Chapter 16: Giant Zombie

What even is that thing?! Lilith twisted aside and dove left, heart spiking like a struck gong, as the monster’s overhead smash carved the air.

The brute stood over three meters tall. Its fist was half her size. It slammed into the Grand Mausoleum’s street with a drumbeat thud, kicking up ash-gray dust that tangled with ghost-blue Moonswallow Mist and blinded the way.

No entry in the bestiary? Nidhogg yanked Abaddon the other direction, cloak snapping like a storm flag, and shouted back through the blue haze.

I’d need time to read! Lilith rolled through grit and shadow, breath hot as iron, dodging another hammerblow. Annoyance flared, sharp as ice. She snapped a basic spell back over her shoulder. A ray of frost smashed into the creature’s head. It howled and staggered.

The chill cleared dust and mist in a sharp-edged gust, and the thing’s face surfaced like a wreck from fog. It looked like a zombie, only upscaled by several sizes, a giant Undead under moonlit rot.

The Little White Dragon’s first impression held. Gray-green hide, corpse-tough, was plated in a layer of ghost-blue crystal. Lilith guessed the armor had condensed from the Moonswallow Mist. The blue plates didn’t just guard him like frost over stone. They also deepened the Mist’s hold, a tide that drowned the mind.

Under that grown armor, she spotted gear that wasn’t Mist-born. Metal straps. Buckles. Maybe he’d been a guard or a cop here, a street’s shield before the Mist turned him. Now the gear he remembered had driven him to forge more with Mist, making him nastier with every breath.

The giant dipped a head almost half Lilith’s height. Two blue flames burned in hollow sockets, lanterns in a ruined shrine. The Mist had eaten his reason. The Cataclysm had left a hunger that drove this former sentinel to crush every living thing he saw.

Every Scourge spreads. Lilith knew that cold rhythm. The Taint she had cleansed had tried to creep, and the other two Scourges from the Cataclysm were the same. So even if she didn’t know the Mist’s scripture, she knew the Undead it touched would labor to expand it. And those Undead were its feet on the road.

Not funny at all. Lilith rolled back from another sledge of a fist, ribs humming like plucked strings. The Little Dragon still had no opening to go in close. She flicked a razor icicle toward the burning hollow of its eye.

Aaargh! The shard punched into the socket, clean as a needle through silk. The giant clutched its skull and wailed. The Little White Dragon met the Black Dragon’s eyes. Nidhogg moved with a hunter’s calm, black chains blooming in her hands. Lilith lifted her pink-white longsword, breath steady, pulse bright.

Nidhogg struck first. Her chain shot out, a black bolt through dusk. Gray-green hide and ghost-blue armor didn’t stop it. The links punched in like bullets and burst foul gray-black blood, a swamp reek rising.

The giant bucked and thrashed. One wild swing slapped a stone coffin off a nearby roof. The coffin whistled through the Mist like a fired shell and screamed toward Lilith.

She rocked back a step and let the stone howl past. Her knees dipped. Spring coiled in her calves. She was about to unleash.

Step!

Lilith seized the Ancient Ark. Void Command Seat resonance flared to full, starlight humming along her bones. She stomped, space shivering underfoot, and appeared by the giant’s heel in a blink. Her rosy blade bit the leg in a tight cut. Parry sigils flickered pink along the guard, like petals catching fire.

Rise!

With the Ancient Ark charged, Lilith sank and jumped. Light body, heavy intent. She shot up like a comet through wind. Constellations hummed in her veins. She twisted midair on the breath of the stars and the gust’s hand. Both hands lifted the pink-white blade high.

Strike!

The blade met gray-green flesh and blue helm at the crown. All the stored power cascaded out in a single beat. Space over the giant’s face rippled and tore. Seven spectral edges bloomed at once and carved its cheeks like rakes through frost.

Aaargh! The giant howled again, louder, deeper, pain echoing like thunder in a gorge. It swayed, tottered, and nearly fell, a cliff losing its footing.

Got you— Lilith surged forward, intent flaring, ready to drive a tentacle in and drain the Moonswallow Mist from the giant’s core.

The giant snapped upright like a sprung trap. It tore Nidhogg’s chains with a wrench and reached into the thickening Mist like a fisherman into a river. It dragged out a long utility pole, blue vapor steaming along the metal. Lilith’s eyes widened. The pole came down like a meteor.

Meow!

The Little White Dragon almost had her suit split at the seams. Reflex saved her. She flung the Ancient Ark up and caught the crushing blow. The impact still cracked a few bones, pain lighting her nerves like sparks on dry grass. She flew backward, a thrown doll, and slammed through a house wall. Brick and dust blossomed around her before she slid to a stop.

Cough—ah… The Holy Cloak held, a warm sun behind a stormcloud. Without it, the pain would’ve pinned her like a butterfly. She gasped. The taste of lime and iron sat on her tongue.

It really hurts. Why is that thing still moving? And with a utility pole, too. I’m not a plant—why am I fighting a Gargantuar?

She stuffed her bleeding with the Taint, packing wounds like sealing cracks with resin. Tentacles uncoiled from her back, shadow-vines whipping, and she sprinted back into the fight.

When she arrived, the giant’s hard-won utility pole lay in two neat pieces. Nidhogg had split it with a single punch. One half stabbed the roadside like a stake. The other half jutted from the giant’s belly like a skewer.

Lilith came back just in time to see Nidhogg’s chains lancing through both shoulders. The giant heaved, cords standing in its neck like ropes. The Black Dragon, a meter shorter, stood like an unmovable mountain. The more the giant fought, the deeper the chains sang.

Nidhogg set her feet, shoulder-width, stance rooted like an old pine. She hauled the chains like a river bargeman at the oar. The giant tried to match her pull, sinew cracking like old timber. He lost. The three-meter bulk toppled with a landslide thud.

The Black Dragon rode the fall. She vaulted, body clean as a blade. One kick snapped out, and the giant’s head popped from its neck like a cork from a bottle.

Nidhogg landed and walked to the fallen head. She stomped once. The half-meter skull pulped into a stinking green smear, swamp stink rolling like marsh fog. She plucked out one eyeball, wiped it briskly, and tucked it into her pack.

The whole sequence flowed like water over stone. Lilith stared, mouth open, thoughts fluttering like startled sparrows.

If she’d known Nidhogg could end it that easy, the Little White Dragon wouldn’t have wasted breath and blood. Now she’d worked hard for nothing and still took hits.

How bad is it? Not serious, right? Nidhogg hurried over the instant she saw Lilith, hands warm and bold, checking for tears and breaks like rain over reeds.

I’m fine. Even if I weren’t, I’d be fine in a minute. Lilith batted away the Black Dragon’s wandering hands, cheeks hot as embers. She wrapped herself in tentacles to block any more mischief, then stepped to the headless corpse and drove a tendril in, siphoning the Moonswallow Mist like cold wine through a reed.

Now we finally have time to see what it was? Nidhogg dug a bestiary out of her pack, pages whispering like leaves, and started hunting for the giant zombie’s silhouette.