Raksha was no stranger to reanimated corpses. After all, they played an integral role in Hegemonic society as menial laborers and battlefield chaff. Slow and placid, they were capable of being tasked with only a single mechanical task at a time, such as pushing a sharpened stick in one direction or pulling the trigger of a pre-aimed rifle. This made them poor workers and worse combatants, and during his days on the battlefield, Raksha had demolished entire formations of them singlehandedly.

The creatures surging from the open steel doors of a massive, cathedral-like building were nothing like that. Yes, they were animated corpses, most of them clad in the customary dark sackcloth of necromantic post-processing and sporting the grayish-white pallor of death where their skin showed, but that was where the similarities ended.

These corpses were running, their hands arced into claws, as they pounced on the meager line of Hegemonic troopers trying to keep them at bay. Their faces were frozen into rictuses of gleeful hatred, an expression disturbingly similar to that of the serfs who’d sacrificed themselves to the Tree of Hearts.

The cracked, bloodless lips of a sprinting corpse split apart into a manic grin, revealing rows of broken teeth. It fastened its jaws around the neck of a hapless Hegemonic trooper, a young man barely past adolescence wearing olive-gray combat fatigues, before tearing free a mouthful of flesh and spilling a torrent of blood.

Raksha charged, Steelbreaker raised. Whatever was going on, he could find out later from the necromancer. For now, there were foes to destroy and lives to save. He leaped over a cluster of cowering troopers, and his first stroke cleaved a trio of pouncing corpses out of the air, sending their body parts tumbling away. As he landed, he looked over his shoulder at the troopers behind him. They were young, the oldest of them having seen his sixteenth winter at most.

“Fall back and reform your firing line!” he barked.

The youths babbled in incoherent fear. They were not combat-ready, not in the slightest, and Raksha could spare no time with further instruction. He bisected a corpse from crown to groin, then kicked its halves into another cluster of the feral dead, tripping those in the lead and staggering the others behind.

As the undead charge faltered, he dove into their midst, blade flashing. Broken teeth and nails raked harmlessly against his aegis as he crushed a faceless skull beneath his heel and cut the legs out from a pair of corpses. More corpses fell, but he couldn’t stop them all. At least a dozen streamed past him, reaching for the troopers with hunger in their glassy eyes.

Raksha growled and fought his way forward. He couldn’t afford to turn back. The corpses were pouring from the cathedral doors. If he could shut them, perhaps the dead could yet be contained. He cursed as the sound of tearing flesh and screams arose behind him. There were too many, and he couldn’t kill them quickly enough. He couldn’t reach them fast enough…

The world suddenly became a crackling sea of cobalt blue lightning. Raksha squinted, shielding his eyes from the blinding electric radiance in which everything seemed to drown. The entire host of writhing, maddened corpses before him fell apart into blazing cinders. He spun on his heel, intent on pursuing those that had passed him, but Sadea’s lightning had struck them down too, leaving piles of ashes that the evening breeze soon swirled away.

“Holy shit, Vicky!” Sadea twirled her staff idly as she approached. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Don’t call me that!” the necromancer snapped, walking over to the disemboweled body of a young Hegemonic trooper. The corpse began to twitch, and its bloodied lips curled into a demented grin. It reached for the necromancer. She drew a pistol from her coat and shot it in the skull, evacuating its brains. “Goddamn it! The unsanctioned dead turn those they kill!”

She nodded to her flesh golems. They moved fluidly among the fallen troopers, the one with the sword putting its weapon to systematic beheading, while the other one, its grenade launcher slung, emptied skulls with a pistol.

“Good thing we got here when we did. I didn’t have high expectations for this town’s garrison, but they failed to live up to even those,” the necromancer said, glaring at the surviving troopers. There were about two dozen left, a frightened collection of youths clad in ill-fitting combat fatigues and clutching their rifles more in fear than in readiness.

“Oh, Vicky.” Sadea sighed. “I know you’re frustrated about failing with men and maybe a bit pent up, but should you really be picking on these boys now? You need to tell me what’s going on.”

“Yes,” Raksha agreed, sheathing Steelbreaker and walking over to the necromancer. “Explain. Immediately.”

“This town’s necromantic office received reports of unsanctioned dead an hour ago, spilling from here, the province’s largest mortuary plant. Administrator Hadriana mobilized the local garrison to address the situation. Having processed Sadea’s bounty earlier and hearing her plans to harass a certain martial scientist, I took it upon myself to track the both of you down, which wasn’t difficult, and requisition your assistance.” The necromancer grimaced. “I don’t see Hadriana anywhere, so I must presume she has fallen in battle.”

“Presume no longer, Vicky.” Sadea pointed at a twitching, bloody pile of limbs, viscera, and a head connected to the sparse remains of a gnawed torso near the gate. “She’s right there. Snapping her ugly maw all the time like she used to do in life. No difference, really, except that at least she’s smiling, now.”

“Goddamn it.” The necromancer looked at the sword-wielding golem. It strode over to Hadriana’s remains and put its blade through her skull. Then it pushed the cathedral doors shut.

“Phew. Even I can feel the unsanctioned necromantic energies radiating from here. Readings at the office’s psi-gauges must be off the chart,” Sadea said. “This is going to get real messy. How many corpses does this place hold?”

“Millions.”

“Well, they’re all coming back.”

“I know, Sadea!” the necromancer growled. “Shut up and let me think!”

“We can’t let these corpses reach the rest of the town,” Raksha said. “We have to hold them here. Or destroy whatever’s causing this.”

“We can’t hold back an army of unsanctioned dead with this lot.” The necromancer glared at the Hegemonic troopers. “And the nearest reinforcements are at least a day’s ride away.”

“Right.” Raksha drew Steelbreaker and walked toward the cathedral gates.

“Hey!” The necromancer ran after him and caught his sleeve. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Being an idiot,” Sadea chirped. “Or moron. Or imbecile.”

Raksha looked over his shoulder at the sorceress. “At least I don’t look like I stuff my face with a dozen candy bars at a time.”

Which she’d done, while Raksha had been fumbling the chimera’s head onto her horse’s saddle hooks.

Sadea gasped and took her hand out of the kilt pocket from which Raksha had seen her retrieve a seemingly endless supply of candy bars. “Did you just call me fat?”

“You said it, not me.”

“You little—“

Thumps resounded from the other side of the cathedral doors. Fists against steel. Inhuman shrieks and moans, born of stinking air forced through decaying throats. One flesh golem braced the doors shut as another dropped a locking bar in place.

More corpses were emerging from the depths of the plant.

“I’m going to end whatever’s causing this,” Raksha told the necromancer. “But it’s a big building. Do you know where I can find it?”

“The unsanctioned energies radiate from within the plant, but it’ll take me a bit more time to triangulate where the source exactly is. Right now, all I can tell you that it’s coming from the lower levels.”

“That’s… not very helpful. So, should I wait until you’re done with this triangularation thing?”

“Triangulation. And no, it’ll take me hours, if not an entire day to do that. We don’t have that kind of time.”

“But the closer you get, the more quickly you can work, right?” Sadea asked.

“I don’t think I should enter the premises. My combat effectiveness lies primarily in my golems. If these energies seize control of them, which they might, since the closer to their source, the stronger they are…”

“You’ll be worse than utterly useless,” Raksha finished. The necromancer glared at him, the cast of her pale, delicate features resembling a pout, but she nodded.

“I will be a liability.”

Sadea held up a copper earring. She clipped its paired twin onto her left ear. “Two hundred credits. Search-and-destroy mission parameters. Psi-link with me, and you can triangulate by proxy and keep me updated as I get closer to the source of these energies.”

“Done.” The necromancer snatched the earring from Sadea and put it on her right ear. She turned to Raksha. “And you? What are your rates?”

“Rates?”

“She’s asking you how much you want to get paid for this, idiot.” Sadea jabbed the point of her staff into Raksha’s side. He brushed it away irritably.

“Uh. Whatever you think works,” he told the necromancer. “I don’t care. I just want to make sure no one else gets hurt.”

“I get his share,” Sadea said. “Another two hundred.”

“Absolutely not.” The necromancer met Raksha’s gaze. “I’ve heard about you, Raksha, apprentice of Shura the Destroyer. And I can now say that it’s a pleasure and an honor to finally meet you.”

She put out her hand. “Viktoria Stefka, Hegemonic Necromancer.”

Raksha shook it awkwardly. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

“I saw him first, Vicky.” Sadea pulled their hands apart. “Don’t get any funny ideas. I know how desperate you are, these days.”

“What—“

Raksha continued walking to the cathedral doors. “Come if you’re coming, woman.”

Sadea caught up with him as he reached the steel doors. Murals had been etched onto their surface, much like those he would expect to see on the stained glass windows of churches: rows upon rows of humanity, some alive and others corpses in various states of decomposition, kneeling in submission and abasing themselves in worship to God, portrayed as a massive grinning skull with a blazing cross on its forehead.

It seemed appropriate. After all, God was the rightful and righteous Tyrant of Death. Or so the priests said. Raksha had never given theology much thought.

Sadea had tucked her staff in the crook of her arm. She took off her scarf and, while holding onto both of its ends, looped its length over his neck.

“What are you doing?”

“If you open those doors now, the swarm will pour out. So we’re going to have to go in without doing that.”

“How are we going to…”

She grinned. Her eyes blazed, and the world turned cobalt-blue.