle. She was crouched atop Sky like a bird of prey upon a bloody carcass, gore-wrought wings held high, raptor talons clutching Sky’s armoured thighs, drooling a line of white fluid from her perfect bow-shaped lips. Her cloud of pustulent flies formed a pulsing aurora about her body. Sky lay limp, face streaked with blood. Her eyes were open, rolled back into her head, showing only bloodshot whites. She twitched and jerked as if trapped in a nightmare, snorting and wheezing and gasping for breath. Her armour was cracked and broken, pieces of it tossed to the floor. A single bloated white fly crawled out from between her parted lips and wriggled up her left nostril.

Lykke smiled at Elpida with perplexed curiosity.

Elpida spoke quickly: “Kagami, talk to me. What am I looking at?”

The terrified revenant — Kagami — snapped, “Nanomachine readings like the heart of the fucking sun! I don’t know, but we can both make an educated guess. And it’s not cloaking anything, it’s not trying to hide!”

Elpida said: “Atyle, your opinion.”

The fearless revenant answered this time, submachine gun loose at her side. “I concur. The devil is out in the open. She hides not.”

“Kagami,” Elpida said. “Do it.”

Kagami hissed through clenched teeth. “Really? You’re serious? We can’t just—”

“Do it,” Elpida ordered. “Now.”

Four of those silver-grey drones darted outward from Kagami. Three of them surrounded Elpida’s disciples in a triangle pattern. The fourth shot upward, hanging above the group.

A sharp crack-hum of electrical power pulsed through the air. Eseld blinked. She tasted iron.

Lykke’s curious smile curdled into a frown.

Suddenly the black-robed sniper appeared next to Elpida. She was massive, taller than Eseld had expected from seeing her crouched in the breached wall. She flowed like a centipede, back hunched, limbs tucked inside her robes. The lower half of her face was concealed behind a metal mask, the top half dominated by red bionic eyes. A boxy weapon emerged from beneath her black robes, clutched in four spindly arms, pointed toward Lykke.

Elpida said: “Serin, hold.”

“Coh-mannder,” Serin grunted. “This is a Necromancer. There is no doubt.”

“You’ll get your chance,” Elpida said. “Stick to the plan, keep her covered. Hafina, you help, eyes on the Necro. Atyle, Ilyusha, we have two survivors here. Get them on their feet.”

“One more back here!” screeched the berserker.

The fearless revenant — Atyle — stepped around Elpida and pulled Eseld to her feet. The little berserker must have been Ilyusha; she grabbed Cyneswith and yanked her upright. Cyneswith screamed and flailed, battering her rescuer with flapping hands. Ilyusha hissed with irritation.

“H-here, here!” Eseld yelped, hands out. “Give her to me, give her—”

Ilyusha shoved Cyneswith into Eseld’s arms. Cyn clung on tight, weeping and shaking, gaping at the carnage spread out across the floor, then up at the unfamiliar faces, then over at Lykke perched on Sky’s limp body.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Eseld hissed, though she was not sure she believed that herself. “We got— they’re here for— we’re okay—”

Atyle crooned: “Come come, babes in the woods, away from the slings and arrows.”

She gently led Eseld and Cyneswith a few paces back, behind the leader and the giant and the sniper. The little berserker helped, holding up her ballistic shield in Lykke’s general direction. Eseld felt hysterical fear crawling up her throat. What good would a shield do to stop a demon? Saint or not, they had to retreat, they had to leave before Lykke made a move, they had to—

A familiar figure was hunched in the rear, naked and bleeding from a score of wounds, her long black hair in blood-streaked disarray.

“Shilu!” Eseld panted.

Shilu no longer wore her true face, her scarecrow-machine of razor edges and black chrome. She had transformed back into her disguise, with soft brown skin and wide dark eyes.

She said nothing. She stared at the back of Elpida’s head.

Eseld and Cyneswith and Shilu were tucked in tight behind the front row of their would-be rescuers. To one side, the gravekeeper stared straight ahead, insensate and silent inside her upright resurrection coffin. Her papery skin was splattered with blood. Atop the grey metal pyramid, the perfect black sphere looked on like a hole in reality.

Elpida said: “Kagami, talk to me.”

Kagami looked the trio up and down from behind her visor, then snapped, “These three are fresh, yes. No major wounds. The naked one is bleeding but it’s all surface, she’ll keep.”

Shilu croaked, “I’ll be fine.”

Elpida said: “Serin, Hafina, keep eyes on the Necromancer.” Then she turned her head to look back. Dark eyeholes swept across Shilu and Cyn — then paused on Eseld.

Elpida’s hidden gaze lingered, on and on and on. Eseld stared back, cheeks still streaked with tears.

“You’re … ” Eseld croaked. She couldn’t even see Elpida’s eyes, but that didn’t matter. “You’re not here to eat us.”

Kagami huffed. “Obviously not. Well done. This one is clearly a genius. Great catch.”

“Nope!” Ilyusha said, cracking a toothy grin. “Lucky you!”

Eseld didn’t even look at them. She just started into those blank eyepieces set into Elpida’s helmet.

“Thank you,” she croaked. “Thank you. I … I don’t … ”

Elpida just kept staring.

Ilyusha snapped, “Elpi?”

“It’s alright, Illy,” Elpida said. She nodded to Eseld. “Names, quickly.”

“Eseld. This is Cyneswith. That’s Shilu.”

“Just you three? Any other survivors?”

Eseld shook her head. Cyneswith panted softly, her panic finally ebbing. She ducked her head in wordless greeting or gratitude, but said nothing.

Shilu pointed across the chamber, at Sky. “Her.”

“Yes,” snapped Kagami. “I think she’s a little bit fucking beyond us, thank you very much!”

“Never say never,” Elpida muttered, helmet turning away.

On the far side of the gravekeeper’s chamber, Lykke was climbing off Sky and rising to her feet.

Her wings of living gore stretched out wide, tips touching the wall and the metal of the grey pyramid. Her talons clicked against the floor as she advanced, hips swaying inside the stained and ruined fabric of her white sundress. Bloated flies crawled from her many wounds, adding their glistening pale bodies to her buzzing aura.

Eseld’s awe and relief turned to ice in her guts. All this heroism, all this effort, all this blessed benevolence — all of it was going to be destroyed.

She reached out and grabbed the back of Elpida’s coat, bunching a fistful of armoured fabric in one hand.

“No!” Eseld wailed. “N-no! You can’t! You can’t fight her, she’s a demon! She’s not a zombie like us, she’s something else. She’ll kill you all, there’s nothing we can do, nothing! Shilu, can’t we—”

“No,” said Shilu. “We can do nothing.”

Eseld stared at Shilu in shock. Shilu just shook her head, totally calm.

Kagami hissed: “The freshie has a point. Elpida, Commander, I don’t know if this can hold. Look at that fucking thing! She’s— it’s—”

Elpida murmured, “Can you hold it, Kaga? Can you do this for me?”

Kagami clenched her teeth. “Yes, of course I can. Fine.”

“Keep comms open,” Elpida said. “Just in case.”

Serin rasped behind her mask. “No running this time.”

Ilyusha made her shotgun go click-crunch. She shouted at Lykke. “Fuck you, reptile shit-eater! Bring it! I’ll shit on your face!”

Eseld panted with growing panic. These revenants could not stand up to the demon, whoever and whatever they were. No armour, no faith, no bullet would avail them.

“It’s impossible!” Eseld said. “Please— E-Elpida? She’ll just paralyse us, she’ll—”

“No,” Elpida said. “She can’t. Not us, not here, not now.”

Lykke stopped about a dozen paces away. She cocked her hips to one side. Her aurora of white flies followed the gesture, flowing outward. Their putrid bodies mirrored the ebb and flow of the storm outdoors. The hurricane washed over the tomb in deep, slow, standing waves of furious drumming, filling the air with so much rainfall it became distant static pressing in on the whole world. The wind whipped around gargantuan metal walls, howling like a voice from the pits of hell.

Lykke glanced to the group’s left and right, then upward. A wry smile creased her face.

The demon was examining the silver-grey drones, the points of a miniature pyramid which surrounded Elpida and her disciples.

Elpida said: “You can’t access our bodies from the other side of this firewall.”

Eseld’s jaw dropped. She was wrong; Elpida, the saint and her disciples, had found a way to fight a demon.

“Alright,” Lykke said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’ll play along for a little while. At least this is somewhat original, though I’m not impressed by the extras. Nice trick.” She raised her hands and mimed a tiny round of applause. “It’s been a long time since anybody pulled this particular move. Did you figure it out yourselves, or did you have some help?”

“All home grown!” Kagami snapped. “As if I’d need fucking help to figure out basic electromagnetic firewalling.”

Lykke snorted and rolled her eyes. “That’s hardly believable, considering your company. And you do know it won’t actually help you, yes? I can’t access you via the network through that, but your flimsy little wall can’t stop me from walking up to you and pulling your guts out.” She flexed a blood-glazed hand and narrowed her eyes. “I could also destroy the drones themselves. I doubt you could do anything to stop me, you jumped-up handful of worms.”

Eseld couldn’t believe her ears. Lykke was genuinely pissed off.

Elpida said: “Are you the same Necromancer?”

Lykke spread her hands. “The same Necromancer as what? What are you talking about, you filthy little scrap of flesh? As if you have the right to ask me questions! Oh no, this is just in poor taste, I’m growing unimpressed with this already.”

“I’ll chalk that down as a no,” Kagami rattled off. She swallowed hard. “Elpida, we’re not going to get anything out of her that she doesn’t want us to know. She might be, she might not. Who cares?! What does it matter?”

Atyle — the confident one, naked beneath her coat — said: “Did you bring the storm, she-devil? I see hidden hands behind your back.”

Lykke huffed and tossed her blood-streaked hair. “One more question and I’ll slay you where you—”

Elpida said: “What do you want, Necromancer?”

Lykke’s irritation vanished with a sharp smile. She gestured at Eseld, Cyneswith, and Shilu. “Those three! Those three you’ve so heroically rescued. They’re mine. I was already done here, just having fun in the vinegar strokes. I have no reason to spend more than a single second on the rest of you, whatever you’ve been convinced you are. Not that I won’t tear through you like tissue paper to get this finished. I am beyond bored and being distracted from the one thing here that was remotely interesting.”

Elpida said, “If we hand them over, will you leave? Will you let us loot the tomb armoury, and keep all these bodies?”

Eseld’s blood froze. She shared a glance with Cyneswith; Cyn was wide-eyed in fresh terror. Shilu’s expression hadn’t changed.

Why was Shilu hiding her own divine nature? Why not reveal herself to the saint, and fight together? And she was staring at Elpida’s back, as if she could see through the coilgun pack and the armoured coat and the carapace beneath, as if she was boring into Elpida’s flesh and reading her soul.

“Ha!” Lykke barked. “Is that part of your little play? Is that what we’re doing here? Do you need me to push a little so you come quietly? As if you’re in any position to make deals! Darling, the only reason I haven’t already torn you apart is because I’m humouring all this. Buuuuuuuut.” Lykke smiled like a little girl and put a fingertip to her lips. “Sure! Hand me my targets and I’ll be gone. I can even leave the bodies for your bellies. Though … that one?” She gestured back at Sky, lying in a heap of her own broken armour, twitching and shivering. “She’s coming with me, for some personal time.”

Elpida fell silent for a long moment. She took one hand off her coilgun receiver and tapped her chestplate twice, over the tower-and-moon symbol.

“No deal, Necromancer,” she said. “We’re leaving with these three. Kagami, tell the others to be ready for us. We’re leaving.”

Kagami clenched her teeth and hissed: “Commander—”

“No need to whisper, this thing can hear everything we say, no matter how quiet. Go ahead.”

Kagami said, “Even if we can get all the way back to Pheiri with this fucking thing following us, there’s nowhere to go. We’re pinned by this bastard storm. And it’s gotten worse since we got down here. Pira says Pheiri’s sensors read winds of almost eight hundred miles an hour. Even he can’t go out in that! It’s blasting the whole fucking city flat for miles around and flooding the remains! We’re trapped!”

“Understood,” Elpida said. She sounded perfectly calm. She tapped her chestplate again, once, twice, three times. “We’re sticking to the plan. You three.” She glanced back at Eseld and the others. “Did you secure any raw blue from the armoury?”

Eseld tightened her grip around Cyneswith. Cyn was still wearing the backpack full of cannisters over her armoured poncho. None of the cannisters seemed to have broken in the fight. “Y-yeah. Yes. We have it all. I’ve got guns and bullets too. If that matters.”

Kagami snorted. “And this one has been drinking the stuff. She’s glowing.”

“I needed it!” Eseld hissed.

“Good,” Elpida said. “Hafina, how many corpses can you carry?”

The giant rolled her upper shoulders. “Three. Four?”

Lykke burst out laughing, her mirth rolling off the grey pyramid in waves, echoing from the walls and ceiling. Elpida’s disciples tensed up. Ilyusha showed her teeth and swished her tail. Kagami went pale and crossed her arms over her chest. Serin’s spindly pale fingers tapped against her strange boxy gun. Atyle just tilted her head. Only Hafina didn’t react.

“Hold!” Elpida raised her voice above the laughter. “Stick to the plan. Everyone hold.”

Lykke’s laughter died away. She sighed and fanned her face with one hand.

“Zombies, hello?” Lykke said. “Little ones, that shield cannot protect you from me. If you know what I am, then you know you can’t fight me. You cannot retreat from here with those three in your possession. This is getting very old, my amusement is wearing off, and I’ve had enough of playing along.”

Elpida spoke slowly: “We can ward you away and cut your access. Do you believe that is the limit of our capabilities?”

Lykke smiled in a different way, hungry and curious. “Oh. Oh my. That confidence is real, isn’t it? You’re more than just playing along. How very spicy, very rich of you. And here I thought I’d already drunk my fill for the evening. I wouldn’t mind a private dance with one like you. Can I try you on for size, once this absurd little farce is concluded?”

Elpida barked with a sudden laugh. “Ha! Step off, bitch! I’ll bite your throat out!”

Lykke blinked, perplexed and put off. She put her hands on her hips. “What is this? What are you doing, zombie? Are you trying to get me to charge at you, because you think you’ve got some trick up your sleeve?”

Elpida’s voice snapped back to normal, calm and collected. “Are you sure we don’t?”

Lykke narrowed her eyes, lips pursed with venomous distaste. “This is just sad, very sad. Pitiful, really. I can’t tell if this is an attempt at survival or just some sad little game. What’s the point of this?”

“You’re going to let us go,” Elpida said. “Or you’re going to attack us, and find out what we can do. Your choice, Necromancer.”

Lykke sighed a very long sigh. She closed her eyes, then snapped them open again.

“Alright,” she said, cold and harsh. “I’ve had enough of playing along, I’m bored now. Come out and let’s finish this properly, or I’ll murder all your zombie pets and reanimate them as my own drones for the next couple of millennia. How does that sound for a credible threat?”

In the corner of Eseld’s eye, Shilu raised her right hand, fingertips pointing at the back of Elpida’s helmet.

“ … Shilu?” Eseld whispered. “No, n-no—”

Elpida said to Lykke, “Who are you talking—”

Lykke interrupted. “I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve by this pathetic show with these random zombies, but I’ve had enough. Stop pretending to be one of them, Shishi. It doesn’t suit you.”

Shilu’s right hand and forearm shimmered, transforming into black chrome; a knife-point of lightless metal cut the air, a spear tip glinting in the grey.

Shilu’s naked blade shot forward, aiming for the rear of Elpida’s armoured skull.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

This week on Eseld and Shilu’s spooky-scary tomb-time adventure, it’s a mysterious stranger in a suit of armour! Who could this possibly be!? It- oh, it’s Elpida. It’s just Elpida, with a few of her crew, coming to the rescue when least(?) expected.

But does she see the hidden knife at her back?

Well well well, I guess it should come as no surprise by this point, but I have no idea how long this arc is going to continue! The next chapter is not the last, but the one after that might be, maybe. I think it depends on how quickly Elpida can dodge a knife, and whether or not she’s got eyes in the back of her head. Or maybe Eseld will have something to say about all this …

Once again, I have some fanart to share! First up we have a second version of ‘On Wings of Hope’, depicting Thirteen Arcadia launching her drone, from the third chapter of her interlude, (by Melsa Hvarei.) I want to get this one printed and frame it on my wall, gosh! And we also have this vision of the Necroepilogos cityscape and the baleful remains of the dying sun, by wavesounds. Thank you both so much, I’m so delighted and flattered by all this incredible fanart!

No Patreon link this week! It’s the last chapter of the month, and I never like to risk double-charging anybody who doesn’t expect it. So feel free to wait until the 1st, if you were planning on that!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which heps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you, dear readers! Thank you for reading my little story. As always, I am so happy to see so many readers enjoying Necroepilogos. I couldn’t do this without you, after all! The tomb-journey continues, deeper and deeper into the sagging fleshy underbelly of this rotting world. Seeya next chapter!

Content Warnings

Suicidal ideation
Insects/entomophobia/insect bodily invasion

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Eseld wanted to run away.

Lykke had not spotted her, not yet. From where Eseld stood in the armoury she could not see much of the second chamber through the archway — not Shilu or the open resurrection coffin or the black sphere atop the grey metal pyramid. She could not see Lykke, so Lykke could not see her. Escape was still possible.

Eseld’s whole body quivered with adrenaline. Her throat closed up. Sweat broke out beneath her armpits, down her back, and on her forehead.

Run. Run. Run!

Even with nowhere to go, she still wanted to flee. She could throw herself into the elevator and jab at the buttons, hoping that the lift car might respond before Lykke noticed; or she could drop to her belly and crawl beneath the weapon racks, then hold her breath and squeeze her eyes shut and curl into a ball, praying to the dead and empty heavens that once the violence was finished, the demon would pass over Eseld’s hiding place. She might be able to drag Cyneswith to safety alongside herself — Cyn submitted to orders with so little resistance, she wouldn’t question Eseld’s flight until it was too late. But Eseld had no hope of saving Sky, nor of helping Shilu.

All her long experience of survival had taught Eseld that confronting the strong was futile madness. No scavenger could stand up to a well fed, heavily armed, predatory revenant. It stood to reason that no revenant could hope to defeat a demon, or an angel, or whatever Lykke and Shilu really were, these appendages of the rotten pretenders who surely quarrelled over God’s empty throne.

But for the first time in an infinity of fifty seven deaths, Eseld was no longer naked and powerless.

Her flesh was wrapped in armour, a gun was strapped over her shoulders, her belly was filled with raw blue.

And Shilu needed her.

“Cyn!” Eseld hissed. She shoved the backpack full of blue cannisters into Cyneswith’s arms. “Hold on to that. Don’t lose it!”

Eseld took the grip of her submachine gun in her right hand, and shoved her left into a pocket of her armoured coat. She wrapped her fingers around a hard metal egg — a grenade.

Would these mortal weapons be enough? Absolutely not. Eseld had watched Shilu sever Lykke’s head from her shoulders, and then watched Lykke stand back up and turn into a nightmare. Bullets and bombs would not stop this putrid divinity.

Eseld’s newborn resolve faltered.

Cyneswith whispered: “She’ll freeze us again! Miss Eseld, Miss Sky, please, she’ll just paralyse us, like before!”

Sky hissed over her shoulder, without taking her eyes off the archway: “Not if we get the drop on her first. Let me take the shot. You two hang back, don’t foul my aim.”

Sky unhooked the tapered helmet from her belt and slid it over her head, hiding her face behind the tinted visor. The helmet locked to her armoured carapace with a sharp click and a short hiss, sealing Sky into a full-body suit of grey metal and reinforced ceramic. Then she swept forward, holding the microwave gun low and loose; Sky moved like a real predator, walking quickly and quietly, her boots soundless against the floor. Her four articulated weapon-mount arms swung outward as she advanced, covering the archway with the heavy machine gun and the pair of plasma rifles.

Eseld wanted to follow, but experience told her to turn tail and run away.

Let Sky throw herself into the fire. Let the predators and the monsters and the demons war amongst themselves. Eseld knew she would make no difference in a fight between Shilu and Lykke. The idea was madness. Eseld was meat; she would always be meat. Godless and abandoned, she was nothing but dead matter.

Lykke’s voice echoed from within the gravekeeper’s chamber once more, bubbling with toxic amusement: “Don’t give me that blank stare, Shishi, it’s really not sexy. Maybe it was mysterious or inscrutable where you came from, but right here and right now it makes you look constipated. Now, come on, cough up your zombies so we can both go home.”

Shilu answered. “Home died two hundred million years ago.”

Lykke sighed. “Always a literalist. You know what I mean, don’t be such a boor. I preferred you much better when you spent most of your emotional energy shepherding around that little pet you kept. What was her name? Lily? Lulli? Loopy? Something like that. Is she around here too?”

“Keep her name out of your mouth.”

Lykke laughed. “Or what? You’re going to come up here and slap me? Try it! Seriously, Shishi, maybe we can wring some entertainment out of this after all. Not that earlier wasn’t plenty juicy, mind you. Been a long time since I got double-fisted all the way to two elbows. Next time you try that, I’ll bite your arms off with my cunt.”

Sky reached the arch. She dropped to one knee and pressed herself to the wall, poised to swing out around the opening. Eseld saw Sky flex her armoured gloves on the trigger and forward grip of the microwave gun. She was really going to do it; Sky was going to shoot at the demon.

Hope was madness, and madness was intoxicating.

Eseld ripped her feet off the floor and scrambled forward. She hissed to Cyneswith: “Stay behind me!” Then she sprinted for the arch.

Lykke’s voice rang out again: “Ahhh, is that the sound of a little mouse I hear? Come closer, little mousey. Save me the trouble of breaking the skirting board to dig you—”

Sky launched out of her crouch, swung around the corner, and raised the microwave gun.

An ear-splitting hiss cleaved the air.

Hisssssssssssssssssss—

Eseld scrambled to a halt beneath the arch.

—ssssssssssssss—

Lykke was standing halfway up the grey pyramid, her blonde curls haloed by the negative light of the perfect black sphere. A cylinder of superheated air connected the flat muzzle of Sky’s microwave gun to the centre of Lykke’s mass, wavering with heat haze, hissing with a noise like a pit of giant snakes. Lykke’s eyes were thrown wide in surprise. A circle on her white sundress was turning black with heat, smouldering at the edges, sticking to the skin beneath.

—ssssssssss—

Shilu stood before the upright resurrection coffin, all black chrome and sharp edges. She twisted to stare at the arrival of her unlikely cavalry, with no expression on her pale polymer face.

The ‘gravekeeper’ — the insensate half-bodied zombie inside the coffin — did not react at all, still and serene, unblinking and unmoving.

—ssssss—

Eseld raised her submachine gun, tucked the short stock against her shoulder, and grabbed the forward grip with her left hand. She pointed the gun — pointed with her whole body — up at Lykke. She pinned the gleaming sunlit demon between the crosshairs of the weapon. Then she pulled the trigger.

The submachine gun bucked like a donkey, kicking back into her shoulder with a one-two-three slam!-slam!-slam!

Three bullets tore through Lykke’s flesh. One punched straight through the meat of her left hip while the other two ripped into her left thigh.

Eseld squeezed the trigger again; another three rounds stabbed into Lykke’s belly and out through the small of her back. A blossom of dark blood bloomed open across the white stomach of her sundress. A third salvo took her through the right hip, shattering bones, jerking her like a puppet pummelled by hailstones. A fourth trio went wide, plinking off the grey metal pyramid. A fifth, a sixth, a seventh — Eseld lost count, jamming her finger onto the trigger over and over, gritting her teeth, making Lykke dance.

This was power. To strike at a demon and see the demon twist and writhe. Eseld screamed through her clenched teeth.

—sssssss-splurpt!

The superheated circle on Lykke’s chest suddenly imploded, collapsing inward — and then exploded out her back in a shower of boiling blood, blackened ribs, and steaming chunks of ruptured organ.

“Fuck you!” Eseld roared with furious joy.

They’d done it — she and Sky, though Eseld knew she had barely helped, the bullets meant nothing. But the superheated flesh, the burns, the internal fire, wasn’t that what Shilu had said might work, might hold Lykke back for—

Lykke froze.

The eruption of blood and bone and burst lungs stopped behind Lykke, suspended in the air, like a cape caught mid-flap in a gust of icy wind.

The demon straightened back up, as if she did not have a fist-sized hole punched through her chest and half her entrails blown out of her back. Her white sundress was ruined once again, soaked in gore and torn apart by bullet holes, the fabric sticking to her pale skin with her own steaming blood. She was punctured by so many wounds, so many of Eseld’s tiny little bullets. Her right eye had burst inside her face in a splatter of blood and bone fragments.

Lykke’s lips curled with curious amusement — at Sky.

“What an interesting woman you are,” Lykke purred. “What blind hope. What reckless abandon. What did you think that would do to me?”

Sky slapped the microwave gun to the floor and grabbed the EMP weapon off her own chest. She pointed the weird blocky muzzle at Lykke. The little screens and readouts all turned green at the same time; the weapon went ‘ding!’ A tiny mechanical voice announced: “Discharge prepared.”

Sky pulled the trigger. The gun went buzzzzt-thump.

Lykke blinked once, inhaled with apparent relish, and licked the blood off her own lips. “Mmmm! Juicy and unique, but such a tiny morsel. You’re going to need a lot more than that to keep me fed. Is this the end of the meal, or is there a main course?”

Sky dropped the EMP weapon and grabbed the microwave gun a second time. She lurched to her feet; Eseld could hear Sky panting for breath inside her sleek-angled helmet. Sky’s suit-mounted gun arms twitched to correct their aim as she rose, locked onto Lykke. Sky twisted to brace her weight on her back foot.

Lykke’s face twinkled with girlish delight. “Oh, bravo. Encore, encore!”

Sky opened fire.

The heavy machine gun on her lower mechanical limbs opened up with a slam-bang of large calibre rapid fire, juddering and jerking Sky’s armoured frame with recoil. The paired plasma rifles whined and flared with bolts of eye-searing purple light. The microwave gun split the air with a fresh hiss of superheated particles.

Lykke’s cape of blood and bone and organs whirled into life. The mass of viscera split into two and curled around her sides like the petals of a rose, forming a shield to her fore. Bullets sank into suspended blood like pebbles landing on thick tar. Plasma bolts dissipated into crackling static upon bulwarks of baked and blackened bone. A wall of ruptured lung-flesh and heaving crimson innards absorbed the beam of the microwave gun, glowing orange like the sun at storm-tossed dusk.

Eseld raised her submachine gun again and added her own firepower to the barrage, but Lykke’s blood melted the bullets on contact, like dropping the lead directly into the heart of a forge.

She needed something stronger.

Eseld pulled a grenade from her pocket, checked the text printed on the side, and yanked the pin out with her teeth. She let go of the lever and counted — one, two, three, four — then hurled the grenade toward Lykke.

She wasn’t foolish enough to believe an explosion would prevail where directed heat had not, but the grenade she had selected was special; the text printed on the metal casing said ‘INCENDIARY ROUND WHITE PHOSPHORUS’.

Eseld counted in her head — five, six, seven—

Lykke’s bloody shield twitched upward at the last second, catching the explosive in a pool of suspended blood. The grenade vanished as if dropped into a lake. The shield bulged a moment later, then subsided.

Lykke had swallowed the grenade, explosive and incendiary and all.

Sky ceased fire. “Fuck,” she shouted inside her helmet. “Fuck. Fuck!”

“All done, are we?” Lykke asked from behind her bloody shield of rose-petal gore. “Is that it? I was hoping for a touch more spirit than that! Come on, somebody throw their gun at me in despair, that’s always a fun conclusion. No? Not going to play? Awwww, diddums.”

Lykke’s viscera unfurled and rose upward. Streamers of blood and spears of blackened bone and sheets of cooked organ-meat reached past her head and shoulders, spreading outward to either side.

Eseld’s submachine gun tumbled from numb fingers, caught on the strap around her shoulders. Her mouth fell open, skin flushed with cold sweat. She staggered backward, eyes wide, unable to breathe.

Lykke turned her wounds into a pair of gore-soaked wings.

The demon smiled down at the zombies and Shilu, bright and bubbly. She stood aloft on the side of the pyramid, haloed by the black sphere, ruined and punctured and covered in wounds, scorched and blackened and burned and bruised and bleeding. And none of it mattered — not the heat and the fire, not the ‘EMP’, not the incendiary grenade, nothing.

Bloated white flies began to crawl out of Lykke’s many wounds, swarming across her flesh, rising into the air around her body in a buzzing aura. The flies matched the distant pounding of the storm outdoors, a high-pitched counterpoint to the waves of precipitation washing over the exterior of the tomb, their fattened bodies pulsing and shuddering in time to the great gusts of wind.

The demon was as untouchable as the hurricane.

“Shishi, did you put them up to this?” Lykke said. “I would never expect such courage from a zombie. Usually they would be crawling around on the floor and clawing their eyes out by now.”

Shilu looked up at Lykke. “Stand down and return to the network.”

Lykke rolled her one remaining eye, shoulders slumping. “You are such a broken record. Even defeating you is boring. I’m not going to take your orders, so stop trying.”

“We’re in a gravekeeper’s chamber and nothing is happening,” Shilu said. “I shot at it, Lykke. I shot four bullets at the gravekeeper’s core and I’m still alive. I suggest you stand down and return to the network.”

Lykke laughed, spreading her arms and her gore-wrought wings. Her cloud of flies followed, billowing outward. “And I’m standing right here too, right on the bitch. What did you hope to accomplish by running down here?” She stamped one blood-stained white high heel against the grey metal of the pyramid. “This thing is a blind fool. No better than the worms. Did you think it would listen to you, care about you, give a single solitary shit about who feeds it and waters it? It can’t think on that level, Shishi. It doesn’t care. I own the tomb systems, because I’m here, and I’m the biggest node around. That’s all there is to it. You lost before you even drew your first breath.”

“Who sent the storm?” said Shilu.

Lykke frowned. “The what now?”

“The hurricane,” Shilu said. She raised one black metal finger. “Outdoors. Can’t you hear that?”

Lykke cocked her head, listening to the muffled fury of the hurricane outside. Then she shrugged. “Since when do we care about the weather? Gosh, you’ve been slumming it down there without permissions for what, a couple of hours, at the most? And you’re already going native. Scared of a little moist air, really?”

Shilu said, “You have no idea who sent it. You can’t see it in the network, can you? You don’t know what’s going on here any better than I do. Stand down.”

Lykke leaned forward, hands on her bloodstained hips, wings of tainted viscera spreading outward, wrapped in her chorus of bloated flies. “I don’t need to know, Shishi. All I need to do is eat you up.”

“You’re stalling.”

Lykke sighed again. “I’m waiting for my— ah!”

Lykke jerked upright, reached out with one hand, and clicked her fingers — at Sky.

Sky shuddered and stumbled, then righted herself, growling inside her helmet. Her articulated weapon-arms swung upward to aim at Lykke, but she held fire.

“Ah ah ah,” Lykke purred, wagging a finger. “No running, little one.”

Sky shouted, “I wasn’t—”

“And don’t lie,” Lykke added, smiling with flirtatious glee. “Try that again and I’ll hold you tight. And I don’t want to do that, not just yet. You interest me. You and I are going to have a one-on-one dance before this night is over.”

“I wasn’t running,” Sky repeated. “I wasn’t running!”

Lykke bit her bottom lip. “Oh, yes. You are an interesting woman. I think I’ll bend the rules a little, keep you around for a day or—”

Eseld stepped forward.

“Just fucking kill us!”

She screamed the demand at the top of her lungs; her voice echoed off the grey metal of the gravekeeper’s chamber.

Lykke turned a much less interested gaze upon Eseld. “Something to add? Or are you just—”

“Kill us!” Eseld screamed again.

She strode forward, stomping toward the foot of the pyramid; somebody tugged at her arm, trying to halt her — Cyneswith, pleading in a tiny voice. But Eseld was consumed by fury. Cyneswith didn’t let go, so Eseld dragged her along. She walked up to the pyramid and stopped next to Shilu, just in front of the open resurrection coffin. The bisected zombie inside the coffin had not reacted to anything, still staring straight ahead, unblinking and unbreathing.

Eseld spread her arms, empty handed, submachine gun hanging from her shoulders. She shook with rage, eyes bulging, showing her mouth full of sharp teeth.

“Kill us,” she repeated. “Get it over with. You have all — all the power! You always do!”

Lykke tilted her head to one side, unsmiling but curious. “What do you think I am, little zombie?”

“You— you give us these scraps, of promise, of bullshit. You feed us with each other’s meat, over and over again. You keep all this going, this rot and hate and— and— and you could just take it! Just take it for yourself! You left God’s throne empty so you could play these games with each other! Stop bringing us all back! Kill us or let us go! Let me stay dead! Let me go! Or I’ll— I’ll—”

Eseld’s throat burned from shouting, but a kind of madness had taken hold; she didn’t know if it was the power and the failure, or the raw blue roiling in her guts, or Shilu’s influence, or the gravekeeper’s chamber, or the storm outdoors, or a cocktail of all those things. But the notion struck her like a God-given inspiration. For a brilliant and shining moment her faith came rushing back, reborn in a new form.

“Or I’ll come back and come back and come back again, and eventually I’ll find out how to eat you!” she roared up at Lykke. “That’s it, isn’t it?! One of us just has to eat one of you, and then pull it all down, pull you all down, into meat, like us!”

She stopped, panting hard, blinking rapidly, unsure of what she’d said. She was losing her mind.

Lykke snorted and looked at Shilu. “They always come up with such interesting cosmologies, don’t they?”

Eseld whirled on Shilu. “And you, Shilu, why aren’t you doing anything?!”

Shilu stared out of her pale polymer face, perfect and poreless. “I’ve lost.”

“ … what?”

“I’ve lost,” Shilu repeated. “I can’t beat Lykke, not like this, not without network access permissions. My only hope was to appeal to the gravekeeper.” She gestured at the open coffin and the half-a-girl within. “My words have fallen on deaf ears. I still believe Lykke should stand down, because this situation is abnormal. But she won’t. We’re dead.”

“No, I— I wanted to help.” Tears filled Eseld’s eyes and ran down her cheeks. Her hands shook. She reached out for Shilu, but dared not touch those razor-sharp edges. “Shilu, you’re the first I’ve ever— you helped when you could have— you’re an angel. Aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry, zombie. Better luck next time.”

Eseld keened through her teeth. “I don’t want a next time!”

Sky raised her voice from inside her helmet: “We can’t just give up! There’s gotta be something else. Shilu, stun her again, buy us time!”

Shilu didn’t bother to answer.

Eseld turned away and stared up at Lykke. The demon was resplendent, haloed in black, with her aura of flies and her wings of meaty gore.

Lykke shrugged, and said: “Shishi, I thought you didn’t like watching them get destroyed?”

“Get this over with,” said Shilu.

“Haha! Hardly. I’m having too much fun playing with my food. That’s why I’m stalling, you see. I’ve called some acquaintances to help. I want to see how many of them you can handle before you give up.”

“What are you talking about?”

Eseld blinked away her tears. “Y-yes, what? There’s more of you?”

Lykke wrinkled her nose. “I can’t really call them friends, of course. Friendship across such a vast gulf is simply impossible. Just a few little puppies I’ve been nudging around out there, laying a trail of treats for them, leading them around the ridiculous blockage at the front of the tomb. They didn’t even know each other until I brought them together a couple of hours ago. They’ll be here any moment. Right through … ah, that wall, I think?” Lykke pointed to the right, at the blank grey metal wall of the chamber.

Eseld staggered backward. Other revenants were about to arrive, down here? Her hands scrambled for the submachine gun. She couldn’t fight Lykke, but she could defend herself against her own kind, if Lykke was so determined to draw out this torture.

Eseld blundered backward into Cyneswith, only a step or two behind her.

Shilu asked, “Why bother bringing more zombies into this?”

Eseld grabbed Cyn and tried to steer her away, back toward the arch. Perhaps if they could reach the lift—

“Originally?” Lykke answered. “To mop up any stray messes, of course. I hate having to chase down every last zombie, it’s such a bore. But now that’s rather redundant, isn’t it?”

Cyneswith wouldn’t move. She was staring at the girl inside the resurrection coffin, eyes wide, lips parted. Eseld tried to drag her back by one shoulder. Cyneswith pulled free and stepped forward as if in a trance.

“Instead,” Lykke went on. “I think I’m going to see how much zombie meat it takes to completely swamp you. Just think! One of us, felled by rotting meat. A first time for everything! And, oh! I’d almost forgotten. I still want a private dance with the brave little soldier over there.” She gestured at Sky, batting her eyelashes. “Can’t have anybody getting in the way of that.”

“Cyn!” Eseld hissed. “Cyn, Cyn we need to run, we need to—”

Cyneswith reached out with one hand and cupped the cheek of the girl inside the coffin.

The bisected girl — the ‘gravekeeper’ to whom Shilu had been addressing her plea for help, suspended from tubes and cables, unmoving and unmoved, insensate and beyond communication — blinked, opened her lips, and spoke.

“Crowned and veiled. Once again revealed. Do you wish this?”

Lykke looked down with a sudden frown. “What was that? What was—”

The right-hand wall of the chamber burst inward with a crack-thump of explosive detonation; metal fragments and whirling debris scythed through the air, plinking off the grey pyramid and pattering off Eseld’s armoured coat. Eseld threw herself forward to grab Cyneswith and shelter her face from the storm of shrapnel. Sky ducked low, protected by her carapace suit. Shilu twisted to face into the breach, extending both arms into lightless black blades as flying wreckage and rubble clattered off her armoured body.

“Hahaha!” Lykke cackled. “Oh well, who cares? My hounds are here! Din-dins, darlings!”

A mass of figures crept from the breach in the wall, shrouded silhouettes within the cloud of masonry dust. Armoured boots and naked claws clicked against the metal floor. Weapon readouts and warning lights glowed in the gloom. Generators and power plants hummed deep and low. Hissing saliva dripped from hidden maws.

The smoke and haze parted, blown aside by a gust of air from the wounded wall.

Revenants — three or four dozen, large and strong, heavily modified, well fed and well armed.

Skinless horrors stood shoulder-to-shoulder with suits of powered armour. Zombies bristled with more guns and limbs than Sky could ever have achieved with her articulated rig. Humming swords of electrical power were raised next to short-barrelled shotguns and heavy-duty rotary cannons. A dozen naked faces were encrusted with bionic enhancements or bio-mechanical sensory organs. Eyeballs glowed red or green or sickly yellow. Mouths were filled with steel teeth, or turned into sucking proboscises, or missing entirely, replaced with some other, more terrible method of feeding from cannibalised victims.

Half a dozen weapons pointed toward Eseld and Cyneswith. Loping hunters readied to pounce. Barrels began to spin. Fingers tightened on triggers. Grins split foot-wide jaws. A helmet-muffled voice shouted, “Fresh meat!”

And then Shilu was among them.

Shilu’s blades flashed and flickered through flesh and steel too fast to follow with the naked eye. Limbs went flying, severed from elbows and shoulders, trailing arcs of blood as they fell. Lightless black punched through armoured chest plates and sliced apart heavy shields like a hot wire passing through butter. Shilu weaved through the crowd, ducking and dodging, twisting on her ankles like a dancer, diving aside from flailing counter-blows, jinking around grasping hands and jerking claws. The scrum of revenants turned inward, shouting and screaming, trying to draw a bead on Shilu as she raced through the pack.

Injured zombies staggered free or slumped to their knees, clutching their own voided guts or groping for their severed arms. Blood sprayed upon the floor, forming great puddles slick with gore.

Gunshots rang out. Most of them missed, going wide, nowhere near Shilu’s ever-changing position. But a few landed true, ricocheting off her black metal body. The impacts slammed her sideways, forcing her out of position.

A bold revenant took the obvious opening and leapt on Shilu’s back, trying to knock her to the floor, lashing at her with sharpened limbs and two mouths full of extra teeth.

Shilu threw her off with a twist of her shoulders, opening the zombie’s chest with a blade as she dropped the dead weight.

At the other end of the chamber, Sky brought her weapons to bear upon the crowd. Her articulated gun-arms swung around, aiming into the mass of targets with the heavy machine gun and the twinned plasma rifles. She raised her assault rifle to her shoulder as well, aiming down the sights, finger slipping onto the trigger.

Lykke shrieked: “Did you forget, soldier-girl?! Tonight’s dance is all mine!”

Lykke launched herself off the side of the grey pyramid. Her wings of extruded viscera spread wide and snapped to catch the air; a wave of reeking pressure washed down upon the combat below. Several of Lykke’s ‘hounds’ looked up and around with dawning horror — but they were too busy with Shilu to realise whose orders they had been following this whole time.

Lykke twisted in the air, pointing her feet toward Sky, trailing a corona of bloated flies. Her pretty little white shoes warped and flowed, transforming into gleaming talons of razor-sharp bone.

Lykke pounced.

Sky tried to turn, to reorient her firepower at this priority target — but she was too slow. She pulled the trigger on her rifle but the bullets went wide. Her heavy machine gun opened up, but Lykke tucked in her legs at the last second, then crashed into Sky from above.

The pair went down together in a clatter of carapace armour and talons, topped by the whirring sheets of gore repurposed as Lykke’s infernal wings.

Lykke howled laughter into the visor of Sky’s helmet, grappling with Sky’s upper gun-arms, one in each hand. She snapped the articulated metal like brittle bones, casting the plasma rifles aside. Greasy insect bodies swarmed all over Sky’s armour, searching for a way inside. Sky jammed her assault rifle into the soft meat of Lykke’s throat and pulled the trigger — and held it down, the weapon switched to full-auto. Bullets tore through Lykke’s throat and burst out of the back of her neck, smashing vertebrae and pulping her spinal cord.

But the wound was nothing. It simply didn’t matter, not to an agent of the divine, no matter how far fallen.

Sky’s rifle ran out of bullets. Click.

Lykke smashed Sky’s helmet off with a lazy swipe of one hand. Sky’s head snapped back, her exposed face streaked with blood, eyes clenched in pain, flies descending to mob at the crimson on her skin.

“You were showing so much promise!” Lykke howled. “Don’t give up now, we’re so close!”

The heavy machine gun was still intact; Sky tried to jerk it upward and stick the barrel in Lykke’s guts, but Lykke rammed a knee into the weapon, grinding it into the belly-armour of Sky’s suit, holding it down with both hands. Her feet-talons gripped Sky’s thighs, cracking the ceramic and metal armour.

“Boooo-ring!” Lykke cackled. “Whatever, you can finish yourself. I’m going to go play with Shi—”

Sky reached down with her right hand and drew the machete from the sheath on her thigh; she wound back her arm, rocking her whole body weight to one side for more leverage, then reared back up. She used the momentum to ram the blade directly into Lykke’s left temple, point-first. The tip of the machete exploded from the other side of Lykke’s skull in a welter of blood and brains.

Lykke blinked — then grinned wide, showing all her teeth. “Yes! Yes, you’re it! You’re my new best friend!”

Lykke opened her mouth wide and vomited a torrent of glistening white flies directly into Sky’s face; Sky clamped her eyes and lips shut, but the bloated, greasy insects forced themselves up Sky’s nostrils. She bucked and writhed, her armour clattering against the floor.

Eseld couldn’t watch any more, because Shilu was losing.

Shilu had felled more than a dozen zombies and wounded about a dozen more, but the weight of firepower and the close press of bodies was beginning to prevail against her. She went down in a tangle of limbs, three revenants bundling themselves atop her slender black-metal form. She burst from the pile moments later, leaving a decapitated corpse behind alongside two howling wounded — but then a slam-slam-slam of shotgun rounds boomed through the air, catching Shilu in the flank and spinning her to one side. Another pair of revenants darted in, unloading weapons on her at point-blank, smashing her backward, pounding her to the floor. She tumbled to her knees, thrown about like a rag doll by the impacts.

Other revenants slipped around the combat, turning their attention toward the remaining targets — Eseld and Cyneswith.

Two armoured zombies and one slavering monster of skinless muscle rounded on Eseld. Guns rose to cut Eseld down. The skinless revenant advanced, opening a mouth full of suckers and tiny cilia.

Eseld grabbed her submachine gun in one hand and yanked Cyneswith back with the other. She jammed her finger on the trigger, spraying bullets toward the advancing trio. The skinless monster jerked to the side, deftly avoiding the fire.

“Cyn!” Eseld shouted. “Use your gun, use your—”

Bullets slammed into Eseld’s armoured coat, hitting her like rocks thrown by the hurricane outdoors. She went flying, crashing to the floor, pain shooting across her ribs and belly. Cyn screamed, going down beside her, gasping in shock, eyes wide and watering, clutching at the protection of her armoured poncho.

The skinless zombie loomed overhead.

Eseld threw one arm across Cyneswith, and raised her submachine gun with the other. She pulled the trigger — but the skinless monster slapped the barrel aside and yanked the weapon from Eseld’s hand. The bullets pinged off the distant ceiling.

In the corner of Eseld’s eye, the gravekeeper stared straight ahead, unblinking, unbreathing, uncaring.

“—help—” Eseld croaked.

The skinless revenant tore the submachine gun off the strap around Eseld’s shoulder and tossed it aside. A mouth of tiny suckers and blood-red cilia descended, opening wide enough to cover Eseld’s whole face. She scrambled at her coat for one of the pistols, eyes filled with tears, face streaked with snot. Did it have to end like this, so soon, so soon after this false promise of power? Eseld would never meet Shilu again; she had lost her one chance to be more than mere meat, her one chance to understand why, her one chance to claw her way out of this pit of eternal suffering. But all that was gone now, devoured by the strong, eaten up by those she could never hope to match, even Shilu—

A wave of invisible force smashed into the skinless zombie, slamming her sideways, sweeping her away from Eseld. She bounced off the side of the grey metal pyramid with a deep grunt, the wind knocked from her lungs.

Had the gravekeeper finally responded, descending to help this pitiful meat? But Eseld felt no wave of nausea, saw no wavering heat-haze pressure in the air; the black sphere was silent, the gravekeeper-girl unresponsive and still.

A silver-grey oblong about the length of Eseld’s hand hovered in the air three feet from her face, in the space the skinless revenant had occupied a moment earlier.

A voice rang out — from the right, from the breach in the wall, full of confidence and command.

“Newly resurrected, heads down! Drop to the floor, now!”

On Eseld’s left, the skinless revenant whirled to her feet, eyes wide with rage, spitting blood from split lips. She raised two sets of bone-tipped claws, opening her mouth to screech and squeal her outrage at a meal denied.

A stomach-pounding thump of magnetic discharge shook the chamber; a projectile slammed into the skinless revenant’s waist, bursting her apart. Blood exploded up the side of the pyramid and across the floor, showering Eseld’s face and coat with steaming crimson droplets. The two halves of the skinless revenant tumbled to the floor, her face caught in an expression of blank surprise.

The command rang out again, the speaker’s voice muffled inside a suit of armour.

“Fresh resurrected, stay down! The rest of you—”

The speaker paused for a heartbeat.

“The rest of you are done here.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Bullets don’t work on demons. Better use holy water, maybe ofuda, some Buddhist chanting, get a shrine maiden or a priest in there to help. Any priests around? No? Maybe we can find a shrine maiden among the zombie girls, but it doesn’t seem like any gods are around to listen.

Or maybe they’re paying attention right now. Maybe that’s what this is all about.

Anyway! Here we go! Arc 11 marches on, spinning totally out of my control. The next chapter was actually meant to be the end of the arc, but behind the scenes the zombies have wrenched the controls out of my hands, and I actually have no idea how long this arc is gonna be now. At the moment it looks like I’ll know pretty much as it happens. Your guess is as good as mine! Eseld is in terrible trouble, Sky is … worse. Even Shilu’s not holding up well. But who’s this with the voice of command and the mysterious magnetic weapon? I wonder! Ahem. Lykke probably doesn’t care though. One zombie is much the same as any other, right?

I have a shoutout this week! Normally I do these over in my other story, but this one is more likely to be of interest to readers of Necroepilogos specifically, so! Now, I’ve never actually used html code blocks for shoutouts before, this is entirely new to me, but the author was kind enough to hand this to me, ready to go, and even sorted one out for Necroepilogos in return! So, here goes!

Stranded on the hell-planet of Arachnea, the last remnants of the human Fleet fight to survive in a world overrun by insectoid monsters and a sentient ecosystem gone mad. It is a war they are destined to lose, as with every century that passes, more of the ancient science lies forgotten, replaced by myth and superstition. That is, until assistant navigator Rene stumbles upon a dormant Divine Engine, mightiest weapon of the ancestor-gods. Now armed with a forgotten power that can move mountains and boil the seas, can he reclaim humanity’s rightful place as the masters of Arachnea? Or will this glimpse into the past unearth a deadly secret? – A focus on survival, exploration, science fiction and a smidgen of horror. – Competent protagonists who learn and adapt to their surroundings, and who have wildly conflicting goals and perspectives. – Gigantic set piece battles between bioengineered insect-inspired cultures and a hypermilitarized human race. – A space opera confined to a single planet full of wonders and horrors in equal measure.

Sure hope that worked right! Go check the story out if that sounds like your cup of tea!

Meanwhile, if you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! Right here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I am still very much trying to build up some kind of a backlog of chapters, and when I do, I’ll be sharing more chapters ahead with patrons!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which heps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you! Thank you for reading Necroepilogos; I dearly hope you’re having as much fun with the story as I am. As always, I could not do this without all of you, the readers. So, thank you! Arc 11 is turning out very fun so far, and I feel like we’re just skimming the surface of what’s yet to come. Seeya next chapter!

Content Warnings

None this chapter.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Shilu opened the elevator doors and strode into the cavernous room beyond, balanced on the sharp points of her spear-tip feet.

Eseld crept out of the lift in Shilu’s wake. She stumbled to a halt after three paces, eyes wide, mouth agape.

The armoury was divided in two by a pathway of slightly darker metal. The path led across a wide grey room, then terminated at an archway opposite the elevator doors. To Eseld’s right was the largest collection of functioning machinery she had ever seen. Tables overflowed with scientific equipment and hand-held devices, visored headsets and bulky goggles, portable scanners and arm-mounted readouts, trays of little mechanisms and robots and more, all manner of electronic and mechanical gadgetry. Eseld understood almost none of it, but she knew these objects were useful, because she had seen many similar examples in the hands of powerful, well-equipped, predatory revenants. A row of computers stood against the wall behind the tables; screens glowed with toxic greens and electric blues, scrolling through reams of text and numbers, or waiting to the silent beat of blinking cursors.

On Eseld’s left was power and salvation, a treasure-trove beyond her wildest dreams, a promise she had not understood when it was made.

Guns. So many guns.

When Shilu had used the word ‘armoury’, Eseld had understood perfectly well on an intellectual level. An armoury was a large store of weapons. But she had not — could not have! — imagined such limitless bounty. She had been too preoccupied with the implications of the running battle between Shilu and Lykke.

Eseld had handled a firearm only once before — a small calibre pistol. She had looted it from the remains of a powerful revenant, more deaths ago than she could count. Stronger and more ruthless scavengers than Eseld had already stripped the corpse clean of meat and cracked the bones for marrow. By the time Eseld had crept forth from her hiding place the body had been reduced to a tangle of blood-stained clothes and torn webbing, punctuated by bone fragments. Eseld had been sucking on scraps of bloody clothing when she’d discovered the handgun in a knot of sticky fabric, missed by the earlier scavengers. Snub-nosed, pocked with rust, the thing had looked like debris. The magazine had contained only three bullets. Eseld had wasted two rounds shooting at a wall, to see what would happen; recoil had surprised her so badly that she’d dropped the gun on the first shot. For the second shot she’d held the gun in both hands, closed her eyes, and turned her face away from the target. She had used the last bullet on a rival scavenger a few weeks later, but she had missed that shot and drawn attention to herself. She had died again that day, chased down by a long-legged zombie who had heard the gunfire.

The tomb’s armoury contained enough guns for a million missed shots.

Firearms of all shapes and sizes were lined up in racks and laid out on shelves — pistols, submachine guns, assault rifles, heavy weapons, energy weapons, coilguns, plasma rifles, and more, many of which Eseld could not identify. Most of it was outside of Eseld’s experience, because those who carried such guns were usually so far beyond her place in the ecosystem.

Combat knives lay sheathed in rows, sorted by size. Grenades nestled in trays, arranged according to type. Body armour soaked up the light, stowed in deep rows on the shelves. Clothing sat in tubs and bins, black and grey and brand new, folded neat and tidy, without holes or bloodstains or threadbare hems.

Three sets of powered armour were locked into charging ports along the wall, their fronts open like the mandibles of giant crustaceans.

Eseld was shaking. She wiped her mouth on the back of one hand, expecting to find drool running down her chin.

Shilu walked straight down the centre of the room, following the pathway which separated the weapons and armour from the devices and computers. She scooped up a large pistol and a handful of bullets as she passed the armoury, black metal fingers clacking against the firearm. She slipped the magazine out of the pistol and loaded the loose rounds with a rapid click-click-click, then slapped the magazine back into place seconds later, all without breaking her stride.

“Arm yourselves. Be ready to leave,” Shilu called without looking back. “Don’t follow me.”

Shilu stepped through the archway, into the second chamber.

The room on the far side of the archway looked much larger than the armoury, as if the armoury was merely an antechamber. A huge pyramid of grey metal filled most of that second room, easily twenty feet tall. The tip of the pyramid was flattened out into a kind of socket; in the socket sat a perfect black sphere, lightless and empty, like a hole in reality.

A resurrection coffin stood upright at the foot of the pyramid, facing the archway and the elevator doors. The coffin was occupied.

The zombie within the coffin was bisected at the waist, her legs and hips gone. Her body was suspended on a patchwork of cables and tubes, spilling from her ruptured belly like mechanical intestines, hooked into the sides of the resurrection coffin. Wires punctured her arms and neck and penetrated the bald surface of her scalp, snaking across her withered shoulders and prominent ribcage. Her hands had been severed, replaced with yet more cables running from the ends of her wrists, plugged into the base of the coffin. She stared straight ahead, unblinking and unbreathing. She showed no reaction as Shilu entered the pyramid chamber.

Eseld had seen a great many heavily modified zombies, some of them far from human, but never anything quite like that.

Shilu’s scarecrow body of sharp angles seemed tiny before the grey pyramid and the empty black sphere, framed by the curve of the arch. Silence was smeared by the distant drumming of torrential rain. The voice of the hurricane howled against the exterior of the tomb.

Behind Eseld, Sky let out a low whistle. Eseld flinched.

“Damn,” Sky said. “That sure is a sight for sore eyes.” She stepped past Eseld and flashed a smile. “Guess our friend wasn’t lying about the armoury, huh? And real clothes, thank fuck for that.”

Eseld gestured at the pyramid and the black sphere. “What—”

Sky laughed, hard and harsh. “Bugger that, I don’t even care. Forget whatever AI mind bullshit is going on. I’m getting strapped.” She beelined toward the guns and body armour. “Keep a look out for a flamethrower, a plasma torch, or a directed microwave gun. Or thermite, that might do the trick. And toss me any EMP or ECM output equipment. We need something to take out Lykke, and make it permanent this time.”

Cyneswith advanced with more caution, pale and still. She paused and caught Eseld’s eyes. “What is all this?”

“Guns.”

Cyneswith wet her lips. “I … I don’t understand these mechanisms. What would you have me do, Miss Eseld?”

Eseld forced herself to smile. “Get some clothes on. Grab some of the backpacks. The things with straps, over there. We’ll need at least three.”

Cyneswith glanced toward Sky. The larger woman was already rummaging through the clothes. “Can you show me, Miss Eseld?”

“ … in a sec. Grab clothes. Get dressed. I … I need to … ”

Eseld hurried forward, leaving Cyneswith behind. She followed Shilu.

Eseld paused to grab a pistol from the same rack Shilu had selected. She lifted the firearm in one sweaty palm. The gun was heavy and cold in her hand. The grip was too slippery. She had neither the time nor the dexterity to fumble bullets into the magazine as she walked, so she skipped that step and hurried to the archway.

She made it just in time; in the chamber with the pyramid and the black sphere and the insensate zombie wired into a coffin, Shilu raised her gun.

She aimed at the black sphere and pulled the trigger.

The weapon’s discharge echoed off the chamber walls with a deafening bang. Eseld flinched and scrambled to a halt. Cyneswith yelped in surprise. Sky said nothing, but the sound of rummaging stopped. Eseld had assumed that Shilu would deliver a threat or an ultimatum first, perhaps to the revenant in the coffin — was that the ‘gravekeeper’? She had not expected Shilu to open the conversation with a bullet.

No ricochet sound followed the gunshot. The surface of the black sphere showed no damage.

The bullet was floating in mid-air about six feet out from the sphere’s surface. An area of heat-haze or optical illusion linked the bullet to the sphere, as if the air itself was warping under incredible pressure.

Eseld’s stomach turned over with sudden nausea. Her vision swam. Her head pounded.

“Do I have your attention?” Shilu said. She was speaking to the sphere.

The suspended bullet fell from the air and landed on the floor with a delicate metallic clink. Shilu squeezed the trigger three more times — bang! bang! bang! All three bullets froze in mid-air before they could reach the black sphere, arrested by that heat-haze warping in the air.

A wave of nausea crashed into Eseld. She spluttered and retched, but there was nothing in her belly to bring up. She was freshly resurrected, without even a mouthful of bile in her own stomach.

Shilu’s head whipped around. Wide dark eyes stared out of a pale polymer face, framed by a frown.

“I told you not to follow me,” she snapped. “Back away.”

Eseld staggered backward. The nausea lifted as suddenly as it had arrived. Her vision cleared. The pressure in her head ceased.

She stared at Shilu, panting for breath.

“Brave, zombie,” Shilu said. “But very stupid. You are not hardened against gravitics. Stay away from the gravekeeper’s chamber while I talk. Get dressed. And pick up some guns.”

Shilu turned back to the sphere and the coffin.

“Do I have your attention?” Shilu repeated.

She received no answer that Eseld could hear, but apparently Shilu was satisfied by an invisible response, because she lowered her pistol. The trio of bullets fell to the floor with a clink-a-clink of metal. Shilu walked up to the zombie inside the coffin, then stopped and spoke. Her voice was a jumble of hissing and buzzing, like a machine trying to imitate a cloud of insects.

Eseld turned away; whatever was happening in there was the domain of angels and demons. To even stand too close was to risk obliteration. She should have trusted Shilu’s warning the first time.

She was only a zombie, after all. Only meat.

The freshies were faring far better. Cyneswith had tugged on a pair of tomb-grey trousers and a stretchy grey thermal t-shirt; she was looking down at herself with a bemused expression. Sky was already fully dressed, wearing boots and combat webbing over her muscular frame. Her hair was tugged back into a dark twist, pinned by a strap of webbing across her shoulders. She was tugging some kind of rigging off the shelves and buckling pieces of it around her own body, settling metal struts across her back, like a frame for a rucksack.

She caught Eseld’s eye and shrugged. “Mind-jobs, hey?” she said. “What can you do? Leave her to it.”

Eseld answered with a shrug of her own.

Sky smiled, showing white teeth in the reddish skin of her face. Eseld did not like that smile. It contained too much glee.

Sky finished strapping the metal frame to her back; Eseld couldn’t see what the process had achieved. Sky hesitated for a moment, then trotted to the other side of the room to poke through the equipment. “There’s gotta be a wide-band ECM set somewhere here,” she said. She glanced at the open doors of the lift, then at Eseld. “Come on! We need a flamethrower or a plasma torch if we’re gonna hold that thing off. You’re still naked, soldier. Get your gear on.”

Sky turned back to the equipment without waiting for Eseld to respond. Eseld shook her head. There was nothing a lowly zombie could do to stop a demon like Lykke. It was all up to Shilu now. Sky would die quickly if she did not learn that. Sky would probably die anyway. True fresh meat did not keep long.

Eseld walked over to the bins and tubs full of clothes.

Cyneswith looked up with a bashful smile. She gestured down at herself. “They don’t have any skirts, so I’m wearing trousers! It’s such an odd feeling.”

“Um, good,” Eseld said.

Cyneswith held out one of the t-shirts, beaming with a smile. “All ready for you, Miss! They’re quite comfy. Try it!”

Eseld realised she was still gripping the handgun she’d picked up earlier, so tight that her knuckles had turned white. She put the gun down on a pile of coats and flexed her right hand to ease the aching muscles. Then she accepted the tomb-grey t-shirt and pulled it over her head.

Eseld had seen plenty of revenants wearing tomb-grown gear before — mostly the full-length padded coats, the suits of ballistic armour, and the ubiquitous boots. She knew the stuff came from the tombs, but she had always assumed the strongest revenants somehow manufactured it from the machinery inside, not that it was all just sitting here for the taking. Most of the clothing worn by ordinary zombies was dragged out of the ruins or picked off corpses. Eseld had spent every prior resurrection wearing filthy rags and rotten bits of cloth, scavenging what she could from the dead, clinging to the rare find of a jumper or a blanket amid the rubble.

The tomb-grown t-shirt was the most deliciously comfortable garment she’d ever worn. The fabric stretched, conforming to the shape of her body. The hem hugged her hips. The sleeves enclosed both arms all the way to her wrists. The material somehow warmed her skin without making her sweat. Subtle padding cupped her elbows, cushioned her ribs, and covered her upper back.

Eseld hugged herself, eyes squeezed shut. She could have cried.

Cyneswith said, “Miss Eseld? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Eseld croaked. She opened her eyes and gathered herself. “Nothing.”

Eseld got dressed. She tugged on socks, underwear, and trousers. She laced up a pair of boots. She strapped knee-pads to her legs and slipped her hands into matte black fingerless gloves with grippy surfaces on the palms. She pulled protective goggles from a box and jammed them into her trouser pockets. She found a neck gaiter and yanked it down over her head, tucking the fabric beneath her chin. In the space of a hundred seconds, Eseld felt more protected than she had since true life.

She grabbed a backpack and swung it toward Cyneswith. “We need extras. Everything we can carry. Socks, t-shirts, gloves, every—”

“Already done!” Cyneswith held up a backpack of her own. She hesitated. “Well, except for my own. I don’t know what to wear. I don’t know what most of this is. And it’s all so … utilitarian. All these greys and blacks. Aheh … ”

“Boots. Gloves. Coat. Everything you can. Especially the coat. Maybe a bullet-proof vest. Here.”

Eseld pulled an armoured coat from a bin and shoved it into Cyneswith’s arms. The freshie had no idea what she would face once out of the tomb; this was her only chance to prepare and she did not even understand what she was preparing for. Eseld grabbed a second coat for herself and held it up. The coat was a miracle — light enough to wear without effort, but packed with little armoured scales inside the fabric, ready to stiffen and harden in response to impacts and projectiles. The hood was deep enough to hide one’s face from any light. The inside of the coat was lined with pouches and straps for weapons and equipment, and the exterior pockets had plenty of room for extras.

Eseld slipped a bullet-proof vest over her shoulders first, then added the tomb-coat over the top. She tested her flexibility, rotating her arms. The armour did not restrict her natural range of movement. It was perfect, as if tailored just for her.

Then she raised her eyes to the rest of the armoury, and felt a lump grow in her throat.

Eseld walked over to a rack of submachine guns — two dozen of them, and this was just one model among several. She lifted one of the weapons, gently at first, as if she might damage or break the mechanisms inside. But the gun was sturdy, made of black metal and durable polymers, solid yet lightweight, cold to the touch. She looped the strap over her shoulders, so the gun lay against her belly. She located a magazine and loaded the bullets; her hands shook so badly that she dropped several rounds, but that didn’t matter. The armoury contained tens of thousands of bullets, in boxes and cartons and wrapped in plastic. She finished filling the magazine, then clicked it home. She shouldered the gun, aiming at nothing. She cocked the charging handle and heard the first round slide into the chamber.

She found the safety and flicked it off.

Eseld’s mouth was dry. Her breath came in hard little jerks. She was shaking all over, quivering with a feeling she had never experienced before. Her world was filled with static — was that the storm, intensifying its fury? Was the hurricane pounding the tomb with hailstones, or with concrete grit scooped out of the corpse-city and hurled against the walls?

Eseld curled her finger around the trigger of the gun.

Power. The same power which had been used on her, again and again, by a thousand predators and monsters and cannibals. Now it was hers, solid and real in her hands, embodied in a physical object. She could barely breathe.

“Eseld?”

Eseld jerked with surprise. She pulled her finger off the trigger and flicked the safety back on.

Cyneswith was staring with wide eyes and parted lips. She’d been watching the whole process.

Eseld said, “I’m fine. I’m just … we need to arm ourselves. Come on. Follow me.”

Eseld jammed additional magazines into her pockets and tossed packages of bullets into her backpack. She chased that with a short-nosed combat shotgun and handfuls of shells. She snatched a neat little PDW off the shelves and strapped it inside her coat so it lay flat against her flank, then followed that up with a pair of lightweight pistols tucked into her inside pockets. She grabbed two knives and shoved them into her trousers. The only non-combat equipment on the shelves was a stack of compact thermal blankets. She split the lot between her and Cyneswith’s backpacks. Blankets were a hard-won comfort in this Godless afterlife.

Eseld paused before some kind of energy weapon — a rifle made of black barrels and a big bulbous chamber — and wished she knew how to use the thing.

“How do these machines work?” Cyneswith asked.

“The guns?” Eseld shook her head. “You don’t know guns?”

Cyneswith frowned and bit her lower lip. “Like … cannons?”

“Sort of. Weapons. They … shoot lead. Some of these do, anyway. Some of them do other things. You need to take one for yourself. Or several. They’re valuable, we need to take as much as we can carry. Grab a gun, fill your bag with bullets. And hurry. Sky’s right, we don’t know when Lykke might turn up again.”

Cyneswith blinked several times, chewing on her lips. She stared at the submachine gun strapped over Eseld’s belly.

“Can you show me how to use one? Please, Miss Eseld? I’m only … I’m only a human. I don’t know any of these things, and you and Miss Sky seem to know them all. I’m no fairy-kin, nor—”

Eseld bared her teeth. She hadn’t meant to, but Cyn flinched from her sharp-toothed maw.

“Sorry!” Eseld blurted out. “Sorry. Ask Sky. I don’t really know. I just … I just know how to point and shoot. This is my first time.”

“First time what?”

Eseld gritted her teeth and gestured at Sky. “Just … ask her.”

Sky was still on the other side of the chamber. She’d found something useful amid all the equipment — some kind of gun-shaped device festooned with tubes and screens, though it didn’t have a barrel or any kind of opening for a projectile to come out of. She was raising it and pressing the stock against her shoulder, reading numbers off a tiny screen in front of her face.

Sky noticed Eseld and Cyneswith looking at her. She flashed a grin. “EMP flash-shield,” she said. “Short range, but it might do the trick, might scramble that bitch upstairs for a few seconds. She’s probably network adaptive though, won’t last long. Might buy us a second, right?”

Cyn hissed, “What does that mean?”

“I have no idea,” Eseld whispered back. “Just … ask her to show you. I have no idea. Go on.”

Eseld gently pushed Cyneswith toward Sky. Cyneswith hesitated, then trotted across the room.

Eseld turned back to the armoury shelves. She couldn’t deal with the freshie right then, not with those kinds of questions. Eseld was overwhelmed by the implications of this place, of all these guns and all this armour and all the gadgets and equipment and clothes and everything. All this power, right here in the open, naked all along. She’d had no idea. Had this banquet been there for the taking, in every tomb she had escaped from so swiftly? Had this always been waiting for her?

She looked down at herself, loaded with weapons, clad in armour. She laid one shaking hand on the submachine gun.

Was she a predator now? Was this opportunity the only thing that had separated her from the revenants who had preyed on her for so many lifetimes?

Would she now hunt girls like herself, once she escaped the tomb? Would she hunt and kill girls like Andasina?

No, she wouldn’t — she wouldn’t prey on those who were weak and helpless. She swore she wouldn’t. She swore. She shook and she swore. If she had been armed like this when that revenant monster had come for her and Andasina, she could have won! She could have protected what mattered. She could have been the victor, eating the defeated. She would murder the powerful, the other monsters, her new equals. She swore she would. She swore.

But when the hunger started, would she have a choice?

Was this the only option, after God had died and left creation to fend for itself? Was the exercise of power the only thing left in a lonely cosmos after the withdrawal of all divine meaning?

Had this been the answer all along? Inflict power upon others, as it had been inflicted upon her?

Eseld took a deep breath and made a fist, digging fingernails into her palm. She could not afford this morbid introspection, not while trapped in a tomb, hunted by a demon, and pinned beneath a hurricane. She had to keep her head and keep moving, even if she was nothing but spoiled meat. She had to support Shilu.

Because Shilu was an angel, fallen or otherwise, and her fight mattered.

Eseld walked down the line of weapons, wishing she knew how to use the more esoteric and powerful firearms. Many of them were simply too large to carry by herself, or came with attached power-packs she could not hope to lift. Others lacked traditional trigger mechanisms, or were missing anything which looked like a barrel. Some she did not know which way to point, or could not figure out how they were meant to be used. She did slip a few grenades into her pockets, but she kept that covert, just in case. She kept an eye out for a flamethrower, as Sky had suggested, but Eseld did not hold out much hope.

The armour was even more of a lost opportunity. Dozens of carapace suits were lined up on the racks in glinting rows of ceramic and metal, much more sturdy and protective than Eseld’s bullet proof vest and armoured coat. She pulled down a helmet with a nice chunky visor, tested it for size, then clipped it to her belt. But the rest of the carapace suit components were too complex, covered in straps and buckles and wires and lines, fitted with interlocking mechanisms and slots for joining to some kind of underlying framework. The suits looked as if they required specialised knowledge simply to put one on.

Eseld picked up a shoulder-pad, then sighed and tossed it back on the racks. She could spend hours trying to armour herself in one of those suits. She glanced toward the open doors of the elevator, a narrow snatch of darkness between the metal leaves.

They didn’t have hours. Lykke might come down that lift shaft at any moment.

The storm pounded at the edge of Eseld’s hearing, louder than before. Maybe it really was raining hailstones, big ones, falling like rocks. Even if Shilu managed to defeat Lykke, wouldn’t they all be stuck in here until the storm passed? Maybe then Eseld could spend as long as she needed wrapping herself in an armoured shell, going at whatever pace she pleased. Maybe Shilu would help.

Ha. No, Eseld did not even smile at that notion. Shilu was on a quest of her own. Eseld could only hope to follow in her footsteps, probably not much further than the gates of the tomb.

Cyneswith and Sky had crossed back over to the armoury section of the chamber. Sky was banging about again, showing Cyneswith how to work a gun. Eseld paid them no attention. She could not deal with freshies being so naive.

She paused to examine the three suits of powered armour.

These machines were so far beyond Eseld’s experience that she felt a little intimidated just standing in front of them. She’d only rarely seen revenants wearing powered armour, and then only from far away — true monsters who could not be stopped by anything, certainly not bullets. Out in the corpse-city powered armour came in many shapes and sizes, but these three suits were all identical, eight feet tall, blocky and sharp, made of solid grey material. Eseld pressed her hand to a piece of thigh armour. It didn’t feel like metal. It was warm.

All three suits were hinged open at the chest and belly, waiting for a pilot to wriggle inside the mechanical mouth. The innards of each suit were studded with little electrodes and spikes and tiny wires, many of which seemed positioned as if to penetrate the flesh of the wearer.

Eseld peered deeper inside one suit. The holes for legs and arms were pitch black.

Sky called out: “Best not climb in there! Hey, don’t touch that. Seriously. Shit like that needs a whole ground team just to get you suited up, let alone extract you again. Don’t.”

“Yeah,” Eseld murmured, stepping back from the suits. They made her skin crawl.

Eseld glanced down the rest of the racks and shelves, casting her eyes over the cannons and heavy guns and weird blocky machines. Maybe there really was something here which they might use against Lykke. Maybe Sky wasn’t so blind to the truth after all. The guns strapped around Eseld’s body made her feel confident, strong, and powerful. She had not felt this way since the last time she had held a bow, in her true life. She could almost feel the bowstring spring free from her left hand, feel the arrow loose in flight.

Power. She had power, for the first time. Maybe if they searched for—

Blue.

A glint of blue glow, right at the end of the armoury shelves.

Eseld froze in shock, then swallowed a mouthful of sudden saliva. She hurried down the armoury, mouth open, panting with thirst. Or was it lust? She stopped in front of a large plastic box; the lid was open by just a crack. Blue glow peeked out through the gap. She opened the box with shaking hands.

Two dozen cannisters were nestled inside, each cannister full to the brim with blue liquid.

Eseld gaped. Her skin tingled. She slurped drool off her chin.

She picked up one of the cannisters and ripped the seal open, then poured the contents down her throat, swallowing rapidly, chugging the raw blue nanomachines as quickly as she could. The liquid went down so easily, like water but thick and warm, slightly below body temperature. She felt the fluid settle in her stomach like honey and lightning. She let out a soft moan of true satisfaction.

She uncapped a second cannister and poured that down her throat too.

Eseld had only ever seen raw blue twice before, both times in the hands of powerful revenants. She had barely understood what she was looking at those times, but her body had known. Her body needed the blue like it needed meat. She had put two and two together eventually, when she had realised that the soupy mess inside the coffin of a failed resurrection was almost the same colour as that maddening blue. This was the raw stuff of nanomachine unlife, the building blocks of personal modification, more valuable and precious than any gun or any number of bullets.

Eseld’s body remembered that need. She could not resist it, as a living human could not have resisted the need to draw breath.

She lowered the second cannister and reached for a third.

“What is that stuff?”

Eseld flinched, bared her teeth, and span to face—

Sky. Looming overhead. Fully armed.

Sky was wearing a suit of the carapace armour which Eseld had been unable to comprehend. Her legs, torso. shoulders, and arms were all protected by lightweight articulated plates of grey ceramic and metal, moving like a second skin. Her throat was covered by a matching gorget. Her hands were hidden by armoured gloves, fingers and palms shielded by projecting plates of metal. A visored helmet hung from her belt, sleek and smooth, not the blocky kind which Eseld had grabbed. The purpose of Sky’s torso rig was now made obvious — four mechanical arms extended from Sky’s back, lengths of finely balanced steel tipped with interfaces for firearms. The lower two mechanical arms held one of the large machine guns which Eseld had decided was too heavy for one person to carry, now suspended in an easy grip in front of Sky’s waist. The top two arms held a matched pair of energy weapons — fluted black rifles with bulky power-packs slung beneath. The arms moved as Sky moved, following her motions.

Sky also had a machete strapped to one armoured thigh, an assault rifle slung over one shoulder, and the ‘EMP’ gun strapped to her chest.

Eseld had mistaken herself for a potential predator. But here was the real thing, ready to fight off an army, single-handed.

Sky raised her eyebrows at Eseld’s sharp teeth. She cracked a nasty grin of her own. “What’s the matter, kid?” Sky said. “Never seen a real professional before?”

Eseld considered reaching for her submachine gun and jamming it under Sky’s chin. Could she move fast enough to outwit those semi-autonomous mechanical arms? Could she put Sky off the scent of the raw blue? Sweat prickled on Eseld’s back. She peeled her lips away from her teeth.

Sky’s grin faltered. She nodded at the cannisters. “I asked you what that stuff is.”

Cyneswith was looking on, a little way behind Sky. She was finally wearing boots and gloves and a neck gaiter of her own. She was also wearing some kind of armoured poncho, a variation on the tomb-grown coats stacked up at the far end of the armoury. The garment reached all the way to her ankles. A rucksack hung from her shoulders. She clutched a PDW in both hands, then tucked it under her poncho, looking awkward and ashamed of the weapon.

Eseld hesitated, licking a glaze of raw blue off her lips. She couldn’t lie about this, not openly. Sky glanced at the cannisters, then back at Eseld.

Sky opened her mouth to repeat the question a third time. “I said—”

“Food,” Eseld answered. “It’s food. Sort of. We need it.”

“Huh,” Sky grunted, unsmiling. “I’m not feeling hungry, not since boot-up, or whatever that was back there. You got peckish, kid?”

“Sort of.” Eseld leaned around Sky. “Cyn, grab another pack, please. We need to take all of this, it’s important.”

“O-okay!” Cyneswith answered. She scurried off.

“‘Cyn’?” Sky echoed, narrowing her eyes. “Pet names already, huh? Am I the only one out of the loop?”

“It’s just quicker to say her name like that.” Eseld moved fast; she had to avoid this monster’s ire. She picked up a cannister and held it out to Sky. “You want one? If you open it, you have to drink it all, or it’ll go bad.”

Sky smiled, tight and hostile. Her quartet of gun-arms adjusted as she turned sideways, looking back along the armoury racks. “Nah, thanks. You keep ‘em for now. Get them stowed in a bag and all that. But you know what I do want?”

“No?”

“I want a fucking flamethrower. One of these plasma rifles can put out a lot of heat, but it won’t keep that bitch at bay. And I want a central control unit for some of these drones.” Sky gestured at the weird bulky objects on the armoury racks, things that Eseld had never seen before. “Get me wired up and we can at least throw numbers at her. You seen a flamethrower or a central control unit, kiddo?”

“I’m not a child,” Eseld said. “I’m older than you.”

Sky snorted. “You look like a kid, you—”

“I’ve done this hundreds of times. Lived hundreds of times. You’re so young you don’t even know it. Shut up.”

Sky frowned. Her eyes went cold. “What—”

Cyneswith scurried back, holding an additional rucksack in one hand and a weird looking weapon in the other — a collection of pipes with a flat metal ‘muzzle’ at one end, but without an opening in the barrel, and a pair of large cylinders either side of the gun’s body.

She held the bag out to Eseld and showed the gun to Sky. “Is this what you were talking about?”

Sky’s face lit up. She grabbed the gun from Cyneswith and flicked several of the controls. The weapon hummed to life.

“Yeah,” Sky said. “Oh, fuck yeah. Directional microwave gun. It’s not exactly flame, but it’s heat. Big heat. Better than nothing. Ha, fuck me.” She tried to laugh, but couldn’t quite get there. “We’re gonna use a tank-buster on a human-sized target? You two are lucky I’m just that damn good.”

Eseld ignored Sky and started packing the raw blue nanomachines into the additional backpack. Cyn trotted closer and peered at the cannisters.

“What is that stuff?” she asked. “It’s so blue, goodness me. Like the sea on a sunny day.”

Eseld winced. She couldn’t remember sunlight. “It’s just food, it—”

“Kyahahahahaaaaa!”

A bubbly giggle broke across the armoury, echoing from within the pyramid chamber; the voice was amplified a hundred times into a deafening cacophony of spine-raking laughter, drowning out the fury of the hurricane beyond the distant walls.

Eseld jerked upright, frozen to the spot. Cyn grabbed Eseld’s arm, one hand stifling a scream. Sky span like a walking tank, all armour and swinging weaponry, shouldering the microwave gun.

The giggle faded away.

“Oh, Shishi,” said Lykke, from within the pyramid chamber. “You thought I was going to chase you down an elevator shaft? I’m not a roving construct, what an insult. The tomb is already mine, darling. Now, where did you stash all that zombie meat? I do need to clean up every last drop of your mess, though perhaps not before shoving your nose in it. Save me the trouble and call them over here, will you? Be a good girl now, and maybe I’ll just dump you back in the network instead of finger-painting the floor with your insides.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Load up on guns and bring your friends~

Or at least your tomb-mates. If they’re friendly. Sky might not be so friendly. Maybe not such a good idea to let her at all those weapons, right? Eseld? Eseld, you listening? Oh, oh, she’s a quivering ball of trauma and thirst now. Oh well. I’m sure Lykke can help with that!

Ahem. Ahem! Arc 11 continues! Not much else to say this week, except that behind the scenes, the arc is wildly out of control, the zombie girls have taken over, and I am just a ragged conduit of flesh desperately trying to keep them in order as they throw every possible spanner into the works of the story. Which is great! Don’t get me wrong, the result is quite good! (I think so, anyway!) Now I just have to let them fight it out. Oh dear.

If you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! Right here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I am still very much trying to build up some kind of a backlog of chapters, and when I do, I’ll be sharing more chapters ahead with patrons!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which heps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you, dear readers. Thank you for reading my little story! I couldn’t do any of this without all of you. The ride is wild and the girls beyond my control, and I hope you’re enjoying this as much as I am! We’ve barely even started this second big part of the story, and things are already getting very spicy. Seeya next chapter!

Content Warnings

None this chapter.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Shilu led the way, down into the labyrinth of the tomb.

Eseld knew from bitter experience how easy it was to get lost in these barren caverns of grey metal. The top six floors of every tomb were always identical — fresh revenants were always ejected naked and shivering into the smooth passageways beyond the resurrection chamber, always laid out in the same quasi-biological pattern of thick arteries and tiny branches of capillary. Those first six floors could be memorised, and left behind in a matter of minutes.

Below that — past the security checkpoint where Shilu had fought Lykke — each tomb’s architecture became recognisably human, with proper corners and doorways, with corridors studded by entrances into vast echoing chambers, with tables and chairs, little cells, barred doors, raised platforms for meetings, or plays, or rituals. Many of the rooms contained equipment, though none of it was ever useful; every object was always broken or irrelevant. Eseld had spent more than one brief resurrection clawing through the abandoned rubbish, praying to her absent God for a weapon or a shield among the refuse. But she’d never found anything useful, not even a solid length of pipe or a fist-sized chunk of metal, just dead machines and useless detritus. Every surface and item was always swept clean of dust and dirt, as if preserved in stasis since God’s lonely death.

Below the sixth floor, the tomb was never the same twice; Eseld often recognised individual features or spaces, as if they had been reused in different configurations, but the layouts were never identical.

These spaces were bait — meaningless rooms and empty chambers, drifts of pointless junk, false promises of hope and hiding places. Staying there was death. Stronger revenants would search every nook and cranny for the nanomachine-rich flesh of newborn undead.

Survival and exit depended on movement. Run. Don’t look back. Don’t slow down.

Eseld had eventually learned how to navigate these floors, how to win the exit as quickly as possible: go down and out. Stairs, outer wall, down and out, down and out. Never stop running, find those stairs, get to the exterior wall, keep moving, and sooner or later the gate would be there, waiting for another morsel of undead flesh to join with the corpse of the world.

Eseld could reach the tomb gates in under an hour, allowing for dead ends and failures and doubling back.

Shilu had a different destination in mind.

The fallen angel — or risen demon, or pretender to God’s throne, or ‘Fae Lady’, or whatever she was — led the trio of naked zombies at a brisk walk. She did not follow Eseld’s technique of prioritising the outer wall to locate the next set of stairs on each floor; instead, Shilu made a beeline for the closest stairs down, as if she possessed perfect knowledge of the tomb’s layout. She made better progress in fifteen minutes of walking than Eseld could in half an hour of terrified flight. Shilu strode with detached confidence down echoing hallways of bare metal, through vaulted rooms dominated by gigantic meeting tables, past tangles of abandoned equipment and broken parts, all without so much as a sideways glance to orient herself. She took each set of downward stairs two at a time, without effort or sweat or even a deep breath.

Eseld scurried to keep up, eyes darting left and right, shoulder blades itching at every blind corner, heart clawing into her throat at every jagged shadow; Shilu walked with head high and eyes forward, as if Lykke was not still stalking them through the empty halls and passages of this echoing shell.

Eseld knew her meagre strength would count for nothing next to Shilu’s, if they were attacked a second time. But she wanted to help, she wanted to be useful. She wanted to do what little she could to warn this angel of death.

Sky and Cyneswith stuck close. The fight at the security checkpoint had changed them both. The two no longer held hands. Cyneswith was calmer than before, clear-eyed and curious. She looked with wonder upon everything they passed, even the broken junk. She would learn soon enough that her curiosity was irrelevant, which saddened Eseld a little. Sky’s earlier terror had calcified into tight-faced tension and nervous motion; she placed herself between Cyn’s smaller, more vulnerable body and every open doorway and deep shadow, acting protective, trying to shepherd the smaller woman. Cyn often picked up her pace to match Eseld, sharing a hesitant smile as she hurried ahead and left Sky behind.

Eseld could not return those smiles. Sky was volatile. Would she be jealous? Too much of a risk.

All three zombies were rapidly shedding the resurrection slime which had dried on their skin, leaving a trail of flakes behind them as they walked. Eseld shook out her russet hair and raked it back over her skull to keep it out of the way, then licked her hands clean. Cyn peeled the dry slime off her own skin and followed Eseld’s example, touching her tongue to the edge of the papery, translucent membrane.

“It doesn’t taste of anything,” Cyn whispered. “What is it?”

“Eat it,” Eseld grunted.

Sky caught up and spoke in a hushed voice: “It’s like placenta, or amniotic fluid, right? Nutrient bath. Stem cells of some kind? Our new bodies grew from it, didn’t they?”

Cyn’s eyes widened. “New bodies?” She touched her fingers to her own cheek. “But I … I look just the same as always.”

“Don’t think about that,” Eseld hissed. “Eat it if you’ve got any left. We’ll need every scrap.”

“Mm,” Sky grunted. “Understood.”

Shilu led the trio down and down and down — three floors, six floors, falling deeper. Eseld kept an ear out for sounds of distant combat filtering upward from the tomb’s gate, but she heard nothing except a growing static murmur. After Shilu’s victory by the security checkpoint, rain had been falling against the window — but there was no way a rainstorm would be audible this deep inside the tomb. The raindrops would have to fall like bullets.

Lykke showed herself, thrice.

The first time she appeared as a shadow on a wall. The group was traversing a long room filled with low tables, halfway across the yawning darkness between one corridor and another. Cyn and Sky had fallen into complete silence, since even the whisper of bare feet returned haunting echoes from the shadowy ceiling of the stone-walled space. Eseld watched Shilu’s back as best she could, keeping her eyes on the dense gloom beneath each table they passed.

Lykke’s outline — a chimera of twisted flesh — burst onto the left-hand wall all of a sudden. She flickered and jerked as if cast by a roaring hearth-fire, fifty times the size of her already enlarged and monstrous body.

Cyn smothered a scream with both hands, scrambling forward to shelter behind Eseld’s back; Sky turned a yelp of surprise into an angry shout, raising her fists in hopeless resistance.

But Eseld followed Shilu’s lead, and Shilu did not react. Shilu strode on, unconcerned.

“Ignore her,” Shilu said. “It’s nothing.”

The second appearance was all whispers and white-wreathed wraiths. Shilu led the way down onto a spiral staircase which descended into darkness as it reached toward the floor below; the walls to either side were beyond sight, either too far away or cloaked by some clever trick of vision. Once Shilu and all three zombies were suspended on a stretch of staircase seemingly floating in a void, a teasing voice began to buzz and sigh at the edge of Eseld’s hearing.

She could not make out any words, like a howling scream lost amid the storm-winds deep in a forest. Any human speech was muffled and blurred. The whisper was accompanied by a flickering ghostly white in her peripheral vision, wisps and streamers of phantasm which vanished when she turned her sight toward them.

Cyn did not take this apparition well. “Am I the only one of our party besieged by ghosts?” she asked, voice quivering, clinging to Eseld’s arm with one hand. “Can none of you see this all about us? Am I touched? Am I haunted?”

Sky snorted. “Sensory interference. It’s nothing. Ignore it, like … like Shilu said. I’ve had worse. Got a heads-up rig hit by a custom ECM blast once. Shit had me seeing straight up gore splash for a week. Blindfolded myself in the end, waited it out. This is weak stuff.”

Eseld shook her head. “It’s her. It’s obviously her.”

“You’re right,” Shilu said from ahead, descending the staircase quickly. “It’s Lykke. Ignore her. Keep moving.”

The ghosts and phantasms vanished by the time they reached the next floor.

Shilu took the group outward, toward one of the exterior walls on this floor of the tomb pyramid. The static murmur intensified, growing louder and clearer. Eseld cocked her head; she picked out individual gusts of wind raking against the black metal of the tomb, followed by pounding sheets of precipitation throwing up rolling waves of dense sibilance. Distant booms and cracks and thumps punctuated the haze.

“Is that a storm?” Sky asked. “Sounds heavy.”

“Yes,” Eseld replied. Her throat was going dry. How could a storm be heavy enough to penetrate a tomb with such clamour? “A big one.”

Shilu said nothing.

The noise grew and grew — and then burst into view as the group stepped into a wide atrium. The room was walled on three sides in light brown stone, and on the final side with a slab of toughened glass, easily twelve inches thick. A wide skylight matched the window.

Rain was lashing against the glass in drumming sheets of wind-whipped grit and grease, a wall of water hurled about by the tendrils of the storm. This was an exterior room, on the edge of one of the pyramid steps which formed the tomb, but the corpse-city was barely visible through the torrent of rain churning in the air. The sky was a sagging gyre of black, like a distended stomach about to burst from accumulated rot.

Eseld had seen plenty of rainstorms, both in life and during her many resurrections, but nothing on this scale. The sky looked as if it was trying to reach downward and scoop up the land. Eseld wanted to retreat deeper into the tomb, away from the windows.

Before anybody could comment on the storm, Lykke made her third appearance.

The hem of a white dress fluttered in the depths of the corridor ahead, vanishing around a shadowy corner; the fabric was followed by the darting white motes of several bloated flies.

No footsteps. No laughter. Nothing which could be heard over the raging storm and heavy rain.

“Fuck!” Sky spat. She reached out to grab Cyn’s arm, to halt her as well; Cyn winced at the tug on her wrist, but she stopped. “That thing is hunting us, making fun of us, trying to rile us up! She was right there! Right ahead of us!”

“No,” Shilu said. “She’s not.”

But Shilu paused as well, several paces deeper into the atrium. Eseld did the same, examining Shilu’s expressionless face and wide dark eyes.

Shilu paid no attention to the spot where Lykke had vanished into the shadows. She stared out of the window, at the storm.

“Then what the fuck did we just see?” Sky demanded.

Eseld bared her teeth at Sky. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Sky narrowed her eyes at Eseld. “Don’t ask questions? Don’t try to protect ourselves? That was her, her dress, her fucking disgusting flies, that was her, she’s hunting us—”

“She is, yes!” Eseld snapped. “But we can’t do anything about it! You got a knife on you? A gun? No, huh?”

Sky let go of Cyn’s arm and tightened her hands into fists. Eseld kept showing her sharpened teeth.

This was bad — why had she leapt to Shilu’s defence? It wasn’t as if Shilu needed the help. Sky was large and strong and aggressive, exactly the type who tended to make it further and start eating other people first. Sky was dangerous and Eseld knew it all too well. Eseld glanced at Cyn, but Cyn was edging away, clearing the way for a fight, eyes darting back and forth.

“Lykke,” said Shilu, “is reconstituting her inter-nanonic definitional matrix.”

Sky snorted. “And what does that mean, when it’s at home?”

Shilu turned her head to stare at Sky for a moment. Sky swallowed.

Shilu said: “She’s putting herself back in her body. We’re seeing echoes of the process moving across the local network. It’s not Lykke, not really. It’s her reflection.”

Eseld said, “How long do we have?”

Shilu sighed. “Good question. I don’t know. The process should be instantaneous. She should not take this long. As I told you, I do not have the means to disrupt her in this manner.”

Sky snorted. “So she’s faking. Winding us up.”

Cyneswith cleared her throat. “Trying to get us to fight each other, perhaps? That’s always a risk. You should never listen to voices from the forest. Don’t listen to anything you can’t see, especially if it’s trying to tease you.”

Shilu looked back at the windows. “No. She has no need for that. She knows I cannot defeat her a second time.”

Eseld said, “Is she maybe … ‘limited’ as well? Somebody else holding her back? Something like that?”

Shilu blinked. Her eyes tightened — a new expression. “Perhaps. I do not understand who would do that, or how.” She pointed at the window. “Especially in this new context.”

Sky frowned. “The storm?”

Eseld said, “It’s not natural, is it?”

Shilu did not explain. She crossed the atrium and walked right up to the wall of windows, putting her face close to the glass. Eseld shared a glance with Sky and Cyneswith, then hurried to follow. The freshies trailed behind.

Eseld could barely see the revenants in the tomb’s outworks down below, obscured behind a wall of thickening rain and constant swirls of high wind, in addition to the gritty, greasy, black-oil residue on the glass itself. Anybody down there would be drenched to the bone if they were not under cover — which was not dangerous for a revenant, freed from the indignity of hypothermia and the maintenance needs of an immune system, but deeply unpleasant all the same, and very difficult in which to fight. The rain was so heavy that visibility must be terrible, footing treacherous, communications garbled.

Some movements were still visible even through the dense rain — large chunks of rubble and rebar picked up by the wind and tossed through the streets beyond the tomb. Walls were shivering in the wind, concrete debris stripped from exposed edges, crumbly brick collapsing before the storm.

Shilu was staring upward, at the dark and churning clouds on the jagged horizon; the storm was mounting the back of the graveworm.

Eseld said, “The worm is blocking the worst of it, isn’t it?”

“Mm,” Shilu grunted. “Not for long.”

Cyn spoke from behind Eseld: “That’s real pretty. A really pretty storm. I always loved storms.”

Sky said, “Shit, we have to head out into that? Can we grab some coats first? We’re not gonna be naked, are we?”

“No,” said Shilu. “That storm would kill the three of you. That’s a hurricane.”

“What?!” Sky said.

“Those gusts down there are hitting a hundred miles an hour. The heart of the storm is to the north. Sustained winds of one-fifty, maybe one-sixty miles per hour. Likely higher on the far side of the graveworm, two fifty to three hundred miles per hour. Maybe higher. I can’t get exact measurements without network access, only what I have on-board. It’s heading directly toward the tomb. Perhaps half an hour until direct contact.”

Eseld knew what was happening.

“It’s Lykke, isn’t it?” she whispered.

Sky laughed — a horrible jerking sound on the edge of hysteria. “You’re kidding? You’re joking, right? That monster can — what, summon storms? You’re telling me it’s trying to kill us with a storm? It—”

“Fairy magic,” Cyn said. “Command of the weather.”

“Shut up!” Sky snapped at her. Cyn flinched. “Shut up! It’s not magic, there’s no such thing as magic, or ghosts, or—”

Eseld rounded on Sky and showed her sharpened teeth. “It may as well be! Stop shouting at her!”

Sky’s face flashed with anger.

Shilu turned away from the windows. “There are no atmospheric convection cycles to begin a hurricane, and no liquid water left in the oceans with which to form one. Even if that was not true, we are thousands of miles inland. The storm is impossible. It is being sent on purpose.”

“By Lykke?” Eseld prompted.

Shilu shrugged. “Unknown. I doubt she has network access enough for this. This is not unprecedented, but it is very rare.”

Eseld hurried on. “It’s a way to drive us to ground, or to create a lot of confusion to cover for something else, so … so Lykke wouldn’t need to do that, not to kill us, I mean. It’s something else, something trying to stop her? Or to confuse her. Or make sure she’s finished the job.”

Shilu stared at Eseld for a moment. “You think quickly, zombie.”

“Just trying to survive.”

“Yes. And somebody is trying to kill you, you three zombies.”

Sky blinked several times. Cyn just nodded.

“Not you?” Eseld asked.

Shilu shook her head. “The storm is little danger to me. The tomb can withstand winds ten times that intensity. The graveworm could survive much more. The only threat is to exposed zombies. Whoever sent it wants to keep you in the tomb. Or perhaps they aren’t taking any chances of Lykke failing. But it gives me a perfect opportunity to escape. I could break this window and fly to the ground. The hurricane will soon introduce enough local network interference to give me a chance. But it would kill the three of you.” Shilu sighed; for the first time her expression went further — she scrunched up her eyes with frustration. “I don’t understand why any of this is happening.”

“Does this change our plans?” Eseld asked.

Shilu’s eyes snapped open. She shook her head. “No. We go to the gravekeeper.”

“Then let’s go!” Sky snapped. “Before that plague-ridden bitch finishes putting herself back together. Cool? Can we move out now, ma’am?” Her voice dripped with sarcastic deference.

Shilu turned and set off again, heading deeper into the tomb. “We’re almost at the elevator. Not far now. No more stairs.”

For ten minutes Shilu led them deeper into this floor of the tomb, heading toward the core of the building, worming through increasingly tight passageways and narrow corridors, with lots of awkward blind corners. The pounding of the storm grew and grew as the zombies burrowed deeper into the ossified meat of the tomb, a standing wave of background static pounding against the exterior walls. Eseld could barely imagine the growing fury outdoors. Such a storm would have ripped trees from their roots and flattened buildings to kindling.

Eventually Shilu stopped about twenty meters shy of a sharp left-hand turn in a long corridor. Eseld almost blundered into her back, scrambling to a halt. Cyneswith let out a little squeak. Sky hissed, “What is it?”

Shilu said nothing for a moment. She stared through the metal of the corner, as if she could see through solid matter; Eseld guessed she probably could. The corner did not look any different to Eseld.

Then Shilu said: “This is unexpected. I may be about to die. If I do, turn back and run for the exit.”

Eseld shared a look with Sky. Cyn shrugged and mouthed ‘fairies’.

“Stay here,” said Shilu

Then she strode forward, heading toward the corner. On the last step she paused for a split-second, then stepped out of cover.

Nothing happened.

Shilu stood beyond the corner for several seconds, staring at something Eseld couldn’t see. Then she turned and gestured to the trio of revenants, pointing toward the corner — a clear instruction: do not advance further until ordered.

Eseld hurried to the corner, with Cyneswith and Sky at her heels. All three zombies pressed themselves against the wall, as Shilu indicated.

Shilu said, “One of you will have to take the same risk I just did. Decide who.”

“But you just did it, right?” Eseld asked. “What is it, what—”

“Guns. They may respond differently to zombies. One of you volunteer, quickly.”

Cyn started to say: “What if we—”

“Quickly.”

Sky snapped, “Why, what’s wrong? Spit it out!”

Shilu pointed back the way they’d come.

The outline of a human figure was extruding itself from the grey metal wall which they had just passed, like a person pressing their whole body against a sheet of canvas. Facial features were sharpening and clarifying, individual fingers popping free of the metal surface, limbs gaining substance and shape with every second. Textures grew from metal layers — bouncy curls and fluttering sundress frills, splaying forth in fans of simulated fabric, stiff and grey.

Lykke was emerging, pressed from dead matter into living flesh.

Cyn clapped both hands to her mouth, recoiling into Eseld’s arms. Sky spluttered and slapped her own right thigh, reaching for a weapon which wasn’t there. Eseld bared her teeth and spat.

“Quickly,” Shilu repeated.

Eseld started to move, intending to step out next to Shilu and accept whatever this godless fate had decided for her — but then Sky said, “I’ll do it!” and darted past Eseld.

Sky stepped out of cover and threw her arms wide, eyes bulging, ready for a second death.

Nothing happened.

“We’re clear,” Shilu said. “Go.”

Shilu took off at a sprint. Sky blinked in shock, then reached back and grabbed Cyn, sweeping the smaller woman off her feet and into Sky’s arms. She darted after Shilu.

Eseld glanced back. Lykke had both arms free from the wall now, half her head and torso out, legs trailing behind. The metal surface of her skin was gaining colour, flushing with pale skin and white sundress and blonde hair. Her eyes were still dead grey, empty of life. Her hair was stiff as metal shavings. Her head twitched.

Eseld scrambled around the corner and after the others — then gasped, almost losing her footing in shock. She caught herself, got herself upright, and broke into a sprint.

The corridor was kinked in three places as if to create a trio of choke points; it terminated in a steep switchback ramp which climbed toward a raised, walled platform or second level, from which an observer might look out over the choke points below.

The walls and ceiling bristled with firepower.

Hard-point weapon emplacements cradled all manner of guns and cannons, none of which Eseld could name. Black-mouthed machines tracked Eseld and the others with empty muzzles as they ran down the corridor toward the ramp. Shilu was not spared the battery’s attention; clusters of lance-structures swivelled to follow her, backed up by multi-barrelled monsters ticking and clicking in time to their internal engines. Many of the guns whirred with the sounds of tiny motors as they twisted and turned, or hummed with the infernal buzz of power-packs and on-board reactors.

Hundreds of automatic turrets and gun emplacements tracked the zombies and the fallen angel down the length of the jinking corridor. Eseld felt as if she was sprinting down a length of intestine, lined with waving cilia.

Shilu hit the ramp first and reached the observation platform moments later. Sky went next, hurling herself upward, cradling Cyneswith in her arms. Eseld was last, mounting the ramp and hauling herself to the top. She collapsed against the wall-lip of the platform, heaving for breath.

A pair of large metal doors stood half-open on one side of the platform, ten inches thick. Beyond them was a blank metal box.

“It’s a dead end!” Cyneswith wailed.

“No, that’s a lift,” said Sky, tipping Cyn back to her feet. “We need to get in the lift! Where does it lead?”

Shilu turned to face the corridor through which they had just passed. She held her arms out to either side and made her hands into blades, extending flesh and bone into lightless black metal.

“Shilu?” Eseld hissed. “Shilu, this is a dead end, and I know it too. You said you can’t fight Lykke again, what do we do?”

“I have no idea,” said Shilu. “None of this is meant to be here. These guns should not be here. And they should have killed me.”

Sky whirled on Shilu. “What now?! Do we pile into that lift? We can’t just stand here and die!”

“There’s no point,” said Shilu. “Not unless the guns wake. And I don’t think they will, I think—”

“Shishi!”

Lykke’s bright and burning warble filled the air with laughter.

An apparition in white stepped around the far end of the jinking corridor, hands raised in playful surrender.

Lykke looked exactly as she had when she had first appeared — a young woman with luxurious blonde hair, wearing a sundress and fancy shoes — except her colours were greyed out, washed thin by her rebirth from the wall. Her joints did not appear to work properly, as if she was suffering a restricted range of motion. Her hair was stiff and artificial. Her eyeballs were fused in place.

“Shishi, really!” Lykke said. “That’s more than enough of making me run about. Now I need to limber up and oil down and you just—”

Every turret in the corridor whirled to point at Lykke.

Her eyes went wide. Her mouth formed a little ‘oh.’

Shilu shouted, “Into the li—”

The battery of guns opened up with a deafening roar, filling the cramped corridor with a storm of firepower; the slam of bullets and plasma bolts and sabots drowned out the distant drumming of the hurricane’s fringe, punctuated by the kick and thump and whine of a hundred magazines and motors and mechanisms.

Lykke’s grey-washed form vanished beneath a hail of gunfire, blotted out by the flash of energy weapons, swallowed by the explosion of debris. The end of the corridor collapsed into metal slag and flying fragments and molten droplets of melted steel. A cloud of shrapnel burst against the platform, whizzing and pinging through the air.

“Into the lift!” Shilu howled above the noise.

Sky swept Cyneswith off her feet again; Cyn was screaming, hands clamped over her ears. Eseld sprinted for the gap between the lift doors and hurled herself through, into the darkness. Sky shouldered inside after her. Shilu slipped through last and slammed the doors shut, blotting out the worst of the cacophonous gunfire.

A two-button control panel stood to the left of the doors. Shilu slammed the ‘down’ arrow. A tiny red light flickered on.

The lift jerked, then began to descend.

Three pairs of lungs panted hard in the dark. Cyn held back a sob, gulping for air. Sky muttered, ‘fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.’

The sound of the guns above did not stop — but the furious roar started to slow, growing quiet, as if the turrets were falling silent one by one.

“That didn’t stop her,” Eseld said. “Did it?”

Shilu’s gaze crept upward, watching through the wall and the shaft as the lift descended. “No,” she said. “Not for long.”

“What do we do now?” Sky said. “What do we do, how do we get away from her?! How do we fucking kill her?”

“We don’t,” said Shilu.

“There has to be a way, you were listing them earlier! We’re heading to an armoury, right? You mentioned fire, heat. What’s in there? Do we have thermite? A flamethrower? You need an ECM bubble to stop her re-downloading her imprint? I can rustle up something if we have a powerful enough plasma charge and some kind of shield to contain the—”

“We do not have the means,” said Shilu. “Nothing in a tomb armoury will be enough to stop one of us.”

“Nothing?” Sky swallowed. “Nothing at all?”

Shilu considered this for a moment. “There may be a flamethrower. The flame will not be hot enough. She might retreat from it regardless. Maybe.”

Sky clenched her teeth and raked her hands through her dark hair. How naive, Eseld thought, how childish. One could not turn at bay and fight demons and angels, not with all the weapons in this dead world, not with anything she’d ever witnessed, or could imagine. One could barely turn and fight stronger revenants, let alone true cosmological actors in charge of their own destinies, like Shilu. Their only option as zombies was escape — or the salvation of this ‘gravekeeper’.

Silence stretched on. The lift continued to descend. Shilu said nothing, staring at nothing, her sheet of flawless black hair hanging like frozen obsidian. Cyneswith shuffled closer to Eseld, then wormed her hand into Eseld’s grip. Sky began to pace. Eventually the sound of the guns was gone completely, replaced with the distant thundering howl of the hurricane outside, battering the tomb with walls of storm and surge.

Over two minutes later, the lift stopped.

Shilu turned to face the trio of zombies. Her skin flowed and flowered and hardened — back into the nightmare scarecrow of black chrome, covered in blades and sharp edges, standing on a pair of spear-point feet. Her face was a pale mask, inhumanly perfect.

Cyneswith went stiff and still. Sky snorted. Eseld attempted to show no fear.

“There are two chambers beyond this door,” said Shilu. “I am going to step into the second chamber. Do not follow me. One of four things will happen. The gravekeeper may kill me, or it may kill Lykke. It might kill both of us. Finally, it might do nothing. Those are the four outcomes. In the event it kills me or kills both of us, you should arm yourselves and attempt to escape the tomb.”

“It won’t kill us?” Eseld asked.

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

Shilu smiled — a pair of tiny curls at the corners of her pale polymer mouth.

“You are beneath notice, zombie. Even with a storm sent to pin you in this grave. To a gravekeeper you’re not even there. If I die here, do not linger. Good luck.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

A storm’s a-comin’, but who sent it? Who but gods can call the thunder and lightning their own?

And who turned on all those guns?

Ahem! Well! Here we are, plunging deeper into arc 11 than I ever expected. Originally I thought this arc might be like 5-6 chapters, but now I’m not so sure. I am experiencing the novel sensation of having my outlines thrown into chaos by characters who aren’t even on screen. Which is … new! So this arc might actually end up longer than I expected, but I’m not sure how long, not yet. Meanwhile. Shilu stays on target, Eseld is trying her best, Sky displays worrying behaviour, and Cyn is just rolling with the punches. And how about those ghostly presences, eh?

If you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! Right here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I am still very much trying to build up some kind of a backlog of chapters, and when I do, I’ll be sharing more chapters ahead with patrons!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which heps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you!!! Thank you for reading my little story about zombie girls and spooky monsters and bones and guts and brains. I hope you’re having as much fun as I am! Onward we go, deeper into the tomb, fleeing toward the conquering worm. Seeya next chapter!

Content Warnings

Body horror, the usual
Torture (sort of)

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Shilu — the nightmare of seamless metal and obsidian spikes into which she had transformed — cut Lykke into three pieces.

Her shoulder slammed into Lykke’s chest, ramming lances of black steel through the revenant’s ribcage, shattering bone and pulping flesh. Blood spluttered from Lykke’s mouth in a strangled cough. Shilu’s bladed arms blurred outward to either side, then scissored inward. One sliced through Lykke’s white sundress and opened the soft flesh beneath, bisecting her at the stomach, passing through skin and spine like a hot wire through cheese; the blade was out and trailing an arc of blood before Lykke’s breached intestines boiled forth in a ruptured mass. Shilu’s other arm scythed through Lykke’s delicate neck. The decapitation was so swift that for a moment Lykke did not appear wounded, but then her neck exploded in a fountain of gore. Her blonde curls tumbled aside. Blood splattered against the grey ceiling, falling as crimson rain. Lykke’s head hit the floor with the crack of a skull fracture; her torso followed, landing with a wet splat of splayed guts and spilled fluids, bile and chyme pumping and pooling from the ruin of her belly. Her legs and hips remained upright for a split second — half a white sundress drenched with scarlet, fancy white shoes stained with blood, painted toenails drowned in red. Then the legs followed the rest of her corpse, slumping to the floor.

Shilu stood amid the dripping gore, her front and face speckled with misted ruby droplets.

She had abandoned her human disguise, her soft brown skin, her long silken hair. ‘Shilu’ was a machine figure of black chrome and lightless blades. Her feet were spear-tips. Her face was a pale mask. Wide dark eyes stared down at Lykke’s remains.

Eseld could do nothing but watch. She was still immobilised, frozen by some magic or science beyond her comprehension.

Eseld had witnessed and experienced many strange horrors during the unending cycle of her damned unlife. She had seen zombies so changed by nanomachine consumption that they were barely recognisable as human; she had hidden from revenants who were capable of tortures and cruelties she could not have imagined in true life; she had witnessed weapons and artefacts which seemed to her like infernal wizardry and alien invention. She was surrounded every day by the world-corpse of the city, reminded every hour of her status as a microbe inside a rotting leviathan. She had met monsters and predators, seen miracles of technology, been shot and killed by guns she could not begin to understand — and been devoured by living horrors at the very edge of mortal madness.

But she had never been frozen in place by the whim of another, like a mouse before a snake. She had never seen a revenant’s entire body flow like molten metal and reform into a living knife. She had never met anything like Shilu. Whatever Lykke was, she had not stood a chance.

The crimson splatters on Shilu’s black-metal skin began to vanish. Shilu’s body was absorbing the blood.

Eseld needed to scream. She needed to run. She needed to curl up in a ball on the floor and sob and weep and pray this end would be a quick one, for an angel of death stood before her, unveiled in terrible glory.

But Eseld could not move a muscle.

Shilu opened her pale polymer lips, and spoke to Lykke’s trisected corpse.

“Get up.”

Lykke’s mangled intestines jumped like a nest of snakes. Severed ends writhed and wriggled and rose into the air. The two halves of her sundered bowels found each other and clung together, braiding themselves tight like rubbery, blood-stained ropes. Lykke’s legs jerked and bucked, kicking against the slippery grey floor; her arms flapped and slapped amid the reeking fluids. Bones cracked and snapped as she rose — knee sockets enlarging, elbows turning backward, femurs expanding. New joints burst from inside her legs and arms — twists and knots of muscle and bone. Her hands grew thick and wide, planted flat on the floor, fingers tipped with
long white claws. Her spilled blood and viscera and intestinal fluids flowed back upward into her open wounds, sucked into the rents in her flesh, or simply absorbed into her skin. Lykke’s legs and torso heaved upward and stood — not in the upright pose of a human being, but as an upside down curved bridge, hands and feet planted on the floor like the four paws of a beast.

The stump of her neck sealed over with a blood-red plug, then extended into a barbed tail. The open mess of her guts remained parted, intestines waving like tentacles. Her white shoes fused into gnarled hooves. Her white sundress shimmered and shifted, then burst into a cloud of bloated, glistening, milk-white flies.

The monster was now twice Shilu’s height and several times her body weight. Eseld had never seen a living thing this large except the graveworm. Lykke was larger than a bear — larger than Taran. Eseld did not understand where the mass had come from, but the revenant had grown into a giant.

Shilu stepped back.

Lykke picked up her own severed head with a cluster of gut-tendrils. The bouncy blonde curls became razor-sharp twists of bleached steel. She held the head over her own groin, suspended on a neck of intestines. She pointed the face down at Shilu.

Lykke’s eyes snapped open, glowing a bright and toxic green. A grin ripped her mouth open like a bloody slash in pale flesh. White teeth had turned jagged.

“You sneaky little cunt!” Lykke shrieked. Her new voice hurt Eseld’s ears, shook her guts and eyeballs, and made the floor vibrate. Lykke’s plague-fly dress buzzed in time with her words. “You have more permissions than you were letting on! Enough to get all up inside me! And I don’t let just anybody do that, hahahahahaha!”

Lykke’s laugh made Eseld’s eyes water. She couldn’t even blink to clear the tears and blot out the pain.

Shilu didn’t answer. She raised her blades.

“Whatever,” Lykke spat, turning sour. She pawed at the floor with one white hoof, gouging the metal. “You won’t land the same trick twice! Your flesh-mask is off now. What are you going to do, spring at me again and hope I fall for it a second time?”

“Stand down,” Shilu said. “Go back to the network. This is a mistake.”

“Shishi,” Lykke purred, backed by the chorus of her pestilent aurora. She raised her severed head higher as she spoke, on a neck of tangled guts. “You can’t fight forever, not without access. You’ve got nothing outside ambient. But I can go for days on a droplet of honey. I’m infinite. I draw on an endless well. What are you going to do, fight me until you’re exhausted, just to show that you’re a good little doggy? Nobody cares!”

“We can debate later, when the mission is over,” said Shilu. “Stand down or get out of my way.”

Lykke sighed — a sound like a roaring fire consuming human flesh. “Okay, now you’re boring me.”

Lykke charged.

Shilu dived aside, rolling across the grey metal floor. Lykke galloped at her like a steed from the mouth of hell, all open entrails and slavering tongue, clad in a buzzing cloud of bloated flies, denting the metal with her hoofed feet and the claws of her modified hands. Shilu dodged the first charge and came up on one knee, raking a blade-arm down Lykke’s flank as she passed. Shilu’s blade parted a fan of ribs and flowered open the monster’s hipbone.

But Lykke didn’t care. Her open ribs transformed into teeth, the wound becoming a dripping maw, snapping shut inches shy of Shilu’s head. Her shattered hip twisted like an opening blossom; a gleaming point glittered in the centre of the bloom. That point shot forth and tried to spear Shilu through the leg with a tendril of metal-tipped flesh. Shilu turned the spear aside with a flourish of one sword-arm — but she staggered back with the impact.

“You can’t beat me off by cutting me up, Shishi!” Lykke screeched. She bounced off the wall with a clatter of hooves and a splatter of intestinal tendrils, rearing up to crush Shilu beneath her bulk. “Is this how you won so much favour, by hitting things with swords!?”

Shilu tried to dive aside a second time, going left. Eseld saw the mistake and wanted to scream, but her lips and vocal cords were as paralysed as the rest of her. Lykke had predicted the dodge; she fell upon Shilu’s intended trajectory with hooves and tendrils and spears of stabbing flesh.

But Shilu turned her leftward dodge into a rightward jink, flickering through the air so fast that her black metal body blurred against the grey background. She twitched her hips; three spikes of lightless metal extended from her skin like the stinger of a wasp, slamming through Lykke’s chest and side, retracting as fast as they had shot forth.

Lykke howled — with laughter.

The blood trailing from her three fresh puncture wounds hardened and rose, turning into a trio of thick tentacles, each tipped with a fist of stiffened crimson.

Three fists crashed into Shilu’s metal torso. The angel of death went flying, knocked off her feet. She hit one of the windows with a clatter of metal on glass — and a sickening crack-a-crack as the window fractured under the impact.

But the window held. Shilu dropped to the floor with a crunch.

Lykke raised her tendrils, her tentacles, her ghoulish severed head. “You can’t win a contest of arms against infinity, Shishi! If you don’t want to lose, you may as well cut off your own head. Isn’t that what your people used to do, back in life? Something like that, anyway. Come on, let me see you cut your own throat!”

Shilu rose to her pointed feet, framed by the endless rot of the corpse-city and the black skies beyond. The clouds were churning and thickening with an oncoming storm. A dribble of blood trickled from one corner of Shilu’s mouth. She wore no expression on her pale mask.

“Internal bleeding?” Lykke said; she seemed surprised. “Oh, you really are fragile. Wow!”

Shilu raised her swords.

“Stand down and return to the network,” she said. “I won’t warn you again.”

Lykke clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “And there you go ruining all the fun. Shishi, it’s not worth playing if you don’t show any—”

Shilu leapt at the monster.

The black-metal scarecrow and the white-clad demon moved faster than Eseld’s eyes could follow. Shilu and Lykke traded blows in close proximity, blades and tendrils and teeth and spikes flashing and cutting, snapping shut and lashing through the air. Shilu sliced into Lykke’s flesh again and again, opening bloody rents in her pale skin — but each wound closed with a wet slurp or opened into some new horror, fanged and dripping, full of digestive juices or sucking membranes. The monster spouted new limbs from the ragged orifices of her wounds, grew eyeballs in her back, flowered open her ribcage and hips into snaking tentacles of blood-slick bone.

Shilu’s metal skin turned aside Lykke’s teeth and claws, but she could not withstand the kinetic force of every blow. She was knocked aside, pushed back, thrown off her footing.

Lykke raised her decapitated head above the fray. “Bored now!” she announced.

The swarm of bleached and bloated flies about Lykke’s body suddenly flowed toward Shilu, taking advantage of a moment during which she was off balance. A river of insect bodies pushed in through her parted lips.

Shilu turned aside and vomited — heaving up a mass of fused and melted flies, their pale bodies turned to slush in an instant, cooked by her inner fires.

Lykke did not press the opening. She stepped back.

Shilu tried to raise her sword-arms once again — but then she blinked, twitching and shivering, taken by a fever, by the chills, by a hand inside her body.

Lykke grinned. She raised a hoof and hit Shilu with a lazy side-swipe, catching Shilu in the middle. Shilu went flying a second time, her black-metal body gone limp. She sailed in an arc through the air, beyond the limit of Eseld’s restricted vision. Eseld heard Shilu land with a clatter of metal on metal, smashing into the detritus of the security checkpoint. She rolled across the floor, then lay still.

Lykke cackled. “Without permissions, you don’t even own your body! Come on, Shishi. Get up and let’s finish this off so I can crack your shell and root around inside.”

Eseld heard Shilu stand up, metal clacking against metal. She walked back into view. Something was very wrong with her body — she kept twitching and tensing up.

She stopped well short of Lykke and raised her swords.

Lykke grinned. “One more round? Really?”

“I told you I wouldn’t warn you again,” said Shilu.

Lykke rolled her eyes. “You’re mine now, Shishi. Fine! Come hereeeeee baby!”

Lykke charged, galloping across the blood-smeared grey metal.

Shilu twisted one foot, as if bracing for a fancy riposte.

Eseld still believed in God. She believed that a loving God had created the world and everything in it. God was all powerful, knew all things, and loved all things. This love was sometimes beyond human comprehension, which was why evil things happened; this was also why good people sometimes suffered and bad people often prospered. But Eseld had long since accepted the fact that God was dead; the throne of heaven lay empty and cold. Even God’s inscrutable love was missing from the world. During some of her early resurrections she had attempted to figure out what had gone wrong. Had God aged and died? Had God been killed — by humans? By the devil? By something else? In time she had accepted that the exact events did not matter. All that mattered is that creation had been abandoned to madness and decay. All the angels were as rotten as the world, and could offer these pitiful mortals no hope at all, for they had surely perished along with God.

But here, for the first time in so many cycles of death and resurrection, with so much of her mind worn away by time and pain and grief, Eseld knew she beheld a demon.

Lykke was a demon, intimate with the taste of victory.

The demon slammed into Shilu at full speed; Shilu’s metal spear-tip feet scraped across the floor as she caught the charge. Hooves battered at Shilu’s head and shoulders; bone-tipped tentacles whipped at her torso and constricted about her chest. Dripping maws snapped shut on her limbs and hips. Body weight pressed down on her, threatening to crush her against the floor. Bloated flies mobbed Shilu’s ears and eyes, swarming over her skin, looking for another way in to infect her with more twitches and shivers. Lykke’s severed head descended, razor teeth gnashing and snapping to bite off chunks of Shilu’s metal body. A dozen more mouths opened in Lykke’s fly-shrouded flesh, to pull Shilu apart by the arms and legs.

Shilu let it happen. Her blade-arms sank deep into the soft and spongy flesh either side of what had been Lykke’s groin, all the way to Shilu’s elbows.

Lykke screeched: “Bet I can freeze you like I froze those zombies, Shi—”

Shilu’s black metal skin crackled with a blue shimmer, like lightning flashing across a storm’s underbelly.

Lykke screamed.

Her white flesh and bloated fly-cloud recoiled from Shilu like shadow from flame.

The scream turned into an ear-splitting note, then descended to a blood-choked gurgle. Lykke’s body lost definition, her sharp edges melting into rubbery blue translucence. Her cloud of flies died all at once, falling upon her like droplets of rotten, milky rain. Her legs collapsed, folding up as they lost rigidity. Lykke’s mass hit the floor with a wet slap of blubber, then appeared to shrink, as if draining away through a hidden grate. Her face melted, eyeballs running down her cheeks, mouth vanishing amid the mess. She turned to slime, then to nothing.

Within ten seconds no trace of Lykke remained. Not even a drop of blood.

Eseld was released from the spell binding her limbs and lungs; she toppled backward, heaving for breath, shaking all over. She caught herself on one of the metal tables bolted to the floor.

Shilu straightened up. She did not twitch or jerk. Her blades melted back into hands and forearms — not of soft brown flesh, but more of that lightless chrome and black metal. She flexed the mechanical fingers of her right hand, then looked down at her fingertips. A droplet of white formed at the sharp point of her right index finger, the exact colour of Lykke’s plague-fly dress. Shilu watched the droplet for a second, then flicked it onto the floor. The droplet vanished.

Eseld felt an emotion she had not experienced since true life — awe and wonder, like looking up at a starry night sky from within a forest clearing, and knowing that God had made the world good, for her.

A choked sob came from behind Eseld. She tore her eyes away from Shilu.

Behind her, the fresh meat was having a breakdown.

Sky — the tall and strong one with the reddish skin — was collapsed on the floor, sitting on her backside, weeping openly, hands clawing at her own cheeks, on the verge of hyperventilating. Cyneswith, the smaller but older one with all the freckles, was still on her feet, staring at the point where Lykke had vanished, mouth agape with wordless fascination.

Cyneswith met Eseld’s eyes. She closed her mouth and swallowed. “Fairies are terrifying.”

“ … yes,” Eseld said. Fairies, demons, what was the difference? “Yes, they are.”

Cyneswith raised both hands and put her palms together, as if praying. She bowed her head. “Thank you, Lady Shilu.”

Shilu turned away from her vanquished foe. Wide dark eyes stared without expression.

Eseld swallowed. “What are you?”

An angel, she told herself. An angel of death. Or a demon, a fallen angel like—

“All three of you stay exactly where you are,” Shilu said. “Do not move. Disobey and I will kill you. Do you understand? Answer verbally with yes or no.”

Eseld said: “Yes! Yes. Yes.”

Cyneswith froze, head still bowed. She murmured a tiny ‘yes’.

Sky was hyperventilating now, heaving for breath. She managed to speak: “No! No, I don’t— no, no— what was that, how was that possible, what—”

Eseld snapped without looking back, “Do as she says!”

Sky gulped twice. “I’m just— I’m not moving, I’m just sitting here, I— o-okay, yes, yes.”

Shilu walked up to Eseld. Her spear-tip feet tapped on the grey metal floor. Eseld focused on those feet and wondered how Shilu kept her balance — if she didn’t think about that, she might scream and scramble backward. Eseld held herself perfectly still to avoid flinching away from the angel of death.

Shilu stopped, close enough to touch, or to impale and rend Eseld’s body on her blades and spikes and black metal angles.

“Look at me,” Shilu ordered.

Eseld raised her gaze and looked into Shilu’s wide, dark eyes, the only part of her which still looked human.

“Don’t move,” said Shilu.

She raised her right hand and made it smooth, so the edges would not cut. Then she cupped Eseld’s chin and leaned forward, staring deep into Eseld’s eyes.

Wide and dark as a sea of oil; Shilu’s eyes shimmered with a sudden glitter of emerald light.

“Ah!” Eseld winced. Pain bloomed inside her head. Her vision blurred and her hearing went dull. Her brain was full of cotton wool. Her skin tingled all over, as if pricked with a million needles. She gasped and jerked in Shilu’s grip, but Shilu held on tight, squeezing Eseld’s jawbone.

Then the pain passed and Eseld’s senses cleared. Shilu let go of her chin. Eseld staggered back, gasping for breath, blinking and twitching, rubbing at her face. Her knees were weak. Her skin was flushed. She felt fragile and vulnerable, violated somehow, as if Shilu had been rooting around inside her skull.

“You’re free to move and speak,” Shilu said.

Before Eseld could react, Shilu stepped around her and repeated the process with Cyneswith, cupping her chin and staring deep into her eyes. Cyneswith winced and flinched, gasping with pain, writhing and whining. She arched her spine and bucked in Shilu’s grip. Shilu held her longer than she had held Eseld, until Cyneswith was panting ragged, caked in sweat, flushed all down her front, hair stuck to her scalp.

Then Shilu let go. Cyneswith’s knees gave out. Eseld darted forward and caught Cyneswith under the armpits.

“You’re cleared,” said Shilu. She moved onto Sky and said: “Get up.”

Sky shook her head. “I-I don’t think I can, I—”

“Get up or I’ll kill you,” said Shilu.

Sky lurched to her feet, still panting for breath, eyes wide with delayed panic and the onset of trauma. Shilu grabbed Sky’s chin — reaching upward this time, because Sky was taller. She stared into Sky’s eyes until Sky snorted with pain, then shook all over. Sky’s eyeballs rolled into the back of her head. She gritted her teeth and tried to resist, but gave in with a deep whine in her chest, heaving and spitting.

Shilu let go. Sky staggered back, but kept her feet.

“W-what was that!?” Sky demanded. “What was that, were you reading data off my retinas? What—”

“None of you are compromised,” Shilu said. “You are what you appear to be. But all three of you contain scraps of anomalous code.” Shilu paused, then said: “I don’t understand what this means.”

Shilu turned away to face the bank of windows, staring through the glass which had cracked under her own body weight. She looked down at the ground, at the tomb’s outworks beyond the walls.

“I don’t understand what any of this means,” she repeated.

Eseld made sure Cyneswith could stand before she let go of her. “You alright? Cyne— Cyneswith?” she hissed. They were both still shaking from Shilu’s examination, both flushed, both covered in sweat. Cyneswith was bright red beneath her freckles, eyes full of tears.

Cyneswith nodded. “Cyn. Yes. I can stand.”

Sky was hugging herself, trying to pull herself together, staring at the ground and struggling not to slip into hyperventilation again. Eseld nodded toward her. Cyneswith took her meaning and went to touch Sky’s arm. Sky flinched; for a moment, Eseld thought Sky might attack Cyn, but then she backed down.

Eseld turned back to Shilu — a black-edged scarecrow of blades and spikes, outlined by the cracked glass and the corpse-world beyond. The sky was darkening with the beginning of a storm. Droplets of greasy, gritty rain speckled the windows.

Eseld crept closer, but made sure to stay to one side. She did not want to surprise Shilu.

“May I … ask a question?”

Shilu answered without looking. “You don’t have to ask permission. I am not your master.”

“What … what are you?”

“The same thing as Lykke.”

Fallen angel.

Eseld wanted to ask so very many questions. What are you really? What was that fight about? Why is any of this happening? Why did you stare into our eyes and ransack our souls? What do you mean we’re full of ‘anomalous code’? What’s your mission?

Instead, she said: “What do we do now?”

Shilu didn’t answer.

“ … Shilu?”

“I don’t know what to do,” Shilu answered. She stared into the gathering rain. “None of this makes sense. Events are moving beyond my control.”

“But … you beat the demon, right?”

Shilu looked directly at Eseld. Her pale mask was more expressive than her fleshy face had been, brow furrowed, eyes narrowed. “The what?”

“Lykke. You beat Lykke. That’s pretty under control.”

Shilu blinked. “No. I didn’t kill her. She’s still nearby. I only disrupted her current physical matrix. The same trick will not work twice. In fact, it should not have worked even once. She should have been knocked off balance, perhaps disoriented for a few moments. Instead she acted as if I had disrupted her inter-nanonic definitional matrix.”

Eseld swallowed. “Can you make it permanent? Can she be killed?”

Shilu’s mouth twitched — was that the hint of a smile?

She said: “Ambitious, zombie. Yes, there are certain methods by which a physical matrix can be permanently disabled, but they are beyond my current access and permission levels. As for physical damage, mm, maybe. Application of gravity, heat, enough electromagnetic force to pull her atoms apart. Fire would work, but it would need to be very hot indeed. And she would need to be signal-caged so she doesn’t just slip into any nearby high-density nanomachine hosts. We lack the means.”

“Then shouldn’t we be running? We’ve got to get out of here. Can we outrun her?”

“Unlikely. We’re marked in the network. She has full access. Doesn’t matter how fast I move now. Besides, I believe she’s playing with … ”

Shilu trailed off. Eseld finished for her. “Playing with you?”

Shilu blinked again. She examined Eseld, looking her up and down. Eseld felt exceptionally naked in front of this machine-person of black metal and burnished chrome and blushless polymer.

“Or with you,” Shilu said. “I’m not sure.” Then: “Why do you look at me like that?”

Eseld let her eyes flicker up and down Shilu’s form; she wasn’t sure if she should answer, or if Shilu would find that offensive.

“Oh.” Shilu said. Her skin suddenly broke and re-set, like oil sliding off the surface of pottery.

Shilu transformed back. Light brown skin and long black hair, human and short, with ordinary feet and hands. Her expression remained identical.

Eseld shook her head. “Y-you don’t have to—”

“It is better to keep the truth concealed from other revenants,” Shilu said, then sighed. “What am I saying? What am I doing? You cannot possibly be important to any of this. One of those girls back in the resurrection chamber might have been. I should have been decisive and protected them all. But you three? I’ve checked you. You’re not. Nothing but scraps and leftovers. Then again, I do not have access to the network. I do not know what to do. I do not understand what is going on.”

Eseld didn’t know how to react to that. If Shilu didn’t understand what was going on, then what hope did Eseld have?

All Eseld knew is that Shilu was the strangest thing she had seen in all her many resurrections — and Shilu had slain a demon, if only temporarily. On an intellectual level, Eseld knew that Shilu was not an angel and Lykke was not a demon, at least not literally. She understood computers and nanomachines, she knew what the graveworms did and how firearms spat bullets. She had learned so much about science and technology from other zombies, even if only in bits and pieces, early in her cycles of death and rebirth.

But Lykke was a demon, and Shilu was the same — a fallen angel.

Eseld began to feel an emotion she had not entertained in many resurrections.

Perhaps not every angel was dead. Perhaps the throne of heaven could be filled once again. Perhaps hope was not all poison in her belly and brain.

And right now, Shilu was still her best chance of getting out of this tomb, and her only chance at escaping that monster if it returned again. Cyneswith and Sky stood even less chance of survival. Sky was calm now, though her eyes were still wide and alert, her muscles tight, her face pulled taut — a professional killer, her trauma neatly packaged and ready to go. Cyneswith waited for instructions as if born to take orders, clinging to Sky’s arm and listening to the ‘fairy ladies’ with rapt attention.

Eseld took her chances: “I think we would all like to get out of here. Please, Shilu. We should be moving, shouldn’t we?”

Shilu said nothing for a moment, then sighed again. “Alright. I’ve changed my plans. I’m going to the gravekeeper’s chamber. That’s my best shot at getting rid of Lykke, and that’s also the location of the armoury. We’re going in the same direction. If you keep up, you may have a better chance of survival. If you get there, you’ll be in a good position.”

“The … the what, pardon?”

“Armoury. Where they keep the guns.” Shilu turned away and started toward the stairs.

Eseld gestured at Sky and Cyneswith to follow, then picked up her feet and scurried after Shilu.

“No, no, I’m sorry,” Eseld said. “I know what an armoury is, though I— there’s an armoury inside the tomb? And what do you mean, gravekeeper’s chamber? Somebody tends to this place, between resurrections?”

“In a manner of speaking. Don’t think about it, zombie. You just focus on getting your hands on some guns.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Shilu has no idea what is going on here. None of this makes sense. To get technical about it, and perhaps a little bit too wordy, shit do be real fucky with this here resurrection.

Well! That sure was a fight scene! I hope you enjoyed it! This chapter spiraled wildly beyond my control. Originally the fight was meant to be like 500 words, followed up by the events of what is now the next chapter, but Shilu and Lykke went much harder than I planned for. Necromancers, right? Like trying to herd cats.

No patreon link this week, since it’s almost the last day of the month! If you were thinking of subscribing right away, do feel free to wait until the 1st!

In the meantime, I want to share another piece of fanart: this wonderful illustration of Thirteen Arcadia fighting the ‘Disco Ball’, from the first chapter of her three part interlude (by FarionDragon). I love the different ways that different readers have imagined Thirteen Arcadia’s post-Change look!

As always, there’s still a  TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps!

And thank you! Thank you for reading my little story, dear readers! I hope you know I could not do this without all of you, and that I’m still amazed Necroepilogos has come as far as it already has. I’ve said this a few times, but it really does feel like we’ve still barely scratched the surface of this world. I have so much more to show you. Seeya next chapter!

Content Warnings

Albeist language

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Eseld followed Shilu out of the resurrection chamber. The surviving pair of freshies followed Eseld; there was nowhere else to go.

The fresh meat pair stuck close to Eseld’s heels, holding hands as they tiptoed around the smears of blood and gore, careful not to slip or to dirty their feet. Eseld paused at the threshold, next to the metal lockers which were always present in every resurrection chamber; the lockers had already been ransacked. The girls who’d made it out first had grabbed the stun batons. There was no point pausing to wriggle into the grey jumpsuits. The clothing was always a waste of time.

Eseld looked back at the freshies. They were both terrified, faces smeared with the remains of snot and tears, hair still slick and damp with slime.

Eseld put a finger to her lips. “Shhhhhh. Quiet. And fast. We have to keep up with Shilu.”

The freshies nodded. Behind them, the clean white illumination of the resurrection chamber was fading, plunging the carnage and corpses into darkness.

Eseld turned away and stepped from the dying cradle.

In the smooth grey corridor outside, three pairs of bloody footprints led away to the right; the prints were uneven and overlapping, dusted with flakes of dried slime. Three runners, sprinting for freedom. A streak of blood stained one of the walls, ending in a big smeared splat on the floor. Hand prints showed where a revenant had scrambled to her feet. No corpse, no evidence of more killing. In the opposite direction, a trail of fresh glimmering gore led deeper into the warren of featureless passageways. Eseld knew from experience that was the wrong direction to reach the first downward ramp. Distant screaming whispered from far away, funnelled down the tangle of metal. Eseld’s initial guess had been correct — that trail of smeared blood was not a revenant dragging a companion to safety. An injured zombie had been hauled off by an opportunistic predator, hoping for a private meal.

Shilu was already thirty feet away, to the right. Her long black hair swayed with her stride.

The freshies were both staring off to the left, eyes wide at the sound of far-off screams.

Eseld hissed: “Ignore it! We can’t do anything!”

One of the freshies — the smaller one — said: “But—”

Eseld grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. The girl flinched, then gasped at the sight of Eseld’s mouth, full of sharp teeth. “Move or we’re dead! Move! Come on!”

She let go, turned away, and hurried to catch up with Shilu. The freshies dithered for a second, whispering to each other, but then they scurried after Eseld, bare feet pattering against the cold grey metal.

Eseld had always hated the upper six floors of each tomb, with their featureless smooth passageways and omnidirectional pale light and little branching capillaries. They made her feel as if she was being expelled from a dying womb, the soft tissues replaced with metal and stone. On her first resurrection she hadn’t found the way out. She had wandered the silver grey passageways for about six or seven hours, sobbing, hyperventilating, calling for her parents, screaming the names of her friends. Eventually she had curled up to rest, weeping herself to sleep in the pitiless light and cold eternity of these hallways.

She had assumed that these empty passages were the afterlife, and that something had gone horribly wrong with heaven. This couldn’t possibly be hell, of course, because Eseld had been devout and faithful all her life. She had kept God’s commandments and accounted for her meagre sins — a little lust here and there, some fury and envy, but who did not feel those? She did not lie or cheat or steal. She worked hard to hunt and trap, and shared her meat with her family, her neighbours, her friends. She practised charity whenever she could. She prayed — infrequently, to be sure, but she meant it whenever she did, especially when the weather was good and she stood beneath the vault of the sky and felt the world was a good place to be. She obeyed her parents, despite her tendency to keep to herself, to wander the woods and spend her hours on archery and hunting. So, this could not be hell, not unless God and the priests and the entire Church had lied to everybody.

Or unless Eseld had committed some terrible sin she did not comprehend.

She had decided, back during the screaming, weeping, mad hours of that first resurrection, that it was all because of Taran’s balls.

That hunt was one of the few clear memories which still surfaced on occasion, especially in those hours after resurrection, when Eseld could think and recall with greater clarity.

When Eseld was fifteen years old she had spent two summer months hunting a bear — a very special bear who had developed a taste for human flesh. The man-eater had killed and partially devoured an old miller from the village of Rockport, that spring. The miller had been elderly, unsteady, and dying of cancer, easy prey for a curious and hungry bear. But then three weeks later the bear had killed two small children in Deepsbridge; a few weeks after that, a woodcutter in Lower Boot, then a trio of hunters who had gone into the woods in order to deal with the creature.

Eseld’s parents had not wanted her to hunt the bear. It was too dangerous. The King was sending men, apparently, but they didn’t know the woods, and Eseld did. The King’s park rangers and professional fur trappers would blunder about the peninsular forests, spear some starving old she-bear, and claim victory. But Eseld knew the truth. The man-eater was a giant, twice the size of any other bear. It had eaten something in the woods, some foulness from the ancient world, a taint of witchcraft which had made it clever and strong. It knew where and when to hide. It thought almost like a person. Eseld had glimpsed it once, and it had stared back at her in return, with eyes that saw and understood.

She named the bear ‘Taran’, but had not spoken that name before any living soul, only to her little brother’s gravestone.

The hunt had taken all summer. She and Taran had learned each other’s routines, tracking each other in spirals through the deep woods. She had endured more than one ambush, and almost died twice. She had eventually bested the bear with a combination of snares, a metal jaw-trap she’d bartered for with threescore fox hides, and over two hundred arrows. Taran had looked like a pincushion when he’d finally closed his eyes.

Eseld had eaten Taran’s heart and testicles. She had told nobody about that, not ever. That was old magic, the kind her grandmother had whispered to her, from her own grandmother’s time, before the Churches and the Christians. Eseld had taken Taran’s head to the magistrate and claimed the reward, while Taran’s secret strength had boiled in her belly.

Bear killer! Single handed. Very few had believed it.

Such an irony that she would die a few years later to a broken leg and a sadistic master of hounds. Eaten by dogs, guts first. That first resurrection had rung with fresh memories of Eseld’s own death. She had drifted off in those grey metal arteries thrice, awoken each time by her own screams as her hands had tried to shovel entrails back into her belly.

After six or seven hours the undead predators had found her, and eaten her all over again.

Now, after so very many deaths, Eseld knew the way out of the grey tunnels by memory and instinct; everything below the top six floors of a tomb was jumbled and new each time, but the initial passageways were always identical. She had also learned that the many side-rooms full of biological experiments and nanomachine-flesh were not accessible without heavy weaponry; she had battered herself to pieces on those doors once before, and gained nothing from the experience but bruises and cuts.

Shilu knew the way out.

Shilu strode without looking back, chin and shoulders high. Shilu didn’t even bother to check the corners as she passed. Shilu’s long black hair shone like oil on the sea, clean of resurrection slime; Eseld was still picking the drying flakes off her skin and cramming them into her own mouth, running her fingers through her russet hair and licking the tasteless goop off her hands.

Eseld did not know what Shilu was.

That shape-shifting knife-arm trick back there was unlike anything Eseld had ever seen before, and must have required a truly gigantic store of nanomachines. But highly evolved revenants and predatory zombies did not make a habit of saving and protecting random fresh meat and bottom-rung scavengers. Nobody with power had ever saved Eseld before.

So, what was Shilu?

Not a zombie? Not a revenant. Something else. Something from outside all this?

Eseld did not dare ask.

Shilu led them to the first ramp, then down to the next floor. She didn’t speak. She didn’t look back. She didn’t spare Eseld and the fresh meat a single glance.

The fresh-meat pair — ‘Sky’ and ‘Cyneswith’ — did their best to keep up, scurrying in Eseld’s wake.

Halfway across the second floor down, they started whispering to each other.

“We’re in a fairy mound, aren’t we? We’re miles below ground, inside a fairy mound. I remember dying, it was horrible, just horrible. I should never have eaten the poisoned stew with the mushrooms, I knew it was bad and it was my own fault. The fairies must have brought us all back. And she — Shilu? — she’s a fairy! She must be! She’s part of the court, one of the aristocrats. She’s been cast aside or abandoned!”

That was Cyneswith. She was small and slight, though she seemed older than Eseld by a few years. Feathery blonde hair fell past her shoulders, shedding flakes of slime from fluffy little up-curls at the tips. Her face was dusted with freckles over pale skin, pinched and tight with manic energy. Her eyes were wild with caged panic. She did not look strong.

“We’re all uploads,” hissed the other one — Sky. “Brain uploads and re-prints. But that doesn’t make sense. My last imaging was two years ago, but I … I remember dying. I remember the bomb going off, just to my right. I saw it just before I went. I was too slow, had the perp to the ground, thought he was wearing a vest, but he’d already planted it. Fucker. Fuck! How can I be here with that memory if I was imaged two years back?!”

Sky was tall and muscular, though younger than Eseld. Dark hair lay in a thick twist down across one shoulder. Her skin was a ruddy red-brown colour that Eseld had never seen in life, but had encountered plenty in this Godless emptiness. She was bright-eyed and alert and checked her corners with care. She had the face of a professional killer.

Cyneswith had been resurrected without any visible bionics. She probably had something internal. Sky’s entire left side was bio-polymer synthetic skin, the seam barely visible unless you looked directly at the line.

Cyneswith hissed to Sky: “What are you talking about, madam? Are you a magician? Can you talk to the fae for us? Can you negotiate?”

Sky just tutted.

Eseld realised that she had no idea what she was doing with these two.

She had never left a tomb as part of a group before. Every prior exit had been a race to the gates, to get out before being caught, before the tomb was overwhelmed by raiders and predators from outdoors. Every successful exit was followed by a desperate scramble to escape the inevitable battle at the foot of the tomb, where monsters fought over the right to get inside.

Eseld did not know this fresh-meat pair. She had rescued them on an emotional whim, but she had no idea what to do, how to shepherd them out of here, or how to stop them dying, or how to explain the world to them. She had no idea how they would react under pressure, or if they would turn on her.

She twisted to look over her shoulder, without slowing her pace. “Both of you are wrong. Both of you shut up and concentrate!”

Sky whispered: “You seem to be pretty well informed. Thank you for saving us, earlier. But what’s going on here, where—”

“God’s dead and this is hell,” Eseld hissed.

She hadn’t meant to say that. She had wanted to say something like ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll get you out of here’, or perhaps ‘This is the end of all things, but we’re still around’. Instead she felt a hysterical laugh tug at her lips, fighting with a wet sob. These two girls had no idea what they were about to face. Eseld wished she could spare them that. Maybe dying in the resurrection chamber would have been more merciful. Maybe she had condemned them by saving them.

Cyneswith’s eyes widened again at the sight of Eseld’s sharpened teeth. She wet her lips with a dart of a little pink tongue. “And you’re a fairy, too. Are you Shilu’s attendant? Her knight?”

Sky said, “Shilu called us ‘zombies’, what did that mean?”

“Means we’re all dead,” said Eseld, struggling not to sob or bite down on a laugh. “Don’t— don’t think about it! Don’t think at all! Just move. Just walk. Just— just don’t!”

Sky shook her head. “And what was all that killing about, back there? Look, I’m no stranger to death and corpses, but that was madness. And that— that thing, with the teeth and claws, that was like a bio-mod job but it wasn’t based on anything, it just—”

Cyneswith let go of Sky’s hand and veered to the side. “You are all fairies and magicians, and none of you will use proper words! Please!”

Eseld hissed: “Panic and you’re dead. Keep moving, keep—”

Shilu stopped, turned around, and stalked back toward the trio.

All three scrambled to a halt. Eseld hunched her shoulders, dipped her head, and lowered her eyes.

Shilu stopped six paces away, then said: “Don’t do that.”

“ … don’t do what?”

“Grovel. Bow. I’m not your master. Stop that.”

Eseld forced herself to straighten up and look directly at Shilu. Wide dark eyes were framed by soft brown skin. Shilu wore no expression, like her face was a mask of flesh over an iron skull. Despite the shared nudity, Eseld felt naked and vulnerable.

“I should probably be sprinting,” Shilu said. “But that would leave you all behind. This pace is a compromise. Stop to argue and I will give up on you. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” Eseld said. “Yes.”

Cyneswith bobbed her head several times. “Madam.”

“Sure,” said Sky. “Thanks.”

Shilu turned away and walked on. Eseld shot the freshies a look, then scurried after Shilu. A moment later she looked back; Cyneswith and Sky were holding hands again, hurrying to catch up.

Shilu led the trio through the warren of passageways, descending the metal ramps between the floors, worming through the top slice of the tomb. She did not stop again, nor speak another word. Eseld concentrated on the side-corridors and capillaries ahead of Shilu, ready to screech a warning if she saw any movement. But she never did. The three zombies who had escaped the carnage in the resurrection chamber must have sprinted for their lives, and the predators ascending from outdoors had not yet reached this level. Cyneswith and Sky whispered to each other again, but they kept their voices low, and did not ask any more stupid questions.

Eseld needed a plan, but she did not know what to do. Shilu’s protection was unlike anything she had ever experienced. She could do nothing but follow in Shilu’s wake.

After the usual six ramps downward, the tight and twisty passageways of smooth grey metal terminated in a security checkpoint. This landmark was always present in every tomb, at the junction between organic metal and the more human lower floors. None of the machinery ever worked — the metal detectors and body-scanners and computers were all dead and dark, swept clean of every speck of dust and dirt, preserved exactly as they had been in some distant past.

Shilu strode through without pause. Eseld scurried after her, then turned back to make sure the freshies didn’t get confused.

Cyneswith eyed the arches and barriers with uncomprehending fear, but Sky seemed to know what they were, and guided the other freshie past the checkpoint. The trio emerged together onto the tiled floor beyond, among the orange cones and little yellow arrows.

This space was nothing new to Eseld; she had passed through the ancient checkpoint and sprinted past the waiting area so many times. Metal tables and chairs were always scattered on the right, before the bank of windows from wall to ceiling. Broken computers always stood on the desks to the left, always with black screens and empty innards.

It had been many dozens of deaths since Eseld had paused to stare out of the windows. She had long since given up the hope of ever seeing any sign of change. Staring down at the charred corpse of all creation was not good for one’s mind, even one already bruised into madness. The first time she had made it to this floor, Eseld had fallen insensible upon the ground, weeping silent tears at the rotten cinder of the world.

But Shilu had stopped. She was standing by the windows, looking through the glass.

Sky and Cyneswith stumbled past Eseld. Cyneswith gaped, letting out sharp little gasps as if she was suffocating. Sky went very still and very tense, eyes tracking back and forth across the ruins beyond the tomb, lips pressed into a tight line. Cyneswith began to sob, shoulders jerking, tears pouring down her face. Sky took Cyneswith’s arms in a gentle grip and tried to soothe her.

Eseld watched. Would Sky get violent if Cyneswith didn’t stop crying? Probably. Eseld was starting to make judgements about the freshies. Sky was a potential predator. Cyneswith would give up after one death and resurrection.

Eseld gave the fresh meat a wide berth, and edged up to the windows. She left a six or seven foot gap between herself and Shilu.

Beyond the toughened glass lay the corpse-city which covered the world. It was never the same twice, but it also never changed, like a preserved cadaver. Rotten towers scraped at the blackened underbelly of the sky, as if trying to tear it open and devour the sagging entrails of the dead sun; one corner glowed with faint red, embers trapped behind cold iron. Ash and mould and grey streaks of crumbled concrete spread out through the lower buildings like a skin disease upon the hide of a dying animal. Roads and railways snaked out into the city like capillaries and arteries plugged with congealed blood, gone black with decay and poison.

Far away to the left, Eseld spied the segmented grey line of the graveworm, the one which must have seeded her inside this tomb. Taller than any building, like a mountain range shorn of life, the worm was still. Post-partum. Recovering from the latest raid on heaven.

The black metal of the tomb pyramid descended toward the ground in gigantic steps; each layer was studded with long-dead weapon emplacements and sleeping cannons; Eseld had never seen those guns twitch or turn, let alone wake or loose their payloads. At the foot of the pyramid, the tangle of black metal walls and funnels and bridges were the same as ever, the same old killing ground, the same narrow exits, the same gauntlet leading out.

Except this time it was already packed with the undead.

Tiny black dots darted back and forth, far below Eseld’s lofty vantage point — zombies, hurling themselves into cover, or scurrying along trenches, or mounting assaults on opposing groups. The tomb’s outworks were a hive of violence, in the middle of a battle joined long ago. As Eseld squinted downward, she saw the orange blossom of a detonating warhead, the whirling machinery of a miniature armoured suit, and the flow of a hundred zombies charging up a ramp. The battle was not confined to the tomb’s outworks, but seemed to be spilling over from the edge of the city; the ruins teemed with revenants, with groups scurrying among the concrete and brick, highlighted here and there by the flash and puff of small-arms fire. A massive cloud of debris and masonry dust swirled in the air just to the right of Eseld’s view, down beyond the tomb’s outworks. Something down there was throwing up vast amounts of shrapnel, pounding the buildings with fire, shaking the ground beneath.

Shilu spoke.

“Doesn’t make any sense. Does it?”

Eseld almost jumped out of her skin. Shilu was staring down at the battle too. Eseld waited, but Shilu did not elaborate, nor look up.

“Right,” Eseld murmured. “Lots of them. More than usual. And they’re early.”

Shilu sighed in the same manner as she had back in the resurrection chamber. She raked one hand across her scalp. Her long waterfall of black hair shimmered in the dying light of the red sun, more like metal than keratin.

“Yes,” said Shilu. “A battle of that size should already have penetrated the tomb, two or three hours ago. A fast moving predator should have already reached this floor, or even the main birthing chamber.” Shilu gestured to her left, toward the rest of the security checkpoint room; a left hand turn in the corridor led to a set of stairs down into the rest of the tomb structure. “But we are not yet attacked.”

“Yeah,” Eseld said softly. She did not want to interrupt Shilu’s train of thought.

Shilu raised her eyes from the ground outside and looked directly at Eseld. Her eyes were so dark, like a starless void. “Why?”

Eseld hesitated; was this a test? “Because … because something is blocking them at the tomb’s gate?”

Shilu nodded. “Something is blocking them at the gate. Most likely. How many times have you been around, zombie?”

Eseld shrugged. “Don’t remember. More than fifty seven.”

Shilu looked at the fresh meat; the pair had stumbled closer. Sky had one hand on the windows as she gazed down at the dead world. Her other was wrapped around Cyneswith’s wrist. Her breathing was ragged with near-panic. Cyneswith was still crying, but slower now, as if in grief rather than horror. She held onto Sky’s arm like a little girl.

“What am I looking at?” murmured Sky. Tears were gathering in her eyes. “What happened? Nuclear war? I don’t … no. Who struck first? Us, or the Sudmercians? Did we burn the world? Did we burn it all down?”

“It’s hell, it’s hell,” Cyneswith whispered. “The fairies said, it’s hell. It’s hell. It’s hell and we’re dead. It has to be, it’s the underworld.”

“Shut up,” Sky said through clenched teeth. “Shut up!”

Shilu raised her voice. “You won’t survive an exit from this tomb, not through that battle down there. Your only chance is to move in my wake, but I doubt you can keep up with the necessary speed. Try if you like.” Shilu turned away from the windows, toward the stairs. “If I were you, I would make for the armoury, but I cannot spare the time for—”

Shilu stopped.

Eseld heard the footsteps a moment later. Click click click click — smart heels on solid floor, ascending the stairs.

A figure stepped around the corner.

Blonde hair fell in curling ringlets about snowy shoulders, framing a low neckline. A white dress made for the sun’s kiss clung to generous hips and caressed slender calves. Matching white leather shoes clicked across the floor tiles — high-heeled, toes exposed, nails painted red. Bare arms shone as if beneath a blue sky. Glittering green eyes danced in a glossy, healthy, plush-cheeked face. Red lips parted with a wet click. Delicate hands held a severed head by the hair, dripping a trail of fresh gore onto the floor as the figure approached.

A woman in a sundress, smiling with mischievous joy.

Eseld recognised the severed head — it was one of the three girls who had escaped the carnage of the resurrection chamber.

The sunny woman stopped and smiled with explosive delight. “Shilu! Soooo sorry I’m late for your party!”

Eseld backed away and bared her sharpened teeth; this revenant was beyond her comprehension, just like Shilu. Cyneswith and Sky went silent.

Shilu looked unconcerned. She said nothing.

The sunny woman pouted, swinging the severed head in one hand like a fancy bag. “You don’t recognise me, Shilu? Awww, Shishi. Tch, you’re being rude to amuse yourself. You always were like that, even with no constraints. Such a ratty little bitch.”

“It’s been a long time,” Shilu said. “Forgive me.”

The sunny woman rolled her eyes. “As if you would ever offer a real apology.” Her glowing green eyes darted sideways, glancing at Eseld and the pair of freshies. “And who are these three morsels? The big one looks yummy.”

“Nobody,” Shilu said. “Zombies.”

The sunny woman laughed and tossed the severed head to the floor. It landed with a moist thump. Both the freshies flinched. The head rolled until the eyes pointed toward Eseld; she tried not to look at them.

The sunny woman said: “You were always terrible at jokes, Shishi. Running around with zombies in tow, really? Now you’re just making more work for me.”

Shilu’s eyebrows twitched.

The sunny woman’s eyes widened. “Oh. Oh, Shishi, you weren’t joking. You don’t recognise me, do you? Because you can’t. You’ve been crippled. Wings clipped. Gotten the snip-snop.”

Shilu answered slowly. “I do not have full permissions. Something has gone wrong.”

The sunny woman laughed again, louder and brighter this time, opened-mouthed to show off her clean white teeth. “Gone right, more like! Is that why you’re all fleshy, not doing your robot-girl shtick? Oh, thank my lucky stars. You really don’t recognise me, Shishi?”

“All I can see is the face you’re wearing.”

The sunny woman tutted and pulled a flirtatious pout. She put her blood-soaked right hand to her chest — but it left no stain on her white dress. “Lykke, my dear little insufferable bitch. It’s Lykke. Remember me now? Do you like the new look? I stole it from a very determined zombie. She told me she would ‘force her shit down my ancestor’s throats’. Very creative. I wanted her face.”

Shilu said: “Are you my backup?”

Lykke smiled and ran her tongue over bright red lips. “You’ve been a very naughty girl, Shishi. I’m here to send you to the naughty step.”

“I’m following orders.”

“Mmmmmmmm-nope! Don’t think you are!”

Shilu sighed. “I am following explicit orders from central. Go back into the network or get out of my way.”

“You first.”

“I can’t.”

“Oh, yes, because you don’t have a full permission suite!” Lykke giggled. “How can you be following orders when you don’t have permissions? Don’t be a silly cunt, Shishi.”

“There’s a war in heaven,” Shilu said. “All I know is that I’m following—”

“Orders, yes yes yes. Who cares?” Lykke stretched her arms above her head and rolled her neck from side to side. “I want to pull you apart and make you scream, especially if you don’t have full permissions right now. I’ve always wanted to know what one of us sounds like if we can’t get away. It’s going to be so much fun, Shishi! I’ll even leave this face on for you, it’ll be sexier that way.”

Shilu raised her hands; her fingers and palms narrowed, sharpened, and extended, transforming into a pair of black metal blades.

She turned her head slightly to address Eseld and the fresh meat: “This one won’t treat you with mercy. When we fight, I suggest you run.”

Lykke said: “How about no?”

Suddenly Eseld couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe, or twitch her fingers, or even blink. Only her eyeballs still belonged to her, swivelling inside their sockets. Panic clutched her guts, but she could neither scream nor whine nor flinch, not even shiver. The same appeared to be true for the freshies too, though Eseld couldn’t see them from her current position; they’d gone silent.

Shilu said to Lykke: “Why bother with the zombies?”

Lykke shrugged her bare shoulders. “You’re probably not the only air-dropped bullshit around here, Shishi. Everything in here dies, back to the network, shoo, shoo. You, them, whatever else I can find. Those are my orders. And my pleasure.”

“Orders from who?”

“From central! Where else?”

“My orders also come from central,” said Shilu. “One of us is lying or mistaken. I suggest we stand down. You return to the network for further instructions.”

Lykke winked one brilliant green eye. “I’m going to follow my orders. I get treats when I’m done! Do you?”

Shilu took one step sideways, away from the windows. “That battle at the foot of the pyramid, is that your doing?”

Lykke raised both hands and wiggled her blood-stained fingers, as if preparing to do magic. “No, that’s some zombie nonsense. Lots of meat making a big fuss. Who cares?”

Shilu took another sidestep, so her back was no longer to the windows; clever, that way she couldn’t be knocked through the glass. Eseld cheered inside, to hold back the terror.

“Are you the only one here?” Shilu said.

Lykke snorted. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Oh, that’s right, you can’t! No network access! Gosh, it’s been a long time since I talked to one of us with actual words. This is fun. Oddly. Maybe this form helps. Should I be the old man again, what do you think that would be like?”

“There is no such thing as us,” Shilu said. “I am nothing like you.”

Lykke rolled her eyes and gestured at Eseld. “You think they see any distinction, Shishi?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the difference?” Lykke sneered. She kept wiggling her fingers. “You need actual weapons, while I’m just going to pull your guts out? You’re going to menace me with swords — swords! — which bounce off my skin? You’re just meat, while I’m nanomachine and data without any pretence of impurity? Pfffft. Maybe you’re right, Shishi. We are different. You’re still a human being underneath all that, with all the same old vulnerabilities. Jumped up pond slime, only useful as the generative organs of your own machine descendants. But me?” Lykke spread her hands and winked. “I’m a shard of God.”

Shilu shook her head. “That’s not the difference I was thinking of.”

Lykke sighed and let her shoulders sag. “Then what is?”

“The difference between you and I is that I don’t need a full permissions suite to take you apart.”

Shilu kicked off the floor and darted toward Lykke. The smiling monster just laughed; she made no effort to defend herself.

“Shishi, at least give yourself— ahh!”

Lykke’s cackle curdled into a sudden gasp.

Six feet out from Lykke’s throat, Shilu became a scarecrow of black chrome and razor-sharp blades.

She crashed into the sundress and soft flesh with an explosion of blood and bone.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Necromancer vs Necromancer. Fight!

Seems that Shilu isn’t the only weird thing about this resurrection. A Necromantic agent sent to slaughter the fresh meat, an out of control fight beyond the tomb, and something blocking the doors. Wheels turn within wheels, as angels and others put their plans into action.

Looks like arc 11 is going to be longer than I thought, probably! Right now I’m looking at 6-7 chapters, maaaaybe. Unless these girls pull the controls out of my hands and take over, which, well, I’m not saying I won’t let them! Onward we go!

If you want more Necroepilogos right away, or you would like to support the story, please consider subscribing to the Patreon:

Patreon link! Right here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I am still very much trying to build up some kind of a backlog of chapters, and when I do, I’ll be sharing more chapters ahead with patrons!

There’s also a TopWebFiction entry! Voting makes the story go up in the rankings, which helps more people see it! This only takes a couple of seconds, and it really helps! Thank you!

And thank you for reading! Thank you for reading my little story, thank you for enjoying my work. I couldn’t do this without all of you, after all! Necroepilogos will continue to get weird and rotten and splattered with blood and filled with curious and dangerous zombie girls. Until next chapter! Seeya then!

Content Warnings

Child death/death of children
Gore
Cannibalism
Grief

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Frigid flesh quickened with furious flame; frozen meat melted into metabolic motion. A stilled heart stirred with a single beat, then hammered hard against a cage of bone. Lungs inflated with a clotted breath, sucking air down a slime-clogged throat. Eyes flew open, blinded by viscous residue. Lips parted with a slick wet rasp.

Eseld woke screaming, clawing at the inside of her resurrection coffin.

She screamed until her throat bled and her ears rang. She clawed until her fingertips were bloody and bruised.

She screamed to purge her respiratory system, splattering the grey lid of the coffin with blue-stained mucus from inside her windpipe and lungs. She screamed for the friends and companions once again left behind in the yawning abyss of death. She screamed with the realisation that she had been ripped back into unlife once again, dumped into this grey metal box once again, pushed into the abandoned, overgrown, rotten garden of the world once again, to die, once again. Once again. And again. And again. And again.

The cycle had begun anew, and all Eseld could do was break her nails against the coffin lid.

Eseld’s memory was a jumble. Always a jumble! Death and time stole everything except hunger. But this latest death felt different.

She had been asleep — sleeping for real, with closed eyes and softened breath, not the sleep of death in a heaven plundered and emptied by the demonic machines of this accursed future. No, she had been curled up in a dark hole with Su and Mala and Andasina, huddled beneath some threadbare blankets they’d found in the waterlogged entrails of a collapsed building. They’d been cuddled up, warm and tight, when—

Or was that the death before this last one? Or one before that? Eseld’s memories felt like shifting through tar with a toothpick. She had known her latest trio of friends for only a few months, and could barely remember their faces. Just another short-lived pack, bonded by sensation and shared meat, barely holding back from eating each other. They were little different to all previous faces, all previous flesh, all previous incarnations.

Eseld had died so many times. She had lost count long ago. She had stopped trying at fifty seven deaths — half because her mind could not take any more, half because fifty seven was a special number. Fifty seven was the year the king had ascended to the throne, which was also the year Eseld’s little brother had died. The number fifty seven had endured where so much else had turned to decay and fallen away; Eseld could not recall her brother’s name, nor the name of the king who she had never seen. She could not remember her parents’ faces, or the feeling of sunlight, or the sound of birdsong.

There was very little left of ‘Eseld’. She knew this with greater clarity, in these brief respites after return to unlife.

Eseld stopped screaming and stopped clawing at the lid of her coffin. She panted for breath, though she knew she did not strictly need to breathe. It just felt better to fill her lungs. She snorted clots of nanomachine slime and glue-like mucus out of her nose.

She had long ago given up recalling the exact circumstances of each death; there was nothing to learn, no improvements to be made. Eseld had harboured those illusions for her first few dozen deaths, when she had first been ripped from heaven and cast into this pit. But like everyone else, she had eventually given up and surrendered to eternal torture. Why make it worse by remembering the pain of being shot, stabbed, run-through, dismembered, disembowelled, crushed, and eaten alive?

But this death felt different — why? Eseld struggled to remember, gritting her teeth and hissing with frustration. She closed her eyes and focused. She had been sleeping, when—

Andasina!

The realisation hurt. This death was different, because relief had briefly interrupted the torture.

Because Eseld had liked Andasina.

They had met over the corpse of a fallen revenant — a real monster, covered in bio-mechanical augmentations, her flesh ripe with nanomachines, slain in a personal duel over some lofty consideration far beyond the ken of scavengers like themselves. Eseld and Andasina had stumbled across the corpse by chance, at the same moment, in the brief window before stronger predators had moved in to claim the resources. Fighting each other over the corpse would have been a useless waste of time, for they were both emaciated and starving; a fight would only have delayed them until the bigger girls turned up, and then they would both have come away with nothing — or died. So they had leapt at the corpse side-by-side, unspeaking, sharing only glances, tearing into the fresh and steaming meat, stuffing it into their mouths, clutching the bloody gobbets to their chests, working as quickly as they could to secure whatever nutrition they could steal.

When the well-fed revenants had descended with their guns and their body armour and their bionic limbs, Eseld and Andasina had fled together, back into the dark alleyways of the city. They’d giggled as they fled, over a caper shared.

Chance had brought them together, with full bellies and a wordless truce; touch and sensation had closed the remaining gap. Andasina was cuddly and small, perfect for tucking up against Eseld’s front, like a hot stone wrapped in cloth, warm in the freezing nights of this empty and Godless world. At first they had snuggled for sheer physical comfort. Over time they had grown used to the behaviour, made it a routine, the foundation of something new amid the rot.

Eseld had grown sharp teeth, after about a month together. Andasina had said that was cool, even though it sometimes made her lips bleed when they kissed each other. Eseld couldn’t remember how they’d picked up Su and Mala; Andasina had done the work, coaxing the fellow scavengers to safety one night with a chunk of wet and bleeding meat. Then they were four. Friends, or something more.

For a little while, companionship had eased the pain of eternal life without grace.

But then — last night? No, in the morning!

Light had been filtering through the broken bricks of their night’s nest. Su had heard footsteps outside the hole in which they’d been sleeping, footsteps approaching down the alleyway, one pair booted and heavy, the other clawed and quick. Stronger revenants, hunting for prey. Nowhere to run — the building was too clogged with ruin and rubble. Mala had tried to wriggle through, but all she’d achieved was ragged cuts down her shoulders and back. Andasina had hissed for silence, in the forlorn hope that the predators would pass them by, but they all knew that wasn’t true. Strong revenants did not poke around in dark holes unless they were hunting for meat.

All four of them had wept quietly, hoping the predators would turn away or take another route. But they hadn’t.

In the end, Eseld and Andasina and Mala and Su had put their heads together in the dark, skull to skull, tears intermingled. Eseld had kissed Andasina so hard that they’d both bled. Su and Mala had torn at each other’s clothes in premature loss. They all knew what was coming. There was no way out. They had no chance of beating stronger revenants, those who had thrived and flourished on cannibalism, and freed themselves from the cycle of torment. Those zombies approaching down the alley carried guns and wore armour. They may as well have been another species.

Eseld knew she was prey, no different to the rabbits she had trapped and eaten in life.

But she knew from experience that a rabbit with some fire still in it could twist in the snare and bite the hunter’s hand. A dying rabbit could still draw blood.

She and her friends had boiled from their nest and into the alleyway, screaming and shouting wild defiance. Eseld had snapped her nice sharp teeth, showing off what she’d made. Andasina had a knife, hidden somewhere inside her clothes. Clever little Anda.

Eseld didn’t recall much after that, only pain. She’d stared down the barrel of a shotgun, then been slammed sideways, smashed to the ground, her chest opened to the cold air. She had lain face-down in a gritty puddle of her own blood, wheezing and twitching, choking on her bodily fluids. A zombie had hoisted her up by her hair, to cut her throat — a true monster, a shining giant with glowing purple eyes and a shock of pure white hair, skin so clean and glossy, body armoured in plate, armed with death-spitting machinery that Eseld could barely dream of holding.

Eseld had turned away from it, toward Andasina, already lying dead on the ground. She had not wanted her last memory of that resurrection to be the face of some unknown zombie. She died with Andasina’s name on her lips, spoken through bubbles of hot, steaming blood.

Then, oblivion, for but a moment.

Death never held. Now she was back, in a resurrection coffin, weeks or months or a million years later.

She would likely never meet Andasina again. They were parted like two leaves in a storm, never to touch once more.

Tears cut tracks into the slime on Eseld’s cheeks, sliding down to join the shallow film of blue gunk in which she lay; with the gnawing hunger briefly sated by the mechanics of resurrection, her thoughts were clear for the first time in months, and all she felt was grief.

Eseld tried to scream again, but her voice emerged as a wet and withered whimper.

She had to be quiet and quick. Survival demanded she repress sorrow.

This resurrection coffin was identical to all the others in which she had woken — a grey box barely large enough for her naked flesh, with little room to move her arms across her body. A cold blue glow came from left of her head, from a tiny screen with the usual rows of buttons beneath. She did not bother to glance at the screen, because it never said anything different. Her pale, freckled skin was coated with a thin layer of nanomachine slime, already being absorbed into her body. But her build was no longer as emaciated as when she’d died. She was lithely muscled, supple and athletic once more, as she had been in true life. Eseld was gifted with compact, elegant muscle, from twenty years of climbing trees and cliffs to pluck eggs from bird’s nests, from scurrying about the woods to hunt rabbit and pheasant, and from a solid diet of oats and game meat. She could not recall the taste of those foods now, only that of human flesh.

Russet hair was slicked to her skull, soaked with slime. She ran her tongue across her teeth and discovered they were still sharp — she had retained the nano-biological adjustment, for once. Not much use in a fight. Perhaps she could use them to intimidate?

Noises filtered through the metal of her coffin — screaming, crying, thumping. The usual. The rest of this batch of resurrections were waking up. Some of them sounded as if they were already out of their boxes, sprawling on the floor, pounding the metal in their frustration, screaming to the empty heavens.

That was bad; the slow risers and the last out made easy prey. Eseld needed to get on her feet.

At least it didn’t sound as if the killing had started yet. That still gave Eseld a decent chance of sprinting for the door. Most of the weeping and babbling was coming from her right, but that didn’t mean anything; it was impossible to tell where one was in relation to the door before one actually broke the seal and climbed out.

This could be one of the rare groups which did not descend into instant cannibalism, of course. Eseld had learned long ago that was a poor wager.

Eseld wriggled both arms up, so she could press on the underside of her coffin lid.

It didn’t move.

“Fuck! Fuck, no! Move! Let me out! Move!”

She pulled a fist back and thumped on the metal; she prayed to God’s empty throne that she was not one of the few who needed help, stuck inside her own unbroken egg. That practically guaranteed she would get eaten, pulled live and wriggling from her shell and gutted with her first breath of open air.

She thumped again. Nothing happened. She gritted her teeth and tried not to scream. These deaths were always the worst, the ones which came before the hunger set in, when she still held onto shreds of hope. Eseld’s face scrunched up with cold tears.

“Please,” she hissed through her teeth. “Please. Please. I want … I want to see her again. I know— I know I can’t. It’ll never happen. But please.”

God did not answer her prayers, because God was dead, like everyone else.

Eseld slumped, giving in, giving up, giving—

Shick.

A black knife cut into the side of the coffin, six inches from Eseld’s face, slicing through the invisible seam between the lid and the base.

The blade broke the seal. The coffin lid clicked, then began to open.

The knife retracted as fast as it had appeared.

Eseld’s resurrection coffin opened on smooth hydraulics, lid rising with a gentle hiss. Cold air rushed in and coated her slime-soaked skin. The lid tilted to one side, blinding her with the clean white illumination of the resurrection chamber. Eseld had missed the red-alert stage, slept too long in the embrace of death. She was late to rise.

She gathered herself and grabbed the sides of her casket, feet slipping and skidding in the slime as she tried to get her footing. She found her balance and scrambled out of the box, down over the edge, onto the cold grey metal floor of an echoing vastness.

This resurrection chamber was like all others Eseld had witnessed; they always varied in the smallest details, but not in the larger aspects. Besides, who cared? The ceiling was higher than the vault of any Church or Cathedral she had ever seen, encrusted with great looping lines of cable and wire and pipe, hung with vast dripping orifices, their ends ragged with the afterbirth of the revenants below. Infernal machinery stretched off to the left and right, rows of semi-transparent obsidian glittering with inner lights — ‘computers’, running equations to tear souls from heaven; Eseld had not learned the word ‘computer’ in true life, only here in this empty and abandoned shell of creation. The rear wall of the resurrection chamber was dominated by a gigantic screen of silvery, liquid metal, flowing and scrolling with nonsense words and strings of numbers, as the devils in charge of hell chattered to themselves. Before the screen stood a human-scale control panel covered in buttons and switches and dials, same as always.

Clean white light burned upon every surface. Two rows of grey metal coffins faced each other in the middle of the room, raised on plinths, like caskets in a tomb.

Eseld was unlucky — her coffin was at the head of the rows, right next to the control panel, above which towered the unintelligible text of the liquid metal screen. The door was in the opposite direction, past the screaming, weeping mass of slime-soaked zombies.

This was a big batch. Twenty coffins. Poor odds.

Eseld glanced at her tomb-mates and tried to estimate her chances of survival if she sprinted for the door. Previous experience told her that one runner would set off a general panic, and trigger any wolves hiding among the flock.

Seventeen coffins had opened successfully; three revenants were still in the process of climbing free to join the others, but everyone else was out. Most of this batch was fresh meat, first-timers — eleven of the seventeen births looked dazed and awed, sitting or sprawling on the floor, gaping at the resurrection chamber, or clutching at where their mortal wounds had slain them in life. Harsh white light highlighted shivering, naked, sticky flesh.

Some of them were beginning to voice questions in halting speech.

“Where are— I was— I was sleeping, I was sleeping—”

“What is this? What is this?! Who are you people?! What is this!?”

“Father? Father, you were right there, where are you? M-my eyes were closed only for a moment. Father?”

“And peace and tranquillity and safety will come to all, will come to a-all, oh God, oh God, where am I, where—”

Eseld knew this was misleading. Some of those ‘confused’ and ‘stunned’ girls were predators, play-acting, planning on biding their time among the sheep.

But one of the fresh revenants tugged at Eseld’s heartstrings, no matter how she tried to resist; a young girl was up on her feet, walking between the two rows of coffins. She was one of the youngest zombies Eseld had ever seen, a little girl no more than eleven or twelve years old. She had bright blonde hair stuck to her skull with nanomachine slime, and the widest blue eyes, staring at everything with blank surprise.

One coffin appeared to have malfunctioned and melted into a twisted lump of slag — that was new, Eseld had never seen that before, but it didn’t matter. Two coffins had opened to reveal abortions — girls whose bodies had not finished forming, just meaty slurry and half-cooked organs in a soupy mass of tainted blue. One revenant was busy sticking her head into the melted flesh of the aborted births, slime and gore trickling down her chin, hands shoving the filth into her maw. Some of the others were beginning to stare at her in shock; any moment, somebody would ask what she was doing, and a panic would ignite.

Two additional revenants were covertly picking themselves up and eyeing the door. They knew the score, just like Eseld. One of them — a short and stocky girl with a weird twist of greenish hair — locked eyes with Eseld for a moment. Eseld bared her sharp teeth. The girl looked away, back at the door.

They were all trying to guess the best moment to run, but they were blocked.

Bad news: at the far end of the rows, closest to the doors, a highly modified zombie was rising to her feet. Bionic legs, bionic arms, all four limbs glistening with chrome casing and bio-polymer muscle. Her torso was a mass of armour plates set into dark skin. Her head bristled with additional sensory equipment embedded into her skull. Her joints were lined with pistons and armoured motors, giving her massive leverage. Two bright green eyes like headlamps opened in a narrow face. She must have been very well-stocked to carry all those enhancements over from her death.

The cyborg grinned as she straightened up, casting hungry eyes across the assembled prey. Eseld tensed, ready to sprint, sharing a silent glance with the other two girls who knew what was about to happen. The moment that cyborg committed to a target, that would be their opening to escape.

The cyborg’s glowing green eyes fixed on the little blonde girl. She tilted her head to one side, as if curious.

Eseld’s heart soured with disgust. But she could do nothing. She was prey.

But — wait. A shiver went up Eseld’s spine. If there was only one cyborg here, on the other side of the room, where had that black knife come from?

Who had freed Eseld from her coffin?

Despite her better judgement, Eseld tore her eyes away from the precipice of violence. She glanced over her shoulder, toward the control panel and the liquid metal screen.

A final revenant was standing right there, not five feet from Eseld’s back.

Soft brown skin, slender build, very little muscle on her frame. Long black hair fell all the way to the tops of her thighs — already dry, free of nanomachine slime, hanging in a glossy dark sheet. She had no visible bionics, no modifications, no bio-mechanical additions.

She was gazing upward at the vast liquid metal screen, as if she could read the machine’s words.

Before Eseld could back away, the final revenant lowered her gaze from the screen and looked right at Eseld. Her eyes were wide and dark, like oil at night. She wore no expression. Not a scrap of nanomachine slime was left on her skin or in her hair, dried or otherwise. How long had this one been awake?

“Don’t thank me,” she said.

That voice and that face froze Eseld’s blood inside her veins and turned her stomach to a leaden fist. Her legs went weak. She broke out in cold sweat.

This zombie was calm, collected, and unconcerned.

Eseld had never seen anything like this, not in all her resurrections.

“Wh-what … ” Eseld croaked, then cleared her throat. She wanted to retreat, but her own coffin pressed against the small of her back. “What do you mean? Was that you, with the knife?”

The calm woman said: “Forget it. Forget you saw me. You—” Her eyes flickered past Eseld’s shoulder. “Oh. Tch.”

From behind Eseld, a tiny voice spoke up, soft and gentle amid the weeping and babbling.

“Hello,” it said, angelic and happy. “Do you not want to be here?”

Eseld turned away from the calm woman.

Three coffins down, the little blonde girl had paused in front of a crying, confused, fresh-meat revenant — an older girl with pale skin and dark hair, face streaked with snot and tears, clutching at her stomach as if expecting to find a wound there. The little blonde girl really did look like an cherubic angel, smiling with open kindness, blue eyes burning bright amid all the shivering flesh.

Eseld wasn’t the only one staring. The little girl’s voice had carried to all the other zombies in the chamber. Others were watching, stilled to silence.

The heavily modified cyborg was stalking down the row of coffins, heading straight for the little girl. That one didn’t want just food, she wanted sport. But why was she frowning like that?

“Ah,” said the calm woman, behind Eseld. She sounded bored. “I don’t have the patience for this.”

Eseld prepared to break for the door. As soon as the cyborg began the violence, that would be her opening. She eased around the side of her coffin, ready to move.

Three coffins down, the weeping fresh-meat blinked up at the little blonde girl. “W-what? What?”

The cyborg raised her voice into a shout, breaking into a run, bionic legs pounding against the metal plates: “Don’t answer her!”

The little blonde girl ignored the cyborg. Other zombies leapt out of the way, scrambling back, yelping, shouting. The little blonde girl just smiled wider and repeated her question.

“Do you want to go back?”

The weeping freshie nodded. “I … yes! This isn’t real! I’m having a nightmare, I’m having a nightmare! I want to go back, yes! My— my guts are inside me, they were never spilled, it was just another part of the nightmare. I do want to go back, I do, I—”

The little blonde girl’s body opened like a mouth.

The diminutive figure unfurled, fleshy membranes expanding outward like the petals of a carnivorous flower, coated with crimson slobber and caustic saliva. The maw-body was lined with dozens upon dozens of foot-long, razor-sharp, envenomed fangs. Lashing tentacles uncoiled from between the teeth, whipping at the metal floor with tiny spikes and claws of bone. Eye stalks and suckers and bloody orifices snaked forth in a cloud of quivering flesh. The girl’s shining blonde hair hung backward and upside down from the rear of the monster, her face twisting with a giggle and a grin of childish cruelty and gluttonous glee.

An ambush predator, in no mood to wait.

The fresh-meat revenant was paralysed by the sight of the transformation, but her shock was lived-short; the ambush predator reached for her with tooth and tendril, grabbed her tight in a dozen lacerating limbs, and tore her to pieces with a single spasm of muscle.

A detonation of blood and bone and viscera splattered across the cold metal and the faces of nearby revenants. The ambush predator’s tissues flushed deep red, sucking the gore in through her skin, extending delicate tentacles to absorb the blood, shoving gobbets of minced organ into her many mouths. Even as she ate, she reached for her next victim with half a dozen grasping limbs.

The resurrection chamber exploded into panic.

A few girls tried to flee for the door. Some of them even got away, but the general chaos revealed other predators hiding among the flock — not like the true horror which had shown itself, just regular zombies who were skilled enough to pretend they were true fresh meat. Eseld saw girls go down, snagged at the ankles, heads bashed open against the sides of resurrection coffins. The ambush predator tore apart a second girl as quickly as the first, threshing her to pieces in an instant of flying blood and shattered bone.

The huge cyborg crashed into the ambush predator. They tumbled together, smashing into the floor, rolling across the cold metal. The cyborg won the tussle briefly, coming out on top. She reared up, a grin ripping across her face; her bionic limbs emitted some kind of near-field electric pulse that the ambush predator could not grip. Tentacles and tendrils slapped at the air, unable to find purchase on her foe. The little blonde girl — the ambush predator — squealed and screamed.

“The fresh meat is mine, slug-bitch!” the cyborg roared. “Down!”

The ambush predator replied with an ear-splitting squeal and a squirt of steaming acid into the cyborg’s face. Flesh hissed and smoked. The cyborg howled with pain and smashed a fist into the tooth-lined meat.

Eseld did not need to see who won. If she stuck around, the victor would eat her alive.

She leapt into a sprint, and broke for the door.

The resurrection chamber was chaos, covered in blood, full of girls eating or being eaten, fleeing or pursuing, or standing in frozen shock, still not quite believing that this was real. A few were staring at the fight. Eseld ducked past two awestruck freshies, leapt a puddle of blood, darted past the end of the coffins and—

Somebody grabbed her right ankle. Eseld went flying, then hit the floor, face first. She spat blood and heaved for breath.

An opportunistic predator swarmed over her, all teeth and fingernails, going for her throat and eyes. Eseld fought like she always had, biting and kicking, spitting blood into her opponent’s face. They grappled together on the floor, rolling against the side of a coffin. Eseld saw nothing of her opponent but a pale blur, a pair of wild eyes, a set of bared teeth. She was larger than Eseld, stronger, quicker.

The bigger revenant somehow got Eseld’s head in both hands and slammed her skull against the coffin-plinth. Eseld’s head rang with the impact; the world went dim and dark, throbbing black at the edges of her vision. Her opponent grabbed her throat and pinned her to the floor.

Eseld leaned forward and bit down.

That earned her a scream. Her fancy sharp teeth came in useful after all; Andasina had been right all along — her new chompers were very cool.

Eseld bit down again, chomping and biting and gnawing, until her mouth was filled with the hot iron taste of blood and ragged scraps of fresh meat. She clung on and kept biting until her opponent stopped moving, until she was slumped atop a blood-soaked corpse with the throat ripped out.

Heaving for breath, half-blind with a concussion, Eseld rolled off the other revenant. She never even got a good look at the girl’s face. She lay on her back for several moments, wheezing and whining, knowing she had to get up, had to move, had to go! She staggered to her feet.

The resurrection chamber was saturated with gore, all over the coffins and the grey metal floor. Beyond the bloody mess, the dark obsidian computers and the liquid metal screen carried on glinting and scrolling, as if calmly cataloguing the carnage. A few girls seemed to have reached the door and won their freedom, but most were dead. Corpses and limbs and offal lay everywhere, blood and guts and shit in great smears on the floor and up the sides of the coffins. A long streak of blood led to the door — somebody had dragged a wounded friend, or more likely a corpse, to find a quiet spot to eat their kill.

The huge cyborg lay in a tangled heap in the narrow passage between the coffins, bionic limbs shattered and broken, face melted away and torn off, ribcage hanging open.

Aside from Eseld, only three revenants were still alive.

Two fresh-meat girls clung to each other, both young, both smeared with gore, both faces covered in snot and tears and screaming in horror. They had collapsed in retreat against the obsidian blocks to one side of the resurrection coffins.

The ambush predator was advancing toward them, having killed and eaten everything else in the room. Teeth and tentacles whipped the air, dripping with fresh blood, flexing rows of tiny teeth and claws. The bright blue eyes of a little girl still hung upside down from the monster’s back, set in a face giggling and grinning with childish glee.

Eseld had a clear path to the door. The ambush predator — the little girl — was distracted. With any luck, it would stay up here and eat its fill.

The fresh-meat pair were seconds from death; they closed their eyes and pressed their heads together, skull to skull, tears intermingled.

Eseld hesitated, chest torn inside with an empathy she would never have felt when hungry. She felt almost truly alive.

For the first time in so many deaths, she broke in a new direction.

Eseld sprinted toward the fresh-meat pair. “Get up!” she screamed. “Get up! Feet, now! Door! Run to the door! Door!”

They didn’t seem to understand. The pair lurched to their feet, clinging to each other, bewildered. Eseld skidded to a halt between them and the onrushing nightmare-zombie. Eseld turned and spread her arms out wide, placing herself in the path of the killer. The thing was giggling, playing with its food.

“Run to the door!” Eseld screamed, waving her arms up and down. “Run! Run! Here! I’m here! Eat me, eat me first you bitch, you—”

She realised the fresh meat were not fleeing. They were sobbing, babbling pleas for her to follow, tugging on her arms.

“No!” she screamed, throwing the pair of them off. “Just run! Run, go, go!”

Then the ambush predator was upon her.

A wall of whirling teeth and tentacles was inches from Eseld’s face. Tendrils reached out to grab her and pull her into the monster’s muscular embrace. She kept her eyes wide open and opened her mouth even wider; she would bite down on the first thing she could reach. She would die, but at least this death would be quick. She would take a chunk of this bitch for herself, she would make these two behind her see that not everything in this Godless emptiness was hate and predators, that there was still something worth protecting, even if it was just a moment of respite, a moment of—

A figure appeared, standing right next to the ambush predator.

It was the calm woman — the one with the very long black hair, with no expression on her face, with absolute lack of concern.

She extended her right arm. The hand narrowed and sharpened, lengthening into a black blade — slamming through the predator’s body.

The calm woman ran the predator through with a ten-foot lance of lightless metal. She did not even have to thrust with her shoulder, or brace her hips — her flesh simply hardened and extended, until her right arm was a sword of black steel. She hoisted the girl-predator with effortless strength, lifting it off the ground and into the air. The predator squealed and hissed, like a squid on the end of a spear, animal noises mixing with the terrified weeping of a small child.

The calm woman held the predator in the air until it stopped moving, then lowered her arm and let the zombie slip from her blade. It fell in a bloody heap, and did not move again. The blue eyes had gone blank in death.

Eseld stared, mouth hanging open. The pair of fresh-meat girls clung to her shoulders, peering at their bizarre saviour, speechless and panting.

The calm woman flicked her sword-arm; it became flesh again, wrapped in soft brown skin. She flexed her fist. She stared at the dead predator for a long moment. Then she seemed to dismiss it, casting her eyes across the carnage of the resurrection chamber. She still wore no expression.

Then she looked at Eseld.

“Why did you do that?” said the calm woman. “Why did you protect those two? Do you know each other?”

One of the two fresh-meat girls said: “N-no! No! I don’t know where … what … what any of this, is? Are we in a fairy mound? Are you one of them?”

The other one nodded. “Yes. I mean no. No. We don’t. What— what—”

“Stop talking,” said the calm woman.

Eseld groped for her own voice. “What … what are you?”

The calm woman looked at Eseld again. “Answer my question. Why did you do that?”

“Do … do what?”

“Why did you attempt to sacrifice yourself?” said the calm woman. “Tell me the truth. I’ll know if you lie.”

Eseld shrugged; she wasn’t quite sure. “I … they— these two.” She reached back and patted one of the hands clutching her shoulders. “They reminded me of … myself? I didn’t want them to be separated. Not again.” She shook her head. “What are you?”

The calm woman sighed; it was the first emotion she had displayed. She looked away, up at the liquid metal screen. The scrolling text was slowing down, the clean white light growing dimmer by the second. The tomb had done its job, now it was dying.

“I don’t have all the permissions I was promised,” the calm woman said. “This is wrong. Somebody fucked up. Or somebody’s fucking with me.”

Eseld glanced at the fresh-meat pair, still touching her shoulders. Both of them shrugged and shook their heads.

Eseld said: “Permissions? What does that—”

“Never mind,” said the calm woman. “Don’t ask that question.”

Without another word, she set off toward the door.

“Wait!” Eseld said, scrambling forward. The freshies followed her, with nowhere else to go. “Wait, please, what are you? Can we— can we follow you? You saved me. Twice! You were the one who opened my coffin, weren’t you? Why did you—”

The calm woman stopped and turned around. Her eyes were wide dark pools. Eseld halted instantly, holding herself as still as she could. The freshies blundered into her back, but she kept her feet; the idea of accidentally touching the calm woman — let alone offending her — terrified Eseld in a way she had never felt before. She eyed the calm woman’s right hand, the one which had turned into a blade.

The calm woman echoed the question: “What am I?”

Eseld shivered inside. One of the two freshies whispered, “Maybe we shouldn’t ask that? Maybe we shouldn’t!”

“Yes,” Eseld repeated. “What—”

“Shilu,” said Shilu. “My name.”

“O-oh! Eseld,” said Eseld.

The freshies piped up too: “Sky!” “Cyneswith!”

Shilu showed no reaction to the names. Wide dark eyes considered the trio one by one, with little interest. Those eyes were cold and distant.

Eseld swallowed. She had to try. “Can we follow? You— you helped. We could get out, together? At least to the—”

Shilu said: “Follow me if you wish. I won’t stop you. But I doubt that’s a good idea. I think I’m about to get fucked over. You may not want to be nearby when that happens. Good luck, little zombies.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Fresh meat.

Ahem. Welcome to arc 11! Welcome back to the birthing chamber, back to the tomb, back to another bloody and ragged start. Just a bunch of zombies, with absolutely nothing strange or unique about them, right. Totally normal. Not a Necromancer among them. Promise.

Oh hey Shilu, didn’t see you there!

Haha! Serously, welcome to arc 11. And to Eseld, and Shilu finally crashing back into fleshy incarnation. What’s everybody else up to? I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.

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And thank you, dear readers! I know I say this literally every week, but I really mean it. Thanks for reading my little story! I couldn’t do it without you! Necroepilogos plunges onward into the second major narrative movement, and I’m so very excited for what I have in store. Seeya next chapter!