Content Warnings

Suicidal ideation
Sexually derogatory language
Body horror

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Ooni’s hope and clarity guttered out, revealing a wasteland of ashes and agony.

Her body was a boiling crucible overflowing with burnt flesh and ruptured nerves. Kuro’s iron forearm pinned her chest and one of Kuro’s suit-mounted weapons was jammed beneath her chin, but Ooni couldn’t feel that anymore. The tides of pain washed it all away, dragging her down into the currents of a black and endless sea. Her vision was a dark red smear, reducing the mysterious tomb-chamber to a cursed dusk of black on black. Her comrades, her friends, the other daughters of Telokopolis, they were not even outlines in the dark. Elpida was a blur of off-white in her carapace. Ilyusha was a suggestion of deeper red. Shilu was invisible. Ooni’s only hope of salvation was an iridescent stain wavering in the middle of her sight; Iriko was her only hope of a meaningful end.

“We’re not leaving without our comrade!” Elpida was shouting. Her voice was amplified by the carapace helmet, but to Ooni’s ears it seemed to come from beyond a crushing weight of dark water. “If that means we have to let you go, then so be it. But you are not leaving with her. This is non-negotiable.”

Somebody shouted back, down in the black at Ooni’s side. One of the Death’s Heads. “You’ll fucking kill us the moment Kuro puts her down! Why should we trust a word out of you, degenerate!?”

Ooni tried to figure out who that was. Surely she recognised the voice? But she was sinking deeper into the pain, into an endless empty void where she should have found herself staring back.

“You can choose to trust me,” Elpida shouted. “Or we can kill you all. Put her down, now.”

A quavering, broken, blood-choked voice coughed a few words; for a second, Ooni thought it was her own. “Per-perhaps we should … should do as they … ”

Yolanda, weeping through her shattered jaw. Finally she and Ooni had one thing in common — a broken mandible.

“Shut up,” somebody else hissed, tight and hard with rancid anger. Cantrelle.

Kuro’s external speakers clicked and hissed. “Order your monster away.”

Ooni tried to speak. She needed to plead with Elpida not to fall for this trick. But all that came from her throat was a dull whine, drowning in pain, more animal than revenant.

“Put her down first,” Elpida repeated. “Then we can negotiate.”

“You all fucking die, you rotten reptile fuck-rags!” Ilyusha, screaming mad. She made her shotgun go click-clunk; the sound was so sharp and clear that it cut through the murk of Ooni’s torment. She groped for that sound, held onto it as hard as she could, and promised herself she would remember. No matter the circumstances of her next resurrection, she swore to herself that she would always remember Ilyusha and Noyabrina. “That’s ours fucking terms!” Ilyusha screeched. “I’ll eat your faces and wear your guts over my shoulders! I’ll shit out your fucking eyeballs! Fucking put her down! Put her down! Down!”

Long aching seconds followed. Ooni couldn’t hear the hurricane over the rasp of her laboured breathing, the scrape of her shattered jaw, and the silent screaming of her flesh as it burnt away inside.

“Your … k-kind,” said Yolanda. Her voice was a wet weep, thick with swollen tissues, tongue clumsy, teeth broken. She slurred her words as if she could not fully open her mouth. “Your kind never know … never know when the hard choices must be made. This … this is the moment. You should have … k-killed us already, if you were going to. But you w-won’t—”

“Yolanda,” Cantrelle hissed. “Quiet—”

“No — no!” Yolanda snapped. “I speak … I speak truth. Let me speak now. I have always spoken nothing but truth. Even when I was not … m-myself. Even to … t-to you, my Ella. And now I speak … t-truth to these … these fallen things, these degenerate fools. You, y-yes, you. Elpida the Telokopolan. I know what you … what you are. I was told, instructed, educated. You … you are a memory of the most foolish of times. And thus … thus … thus—”

A clatter of armour broke into Yolanda’s heaving stutter, followed by a hiss of frustration and a high-pitched whine of pain. Had Yolanda fallen, overcome by her wounds? Somebody had dragged her back upright, and none too kindly.

A moment of wet sobbing passed, then an indrawn breath like the flutter of exposed lungs. Yolanda continued.

“Thus … thus I know, you will not make the necessary sacrifice here. You will … you will risk everything, for the sake of one filthy apostate.”

Elpida didn’t rise to the bait. “We will let you go, in exchange for Ooni. That’s the only possible deal here. If you take her with you, we’ll kill you all.”

Ooni gurgled, throat wet with blood, choked by the pain of her fractured jaw. She needed to make Elpida understand that wasn’t an option. The Sisterhood would find a way to take Ooni away. They would take her and torture her. A quick, clean, easy death here would be victory, a real victory, over the Death’s Heads! Anything else, any deal that allowed them to live to fight another day, Ooni could not bear the thought.

“You would … kill us regardless,” Yolanda replied. “She is our insurance.”

“You’ll kill her as soon as she’s out of our sight,” said Elpida. “That’s no deal.”

Ooni tried to sob. Elpida did not understand. How could she? The unblemished legitimate daughter of a real goddess. She did not understand what the Sisterhood would do to Ooni. They would not kill her quickly.

Kuro’s speakers crackled. “The deal is already struck. She will be returned to you outdoors, once the storm has passed.”

“No deal—”

“Call off your monster. Do it now.”

Kuro’s weapon forced Ooni’s head up and back; Ooni gurgled with a spike of additional pain.

A moment of silence unfolded — too long, stretching out so that Ooni started to lose herself on the sucking waves of agony. But then that iridescent smear in the middle of her vision started to shrink and recede. Iriko was backing away, leaving the chamber.

“N-no!” Ooni whined, forcing her lungs to work against the mass of shattered ribs. “No, kill … me … ‘pida … please … ”

Her voice was so pitiful that she doubted even Kuro could hear.

Furtive whispers rustled somewhere behind Ooni, behind Kuro. Ooni realised the Death’s Heads were trying to get the wounded Yolanda to open the wall again, with whatever trick the ghosts had imparted to her, while Kuro was tied up holding Ooni hostage. A wet ripping sound rippled at the edge of Ooni’s hearing — the sound of the black metal wall peeling back like warm tar.

The tomb chamber started to blacken at the edges, as if being swallowed by the darkness, closed in a fist of night. Ooni felt little jolts of torture jostle her shattered ribs, her broken wrist, the throbbing mass of her bruised shoulder. Kuro was walking backward, step by step, taking Ooni with her.

Ooni cried out, a mangled retch clawing up her glass-scoured throat. She put everything she had into a final scream, spraying flecks of blood, clawing at Kuro’s arm. She reached out one hand — her burned hand, still encased in Ilyusha’s resin — toward the shrinking figures of Elpida and Ilyusha, one a white smear, the other a red-tinted shadow. She couldn’t even see Shilu. Iriko was gone.

“—Elpida—” she whined, “—please—”

And then the darkness closed in, tightening on a tiny circle of the world. Ooni realised it was the wall between chambers, easing shut like tar flowing closed over her head, cutting her off from her comrades, from Telokopolis.

In the final split-second before the wall slid shut, Ooni was granted a single blink of unclouded vision, dizzying and blinding with sudden clarity.

She saw the eyes of the gravekeeper interface, propped in its upright coffin.

Rotten eyes, dead and glassy, met her own. Then they flickered downward, as if looking at her wounds, her broken ribs, her charred armour plates. And then they were gone, sinking into the black, replaced once again by the blurred crimson smears of Ooni’s failing sight.

A vision? A message? Ooni’s mind groped and kicked, trying to gain the surface of the ocean. But the message had seemed like nothing. A final mockery from the nightmares in the network? A lingering goodbye from the goddess who had so briefly touched her mind? Or just the spasm of an old corpse?

Ooni could not swim. She floated down through the darkness and the pain. Time stretched out, meaningless so deep in death’s iron grip. Nothing had meaning anymore, not after this final and most terrible betrayal.

Telokopolis had abandoned her. Elpida had abandoned her. Hope and clarity and purpose, all had fled her. If only Iriko had not paused at the sight of Ooni clasped in Kuro’s arms, with the threat of Ooni’s death as a shield for the Sisterhood of the Skull. At least then Ooni’s death would have meant something — she would have been a single sacrifice to secure the final end of the Sisterhood. All of them would have died beneath Iriko’s bulk, or trapped by the acid of her grinding innards. Kuro, Yolanda, Cantrelle, and whoever else who had survived the grenades and Ilyusha’s ambush. The Sisterhood of the Skull would have been no more, scattered in time, forced back to the cycle of resurrection, all for the paltry price of Ooni’s pitiful skin.

Ooni sobbed. She wasn’t sure if real tears were running down her cheeks, but she felt the weeping inside. She cried not for herself or the drawn-out, messy, awful death that she was about to endure — because her former Sisters would not make it quick or clean, oh no; they were going to pull her apart while she was still alive, they would eat pieces of her in front of her eyes, and Kuro would do worse, far worse before the end. Kuro would dismantle her, physically and otherwise. But Ooni didn’t weep for herself. Ooni wept because Yolanda was right. The prophet and leader of the Sisterhood had proven herself correct.

If only Elpida had been willing to sacrifice Ooni, then Telokopolis would have won. But Telokopolis could not protect her own.

The Death’s Heads had been right all along.

Ooni retracted to a nub of awareness deep inside her flesh, coming to settle on the floor of her empty ocean. The floating stopped — Kuro must have drawn to a halt — but Ooni could see nothing apart from dark smears and lightless smudges. She heard the rasping of several sets of lungs, panting with adrenaline comedown.

“Is this it?” somebody asked, hissing through their own dram of pain. “Is this all that’s left? Fuck me … ”

Elodie. How had she survived such close proximity to Ilyusha’s shotgun?

A click-buzz echoed off distant walls, as if the last of the Sisterhood stood huddled in a vaulted chamber. “You’re shot.”

DeeGee, with the last suit of powered armour. She sounded intact.

“No shit,” Elodie snapped back. “What gave it away, all the blood? Fuck me, that little cunt thing with the tail was fast. Fucking bitch, ffffuck!”

“This is it, then,” said somebody else — Teuta? “And then there were six.” She heaved and grunted, which was followed by a clatter of gear against the ground. “There, that’s Durock, but she’s dead. We’ll need the meat. You’re welcome, by the way.”

A gurgle of pain was cut by a sharp hiss. Yolanda coughed herself clear, then said: “A nucleus, from which to r-rebuild. We are … d-delivered, once again. The hand of providence returned our Kuro to us, in our hour of greatest need.”

DeeGee said, “Kuro, you’re damaged. You’re venting rads, girl. And your power sigs are—”

Click-buzz. “Ignore it.”

“I can hardly believe this one little apostate did so much … d-damage,” Yolanda hissed, then trailed off with a croak of pain. She made a series of wet sucking sounds, like she was struggling to get her broken jaw back into position using only her tongue. “I … I w-want … unnnghhh … ” Her voice broke again, silenced by agony. “I want her … f-flayed. Kuro? Kuro, do you understand? I want her to feel every inch of … t-this. Do you hear me, apostate?” Yolanda hissed. “Ooni?”

Ooni heard, but she didn’t care. She felt a hand on her face, saw a pale blur before her eyes.

Yolanda had already won in every way that mattered. Everything which happened from this moment onward held no further meaning. Yolanda was correct — about Elpida, about Telokopolis, about Ooni. Yolanda had been right all along. That was how she had gotten away with it. She was correct, and so she had won. Ooni could see nothing else through the infinity of dark water but that one truth, the truth that negated all others.

Yola’s face coiled and drifted before her, a pale soot-stained smear, bruised and bloody, with a ring of contusions blossoming around her right eye socket, the imprint of Ooni’s knuckles.

A battered spark of Ooni’s former clarity struggled back to life inside her chest, not quite dead. It was not enough to boil away the sea of pain, but it gifted her something akin to a clear thought.

Yolanda hadn’t escaped yet, had she? Ooni was still here. If only Ooni had a weapon, if only there was a way to—

The spark brightened. Memory peeled back like rotten flesh from clean bone. The gravekeeper interface — it had looked down, not at Ooni’s body or her wounds or in pity for her wretched state and the way she would meet her end at the hands of her former sisters. No, it had looked at the armour carapace, at the hip and thigh plates.

Her sidearm!

In all the chaos and the pain, Ooni had forgotten about the pistol. She’d picked it up back in that tiny circular room where Kuro had imprisoned her and Ilyusha, along with her submachine gun and the trio of grenades. The grenades were used up, the submachine gun was gone, but the sidearm was tucked safely away in her left-side thigh-compartment.

All she had to do was draw the gun and take one shot.

If she could achieve that, though Ooni’s own inevitable death would be a terrible one, Yolanda’s proof would mean nothing. Yolanda would be reduced to so much meat, just like everyone else, resurrected again without her followers, her reputation, her armour, her anything. Yolanda would be wrong.

Ooni twitched the fingers of her left hand. Her broken wrist was like hot metal inside her skin, but she felt her fingers move.

Kuro’s high-pitched voice was rasping from her external suit speakers. “Ooni has to remain intact. They will be watching us, mostly through their drones. We must keep her as insurance, as we promised.”

The pale smear in front of Ooni wavered and sank as Yola moved. Ooni forced her eyes wider, forced herself to focus. She would need to see to shoot straight. She’d get one shot, that was all, one moment of surprise.

Yolanda’s face — bloody, beaten, bruised, jaw at a strange angle, green eyes dimmed by pain, hair all covered in soot — floated back out of the haze. She was looking up, over the top of Ooni’s head, at Kuro’s faceplate.

“K-Kuro?” she croaked. Her jaw barely moved as she spoke, words muffled by the fracture. “My darling, my perfect hound, you cannot be … serious. We will not keep promises with such things. The apostate is ours now, is she not? She is ours to dispose of—”

Kuro interrupted. “Your foolishness will get you killed.”

Yola’s eyes widened, even through the pain of her bruises and broken jaw. She stared up at Kuro with a shock that Ooni understood all too well. None should have dared speak to Yolanda that way, especially not Kuro, especially not in front of the rank-and-file. Not that there was much of that left anymore.

Elodie laughed, low and bitter. She was beyond Ooni’s blurred sight. “And you won’t?” she said. “You won’t, Kuro? You left us, you bitch. You left us and that thing started following us, that fucking blob-monster. You abandoned us, you traitor.”

Teuta muttered, though a mouthful of something meaty and wet, “We’re all traitors now. I’m with Kuro. Fuck risking that again.”

Kuro’s speakers crackled. “We must retreat to the edge of the tomb. The storm is ending.”

Yolanda was trying and failing to shake her head.

“How do you know that?” hissed a broken voice.

Cantrelle’s face floated into Ooni’s smeared vision. Her big dark glassy eyes and bald head, her ruined throat, still marked purple by the memory of strangulation. Metal tentacles floated above her. She was bleeding from a dozen tiny cuts across her forehead and cheeks, wearing a mask of drying blood and sticky black soot.

Kuro said nothing. Yolanda turned to hiss something into Cantrelle’s ear, but Cantrelle glared at her with real hatred. Yolanda’s mouth wavered shut.

Ooni moved her left hand as slowly as she dared, inching down her hip. Numb fingers found the edge of her thigh plate. The compartment was still there.

“I said,” Cantrelle rasped up at Kuro. “How do you know that? How do you know the storm is ending?”

Kuro’s voice hissed through a wave of static. “I’ve been told.”

Cantrelle’s face twisted. “More Necromancer bullshit! You betrayed us, Kuro! You’re no better than the apostate—”

DeeGee’s voice floated from somewhere beyond Ooni’s vision. “Hey, hey. Cantrelle. Cool it, hey? She came back to us, she came back—”

Cantrelle whirled away. “She is a fucking traitor! Her and Yolanda, listening to Necromancer voices! Both of them! Yolanda with Necromancer hands up her cunt, and Kuro vanishing into the tomb at the sight of some fucking hologram trick! Traitors, traitors!”

“All traitors now, you stupid shit,” Teuta grunted. An arm waved at the limit of Ooni’s vision. “Have a snack, come on, it’ll cool you down.”

“Fuck you too, you waste of skin!” Cantrelle hissed.

Ooni’s left fingers quivered as she eased open the compartment on her left thigh; the smallest scrape would distract from the argument.

Yolanda mewled with pain. “Ella. Ella, please, let’s just be gone from this—”

Cantrelle rounded on Yolanda. “Never call me that again!” she spat. “You cheating fucking whore. You filthy slut. All the time, all your promises, all of it just rot! Twice, twice you’ve done this! This is who you are! I was a fool to believe in you.”

Cantrelle shoved Yolanda in the chest; Yolanda staggered back two paces, crying out with more than pain.

Ooni slipped her hand inside the compartment. She wrapped her fingers around the sidearm. She could barely feel it, her hand was throbbing with such pain. Her thumb poked at the safety — slowly, slowly — and eased it off. Did she have a round in the chamber? She wasn’t sure, couldn’t remember if she’d fired the gun or primed it. She had no way to rack the slide without being noticed. She had to trust in her own preparation.

Teuta grunted. “Cantrelle, for fuck’s sake. We need to get out of here. Kuro’s right. We run or we die.” A wet slap, meat against meat.

Cantrelle’s face twisted with rage. “Then we die!” she roared, her voice echoing off the distant walls of some vast tomb-chamber. “We all die! None of you were ever worthy of this! Not a single one of you was worthy of the Kingdom of Death! Degenerates and failures and incompetents, all of you! You all die, you all— oof!”

Cantrelle’s words ended in a low groan as somebody smacked her in the gut. A hazy shape in powered armour got one forearm around Cantrelle’s neck and another hand clamped on her tentacles. There was a short scuffle, no punches thrown, but Cantrelle was not in any shape to be wrestling with DeeGee. In a moment, DeeGee had Cantrelle restrained.

“Boss?” DeeGee said from inside her armour. “Yolanda, boss. What do we do with her?”

Yola’s face floated back into Ooni’s dimming field of vision. “Hold her,” Yola slurred. “Don’t … don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt my … my Ella … but we have to leave. Kuro is … c-correct. Kuro?” She turned to Ooni — to Kuro, filling Ooni’s vision with that broken jaw and tear-filled eyes. “But you can’t be serious … about the apostate. She has to … ”

Kuro’s external speakers crackled back to life. “We keep her intact to keep them at bay. When the storm is gone, we leave. We can flay and eat her then.”

Yolanda smiled — painful but genuine, her lips curling with pleasure. “My hound,” she breathed through a broken mouth. “I knew you would understand.”

Yolanda’s eyes lowered to meet Ooni’s. Her smile sharpened with cruelty — but then she winced, as the muscles of her face pulled too hard on her broken jaw.

Ooni gathered every scrap of strength she had left, clarity flaring bright in her chest, and ripped the sidearm from her thigh pouch.

Yolanda’s eyes flew wide. She tried to throw herself aside.

Ooni got the muzzle lined up with Yola’s jaw.

Squeezed the trigger.

And—

Kuro’s other hand whipped out from beneath Ooni’s chin and wrapped around her broken wrist.

Bang!

The shot went wide, thumping into a distant ceiling. Ooni screamed, wailing her wordless frustration, her wrist pinned, bones crushed to powder in Kuro’s iron grip. She held onto the pistol in hopeless vanity. She would never get another chance now, there would never be another shot. Yolanda was stumbling sideways, Cantrelle was straightening up, Kuro had Ooni finally and utterly disarmed. It was over. Her final attempt was over, foiled, futile.

Ooni’s spark of clarity finally went out, surrendering to the cold and the dark. She went limp in Kuro’s grip, pistol about to tumble from her hand.

Yola had won. Yola had been right all along. The Death’s Heads were correct. Telokopolis was a lie. Ooni was—

Boom-crack!

A deafening gunshot tore through what little was left of Ooni’s hearing. The impact crunched into Kuro, throwing up a burst of ruptured metal and ceramic plating. Kuro’s arm was torn from around Ooni’s wrist, spinning Ooni from her grip, Kuro tumbling away into the darkness beyond Ooni’s narrow tunnel of vision.

Suddenly Ooni was free. By some miracle she kept her feet. Her world was black and red and fading into the sound of her own heartbeat. She raised her pistol again.

Yola was right in front of her, raising her purple gauntlets as if she could surrender, eyes going wide with shock. A second shot split the air, loud as thunder. Cantrelle was suddenly free of DeeGee’s grasp, lurching forward, going for Ooni. DeeGee was falling back, floored by the kinetic impact of an anti-materiel round.

Ooni pressed the muzzle of her gun to Yola’s forehead. She pulled the trigger and—

A battering ram of force swept Ooni off her feet and into the air. Her second shot went wide and she screamed with righteous rage denied. Yet again, again, how?! Kuro’s arms went around her, hauling her upright, one hand struggling to bring a weapon back to Ooni’s throat. Kuro whipped Ooni around to face an onrushing wall of iridescent beauty.

Iriko!

Ooni suddenly understood what her new comrades had achieved. Those deafening shots like lances from the heavens, that was Serin’s anti-materiel rifle, knocking Kuro’s hand aside from Ooni’s throat, clearing the way for Iriko to attempt a rescue — or a mercy-kill, should the plan fail.

Iriko’s charge was so fast, like lightning across dark skies, a wave of prismatic meat about to break on a shore of metal.

Kuro’s weapon systems flowered wide either side of Ooni’s thrashing, screaming, flailing body. For one blinding second Kuro opened fire with everything she could spare; miniature autocannon rounds chewed into Iriko’s mass, bright bursts of plasma cooked patches of her armoured scales to blackened meat, and gouts of flame made her leading edges shrivel up in tiny retreats.

But it wasn’t enough. Iriko roared onward like the tide.

Kuro heaved Ooni upward and threw her at the onrushing wall of death. Ooni felt herself weightless for a split-second, twisting in the air. She caught a glimpse of Kuro’s back turned, of that grey-armoured giant sprinting away, saving herself first. And then Ooni landed without impact, as if caught in a warm, wet, sucking net.

Iriko crashed down on the remains of the Death’s Heads with an earth-splitting splatter of meat, carrying Ooni along as part of the wave. The Sisters struggled and fought, firing their guns into Iriko’s body even as they were sucked inside, as protoplasmic flesh enveloped their limbs and choked their faces, forcing itself down their throats and nostrils and past their eyeballs. Elodie screamed and thrashed, skin melting off her bones, clawing at the floor, trying to drag herself free. Teuta just closed her eyes and spread her arms, letting it happen, accepting the end — until she felt the acids and enzymes dissolving her flesh and eating into her bones, and then she gaped for relief, shuddering like a beached fish. DeeGee fought the longest, protected inside her powered armour; she drew a blade and tried to hack her way out. Iriko cracked DeeGee’s plates and spat out the hard bits, dismantled her back-mounted power-plant and dropped the refuse on the floor. Iriko sent questing tentacles of biomass into the first gaps in DeeGee’s war-plate, and ate most of her flesh before she’d even finished shucking the revenant.

Yolanda and Cantrelle clung to each other as they were engulfed and devoured. Ooni found herself alongside them for a moment, in the centre of Iriko’s jelly-like body.

Cantrelle had her hands tight around Yolanda’s throat, even as her fingers melted and her bones dissolved. Yolanda’s armour protected her for a few moments, long enough to know that her beloved Ella was strangling her as they both died.

Ooni’s limbs still worked. Her armour and her clothes were melting off her skin, joining the meaty, gel-like soup of Iriko’s body. But she still held her pistol. She pushed it through the throbbing, pulsating mass of Iriko’s innards, and pressed the muzzle to Yolanda’s forehead.

Cantrelle’s mouth widened in a silent scream. Her lungs were already full of Iriko.

Ooni pulled the trigger. The round punched through Yolanda’s forehead and scattered her brains across the inside of Iriko’s biomass. The light in her eyes went out, a split-second before the eyeballs themselves dissolved in Iriko’s acid. Yolanda got a quicker death, but Cantrelle was denied the pleasure of killing her.

Cantrelle turned her flat, screen-like eyes toward Ooni. They were dissolving as well, eaten away at the edges, almost gone. Cantrelle reached for Ooni, but her hands were burned away, already digested. She tried to claw at Ooni with the bony stumps, but then she spasmed and jerked as Iriko’s fluids breached her skull and reached into her brains. Ooni smiled as Cantrelle’s body collapsed into meat-fluid sludge.

Then — a spark. From the last few scraps of Cantrelle’s body, a spark seemed to flicker, as if struck from flint. Then it fled Iriko’s innards, vanishing in a direction Ooni had not known existed until she saw that spark turn and leave.

An illusion. The moment of death, embellished by Ooni’s own dying mind.

Ooni’s pistol finished dissolving in her hand. She was naked now, her armour carapace and her clothes and equipment all melted off her body by Iriko’s acid insides. Her pain was incredible, throbbing through every part of her flesh, diminishing as her nerve endings were eaten away. But this death had meaning. This death was the end of the Sisterhood. Ooni had to go with them, for her sins, for her past, for everything she had been a part of. She closed her eyes and finally felt at peace. For Telokopolis, she was happy to die.

And then with a wet and painful thump, Ooni landed on hard ground. The impact jarred her broken ribs so hard she almost blacked out.

Cold air raked her naked skin. Her own gasping throat ripped at her ears. She choked and flailed, twisting on her side to vomit up a great sticky mass of Iriko’s bio-matter, laced with her own blackened blood. She blinked and heaved and clutched at her belly, clawing at the pain in her ribs, sobbing the wet and broken sobs of pain without relief.

She was intact. She was alive. She was wet and cold and shivering.

A mass of black rags entered her narrow, throbbing, field of vision, accompanied by red claws and off-white carapace boots. Two pairs of hands lifted her to her feet, under her armpits; they were gentle as they could manage. The pain was drowning her, but she was lifted up, above the surface.

She stared into three faces — Serin, behind her metal mask, Elpida, with her helmet off, and Ilyusha, grinning with a mouth full of red-stained teeth.

“Ooni?” Elpida was saying. “Ooni? Can you hear me? Ooni? She’s in too much pain, we need to carry her. Illy, keep her on her feet, keep her upright. Serin, can Iriko assist?”

“Iriko has learned to be gentle,” Serin rasped. “But she still does not know her own strength.”

Ilyusha grabbed Ooni by the chin. Ooni’s broken jaw sang with fresh pain, but Ooni didn’t care. Ilyusha was grinning, so Ooni was grinning too.

“You’re fucking alive, you stupid bitch! Haha!” Ilyusha whooped — then pulled Ooni into a sharp-edged, awful, painful hug. Ooni felt Ilyusha’s claws open fresh wounds on her back, but she didn’t mind. Ooni could not return the gesture. Her arms wouldn’t obey her brain. Maybe there was too much pain in the way.

A voice whispered in Ooni’s ear — Ilyusha’s voice, but not Ilyusha’s words.

“That’ll do,” murmured Noyabrina. “That’ll do.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Well done, zombie girl. You made it out.

And thus, Ooni has both redemption and revenge in one! The Death’s Heads (at least this offshoot of the larger ideology) are no more. Except for Kuro, but she’s just one revenant, and now she’s all alone. Cantrelle and Yolanda get the (an?) ending they deserved, and Iriko gets a tasty snack. All’s well that ends well, right? Hm!

Well, the arc might be over, but the story is far from it! And there’s plenty of wrinkles and leftover flesh to creep away into the dark and grow strong while out of sight. Metaphorically speaking, that is! Next chapter we’re straight onto arc 16, no interlude this time (but maybe at the end of 16, we’ll see!)

And also, guess what? More art from the discord, to share with all of you! This week I have something quite special, because it feels like a rough version of a future potential cover or something, it’s very striking (despite it being a WIP that was never brought to fruition, which I got permission to add to the fanart page regardless.) The artist didn’t give it a title, so here is ‘Reaching for the sun‘, (by spring). I really really like this one. It feels like a visual summation of some core themes!

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

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

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!

And thank you, dear readers! Thank you for being here and enjoying my little story about zombie girls and blob monsters and tank boys and all the rest. None of this could exist without all of you, the audience! Ooni would never have found her salvation otherwise. And all the zombie girls to come, they’re lurking too. Seeya next chapter! Until then!

Content Warnings

Suicidal ideation
Suicide attempt (kinda, I’m erring on the side of caution here)
Extreme pain

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Ooni lurched to her feet, blinded and deafened and masked in blood, adrift on a sea of black smog.

For a moment she thought she was dead — returned to the pit-trap of immortality between resurrections, yet somehow kept conscious and coherent. She blinked grime and grit from her stinging eyes, preparing for the black miasma to condense into a face, a demon assigned to punish her for heresy, to drag her kicking and screaming back to the Kingdom of Death.

But, no.

Ooni was dead, but only in the same way that she’d been dead already. She was in too much pain for this to be an illusion.

She had avoided the worst of the two grenade detonations. She had already been down on the floor; the shouted warning had given her a split-second of useful motion between the first and second explosions, just enough to hit the deck and wrap her good arm around her head. She dimly recalled being picked up and slammed against the wall, her armour carapace peppered with fragments of shrapnel. Her ears were ringing, her left cheekbone throbbed with the sharp pain of a bad fracture, and her face was covered with tiny scratches and cuts and wounds, bleeding freely.

How had those two grenades done all this? Ooni had expected damage, of course, but they were just fragmentation grenades. Had the tight confines of the chamber reflected the pressure from the blasts?

No time to count that blessing. Pain was everywhere, in her burned arm and bruised shoulder and bloody face and every battered, twisted, knocked-askew joint. But Ooni didn’t care; the pain was total, yet abstract, held at arm’s length, like she was bobbing on the surface of an infinite sea.

Her left hand was already groping for the grip of her submachine gun.

Ooni couldn’t see anything, let alone a target. The air was saturated with dense black smoke, bitter and caustic in her eyes, scraping the exposed skin on her face, turning every little cut into a throbbing abrasion. She tried to take a breath; suddenly her mouth and throat were on fire, raked raw by sandpaper and gravel. She doubled up and vomited a string of bile onto the floor, tainted black by the foul air.

It wasn’t smoke — it was aerosolized glass. The black blocks that lined the chamber had been shattered by the explosions, pulverised into a swirling, choking, pitch-dark cloud of lethal particulate.

Ooni wasn’t even sure how that was possible. Had the contents of the glass cooked off somehow, intensifying the blast? Was it even glass?

Ooni spat and retched and tried not to breathe. This air would have killed a live human being in seconds, but Ooni wasn’t alive. She was a revenant. She was the reborn flesh of a new world, clay in the hands of Telokopolis.

She wrenched herself back upright, scrabbling for her weapon. Her right hand was still near useless, encased in Ilyusha’s protective resin. Her left gauntlet was covered in blood — her own? Didn’t matter. Her fingers were slippery on the trigger mechanism, but she held on tight

Ooni peered into the black. She couldn’t even tell which way she was facing.

Muffled screams and shouts reached her as if she were a mile underwater, but she couldn’t make out any of the voices, let alone the words; her hearing was bottled out by a single high note. Something crackled and hissed right in her ear, like an insect passing too close. Ooni hissed and whipped her head away, but that just made her vision swim and throb.

Then — boom!-boom!-boom! — that was Ilyusha’s shotgun! And her war cry, a long howling ‘Fuck youuuu!’ To Ooni’s — left? She’d gotten turned around.

Ooni twisted a full one hundred and eighty degrees and bumped her right shoulder against the wall. Pain shot through her bruised flesh and drew a wet sob from her throat, but she couldn’t hear her own cry, and she didn’t falter. Now she was facing the right way, toward where the Death’s Heads had been gathered when she’d rolled the grenades under their feet.

Ooni raised her submachine gun and pointed it into the churning black, in the general direction of her former ‘sisters’.

Death’s Heads to kill. Fight wasn’t over.

Ooni knew that when the fight was done, she would feel every inch of her pain. Something was holding her up and out of those waters of agony. It was not like before, when the voice of Telokopolis had spoken so clearly inside her. It was just a product of her own forward motion. If she stopped, if she gave up, if there were no more steps to take, then that favour would be withdrawn.

Ooni staggered forward. One step, two, three.

“Gonna—” she said, then choked and gagged on the razorblade-air. “Gonna kill you— gonna—”

A soot-singed giant stumbled out of the soupy murk, limping with shattered servo-motors in one power-armoured leg, right on top of Ooni.

Yazhu, neither down nor out. She was burned and scored and dented — probably from being smashed against a wall by the explosion right beneath her feet. But she still clutched her plasma rifle in both gauntlets. Her head snapped upward at the sight of Ooni, the optic trench in her helmet struggling to pierce the black with a pulse of red targeting light.

Yazhu jerked her plasma rifle into a firing position, stock to her shoulder. A pinprick of purple light sparked bright inside the muzzle.

The grenades hadn’t mattered. Ooni was right back where she’d started, facing a foe she couldn’t possibly defeat, staring down her own execution, yet another return to the endless cycle of death and resurrection. She knew her chance of finding Leuca again was next to nothing. The chances of reuniting with the others — Elpida, Pheiri, Ilyusha, her new comrades, her new sisters, though she had not dared to think of them as such until now — were even lower. She was about to be alone and hungry, again and again, forever and ever, no matter what she did. And by Yazhu, too, not even Yolanda or Kuro. A solid foot-soldier of the Sisterhood of the Skull, going along with whatever her mistress ordered. Ooni’s actions would be worse than meaningless.

The Ooni of before would have sobbed and surrendered to her fate. The Ooni of before would have closed her eyes and shied away from the killing blow.

The Ooni of before died right there, in a roar that Ooni herself barely knew.

“Telokopolis is forever!”

Ooni slammed into Yazhu before she’d even realised she was charging — her left shoulder low, taking the powered suit in the gut, knocking Yazhu off-balance, overcoming the damaged servo in her left leg. The plasma rifle discharged with a crackle-thump of energy, cutting through the black murk with a bright purple bolt at the edge of Ooni’s vision.

She rode Yazhu to the floor. The powered armour landed with an almighty crash of ceramic and metal, throwing up great swirls of the black glass-cloud. Ooni scrambled up Yazhu’s armoured chest, trying to get as close as possible before Yazhu recovered. She had no idea what she was doing, working on pure instinct, powered by adrenaline and the shining spire of Telokopolis in her mind’s eye.

Yazhu’s power-armoured fist arced out of the murk and slammed into Ooni’s face.

The world went white, then throbbed red and black. Ooni was certain her jawbone was broken, and probably more besides — but she had somehow kept a grip on Yazhu’s armour with her right hand, the resin-encased fingers curled into a claw, hooked into a curve of the suit. The pain was unspeakable; Ooni’s right hand was a cage of agony, like her bones had been cooked to carbon and then shattered by her own trembling strength. But the pain didn’t matter. Something was inside her, muffling the hurt and taking it away as long as she kept fighting. Ooni had never felt anything like this before. Was this what Elpida felt like, when she fought? Was this what it was like to be the child of a god?

She clung on tight, too close for Yazhu to draw a bead with the plasma rifle. The Death’s Head was bellowing inside her armour, the unwieldy length of the plasma gun caught against the plates of Ooni’s carapace.

Ooni found her submachine gun with her left hand again. She dragged it up the length of Yazhu’s armour, muzzle rattling off the metal. The bullets would do nothing, not unless she could find a weakness, an opening, something to exploit. And Yazhu would come to her senses any moment, just smash Ooni’s head to pulp with one armoured hand.

Yazhu freed the plasma rifle with a clatter. A bright purple bead of light burned right next to Ooni’s eyeballs.

Ooni reared up, screaming with the pain, arcing high off Yazhu’s front — and then stamped on the plasma rifle with her right boot, slamming the weapon into Yazhu’s chestplate. The plasma bolt went wide, searing a passage of superheated air through the black murk, tendrils of glass-fog swirling behind.

For a fleeting moment, Ooni had Yazhu pinned beneath her, one foot on her chest, one hand in a curl of her armour. But it was still a futile contest. Even wounded and momentarily winded, Yazhu was invulnerable inside that suit. All she had to do was reach out and snap Ooni’s neck. Yazhu merely had to raise her arm and the servo-motors in her suit would overpower all of Ooni’s body weight, slam her against the wall, and that would be that. Skull fracture, brains leaking out. Back to the cycle of death. Why was Ooni even bothering? What was the point of this fight? To exert herself against her former ‘sisters’ for a few more moments? To die screaming and flailing rather than sobbing and cringing, with her back turned away from the blow that would kill her? Why fight when she knew she would die?

Yazhu hesitated for a single split second.

And Ooni realised why — why fight, why Yazhu hesitated, why do any of it. Ooni was grinning. Her former sisters had never seen her grin.

Ooni rammed the narrow muzzle of her submachine gun directly into the optic trench on Yazhu’s helmet. Something glassy and brittle broke with a crack. Ooni pulled the trigger and held it down; the recoil and the angle and the ricochet of the first few rounds almost threw her off Yazhu, but Ooni held on and screamed. A ricochet slammed into the armour over her right shoulder. Yazhu’s powered gauntlet closed on Ooni’s wrist; she felt her forearm bones creak and snap. Still she held on and held down the trigger and—

And then the bullets punched a hole through Yazhu’s optic trench and into her helmet. She jerked and spasmed beneath Ooni, power-armoured limbs flailing as she died.

Ooni was knocked clear. She landed hard. The world went away for a moment, then rushed back, all noise and pain and swirling miasma.

Ooni climbed back to her feet again. Her right leg wouldn’t work properly, it wanted to fold up, but she made it obey. Her left arm was bulging at the wrist with multiple fractures inside her gauntlet, but her hand still worked. Her face was on fire and her jaw was screaming. She had so many broken bones that if she’d been a human, she would be dead.

Ooni didn’t care. She was dead. She was dead and still going, dead in the embrace of Telokopolis, and she would never truly die. The pain was overwhelming, but Telokopolis accepted it in her place. She had work to do.

Her submachine gun was gone, ripped from the strap and lost somewhere in the clouds of black glass. Yazhu was spread-eagle on the floor, a dead giant of metal and ceramic. How had Ooni done that? She could scarcely believe that was the work of her own hands, but it was. She had killed a Sister, in single combat. A revenant in powered amour! Yazhu!

She yanked the plasma rifle out of Yazhu’s dead gauntlets, pointed it at the ceiling, and pulled the trigger — crack! Still functional.

Ooni dragged herself upright and filled her lungs, ignoring the searing pain of razor-blade air ripping at her throat.

She howled into the black. “Yolanda!”

Her voice cut through the high-pitched whine in her ears. Was it just her imagination, or did the shouting and screaming and gunfire ebb for a moment, in respect for her challenge?

Didn’t matter. Find Yolanda. Kill her.

Ooni had no sense of which way she was facing, she’d gotten so turned around by the fight with Yazhu. She staggered forward and almost blundered into a jagged crag of black glass — the remains of one of the blocks, exploded by her grenades. The thing looked like it had detonated from inside. She lurched around it, to the right. This was where the Death’s Heads had been standing when the grenades had gone off, wasn’t it? Or had Ooni staggered back in the other direction? Ilyusha’s voice still echoed from beyond the murk, far away to her left. That didn’t seem right.

Ooni almost tripped on a corpse — meat seared by heat, blood cooked to a shiny black crust, flesh torn apart by the glass shrapnel. Somebody else was on the ground, writhing and screaming, but it wasn’t Yolanda. Ooni stepped past them, leaving them behind in the black.

Suddenly she was in an open space, no walls on any side, no ruined black glass, just the whirl of choking murk.

And there was Yolanda.

She was crouched, peeking around a corner of something, looking off to the left. Her distinctive purple powered armour was scratched and dented all over. Her flame-red hair was dirty with soot, raked back over one shoulder. She was bleeding from several cuts on her face, blood getting into her eyes. Another shape moved behind her in the swirling murk, picking itself up off the ground, tiny mechanical tentacles waving — Cantrelle? Somebody to the left was shouting over the rattle-crack of automatic fire, cut up by the thump-boom of Ilyusha’s shotgun.

Ooni filled her lungs and roared again. “Yolanda!”

Yola looked. Wide-eyed. Green-eyed. Terrified.

Ooni raised the plasma rifle to her shoulder, pointed the muzzle at Yola, and pulled the trigger; the first shot glanced off Yola’s powered armour, spinning her at the hip, caught in the act of rising to her feet. Yolanda squealed, and Ooni roared with something better than victory. She strode forward, pulling the trigger again — but another revenant came swarming out of the black mist, knocking into Ooni, and the shot went wide. Ooni snarled and jammed the muzzle of the plasma gun into the newcomer’s guts.

Ooni wasn’t sure who it was — big blue eyes and softly pale skin, soaked with blood and soot. Hands slapped at the plasma rifle, slippery with fresh blood, trying to pull it from Ooni’s grip. Ooni yanked the trigger and shot her assailant through the gut. A mass of flash-cooked gore arced out of her back.

The Sister reeled backward, tearing the plasma rifle from Ooni’s hands. The black mist swallowed her up.

The old Ooni would have sobbed with frustration. The old Ooni was dead.

Ooni whirled back to Yolanda, who was picking herself up. She tried to leap, but her legs wouldn’t work right, so she lurched forward, arms out, going for a grapple. Yolanda stumbled back, all her smug superiority finally washed away in a white-faced spasm of fear. Ooni howled something again, but it wasn’t a word anymore, not through her broken jaw.

Yolanda’s retractable helmet started to close. Ooni crashed into her and got the fingers of her gauntlet beneath the descending lip of the helmet. Yolanda was screaming in her face, trying to shove Ooni back, but Yolanda’s powered armour was all for show, the servos barely stronger than any old unaugmented zombie. Ooni shoved as hard as she could on the lip of the descending helmet; the mechanism whined and locked up as she broke something inside. Yolanda toppled backward, crashing down across a jagged outcrop of broken glass. Her helmet was wedged open.

Ooni dropped onto her and punched her in the face with the carapace gauntlet. Yolanda’s head snapped sideways, bones breaking beneath Ooni’s fist, teeth knocked out. Ooni hit her again. Blood exploded from split lips and the side of Yolanda’s cheek. Ooni had never felt so good.

She was going to beat Yolanda to death. Somebody should have done this years ago. Ooni should have done this, the first time they’d met.

Yolanda was flailing and kicking, her purple gauntlets slapping at Ooni’s front, trying to shove her off. Yolanda was no weakling, she should have been able to fight back; Ooni was a bag of broken bones, each blow jarring the fractures in her left arm. But the pain was like the black fog — all around but not yet inside. A cold fire in Ooni’s flesh kept it at bay, kept her on top of Yola, kept her swinging. The fire told her keep going, keep going, keep going! Ooni knew she would be burned up, used up, melted down to nothing, but she didn’t care. Revenge was worth the end.

She hit Yola again, breaking an eye socket, drawing a wail from the ultimate leader and true prophet of the Sisterhood of the Skull.

Ooni drew her fist back again — and somebody big and strong grabbed her from behind, ripped her off Yolanda, and hoisted her into the air.

Ooni tried to twist and fight, spitting blood-mangled froth from her broken jaw. But a hand slapped her across the cheek, open palmed, hard as metal; the strike to her face burst through the cold fire which kept the pain at bay, rocketing through her like a bolt of lightning.

The world went out, black and red and throbbing with Ooni’s heartbeat. She felt herself dragged off her feet and pinned between arms like iron bars. A familiar deep hum was pressed to her back.

Ooni’s sight returned in stutters. She coughed and choked and wheezed, pushing at her new restraints, flailing at her captor. She screamed something, but she couldn’t make proper words. The muzzle of a very large weapon was pressed beneath her chin, forcing her head back and up, grinding at the pain in her jaw. She was dangling, held off the ground, her back against something cold and hard, an arm over her chest.

The air was clearing, the black razor-clouds receding or falling to the ground at last. A huge hole had been torn in the far end of the space, as if the wall had been coaxed to peel itself back.

The chamber was a wreck. Most of the black glass blocks on this side had been pulverized by the two grenades. The rest of the room was pockmarked with small arms fire, chunks blasted out of the blocks, bullet holes in the walls, severed pipes and ducts hanging from the ceiling.

The gunfire had fallen silent, but there was a lot of shouting, fading in and out of Ooni’s hearing.

“—up! Back up! All of you degenerates, you back off right now or we will flense the apostate before your eyes, you—”

“—Yolanda, doorway! We need a doorway, we need out—”

“Put her down! Down, right now!”

“Fuck you, reptile cunts! Coward shit-eater bitches! Come fight me, fight me, come fucking get fucked—”

“—landa! Yolanda! Cantrelle, get her at the wall, we can’t hold here—”

“Put her down or we will open fire.”

Click-buzz, right above Ooni’s head. A suit of powered armour, opening external speakers.

“We have a deal,” Kuro’s girlish voice was full of static, rough with damage. “Call off your monster.”

Ooni forced her eyes as wide as they would go, trying to clear her vision. She was pinned across the chest, her arms held in place by Kuro’s grip, clutched to the front of Kuro’s armour. To either side of her the final remnants of the Sisterhood of the Skull were scuttling into what scant cover they could find, pressed against the rear wall. And there was Yolanda, bloody and battered and weeping, clinging to Cantrelle’s arms.

Ooni felt a surge of determination; pain seemed irrelevant. She ripped and tore at Kuro’s arm, trying to wriggle free, trying to reach out and grab at Yolanda, trying to pull her eyeballs out, tear at her cheeks, rip off her head. Yola squealed and shied away.

How could Yola escape again!? Ooni had been so close! Another few blows and Yola would have been dead, her brains dashed on Ooni’s gauntlet. And now, this—

“Let her go, or you all die,” a voice rang out. “Deal or not.”

Elpida!

Ooni sagged in Kuro’s iron grip. On the other side of the room were three figures, two half in cover, one standing in the open. On the right, Ilyusha was crouched behind the remains of a black glass block, half-collapsed with her own debilitating recovery, shotgun balanced on the top of her cover, teeth bared. On the left was Elpida; Ooni couldn’t see her face inside the full carapace suit and helmet, but the voice was unmistakable. Elpida was crouched half in and half out of cover, lest the situation go either way.

In the middle of the open passageway between the shattered glass blocks stood Shilu, a nightmare scarecrow of black knives and razor-sharp edges. She stood perfectly still, ready to spring forward. Both of her arms were three-foot swords.

“Call off your monster,” Kuro said again.

Elpida shouted back, “Not until—”

Ooni filled her lungs, and almost sobbed; her ribs were broken, a bag of glass inside her chest. But she held it in, and howled through her shattered jaw.

“Kill them!” she wailed. “Shoot through— kill them— shoot me— kill them!”

Kuro ground a weapon against Ooni’s jaw; the pain made her stop, keening like an animal.

Elpida shouted again, voice muffled inside her helmet, “Ooni! Ooni, you hold on. You stay conscious, and you hold on! Understand me? That’s an order, Ooni!”

Ilyusha screeched, “You don’t get to die now, fuckhead!”

Ooni couldn’t reply. Her plea emerged as a bloody gurgle.

Kuro’s speakers crackled again. “Call off your—”

The hole in the chamber wall, directly opposite Ooni, suddenly brightened with the rainbow darkness of oil on water. A protoplasmic mass boiled into the room.

Iriko entered like flood waters. She slammed into the room and flowed straight down the middle, her vast scale-armoured mass too big for the chamber, a slug of fluid with the force of a wrecking ball. Shilu leapt out of the way. A few remaining Death’s Heads screamed and opened fire; bullets and rounds and plasma bolts were deflected or soaked up by Iriko’s refractive mail. Kuro’s weapon systems flowered open either side of Ooni’s body, bristling with muzzles and target locks and the threat of close-range energy discharges, but Ooni knew it wouldn’t be enough.

Iriko filled the world, rearing up to engulf all that was left of the Sisterhood of the Skull, and Ooni along with them.

Kuro took a single step back. She raised Ooni like a shield.

Ooni smiled. The pain was worth it. Her death would be worth it. She didn’t want to die, she didn’t want to go; she would be alone and hungry and cold forever, but at least her former comrades would be dead and scattered.

She gurgled two final words from her bloody, broken lips. “Thank you—”

Iriko shuddered to a halt with a sound like a mass of raw meat dragged across jagged metal; the flowing wave of her body paused in mid air. Small arms fire trailed off; Kuro’s weapon systems quivered, scorpion-tails ready to sting. Ooni gazed into the shifting protoplasmic depths of Iriko’s exposed flesh. Eye-like organs formed and twisted and dissipated beneath Iriko’s surface, all fixed on her, on Ooni’s own face.

“No—” Ooni spat. “No, Iri— ko— kill— kill me too, do it, do—”

Iriko flowed back, like the tide retreating across a black and blasted beach, up the middle of the open passageway between the shattered blocks. She held position in the middle of the room, writhing and roiling. Elpida and Ilyusha and Shilu were still sheltered by the cover of the ruined chamber. Elpida half-rose, helmet peeking above the jagged sea of black.

Ooni sobbed; it was the worst thing she’d ever felt — relief that she was still alive, and horror that she was going to live. The cold clarity of fire in her flesh faded to nothing. She gasped. The pain was everywhere and everything.

Kuro’s speakers crackled again, sharp and harsh in Ooni’s ears. “We have a deal.”

“You have a hostage,” Elpida shouted. “No deal.”

“Same thing. Deal or no.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

How many times, Elpida? Never make deals with this kind of monster. They can’t help but betray you.

Ooni goes rip and tear mode! I gotta admit, while writing this, she really surprised me. I wasn’t sure how she was going to react to this situation, or what direction she would go in. But Ooni lived up to all the faith placed in her, even if she couldn’t quite end all of this with only her bare hands. And up next, it’s the final chapter of the arc! Yes, really! I’ve just finished editing it, as of the time of writing this author note, and it’s the last lines of arc 15! Up after that we miiiight have an interlude, I’m not certain yet. So, next chapter, Ooni’s fate is decided.

Also, once again, I have art to share, from over on the discord! This week I’ve got two very cool things. First off we have an embroidered hoodie, marked with the symbol of Telokopolis, (by EmbersOfFlame). It’s always so cool to see physical fanworks out there in the world! And then we have this absolutely incredible piece of … I don’t even know what to call it, thematic tone-art? Classical painting reference? The Salvation of Ooni, (by cubey). I absolutely adore that one. Some of the central themes of the story captured, right there!

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

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

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!

And thank you, dear readers! Thank you for being here and enjoying Necroepilogos! I couldn’t do all of this without you, reading along and cheering for our beautifully beleaguered undead. The middle of the story is … approaching the middle??? A paradox, which falls to me to untangle! And I will see you all next chapter. Until then! 

Content Warnings

None this chapter.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Elpida placed her left hand against the black metal wall. The tiny ceramic ring mail links in the front of her gauntlet clicked against the surface as she flattened out her palm and fingers; forty minutes ago those subtle sounds would have been drowned beneath the distant roar of hail and wind outside the tomb, but Elpida was in deep now. The hurricane had been reduced to muffled static at the edge of the world. She spread her fingers and pressed, gently but firmly.

Ready.

You don’t gotta tell me every time, Elps, Howl grumbled. Already on it, see? Piece of cake. Wham bam, thank you tomb.

A hot flush shot down the length of Elpida’s left arm, like a slug of volcanic rock in an artery, originating as a sudden hard palpitation in her heart. The sensation of heat crested the meat and gristle of her shoulder and raced along her humerus. Her ulna and radius bones felt as if they vibrated for a split second; Kagami’s drones and Shilu’s raw observation had confirmed that was mere sensory illusion. Finally the heat concentrated in Elpida’s palm, tingling in her fingertips, then vanished, as if expelled through her gauntlet.

The black metal wall rippled, like a pool of tar disturbed by a rock — then it peeled away with a silent shudder, a sluggish mucus membrane withdrawing from a biochemical intruder.

Elpida quickly stepped back before the opening could reach maximum extent. She grabbed the submachine gun strapped around her left shoulder and braced the weapon against her hip with one hand.

On the other side of the irregular opening was yet another snatch of empty black corridor, truncated by the edges of the retreating wall, smooth and regular as a loop of petrified intestine. The darkness was painted the ghostly pale green of machine-enhanced night vision, seen through the visor of Elpida’s carapace helmet. The helmet’s on-board computer updated the map in the bottom right of her heads-up display with a tentative swoop of fresh passageway; the helmet’s built-in processor was no substitute for what Pheiri and Kagami could compile via the drone sensors, but that wasn’t an option now, beyond range of the main comms uplink.

Shilu ghosted past Elpida before the HUD completed the mapping update — a black scarecrow of razor edges and sharp spikes slipping through the new gap in the walls.

Shilu moved with absolute silence; her pointed legs looked as if they should click against the floor, and her metal body seemed as if it should clatter when she walked, but Elpida’s external helmet sensors picked up nothing but a whisper of displaced air. Somehow Shilu kept even that to a minimum. Elpida’s visor IFF settings highlighted Shilu with a thin outline of bright green in the rough shape of a person. The Necromancer was very difficult to see in the dark, even with assisted night vision. ‘Natural’ zombie low-light ocular capabilities stood no chance.

Keep sharp, Elps, Howl hissed. Eyes up!

Understood.

Elpida didn’t need the reminder — she felt frosty and clean and ready for anything — but she appreciated it regardless. This journey toward the core of the tomb had been nothing but repetition, and repetition in a potential combat situation heightened the danger of ambush, which was precisely what she was trying to avoid. She was taking no chances, hence the helmet’s night vision; she could see perfectly well in the dark, and Kuro knew that too.

This was the most dangerous moment of the advance — the second or two when Elpida and Shilu were on opposite sides of each new opening coaxed through the tomb-metal. Elpida turned quickly — left and right, covering the corridor with her submachine gun, helmet visor picking out shadows and discarding them as nothing. She took a step back and covered the rear, down through the tunnel of holes that she and Howl had cut through the deep guts of the tomb.

“Clear,” said Shilu, exactly two seconds after stepping through. Her voice was clipped and clear on Elpida’s helmet comms.

Elpida backed through the gap, joining Shilu in the next corridor. She quickly glanced left and right again, giving her HUD more data to chew on. More black corridor, more smooth emptiness, washed out by the pale flickering green of digital low-light image enhancement. Another wall to punch through on the way to Ooni and Ilyusha’s last known position.

Wall number one hundred and eight. Mission time: fifty seven minutes and thirty two seconds.

They were making even better progress than Elpida had hoped, but they were slowing now. Walking through walls was infinitely faster than trying to untangle the guts of the tomb by following the corridors. Elpida and Shilu were already three times deeper than the first expedition had gotten, the one which had been ambushed by Kuro on the way back. They had cut through wide passageways and ghosted across empty chambers in a straight line, punching through the parts of the tomb which still pretended they were for human-scale use. Eventually they had reached this densely knotted tangle of smooth black tunnels, most so narrow that they couldn’t stand shoulder-to-shoulder, so that each fresh opening torn in a new wall bought them barely another three steps of progress before the next.

At their rear, those same ragged openings were closing up behind them, cutting off the route they’d taken to get in. Like cold tar flowing back over a boulder, the black metal was slowly rippling shut. The final sliver of dark red illumination from Kagami’s drones was being choked off by the closing walls; Elpida and Shilu had left the drones behind at the limit of comms range, about fifteen minutes ago, where the strange interference from the core of the tomb rendered the drones blind and deaf.

Elpida paused and stared at that last shaft of red light still breaking through a narrow gap in the closing walls. She keyed her helmet comms. The uplink was still live, but drowned in static, as if she had opened a connection to the hurricane itself.

“Kaga, Pheiri,” she said. “Do you read?”

Static wailed and roared, broken by a flicker of sound like a wash of hailstones on metal.

“—mander— … —er— … —back—”

A snatch of Kagami’s voice. Pheiri replied with an acknowledgement ping, but the tone was warped by interference, the wrong note, smothered in static.

“We’re about to lose visual on the drones,” Elpida said. “Pull back, wait for contact.”

Three full seconds of static murk. Then Kagami again: “—ck you. Wait for— … —be dead before— … —reach you—”

Elpida didn’t need a clear line to know what Kagami had said. “Negative. Pull back, wait for contact. Don’t lose the drones by keeping them in the open. They have to take the long way back, start now. Pull back to Pheiri, wait for us to re-establish contact. That’s an order, Kagami.”

Four seconds of static. Five. Six. Seven. The black tomb metal was easing itself together like tar sealing over a wound, choking off the bloody red light from Kagami’s drones. Elpida’s night vision compensated, increasing the saturation of ghostly green, filling the violated corridors with sensor ghosts in every washed-out shadow.

Pira’s voice came over the comms, crackling with interference. “Drones— … —lling back. Good- … -uk, commander.”

“We’ll be home soon,” Elpida said. “Fireteam out.”

Elpida disconnected from the comms uplink, dropping back to local. The furthest gap in the walls finally closed up, sealing off the last shaft of light from the drones. Elpida’s night vision deepened and bloomed in the absolute darkness, coating the black walls with a patina of greenish white mould.

Shilu’s voice came clear over local comms. “Just us three now.”

Howl grinned behind the visor of Elpida’s helmet, taking control of her lips and tongue. “Glad you remember I’m here, cheese grater,” Howl hissed. “Just don’t try to stab Elps in the neck this time. We’re cool, for now.”

Shilu nodded.

Elpida took back control. “We both trust you, Shilu. I wouldn’t have you here otherwise. That’s just Howl’s way of expressing herself.”

Shilu nodded again.

The Necromancer — or ex-Necromancer — had dropped her human disguise the moment she was out of sight of the tomb chamber where Pheiri was parked. They’d managed to slip away without being spotted by the crowd of zombies still gathered in front of Pheiri, taking refuge beneath his bulk, but Elpida appreciated Shilu’s caution all the same; if the zombies she had fed in the name of Telokopolis suspected she was working alongside a Necromancer, that might undermine the seeds she had planted in their hearts. Shilu’s true nature needed to be kept a secret, until the day came when things could be different.

Shilu’s borrowed clothes, her soft brown skin, her long dark hair, it had all vanished beneath a body of razor-sharp black metal. Only her face remained human, a pale porcelain oval drained of colour, too perfect and poreless to be real.

Elpida was quietly impressed by Shilu. The Necromancer had required barely any instruction on the plan of advance. Elpida — via Howl — was to punch her way through each wall, then Shilu was to step through first, in case Kuro was waiting on the other side, before Elpida followed her through. Shilu moved with silent precision, sometimes faster than Elpida’s eyes could track, despite the awkward-looking sharp points that served for feet at the end of her black metal legs. She kept her right arm extended into a long blade, all the way from her elbow, ready to respond to potential ambush. She watched Elpida’s back so closely and effectively that even Howl had no complaints. Well, almost no complaints.

“Right, next wall,” Elpida said, stepping forward as Shilu moved to cover her rear again. She checked the map in her HUD; they were about halfway to Ooni’s last known position. Their track through the deep guts of the tomb formed a spear-thrust through the coiled layers of a conch shell, bypassing the apparently shifting corridors. Kagami had been very upset about that, but this technique rendered it meaningless. Whatever the tomb was doing, and why, did not matter. Elpida’s first priority was the recovery of her comrades. Mysteries could wait until everyone was safely inside Pheiri’s hull.

But she was very deep down now, and the way back was closed. A spear tip lost in an ocean of black meat, burrowing deeper toward the ghost of a voice. Elpida’s local comms was reaching out into the unknown ahead of them, pinging the headsets that Ooni and Ilyusha hopefully still had, hoping that proximity would overcome the local jamming, and that Ooni and Ilyusha were still listening, still conscious, still alive.

Elpida eyed the radio beacon indicator on one side of her HUD. It was repeating every five seconds. Still no response.

She put her hand against the next wall.

Howl?

What? Elps?

Are you ready? Are you holding up okay?

What, me? Howl scoffed. This is nothing, Elps. Network bullshit. I could fart on these walls and they’d open like wet paper. I’m already doing it, see?

The pulse of heat was already running down Elpida’s arm, that was true. The wall rippled once, then parted, peeling back like flesh falling away from rotten meat. The next corridor blossomed in the dark, empty bowels filled with the shadows of forgotten fluids. Shilu was past Elpida in a flash, a green outline flickering in the darkness.

Howl’s words didn’t add up.

For the first two dozen walls, Howl had whooped and cackled as the black metal had yielded to her network permissions. Elpida had barely needed to brush the fingertips of her gauntlet against the substance of the tomb to feel that hot pulse down her arm, the feeling of Howl hijacking the local network conditions with the techniques she had stolen from Perpetua. The metal had flowed apart without resistance, and stayed open for almost twenty minutes before the first shudders of closure.

As the descent had deepened, Howl had slowed. At first the delay hadn’t been noticeable. But by wall number sixty, Elpida had time to press her entire palm against the surface. By wall number eighty she had to prompt Howl to exert her network influence. By wall one hundred, Elpida was certain something was wrong.

Howl, she said. If you’re struggling, I need to know. We cannot get stuck down here in this tangle of passageways. You’re doing something difficult, untested, and dangerous. There’s no shame in telling me you’re tired.

Howl hissed through clenched teeth. I’m fine! Fucking hell, Elps. What are you even talking about? Getting cold feet, bitch-tits? What happened to not leaving anybody behind? Fuck is this, huh?

“Clear,” said Shilu.

Elpida stepped through the ragged gap, into another loop of petrified guts. She glanced left and right, filled out what she could of her HUD’s map, then turned to the next wall.

I am not proposing we leave anybody behind, Elpida thought. I’m asking if—

You’re fucking projecting, is what you’re doing! Howl hissed. Get on with it.

Elpida placed her hand against the next wall.

She counted. One second. Two seconds.

Howl?

What now!?

Answer my next question in good faith. This is very important.

Elpida felt Howl’s mouth open, angry and ready to bite. But she stayed her teeth.

Are you unaware that you’ve been slowing down? Elpida asked. Each wall we open, you get incrementally slower. Are you aware of that?

Silence filled Elpida’s mind, backed by the distant static of the storm, as if heard from deep underground. She felt the hot pulse flow down her arm, the fire-bright tingle in her palm and fingers. The wall rippled and parted. Beyond was a slightly wider corridor, twisting downward into greater darkness. Shadows flickered and jerked away from the green-white glow of Elpida’s night vision.

Shilu slipped through, a ghost to match the shadows. Elpida raised her gun.

Howl?

Howl let out a hiss of disgust. Fuck. Fuck, you’re right.

If you need to rest—

It’s not me. Fuck, Elps, it’s not me!

“Clear,” said Shilu. Elpida stepped through, then held up a fist to signal a pause. Shilu didn’t even nod, she just moved to cover Elpida’s back, head tracking left and right to the rear and flanks.

Howl, Elpida said. What does that mean?

It means it’s not me! Howl snapped. Means I didn’t realise. Some cunt has been slowing us down, pushing back against the network permissions. I didn’t see it until you pointed it out. Fuck. Fuck!

Alright. Focus. Who or what is pushing back against us?

Fuck knows! The tomb, that Kuro bitch? A Necromancer? I don’t know! I can’t explain what it’s like feeling through the network, it’s not like using regular senses. It’s like something reaching in and slowing my hand down while I’m trying to turn a key. But even that’s not right. I can compensate now, but … shit. Howl’s voice dropped to a low growl. Some fucker is hunting us.

We always knew that would happen, Howl. We will make difficult prey. Elpida keyed the local comms uplink. “Shilu, we have a developing situation.”

Elpida explained what Howl had told her, why the process had been slowing down. Shilu listened without comment, staring into Elpida’s visor with her big dark eyes. Night vision turned Shilu’s pale porcelain face into the green mask of a waterlogged corpse. Her features were whited-out, blurred to mere suggestions.

When Elpida finished, Shilu said, “Right. And?”

Shilu’s mouth didn’t move as she spoke. Her voice came over the local comms network, through the speakers built into Elpida’s helmet.

“You don’t have an opinion?” Elpida asked.

The Necromancer just stared, unblinking. “You’re in charge.”

“Alright then,” Elpida said, glancing up and down the current corridor, her submachine gun braced against her hip. Far behind them, the recent holes in the tomb’s structure were slowly sucking shut, the inching closures drawing closer. “My decision as Commander is that I want your opinion. You’re the one who’s going to have to fight close quarters if we get ambushed.”

Shilu shrugged. “I am confident I can repel a revenant in powered armour.”

“I know that,” Elpida said. “But what’s your opinion as a Necromancer? Could it be the tomb doing this, or something else?”

Shilu was motionless for a moment. Then she blinked. “It’s not the tomb. It’s another actor. Something or somebody else with a similar range of network permissions. That’s my opinion. It’s not knowledge.”

“Kuro?”

“Unknown,” Shilu said. Then she sighed over the comms, a very human gesture from that scarecrow of black metal, even if her body didn’t move. “We’ve come too far to give up now.”

“Agreed. Push on?”

Shilu nodded.

Elpida and Shilu pushed on through another three corridors of looping, winding, black-dyed intestines. They cut into the corner of a vast, echoing chamber which seemed too large for the depths of the tomb, walled with segments of stone between the sections of familiar black metal. They passed through a tight tangle of tubes and pipes which no zombie could have traversed without Howl’s stolen network permissions. Always the same pattern, with Shilu leading the way into each new incision.

The silent monotony was unyielding. It made Elpida glad that she had brought only Shilu and Howl. Nobody but a Telokopolan pilot or a Necromancer could have maintained their nerves and an alert state of mind under such conditions for such an extended period of time. Elpida wondered if anybody in her new cadre — save perhaps Pheiri — could have endured the crushing sense of descent into a darkness so thick that it seemed like living tissue.

Howl stayed silent as well, occasionally grumbling and hissing in the back of Elpida’s mind. Howl was another set of eyes, through Elpida’s own, and a sensor dipped into the surface of the network, watching for approaches that even Shilu wouldn’t see.

Elpida was fully aware that the ambush might never come. If Kuro understood what Shilu was, then she was unlikely to attempt a frontal assault a second time. Shilu would not be occupied with trying to cut a way out for the others. Elpida and Howl could protect themselves with the walls of the tomb, and Shilu would have a free hand to engage. Shilu wasn’t invincible, but she was bulletproof. In the close quarters of the tomb, with the advantage of her speed, if she caught Kuro, the Death’s Head would be helpless.

But Elpida was keenly cautious about the other possibility — that Kuro might manufacture an ambush to cut them off from each other. A low-powered submachine gun would not do much against powered armour, and Shilu might need time to cut through a wall to come to Elpida’s aid.

Hence the two magazines of explosive-tipped rounds inside the armoured pouch on Elpida’s thigh, and the third one loaded into her weapon. Not enough to break Kuro completely — that would require weaponry too dangerous to use in such tight quarters — but enough to give her pause, long enough for Shilu to rejoin Elpida, or for Howl to tear down the walls.

Elpida felt ready for anything. The plates of the armour carapace moved with her muscles, flexible and tight. The armoured coat over the top would hide her from casual glances. It was no Telokopolan hardshell suit, which would have compensated for her missing right forearm, but it was the best she had access to, and her comrades deserved everything she could give.

As Elpida emerged into yet another twisted corridor and joined Shilu, her helmet comms crackled with Shilu’s voice.

“Elpida. I think I would like to ask you a question. Can you speak and concentrate on our advance at the same time?”

“Sure. Can you?”

“Significantly better than you can.”

Show-off, Howl growled. Still don’t like her.

I gathered that.

“Then there’s no problem,” Elpida said out loud. “Go ahead.”

Shilu was quiet for a few moments, until the next wall was parted and she was slipping through, into a medium-sized chamber lined with strange machines, like banks of computers studded with dials.

“I believe that you would do this for any of your comrades,” Shilu said. Her voice murmured in Elpida’s ear, over the built-in helmet comms. “When you say you won’t leave anybody behind, you mean it. You stake your life on that principle. I agree with it. Considering what you’re trying to build, it’s the only way to act. Anything else risks a rapid collapse. Clear.”

Elpida stepped through and covered the room with her submachine gun. Nothing but metal and dying echoes. Shilu led the way straight across, spear-tip feet silent on the stone floor, following the HUD marker of Ooni’s last known location.

“Thank you, I think,” Elpida said over the comms. “But that’s not a question.”

“I’m exploring the necessary prerequisites.”

Elpida followed Shilu over to the next wall. She selected a section of upright black metal and pressed her hand against the surface.

Shilu continued. “I haven’t spent much time with you people—”

“Yet,” Elpida added.

“ … yet,” Shilu allowed. “But I already understand Ooni’s position in your group. You’ve attempted to redeem her for her past actions and allegiance.”

The black metal wall flowed open. Shilu stepped through, a ghost of negative colour in the night vision haze.

“She redeemed herself,” Elpida said. “Or at least she’s trying. You don’t approve? Neither did Kagami. Or Ilyusha. Or Pira herself.”

“On the contrary,” Shilu said. “It’s the only way to act. Clear.”

Elpida stepped through. Another corridor-tunnel, this one ridged and tight, winding away into the shadows like a dead snake. “The only way?”

Shilu was staring at Elpida, her pale white face almost blank under the warping effect of night vision. “Any ideology can offer death to your enemies. It’s not hard. Prehistoric, even. A better program might offer a place at the table for turncoats, but only if they turn on others in turn, only if they hate the out-group even more than those who were not converts.” Shilu paused. “But the best, the systems that work, all down human history, they offer the possibility of universal redemption. Even for the worst. Especially for the worst.”

Elpida stepped forward and put her hand on the next wall. “I think I can tell where you’re going with this.”

“I hope you can,” said Shilu. “Here’s my question. Does your Telokopolis have a place for the other Death’s Heads?”

What does this bitch think she’s saying? Howl hissed. The black metal wall flowed open again. Shilu darted through.

“In theory, yes,” Elpida replied. “If they all did as Ooni does.”

A moment of silence. Then, “Clear.”

Elpida stepped through.

“Theory isn’t good enough,” said Shilu. “I’m talking about practice. Entertain this thought experiment. What if when we reach Ooni and Ilyusha, she has killed all the Death’s Heads. Kuro, Cantrelle, all the others, they’re all dead. All except for Yola. She’s no threat, she’s been stripped out of her armour, and she’s unarmed. She’s begging for her life. What do you do with her?”

Elpida paused in the corridor and stared at Shilu. Her eyes were so large and dark, they were the only part of her not washed out by the sickly green of night vision.

“Is this a test?” Elpida asked.

“No. I’ve already agreed to be one of you. Telokopolis spoke to me too. I’m just … let’s say ‘hopeful’.”

Elpida took a deep breath inside the privacy of her helmet. She took the honest gamble.

“I wouldn’t kill Yola,” she said. “She’s their leader, and she voiced their ideology with such conviction. So, if I could make her see that it was a lie, if I could bring her into the fold of Telokopolis, I would. It would be a victory, to bring somebody like her around. A victory worth showing. The Death’s Heads are nothing compared to Telokopolis.” Elpida sighed. “But I don’t expect I’ll ever get a chance, because she and those around her will fight against any attempt to show them a better way. With infinite resources and infinite time, and without the pressure of … all this,” she gestured up and around, at the tomb, the storm, the world, “then sure. Of course. But in practice? I’ll kill them all to protect Telokopolis, to protect my comrades. You included.”

Shilu stared for a moment. Her lips did something which might have been a small smile, but it was impossible to be sure through the night vision glare off her porcelain face.

“You would accept anything into Telokopolis, wouldn’t you?” she said. “Former foes. The worst monsters. Necromancers.”

Elpida grinned. She was certain Shilu could see that even through the helmet. “I’m pretty sure it’s what I was made to do.”

Shilu nodded. “Let’s carry on.”

As Howl opened the next wall, Elpida kept talking; the paradoxical distraction of conversation kept her senses sharp and her concentration focused, away from the throbbing pain in her stump or the chafe and pinch of the carapace plates. The conversation was choppy and broken-up, conducted between the peeling of black metal and the covering of blind passageways, Shilu always one step ahead, a ghost in the green-white wash, slipping through the shadows.

“Serin mentioned that Death’s Heads are a recurring problem,” Elpida said. “They, or others like them, tend to recur over and over again, with new names for themselves, slight variations in ideology. You’re a Necromancer, you’ve been around a long time. Is that accurate?”

“Clear. Yes, that’s true. I’ve never paid them much attention. I find no need for them.”

“No need for them?”

A pause as Elpida opened the next wall. Was Shilu thinking? Trying to avoid responsibility for past actions?

“Some Necromancers tend to use them,” Shilu said. “Clear. Or groups like them. To interact with the wider mass of revenants without revealing themselves. Death’s Heads and those similar to them, they make very good pawns. Easily directed.”

“Really? How so?”

Shilu paused and glanced at Elpida’s faceplate. “You can’t work it out yourself?”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Ah,” said Shilu. She slipped through into another corridor as Elpida stepped back. “Clear. As I understand it, you give them a little power, and they’ll do anything you ask. Give them nanomachines, weapons, a little food. Any leg-up on the local populations they’re set against. As Serin said, it’s a recurring pattern, but Necromancers encourage it quietly. Some Necromancers.”

“And how do you feel about them, Shilu?”

Shilu took a deep breath; Elpida could hear it over the comms, but Shilu’s face didn’t move. “I feel like none of this should exist. Death’s Heads included.”

“Not even us? Us and Telokopolis?”

“Small price to pay.”

Elpida allowed herself a smile. “We’ll bring you round yet. There’s place for you and yours in Telokopolis, too.”

“We had a place,” Shilu said. “In death. But barring that, this is acceptable.”

Howl took over Elpida’s lips and tongue. “Glad to hear it, cheese grater.”

“Thank you, Howl,” said Shilu.

Howl tutted and hissed inside Elpida’s mind. Elpida almost laughed, but she didn’t allow herself to relax far enough to permit that. Concentration was still paramount priority. She followed Shilu into the next tight, tangled corridor.

“What about Serin’s allegiance?” Elpida asked as she scanned the darkness to the left and right, shadows devoured by green phantoms. This corridor was especially long, stretching off into the darkness in both directions, vanishing into a ghostly haze under her night vision. “When I met her, she wore a symbol, a crescent and a line, the one I’ve adapted for Telokopolis. She explained it a little, but I’ve never gotten a straight answer out of her. The Death’s Heads called them ‘wreckers and murderers’. What does that mean?”

“It’s a much looser collection of allied ideologies,” Shilu said. “And I know even less about them than I do the Death’s Heads. I suspect they descend from—”

Shilu’s voice cut off with a crackle of comms interference. The Necromancer twisted away from Elpida, pivoting on one spear-tip foot, her other arm flowing into a second blade. Elpida brought her submachine gun up, braced against her hip.

A figure stood in the distance, about fifty feet away, filling the narrow corridor, right out in the open.

Bulky powered armour, festooned and studded with built-in weaponry, glowing like a green ghost in Elpida’s night vision. The back-mounted power-plant was emitting an erratic heat signature, as if damaged and venting gasses; Elpida’s visor flickered with radiation overspill warnings — pointless for a zombie, but interesting information. The helmet raced through IFF readings for the figure’s weapons, labelling plasma signatures and energy readouts, quivering over activation warnings.

Kuro.

Shilu flickered forward, faster than Elpida’s eyes could follow.

Kuro held out one hand, palm flat; the universal signal for ‘stop’. Elpida’s visor flickered with a conspicuous absence of weapon activation warnings.

“Shilu, hold,” Elpida said over comms.

Shilu stopped, dead still, halfway between Elpida and the ghostly figure of Kuro’s armour. Elpida quickly weighed her options. This was very likely a trap, intended to draw Shilu away from Elpida. But Kuro could activate her weapon systems at any moment, forcing a retreat. Clever move, but Howl could simply encase them in a piece of the tomb metal, neutralising Kuro’s presumed strategy.

Something was wrong here.

Elpida said into comms: “Shilu, pull back to me. Prepare to take cover. I think she’s—”

Kuro’s external speakers buzzed and clicked, coming online. Her voice emerged first as a hissing mumble, dirty with static, echoing down the tunnel. She cleared something wet and clotted from her throat.

“I want to make a deal,” said Kuro.

Elpida opened her own external helmet speakers as well. She amplified her voice, booming out into the dark. “Explain.”

Kuro’s voice hissed from her speakers. “You want yours. I want mine. They’re both heading to the same place. Probably in it now. Call off your protoplasmic pet, leave mine, and you can have your scraps.”

Protoplasmic pet? Must be Iriko.

Elpida shouted, “We’re not in contact with her.”

A moment of silence from Kuro. Then, “The deal stands. We are going in the same direction. Call off yours, and you can have your lost lambs.”

Shilu spoke over the comms, “Ooni and Ilyusha, in return for letting the Death’s Heads go. Yes or no, Elpida?”

“Answer should be obvious,” Elpida hissed, then activated her externals again. “Alright, Kuro. But you stay at that distance. One flicker of weaponry and Shilu here will shuck you like shellfish. Where are—”

Ping — Elpida received a data-packet request via her helmet comms. It flickered up on the left of her HUD, signed with a black skull.

“Right,” she hissed. Howl?

It’s clean! Howl snapped. Elpida accepted the data packet. Her HUD’s map flowered with a field of rooms and corridors, with a single red marker in a sealed-off chamber. It was closer than she’d thought, less than five minutes away, right in the core of the tomb structure.

“That’s our comrades?” Elpida shouted.

Gotta be a trap! Howl snorted.

My thoughts as well, Elpida confirmed. We’ll turn it against her. She’s given us something, even if it’s a lie.

Kuro’s speakers crackled. “Alive or dead. But you have to call off your—”

Thoomp!

A nearby explosive detonation, muffled behind layers of wall and black metal and inscrutable stone. Elpida’s helmet visor flashed with directional warnings for sound and pressure. A second later — thoomp! — another. Hand-held size. A pair of grenades. Close.

Kuro turned away and tore through the nearest wall like a rock hurled through a black waterfall. Shilu flickered back to Elpida’s shoulder.

Elpida didn’t need the map update to tell where the explosions had come from, because somebody had just replied to the standing comms ping — an automated pickup signal, from two headsets going loud, announcing they were within range. Elpida keyed the local network and reached out, linking up with the invitation.

“Ooni, Illy, this is Elpida. Respond—”

“Whooo! Yeah! Fuck you too!” Ilyusha whooped and roared down the restored uplink, her battle cry cut off by the sudden thunk-boom-thunk-boom of her shotgun.

Elpida turned and slammed her hand against the next wall of black metal.

Howl, get us in there, double-time!

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

A brief breather amid the choking darkness of the tomb. A deal rejected(?). And a party joined. Because everybody’s heading to the same place, and there’s about to be a whole lot of zombie girls all crammed into that one secret tomb-chamber. Make room, Ooni, help is on the way. And Kuro.

As for behind the scenes, the arc is now going to 6 chapters! At least 6 chapters, I’ve confirmed this. 7 is possible, but much less likely, but we’ll see what happens as I get there. As always, I am allowing the narrative to swerve wherever the characters decide it should go. And right now that means right into the core of the tomb, grave-dirt and worms and dead roses and all. Hooray! Hooray for … well, for saving Ooni, certainly. Good luck, Elpida.

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

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

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!

And lastly, thank you, dear readers! Thank you for being here and reading my little story. We’re crashing toward the climax of this arc, perhaps even toward the climax of this whole series of arcs, with what’s coming up next, and I am still very much having a blast with my zombie girls and their constant peril. And I couldn’t do any of it without all of you. So, thank you! Seeya next chapter! Until then!

Content Warnings

Extensive discussion of self-harm and suicidal ideation
Discussion of torture

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Ooni’s old self clawed at her insides, resurrected from some sucking swamp in her soul, trying to drown her in the choking mud.

She pressed herself deeper into the crevice between the blocks of black glass, trying to make herself as small as possible. She had to take up as little space as she could — cut away pieces of herself and toss them out into the dark, sacrifice her legs, her arms, her nose, her lips, her tongue, make herself a dead thing with a skull for a face, so that she might be overlooked and left alone. She had to be quiet — no, silent! Absolutely silent. No breath, no gurgles of fear from her guts all clenched hard as a fist. She should rip those out too, cast her bowels into the dark flames, or offer up her intestines to the Sisterhood of the Skull, so maybe they would be too busy eating her entrails to bother with what was left of her.

No, no, no, don’t whimper now! Shhh, shhhhh, shhhhhhh.

She had to be silent, not a single mewl could escape her lips, or she would die. She had to strangle fear and make pain meaningless, or she would die. If Ooni’s former Sisters — sisters! all of them sisters and she the smallest of the litter, the runt — if they found her and Ilyusha, they would torture them both before killing them. Death, if Ooni was lucky. The alternative was far worse. They might keep her alive long past the point where sanity had fled. She’d seen it, she’d seen them do it, eating a zombie and keeping her alive and alone and eating chunks of her every day and never letting her go.

But Ooni was already dead, wasn’t she? There was no way out of this weird little chamber, no exit, no door, no route away from Yolanda and Cantrelle and whatever other dregs of the Sisterhood had survived. And they had found her, they had found her at last. It was as if Elpida and Telokopolis and the return of her beloved Leuca had been nothing but a dream. What horrible irony, that they who had been hunted with so much effort had now been found by accident. And she who had ached to find them and slay them and present their heads to Elpida, they had found her instead, wounded and cut off, behind the lines.

Ooni strangled a treacherous laugh, swallowing so hard that her throat hurt, biting her lips and cheeks, tasting her own hot blood. Tears were leaking from her eyes, screwed shut in hopes the world would end without her. She couldn’t breathe, there was a weight on her chest. She was dead, dead, dead, after all this, she was still dead, still nothing. She was back in the same pit that Elpida had saved her from, sunk to her chin, about to drown.

She was not a Death’s Head anymore, she knew that. She had accepted Telokopolis.

But she was still prey.

The voices of her former Sisters floated out of the dark, loud enough to hear over the distant storm-static beyond the tomb. They were still on the opposite side of the room for now, where they had emerged from the wall.

“This chamber’s sealed,” one of them said, slightly out of breath. “No ways in or out. No local movement. I think we’re clear. Fucking hell, that was close. That thing was almost on top of us.”

Cerybe, perhaps? Yes, Ooni recognised her voice. Cerybe had always been alright. Not too dangerous to be alone with. Perhaps Ooni could negotiate? Maybe none of the really monstrous Sisters had survived, only Yolanda herself, and Cantrelle. Perhaps all their real power was gone, perhaps the Sisterhood was only present in body, not in spirit?

“Pause here,” somebody said — muffled, facing the wrong way. Ooni strained, but she couldn’t tell who. Maybe Teuta? Or Narulue? “Get our bearings. Make a plan. Boss, Yola, orders?”

“Sealed or not, it doesn’t fucking matter!” Cantrelle spat. Ooni flinched, then swallowed a whimper of fear — had her armour scraped against the floor, or the glass? No, Cantrelle was still going. Her voice sounded scratchy and rough; Elpida had strangled her unconscious when they’d first met, but had Cantrelle’s wounds still not healed, after all those weeks? “We have no way of stopping that degenerate protoplasm. Except running. Running, running, running! They have us running and hiding like fucking rats! Us!”

There was a sound of metal against metal, Cantrelle punching something, or hitting the wall. Ooni held onto her flinch that time. Silence, stillness, nothingness. She was nothing, she was already dead, she was a month-old corpse filled with rainwater and worms. She tried to become one with the storm, just background noise, not really there.

Another voice spoke up. Ooni recognised it as Halima, another minor Sister, of little importance. “Cantrelle, for fuck’s sake. Yolanda needs to think, let her think—”

“Fuck you!” Cantrelle screeched. There was another thump, then a grunt. Had Cantrelle cuffed Halima over the head? “Fuck you, you snivelling worm. You do not speak out of turn again, or next time it’ll be a bullet. And fuck Yolanda, too. It’s her fault we’re like this. You hear that, Yola? This is your fault. You’ve gotten us fucked.”

A click-buzz of helmet speakers cracked the air — powered armour. Ooni bit her lips to keep from screaming. How had they retained the suits?!

DeeGee’s voice echoed off the black glass: “Canny. Don’t talk to Yolanda like that. Nobody talks to—”

Cantrelle interrupted with a cold rasp. “I will talk to Yola however I like. And you will not presume to order me again.”

A moment of silence, filled with distant static and the howl of hurricane winds.

Bionic bio-polymer scraped against Ooni’s armour carapace. The noose around her waist tightened and tugged. An intake of breath, a soft clatter of claws against the stock of a shotgun, the wet click of lips peeling back from teeth. Ooni almost screamed. Her eyes flew open, blinded with tears, trapped between black glass and rearing shadows and the echoes of her former Sisters.

Ilyusha — wedged next to Ooni in their narrow hiding place — was starting to rise, clutching her automatic shotgun, teeth bared and ready to bite.

Ooni threw her right arm over Ilyusha, to stop her from standing up. Her bare right hand was encased in quick-drying pinkish resin now, the burning fires inside doused in undead biochemistry, but her right shoulder was still bruised so hard it moved like old wood. Ooni swallowed a scream and tried not to sob, mouth open in a silent wail.

Ilyusha hissed a whisper between her clenched teeth. “What!?”

Ooni shook her head, hard. She mouthed, barely above silence, “No, no! It’s them. The Death’s Heads. No. We can’t … we have to … we just can’t … ”

Ilyusha stared with heavy-lidded eyes; she looked exhausted. She had fought like a demon against Kuro, but now she looked barely able to stand without help. “It’s what we came here to do.”

Ooni shook her head again. “Too many. Too many.”

Ilyusha blinked heavily. She looked disappointed — disappointed in Ooni. “Don’t you wanna kill them?”

Ooni’s old self presented a hundred desperate arguments for silence and submission, but not a single one survived the fire sparked by that look and those words.

Ooni wanted to kill Yolanda.

She wanted to kill them all. Kuro, Cantrelle, every single one of the lesser sisters, for every indignity, every petty act of violence, every time she had been made to scramble for something worse than subsistence. But Yolanda most of all. The head of the snake. The voice of a demon. Once she had held Yolanda in awe and loyalty, but those had been born of terror, and the need to cling to the skirts of the hierarchy which Yolanda represented.

More importantly, she wanted to kill them to protect Telokopolis, Elpida, Pheiri, all the others, Ilyusha at her side right now, Leuca back there with the rest. Even the ones who saw her with contempt and would never trust her, she wanted to protect them too. Even the worst attitudes within Elpida’s new cadre, in the bosom of Telokopolis, were kind and welcoming when compared to the best that the Sisterhood had to offer.

Ooni’s fear curdled and soured. She transmuted it into a clean and focused hatred.

She hated Yolanda. She hated the Death’s Heads.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I do.”

Ilyusha grinned. She started to move again, but Ooni kept her arm in place. She would never have dared restrain Ilyusha before, but she didn’t want Illy to get killed.

“Wait, wait,” Ooni mouthed. “We need intel. Need to know how many. Need a plan. Wait a second. P-please?”

Ilyusha hissed, then reluctantly subsided.

The Death’s Heads were still arguing.

“Cantrelle has the right to question my decisions,” Yolanda was saying. “Please, Sisters, followers, friends, loyal to the last, please calm yourselves. There is no need for this division, not in the face of the foe so close to our heels. We are sealed in this room for now, but we do not know when the arch-degenerate will come upon us again. We must remain ready to flee.”

Ooni frowned in disbelief.

That was Yola’s voice, impossible to mistake — the sickly-sweet honey over iron-hard resolution, purring and wet, lips clicking on consonants. Ooni’s guts clenched at the sound, her skin breaking out in cold sweat. The tone, the word choice, it was all familiar enough. But the Yolanda Ooni had known would never say something like that.

It was never acceptable for anybody to openly question the leader and prophet and light of the Sisterhood. Everybody knew things must be different in private, especially between Yola and Kuro, and presumably between the others that Yolanda spoke to alone. But out in the open, in front of the lower orders? Never. The Yolanda Ooni had known would have implied disloyalty without giving any specific orders, then allowed the Sisters to take matters into their own hands, either there and then, or later, in the dark, away from witnesses. The Yolanda of Ooni’s memories spoke with an almost irresistible logic despite the evil of her guidance; this Yola here and now sounded limp and hesitant, as if on the cusp of halting with every other word.

The Sisterhood of the Skull had never enjoyed unity of purpose or clarity of direction. Yolanda had always been in charge, ultimate and unquestionable, but beneath her was an ever-changing hierarchy in which every Sister jealously guarded her own position. To slip too far down the invisible order would invite internal predation. Vulnerability could mean death, or at the very least losing chunks of oneself to whoever had the strength to take what they wanted. When Ooni had been one of them, she had accepted that as the natural way, the only way to thrive in this undead afterlife, better than being one of the bottom feeders huddling naked against the concrete, fighting over a single mouthful of carrion.

Now Ooni knew better; though the worm of the Death’s Heads still lurked in her heart, she knew it was wrong. She knew that comradeship would overcome the alternative. This ceaseless internal competition would only erode and destroy.

And now Yolanda herself and Cantrelle were openly arguing. Was Cantrelle trying to take over? Was this the end of the Sisterhood?

Ooni grasped that straw; perhaps the internal conflict would give her an opening, though she couldn’t yet figure out how, but she knew she could do it. She had been chosen by Elpida, guided by the hand of Telokopolis, and had driven off Kuro at Ilyusha’s side! She wasn’t some snivelling coward anymore, ducking her head and eyeing the shadows for the claws of her own so-called Sisters. If she was going to die — and that seemed likely — she would go out by slaughtering the foes of Telokopolis.

A few grumbles followed Yolanda’s words, clicks of acknowledgement, and a raspy snort of contempt from Cantrelle. Ooni tried to count and identify the voices. More than six? Eight? Ten? She heard the overlapping crackle-pop of at least two suit-mounted speaker systems. One of them must be DeeGee, she’d heard that voice earlier. Had Yazhu survived as well? That would make sense, they were the most heavily armoured pair in the Sisterhood, with the exception of Kuro.

Two suits of powered armour. Cantrelle and Yolanda. At least four Sisters. How many others? Three? Seven? Ten? Bad odds.

Ooni needed line of sight, but that was impossible without revealing herself. The Death’s Heads were on the far side of the room, behind two dozen rows of black glass blocks. The room was bisected by two pathways, which formed a wide junction in the middle. There was also an open space around the perimeter of the room, but no way to approach the Death’s Heads from a blind angle.

She glanced up and around, at the shadowy reflections moving across the black glass. A constellation of actinic lights twinkled inside, reflected and filtered through hundreds of obsidian surfaces. Ooni moved her head to the right, then the left, trying to catch sight of the other side of the room in the kaleidoscope of shadows. Even if all she could see were blurred outlines and silhouettes, that would give her something to go on.

She gestured to Ilyusha, pointing leftward; if she moved a little, she might get a better view of the ghostly reflections. Ilyusha nodded and unwrapped her tail from around Ooni’s waist. The bionic limb made a gentle scraping sound against the plates of Ooni’s armour carapace as it slithered to the floor, but the Sisters were arguing too loudly to notice.

“Ready to flee?!” Cantrelle spat. “We’re not fleeing, we’re playing into the hands of a fucking Necromancer! And you know it! You all know it! We all saw the same thing, we all saw—”

“Cantrelle, shit, shut the fuck up!” That was Doriji. Ooni was surprised. Doriji was practically a bottom-feeder, little higher than Ooni herself. For her to speak to Cantrelle like that, something had gone terribly wrong. “Yolanda says it wasn’t—”

“Yolanda is fucking wrong!” Cantrelle screeched. “You can’t fucking see it?! You believe in ghosts, you—”

“Now now,” Yolanda purred — though there was a tremor in her voice. “It was not a Necromancer. I would never accept instruction from such a vile thing, opposed to everything we believe in. It was a ghost, a ghost of my own dear mother. Why is that so hard to believe? We are dredged from the seas of time, why not a ghost? And she has delivered us from the degenerate and the traitor, from the foolishness of the untested forms of life, from those who have rejected their basic humanity. Has she not? We stand here because of that. Would a Necromancer have done such a thing? I think not.”

A ghost? So the ghosts had appeared to the Death’s Heads too, just as they had to Kuro and Ooni. Was that how the Sisterhood had learned to manipulate the walls of the tomb?

But Kuro had manipulated the black tomb-metal via magnetic field effectors in her powered armour. Did the others also have similar devices? Ooni wasn’t sure. Kuro keeping a secret like that from everybody seemed pretty reasonable. But everyone with powered armour had similar devices? It didn’t add up.

Ooni crept slowly leftward, between the rows of black glass blocks, until reflected shadows became fuzzy outlines. She couldn’t see any real reflection — the room was too dark for that — merely rough shapes where standing figures blocked the twinkling inner lights inside the glass. Ooni counted them by the absences they left, making educated guesses where the outlines blurred into one another.

Twelve people.

Maybe a couple less, but Ooni couldn’t be sure. She bit her bottom lip, trying not to cringe with the return of her fear. Twelve! Two had suits of powered armour, big and bulky. Yolanda’s shadow was a dim purple smear, so she still had her suit as well. Eight other figures stood at the far end of the chamber, gathered around the argument, laden down with body armour and guns and equipment.

No Kuro, though. Kuro had told the truth about leaving Yolanda behind and going off on her own. Ooni silently thanked Telokopolis, and Ilyusha too.

“It was a Necromancer,” Cantrelle rasped. Her voice had gone cold and sharp. “Why can’t you admit it, Yola?”

A pause, then Yolanda said, “Perhaps Cantrelle has a point. Nevertheless, we must ensure our short-term survival. We must evade this pursuit until the storm passes, and then we will be given a free hand—”

“Free hand?! Given!?” Cantrelle exploded. “Given by whom? By whom, Yola? You cheating fucking whore, you can’t help yourself, can you—”

“Hey, hey, Canny!”

“Shit, what the fuck—”

“Boss, boss, back up, boss—”

A short scuffle ensued, with insults and fists and metal clattering against metal. Ooni braced herself for the sound of gunfire. Perhaps this problem would thin itself out; the Sisterhood had fought itself enough times before, in quick little blood-letting sessions of cannibalistic violence.

But the fight broke off after only a few moments, with no gunfire or screaming. Somebody was hissing with pain, but that was all.

“Alright, alright!” Cantrelle was shouting, which made her throat sound like shattered gravel. “We focus on survival. Then once we’re out of here, we’re going to have … a talk.”

“A talk, yes,” Yolanda echoed. “I think that would be healthy.”

Ooni was baffled. This conversation was unlike anything she had ever heard in the Sisterhood before. Yolanda’s position meant nothing. Cantrelle should be lying dead on the floor. That word — ‘whore’ — it made no sense. Instead they were arguing out loud, with no concern for the dignity of their remaining leadership. They weren’t bothering with private comms — though Ooni would wager a mouthful of meat that unheard personal conversations were crackling back and forth. They hadn’t even swept the room.

After they had sent the suicide bomber to Pheiri, Ooni had imagined the remnants of the Death’s Heads must be working in much the same way they always had. A forced suicide bombing seemed their style, something Yolanda would have dreamed up. She had expected the Sisterhood to be reduced, disarmed, and fleeing, of course. But not broken, not like this.

Savage pleasure fought with strange nostalgia in Ooni’s breast. Perhaps this was the truth beneath the Sisterhood all along. If there were only two Sisters left in the world, would one kill the other, and then turn her gun on herself? Perhaps this was always the eventual fate of the Death’s Heads.

The world — even a world of ashes and death — would be better off with them gone for good, even if this was just one tiny branch of a horrible weed that kept regrowing.

This was the opening. If Ooni let it slip away, she might never get another chance, never be within range of Yola again. As soon as they moved away from that corner, one of her former Sisters might spot the gauntlet and helmet that Ooni had left in the middle of the central passageway, between the blocks of black glass. Then they would be alert, the element of surprise worth so much less.

Ooni needed a plan. What would Elpida do?

Elpida would not be shaking inside her body armour, nor would her heart be beating so loudly that she feared her foes might hear it, nor would she be wiping away thick rat-tails of hair stuck to her face with cold sweat. Elpida would focus on what really mattered, without hesitation. She would save her comrades. She would pull them out. She would have the right answer, the right moves, as if she’d been born to provide them.

Ooni wasn’t Elpida. There was no way out of this chamber, no exits, no way to get the door open. Two against twelve, with three of those twelve in powered armour? Impossible odds, even if Ilyusha had been fighting fit and on her feet. Ooni chewed her bottom lip; the Death’s Heads were sounding off about supplies, telling each other what they had left, but it didn’t matter how low they were on bullets, Ooni wasn’t enough all by herself. Ilyusha’s shotgun had more stopping power, that was true, but even if Ooni could execute a perfect ambush, she would only be able to take down one, perhaps two Sisters at most, before her own death. She needed something that would deal with them all at once.

Grenades?

The grenades!

Ooni fumbled with the side-pouch of her armour carapace, trying to open it silently; she had to reach around with her left hand, now that her right was encased in a thin layer of Ilyusha’s blood-pink bio-resin. She stuck her left hand inside the pouch. Yes, there they were, three dense, smooth, heavy little spheres, taken from Pheiri’s stores when she and the others had originally set out on this mission. Kuro had taken them from Ooni earlier, along with her submachine gun and sidearm, but Ooni had grabbed them off the table when she and Ilyusha had escaped that ferromagnetic prison.

Three grenades. Anti-personnel fragmentation, not much use against powered armour. But these would even the odds. And in the confusion after they went off, perhaps Ooni or Ilyusha could mop up whatever was left.

Or Ooni could ambush them just right, and shove a grenade down Yolanda’s throat. If only Ooni could guarantee that she’d live long enough to see the blast go off.

She almost laughed, hate and fear swirling together into something new, hot and urgent and angry. Yolanda had survived one bomb-throwing already. How strange, that Ooni should be in position for another. The first had been an over-clocked plasma rifle, more flash and fire than real damage. Ooni wanted to stick around to see the explosion this time, and confirm that Yola was dead.

Ooni shuffled back to the right, close up against Ilyusha. She whispered directly into Ilyusha’s ear.

“Twelve of them. Three in powered armour. Yolanda and Cantrelle.” She swallowed, then said: “I have a plan.”

Ilyusha watched in sullen surprise as Ooni leaned back and extracted one of the grenades from her pouch. “I have three,” she whispered. “I’m going to get close, then roll the grenades at them from either side, pin them between the detonations. It won’t kill them all, but … it’ll fuck them up.”

Ilyusha bared her teeth. “Me too.”

Ooni shook her head. “You can barely walk,” she whispered. “Stay here. If they think it’s just me, then—”

“Fuck no,” Ilyusha growled.

Ooni winced, but the Death’s Heads didn’t break off their chatter; the distant static of the hurricane beyond the tomb was enough to drown out Ilyusha’s frustration.

Ooni shook her head again. “I’m not planning on dying. I promise. You can’t walk and you can’t get close without making too much noise. I’ll use two grenades. Take out as many as I can. Then we can ambush the survivors. But … stay here. Please. I … I saved you once, you have to live.”

Ilyusha pulled her lips back in a silent snarl, but she nodded. She stuck out a hand. “Gimme one. I’ll follow up. Make ‘em think you’re somewhere else.” She patted her shotgun. “Then with this.”

“Sure. Yes. Good plan.”

Ooni gave Ilyusha one of the three grenades. Ilyusha closed her bionic fingers around the explosive egg, then grinned, showing all her teeth. They briefly discussed which side of the room Ooni would be on, and when she would throw the grenades, so that Ilyusha wouldn’t accidentally catch her with the third. Then Ooni handed Ilyusha the spare comms headset.

“Private channel, short range,” Ooni whispered. “Just in case. Keep it silent for now.”

Ilyusha dragged the comms headset on, then flashed a thumbs up.

Ooni made sure her submachine gun was strapped tight to her left side, so it wouldn’t click or rattle as she moved. She transferred the two grenades from her right pouch to her left; her right hand was totally useless now, dead weight inside the sheen of resin. The pain still throbbed deep inside her flesh, and from the stiffening bruises in her right shoulder, but it no longer burned, no longer made her weep. She was clear-headed enough for this.

She was about to turn away and creep out of cover when Ilyusha grabbed her by the chin. Red-black bionic fingers closed around her cheeks and drew her around, to face Ilyusha’s flat grey eyes.

It wasn’t Ilyusha. It was Noyabrina again. She wasn’t terrified now — she was murderous, cold and focused and full of hate.

“Don’t die,” Noyabrina hissed.

“I’m not—”

“Liar. You’re a reptile monster elevated by chance. But you’re worth a hundred of them. Don’t die. That’s an order. Or a command. Or whatever the fuck is it you need. You’re not fucking allowed. You belong to the commander.”

“To— to Telokopolis.”

“Whatever.”

Noyabrina let go of Ooni’s chin, and she was Ilyusha again. Illy fingered her shotgun and cracked a grin. “Let’s go kill some snakes,” she whispered.

Ooni swallowed, nodded with all her heart, and crept from her hiding place.

Out in the open pathway between the rows of black glass, Ooni’s skin rose in a wave of goosebumps, her heart climbed into her mouth, and she broke out in freezing sweat. She tried her best not to shiver and shake. She could no longer see the shifting shadows of her former Sisters in the reflections, but she spotted the side of a leg and the curve of an elbow at the end of the path. One step back and whoever that was would spot her, right out in the open.

She scurried across the path in a crouch-walk and slipped into the forest of black glass monoliths on the opposite side, trying to ignore the pain in her right hand and the deep throb in her shoulder, pulsing in time with her racing heartbeat. She held her breath — easy for a revenant — and listened.

“—we are being led to the slaughter by the machinations of some bullshit we don’t even understand,” Cantrelle was saying. “We should stay here until the storm is gone.”

Somebody sighed loudly. “Wish Kuro hadn’t run off. She’d deal with this.”

That was Elodie? Elodie had survived the Sisterhood’s near-destruction? Ooni shivered with involuntary disgust. Elodie was one of the worst, always the first to beeline toward anyone who had lost their position or lost a fight, anybody vulnerable. Ooni had watched Elodie murder and eat at least three Sisters, people with no friends or connections or personal strength left to draw on.

“Don’t say that name again,” Cantrelle spat. “She’s a traitor. Barely better than an apostate now. If she comes back—”

Yolanda interrupted. “If Kuro returns, we will welcome her with open arms. She is our sister.”

Silence for a heartbeat. Then Cantrelle started shouting, mostly at Yola, mostly about Kuro, peppering her tirade with sexual insults, accusing Yolanda of things Ooni had never considered. Another scuffle broke out, followed by a grunt, and a scream of pain. With any luck, one of them would start shooting, and Ooni could roll the grenades in there, right between their feet.

She broke from cover again, then ducked into the next row of black glass, then again, and again, and again, working her forward to the planned position. She scurried quickly past the pathway junction in the middle of the room, glancing to her right; she made eye contact with the interface zombie, upright and silent in the resurrection coffin, staring forward—

The eyes flickered to follow her.

Ooni almost stumbled in surprise. She slipped into the next row of black glass blocks, heart hammering, pulse a blinding throb inside her head. Had she made a sound? Had she—

“Hey! Hey, hey!” a voice rose above the scuffle — close now. Ooni stiffened with fear, but the voice didn’t seem alert, just irritated. Elodie again. “Hey, everyone shut up! Shut up!”

“What? What!?” DeeGee’s voice, crackling from inside her armour.

“Elodie, speak,” Yolanda said. She sounded out of breath. Ooni had never heard Yolanda out of breath; such a thing didn’t seem possible.

Ooni drew the first grenade from her pouch. Had one of them spotted her at the last second? Should she throw now? Was it now or never or—

“There’s … something on the ground … ” Elodie said. “One sec.”

Ooni closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip. The helmet and the glove, the ones she’d left in the middle of the junction. She’d known this would happen.

Before Ooni could react, a dark figure jogged right past her hiding place, a shaggy outline of combat gear and bionics. The footsteps halted right in the middle of the room, in the junction.

Silence.

Ooni’s blood went cold. The Sisterhood had gone to comms. Ooni had seconds before the group split up and spread out. She eased to her left and spotted Elodie’s back right in the middle of the junction — a lean cord of muscle wrapped in overlapping armour plates. She was lifting Ooni’s ruined helmet in one hand.

Ooni jabbed at her own comms headset. She needed to know what they were saying — then she winced, because the Sisterhood’s comms net was encrypted. Stupid, stupid!

Her opening was slipping away. She needed shock and surprise, and every pair of eyes elsewhere, for just long enough to roll those grenades either side of the pack.

She needed to confuse them. What would Elpida do!? What would—

No. What would Ooni do?

Ooni screwed her eyes shut, pressed her back against the black glass, and used her teeth to pull the pin on the first grenade. She held it tight in her left fist, spat out the metal pin, and filled her lungs. She summoned the oldest and deepest lie she knew, one her former Sisters could not resist.

“Death to all degenerates!” she howled.

Then she leaned to her right and hurled the first grenade down the centre of the walkway.

She was up and scrambling to her left before the explosive had rolled to a stop, yanking the other grenade from her pouch. A half-second of confused shouts echoed from the end of the chamber — “Who’s that?! Report, who was that—” “—another ghost, it’s another one of them—” “—Kuro, that’s Kuro, she’s hiding—” “—corpse-rapist filth again, it’s one of them, it’s one of—”

Ooni hit the floor with a crash, rolling out from the other end of the row of black glass monoliths. She hit her shoulder on the way down; the pain was like a spiked steel ball tearing through her bones and chest, grinding a wall of glass into her lungs.

She turned the scream of pain into another false battle-cry. “Long live the Sisterhood of the Skull!”

Ooni ripped the pin from the second grenade and rolled it down the open passageway.

Somewhere behind her, Ilyusha opened up with her shotgun — boom!-boom!-boom! — blasting through armour and flesh and whooping at the top of her lungs.

Somebody came around the corner ahead as the grenade bounced and rolled, somebody in powered armour. Yazhu, plasma rifle swinging upward in her gauntlets, the optic trench in her helmet locking onto Ooni with a crackle of red light. The grenade went straight between her armoured feet, bounced off the wall, and came to rest against Yazhu’s heel.

Ooni stared into the barrel of the plasma rifle, at the pinprick of purple light. She couldn’t get up, the pain was so bad she could only slump against the black glass. Yazhu’s finger tightened on the trigger.

Ooni felt an expression rip across her face, one hadn’t made in years. A grin, all teeth.

“Fuck you, death cultist,” she said. “And don’t come back.”

“Grenade!” somebody shouted.

The world detonated.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Always good to have a skill to fall back on, right? Ooni’s just so happens to be sneaking around and then blowing shit up. This is twice now she’s surprised her former ‘comrades’ with a sneakily delivered explosive present! Twice might be coincidence. Can our Ooni go for the hat-trick!? I sure hope so. Don’t die, zombie girl.

Behind the scenes, the arc has, as fully expected, expanded a bit beyond my original estimates. At first I was thinking 5 chapters, but now, probably 6? Maaaybe 7? We’ll see! As always, I can never be sure what exactly the zombie girls will do as I urge them from narrative landmark A to narrative landmark B. Except in this case that they’re gonna blow shit up.

Also also also, I have some more art, once again from the discord server! This week we have quite a treat: a Necroepilogos-themed tarot card, ‘The High Priestess‘, depicting the fight between Thirteen Arcadia and the Golden Diamond, with Atyle riding Pheiri in the foreground, (by Livia!) This is incredible! It’s certainly one of the most popular scenes of the story so far, and it’s amazing to see fanart of it!

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

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

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!

And thank you, dear readers! Thank you for being here and reading my little story! None of this would be real without all of you, the audience. The nanomachinery requires that special alchemy from beyond the bounds of the story, and that’s where you come in. I have so much more tale to tell, beyond the walls of the tomb. Until next chapter! Seeya then!

Content Warnings

Chronic pain
Discussion of torture
Burn wounds

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

After perhaps an hour of searching the mysterious chamber to which they had been led, Ooni accepted that she and Ilyusha were stuck.

Not trapped — stuck. The distinction was important.

It had to be, or else Ooni would go mad.

After Ooni had helped Ilyusha to limp over the threshold, the door of black tomb-metal had flowed shut behind them, sealing them inside. Even if Kuro had figured out how to bypass the automatic gun emplacements in the corridor outside, it seemed that the tomb itself — or somebody with equal control of the ferromagnetic substrate — had barred Kuro’s pursuit.

Ooni and Ilyusha had both fallen silent in the sudden still dark, sagging against each other for support, breathing hard though their undead biology didn’t need to breathe at all. Ilyusha had tightened her bionic tail around Ooni’s waist, scraping against the plates of armour carapace, dead weight dragging on Ooni’s left arm. Ooni had struggled to keep a grip on her submachine gun, and to keep her eyes from misting with tears. Her right shoulder still throbbed with slow waves of pain, stiff with bruising, difficult to move. Her right hand felt like it was on fire inside her carapace gauntlet, raw and bloody and burned.

But she didn’t dare lower her weapon, let alone peel the gauntlet off. Ilyusha kept her weapon ready as well — heavy shotgun wedged against her hip, aimed out into the shadow-filled nooks and jagged shapes of the chamber.

They listened to the silence, waiting for Kuro to reappear. Surely she would figure out a way into this room, sooner or later?

Minutes trickled by. Sweat ran down Ooni’s forehead and into her eyes. The roar of the hurricane was muffled beyond so many layers of stone and metal, a distant static hum at the edge of hearing. Ilyusha’s breath roughened into a heavy wheeze. The pain in Ooni’s right hand built to a single unending note of fire-bright agony. She pressed her lips together, then bit the inside of her cheeks, to hold back a whimper.

Eventually Ilyusha grunted to clear her throat, then rasped, “Bitch ain’t coming. You think?”

Ooni tried to speak, pushing past the pain. “I … y-yes. It’s been … I don’t know how long, but … I don’t think she can get in.”

Ilyusha let the muzzle of her shotgun droop. She sagged lower, pulling on Ooni’s waist. “Lemme sit. Put me down.”

Ooni didn’t have the strength to argue. “At least … away from the door?”

“Unnh. Whatev’.”

Ooni helped Ilyusha deeper into the darkened chamber. They staggered and limped between regular rows of blocks made from black glass, with tiny lights winking and stuttering inside. On the walls, silvered screens scrolled with reams of numbers and strings of letters. Pipes and tubes and ducts coiled overhead, vanishing into the ceiling.

A single resurrection coffin faced the door into the chamber, standing upright on one end. The wired-up half-corpse inside it neither moved nor spoke, just stared straight ahead, but Ooni couldn’t shake the sensation that it — her? it was just an interface — was watching. Ilyusha huffed and scowled at it, but her anger quickly trailed off.

They reached what felt like the middle of the room, a junction of two open pathways between the black glass machines, one which ran from the door to the resurrection coffin, and the other which ran the length of the space. Ooni dragged Ilyusha a few more steps, into the left-hand pathway, so she would be out of sight of the door, in case Kuro somehow got past the guns.

She lowered Ilyusha to the floor. Illy sat down hard, eyelids heavy, bionic legs scraping across the metal, shotgun across her lap. Her tail slithered away from Ooni’s waist and slapped down with an ear-splitting crack. Ooni tried to prop her against one of the black glass blocks, but Ilyusha grumbled and growled, then shoved her away, weak but insistent. Ilyusha lay down on her back, bionic tail coiling limp at her side, legs and arms spread out. She panted softly, lead-coloured eyes staring at the ceiling.

“Ilyusha?” Ooni whispered. Her voice didn’t echo, absorbed by some property of the black glass all around. “Please, Ilyusha, please try to stay awake, p-please don’t … please?”

Ooni was afraid that Ilyusha was about to slip into unconsciousness, the same way she had when Ooni had reattached her bionic limbs. Perhaps that final burst of speed and power during the melee with Kuro had depleted some inherent energy in her bionic parts. Ooni had not been able to carry her then, and would be even less capable now. If this chamber proved unsafe, and Ilyusha was out cold, Ooni would not be able to help her.

“Ilyusha … I-Illy—”

Illy snorted. She half-rolled her eyes, but couldn’t quite get there. Her upper lip curled with disgust. “Won’t sleep. Can’t sleep. Hurt too fuckin’ much. Lemme lie here. Gotta … preserve, in case that bitch cunt shit-eater comes back.” She rolled her eyes toward Ooni; they were glassy with exhaustion. “M’fine. You need it too. Sit. Ain’t goin’ anywhere anyway. Wait for Elpi. Wait for the others. Unnnnh.”

Ooni found that instruction almost impossible to follow.

She sat down next to Ilyusha for a while, unlooping the strap of her submachine gun from her right arm and unclipping the busted carapace helmet from her waist. She wasn’t sure why she was still carrying the helmet; the forehead was caved in, the visor smashed, the built-in comms uplink trashed. She fiddled with the standalone comms headset again, trying to reconnect to Pheiri’s uplink, whispering into the mic-bead. She tried the spare for Ilyusha as well. Nothing but static.

Rest was out of the question. Ooni’s senses were tightened to breaking point, listening to the distant haze of the storm for any sound out of place, any tell-tale click of metal boots, any sign that Kuro had entered the room via some unseen vector. The encounter with the ghost of her long-lost sister still echoed inside Ooni’s head, too much for her to process while hunted in the dark.

And then there was the voice which had whispered to her — the voice which had performed miracles to save her.

But this will burn you. I am sorry, it had said.

Ooni tried her best not to resent that burn, even though it had saved both her and Ilyusha. When that concept had been fed to her, she had thought it was a metaphor, but it had turned out to be terribly real.

The pain in her right hand was so bad that she couldn’t think, let alone close her eyes and get comfortable. Sitting still for even a few minutes was torture; as the adrenaline ebbed away, and the silence settled in, and the stiffness in her shoulder steadied into an all-too-familiar throb of deep bruises, the real pain rose higher and higher in a wave that threatened to never break. The bright burning agony in her hand blazed all the hotter as the other flames died away.

She tried to take deep breaths. She raked her dark hair back from her scalp, out of her sweat-soaked face. She pictured Leuca in her mind. None of it helped. The pain kept going and going and going and her hand was going to fall off and melt out from beneath her gauntlet and where was the voice, where was the voice that had spoken to her and promised help but left her with this burning and burning and burning and—

She had to get up, move around, occupy herself.

Ooni eased back to her feet and discovered she was shaking all over, covered in cold sweat. She looped her submachine gun over her left shoulder, biting back a sob. She left the helmet on the floor, next to Ilyusha.

“Illy … Ilyusha, I’m just going to … ah … to explore the room. I promise I won’t touch anything. Maybe there’s another route we can take, a route away from … away from Kuro. Just gotta … need to … walk around. Think. Stay … mobile. Yes.”

Ilyusha grunted, eyes half-lidded, gritting her teeth at the ceiling. Ooni prayed to Telokopolis that Illy would stay awake.

Ooni set out on a systematic exploration of the chamber. It wasn’t as large as it had seemed from the shadows, perhaps the same size as the tomb’s armoury, small enough to cross in a few seconds of brisk walk, large enough for a private conversation without whispers. The ceiling was high, presumably for all the equipment which sprouted from the floor and the pipes which bulged from above. The machines cast deep shadows, studded by tiny winking lights that provided almost no real illumination. Without undead low-light vision, the room would be impossible to navigate, nothing but shadows and glass.

Ooni walked from one end to the other, then back again, then around the perimeter of the space. She made sure to catch sight of Ilyusha on each pass, still sprawled on the floor, half-conscious and staring at the ceiling. She confirmed there were no other ways in or out, no hidden apertures or side-passages.

Ooni tried not to stumble as she walked, clutching her right forearm across her belly with her left hand. Several times she had to pause and take deep, shuddering breaths, or shake her head from side to side, trying to swallow her whimpering. Her right hand burned and burned and burned and burned—

She was too afraid to sit back down, too afraid to cry out. If she did that, Ilyusha might notice, and then Ooni would be forced to look at what was happening inside her gauntlet.

She distracted herself with another, less pressing truth. This place reminded her of a resurrection chamber.

The monoliths of black glass, lit from within by tiny lights — she had only ever seen their like in one place before, though these ones were fewer in number than the similar machines found in a resurrection chamber. The walls were covered in screens of liquid metal, almost impossible to make out in the shadows; they scrolled through nonsense text, numbers and figures and strings of machine-language, like she had sometimes seen on the screens inside Pheiri’s cockpit. The ceiling was encrusted with pipes, coils and loops and junctions vanishing into the black metal in a jumble of ducts and tubes — just like the giant pipework that delivered the tomb’s main payload of raw blue nanomachines to the resurrection coffins, to kindle fresh zombies into new flesh.

She stared into several of the black glass blocks, hoping that the lights would reveal some secret meaning. She staggered over to the walls, peering at the little metal screens with their silvery flow, frowning as she tried to pick out even one word in a hundred. She walked back to the door where she and Ilyusha had entered, and found that it didn’t have any seams where it met the walls.

Surely she and Ilyusha had not been sent here simply to wait for Kuro to find them again? Surely there was some purpose?

Ooni knew she was being irresponsible. She should stay by Ilyusha’s side, in case Illy needed help. What if Kuro came through a wall while Ooni was blundering around, choking on half-swallowed sobs of pain? Ooni could handle her firearm with her left hand, but there was no way she could shoot straight, not addled as she was.

Why did her hand burn like this? What had that voice done to her?

Eventually Ooni stumbled to a halt before the only feature of the shadowy room she had not yet investigated — the open resurrection coffin which faced the door.

It was the exact same set-up as she’d seen inside the gravekeeper’s chamber. The resurrection coffin was propped up one end, so the interface-corpse inside was almost ‘standing’ upright, or would have been, if not for the lack of legs. The zombie was just a torso and a head, with long, lank, once-blonde hair stuck to bare shoulders, her flesh wired into the resurrection coffin with pipes and tubes and bundles of fibre, pinned in place with massive spikes beneath her collarbone. She looked middle-aged, with a strange greenish skin colour that Ooni had never seen before. Her eyes were the brown of old rust.

The interface stared straight ahead, unblinking, unbreathing, silent.

“Hey,” Ooni croaked. “Hey. Grave … gravekeeper? Did you … did you save us? Was that you?”

Nothing. If this was an interface, then either it wasn’t hooked up, or the gravekeeper didn’t care.

Ooni was certain that she and Ilyusha had been led here for a reason — by the voice in Ooni’s head, and by the words of her long-lost sister. If only for refuge, they had been led here for a reason. This could not be a trap, it couldn’t, it just couldn’t.

Maybe—

Maybe it was the pipes!?

Ooni started to shake as that thought took form; saliva gathered in her mouth and threatened to spill down her chin. Her right hand spasmed as she reached for her submachine gun and closed on empty air. She almost cried out at the burning pain deep in her flesh, her raw skin grinding against the unprotected inside of the gauntlet. She’d switched the gun to her left, but she couldn’t think.

Ooni staggered back over to Ilyusha. She did her best to form words.

“Il— Ilyusha. Pipes … in the ceiling. I’m going to … discharge my gun. Shoot them. Maybe … maybe there’s blue?”

Ilyusha’s eyes were fully open now, wide and grey and cold, her face without expression.

“Okay,” said Ilyusha.

Ooni stepped away so that she would not risk hitting Ilyusha with a ricochet. She aimed her submachine gun at the ceiling with her left hand, but her aim was shaky and unsteady. She tried to use her right hand to brace the forward grip, but she could barely uncurl her fingers without screaming. She bit back a sob and gritted her teeth, then yanked the trigger. The weapon jumped and kicked, almost leaping from her grip. Bullets slammed against the ceiling, bits of metal rained from the impacts. She sprayed along the pipework, once, then twice, until she was certain she’d punched a hole in several of them.

She scurried back to the centre of the room. Ilyusha was sitting up now, cold grey eyes fixed on Ooni, hunched forward over the shotgun flat across her lap. Ooni grabbed her broken helmet and rushed back to where she’d shot the ceiling.

She held out the helmet to collect droplets of raw blue. She held it out left, then right. She stumbled forward, to where more of her bullets had struck.

Only shadows pooled in her broken helmet. There was no raw blue in the pipes. There was nothing.

Ooni let out a broken sob. She trudged back to the centre of the room, back to Ilyusha, heaving with thin, reedy, painful breaths. She cast her empty helmet onto the floor, then slumped against the nearest of the black glass blocks. She slid down it until she crumpled into a sitting position, clutching her right arm across her belly. She squeezed her eyes shut and hissed through her teeth.

“Unnhhhh … unnnnn … oh … ffffuck it hurts. It hurts.” She started to sob. “Ahhhh. Ahhh … ”

Ooni trailed off. She couldn’t even moan properly.

She’d felt such power only a short while ago. A voice in her head had performed miracles to protect her, and she had accepted the sins of the past which she had visited on a sister she didn’t recall. That had made Ooni strong in a way she’d never felt before, even when hunted by Kuro, even when cut off and alone and in terrible danger. She was graced by the unparalleled opportunity for salvation and redemption. She was guided by a voice she dared not hope was Telokopolis. She had repelled Kuro, together with Ilyusha, together with a comrade-in-arms more true than a hundred Death’s Heads!

And now she was lost in the dark, wracked by a pain she was too afraid to confront.

“T-this … this is salvation too … ” she mumbled past her dry tongue. “This is … is … ”

She couldn’t finish that either. Ooni opened her eyes and found the darkness was still there. So was Ilyusha, hunched forward, staring.

Ooni tried to smile, though the pain made it difficult. Was Ilyusha angry at her again, now the immediate danger had passed? Had Ooni done something wrong? “Don’t know how you could lie there like that,” Ooni said. She tried to keep the pain from her voice, but it was hopeless. “I-I mean, I mean, I wasn’t trying to critique you, just … amazes me. You’re amazing. I mean. S-sorry … ”

Ilyusha said nothing for a long moment, then: “One learns to cat nap whenever one can.”

A cold shiver went down Ooni’s spine. She blinked to clear her vision, then sat up straighter, staring back at the cyborg imp.

Those words didn’t sound anything like Ilyusha.

Ilyusha — or the thing that spoke through Ilyusha, with Ilyusha’s voice — said, “Don’t freak out, you idiot. I’m not a Necromancer, or any stupid shit like that. Ilyusha’s just sleeping right now. She’s in a lot of pain, so I made her go to sleep. But this is a bad situation, so I have to be awake in her place. I don’t feel the pain so keenly. That’s all.”

Ooni nodded slowly. Her throat was closing up. “ … o-okay. Are you … are you the voice that was in my head earlier—”

‘Ilyusha’ tutted. “No. I don’t know what that was either. But it wasn’t me.”

“Oh. Right then … ” Ooni tried to swallow. She couldn’t.

“I don’t really feel like explaining this to you,” said the thing inside Ilyusha. Her voice was flat ice. Her eyes were cupped by the shadows of the chamber, grey pools of liquid lead in the dark, staring at Ooni with dead affect. “Not now. Probably never. We — me and Illy — we were like this before our first death, our real death. There’s two of us in here, and it’s nothing to do with being a zombie. Tell yourself that Illy’s crazy if you want, if it makes it easier. Understand?”

Ooni tried to calm down, taking slow, deep, steady breaths. If Ilyusha had been a Necromancer all along, well, she had done nothing but serve at Elpida’s side, and she had actively helped save Ooni’s life from Kuro. If she wanted Ooni dead now, all she would need to do is tilt that shotgun in her lap by a few degrees and blast Ooni in the face. She didn’t need Necromancer tricks to win.

Ooni nodded, firm and serious, pushing through the pain. “You’re my comrade,” she said. Her mouth was bone dry. “Another daughter of Telokopolis. Whatever … whatever’s going on inside you.”

Ilyusha shrugged, then hissed at the pain in her bionic arms. She flexed her hands, staring down at the red-black bio-polymer. “Noyabrina.”

“S-sorry?”

“Noyabrina. A name. If you need to call me anything other than Ilyusha.”

“Oh. Right. Well, t-thank you, Noyabrina.”

Noyabrina snorted. She sounded so different to Ilyusha, despite using the same vocal cords and the same mouth. She didn’t sound genuinely amused, not even in the brutal, dismissive way that Ilyusha sometimes could. She sounded caustic and corroded.

“I should be the one thanking you,” she drawled. Her bionic tail curled across the floor, slowly scraping against the metal, toward Ooni’s thigh. She eased the spiked red tip from within, poked Ooni’s thigh armour, then withdrew the tip again. “But I don’t want to.”

Ooni frowned, trying to concentrate. This conversation was giving her a foothold against the burning pain in her right hand.

“Why?” she asked. “What—”

“Why thank you?” Noyabrina turned her face away from Ooni, staring at one of the black glass blocks. “Because you could have walked away and left Ilyusha behind. You could have refused to reattach her limbs. You could have used her as bait. But you didn’t. So you deserve to be thanked. She probably will, when she’s awake again.”

Ooni shook her head. “I only did the same thing anybody else should do. Anything else would be betrayal. Of … of Elpida, of Telokopolis, of everything.”

Noyabrina turned her cold grey eyes back to Ooni. The storm beyond the walls seemed to pick up for a moment, hailstones pounding in thick waves against the distant walls of black metal.

“Betrayal,” Noyabrina echoed. “You’d know a lot about that, wouldn’t you?”

Even a day earlier, Ooni’s confidence would have flat-lined under the assault of such words. Ilyusha — or Noyabrina — had an absolute right to say that, to hold that over her, to call her a traitor. She had been with the Death’s Heads for so long, had imbibed so much of their ideology, she would be paying that debt forever, not just in this resurrection, but in the next and the next and the next, until she was extinguished completely or Telokopolis was restored, or even beyond those unimaginable boundaries of time. She had betrayed Yolanda and Cantrelle, that was true, but before that she had betrayed herself, and the entire human race. Her awareness drifted back to the pain in her right hand, throbbing, burning, the flesh peeling away from the bones. She deserved this. And she would bear it.

Ooni nodded. “Yes.”

Noyabrina frowned. “Hmm?”

“If … ” Ooni had to gather herself against the pain. She let out a little heave of breath before she could carry on. “If Elpida hadn’t given me this second chance, then I would be … no, I should probably be dead. I betrayed everything. Myself. Humankind. The Gods. All of it. I know.”

Noyabrina stared for a long time. The distant static of the storm seemed to resonate with the haze of pain in Ooni’s right hand. She keened softly through her teeth. She put the rear of her skull against the black glass at her back, rolling it from side to side. She wanted to pull her own arm off—

“I won’t forgive you,” said Noyabrina.

“That’s okay,” said Ooni. “I don’t think you should.”

Noyabrina fell silent for even longer than the first time. Ooni tried to focus on her face, or the edges of the black glass blocks, but her vision was heavy with exhaustion. The pain seemed to rise and rise and rise in one long standing wave, worse every second, yet always the same, always there, burning and melting and—

“Ilyusha doesn’t hate you,” Noyabrina said.

“Ahh?” Ooni managed to focus on her face. “I’m … sorry?”

“I said Ilyusha doesn’t hate you,” Noyabrina repeated. “Not anymore. She did hate you, because of what you were, what you did. But now you’ve proven yourself, saved her, made it clear you’re not just pretending. Ilyusha is adaptable like that. She had to be. Show her that you’re really on her side, and … ” Noyabrina trailed off with a sigh. “Even you get that benefit. Even a footsoldier of the eternal enemy can be made to do good. What a shitty joke.”

Ooni wiped her eyes, full of cold tears. She nodded and tried to recover her breath. “That’s … basically what Elpida said.”

“I don’t agree with Elpida,” said Noyabrina. “I still think she should execute you. Probably Pira too. Ilyusha might not hate you, but I do.”

Ooni was speechless for a moment, staring back into those cold grey eyes set in Ilyusha’s pale face, framed by the jagged shadows of the mysterious chamber. A face from glass and darkness, like a thing from the underworld come to judge her for everything she had done.

Ooni nodded. “That’s fair. I … think that’s fair.”

Noyabrina looked away. She wrapped her bionic hands around the shotgun in her lap, but the fingers seemed slow. Her red-black bionic tail curled across the floor, limp and flat.

“Ever since you joined us,” Noyabrina said, “since Elpida brought you and Pira back, I keep asking myself this question. What if, back in life, if one of them … ”

She trailed off. Ooni waited patiently, but Noyabrina didn’t continue. She blinked at nothing, at the floor, perhaps at memories.

“One of them?” Ooni echoed eventually. If the conversation ended then she would have only the pain.

Noyabrina looked up. “I don’t remember. I’m too old, been doing this too long. One of them, one of the people who burned my home. The soldiers, the cannibals, the human-eating jaws of it all. What if one of them had defected? What if one of them had fled and come to join us in the woods? We would have killed him, of course. We would have strung him up somewhere as a warning. Left his body on a road. Cut him up bad, so the others like him would know he’d died weeping and shitting himself and … and … ”

Ooni swallowed.

Noyabrina recovered with a little shake of her head. “But let’s say we could prove he was for real. Let’s say he proved himself. Just like you. What then? Would I still have wanted him dead? Probably. But would I have killed him myself? No, not so long as he helped us kill others. But … ” Noyabrina frowned oddly, as if confused. “But when it was all over … and I assume it was over eventually, and we won, or the world would have died long before all this. When it was over, would we have tried him? Would he have been executed? He would have been one of us, right? Like you’re one of us now. One of us. Not one of them.”

Ooni nodded. She couldn’t understand the depths of Noyabrina’s — Ilyusha’s — memories. But she understood the principle. “That’s probably what I deserve.”

“It’s too good for you,” Noyabrina said. “You fight for us now.”

“Telokopolis has a place for all,” Ooni said. “Even me. This is how I can be useful. This is my place.”

Noyabrina snorted again, still unamused. “And what happens if we win?”

“Win?”

“Yeah. Win.” Noyabrina raised her cold grey eyes. Ooni felt as if she was pinned to the glass at her back by that gaze. “What if Elpida’s right? What if we rally thousands of zombies and solve the food problem? What if we find a way to beat Necromancers, and Central, or whatever the fuck it is? What if we recover the bones of Telokopolis, and stuff her soul back into the corpse, or make a new soul, whatever, whichever. What if we do it, Ooni? What if we win?”

Sitting in the dark, in the heart of a tomb, beneath the mother of all storms, with her right hand on fire, far from whatever scrap of home she had found in Pheiri, Ooni could not imagine that future.

“I … what would that even be like?” she whispered. “I can’t … ”

“Neither can I,” said Noyabrina. “But that’s not the point. Say we get there. What happens to you then? Can I kill you in your sleep? Will you let me?”

Ooni thought about that for a moment. She tried to imagine the clouds parted, but she couldn’t recall sunlight. She tried to imagine no more hunger, for anybody, but that seemed impossible.

No. Nothing was impossible. Telokopolis was forever.

“If I’ve contributed to that?” Ooni said slowly. “Then I would die happy, I think.”

Noyabrina sighed. “Yeah. Better than you deserve.” She gestured with one black-red bionic hand, claws retracted inside the fingertips. “Show me your arm.”

“E-excuse me?”

“The arm. Show it.” Noyabrina’s eyelids seemed to grow heavier. “You were hiding it from Ilyusha earlier. You don’t have the inner glove, right? Got ruined or damaged or something. Your hand’s gotten all fucked up by the inside of that suit. Show me the wounds.”

“It’s not—”

“Just fucking show it to me.”

Ooni hesitated. She had concealed the wound from Ilyusha, that was true, but it seemed that Noyabrina had not guessed the real reason. Could she be trusted? Ooni decided that didn’t matter. Ooni knew she was an instrument now — of Telokopolis, of Elpida, of the others. And Noyabrina was one of those she was meant to be an instrument for.

Ooni uncoiled her right forearm from around her belly; her shoulder was stiff as old leather, but that pain barely registered when compared with the burning inside her hand. She straightened out her fingers so she could remove the gauntlet; she failed to strangle the scream in her throat, dissolving into sobs of pain. Noyabrina just watched and waited.

Pulling on the gauntlet drew more sobs of pain from Ooni. The skin on her hand was stuck to the inside of the carapace plates with dried blood, but it seemed much worse than before, as if her flesh itself was peeling away from the bones. She got the glove off, shaking and whimpering.

Her right hand was a nightmare, as if the damage from the flames had time to sink in, to crisp the skin and cook the meat. Her knuckles and the bony parts of her wrist were raw and grazed from chafing against the inside of the gauntlet, without the protection of the inner glove, as expected. The blood had dried, then bled, then dried, then bled, over and over, forming a sticky, half-congealed crust of darkly crystallised crimson. The burned patches stood out on her olive skin, impossible to hide now — on her palm and her fingers mostly, as if she had grasped metal hot from a forge. The skin was blackened and peeling, the meat beneath crusted and scorched. The smell of cooked human flesh made her salivate, then gag with disgust. That was her own flesh, the scent of her own meat.

Noyabrina leaned forward. She took Ooni’s arm in one black-red bionic hand, below the limit of the damage.

“Burned,” she said. “How?”

“The … the voice that was in my head,” Ooni said, trying not to sob. “When it got me up, when I shot at Kuro, it said this would burn me … t-to save us … ”

Noyabrina stared at the grazes and the burns. “What do you think it was?”

“W-what?”

“The voice in your head. What do you think it was?”

Ooni shrugged. The gesture made her right shoulder throb. Noyabrina’s grip on her arm was like iron. “A … a Necromancer. Or Telokopolis. One or the other. Those are the only options. A-and then the ghost led us here, so … so … ” A sob of pain and despair broke through her efforts. “We’re trapped, aren’t we? Nobody knows where we are, and … and … and we’re gonna get left here, and—”

“Hold still,” said Noyabrina.

She brought her mouth toward Ooni’s wounded hand, opening her jaw wide. Ooni screwed her eyes shut and braced for the bite, trying not to cringe away, resisting the urge to kick at Noyabrina, to scream and thrash and wail. She knew this was the most sensible thing to do, but the act still horrified her. This was Death’s Head behaviour, eating the wounds, eating the wounded. But surely Ooni owed this, she owed it to the others, even if she was doing the right thing now. Noyabrina, Ilyusha, they both had an absolute right to her flesh and her—

Noyabrina made a gagging sound.

A moment later, Ooni felt a strange cooling sensation spread across the burned skin of her right hand. She opened her eyes.

Noyabrina was drooling a thin stream of pale red saliva onto Ooni’s hand and wrist, like mucus tainted by a pinkish froth of fresh blood. The saliva stuck like honey, cooled like ice water, and coated Ooni’s flesh where it fell. Noyabrina made another hacking, coughing sound, and the stream of fluid trickled to a halt. Then she used her other hand to gently smear the reddish goo over Ooni’s burned, grazed, aching flesh, where it dissolved the crust of blood. The pain did not go away, but the burning sensation was smothered, ebbing down to a throb of damaged flesh.

Ooni took a shuddering breath. “H-how—”

“I have bionics on the inside, too,” Noyabrina muttered. “This part will hurt. Don’t flinch.”

She extended the claws from her other bionic hand, then used the razor-sharp edges to cut away the blackened flaps of Ooni’s skin. The pain was sharp, but sudden and short, and soon soothed by the coating of reddish mucus that Noyabrina smoothed into the wounds. Noyabrina held up each flap of skin, offering it to Ooni’s lips at the end of her crimson claws. Ooni accepted, quickly eating each morsel of herself. Her own cooked flesh tasted of nothing much, just carbonised meat. The red mucus tasted like bloody snot. She could have eaten a hundred times what she had.

When she was done, Ilyusha-Noyabrina let go and sat back. “It’s just a sealant. It’ll harden in a minute or two. Nothing like raw blue. You’re still fucked up.”

Ooni nodded. She could already feel the mucus stiffening like a coating of plastic or thin rubber. Her hand didn’t burn anymore, though it still hurt very badly, and she could barely move the fingers. “Thank you. Thank you, Noyabrina. I don’t deserve—”

“Illy will be awake again soon,” said Noyabrina. “Walking won’t be … too bad. You and her need to decide how you’re going to get out of here.”

Ooni lowered her stiff hand. “Elpida will come for us.”

Noyabrina snorted. “That’s not what you said a moment ago.”

“I was … the pain was … I didn’t mean—”

“I agree with the pain,” Noyabrina said. “Elpida’s good, I trust her, but she can’t work miracles. You got through on the radio, but so what? You and Illy have to get out of here.”

“We can’t even get the door open again. How?”

“Find a way. Maybe talk to the corpse-thing over there, maybe it’ll—”

A sudden sound churned the air, like gas bubbling up from beneath liquid tar, thick and metallic.

Ooni shot to her feet, submachine gun clattering against her carapace. Noyabrina clawed herself upright as well, clinging to the lip of the nearest black glass block, shotgun clutched in her other hand.

A distant corner of the shadowy room was churning, the metal wall folding inward, the silvery screens deforming under pressure. It was like a mouth puckering inwards, about to eject some indigestible object.

“Kuro!” Ooni choked, her skin flushing with cold sweat. “The walls! She’s coming back through the walls!”

Noyabrina was wide-eyed with fear — an expression Ooni had never seen on Ilyusha’s face. Then the fear vanished, the face snarled, and Ilyusha was back.

She swung herself off the black glass block and grabbed Ooni’s good arm.

“Hide!” Ilyusha growled. “Hide hide hide!”

“What!? But she’ll see us anyway, she’s got sensors and—”

“Then we fucking ambush her, right up the cunt! Hide us, now!” Ilyusha dragged on Ooni’s arm, pulling her toward the far side of the room, away from the deforming pucker in the wall.

Ooni obeyed, stumbling deeper into the grid of black glass monoliths. She reached the far end and stepped between two blocks, squeezing between the upright layers of solid glass, dragging Ilyusha into the gap behind her. They both crouched in the narrow space. Ilyusha’s bionic legs were shaking with effort, but she stayed upright, braced against the glass. She pulled her tail in and wrapped it around Ooni’s waist again. She fingered her shotgun, making sure it was loaded.

Ooni clutched her submachine gun in her left hand, praying that the voice in her head would return. They had wounded Kuro before, but without the miracles that had stripped away her ferrofluid armour layers, Ooni and Ilyusha would be helpless, without—

“Oh!” Ooni almost shot upright. “My— my glove, and the helmet! I left them out there, she’ll see—”

Ilyusha made her claws slide in and out, quick and clean. “Shhh! No time. Shut up.”

The wet glugging sound rose to a crescendo — then burst into several pairs of feet spilling across the distant corner of chamber floor. Several pairs of lungs panted for breath. More than one person? Not Kuro, then. Maybe it was—

Somebody swore — “Fuck. Fuck!”

Ooni’s blood went cold; she knew that voice.

A moment passed. Another voice — breathy, raw, but full of concealed power — said: “We have been delivered from our foes, once again. The messenger’s words were true, we are favoured.”

Ooni almost whimpered. No. No!

“Delivered?” another voice hissed, spitting sarcasm. “Delivered.”

“We did get away,” said another. Ooni closed her eyes, trying not to cry.

“We got fucked over,” said that second voice again, a voice Ooni had hoped never to hear again, full of tight pressed anger. “This shit isn’t working like it’s meant to. We got fucked. Nobody fucks us. Nobody!”

“We have been delivered from our foes,” repeated Yolanda.

“Fuck,” Cantrelle spat again.

The last people Ooni ever wanted to see. The only people worse than Kuro, because they wouldn’t spare her for sport.

The last dregs of the Death’s Heads.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Look, Ooni, it’s your old friends! Right? No? Oh shit. Girl, you’ve got such a messy ex-situationship. (Though for serious, Ooni didn’t have a situationship with anybody from the Sisterhood.)

Arc 15 gets truly underway now, and I’m still not sure how long it’s going to be. This one might be short and violent and over in 5 chapters, or it might run a little longer. Depends on the exact way everyone is about to clash together, or maybe Ooni can stay quiet and stay hidden and stay out of the way. Good luck, zombie girl! You’re gonna need it.

Meanwhile, I have more art to share, from over on the discord! This one is a little different to the usual: a mock-up cover for a physical book version of Necroepilogos, using the first version of the cover art (which was by @makuros011), by Lynn. This is such a cool piece of visual design! Who knows, maybe Necroepilogos will be a real physical book, one day. I certainly hope so!

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

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

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!

And thank you, dear readers! Thank you for being here and enjoying my little story about zombie girls and super-science and nanomachines. I have so much more story to tell, and I wouldn’t be able to tell any of it without all of you! And without you, Ooni would stay lost in the darkness. So, until next chapter! Seeya then!

Content Warnings

Mention of suicide
Voluntary self-wounding/self-harm

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

“It has to be me,” said Elpida. “Me alone.”

Pheiri’s crew compartment felt cramped and crowded, even with only five people. The space was still crammed with spare equipment looted from the tomb armoury; it would take days of work to complete a full inventory, let alone proper stowage. Several suits of full-body armour carapace were stacked up on the bench seats, off-white plates a dull matte under the lights, alongside enough firearms to outfit the whole crew twenty times over. Crates and cases of bullets and energy-packs sat against the walls further back, draped with tomb-grown armoured coats and bundles of spare clothing.

If they made it out of this tomb and escaped the trap at hurricane’s end, Elpida was confident that her new cadre would be the most heavily armed group in the graveworm safe zone, even without the incalculable benefit of Pheiri himself.

And what about beyond the graveworm safe zone? She filed that thought away for later, after this crisis, after the storm.

Pheiri’s engines throbbed a slow, steady, subliminal heartbeat beneath Elpida’s boots. The hurricane — beyond Pheiri’s outer hull, beyond the walls of the tomb — was a distant static hum of wind-whipped hail and sheets of rain. It sounded the same as before, but Kagami’s readings were consistent. The hurricane was weakening, slowly but surely. The storm had served its purpose, whoever had sent it.

Amina was helping Elpida to don one of the carapace suits. Elpida had managed the greaves, cuisses, faulds, and boots easily enough by herself, and then wriggled into the upper half of the support harness easily enough. But strapping the chestplate into position was too difficult with a missing hand. Amina had been lurking in the spinal corridor, listening to Elpida’s growing argument with the others — but then she had shown herself and scurried forward to offer her help. Elpida had been glad to give Amina something to focus on other than Ilyusha’s absence. Amina’s small, dexterous hands reached up between the carapace plates and Elpida’s clothes, hooking the armour to the harness, tightening the straps at Elpida’s instructions, checking the clips and seals and the joints between each hardened ceramic plate.

Victoria and Pira stood either side of the entrance to Pheiri’s main spinal corridor. Pira still wore half of her own carapace suit — gloves and gauntlets and chestpiece off, hips and legs still armoured, face closed and hard. She’d only been back inside Pheiri for about fifteen minutes, too eager to hear Elpida’s plan to finish stripping. Victoria had her arms folded across the grey chest of her tomb-grown thermal top, her brow creased, chewing her bottom lip.

Elpida was glad the others had not followed them from the cockpit. Melyn seemed exhausted, Atyle was absorbed in thought, and Sky was more interested in leaning over Kagami’s shoulder to peer at Pheiri’s internal screens. Eseld and Cyneswith were both lurking just inside the open bunk room door, pretending that they weren’t listening to the argument. Elpida knew she had to speak with both of them eventually, to make them truly part of the group, just as Howl had with Sky, but now wasn’t the time. Elpida needed to get armed and armoured, and get under way; the storm would not wait.

Victoria coughed — an attempted laugh. She gestured past Elpida’s shoulder, at Shilu.

“She counts as ‘alone’?” Victoria said.

Shilu was standing at the far end of the crew compartment, by the exit onto the rear airlock and the ramp. She wasn’t armoured in anything except a coat, though she was wearing her human disguise again, her black metal truth tucked away beneath soft brown skin and long dark hair.

“Apparently,” Shilu answered.

Victoria shot her a combative look. “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Elpida.”

Elpida dipped her head. “I misspoke. Myself, Shilu, and the drones. And Howl, of course. What I mean is that I’m the only zombie going—”

“You can’t be fucking serious,” Victoria snapped. She looked pale and tight. Dark bags of stress hung beneath her eyes. “You’re still wounded. You’ve lost your right arm. You can’t even handle a long gun in that state! Elpida, don’t be ridiculous. At least wait for it to … to … grow back?” Victoria’s frown deepened. “Is that what’s going to happen?”

Elpida glanced down at the stump of her right arm. Melyn had changed the bandages in the cockpit, during the first phase of this argument, so the dressing was clean. Kagami had insisted she would only consent to this operation if Elpida gave herself the best chance of success, and this operation was a non-starter without the cover of Kagami’s drones. Elpida had judged that Kagami was not bluffing — Kagami thought she was bluffing, but she wasn’t, not really. Elpida had called that bluff by accepting without argument; she had downed an entire cannister of the concentrated blue nanomachines, a significant portion of their precious reserves, to kick her undead biology into a heightened regenerative state. Kagami had watched, trying to conceal her reaction. Then she had given her support.

Elpida wouldn’t have dreamed of consuming so much of the group’s resources even a few weeks ago, but her priorities felt clearer now. If she was going to rescue Ooni and Ilyusha, she needed every advantage she could get. The resources were not consumed for her alone, but for everyone.

The stump itched like a week-old scab and throbbed like a second heart.

“Given enough time, yes, it will regrow,” Elpida said. “But that could take days, maybe weeks. The storm is fading right now, that’s our time limit. This can’t wait, Vicky. You know that.”

Victoria clenched her teeth, turned aside, then back again. “You were in a goddamn fugue state! Howl had to take over! You were … fucking gone! And … and … and now you tell us you were in some kind of virtual reality, fighting Necromancers in your mind palace—”

“The network,” Elpida corrected gently. “I was in the network. I know it’s a lot to take in.”

“And you expect us to just accept you going off on a solo mission, with another Necromancer, into a place where we’ve already lost two people?”

Elpida nodded. “Yes.”

Victoria threw up her hands. “Fuck! I don’t know why I bother protesting. Kaga’s right, you’re mad. This is mad. You’re gonna get killed.”

“Kagami is confident in my decision,” Elpida said. “This is going to work.”

“Yeah,” Victoria huffed. “But she still thinks you’re mad. Elpi, you can’t do this. We can’t do this. We’ve failed. We’ve screwed up. You can’t fix everything yourself. This is the same thing you were doing before, and now you’re doing it again, and—”

“Victoria,” Elpida said, hardening her voice. “Nobody gets left behind.”

Vicky stopped. She swallowed. “I know, I know, it’s just … ”

“If it was you out there, I would do the same.”

Victoria frowned, eyes narrowing. “And what if it was you, Commander? What if we’d lost you, instead? What would you want us to do? Would you want us to throw ourselves into this— this—”

Pira spoke for the first time in several minutes. “Incident pit.”

“Thank you, yeah. Incident pit!” Victoria clicked her fingers and pointed at Pira. “What she said. Would you want us to throw ourselves after you, Elpida? You’d tell us to leave you behind.”

Elpida smiled. “Would you, Vicky? Would you leave me behind?”

Victoria’s mouth opened. No sound came out.

Amina finished tightening the internal straps which held the carapace breastplate to Elpida’s harness. Her touch slithered down Elpida’s back as she extracted her hands. Elpida patted her on the shoulder. “Thank you, Amina. Great job, it’s sitting perfectly.”

Amina lowered her eyes and started to blush, nodding stiffly. Elpida knew that Amina was getting more out of this than the simple pleasure of helping a comrade, but she didn’t have time to deal with that right now.

“Victoria,” she said, as she turned back to Vicky. “You’re angry and frustrated because your command decisions went wrong. You’re blaming yourself for your perceived mistakes, because you lost Ooni and Ilyusha out in the tomb. But that wasn’t your fault. We couldn’t have predicted that Kuro would be able to manipulate the material of the tomb. I could have made the exact same mistakes. And I’m sorry, I should have been here. I only wish I’d picked up my own shit faster than I did.”

Victoria swallowed and shook her head. “Commander, no, I—”

“And now you’re worried that I’m throwing more of us into an intractable problem, because you think my judgement is compromised. You’re worried I’m going to get lost too.”

Victoria sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, you might.”

She looked exhausted, like she wanted to scream. Elpida knew how hard the strain of command could be on a non-pilot, a baseline human being, even a trained soldier. Victoria had taken a battering in a way that she had not been prepared for. She needed shoring up. Elpida knew how to do that. For the sake of Victoria and all the others who would soon be without Elpida again for a short time, Elpida was willing to delay her departure long enough to give Vicky what she needed.

Elpida nodded. “That’s a risk I have to take.”

“But—”

Elpida waited. Victoria grimaced, but didn’t say anything.

Amina spoke up, voice barely louder than a whisper. “But Illy’s out there. Please? Vicky, please … ”

Victoria looked from Amina to Elpida, then back again. She shook her head. “I didn’t mean … ahh shit, I don’t know what I mean.”

Elpida said, “I know what you don’t mean. You’re not arguing that we should leave Ilyusha or Ooni behind. I know that, Vicky.”

Victoria nodded, looking elsewhere. “Yeah. Yeah, of course not.”

“One for all,” Shilu said, “and all for one.”

Victoria looked up. “Quoting more ancient literature at me?”

Shilu shrugged. “Primitive sentiment, but it does the trick.”

Victoria snorted.

Elpida reached down and picked up the left gauntlet of her carapace suit, already locked to the interlinked plates of vambrace and rerebrace. She held it out to Amina. “This piece next, please. Hold it steady so I can put my arm inside, then wait until I clench my fist, that should keep it in place so you can strap it to the shoulder. Understand?”

Amina nodded, taking the heavy plates in her arms. Elpida sat down on the end of the bench so Amina wouldn’t need to reach upward. Elpida slipped her left arm between the plates and clenched hard. Amina got to work, dexterous hands looping the straps over Elpida’s shoulder, locking the smaller plates to the chestpiece.

Victoria rallied. “Alright, yeah, of course I’m not saying that we should leave anybody behind. I’m saying you shouldn’t be doing this alone.”

“I won’t be alone. I’ve got Howl, and Shilu. Kagami’s drones will be with us until the comms uplink gives out.”

Victoria screwed up her eyes. “Elpi, I know what you’re doing. You’re downplaying this because you gotta do it, fine, and you gotta leave the rest of us here, but … ”

She trailed off, eyes flicking over to Shilu.

Shilu said, “I will do my best to protect her.”

“We barely know you, Necromancer,” said Victoria. “And Elpi’s just told us that we’ve had a least two other Necromancers right on top of us this whole time, playing some fucked up game in virtual reality, trying to murder Howl. How do we know you’re for real? How do we know you’re not going to knife her in the back the moment you’re out of drone signal range?” She turned to Elpida. “How do we know? Come on, Elpi, convince me, gimme something to go on here.”

Elpida met Shilu’s eyes. She wished she could explain.

“She spoke to you too, didn’t she?” Elpida said.

Shilu blinked. “Who?”

Elpida couldn’t help a smile. That was all she needed. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that Shilu had changed, but she knew the Necromancer had been contacted by the ghost of Telokopolis, somewhere in the network, during some moment that nobody else had been watching. Saying it out loud was a risk, they didn’t know who or what might be listening, but Elpida was certain.

“We can trust Shilu,” Elpida said. “We can trust her absolutely. She’s on our side. She’s a child of Telokopolis too now, one of us.”

Victoria chewed on her tongue. She didn’t look satisfied.

Pira said, “I’m willing to accept that.”

Victoria looked at her like she was mad.

“Thank you, Pira,” Elpida said. Amina finished tightening the straps on her left gauntlet. Elpida turned the other way so Amina could do the same with the right side; Elpida didn’t need the full gauntlet on the right, just enough armour to cover her bandaged stump. “Besides, that’s not the point. The point is that we cannot go in force. If we go in numbers, we risk the same outcome as the previous fireteam, cut off and singled out by Kuro. It’s too dangerous, too many of us could be lost that way.”

Victoria ground her teeth. “You could be lost.”

“Howl is confident that won’t happen, even if Shilu and I are cut off from the drones, or separated from each other. And if Howl’s method doesn’t work, then I’ll pull back and return to Pheiri while Shilu pushes on alone. Shilu, are you willing to do that?”

Shilu nodded.

Amina finished with Elpida’s right rerebrace, just enough armour to cover the stump of her elbow. Elpida thanked Amina again, then rose to her feet, flexing her arms and legs inside the carapace suit. She felt light and powerful, ready in a way she had not felt since before death. Her mind was clear, her purpose before her, no more doubts or confusions or paradoxes.

She selected a fresh submachine gun from the firearms taken from the tomb armoury — an ultra light-weight weapon with a combination shoulder and hip strap, a PDW perfect for firing one-handed. She looped the straps into place around her left shoulder, forearm, and hip, then tested the resting position of the weapon. She drew it slowly three times, making sure she knew the timing and the necessary position of her hand. Then she drew it quick and smooth.

“This one will do. Amina, can you please fetch me three magazines for this? That box, with the blue markings. Thank you. You’ve done great.”

Amina dipped her head. One of her hands came to rest on Elpida’s armoured hip; Elpida patted that too.

Victoria said, “You promise you’ll come straight back, if this thing doesn’t work?”

Elpida grabbed her armoured coat off the bench and pulled it over the top of the carapace suit, hiding the plates behind the dark fabric. The pockets were already filled with additional equipment — a spare radio headset, a heavy sidearm, a pair of grenades, and a slender combat knife.

“I promise,” Elpida said.

Victoria sucked on her teeth. “And Howl?”

Howl pushed to the surface of Elpida’s face. She felt her lips curl into a grin, pulled by Howl’s fingers.

“It’s gonna work like I work Elp’s cunt,” Howl purred. She raised Elpida’s left hand and made an obscene gesture with two fingers and her tongue. “That Necro bitch who tried to cut me up, she knows how to bend the walls of a tomb. Pretty sure she fed a bullshit version of it to Kuro, some crap about magnets, but I picked up the gist of the real thing, just by listening. Me and Shilu, we’re gonna walk through the walls and straight to our little lost lambs.” She winked at Vicky. “Back before breakfast. Save me a spot in bed.”

This was the basis of Elpida’s plan — Howl’s plan, really, since none of it was possible without the information and techniques she had ‘overheard’ while in the network grip of the Necromancer Perpetua.

Ooni and Ilyusha were lost. Radio contact was disrupted somehow, but a little while ago Ooni had managed to briefly re-establish the comms uplink, long enough for Kagami to trace a rough position. She was deep in the core of the tomb, the very centre of the structure. Shilu could cut directly through the walls with her bare hands, but that was a slow process, it would take hours to reach Ooni’s estimated position. And the walls deeper in now seemed to be changing their configuration whenever Kagami’s drone sensors weren’t looking directly at them. It was as if the core of the tomb had resurrected itself, writhing to new life when unobserved, deep in the dark.

But Howl was confident she could tame that chaos, part the walls, and walk right inside.

Victoria was frowning at Howl. “That’s not what I asked. I want you to promise to come back, if it doesn’t work. Come on, Howl. Don’t be a shit about this.”

Howl shrugged. “Sure. Promise. Whatever. It’ll work.”

Howl, Elpida said into her own mind. Vicky has been run ragged by perceived failure, and terrified of losing us. She needs reassurance.

That’s what I’m giving her! Reassurance! Look at me, major reassurer here.

You were never any good at this.

Hey, fuck you, Elps!

I love you too, Howl.

Elpida felt Howl slip back beneath her surface. She said, “Howl’s promise is genuine. Don’t let her tone fool you. If this doesn’t work, we come straight back.”

Victoria sighed. “I still don’t like it.”

“Nobody likes this. Not even me. But I have to do it.”

Howl surged back to the fore, gripping Elpida’s throat and lips, and said — “Unless you want me all up in your head instead, Vicky! You wanna carry me into the tomb? Didn’t realise you were into that.”

Victoria frowned harder. “Actually, that’s a good question. Why can’t you go in Shilu’s head for this?”

Elpida answered before Howl could make this worse. “We’re never letting each other go again.”

In the back of Elpida’s mind, Howl grumbled. True, but you don’t have to—

Shut up, Howl.

Howl growled.

“Besides,” Elpida added out loud. “That wouldn’t work. Howl can’t just come and go like we’re all interchangeable vessels. She can move across the network independently of me, but that’s too risky, especially right now.”

“Yeah, about that,” Victoria said. “Howl is also our only way to fight Necromancers. When this storm ends, if you’re not back … ”

Elpida smiled. “Vicky, we’re not going to fight Necromancers. If Perpetua was telling the truth, if there really are multiple Necromancers waiting to assault us when the storm ends, we are not going to fight them. We’re going to run. This little piece of Telokopolis we’ve built here has to survive. Pheiri has to survive. We run.”

“Wise,” said Shilu.

Vicky nodded slowly. She swallowed hard. “Right. Right. Of course.”

Elpida grabbed the helmet of her carapace suit. She raised the visor and fiddled with the built in comms-uplink until it clicked. “Testing, testing. This is Elpida. Kagami, do you read?”

Kagami’s voice crackled from the helmet speaker, “Loud and clear. All clam-shelled up, are we? Ready to do something moronic, I hope.”

“Always. Pheiri?”

The speakers emitted a soft ping.

“Thank you, Pheiri,” she said. Amina echoed the words, followed a moment later by Victoria. Pira mouthed it silently.

Elpida lowered the helmet. “Right. I’m ready. We’ll leave through the top hatch and over the side, as little fanfare as possible. I don’t want the crowd out there to know we’re sending anyone out. We don’t need a zombie escort this time, I don’t want them put in danger. Now, Victoria, while I’m gone, you’re in charge.”

Vicky put her hands up. Her skin went ashen. “No, I— I can’t— Elpi—”

Elpida hooked the carapace helmet to her waist and strode forward. She put her hand on Victoria’s shoulder. “Yes, you can. Vicky, I know you can do this.”

Victoria’s face threatened to collapse. “I’ve already fucked up enough. Come on. Don’t make me do this.”

“Everyone fucks up, and it’s never enough.” Elpida smiled. “When me and my sisters were young teenagers, there was this one time I led them to sneak out of our quarters. We wanted to visit a … ” Elpida edited the anecdote on the fly; Howl snorted in the back of her mind. “A particular kind of entertainment district. I fucked up so many times that we had a tail before we even left home. We spent four hours dodging capture in the public streets, had a whole detachment turning things upside down to find us. And we all got picked up one by one, carted home, chewed out. I made it to our intended destination, but by then I’d lost almost all of our forces. Howl included, believe it or not. It was just me and two others by the time we got there. And Nunnus — my … mother surrogate, I suppose — was waiting for me there, to give me an object lesson in the failures of command.”

Victoria blinked several times. “You got caught sneaking out to visit a strip club?”

Elpida turned that phrase over in her mind; she’d never heard it before, but—

Close enough, Howl laughed.

“Strip club,” Elpida repeated. “No. I don’t think we had those in Telokopolis, but the concept is close enough to make sense.”

Victoria tried to laugh, but she couldn’t quite get there. “Shit, Elpi. That’s hardly the same.”

Elpida squeezed Vicky’s shoulder. “I got to make command mistakes in a safe environment, where the worst consequences were more hours of training—”

And Nunnus testing us by seeing if we could pull it off undetected a year later, Howl snorted.

Let’s leave that part out for now.

“—while you don’t have that luxury,” Elpida continued. “But that’s not your fault. Nobody is expecting you to be perfect, Vicky. What I expect you to do is command. Make the decisions, take responsibility for that, and don’t shy away from it. I need you to do this, you’re the only one I can rely on. Kagami will be too busy controlling the drones, and nobody else is suitable, nobody else here can call on everyone’s trust, except Pheiri, and he needs one of us to make decisions for the group. I’m relying on you, Vicky. And you can do it, I know you can.”

Victoria swallowed. She tried to nod.

Howl hissed inside Elpida’s mind, She’s not gonna crack it, Elps.

She can and she will. One more push.

“And I’m not leaving you entirely without instructions,” Elpida said. “I need you to prep for immediate departure. Do you understand?”

“Oh fuck,” Vicky hissed. “You’re not planning on coming back.”

Elpida squeezed Vicky’s shoulder again. “No, I am coming back. But if I’m not back in time, then you need to prep to leave, and then you run. Do you understand?”

“I— I— I don’t know if I can do this without you. Elpida. I can’t—”

“You can. I’m not everything, Vicky. You all need to learn to operate without me making every decision. Now, focus. You’re the only one who can do this, but you won’t be alone. You’ve got the whole crew with you, right here. You’re gonna have everybody’s support. You’ve got Pheiri, too. If in doubt, he’s your best counsel.” Elpida spoke to the helmet clipped to her waist. “Pheiri?”

The helmet comms pinged softly. Victoria almost laughed, but it was half a sob.

“Vicky. Prep to leave. Do you understand?”

Victoria swallowed and nodded. “Immediate departure, right.”

Elpida let go of Victoria’s shoulder and stepped back. “As soon as the storm weakens to the point where it’s safe for Pheiri to head out there, you go. Make an announcement to the crowd of zombies outside, give them time enough to get clear of Pheiri’s path. Then go, run, don’t wait for the Necromancers to show themselves.”

“What do I tell them? T-the crowd of zombies in the chamber, I mean. They’re all … ours now, aren’t they?”

“Tell them the truth,” Elpida said. “Necromancers are coming, best to scatter, get away from the tomb. The more of them who can get clear, the more who’ll survive. Hand out the rest of the meat before then, keep just what we need for ourselves. Pull the drones back inside, but guard the hatches. Where’s Hafina?”

“Uhh … ” Victoria swallowed and blinked. “Up top, out on the hull, she’s the only one watching the crowd right now.”

“Pull her in ASAP, as soon as we’re gone.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Vicky said, one hand up. “The … tch, ‘bottom feeders’, the ones closest to our drone picket, most of them aren’t armed. Some of them don’t even have clothes. We send them back out there without Pheiri’s protection, most of them aren’t gonna last another day. They’ve exposed themselves by coming to us, showing themselves to the bigger predators. They’ll get eaten in the retreat. Elpida, we can’t just let them die.”

Elpida nodded. “This is why I’ve put you in command. Make a decision.”

Victoria stared, panting, then glanced at the weapons and armour and clothes stacked up all over the crew compartment. “We arm them.”

Elpida nodded.

Victoria kept going. “Clothes, boots, basic firearms. Whatever we can spare. We can’t give them the carapace suits, or anything difficult to use. But bulletproof vests, some pistols, rifles. We can spare that, can’t we?”

Elpida smiled. “Make sure to put the symbol of Telokopolis on their clothes. They’re ours now, even if we can’t fit them in.”

“Right, right. Uh, I’ll need to … use Haf, and … and Pira, and uh, drones, right … ” Her eyes flickered up, back to Elpida. “Wait. Serin and Iriko aren’t back. What about them?”

Elpida tried not to grimace. “For the sake of their own survival, it might be better that they exit the tomb their own way. If we spread out, we have more of a chance. Iriko and Serin can both handle themselves in the open, we know that. Once the storm clears, start broadcasting for them, but don’t wait to pick them up. Me and Shilu as well, if we’re not back. Just go.”

Victoria nodded. “Fuck. Fuck, I can’t believe we’re gonna do this. Fucking hell, Elpi.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll be back soon, here or elsewhere.” She unclipped the helmet and lifted it up, to slip it over her head. “Shilu, ready to—”

Pira interrupted, cold and sharp. “Commander. May I speak with you?”

Elpida paused. “You don’t need my permission to speak freely. Go ahead, Pira.”

“In private.”

Elpida raised her eyebrows. Pira nodded at the door to the infirmary, which stood ajar, then turned and strode toward it without waiting for an answer. Elpida glanced at Victoria, but Vicky just shrugged. Shilu said nothing. Amina was wide-eyed and silent.

Elpida crossed the crew compartment and followed Pira into the cramped confines of Pheiri’s infirmary.

The tiny room stank of iron, sweat, and bodily waste. It was still filthy with blood and sodden bandages, the floor caked in crimson and littered with medical detritus, the aftermath of Elpida’s wound and the extensive emergency surgery on Sanzhima, the girl the Death’s Heads had used as an unwitting suicide bomber. Sanzhima still lay naked on one of the medical slab beds, wrapped in masses of bandages and dressings, holding her chest together and keeping her guts inside. She was unconscious, face a puffy mass of bruises and blood. Elpida wasn’t sure if the girl would ever wake up.

Once this crisis was past, Elpida needed to get the infirmary cleaned up. Melyn deserved that much at the very least, for all she’d done.

Pira stopped a few paces inside the infirmary. “Shut the door. Please.”

Elpida shut the door. She made sure the internal seal was flush.

Pira’s flame-red hair was raked back from her forehead and across her skull in sweat-soaked rat-tails. Her face was closed, but the exhaustion was impossible to hide; she had been out there with the fireteam for several hours, then hunting for a way to retrieve Ooni and Ilyusha, alongside Shilu, but without the hobbled Necromancer’s limitless stamina. She blinked, and for a moment she seemed to have forgotten what she was going to say. The static of the storm beyond the tomb filled the silence.

“Pira?”

“Leave them behind,” Pira said.

Elpida sighed. “I hoped you weren’t gonna say that. Are you serious, or is this a rhetorical strategy for some other purpose? We don’t have time for word games right now.”

“I’m serious. Leave them behind. Go back into the tomb if you have to, just far enough to confirm if Howl’s theory works. But then pull back, retreat to Pheiri. Make up some excuse. Or cancel the entire operation right now. Nobody will think less of you, nobody will—”

Howl bubbled to the surface, and snarled, “You so afraid of that Kuro bitch, huh?”

“No. Commander, you can’t do this. Leave them behind.”

Elpida took control back from Howl and shook her head. “You know I won’t do that. Pira, what is this really about?”

Pira raised her chin. “Victoria is too polite to say it. Kagami is afraid of what it means. Amina … too young, too uneducated. The others, most of them see it, they think it, but they won’t say it to your face.”

“Say what?”

“You’ve been mentally and emotionally unwell. For weeks now, since we had to hunt. There’s … ” Pira paused, a struggle concluding behind her face. “There’s no shame in it. Zombies just go mad. It happens. And you’re no different. Your decision making is compromised. With Eseld you almost got yourself shot, then with Sanzhima and the bomb you sacrificed an arm — why? For what? The drones could have done it.”

“You know why. The zombies out there had to see—”

“Of course I know why,” Pira carried right on. “I know why, and I understand, and I agree. And that’s the worst part. I agree. I know that you have acted correctly. But, you are not stable. You are not mentally well. Your decision making is compromised. We have to leave them behind.”

Elpida nodded. “I was unwell, you’re right. And you might be the only person willing to say it to my face. For that, thank you, Pira.”

Pira’s expression threatened to open, a hint of hope in her cold blue eyes, like a cloudless sky after a storm.

“But,” Elpida added, “I’m much better now.”

“Really.”

It wasn’t a question.

Elpida leaned closer to Pira. “Look at my eyes. Listen to my voice. And answer seriously. Do you think I’m still unwell?”

Pira frowned. She couldn’t answer.

Elpida continued. “In the network I solved my paradox. Lykke helped, like I told everyone, however crazy that sounds.”

“Necromancer bullshit,” Pira hissed. “You’ve barely given us the details—”

Howl ripped back onto Elpida’s face, grinning wide. “Elps and the Necro fucked, nasty style. Almost cadre style. She’s gonna tell everyone later, but you get the preview, nosy bitch. How’s that, huh? All she needed was a good hard roll.”

Pira’s face froze.

Elpida took control back from Howl. “As I said, Lykke helped. But she wasn’t the main thing. After her, I met … ” She took a deep breath. “It’s not the time to talk about it, not right now, it would take hours, and it’s unsafe. But I understand what was wrong with me, and I’ve fixed it, at least enough for this. This decision I’m making now is not a suicide mission. I’ll have Shilu as backup, and Kagami’s drones for most of the way. Howl thinks she can affect network control of the tomb architecture, and if she can, that solves most of our problems. I’m not putting myself at undue risk for no reason—”

“For two people.”

“For two of us, yes. Two children of Telokopolis.”

Pira clenched her jaw so hard that Elpida heard her teeth creak. Her carefully guarded expression began to crumple with frustration.

“Pira, if I didn’t go, if I leave two of us behind, then we would cease to be a fragment of Telokopolis. Nobody gets left behind. Nobody gets left out in the green. I applied the same standard to you when I gave you a second chance, and that was the right choice, you’ve proven it since.”

Pira took a deep breath. Her closed expression fell apart. Her lips shook. The skin around her eyes crinkled with internal pain.

“Commander,” she said. “We cannot risk losing you.”

Elpida shook her head. “Yes, you can.”

Pira gulped. “What are you saying?”

Elpida placed her carapace helmet on the foot of Sanzhima’s slab-bed. She considered her words carefully, holding on hard to the clarity that she had experienced inside the network, when Lykke’s attentions had finally helped her unravel the paradox of cause and comrades. She recalled the sheer brilliance of speaking with Telokopolis. She needed Pira confident and in control. She needed Pira to understand.

“I am not the only thing holding this group together,” she said. “You should understand that more than the others. You think I’ve been so emotionally unbalanced that I haven’t seen the way you’ve embraced Telokopolis.” Pira swallowed hard, but Elpida carried on. “You know that’s what holds us together. The ideal, the promise of more than this, what we’re working towards, where we’re going. Not just me.”

“But … Victoria—”

“Is very inexperienced at command, yes. But that doesn’t make me alone the difference between success and failure, between survival and death.” Elpida stepped forward. She raised her left gauntlet to touch Pira’s shoulder, seeing how Pira would react. Pira looked away slightly, but didn’t move. Elpida laid her hand on Pira’s arm. “While I’m gone — and it hopefully won’t be for long — Victoria is going to be in charge. But she needs your support.”

Pira blinked. “She doesn’t want it.”

“You all have to stop thinking of yourselves as waiting for orders from me. Victoria will need your support, especially if you have to pull out of the tomb before I’m back. I need you to back up her decisions and provide her counsel when she needs it. Stop lurking in the shadows, Pira. You’ve more than redeemed yourself. You’re one of us.”

“She would never trust me. Kagami even less.”

Elpida smiled ruefully. “Yeah, you did shoot me, once.”

Pira said. “Leave them behind.”

Elpida shook her head again. “It’s not my decision to make. It’s not up to me. If I leave them behind, that would betray everything we’ve been building. Nobody gets left behind. Nobody gets left out in the green. Telokopolis is for all. Telokopolis is forever.”

“Telokopolis is forever,” Pira murmured. She blinked hard; Elpida wasn’t certain if she saw tears.

Elpida said, “Is this about you and Ooni? Trying to be self-sacrificing by leaving her behind?”

“No, I … I … ”

“It’s been difficult between you and her, hasn’t it?”

Pira looked up, eyes dry. “Is it that obvious?”

Elpida laughed softly. “I spent my entire life managing a cadre of twenty four sisters. We all loved each other in the most messy ways imaginable, constantly, without pause. So yes, I can tell that Ooni wants you, and you aren’t giving her what she wants. Do you not want her in return? If not, I can talk to her, I can mediate.”

Pira swallowed and looked away. “It’s complicated. And this isn’t the time. I can’t stop you from doing this, can I?”

“Not unless you shoot me again.”

“Don’t joke about that,” Pira hissed.

Elpida was about to say something gentle — that she was glad Pira was here to take the joke, however badly — but then Howl took charge of Elpida’s lips, and curled them into a grin. “Think she’s joking, you trigger happy cunt?”

Pira stepped back, out of Elpida’s grip. The pain slid from her features, closed again. “Sometimes I forget you’re in there, Howl.”

Howl laughed; Elpida let her. “I never forget you, bitch,” Howl said.

“Mm. Good.”

Elpida forced Howl back down. “Howl means well. I hope you can believe that. Now, I have to get going.”

Pira nodded, but she seemed distracted. “I … I need some blood, but I hesitate to ask you for that. You’ve already been wounded, your body likely needs everything it can get.”

Elpida shrugged. “I’ve got a whole cannister of blue in me, I can spare some blood. Probably making it faster than I can bleed.” Elpida presented her left arm. “Here, you’ll need to loosen the gauntlet for me.”

“I really shouldn’t. Commander, forget I said it.”

“Do it. That’s an order.”

“No.”

“Do it.”

Pira’s hands shook as she loosened Elpida’s gauntlet. The glove slid off, hanging by the thick fabric straps, exposing Elpida’s palm and wrist. Elpida reached into her coat pocket and drew her combat knife, then held it out to Pira. “You’ll have to make the cut, I’m a little short on hands right now.”

Pira didn’t reply. She was breathing a little too hard, pale cheeks flushed a faint pink. She slid the blade across Elpida’s palm, shallow and short. Blood welled up in the cup of Elpida’s hand. Pira held it in her own, eyes locked with Elpida over the pool of shining red, then lowered her lips and drank directly off Elpida’s skin.

The static of the storm hissed and roared far beyond the walls, beyond Pheiri. The pain in Elpida’s palm was minimal, even when Pira sucked directly from the wound. After a mouthful or two, Pira raised her face, lips smeared with Elpida’s blood.

But she didn’t let go.

“Pira? Do you need—”

Pira darted her head forward. Bloody lips met Elpida’s own, smearing crimson in a clumsy, desperate kiss.

It lasted only a moment. Then Pira stepped back and let go of Elpida’s hand. She wiped her bloody lips on her sleeve, other hand curled into a fist.

“I don’t know why I did that,” Pira said. “I don’t know why.”

“I do,” Elpida said. “And it’s alright. We’ll talk later, okay?”

Holy shiiiiiiit, Elps, Howl cackled. She’s like one of us! Crazy cunt and not scared to splash it, ha!

She’s fragile. Don’t hurt her, Howl.

Wouldn’t dream of it.

Pira shook her head. “There’s nothing to talk about. I am dedicated to you, and to Telokopolis. That’s all.”

Elpida wiped her own lips on the back of her hand. Pira returned the knife, then helped her re-secure the gauntlet, but she didn’t meet Elpida’s eyes. Then Elpida picked up her helmet and turned toward the infirmary door. “Past time I got under way. You’re gonna support Victoria, understood?”

Pira nodded, framed by the bloody mess of the infirmary. “Come back to us, Commander. And … bring Ooni back. Ilyusha too.”

Elpida smiled. “I will.”

Pira saluted, a fist to the side of her head. “Telokopolis is forever.”

“Telokopolis is forever.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Elpida’s back in action and ready to rock. But is she truly doing better, or just repeating the same old mistakes with a fresh smile on her face? Is this a cool-headed assessment of the best course of action, or a wild self-sacrificing death-ride into the bowels of the tomb? Only time will time. There’s no way she’s leaving Ooni and Ilyusha behind, though.

And here we are, arc 15! My plans for this arc have changed somewhat since the end of arc 14, as I mentioned in the previous post-chapter note. Buckle in for 2, or maybe 3 different POVs. We’re on a rescue mission now, but the damsels in distress are still heavily armed undead cannibal cyborgs, so I’m sure they’ll have a word or two for themselves. Plus, a certain sniper and blob double-team are about to team-attack on the Death’s Heads, with the help of a mysterious little fairy. So! Plotlines converge, crashing together in the darkness of the tomb. Here we go.

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

Patreon link! It’s here!

Right now this only offers a single chapter ahead, about 5k words. Behind the scenes I’m plugging away, and hope to offer more chapters ahead in the future!

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!

And thank you, dear readers! I know I say this every chapter, but it’s no less true for all the repetition. Necroepilogos would not exist without all of you, the readers! Without living eyes to observe this undead flesh, it would fall apart into so much rot and rubble. So thank you for being here! I’ll see you all next chapter! Until then!