In the fallen city, the sky began to darken as the sun reached the edge of night. The hellish moans and screeches of the dead rose to a terrible cacophony as the air blistered and roiled. Words in a language impossible for most to understand began to resonate throughout the land.

"Dammit! Get ready," snapped Scott.

"What's happening?" asked Kitty as the wind began to pick up.

"Infernal Speech! Someone's using necromantic hymns of prayer to a Deep Lord," called out Saelil.

The wind immediately began to roar as zombies in the area flew upward in the air and started to slam together in a squiggling wad of rotten screeching meat. A tornado of whirling gore manifested in the intersection where the zombies gathered.

"Can you stop this?" shouted Scott. His voice barely carried to Saelil over the roaring of the wind, and the screeches of the damned.

"Not here! I'm only able to use a few of my sealed spells in this world. I don't feel a connection to the underworld at all since we left my home," called back Saelil while she did her best to hold down her robes.

"What's happening?" shouted Chaine.

"Shit just hit the fan. Get ready, something's coming!" exclaimed Scott, before he pointed to a taller building nearby. "We need to get higher off the ground!"

Fleshy lumps shaped like massive soft-shelled eggs began to fly up and out of the whirling vortex. Soon, the scant few sacks of meat became dozens and then hundreds. They choked the sky in their multitudes even as they rained down upon the nearby areas of the city.

The would-be heroic quintet fought the raging winds as they worked their way up to the top of the building that Scott pointed out earlier. By the time they reached the top of the twelve story apartment building, the winds began to die down.

Littered with hundreds of pulsating sacks of flesh, the ground below seemed to writhe with the hateful existences being born upon it.

"The necromantic hymn of spiteful rebirth..." said Saelil, his lips pulled tight in a thin line. For the first time since Scott met here, she'd dropped her warm and friendly appearance and adopted one that was both stark and grim.

"You know about this?" asked Scott. "You sure you can't do anything?"

"All we can do is destroy these things once they've hatched. Attacking the eggs will not do much, as they'll just continue to regenerate until they hatch," she said tightly. "Even rendering them to ash won't stop the regeneration."

"Someone tell me what's going on!" snapped Chaine. "What are those things?"

"They're eggs. The last time I dealt with them they gave birth to undead creatures that were like small children from the waist up, but had the lower body of a spider," said Scott.

"Seriously? That's—" said Chaine.

"Wait! There might be something we could try right now," said Saelil. She looked to Scott. "That power of yours, the one that makes friendships. If you concentrate it all on a thick cluster of those eggs, it's possible your power might overwhelm the regeneration or even overwrite some of their wicked instincts."

Scott wasted no time asking her for more information. Any chance to do something about this situation needed to be seized. He rained highly explosive friendship down upon the squirming masses in the street below.

A thick cloud of hope and general good feelings began to roil about as though it were an insecticide set loose to fumigate an infested home. Soon, the street could no longer be seen even by elven eyes. Scott's garden power covered the area in a sweet blanket of love, friendship, and hope for better days to come.

"Is it working?" asked Kitty while looking down over the edge.

"There's no way to know until the miasma of friendship clears," said Saelil. She looked away from the street below and over to several other nearby concentrations of the egg sacks that were not enveloped by high-yield friendship explosions. They were beginning to hatch.

The shrill cries of wailing infants echoed through the area as hideous sacks of pulsating flesh began to split open. Darkness began to set in even as the first clawed fingers tore through the filmy exterior of the monstrous eggs.

Scott never stopped bombarding the street below with his power, not even when the newborn abominations began to slide out of their birth prisons. Had he done so, he would have seen that these creatures were not the spider beasts from before. They were strangely human in appearance, at least at first glance. It would not take an observant individual long to realize several startling differences between a man and a monster.

Skin red as blood streaming from an open artery, the creatures that rose up now walked on two feet like a man but there were subtle differences. Their eyes were yellow and held the appearance of a wolf. Their teeth bore the triangular appearance of a shark's teeth. Upon their hands and feet jutted short but wicked claws.

Saelil hissed lightly then said, "Blood Ghouls, nocturnal undead that get stronger at night."

"How tough are they?" asked Chaine.

"Even the least intelligent are as smart as a small child. They can run like a berserker, and I've seen them easily rip a strong man in half," said Saelil. "Worse, they're highly resistant to normal physical damage. Magic, especially fire and holy powers, is far more damaging."

"Whoa. Sounds bad," said Kitty.

"Tell me everything," said Scott. "How bad is this situation, really?"

"Beloved, any of us could defeat one of these creatures easily. They are much tougher than the zombies we've faced, but we're all wielding abilities that are extra potent when facing such a foe," said Saelil. She took a breath then said, "But there's a problem..."

"Which is?" asked Scott.

She pointed toward a growing army of normal zombies that shambled into the area in a steady trickle. "The problem is that outside of their secondary attacks and reflexes, they also boost the power of lesser undead in their presence. Even those poor shambling creatures from before would probably be able to act nearly at the level berserkers with this many blood ghouls in the area."

"Damn... All this noise is definitely going to draw a crowd of them too," said Kitty.

Scott started to say something, but he was cut off by Samantha. "They're moving!" she cried out before aiming at the horde running toward the building. A stream of running abominations raced toward their location. Hundreds of normal zombies were mixed in with the hideous red ghouls swelling their numbers to well over one thousand strong.

Pulling out his plasma pistol, Scott called out for everyone to get ready. Fireballs would be of greater use once they reached the building, but he wanted to do the most damage possible at range.

Chaine tapped something on his Lorekeeper and a beautifully crafted bow appeared in the air before him. "Time to put this to use," he said.

The newly equipped archery implement was pristinely white with decorations at the top and bottom portions of the limbs, and triangular shapes to reinforce the riser. Wing-like projections made of gold and silver, they turned an ordinary looking bow into a work of art. However, no string was evident despite the fact that it looked to be bent and ready for use.

Scott's curiosity over how the thing would even work was sated a moment later when Chaine gripped something invisible to the naked eye and pulled backwards. A bow string and arrow made of light appeared at their proper positions on the bow a split-second before Chaine fired off a shot.

Down below a blood ghoul that was still a good distance away was struck by the shining arrow and immediately caught fire. It flailed around briefly before exploded into colorful motes of light that drifted upward from a pile of ash.

"I have got to get me one of those," said Scott, his eyes wide.

Chaine grinned a little before knocking another arrow. His grin faded slightly as he said, "I'm low on arrows. Should make these count."

"Right," said Scott before turning to fire his own weapon. Samantha was already firing into the crowd as well. Arrows and plasma rounds raced downward in a bid to slaughter as many ghouls as possible before the horde overwhelmed their building.

The ghouls raced through the cloud directly below the building, unconcerned for the positive vibes and general sense of well-being that permeated the atmosphere. The sound of smashing glass and twisting metal carried word to the heroes that the enemy had broken into the entrance of the building.

"Saelil, what sort of magic do you have for this?" called Scott. "If it's useful, use it!"

"Certainly, beloved!" announced the necromantically inclined girl. Saelil floated out into the air above the center of the street then aimed for the thickest concentration of undead.

"This'll do nicely," she said before pointing her staff downward. A brief instant later her eyes flashed a brilliant red light and a whirling tornado of flame raced downward toward dozens of ghouls and zombies bunched together down below.

"Holy shit!" cried Scott as the massive fire tornado ripped forward and devastated the nearby ranks of the undead. The suction from the change in wind pressure drew the hapless beasts upward into the air even as they caught fire. They flew through the air, spat up by the powerful spell and went plummeting back down toward the ground.

"Hey, keep doing that!" called out Kitty excitedly.

"Would that I could, but that's a one-use spell for me right now. It's used to drain multiple charges from a magical item and cast a superior form of the spell," said Saelil. "My staff doesn't have enough remaining charges to do it again to that extent."

"It's fine! Do what you can! Their numbers are dropped, but the ones that broke into the building will be up here soon," said Scott before firing on another blood ghoul. However, his shot missed the head by a slender margin and ended up impacting a zombie beside of the creature.

The blood ghoul, showed awareness of its narrowly avoided fate. Its head snapped upward toward the champion above, and then to Scott's horrified surprise the beat snatched a shambling zombie up and held it aloft like a shield to protect itself.

"The hell?" asked Scott, his eyes going wide. It was a tactic several other ghouls took up. They casually used the lesser zombies as meat shields to help ward off plasma beams and arrow shots while pushing toward the entrance to the building.

A group of the ghouls gathered and held multiple zombies aloft in a bid to weather the storm of arrows and plasma, but Saelil was not out of tricks. Her large scale fiery tornado was no longer an option, but her concentration stat was high enough to cast numerous level one spells. She tossed a much smaller tornado of flame down into the center of that squirming mass of death that sent over a dozen of the beast flying into the air while their bodies were set ablaze.

The large group separated into smaller clusters, a more useful tactic on their part as the dark elven lesser lich could no longer target them enmasse anywhere but the main entrance. Every now and then, she'd use a spell to keep them on their toes and to whittle their numbers down.

"I'm out of arrows!" shouted Chaine before he drew his sword. "I'll help Kitty watch for climbers."

"Great idea!" replied Scott loudly before he put his gun away. He began lobbing fireballs into the crowd below. Explosions went off at regular intervals.

It was not long before the roof access door began to rattle. Chaine and Kitty stood ready to guard everyone's back during the first rush of what was to come.

A heavy pounding sound and rigorous rattling could be heard coming from the door. It was locked. The ghouls were having issues getting it open, or so the duo thought. However, the stench of burning metal reached their nostrils not long after. Soon acrid smoke wafted upward from the door, and then surprisingly the door handle fell off.

"They're here!" shouted Kitty as the door floor open. A viscous substance sloughed off from the metal and wood around the open hole that once housed a door handle. It splashed sickeningly to the ground even as the blood ghouls rushed forward to claim their tasty prize.

"Meat!" roared the lead ghoul, only to get hit in the face with a small spherical object. It was only slightly deterred by the odd counter and rushed forward. However, three seconds after Chaine tossed it, the grenade exploded with violent power and sent the monstrosities flying.

Scott raced over and began rapidly lobbing fireballs into the stairwell to try to hold the rest of the beasts at bay, but even that was not quite enough as a soon after a loud crashing sound reminiscent of breaking glass erupted in the air. The windows on the top floor of the building now lay in shattered ruins, but the true tragedy was the emergence of blood ghouls from all sides of the roof top.

Kitty performed a flashy aerial flip kick that sent one flying over the side of the building, and then engaged with two more. A series of quick spinning claw slashes and hard kicks tore into the beasts, but they were surprisingly sturdy. One beast opened its mouth and revealed that it could split apart like a certain movie predator. Its open maw now bore the appearance of a fanged vagina, even as its swollen tongue wriggled disgustingly in Kitty's direction.

"Eww! Not my type!" she retorted before flipping over its head and performing a powerful back kick that sent it flying. She barely recovered from her strike in time to avoid a ball of viscous phlegm that another beast sent flying her way.

"Gross! It'll get in my hair!" she cried before dodging yet another spit phlegm wad of death. Wherever the viscous mucous landed, the rooftop began to smoke and break down. The concrete and rocks sizzled loudly as the acid did its job.

Samantha and Saelil abandoned their attempts to gun down the horde below and joined with the others. The power suited champion of running and gunning focused on helping Chaine, as the blood ghouls were thickest in his area.

Beads of sweat poured down the sides of Scott's face as he continued to send fireballs into the roof top access stairwell. The situation was going from bad to worse. In his peripheral vision he could see the number of ghouls growing by the second, almost as bad were the rapidly increasing number of berserker grade zombies in the area now.

Everyone was so busy with the ghouls attacking directly on the roof that no one noticed that in the blind spot behind a group of large air conditioners. Several other ghouls continually enacted a stupidly simple and effective plan while the battle went into high-gear.

Normal zombies were hurled out the windows below and up into the air so that waiting ghouls could catch them and drop them on the roof. Only one in three were actually caught, however. The blood ghouls held no particular concern for the zombies and hurled them out the window as fast as they could snatch them up. Most of the hapless undead used in this manner plummeted toward the earth and splattered on the ground below.

It was not long before each zombie that made it to the rooftop righted themselves and began to join the fray. Soon shrieking berserker zombies raced toward the group from all angles.

"Everybody back to the last building we were on!" shouted Scott after leaping into the air to avoid a flying body tackle from a blood ghoul. When no one acknowledged his outcry he looked around and took brief stock of the battle.

Chaine used his shield to block a wad of acid phlegm then slashed his sword upward to split open the attacking ghoul. It caught fire and fell to the side just in time for a dynamic downward power slash that sent a wave of spiritual energy lashing outward to split apart a berserker zombie racing in to attack. Despite his swordplay, several more monsters rushed in to fill the gap.

Samantha fired rapidly at everything that rotting that still moved. A mountain of corpses were piled up around her in a near perfect circle, but with each passing moment the beasts were killed at ever closer distances.

Kitty was a spinning whirlwind of fangs, claws, and rage that tore through zombie and ghoul alike. Unfortunately, most of her opponents were zombies. The ghouls were actively staying out of her reach and literally tossing lesser zombies at her to weaken her little by little with each throw.

Saelil was reduced to fighting using her staff. She acquitted herself well, but it was obvious that the ghouls were only toying with her. Zombies would rush in and while she danced with them, the ghouls would launch phlegm wads in her direction in a bid to tag her with acid laced death.

"Fuck!" snapped Scott before hopping up to avoid another ghoul attack and crashing down atop the beast's head. He crushed it under foot then dealt with several oncoming zombies before rushing over to help Saelil.

"Why aren't you flying?" he called to her after leaping in with a flying kick that sent a blood ghoul hurtling into the side of a large air conditioner.

"Trying to do what I can!" she called out.

"Apprecia—" he stopped his response partway to deliver a heavy kick to an oncoming zombie, "—te it! But don't you have any spells, left?"

"I'm out!" she cried before whipping her staff around to smash in the skull of another zombie. She ducked her head just in time to avoid crisscrossing wads of phlegm that were sent her way.

Scott hurled fireballs toward the ghouls and sent them flying away via the fiery explosion. Two of them flew straight off the roof and hurtled toward the ground below. "Let's gather up with the others and get back to the other roof we were on before! You head upward, and I'll run over to Kitty."

"Of course, beloved!" shouted back Saelil before she lunged skyward and out of the immediate range of zombies and phlegm alike.

Unfortunately, saying and doing were two entirely different things at the moment. The rooftop was fairly large as such things go, but it was also jam-packed with enemies. The group was cut off into little pockets of resistance while zombies attempted to climb over each other to get to their desired snack treats. Only the superior power and skill of the team members kept the monsters at bay even to this extent.

"Won't be able to escape at this rate. Need to thin the herd a little more," admitted Scott before settling back into a fighting rhythm. At the moment no one seemed entirely overwhelmed or badly hurt. There would come a time soon when they could make their move, as long as they kept up the fight.

The battles now ranged all across the roof top. It was only a matter of time before the rescue team would be overwhelmed by the sheer number of monstrosities attempting to drag them down. Time passed, and despite the best efforts of the team it proved next to impossible to escape to the other roof.

Each time they tried to work toward that goal, blood ghouls would move to intercept in large, but well-spaced, numbers. It was obvious that they did not want to be clumped together in an easily exploded group. The zombies were a different story, however. They grouped up at every opportunity, though they did so out of pure hunger. Their groups were arranged near the closest potential meat source, whichever of the companions was nearest to them at the time.

The champion growled. The group would need enough room for a running start if everyone was to make it across. There was simply no time to make a plan, or enough distance available for those who needed to run and jump to actually do so. The current method, kill everything till it dies, was not working. The enemy numbers remained high. At this point, many of the blood ghouls were actively hanging back while using the zombies to keep the team busy while building their own numbers by a few more each minute.

Scott's heart nearly stopped when he saw Kitty go down under a small tide of zombies. However, her sudden disappearance between the squirming mass of undeath was soon put to an end. An intense roar similar to an enraged jungle cat, and the sight of the beasts being sent flying, heralded her return to the fight!

"Holy shit..." said Scott before casually punching a zombie in the face with enough force to smash its skull inward. The Kitty that went down under the zombie mass was not what the Kitty who rose up.

Where once there stood an overly sexy cat girl who mixed equal parts haughtiness with joyful perkiness, there now stood a woman who was far more muscular and vicious in appearance. Her claws, fangs, and eyes were larger, and her face now resembled a tight mask of hatred. Her thighs and shoulders grew especially large and powerful while her legs grew longer overall. The sudden shift granted her a hard and wicked appearance.

Kitty's tail lashed dangerously as her inhuman feline eyes darted back and forth. She screamed out a battle cry, "I told you not to get it in my hair!" before whirling rapidly around the battle field in an enraged tizzy of flailing limbs that decimated the zombies closest to her. A careful observer might possible have noticed that she now bore a slightly singed lock of hair at the back of her scalp.

A brief instant later she leapt forward with astonishing speed and tore a blood ghoul's head clean off its shoulders with a single swipe of her claws. She was one decidedly unhappy Kitty, and the fell beasts would know of her displeasure!

Despite the renewed vigor that Kitty showed when dealing with the forces of darkness, the number of enemies continued to rise. The ever-present horde of the undead barely waned in numbers as the minutes passed.

"Dammit, we're barely holding on," said Scott before he unleashed fiery hell on a thick concentration of zombies and ghouls. They screamed as they burned, a sure sign that they felt the flames in some manner regardless of their inability to feel pain. Magical damage registered on more than a physical level, after all.

A blood ghoul charged him from the left its jaws opened widen and viscous mucous flowing heavily down its facial vagina dentata. "Damn, they have medication for that–" said Scott just before leaping into the air and delivering a powerful double dropkick to the beast, "—you know!"

The blood ghoul was sent flying back and even performed a rough somersault in the air before hitting the ground hard. It rolled nearly to the edge of the building, but dug its claws into the gravel and concrete to halt its momentum. Little worse for wear from the powerful kick, it hissed menacingly at Scott then launched forward again on all fours.

Acting on instinct, he used his special ability Fiery Smash, to bounce a fireball off the ground then directly smash it toward his opponent. The blood ghoul tried to dodge but the speed of the streaking explosive was too great. It was sent flying off the side of the building along with two hapless zombies that were nearby.

"We need to move..." he said while dodging several attempts to tackle him, "Dammit! There's still so many."

The zombies were little more than cannon fodder for the far more intelligent ghouls, but their numbers never seemed to relent. The ghouls were slowly declining in number overall, but more zombies trickled up to the battle at each passing moment.

One particularly notable tactic against the fast moving undead was Saelil's rather shameful display. Unable to do much else directly, she'd taken to flittering about near the edge of the rooftop while taunting her prey.

"Come and get it boys," she said before shaking her chest lightly and then blowing a kiss toward a group of zombies that seemed strangely reluctant to move further toward the edge of the building.

Was it that her actions enticed them toward something worth sinking their teeth into? Or was it that her movements simply caught their attention and they found a reason to go in her direction? Either way the end result was all the same. Dozens of zombies ran right off the edge of the roof and flailed their arms wildly as they fell to their new deaths on the streets below.

"Oh, the boys often did fall for me pretty hard..." she said lightly before shifting her position and cocking her hips to the side.

Another zombie noticed her and leapt to his death in response. "Still got it!" she said before laughing softly and spinning in place like a top.

Near the rooftop entrance Chaine dodged to the side while narrowly avoiding a blood ghoul's attempt to bite him. Its teeth clamped down around the brick and mortar that comprised the entrance and tore off a chunk of material with little effort.

However, despite its brutal strength it screeched in pain a moment later when Chaine's sword cleaved its left arm. The amputated limb flopped to the ground and spasmed wildly for the briefest of moments. Another shriek of agony erupted from its hideous maw when a follow up strike pierced its chest. The blood ghoul exploded into ash and motes of light just in time for the tunic clad hero to smash his shield into the face of a screaming zombie.

On the surface, he seemed to be holding his own. On a deeper level, however, he bled freely from numerous minor wounds. At this point only Scott and Samantha managed to avoid such injuries. One was due to his high hit points and defense. The other was due to a power suit designed to deal with swarms of enemies of at least the same strength as the ones on the roof top. Neither could maintain that level of indifference to damage much longer at the rate that things were going, however.

Kitty flipped sideways to avoid a thrown zombie. The screaming beast flailed its arms wildly as it sailed past her. Her bestial instincts were at their highest point. She could easily dodge such a slow moving missile. The only problem was that it was not the only thrown object. The ghouls began throwing gravel toward her with incredible ferocity.

Forced to dodge and weave around that many projectiles to avoid being pummeled, she slipped on the loose rocks beneath her feet and lost her balance for a split-second. It would have been far too little time for a normal man to capitalize on, but the ghouls and zombies were faster and more aggressive than any human being. A zombie tackled her legs from the side and she went down. A moment later a blood ghoul leapt atop her and began clawing at her with wild reckless abandon.

If not for the sudden removal of the beast's head via a plasma disruptor shot, Kitty might have been slain. However, Samantha's redirection of her attention also cost her momentum and disrupted her attack rhythm. The ghouls and zombies she kept at bay until that moment used her distraction to tackle her as well.

Even as Kitty clawed and kicked her way to freedom, Samantha was dog piled by rotting corpses. They bit and clawed at her armor. A blood ghoul hocked disgusting wads of phlegm on her in concerted effort to melt her suit right off her body.

Shot after shot was fired beneath the dog pile of rotting death, but son those shots stopped altogether. Scott spared a glance toward her location. He'd not seen what happened to her due to his own situation, but he'd paid attention to her shots. When they stopped, he noticed.

He started to cry out her name, "Sama—" but he was cut off by a thunderous explosion. Corpses were sent flying in a flash of brilliant light, and in the air there hung suspended for the briefest of moments a spherical ball that rotated rapidly. The metallic ball bounced down and landed atop an air conditioning unit with enough force to smash it inward, deforming its outer casing in the process.

A little glowing sphere was left behind in its wake even as the metal hamster ball rushed forward like a demented pinball. The glowing sphere exploded three seconds later, and another appeared where the spherical form of Samantha passed.

The ghouls sensed the correlation and moved swiftly away from the dangerous glowing light while the far less intelligent zombies continued to rush after her. It was not long before another small concentration of screaming dead was sent flying away due to a high-yield explosion.

Samantha stayed in ball form for a while as it was much more difficult for the zombies or ghouls to watch her slick surface. Meanwhile, they would bunch together while trying to attack her.

Scott watched her roll through the horde leaving explosions in her wake briefly, and then laughingly cried out, "Hell yeah! Do it hamster girl!"

Unfortunately, despite her best efforts the number of enemies continued to increase for quite some time. It seemed that for every zombie or ghoul slain, four more rose up to take their place.

If things continued at the rate the heroes would be completely worn down and would inevitably fall. Time also grew shorter by the moment. If they did not make a move sooner, the situation was destined to become even worse than it was currently.

No handy menu screen appeared before him. This battle was not considered to be increased difficulty worthy of note. Scott could only grin and bear it as time went on, whatever would happen when time ran out must be considerably more difficult than even the battle now being fought on the roof top.