“No!” Daniel said. “This isn’t something the Americans would do! I hate them, but… not this.”

It was inevitable, I realized.

“Oh, it is them,” I told him, watching as our enemies and friends alike began to stir back to life. An entire army worth of dead, suddenly resurrected and captured to the other side. With such unfathomable Power, how could Seraph lose? And in a fight to the death, why would they hold anything back?

I should have seen it coming, I thought. But Daniel was right. It was beyond the pale. Yet, we had pushed them to this breaking point, and if any accountability did come for the horrible secret here revealed; that Seraph was harboring the devil himself, then it would be many years from now.

Hickory stomped Maximal’s face into the concrete as the Hero attempted to sit up and look around at what was happening on the field. He promptly lost consciousness again, at that. Yet, I tried not to think about him anymore.

Maximal was a small piece in this game.

I’d been so excited to face him, despite myself. He was the man who started all my persecution and, even though I renounced my resentment, I’d been giddy to see it acted out. But it was only because, deep down, I thought I had the luxury of vengeance in this easy fight. When, in reality, the odds had been rigged against us from the start.

Always, I was tempted back to my old ways, and I was tempted to despise the suffering that had been my greatest blessing. It was because of Hickory and Maximal that I’d become who I was now and that I had a chance at making history. Otherwise, I might have gone my whole life in that gas station, completely unaware of the Power I was harboring to change the world.

Fuck that, I thought. “We need to come up with a plan!”

“Easy for you to say,” Hickory snarled. “But nothing is coming to ya, is it? That’s because we’re screwed, here, boys. I know it when I damn well see it!”

And see it, he did. We all saw the hundreds of corpses, just standing there and waiting. They were ready for the command of their master. But where was the man himself? Where was that old Russian wretch?

It turned out, he was above the fight this whole time. And with a thunderous explosion, he cleared the clouds for all to see his face.

It was the first time anyone had laid eyes on the monster in so many decades. He was the vilest name on everyone’s lips, all across the world and for almost half a century; a faceless bogeyman. And now he stood up to protect the Earth from me.

He was surrounded by his cabal on a glass platform in the sky. Among all the countless Heroes he had killed during the sieges on his lands, he always took the best support Types for himself. Everyone knew this. They were his witches and warlocks and they were always close at hand. With them, his Power soared to new heights.

I didn’t think that, ultimately, he had half the strength he was associated with. Raising the dead, yes. But not his immortality, nor the widespread and precise military control of his thralls. Even then, I heard the faintest whisper in my ears. It was a psychic projection of his raspy, accented voice. No doubt one more Power he had acquired.

It was rattling off conditions and commands. Kill the Martians. Kill the Aliens. Kill those who stand against Seraph. Spare the Heroes.

Over and over, he reworded the same general command, while the faces of the dead pondered. I could actually see their expressions change as if they were still getting used to taking orders. As if they were thinking.

I shuddered to imagine that there were conscious people still trapped inside the undead. They were being forced to interpret and carry out another’s will for all eternity, and the very notion sent a violent chill down my spine.

Suddenly, I knew with a terrible certainty what we had to do. If there was going to be any hope of us winning this war, we had to bring the man down.

We had to kill the Lich.

Seraph had called him his son. This was the other team’s greatest Trump card, and we had to beat it.

“Hickory,” I said. The dead were now beginning to move towards us, still bleary-eyed with confusion.

“Yeah?” He was standing wary.

“What do you say we kill that man up there?”

“I’d say you’ve gone completely nuts.”

“Heh. That’s for sure,” Daniel agreed.

But Hickory went on. “And I couldn’t be more excited.”

“Oh, well, fuck, I guess.” Daniel shrugged. “We’re doing it, then. Sounds great.” He had to force his positivity back on, but he had plenty of his own craziness to do it with.

The first undead Hero moved up and attempted to choke Hickory, even though there was still a gun slung around their neck. They were almost despondent, and the Southerner quickly punched their head clean off. But that didn’t stop the attempt from continuing.

“We need to head back and get a plane or something, I reckon,” Hickory said, crushing the hands next. “Err, you know what…” He looked up to the sky and for the first time, I saw him use his lights to speak. He called out for our two flying comrades, Paradise and Foci.

Luckily, they had stuck around the area after dropping he and Daniel off just moments ago.

Hickory was taking the lead this time, and he pointed to Daniel and I. “Y’all come here so I can get a grip on you.” Then, he looked back to the fliers. “You two are gonna have to work together for this. But don’t worry, I’ve done this in the past a long time ago. Works like a charm.”

Before all three of us loaded up to fly, Daniel was taking shots at the undead nonstop. They were becoming increasingly violent, and the battle was now resuming from its eerie calm just moments ago. The sky was once again a hazardous flying zone, but we took off for it nonetheless.

“We’ve gotta get back to the Scarab!” Hickory ordered.

They weren’t happy, but Foci and Paradise obliged. Once we were airborne, though, it was slow going. They were severely overburdened.

“Wait!” I said to Hickory. “What about Maximal?”

“Fuck him,” the villain said bitterly. “I’ll kill him later when he won’t become a goddamn zombie. It’s not like we got a choice. I mean, FUCK!” He was seething, and try as he might, he couldn't hide it.

I watched as the little white body shrunk into the distance, and I tried not to be disappointed as well. Now simply wasn’t the right time, nor was he an important target, really. I had to remember that going forward.

I was bigger than him.

With the clouds completely cleared by the dread Lich, I could see the battlefield in its entirety. The Great Storm had been reformed for miles around the city, effectively cutting off our reinforcements and sealing us all alive in this tomb. That was where the clouds had gone, reforming into a torrent. It was an impossibly high storm wall, powered by the Earth’s own ferocity.

At least the Kizmets couldn’t be brought back, I noted. Neither could our own dead Scarabs be brought back, since they required a living pilot. The Master of Many had apparently lost most of her beasts, and now only the Golden Dragon of Smiler and Solomon’s Chariot remained as the greatest decisive threats.

In the end, there could be no lie, though. We were losing badly. All the Martians in the world couldn’t strangle to death those few Class One Heroes that were on the enemy’s side. We were lucky if a straight-on hit from one of our biggest cannons mounted on the Scarabs could even do that. This meant that scarier levels of Power still rang out on the field, held back only by the presence of allies. And very soon, there would be nothing left but Martians and the undead. Then, they would merely retreat and level the city with that kind of ability.

We tried not to draw attention to ourselves, flying by, but the field was now crawling with the undead, and we were hanging low and visible to them. For any enemy that spotted us in the sky and came forward, we had Daniel to blast them, and that worked to a point. But only to a point.

When his green blast fizzled against a black-suited Hero flying up to knock us from the sky, there was nothing I could immediately think to do. If we got knocked down now, we’d be immediately swamped on the street.

“Hickory!” I called.

“What do you want me to do about it?!” He barked. “You want me to throw you?”

I was seriously considering it before he got too close. It was our only idea at the moment, and I was the only one here without Powers, anyway. I was the most expendable.

Just then, a drone swept by. Its sleek white frame strafed the undead Hero and, in that motion, his head was taken clean off. Shimmering, vibrating blades were faceted along the bottom of the machine, and I only caught a glimpse of it before it disappeared again above the streets.

As we finally arrived at the Scarab’s loading bay, I realized what had happened when I saw who came to greet us. It was Cyber, and her head was huge.

She had put on a specially designed bio-mechanical helmet, and it arrayed her with antenna through which she could directly attack Seraph's data network. She was a supercomputer at this rate.

"That was close," she said, smiling meekly. Still the same as ever. So trepidatious for the horror around her.

"You really saved me there," I nodded, already searching over the cargo bay for the next suit I would take. We had to get even more firepower if we were going to take on a Goddamn Class Zero, surrounded by a small army of Ones and Twos. Who was I kidding?

We were on a suicide mission.

"You're thinking what I'm thinking," Hickory said, noticing my grimace. "I don't like our odds neither."

"But what can we do?"

Cyber chimed in. "You can organize a proper offensive instead of just running in there on your own. I've been in here now since the start of the battle, and it may look like chaos down there, but we're well organized. I can pass on your plan to the Strategists if you're thinking of going after the Lich, right? I think Sol is already planning something similar."

Of course, he was. My face lit up, and I could finally start to see a way through. "So let's all grab some equipment here and move out. Cyber? Do you have any more of those drones?"

She shrugged. "A handful. But I can't usually get good control of them, so I've mostly just been focusing on causing them to crash or self-destruct. I've been trying to keep the heat off you guys."

"And massively appreciated," I said. "But right now, we need everything you've got."

"This is it," Daniel realized. "If we don't kill the Lich here, then every set of reinforcements we send will just dig the hole deeper. We'll never have another chance like this..."

"This is it," I agreed.

One last push.