Page 37 of The Withering Wood

Oberon cleared his throat, expelling the slight quiver in his voice. “Ideas on how to kill Vraethik without getting maimed by the lichboar?”

One of them had to engage the pair so the other could kill Vraethik. The prince had never fought in real battle before. He’d been trained in how to use different weapons but fighting in the training grounds was nothing like the battlefield. And the living were much more analytical in their battle tactics than the undead, who were ruled by chaos and fearlessness, knowing there’d be an unholy way to resurrect them.

But Cerise, she knew the ways of necromancers and their familiars. How to weave her body, parry and thrust with Beloved, amidst numerous enemies who hurt without thought.

“I’ll distract them,” she said. “Try to create an opening for you to kill Vraethik. Stay back and remain as hidden as possible.”

She darted forward, a bolt of pain shooting through her leg as her knee cracked in the sudden movement.

“Cerise, wait—” Oberon shouted behind her, but she ignored him.

He had his orders.

Gaze pinpointing on her approaching enemies, her battle fury rose, numbing the aches and agonies that threatened to immobilize her. Cerise’s heart drummed in her ears, the brittle wind sliced against her exposed cheeks and fingers, and Beloved’s sharp blades glinted in the light, ready to shed necromancer blood. A grin tugged the corners of her lips. Though she did not relish her time in the Undead Wars, this sensation—almost a meditation—was long missed. When the world and her mind hushed, and there was only the fight before her, the evil that needed vanquishing.

Fog puffed from Threxilon’s ragged, huffing snout and Vraethik’s stunted, pockmarked nose.

An image of them lifeless, no bursts of breath from their forms, flitted through Cerise’s mind, followed by the pleasant sense of relief and victory. Her grin widened as her grip tightened on Beloved, ready to deliver those killing blows.

The ground erupted before her and she came to a stumbling halt, throwing her arms up to shield her face from the rain of dirt and snow.

The prince shouted in the distance, but she couldn’t understand his words. Heavy thuds cascaded around her, the earth fissuring in both directions as buried layers geysered above ground. Clumps of soil, snowdrift, and long, fragile rocks pelted her arms and thunked to the frozen earth.

No, those weren’t rocks.

Through the crack in her arms, she saw those weighty pieces for what they truly were.

Bones.

She leapt backward, the plains now a fresh graveyard, littered with broken bones and upturned dirt. Footsteps thundered behind her and she grit her teeth at the prince’s idiotic disobedience.

Vraethik raised his arms, the lichboar standing protectively at his side. Cerise kept a firm grip on Beloved, bracing herself for one more mad dash forward to stop Vraethik before he abused the bones.

She was too late, too slow. Or perhaps he was too powerful. His magic, a wretched deep purple tinged with sickly green, burst from his staff, wrapping around the fragmented bones. The magic thrummed in the air, lifting the forgotten bones and shaping them once more into dozens of human skeletons. They dropped to their exposed feet, each bone kept in place by the threads of Vraethik’s necromancy, their gleaming white shapes outlined in purple and green.

The heat of rage flared brighter than ever in Cerise’s chest. This was why she hated necromancers. Why she fought so hard to eradicate them from this world. Allowed the war to wreck her body and mind. And why Azkanix should never, ever be allowed to rise again. These corpses of fallen soldiers may never find a proper burial, but they should at least be allowed to rest in peace. Not pulled from their graves and forced to fight for their enemies.

She’d stop this now, one way or another. Even if it meant breaking her promise to Eirwen and never coming home.

Oberon stopped beside her with a harsh pant, catching his breath.

“I told you to stay hidden,” Cerise growled.

“I said I liked you telling me what to do, not that I’d always listen.”

Cerise shot him an unamused glare, but before she could retort, the shambling skeletons surged toward them. Joints grinding and mandibles slack, they flailed their frosty, brittle forms forward. Beyond the throng, Vraethik turned his back on them, returning to his summoning with Threxilon at his heels

Cerise clenched her jaw, Vraethik’s silhouette swallowed by the approaching mass of clicking and clacking bones, eager to rip out their eyes and devour their living flesh.

The horde fell upon them, frozen phalanges thrashing, snapping their aged, decayed teeth.

She swung Beloved, an axe blade cracking through a skull of the closest undead, plates of its bone shattering and falling into the skull cavity. It staggered and Cerise whipped Beloved in a wide arc, cleaving through the ulnas, clavicles, and ribs of the half dozen skeletons that surrounded her. The bones flew from their bodies, stretching the purple-green magic that kept them assembled. The threads of energy expanded then contracted, yanking the dislodged pieces back in place with a loud, hair-rising crunch as the fragments ground together.

There would be no destroying these undead. Not without killing Vraethik.

“We have to push through!” Cerise yelled.

Oberon seemed to discover the same thing she had, his spearhead popping through a skull with such force that it took it off the top vertebrae, only to be jaggedly returned to the body with the magic threads of muscle.