Published at 22nd of October 2023 9:42 am

Book 3: Chapter 17

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Joseph was having a bad day. If he took a moment to reflect, it had really been a bad couple of years, but the last few days had been especially bad. It had started when one of his buddies in the gang found himself on the wrong end of the Crusher’s fist and lost his head. The offense had been simple enough, not bringing Paskal the right drink during dinner, and had rapidly escalated until his friend’s cold body was tossed out into the alleyway behind the Brass Tiger Syndicate’s headquarters. Though Joseph had managed to stay out of it by keeping his head down, the situation ate at him over the next few days and he found he couldn’t sleep well. Everyone was walking on eggshells, especially around the boss, and Joseph even contemplated abandoning the gang all together.

To make matters worse, he had been behind on his quota for almost two weeks, and in his sleep deprived state, he was starting to think that the lieutenants were going to single him out to make an example of him. Because of his worry, he had started hanging out as far from the gang’s headquarters as possible each day, going south toward the waterfront and spending time with the dock workers. It was a temporary measure at best, since he couldn’t hide from the problem forever, and on some level, he knew he was making it worse by avoiding it.

Trying to ignore the murmurs from his bunkmates, he forced his eyes shut and attempted to go to sleep, not wanting to face his wretched life. Eventually he did fall asleep, but his dreams were so strange that he woke up almost immediately. Soaked in a cold sweat, he stared at the bottom of the bunk above and tried to understand what he had just seen. His dream had been filled with death and chaos, rushing bodies in a dark world. He had dreamed of rising from his bed, going to open the door, and being trampled by a swarm of terrifying zombies who had burst in his door. Even the vague memory sent shivers down his spine. Trembling under his covers, he was about to turn over and try and go back to sleep when a small voice spoke in his mind.

Zombies are coming. Go warn the boss.

As soon as the thought appeared, he rejected it, not wanting to get anywhere near Paskal. The boss had been drinking heavily the last few days and was in a permanently foul mood for some reason. Shaking his head, Joseph closed his eyes but the rotting face of a zombie appeared in front of him, causing him to let out a shriek and bolt upright. Slamming his head against the top bunk, he swore and scrambled backwards, falling out of his bed and to the cold floor below. Everyone else in his room stared at him, and one of the gang members, a large, bald man with a bit of a paunch guffawed.

“Aw, poor little Joey had a bad dream.”

Ignoring the laughs, Joseph slowly got to his feet, his mind a whirl of confusion.

“There are zombies coming. I need to tell the boss.” He thought to himself.

Again, that same voice spoke clearly in his head, causing him to shiver. The men in the room, seeing that he wasn’t responding, were about to keep making fun of him when a loud bell sounded, echoing through the room so loudly they could feel their bodies shake.

“That’s the city alarm,” one of the men muttered as the toll faded away.

His words snapped Joseph out of his daze and caused him to bolt for the door. Throwing it open, he raced down the hall, driven by the terror of what he had seen in his dreams, and oblivious to the five petaled flower that waved gently above his head. No one else could see the flower, or hear the voice it carried, so when he burst into the room on the top floor that the officers used, what met him were hard, confused stares. Stumbling over a young woman curled up on the floor just inside the door, Joseph barely avoided smashing his head into the table.

Scrambling upright, he froze as his eyes met Paskal’s. The Brass Tiger Syndicate boss was sitting on the other side of the table, half a dozen empty bottles scattered around him and a half full bottle at his lips. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and his bronze skin gleamed in the candlelight, showing each and every one of his highly defined muscles. Slowly, Paskal took the bottle from his lips and put it down on the table with a thud that sounded like a boulder dropping. He pushed the woman in his lap aside and stood up, an ugly smile on his lips.

“Whatever you are about to say better be really important to be worth interrupting me,” Paskal said, his voice dangerous and low.

Around the table, the gang’s lieutenants all stared at Joseph, most of them wondering what madness had possessed him to burst in like that. Paskal hated being surprised, almost as much as he hated being interrupted, and Joseph had done both. Holding on to the table to keep from falling over, Joseph felt a surge of courage rising up in him. He had no idea where he got the guts from, but he stared straight into his boss’ eyes and spoke in a voice that was almost calm.

“You heard the alarm, right? There is a zombie wave coming.”

His words were met with incredulous stares and then loud laughter. The only one not laughing was Paskal, whose glare intensified, causing Joseph’s newfound courage to wither.

“What did you say?

The laughter was silenced by Paskal’s growl, and all the lieutenants looked at their boss.

“Did you just say there is a zombie wave coming?”

“Y…yes?”

Slamming his palm on the table hard enough to make the bottles jump, Paskal grinned savagely, as if he had just made a major discovery.

“I knew something was off with the Grave Walkers! Get the gang together boys, we’re in for a fight tonight.”

“Boss, what are you talking about?” one of the lieutenants asked, completely lost.

Snatching his half full wine bottle from the table, Paskal drank it down in one long gulp and then hurled the empty bottle at the man who spoke, causing it to shatter as it nailed his lieutenant in the head. Despite the heavy gash he received, the man didn’t dare make a noise as Paskal shoved the table aside and walked toward Joseph as he spoke to his men in a threatening growl.

“I told you to gather everyone! And you! Come with me and tell me where they are coming from.”

A few hours later, after being fed information through the dream flower he carried, Joseph found himself huddled behind a makeshift barricade as the first of the zombies raced down the street into the heart of the Brass Tiger Syndicate’s territory. He had no idea where he was getting the information from, but so far, everything that small voice in his head had said turned out to be right. The good news is that he was now Paskal the Crusher’s favorite person. The bad news was that meant that Paskal wasn’t going to let Joseph out of his sight, resulting in his new position on the front line. Peeking over the barricade, he caught a glimpse of the hooded figure at the other end of the street and shuddered. They were separated by a growing horde of zombies who were flooding into the street.

“Looks like you were right about the path they’d take,” Paskal said, giving Joseph a look that made the poor man tremble. “I’d love to crack open that head of yours and figure out how you know all this stuff.”

“I… I don’t know,” Joseph said, clutching his head and scooting back.

“Don’t worry, there are too many zombie heads for me to crack to bother with yours. For the moment, at least,” Paskal said, laughing.

Putting a hand on the barricade, the gang leader hopped over it, his muscles rippling in the bright light of the torches that they had lit. Stripes crawled up his arms as he clapped his hands together, causing a loud boom that shook the air all around.

“Looks like we’ve got a party tonight, boys! No one is coming to save us, so get ready to fight! If you die to a zombie, I’ll crush your head myself!”

Behind him, the members of the Brass Tiger Syndicate got ready, many of them advancing into the street to stand with their boss while others lifted their crossbows. No one knew who loosed the first bolt, but as soon as the twang of the string sounded, the whole street turned into pure chaos. More bolts began to fly, smashing into the zombies in the front of the horde, tearing flesh and snapping bone. Paskal and the main fighters of the gang were right behind them, charging into the zombies with reckless abandon. At the front of the charge, Paskal cleared a wide path, his fingers curled into claws, leaving tears through everything they touched.

His soul spark flared with power, causing a faint image of a tiger to appear around him. With a roar, he slammed his palm down on a zombie, transforming its head into a pile of mush that splattered against the ground. Protected by from the spray of disgusting bodily fluids by the mental energy that surrounded his legs, Paskal grew more excited with each kill and threw himself deeper into the fight until his men were struggling to keep up. On the other end of the street, the necromancer cursed his luck. He had assumed that he was safe after escaping from the encirclement in the royal graveyard, but now he had run into stiff resistance a few blocks away.

Urging his zombies forward to buy him time, he took out a statue carved of dark wood from his robe and used the fangs on the statue to cut his arm, causing blood to drip into the statue’s mouth. The blood was absorbed rapidly into the dark wood, making red veins appear on the statue’s surface. As those red veins reached its eyes, a wave of mental energy surged from it, spreading out to the nearby zombies. Similar red veins appeared on their skin and they began to roar and scream, accelerating as they entered a maddened state.

Clenching his fist to keep more of the blood from falling into the statue's mouth, the necromancer mumbled a prayer to Lesrak under his breath. The zombies around him surged forward, nails outstretched and mouths gaping as they threw themselves against the Brass Tiger Syndicate. Yet, what met them was a wave of energy as Paskal slammed his hands together. The blast knocked the leading zombies backward, buying time for his men to run forward, bringing down their maces on the zombie heads and bodies. Cracks echoed across the street, and Paskal's laughter carried over it.

Once he got going, Paskal fought like a madman, tearing zombies apart or crushing them into pieces with every swing of his hands. No matter how many zombies piled into the street, it seemed that none of them could get past the wall of force his blows generated. With a shriek of rage, the necromancer brought his wounded hand to the statue's mouth, pouring more blood in. With every drop the statue absorbed, the rage that filled the zombies increased, and they grew faster and stronger. Soon, they weren't being crushed as easily, and as the Brass Tiger Syndicate fought furiously against the horde, casualties began to appear.

The first was a gang member who stepped too far forward and found his ankle clutched by a legless zombie. Dirty nails dug deep into the man's calf, and with a yell of pain, he collapsed to the ground. A dozen more zombie hands latched onto him, dragging him into the crowd, and a few moments later, he could be seen shambling among the horde as he advanced on his former companions. The longer the fight dragged on, the more often that same sight was repeated, causing Paskal's fury to grow.

The gang leader seemed to be everywhere on the front line of the fight, smashing zombies apart with casual blows and destroying whole swaths of them with crushing strikes. Every swing of his hands produced an afterimage of a large bronze tiger paw that obliterated anything it touched. By this time, the necromancer was trembling fiercely from blood loss, but the madness of the statue seemed to affect him as well, and he continued to feed his blood into its mouth. Paskal caught sight of him among the zombies and quickly realized that he needed to destroy the influence of the mysterious artifact the necromancer held if they were going to have any hope of defeating the horde.

Paskal lunged forward, blowing a hole in the zombie line and racing towards the necromancer. Too occupied filling the statue with blood, the necromancer didn't even see the blow coming, and the only thing that saved his life was the faint shield that sprang up around him. It shattered in an instant but bought just enough time for the necromancer to dive backward as Paskal's ethereal paw destroyed the cobblestones where he had been standing. Before he could scramble to his feet, Paskal was on him, another strike tearing away one of his legs. A scream of pain tore through the air as the necromancer clutched at the bloody stump.

Yet even after he had dropped the statue, the rage that filled the zombies didn't abate. Instead of killing the necromancer, Paskal turned to the statue and brought down his hand once again, intending to crush it to pieces. Yet even as he did, he encountered tremendous resistance as a powerful mental presence swelled up from it, causing fear to grip his heart. There were very few things Paskal was afraid of, and ever since he became a shaper, he had walked unhindered through the city. Even other shapers gave him a wide berth, wary of his strength. Yet the mental energy that poured out of the statue was something beyond him, something he barely understood, and the instinctive fear born in his heart allowed him to understand that he was facing a being significantly more powerful than he had ever encountered before.

Half driven by fear, half driven by battle lust, he doubled down on his attack, attempting to destroy the statue. Yet even after three strikes, his ethereal paw couldn't pierce the heavy defenses. Unbeknownst to him, high up in the sky above the fight, he was being watched. Isabelle danced through the storm, taking in the city below. At Garrett's direction, she had been watching the fight for some time, and now, with a shiver, Garrett took command. A well-manicured finger pointed down toward Paskal, who was pounding at the statue with futile strikes, and a single hair from Isabelle's head extended into a thin spear. Pouring as much mental energy as he could muster into it, Garrett threw the hair down like a javelin, causing it to drop like a silent bolt of black lightning toward the ground.

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