They were on the left flank of the flowing horde, their numbers unknown - his spatial senses couldn’t reach all of them.
More abominations closed in. He couldn’t ignore the dark creatures forever. Fighting through the horde was already a struggle without adding the dark newcomers.
Sweat trickled down his brow. Although he was flush with soul essence, he was pushing his mind and body past their limits. This couldn’t go on much longer.
Killing Dakas was the priority. The crew could join the battle when his Gift was off the board. Then they’d fight through the abominations and escape before the dark creatures engaged.
Unlikely, but better than waiting for death.
Levi and Silas continued laying waste to the approaching abominations. Corpses covered the ground nearby. Darkshards lay scattered among them. Riches he loathed to give up, but too dangerous to collect in the chaos.
A Horned Ape launched itself at Kai, Darkshards shattering under its hooves.
Its black claw rose and fell. Kai stepped aside, his sword flicking out. Its arm fell. Blood sprayed; his suit drank.
The ape didn’t stop. Its other claw attacked. Kai ducked low and cut upward, leaving the ape armless.
It roared. His sword plunged through the ape’s open mouth, bursting from the back of its skull. The abomination collapsed with a thud, crushing more Darkshards.
Black powder hung in the air. Blood fed his suit. The dark fabric pulsed and writhed. An overwhelming thrum of satisfaction rolled across his mind.
The word crawled into his thoughts, syllable by syllable.
His eyes widened.
You can talk?
The suit pulsed again. Onyx crawled across his fingers. Fingernails became claws. Another pulse. The Demonic transformation spread across his body in a flash.
Black horns burst from his forehead. Onyx covered his flesh. Dark wings pierced his back. The living suit morphed into a flowing robe.
The entity had evolved somehow. The culprit was up in the air. Levi’s father’s blood? The Darkshard dust in the air? Maybe feeding his suit copious blood triggered a transformation.
Could be all three. But no time to dwell on it.
Soul essence flooded Kai’s muscles. His suit’s reserves doubled. He scanned the carpet of corpses nearby. Had the suit forced his transformation? Or was it the blood and death surrounding him? Something he’d need to figure out later. Uncontrolled transformations would blow his cover and get him hunted.
Filled with essence and surrounded by walking fuel sources, he took a risk.
Levi cut through another Roach Man as Kai called to him. “Levi! I’m gonna try something dangerous! Be ready to give me blood.”
The unfortunate Roach Man split in two; its transparent blood flowed toward Kai. “Who’s the greedy one now?” Levi replied.
Kai’s expression hardened. “That’s a command.”
This wasn’t the time for banter; he needed the uptight bastard ready to intervene instantly. If he miscalculated, if his essence reserves weren’t enough, he’d pass out. Unconscious, surrounded by ravenous abominations - a terrifying prospect.
He doubted he could return from the dead from within an abomination’s stomach.
His assumed immortality was flimsier than he’d like, operating on unknown rules. And there was only one test to confirm if he was immortal - death. An experiment he wasn’t eager to try.
The vampire clicked his tongue in response. Good enough.
Kai focused on his body, then expanded space outward in every direction. He mentally excluded any corpses, unsure if he could even add conditions like that. He blinked in surprise when it worked.
The flanking trees slid away. The abominations before him now snarled at a distance. His allies behind stood further back.
He was in a sphere of distorted space. Isolated from everything but the scattered corpses; dozens of roach husks, about a dozen roach men and horned apes. His lips curved upward - the first step was complete.
Now came the hard part.
Levi and Silas cleared the enemies near them, then watched Kai.
Levi stepped toward him but couldn’t close the distance. The spatial distortion acted like a transparent barrier. Abominations in front also failed to breach the boundary. Kai turned, keeping his allies and enemies in his peripheral vision.
The vampire’s mouth moved, but no sound reached Kai. It looked like he said the word ‘Domain’. This couldn’t be a real Domain, right? He hadn’t prayed to any god to create it.
When he’d observed Levi’s Domain, he concluded it was like creating a controlled space with soul essence, only more complex. Spatial control was his speciality, making that part simple enough. He knew how to infuse items with essence, but he’d never spread it over a large area like this.
Levi had said a Domain was an extension of one’s Soul Palace and Gift. He had no idea how to extend his Soul Palace, but he had practice extending space and manipulating the effect of his essence. Maybe he could create an incomplete Domain like the Crawler-snake?
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Whatever the case, it was a step in the right direction.
He focused inward on his soul, tugging at it. A cold aura spilled from his chest, then spread outward. His soul essence touched everything around him, filling the expanded space.
Then he spoke a language forbidden to human tongues. “Rise.”
The corpses twitched. Then flickered. One moment they were solid; the next - transparent like a ghost. And that wasn’t all. Their bodies kept changing, morphing, rearranging.
A Roach Man had one left arm. The next moment, it had two right arms. Then one right arm. The fundamental laws of reality faltered.
Each corpse pulled itself upright. Roaches skittered into a pile. Roach Men and Horned Apes joined them. When the undead made contact, they flickered and fused into an abominable mess.
A wretched sight. Kai fought the urge to vomit.
Words cut through his mind.
[ERROR]
[ERROR]
[ERROR]
Each message was a spike hammered into his brain. Pain surged before fading.
He gritted his teeth and ignored them.
The suit pulsed again; essence poured out. A quarter of his reserves vanished. It was draining too fast. Blood surged from his suit into the twisted nightmare of a creature, slowing the drain on his personal reserves. How long could his suit hold out?
His heart raced.
“Levi! Blood!”
Levi’s blood sphere couldn’t bypass the extended space. Bad news. He shook his head.
Something barely resembling a Horned Ape stood centered among the pile of skittering roaches. Multiple arms, heads, legs, and other appendages protruded from its body. It flickered. Stray body parts sank into its torso.
Now it had four thick, furry arms ending in black claws. Two legs and two heads. Dark red flesh covered its body. Pig noses. Roach mandibles. An unsightly mess.
A chimera.
Undead roaches had already climbed up its waist; more continued upward. They covered the twisted chimera like living armour.
The drain on his essence slowed as his new wraith finished forming. His suit’s reserves had depleted; his personal pool was half empty. Could’ve been worse. He’d retained more essence than expected after raising so many corpses. Though all those corpses had formed one ashed up creature - maybe that affected things.
The unstable wraith kept flickering. Kai’s head throbbed, vision blurry at the edges. Blood trickled from his nose, warm drops touching his lips. He released the extended space; the throbbing faded, but a wave of exhaustion swept over him.
The forest returned. His allies were beside him again. A river of abominations rushed to meet him.
To their disappointment, a giant chimera blocked their assault. The unstable wraith stood twice as large as any Horned Ape, towering over the other abominations. Its body wide enough to fill the path between the trees.
Kai commanded it. “Clear the way.”
The ground shook as it moved.
A dozen undead roaches left the chimera, their mandibles ripping through their living counterparts. Their victims soon twitched, flickered, and became part of the growing chimera.
The chimera ripped apart abominations with a swipe of its limbs. A Horned Ape struck the wraith with its claw, burying its forearm in the wraith’s stomach. Undead roaches rushed up its arm, mandibles stabbing at its eyes, ears, and vulnerable orifices.
Its arm sank deeper. The rest of the attacker’s body followed. Undulating flesh swallowed the abomination, then it was no more. Another part of the growing chimera.
The unstable wraith moved through the horde without meaningful opposition. Undead bugs crawled over its frame, patching any gaps in its defence.
It killed any abomination standing in its way, absorbing them into its growing body. Abominations attacked it from behind as it passed. Multiple eyes and clawed limbs ripped through the chimera’s back, unleashing destruction in all directions.
Blood from the wraith’s kills flowed into Kai’s suit, filling his reserves once more. The trio advanced behind the chimera, mopping up stragglers on their way toward Dakas. The flow of abominations onto the path slowed. Kai sensed them among the trees, watching.
Were the corrupted bastards scared?
“How’s that for crowd control?” Kai said.
“I-impossible.”
Levi looked shaken, like his understanding of the world had been upturned. What was so impossible about raising the dead? Wasn’t that what his Gift was for?
“Abominations…can’t become undead. Don’t you see how unstable that thing is?”
That was news to him.
“It’ll fix itself eventually, right?”
“No…” he hesitated. His eyes tracked the flickering chimera, fear etched on his features - rare for the pompous vampire. “It shouldn’t even exist.” He shook his head. “Impossible,” he whispered.
Kai frowned. He’d thought his impromptu pseudo-Domain was an impressive breakthrough. Was raising this unstable wraith a bigger feat?
He studied the undead chimera as it carved through abominations. Absorbing more corpses into its body, flickering growing more frequent, stability deteriorating. It wouldn’t be long before its instability destroyed it.
Or worse.
“Let’s take advantage while it lasts,” he said. The consequences of the chimera collapsing were unclear, but it was their best chance to destroy Dakas quickly. He’d worry about the aftermath when the bastard was dead.
Levi nodded, confusion giving way to focus.
Dakas’s tentacles would’ve swatted him out of the air if he’d flown over the abominations, but the monsters had no answer for this.
When they reached Dakas, the unstable wraith had six arms, three heads, and countless roaches crawling over every inch. It had grown to triple Dakas’ size - a giant among giants. The two monsters fended off abominations as the flickering chimera closed in.
Tentacles whipped toward the newcomer. The chimera caught a few in mid-air, ripping the slithery appendages apart. But there were more where that came from. Uncountable tentacles lashed out.
Undead roaches crunched under the relentless strikes. But new roaches took their place. Claws and mandibles sunk into the monsters’ purple flesh while they focused their attacks on the flickering chimera.
Crack.
The wraith strode through the thrashing tentacles. Strikes phased through the chimera when it flickered. A number of tentacles became lodged in its body when it solidified again. The relentless attacks continued. Crushing roaches covering its body, then striking through the gaps in the chimera’s defence. The wounds flickered before vanishing.
The wraith ignored the flailing appendages, enduring their strikes without reaction. Then it grabbed Tentacle-arms’ torso with two claws, two more seized its legs.
The chimera twisted and pulled the monster apart. Blood and viscera spilled out. Animated tentacles became flaccid. A fist-sized organ squelched as it hit the ground - a two-dimensional snake coiled around it. The thing Renzo used to control his puppets. The rest of Tentacle-arms’ corpse melted into the wraith’s flickering body.
The snake unfurled around Dakas’ heart.
Kai ripped through space. His dark blade pierced the monster’s heart and the flat snake. The snake struggled and thrashed, but it was futile. It rotted and disintegrated on the spot.
One down. One more to go.
Kai looked toward the remaining monster and spotted Levi’s blade carving through its stomach, ceasing its beating heart.
He watched for another snake; none appeared. Strong-arms’ body flickered as it fell - the duplicate vanished.
They continued carving through abominations as they approached the cave. A few roaches fled ahead, into the cave.
The chimera’s flicker-rate increased. Its body shrinking. Not good. What would happen when it collapsed? Would it fade away peacefully? Or would its reality-violating presence explode?
Kai mentally commanded it to move into the forest. Two birds with one stone - moving the danger and killing more enemies.
Abominations fled from the trees, onto the path and toward the cave.
Kai sensed one of the dark creatures a fair distance behind the streaming abominations. Its head jerked and shook erratically. Was it angry? Trying to communicate? No time to decipher what that meant. Kai sped toward the cave, cutting down the few enemies in his way.
Time to call for backup and get the hell out of there.
Also: please follow, favourite and review the story - it helps me reach more people.