~~~~~

Daryl

~~~~~

Daryl's only warning that everything was about to go to shit was Princess screaming in his head. Then Nate kicked him…

The attack came out of nowhere and caught him completely by surprise as it blasted right into his chest. "What the hell…" Daryl thought, moments before darkness and pain surrounded him, "oh shit!"

Debuff Upgraded: [Miasma III]

Debuff Upgraded: [Miasma VI]

Debuff Upgraded: [Miasma IX]

Debuff Gained: [Corruption]

Nate's foot hit him hard, and Daryl heard something crack, but that was the last thing on his mind as the unexpected assault pushed him back… and just outside of the Magic that had blasted up from the ground.

Debuff Downgraded: [Miasma I]

He could still feel the black wave of corruption from a distance, even without touching it, as it shot up from the field in the center of the stadium. Then it grew into an expanding ring of death that raced after him as he sailed through the air.

Nate exploded out of the charging darkness and blurred past him to grab two of the people that had agreed to leave this place. They were the lucky ones.

"My God!" Daryl could see people inside the Magic or those too slow to escape as it spread. He could see them scream and start rotting at a horrible pace until they were swallowed up in the dark.

Princess had been further away and hadn't needed any help when the spell hit, so Daryl could concentrate on his landing when he finally reached the end of his impromptu flight. He managed to turn his tumble into a roll and was on his feet an instant later, sprinting for his life. "I'm okay!" he thought toward Princess, whose panicked voice was crying in his head.

"Are you sure!? I can feel your pain!" she replied.

"Nate got me pretty good." he said, and she growled in his head. "Hey," Daryl reassured her, "I'll take a bruised rib cage over that any day!"

"He is a brute with no finesse!" she huffed.

Daryl smiled at her complaint and risked a glance back as they ran… "Shit!" Something was emerging from the raging pillar of corruption… it looked like a…

"No need to be vulgar…" Princess started to complain, "shit, dodge!"

Daryl didn't hesitate at the alarm in her voice and threw himself sideways while simultaneously cloaking himself in his magic. He vanished, and an illusory copy of him dodged in the opposite direction as purple light rained down where he would have been. He was kicking himself for not already having his defensive magic going when he realized what that attack had been… "That bitch!"

He found Sam in the sky, purple lights swarming around her, and Nate abruptly appeared next to her. He punched through her crystalline barrier in an explosion of purple light and landed a few more glancing blows before a voice bellowed, "That's enough!" and glowing chains sprang up around Nate.

Daryl slid to a stop when he saw the owner of that voice… a four-armed Skeleton. "This is bad. This is so bad!" He still had the occasional nightmare of the four-armed monstrosity that had fought Stanley near the Tower… Now there was another one, and it had caught Nate. "What the hell do we do now?"

“Do we attack?” Princess said as she crept up next to him, her own illusory double chasing after his in the distance. The difference was that her double was surrounded by more illusions, new copies constantly springing up and sprinting away. Moreover, she was continually shifting which one persisted and split off, thereby better selling the idea that she was among them.

It only bothered Daryl a little that she was so much more skilled with the magic than he was… "Get ready with your fire spit," he told her as the Skeleton closed in on the struggling and increasingly brighter Nate.

"A princess does not spit!" she said indignantly.

"Then get your fireball ready!"

Sam had stopped fighting once Nate was bound in the Magic chains, and she instead bowed to the Undead in the sky. "You failed to catch even one of them," it said in a gravelly voice.

"I told you that one would be trouble!" Sam exclaimed, pointing at Nate, "I would have…"

"Enough excuses," It interrupted, then handed something dark and shiny to her, "this is your last chance. Don't disappoint us again."

"Now!" Daryl screamed mentally to Princess and immediately followed her fire-spit with his own copy of it. Simultaneously their illusory doubles slid to a stop and started launching a steady stream of those same fireballs at the Undead.

"Go, I will deal with this," the four-armed skeleton said as it gestured with two hands, the other two holding the chains on Nate. A glowing disc appeared between it and the spells and quickly expanded as Sam flew away towards the tower.

The stream of fireballs heading at the shield abruptly flew wild in all different directions and trajectories. One of those paths led into, and merged with, the only non-illusory spell from Princess and managed to strike the Skeleton first…

It struck a leg and set the dark robe the thing was wearing on fire. "Damn, worms!" Then the rest of the spells crashed into it, Daryl multiplying many of them at the last moment.

Under the barrage of fire, the magic binding Nate dimmed. Daryl saw Nate twist violently in the chains and then drive two fingers into a link of the spell. There was a flash, and the entire chain shattered. The Undead spat something, and more chains swarmed the man, but Nate danced around the reaching magic and juked his way across the sky towards the fleeing Sam with booming footsteps. The Undead leader flew after him, and Nate shouted one word as he left, "Run!"

Princess echoed him, and Daryl was already running before he glanced back at the pillar and wished he hadn't. It was fading, becoming less opaque, which meant he could see the army flowing across the ground towards him. Looking ahead at the rest of his team and all the people that had just joined gave him a sick feeling in his stomach. There was no way the mainly E Ranks would be able to keep up and stay ahead of the Undead… "Do we have to leave them to die?"

Daryl abruptly realized that he wouldn't be fast enough either as something blurred out ahead of the enemy lines and towards the humans. He got a brief glimpse as one slowed… and saw a zombified dog sniffing at the ground before it looked abruptly in his direction and the entire pack shifted course to close in more quickly. "That's cheating!"

Princess sent her duplicating clones charging back to engage, and Daryl spun off his own batch of copies, adding a bit of extra Mana to each in the form of scent. The growing army of Daryl's and foxes collided with the mass of zombie dogs, wolves, and other quadrupeds that he didn't know what they were, seeing as they were nothing but bones.

Fiery explosions detonated in brilliant destruction, and many of the 'dogs' were blown into chunks of meat or shards of bone. But more than half of the clones went down to snapping jaws and slashing claws as the forces collided. Daryl slowed to a jog as he frantically split off new clones from the survivors, trying to keep the illusions solid enough to draw in more attention and divert or slow the advance.

He heard a loud howl that seemed to set the world to vibrating. “What was that?”

“The Dog,” Princess said, “he is yelling again.”

Daryl carefully hid his amusement at her continued grumpiness towards Caffeine, not that it was hard at the moment. “Are they attacking the Tower already?”

Something flew overhead, but he was too focused to spare even a glance. "More Leader Undead," Princess supplied in his head, "going to the Tower, after Nate and the traitor." She sighed in his head, “and the dog is crying about protecting his friends.”

Daryl cursed silently. "Good luck, Nate." There was nothing he could do, all of his attention on stopping the charging horde before it could overrun him and the others. And it was working! The Undead were slowing and stalling as they attacked the army of Princess and his creation. Daryl grinned as he kept jogging slowly after the escaping humans. "Choke on my…"

The smile froze on his lips as something Looked at him… it reminded him of when Stanley used to look at him with those heavy eyes of his… but this was so much worse. Stanley gave off a feeling of fear and pain, sometimes mixed with a hefty amount of anger. But this gaze… it held no fear or pain, no anger. Only a deep… Hunger. A Starving, Crazed Hunger.

Daryl couldn't move as the weight of it bore down on him. His legs stopped running, and his magic slowed in his veins. "Daryl!" a screaming voice whispered distantly in his mind as he finally met the glowing eyes descending on him. They were a terrible vortex of red and black light…

Mana suddenly burned through him, and Daryl was abruptly a dozen feet away… he saw a glowing skeletal hand clawed through the magical copy of himself that had taken his place.

“That was a good skill choice…” It had drained almost all of his Mana to escape, and he was pretty sure that Princess had activated it for him as well, but...

The glowing horror show that passed for the thing’s eyes only stayed on the dissolving replica for an instant before snapping over to pin him down again. "Princess…” he thought in a sluggish panic, “run…"

A swarm of flaming foxes intercepted the claws inches from his face and buried the towering monster in fire and teeth.

Daryl snapped out of his stupor and pulled at the dregs of his remaining Mana. "It almost killed me again… Princess!"

The fight was over a heartbeat later. All the foxes vanished but one, and she was clutched in one large skeletal hand and snarling in pain as she struggled to free herself, flaming tails lashing wildly.

A glowing red spear appeared with a boom, the point inches from the pale skull, the haft held tightly by another of the skeletal hands. It clenched the hand tighter around the spear, and a woman screamed behind Daryl.

"Interesting," the murmuring voice rumbled through the air as it looked at the spear and then behind him.

Daryl could suddenly breathe again. "Kira… Princess!" Before he could do more than draw in a breath, those eyes fell on him again, crushing him under their weight. The spear turned to point at him… Princess yowled in pain and rage. "No…"

Light bloomed brighter overhead, casting their shadows into stark relief on the ground, and Daryl felt heat press down on him. Then briefly, those swirling eyes lifted from him… an instant before the heavens opened up and rained down their wrath.

Daryl heard a deafening screech, then red and gold fire plunged down like a meteor and slammed into the monstrous skeleton. A shockwave blasted out from the impact and threw him backwards into the air as it consumed the world. Flames roared around him, but he felt only a soothing warmth, and a heartbeat later, a humanoid-shaped flame leaped from the inferno toward Daryl, Princess under one arm.

Daryl didn't need to see beneath the flames to know who it was. "Adrian!" He would never not recognize this man. Both of them collided in each other's arms, and Daryl felt the healing fire burn throughout his body, revitalizing and healing him. But not completely…

"Daryl…" Adrain was interrupted by a deep roar, and the flames surrounding them were forced away in an expanding ring from the now charred skeleton.

"Die, you…" it roared and a beam of burning energy lanced from the beak of the giant phoenix in the sky above. At the same time, Adrian leaned forward, and a beam of fire roared out of his mouth to join in.

Daryl copied him, and all three beams crashed into the skeleton, knocking it from the air and sending it to the dirt, then blasting it across the ground in a burning, roaring pile of bones.

A terrible sound that might have been a word echoed through the air, and a bubble of darkness appeared under the flames. Beams of magic shot from the dark. One into the sky, where it sheared through a wing of the enormous bird, sending it into a screeching tumble toward the ground.

Another caught the flame-drenched Adrian in the leg… and blasted it off at the knee.

The last beam cut straight through Daryl's chest.

Burning blood sprayed from the stump of Adrian's leg as Daryl dove away from the crumbling illusion of himself and toward the wounded man. "Stanley said it was Soul Sight…" he thought in a near panic. Putting his illusory double next to himself to throw off the monster's perceptions had worked… but it had been so close!

"Adrian…" before he even finished shouting his name, Adrian's burning blood had bloomed into blinding white fire, and a new leg was there when it faded. “How much more can he use that?” Daryl didn’t know the limits of that power but suspected they were close.

Cheesesteak replaced his missing wing with one seemingly made of his own fire and blasted the Undead again with another beam of searing flame. Daryl was only a heartbeat behind Adrian as they joined in the assault.

"Enough!" Daryl felt a surge of magic accompany the roar and threw himself at the man next to him. He took both of them to the ground an instant before the Magic scythed through where they had been standing. "You…" the skeleton roared in outrage.

A single sonic boom was the only warning before Nate appeared above the Skeleton, his foot driving down in a glowing ax kick onto its bubble. The dark orb shattered and revealed the undead with a hand held up, glowing with brilliant obsidian light, and poised to catch the descending foot.

Nate somehow aborted his kick and spun faster than Daryl could see into a spinning roundhouse kick that slammed into the side of the thing's skull and sent it tumbling once more across the ground. He was off again in pursuit before the monster even hit the ground.

A wordless roar of anger erupted from the undead as another beam of fire lanced from the sky. Magic burst out in all directions, and Nate was forced to abandon his attack in a violent course correction to dodge the wave of darkness. The explosion didn't go far before fading, and Nate landed next to them as they all ran away.

"Zeke needs healing! Sam stuck him with something, and the Corruption is killing him! I'll delay this one! Go!" his words almost blurred together as he talked fast.

"I can't," Adrian said and gestured to his bare leg. Daryl could see a black spot where his leg had been blasted off by the beam, small squirming lines radiating outward from it. "It latches onto our Souls and I can't remove it."

Daryl finally thought to look at the Debuff.

[Corruption]

A Soul deep Infection of Undeath. This Effect will Grow over time, increasing in strength until Removed or the Infected Dies. Upon Death, will transform the Infected into Racial Change [Undead].

Can only be Removed by Powerful Soul Abilities, or Strong Purification Effects.

The skeleton must have overheard them talking, and it started laughing as it floated back into the air in pursuit. "You are doom…"

"Then we kill it," Nate said quickly, "will that stop it?"

"You dare to ignore…" Another beam of flame shot down… and struck an invisible dome above its head. More streaks of darkness reached for them, and the phoenix dodged in a flash of fire, while Nate dodged the one coming for him in a twisting twirl. While he was at it, he also punched another into the ground and kicked the other into the sky.

"I hope so," Adrian said as he ran without breaking stride, "Kill it and whatever is up there."

Daryl stopped gawking at Nate and finally took a good look above as he sprinted with the others. A massive orb of impenetrable darkness loomed overhead as it slowly drifted after them.

No, not after them… it was heading toward the Tower. "What is it?" he asked.

"Another Raid Leader," Nate said with certainty in his voice, "and the source of the Miasma."

"How do we fight that?!"

Nate snatched up and threw a handful of rocks from the ground in one blindingly quick motion. The glow on his hand vanished and the small stones were glowing instead when they impacted with the dark spheres of magic bearing down on the trio. Each sphere expanded into massive explosions of magic when struck, and not even dust emerged from them. "We start by killing that one," he said, "I think it must be C Rank."

The undead in question responded with another wordless roar of irritation and started flying faster after them.

"Shit!" Daryl cursed. That explained the weight of its gaze earlier… though now, surrounded by the phoenix fire, it held much less pressure… and it was no longer hungry. Now there was a wave of growing anger coming from those eyes…

"I heard that!" Adrian said, "I'm telling Walter you said a bad word!"

Daryl almost tripped but felt a smile growing on his face. "I'll feed the swear jar when we get back… after we beat this thing." He shoved a small ball of something edible, allegedly, into his mouth. The flavor was… intense, but the effect was worth it.

+100% All Regeneration(29:29)

The others quickly followed suit, with similar expressions to what Daryl expected had been on his face. That woman made some powerful stuff, but it came with a steep cost to their taste buds…

Nate knocked away the next barrage of magic, and Daryl noticed that the four-armed skeleton was falling behind. In fact, the undead army was getting closer than it was… "It won't leave the orb…" he said, understanding dawning, "we can outrun…"

"If it gets to the Tower, I have a bad feeling that we are going to be in trouble," Nate said, and Daryl had fought alongside the man enough by now to trust his ‘feelings’.

"Wait," Daryl said, "what about the Raid Leaders that already went to the Tower?"

"Caffeine drove off the… wait there was more than one?" Nate asked.

Daryl told him what Princess had seen and Nate frowned but finally shook his head. "They can handle it, Caffeine is there, and besides, this is the real threat." He pointed up. "Can either of you attack whatever is inside that thing?” Nate continued, “We might need to stay at range… I don't think I can survive inside that for long." Then, almost before he finished talking, Nate vanished in an explosion of dirt and kicked the chanting skeleton in one waving hand, disrupting whatever magic it had been preparing.

Daryl had gained an increasing awareness of magic around him as he delved into his new abilities and fought for his and Adrian's survival. In the process, that same awareness helped him get a feel for how much power his spells required to successfully overcome resistance or blind his opponents to the fact that it was all illusion. And now it told him that all of his power was insufficient…

Daryl met Adrian's eyes as he shook his head. "My magic will be weaker against the leader, and I doubt it will get through that corruption up there." Adrian caught his hand and squeezed it as Daryl continued, "you and Nate deal with that. I'll stop the army."

"Of course," Adrian said with a grin, "you mop that up, and I'll take care of this. Say fifteen minutes, and we meet up for a late brunch?"

"I'll bring the mimosas," Daryl smiled back, but it faded quickly. He tugged Adrian close as they caught up to the fleeing humans and slowed down. "Please be careful…" he whispered, before letting him go.

Adrian spread his arms with a cocky grin, flames spreading over his body and roaring high above him. "I'm a phoenix. We are Immortal!" Then he rocketed after Nate, who was still keeping the leader busy beneath the looming orb.

Daryl vanished into a group of his copies, and the crowd grew as it sprinted to meet the approaching army of the dead. "I sure hope so, Adrian." Every day it felt a little like he was being left behind by the man, his own power no actual match for what Adrian could dish out. What heights could he rise to in this new world? Daryl watched him, a living embodiment of phoenix fire, as Adrian impacted the raid leader like a missile and blasted it across the sky. "Will he eventually leave me for someone stronger? Someone who could stand on his level?"

"Adrian doesn't love you for your magic," Princess spoke into his mind, drowning out his thoughts, "Cheesesteak knows that much."

"He loves me!" Daryl smiled at the innocent confirmation, not that he doubted it… much, and then he had another thought. "You talk about us?” Even as he kept moving and created more copies of himself, Daryl asked, "Why does he love me then?"

"Of course," Princess huffed, "we must take care of our humans. And Cheesesteak doesn't know why he loves you… but I do."

"Really, why is that?" Daryl was curious now.

"Because you feed him and give him good pets!" she declared.

Daryl almost tripped when he burst out laughing, and Princess huffed, "I always loved you when you did that for me…"

"I'm sorry, Princess. You just might have figured it out," Daryl consoled her, "though I still worry about him."

"He is strong," Princess said reassuringly in his head as she followed along and sent her own copies charging along with his, "plus Cheesesteak will watch over him."

Daryl forced dreadful images from his imagination and cast a critical eye over the fleeing humans who would never be fast enough to escape the tide. Kira's team must have come to the same conclusion because they stopped, letting the weaklings stream past them as they got into formation to face the horde. He saw her spear light up with its signature red glow and sent an illusory copy to appear with them.

"Take them wide," his copy said, "they will never outrun the Undead. Their best bet is to find somewhere to hole up and hope we win…" That came out a bit bleaker than he intended, but one of the other groups that had fought and trained together volunteered to lead the hundred or so weaker humans to safety. No one objected to the choice, and though they were the weakest team here, they would be enough to keep the much more fragile humans from getting eaten by rats or ants…

Daryl assisted in their escape by shrouding everyone in his magic and sending illusions of them towards the Tower while they veered off to the side. He didn't waste too much power on the illusions, just enough to look decent from a distance and a touch of scent in case of more hounds.

Then he turned to meet the horde. "Are you ready, guys?"

"Let's wipe 'em out!" someone shouted.

"No," Daryl shouted over the growing roar of the monsters, "this is a marathon. We will be in a fighting retreat to the tower; no glorious charges or heroic last stands today." He made eye contact with Kira, and while she glared defiantly at him, she also nodded her head, if reluctantly. "We thin the herd, kill the faster ones and give people at home time to prepare."

There was a chorus of agreement, then Kira's spear shot across the distance and ripped into the front ranks of the Undead. Princess once again launched her one non-Class skill, the fiery acid spit Stanley had given him from the ant queen. Then, she mixed in a slew of follow-up fireballs, all illusions. Daryl added his spells to the mix, but from his copies. His actual body was already far ahead of the others and running further away as Princess left her own copy behind and raced to catch up. It felt a bit shady to run away like this, but he could accomplish much more if he focused on a wider area and didn't need to worry about defending his body.

Kira slid to a stop when her spear returned and slashed the point across her arm. The blood leaped from her, forming new spears in the air and launching into the approaching horde.

Arnold stood in front of Kira while Sven moved between them, pulses of light flashing from his hands, touching everyone in turn.

Jason and his brother Larry fell in behind Arnold with bone swords of their own. Frost was gathering around Amanda as she forced out a wave of ice to coat the ground ahead of the attackers.

Daryl’s copies were also on the front line, some throwing fireballs, others wielding blades, and even some with glowing red spears. He dodged aside from a skeleton's sweeping bladed arm and blasted the other descending blade free of the limb it extended from.

Another leaping Undead dropped down onto him and bisected his body straight down the middle. Each half spun into a new copy and sent out a wave of ice over many of the charging Undead, stopping them cold… While some froze solid, others were only immobilized as they fought against the illusion. Red spears shot from more copies of him and shattered a few of the frozen monsters.

More illusions died along the front, but the Undead paid the price. He didn't need to direct each copy individually, simply focusing on his intent was enough once they were created, and Princess filled in the gaps for him.

He could have copied the other people’s body’s along with their skills, and doing so would increase the strength of their respective skills when he used them, but it was far easier to copy himself. It took almost no Mana to replicate something he knew as well as himself, and in a large-scale fight, Mana would probably be the deciding factor…

“...the fuck is that!?” someone screamed, and Daryl glanced over as the ground shook beneath his feet.

“So they were real…” Towering behemoths were rising up in the receding stadium, each topping out taller than the stands around the field. Eve had talked about those, but Daryl had been hesitant to believe something like that could exist, even in the newly magical world they all found themselves in now. And yet here they were.

“Run faster!” he screamed and threw a spell at the closest of the giant monsters. It looked so tiny when it impacted the thing… they fought on in a steady retreat until…

Enemy Raid Leader Defeated…

The battleground seemed to pause, “Useless!” the Raid Leader growled, and Daryl thought he heard a faint howl, but it was drowned out by the noise of the stadium's destruction as one by one, the towering monsters were walking through the structure to get outside. At that pace, they would catch up far too soon…

He heard a new strange sound and felt Princess flinch at something overhead. He looked up in time to see a black cloud rolling over them both. Daryl had a fleeting instant of terror… then he heard the cacophony of flapping wings. “That isn’t corruption… what is it?”

“Bats,” Princess growled, her ears tucked down unhappily, “that annoying dog has annoying friends.”

Daryl shared some of her reluctance about the bats. They’d had a few run-ins, and the mana-eaters were possibly the worst opponent he could fight. But here and now… a few lone bats did swoop down and destroy some illusions, but the vast majority swarmed onto the Undead.

“Fall back!” he shouted over the racket, “let the bats fight!”

They did as instructed and used the opportunity to get some distance. Daryl also used the lull to let his Mana regenerate. Then he started carefully crafting doubles for each of them, placing the illusions as close as he could to each person, just in case. Then a heavy gaze swept over the group and his magic shivered under the weight.

“Damn it!” Daryl felt magic fly from the skeletal leader and out into the horde on the ground. He couldn’t see any effect for a few moments, and then something changed… the steady sound of bats exploding suddenly kicked up a notch. It took even longer to see the cause, but he cursed and started moving further back when he did. “Get ready!”

A wall of bone emerged from the horde as the chaotic mob continued thinning out under the Mana drain of the bats or the explosions of their deaths. Brilliant red eyes were fleetingly visible between the shields, eyes with intelligence. The shield-bearers methodically cut down any bat that came close, and when one became too damaged, they would retreat, and a new one would replace it.

In the gaps, Daryl got glimpses of other undead. He saw more blade-armed skeletons, now no longer charging mindlessly. Behind those, he saw zombies. Some were fresh-looking human zombies with a disturbing look of intelligence. “How many people, besides Sam, joined willingly?” he thought with some trepidation. Then once the bats thinned out even more, the newcomers started throwing magic between the shields.

The humans responded with alacrity and dodged what they could while blocking the rest. But unfortunately, it slowed the damage they were able to dish out. Daryl tried to send his magic in retaliation, but the shields blocked the small tricks, and whenever he got something big going, the Raid Leader would look over and destroy it all with a glance.

They were being driven further away until Adrian suddenly sent a storm of fire raining down over the undead forces. Nate was an indistinguishable blur to Daryl's eyes, and yet somehow, the Skeleton still managed to slip free long enough to send an explosion of dark magic right behind the fire. The engulfing phoenix fire smothered in the darkness, flickering and fading away, while the undead that had been damaged were restored by the same.

Nate traded roles with Adrian next, landing behind the shield wall like an artillery strike and shattering dozens of them while sending more flying. Daryl and his people managed to destroy only a couple of the displaced undead before another spell buried them in shadow. All of them were restored when the darkness was burned away by Adrian's next attack.

“This isn’t working…” Daryl met Adrian’s increasingly weary gaze. They needed to find another…

Enemy Raid Leader Defeated…

That was welcome news and unexpected by the reaction of the Raid Leader. “What…” it growled, eyes toward the Tower.

Enemy Raid Leader Defeated…

“Impossible!”

Enemy Raid Leader Defeated…

“Damn you worthless…”

Adrian and Nate pounced. Fire filled the sky, and a deafening thunder of Nate’s supersonic blows rang in their ears. Cheesesteak dove from the flames and flew down the front lines of the undead forces on the ground, spewing fire over them like a vengeful dragon.

Magic surged high, and Daryl ducked down instinctively behind the wall he was lurking next to. The resulting wave of blackness burned at his skin and then retreated behind the follow-up wave of phoenix fire.

Debuff Upgraded [Corruption II]

When he lifted his head, the Skeleton Leader was nowhere in sight… then a barrage of black magic poured from within the slowly floating orb. Adrian landed explosively among the humans and filled the area with his fire to combat the deadly corruption. Nate did his best to deflect what he could, but much of the magic still touched down.

It landed among and restored many of the inflamed undead, negating almost all the previous damage. Though some of the more destroyed ones remained dead. The humans picked themselves up just in time to meet the onrushing tide of organized dead. Adrian and Nate crashed into the organized formations and dealt a heavy toll on those forces. But their assistance was pulled abruptly when more magic rained from above and threatened to kill the living and restore the unliving.

“It retreated…” Daryl realized, his eyes drawn to the opaque darkness drifting closer to his hiding spot. The Leader was nowhere to be seen and, given the attacks from above, was very likely hiding out in the one place no one could reach. ”How do we…”

The Undead were driving back his allies and copies in a steady push, when a blurring shape darted through the ranks. Undead fell, and the Humans capitalized, destroying dozens of the shield-bearers before Daryl could even see what had come to their aid.

Then a new, larger shape padded into his view and howled. "The Wolves… more of Caffeine's friends?" he asked Princess.

"Dangerous beasts," Princess agreed, "and worthy allies."

The pack's leader seemed to be a massive gray wolf that stood apart from the rest. It almost looked like it was analyzing the battlefield… More wolves had followed the first blur, these moving at a speed Daryl could follow as they ripped apart the front ranks of shield-bearers. They mostly went for legs and feet as they sprinted, unstopping through the Undead.

Everyone attacked in the sudden chaos, including the Raid Leader above. Again, more magic rained down, and Adrian rose to meet it with Nate this time. Together they blocked almost all of the dark magic before it could reach the ground, to heal or harm.

Daryl was already copying and duplicating the wolves, sending fresh packs sweeping through the horde one after the other as the Humans pounded through the front rank defenders and into the Magic users behind.

The world shook under a booming sound and the spherical darkness above deformed as if it was water struck by a rock. Then something burst out the other side and sailed down to the ground.

Caffeine landed on the ground, a skeletal arm in his teeth. He dropped it and howled up at the now screaming darkness.

You have Heard the Howl of the Beast Lord.

+25% Effectiveness of All Attributes to Friends

-25% Effectiveness of All Attributes to Not Friends

"Curse you, beast!" the angry voice of the raid leader was music to Daryl's ears. The surge of energy from the buff was even better.

"Such a drama queen…" Princess huffed.

The pug was covered in mostly gray hair, but after his trip through the corruption, it was patchy with multiple bald spots, and Daryl could see writhing lines of obsidian squirming all over him. Caffeine dropped the bones and spun as if trying to chew an itch. "Not him too…" Then Caffeine stopped spinning and growled at his own butt.

The corruption stilled, stopped spreading, then ran down and slid off the pug, pooling on the ground in a roiling puddle. "Seriously? How did he do that?" Adrian said it was attached to their Souls somehow, and yet the pug just growled it away? Though, for Stanley's dog, maybe it wasn't that crazy…

Then the ground shook as one of the massive abominations lumbered closer, and a gigantic foot descended towards the pug. Caffeine moved in a blur and appeared clinging to one of the towering abomination’s arms. He was growling and squirming but otherwise doing little to the monster in his current tiny form.

Princess launched multiple fireballs in rapid succession, but the damage was insignificant against the size of the thing, and Daryl's attention was drawn to Kira. It looked like she was having trouble holding onto her spear as if it was trying to leap from her hand. Nevertheless, she managed to hold onto the vibrating and increasingly bright weapon. Then threw the blood-red spear straight up into the sky.

The spear vanished with a crack of displaced air in the clear blue sky, and Daryl lost sight of it until a few moments later, when it plunged back into view and into the abomination’s head with an angry, almost hungry energy. Daryl watched in fascination as the spear literally ripped a hole through the gargantuan monster, what looked like blood-colored lighting bolts running from it, digging through and into the flesh. It almost looked like it was eating the thing as the entire head caved in and vanished behind the weapon.

It continued down through the monster, ripping it apart until it finally dimmed and dropped to the ground underneath the disgusting creature. The abomination fell in two halves to each side, and they were not large pieces either. Kira fell with it, dropping face down in the dirt and white as a sheet when the spear finished its gory work.

Caffeine jumped free of the falling monstrosity and dropped to the ground. He howled at the sky as Kira’s team moved quickly to gather her up and carry her back, away from the battle.

Daryl was impressed by the display and promptly copied it, but while his illusory spear still ripped into the next abomination, it didn’t do nearly the damage that Kira did. Then another blast of darkness from the skeleton repaired the damage he did do… “This isn’t going to work!” He struggled to think of a way to deal with the rapidly approaching gargantuan abominations. His magic just wasn’t strong…

Caffeine ballooned in size, expanding quickly until he stood face to face with the threat. Then he stumbled and looked toward the Tower. "What is…" Daryl felt Princess tense up in alarm a moment before power bloomed into raging life behind him. He turned in panicked fear, "That's… Stanley!"

The entire battlefield fell silent under that swell of power, and Daryl felt Princess growling almost inaudibly next to him. He followed her tense gaze back to Caffeine and froze. "My God…"

The now gargantuan pug was staring toward the bonfire of Power, and his eyes were glowing… blinding pinpricks of white light that shone out with eye-searing intensity.

"Impossible!" the voice of the Raid Leader boomed from above, and Daryl pulled his attention upward in time to see the skeleton emerge from the dark sphere. "It will be…"

Nate arrived between it and the sphere and drove a powerful kick into its back, sending it hurtling away from the darkness it had been hiding in. Adrian slammed into the skeleton a heartbeat later and forced it further away in an explosion of fire. Daryl saw one additional detail before the creature was obscured in flames. It had all four of its arms…

The sudden violence broke the air of stillness that had settled over everything, and chaos erupted once again. The Undead charged with even greater aggression than before, and the humans fought for their lives.

Caffeine turned to the approaching abomination and Growled. The sudden stillness of every single Undead left the world eerily quiet once again. Then deafening booms rang out from the battle above and curses from the Skeleton set things in motion once again. Caffeine sat down, panting. His gaze constantly swiveling from the Undead to the Tower as the storm of power kept building higher.

Daryl didn't have the slightest clue how to help the man with whatever was happening now. Other than by killing all the monsters that were in front of him and threatening his home. Accomplishing said task, however, was another matter. Kira was still out after killing the abomination, and the next one was on the heels of the remaining combatants, even stomping on the tiny Undead that got in its way.

Stanley continued to burn bright in the distance, and Daryl worked frantically to distract himself from that terrible sensation, sending an army of illusions to give his people time to retreat. Battle was joined, and violence raged all along the front before him. He even managed to steer the abomination off course with a copy of Caffeine. The giant fake pug latched onto an arm and pulled the thing to its knees before Daryl was forced to let the illusion fade. The Mana cost was too high for something so significant. Caffeine did stand up again though, looking surprised at the illusion of himself and like he was about to go investigate.

Then the Skeleton returned and blew all the rest of his copies away again, Nate and Adrian on its rear as it dove back into the sphere of corruption and disappeared in the darkness. "I underestimated you, Humans," its voice echoed from the globe, "some of you are indeed talented… but all will join the Eternal march in the end. It is inevitable."

Adrian broke off his attack at the edge of the darkness, and Cheesesteak dove for the abomination that was crawling as it tried to get back up. Nate went for the next one and blew through one of its legs in a spray of gore, sending it toppling over.

Dark beams, and orbs of the same color, all exploded from the sphere in the sky, and Adrian was forced to halt his attack after accomplishing little more than setting the abomination on fire. He instead sent his fire back into the sky, intercepting everything he could as it rained down on the battlefield. Nate also turned to defend the humans, punching and kicking spells away.

Caffeine vanished, leaving behind a crater in the ground and punching into the sphere once again. This time he came back out the way he went in, another bone in his teeth, a leg by the looks of it… The pug dropped it and shook himself violently. As before, the Corruption slid from his flesh and new hair immediately started growing back.

The scream from above was as pleasant as it had been previously. "Aaaah! Damn you, beast!"

Caffeine sat down briefly and almost dropped to his belly as if he was exhausted, but quickly stood and bared his teeth to the sky. Daryl felt magic build up in the dark, and Caffeine jumped again. This time returning with another arm.

"Stop doing that! What even are you!?" the voice roared, though it sounded a bit petulant that time.

The ground had been rumbling under Daryl's feet, and he thought it was the giants at first, but it kept shaking, and the vibration was growing stronger. "What is that?"

"More of his friends…" Princess whispered, and then something charged into view in the distance, approaching at high speed towards the battleground.

"No way…" Daryl stared in shock at the most enormous moose he'd ever seen, standing at least a hundred feet tall at the shoulder. It was followed by dozens of only slightly smaller ones, all of them stampeding towards the abomination. “Caffeine!” Daryl lifted a hand toward the pug who was now lying down in the path of the charging herd.

“It’s fine,” Princess told him, “they are his friends,” and she was right. The moose pounded down the road and split around the panting pug. A few zombies and bladed skeletons were chasing after the dog, and they vanished into smears underneath those hooves.

The rising thunder of their hoofbeats rapidly drowned out all other sounds as they ran closer in lockstep. "They still aren't big enough…" Daryl thought as they approached the massive monster. Then they started to glow.

The glow first appeared on the leader of the herd's wide antlers. It quickly spread up and out as they charged until the entire group was surrounded by green and brown light. It brightened and sharpened until a visible shape emerged. A giant, semi-translucent moose.

The glowing outline of the Moose ducked its head and plowed into the abomination. The wide rack of its antlers drove the monster back and then off its feet as the unstoppable momentum of the moose didn’t let up at all.

The gargantuan undead landed with an earthshaking crash on its back. The moose didn’t stop or slow. Head down, the giant outline kept running. It forced the undead to slide back at first, then a glowing hoof caught the abomination’s leg and flattened it. That stopped the sliding body cold, and the rest of the monster was quickly pulped by pounding feet as the moose ran over and through it. They also left a wide swath of destruction through the undead ranks, which dishearteningly seemed to fill in almost instantly with more of the monsters.

Unfortunately, too many humans had stopped to watch the show and now had to scramble to escape in the aftermath. “Idiots…” Not that he could blame them much… that had been quite the sight.

Princess wasn’t watching the giant glowing moose as it faded and revealed the much smaller, but still very substantial herd beneath, running and leaving the battle behind. Instead, she was looking at Caffeine, the small pug getting left behind by the Humans as he just lay there panting. Then the surging power coming from the Tower, something that he couldn't ignore no matter how hard he tried, suddenly spiked into a raging storm.

Caffeine jumped to his feet, staring toward that storm and grew to mammoth proportions. His eyes were no longer pinpricks, now they were spotlights that made him want to look away. Only he couldn't…

Caffeine took a single step toward the Tower and stumbled, his body shrinking rapidly to half its former size. He howled and started running, then fell in a tumble when his size dropped again. He still blew past them in a heartbeat and continued up the road.

There was nothing to be done for the dog but keep doing what they were doing as they followed in the same direction. Nate and Adrian kept blocking the Raid Leader's attacks and Daryl was mixing his illusory fighters more sparsely among the humans now, partly because his Mana was not keeping up. He also suspected the Raid Leader only noticed when he fielded entire armies. So he threw fake wolves in among the enemy as well and even created his own copies of the undead, hoping to cause some confusion or infighting if possible.

Something stabbed into his back with searing pain!

“Daryl!” Princess screamed, and Daryl blasted out a wave of fire in all directions. It revealed what had attacked him but failed to do much more. It was the damned chameleon ants! “Why are they here now!?” He didn’t think there were any ant Lairs left in the area, not after Stanley's rather aggressive Lair spree. Daryl jumped away from the ants and into a high arc towards Princess, and the Raid Leader looked at him… hard. His mind went almost blank under that crushing gaze as he distantly noticed more ants swarming into his landing site. “They are undead…” Daryl had not expected that. Undead ants… explicitly sent after him by the looks of it.

Princess was screaming incoherently in his mind as he fell helplessly to certain doom. He stared down at the needle-like legs and bladed jaws of the chameleons. “Adrian, help…”

Darkness swirled beneath the ants, and Daryl had a moment to note that it looked different somehow… then gleaming white teeth appeared from the dark and lunged upwards. Massive jaws stretched past him on both sides… and slammed shut.

The pressure of the Raid Leader’s gaze diminished almost instantly, and Daryl found himself squeezed tightly within somewhere wet, hot, and dark. He prepared what magic he could, all the while expecting at any moment to feel those giant fangs sinking into his flesh. But, instead, there was a strange, disorienting sensation, and then he fell back into the light.

The first thing he noticed was the presence of Princess moving directly over him. Then he heard her very angry yowls. “Get away from him! I’ll kill you all!”

“I’m okay!” Daryl said aloud and opened his eyes. He immediately saw Princess standing protectively over him, her flaming tails lashing angrily, and an illusion wrapped around herself that made her look massive.

Then he saw the wolf. It was pitch black, considerably larger than Princess, and staring at him with piercing blue eyes as it sank into the ground. “It saved me, Princess,” he said quickly, sitting up and putting a hand on her flank. The wound in his back hurt like a mother… but it wouldn’t kill him.

“Thank you,” Princess said hesitantly as her threatening posture eased slightly.

The wolf blinked once and then vanished into the shadows on the road. Princess immediately started sniffing and licking at the wound on his back. “You’re hurt!”

“Ow! I’ll be okay…” He heard a sad little howl beneath the violent explosions and booming cracks overhead. Caffeine was not far up the road, standing on trembling legs as he howled at the tower in the distance. His fur was white now, and his legs gave up after taking only one more step.

"His human is dying…" Princess said sadly, and Daryl tore his attention away from Stanley's extremely… loud presence.

Caffeine was still howling, but his howls dwindled in volume, and then Daryl couldn’t hear anything over the battle, only the tiny head tilting to the sky indicating his continued cries.

Princess watched him struggle to stand, trying desperately to get back to his Dearest Human. “We should help him,” she whispered, “I think he is dying too…”

Debuff Upgraded: [Corruption III]

“Go get him,” Daryl said, “I’ll be right behind you.” She sprinted away, only a ripple in the air marking her passage, though Daryl knew her location through the bond almost better than if he could see her.

Then she stopped. "No need."

Standing over Caffeine now was an even greater wolf, this one gray and the size of a bus, as it loomed above him. The pack leader. Jaws that could eat Daryl in a single bite poised far too close to the helpless pug. Behind both of them, he saw a… bear? A giant black bear, ambling down the road as if out for a stroll. “What the hell is going on?”

“Caffeine called his friends…” Princess said.

“Okay then.” Daryl climbed to his feet and took stock. Running ahead of the undead forces, he saw his people, what was left of them… he really hoped the missing ones had found somewhere to hide and weren’t in the process of becoming new Undead. Kira was up again, leaning on Sven as they all rushed closer. Behind them, the tide of death pressed onward like an unstoppable tsunami.

Above him was the orb of darkness, still moving inexorably toward the Tower. Adrian stood on Cheesesteak’s back as the bird flew in erratic patterns around it, and they both sent almost constant streams of fire into the blackness. Nate stayed below, kicking and punching magic away from everyone on the ground.

“We run for the tower,” Daryl said, watching nervously as the bear plodded past. It was even bigger than the wolves, but it looked like it wanted nothing more than to stay as far from all of them as possible.

The gray wolf was joined by another more normal-sized wolf. The newcomer picked Caffeine up by the scruff of his neck and then sprinted away in a blur towards the tower. “Take good care of him.”

He spent what Mana he had left on delaying the Undead while keeping an eye out for more of the ants, though from the way Princess was sniffing and twitching about, he doubted they would get close again. Then he ran with the rest of them.

Daryl looked back when the plodding bear met the charging Undead. They swarmed over it and the bear… just kept plodding along. Blades slid from its fur, and zombies were crushed underfoot, but the bear seemed unbothered.

At least until the next looming abomination approached… Then the bear stopped and heaved itself into a standing position on its back feet. The zombie amalgamation lifted one disgusting hand high and swung down on the bear.

The bear responded with a similar gesture, only something more happened as it swept a paw through the air. Daryl felt the magic surge even from his great distance, and then the massive Undead's limb crushed down into itself. No visible magical effect could be seen, yet the results were devastating. The abomination’s head followed the raised arm, flattening into the torso. The rest of the body fell rapidly until the gargantuan undead was nothing more than a flat puddle covering the road.

“Holy…” Daryl had to be prodded by Princess to keep running after that display.

“I told you he had dangerous friends,” Princess huffed.

The bear dropped to all fours and continued forward, nose down and looking like it was trying to find something. “The Core?” Daryl wondered, and then the next abomination rounded the nearest building and dropped a hammer blow down onto the distracted bear.

The sound and shockwave reached all the way down the street to Daryl and sent him stumbling. The bear ignored the blow… its head dipped down instead and snatched something up from the ground. Then the bear stood up again, paws rising high, and roared. “That doesn’t sound like…”

A giant tiger appeared out of thin air in the middle of the road, equal in size to the bear and roaring to rival a fighter jet.

It was also far too close to the humans. Princess flinched right alongside Daryl.

The bear dropped back down and glanced at the tiger. Then turned and ambled along, seemingly forgetting the abomination above that was winding up for another blow.

The tiger roared again, tail lashing violently, and then pounced. Daryl was unsure if the cat had teleported with how fast it appeared behind the hulking undead. However, this time there was a visible magical effect accompanying the attack. Five blades of light followed the tigers' swiping paw and cut the abomination into chunks. The tiger roared once more, then faded on the spot and vanished. “What the hell kind of monsters have been lurking here all this time?”

“We should run faster,” Princess whispered.

Daryl wanted to, but the pain in his back was slowing him down. He didn’t want to pull Adrian from the battle above, either. It was just a little pain anyway…

Debuff Upgraded: [Corruption IV]

There was also that… he could feel it throughout his body, a slow-burning but growing pain that left him nauseous. He deliberately refused to look at his exposed skin, where he knew he would find spreading streaks of darkness.

Princess had black lines in her fur as well, she must have taken a hit he didn't notice. Or maybe just being Soul-Bonded to him was enough… Daryl was holding tight to the hope that Zeke would be able to pull them through this. They were close enough now that he could see the golden glow coming from part way up the Tower.

The Undead came on unceasingly, with a few distracted by the bear that was still wandering among them and picking up Cores by the looks of it. A few bats still came through in small groups and killed a zombie or two, or died with small explosions. But overall the Undead were not meaningfully slowed and were catching up. The final abomination was still approaching as well… and quickly.

A crow appeared on his shoulder with a popping sound and cawed in his ear.

Daryl yelled and tripped in surprise, the crow was gone when he hit and then rolled on the ground. A few faster undead were sprinting for him when he got to his feet, Princess growling defensively next to him. There was a series of rapid pops and the approaching Undead all collapsed, headless, and tumbling across the ground. The crow appeared on his shoulder again.

Daryl ignored it and kept running. “Stanley and his damn dog making friends with every crazy animal they find…” Unfortunately, he couldn’t deny their help today. Princess contented herself with growling at the bird as they ran.

A bright white and silver beam lanced from the Tower and through the darkness above. Another followed, and another. One after the other, the beams flew, until one did not emerge from the other side. A roar of anger came from the dark and the beams appeared faster, more and more of them striking against something within. Every flash of light filled Daryl with a small touch of the dread he felt from the thundering power Stanley was giving off. Yet the only person he could think of to be doing that magic was Eve…

"Good. Fuck that bastard up!" But he had his own problems down here. The abomination on the ground was picking up speed as it settled into a lumbering run and Daryl used every trick he knew to lead it away or distract it. But his Mana was just too low and it finally caught up…

Adrian must have decided that the fire from the Tower was distraction enough, he swooped overhead like a missile and together with the phoenix, they burned the top half of the monster to ash. The legs crumpled and fell rolling across the ground.

As if waiting for just such a moment, an overwhelming barrage of magic shot from the sphere overhead. Spells flew towards Daryl and the other humans nearby, and more flew for the tower. Straight at the golden glow and the source of the deadly beams.

Nate exploded after the deadly magic, racing to block it before it could reach the building. Daryl didn’t get to see the result because Adrian launched himself backwards from the phoenix and landed among them in a great wave of golden flames.

The fire soothed Daryl’s wounded back, but only burned unpleasantly in the lines of corruption elsewhere. And he saw dark streaks in the otherwise golden fire surrounding him…

Adrian found him in the flames. Daryl tried and failed to hide his dismay on seeing the love of his life, and what was happening to him… Adrian's leg looked bad, very bad. Black lines were already crawling up his neck and onto his face. "We might not make it through this one…" he thought with a sinking feeling. Daryl could see the same realization on Adrian's face as the other man took his hand and ran trembling fingers over the darker lines in his skin.

Adrian pulled him into a tight embrace and whispered in his ear, "This isn't over yet!"

The moment was cut short by loud and repeated, cawing. The flames were subsiding and Daryl saw the crow popping back and forth in the air as it squawked in distress. It landed on the ground and twisted to peck at its tail.

Daryl couldn't tell if it had been hit by the corruption under its black feathers but guessed it must have. "You shouldn't have come here." All around them he could see signs of the same infection on the Humans as most stood or sat in the phoenix fire, exhausted and breathing heavily.

The crow abruptly stopped its frantic activity and stood still on the ground. It squawked once more and a ripple traveled away from it, visible like a wave in the air. It faded into the distance and the crow collapsed. The Undead army was still oncoming despite all the damage dealt to it and the countless number that had been killed. People gathered their strength and started trudging on toward the looming Tower.

Daryl could see Nate bouncing in front of the tower, within the golden sphere that surrounded the lower levels. Behind the man was the shattered and pock-marked front of the building. Far too much magic had gotten past him, and wreaked devastation on the Tower. Though one of the gaping holes directly behind him was covered over in a silvery screen. Eve was still fighting and he hoped that meant Walter was okay as well…

He was debating whether to pick up and bring the crow with them… "Oh hell!" He sent an illusory double to scoop it up.

The world Rippled back.

Many heads turned towards the very unmistakable origin of the effect, one of the still standing skyscrapers, deeper into downtown. The upper half of the building very abruptly and very violently, imploded inward and then spread itself across the sky. In its place a crow appeared, standing on the remaining bottom half of the structure. It was wider than the building it stood upon, and then it spread black wings wide across the sky.

"How did we never see that…" Circling almost unnoticed around it, was a spiraling flock of more normal sized crows, hundreds, or thousands of them…

The giant crow seemed to pause there, with wings outstretched and unmoving. It was facing the sphere of darkness but Daryl could feel its gaze on himself, on everything… a heavy gaze. "Another C Rank… holy… hell."

The head tilted suddenly, and he was staring up at the midnight void of its eye. He became acutely aware of the fact that his magic was currently wrapped around a small unconscious crow. A tugging sensation popped his clone immediately and the bird remained sitting in the air. The tugging grew as the bird's legs kicked feebly in the air. Then the tiny crow vanished and in its place a small oily sludge fell to the ground.

The giant bird in the sky still hadn't flapped its wings… Daryl felt its attention sweep away from him, and settle onto the sphere of corruption. The great beak opened wide and a sound emerged that was unlike anything Daryl had ever heard. A terrible sound.

Space itself broke, shattering in a wave of devastation across the distance, and then into and through the opaque dark.

Daryl thought he heard the skeleton screaming, but the sound was distorted and seemed to come from multiple directions. The darkness it was hiding in scattered away, appearing in random locations across the sky. So did the skeleton… as well as a new form, a ghostly zombie that looked almost human, at least before it was split into multiple pieces. The Zombie had a shiny and glittering point of darkness in its chest…

He felt the Undead's magic move more strongly than ever and his eyes sought out the source of it. Huge swaths of the Undead army all fell at once, then crumbled to dust and blew away, turning into streams of black light that streaked straight into the two Raid Leaders. Both of them were instantly whole once more and a dark mist or smoke flowed from the Zombie to almost immediately obscure them once again. "That's how they survived… " The tide of Undead still looked endless, stretching back to the horizon. "How can we possibly win…"

"What in the Name of All the Divine Eternal's is wrong with this world!" More of the army fell and magic roared out of the new sphere, reaching for the bird that had attacked them. The bird tilted its head slightly… and was gone. All the smaller birds vanished with it and the Magic sent for them sailed off uselessly across the sky. "Why didn't it just attack again?" A small crow appeared with a pop in front of him. It only started to caw and then vanished silently.

"It said thanks… I think," Princess told him, and Daryl nodded bitterly while looking up at the now reformed sphere once again advancing on the Tower. They were on their own, but what could they do against…

Stanley suddenly Raged! His familiar presence brought rising hope… and the hope faded. Daryl could feel it. He suspected that everyone could feel it. Stanley wouldn't save them… he was dying… He was dying and raging violently against that death. It might have been inspiring, if it didn't mean that they were doomed…

"I can kill one of them," Adrian said abruptly, "but you might have to take care of me afterwards…"

"Of course I'll take care of you!" Daryl exclaimed, "but how…"

Adrian didn't say anything, only pulled him close and kissed him. The kiss felt off, too desperate… Then he whispered, "wait for me, I'll be back!" and dashed away. "Nate, I can kill one for sure!" he yelled, "which one do you want?"

"Take the zombie!" Nate yelled back, "I'll beat the shit out of the other!"

Adrian must have communicated with Cheesesteak, because the bird dove towards him as soon as he started running. On the way down the bird was engulfed in his golden-red fire. It burned brighter and bigger until he was nothing but a streak of fire shooting to the ground. The fire slammed into Adrian and they both vanished in an expanding dome of flame.

When the light faded, a new figure stood there. "He used it…" Adrian had changed, his feet and legs looked like a hawk's. His torso still looked human but his shoulders sprouted red feathers out over the arms and to his hands, where his fingers now ended in wicked talons. His head looked like Cheesesteak… He looked beautiful. "I really hope you can change back…" Daryl thought, "I'm not kissing that face." There had been some concerns about the Skill description being unclear on that specific detail. "But I guess it's do or die now…" He also had flaming wings spreading out from his back.

Adrian shot from his position and burned a line through the air, blasting straight into the sphere, right as it reached Zeke's own sphere of golden light. The darkness blew away in front of him and he slammed into the Zombie. And went right through it… like it was a ghost… "That's… not fair," Daryl thought.

The skeleton was waiting for him and wrapped two of its four hands around his wrists. "It is futile," the Raid Leader laughed, "the Eternal March never fails, and it never will!"

Nate appeared behind the monster and kicked it in the head with a thunderclap.

Daryl was sure he saw bone chips fly from the impact, but then more of the army fell… The skeleton was punted through the air, but did not let go of Adrian. "Enough of this!" It lifted its two free hands, now glowing with obsidian light, and drove them into Adrian's gut. "You will all serve in time, and that time is now!"

Adrian screamed, only it came out like a hawk's screech. Then he tilted his head back down, opened his beaked maw, and breathed out a stream of white fire directly into the monster's face. The same fire he had used to save Stanley. The fire that cost him some of his life to use… his Heart Fire.

Daryl was running before he even finished registering what he was seeing. "Don't use that…"

The Undead screamed under that white flame. It tried to flee and Adrian sank the talons on his hands into both sides of the thing's skull, all the while the white fire raged out. "That's enough!" Daryl ran uselessly to get closer to him. "You have to stop!" He could feel the magic pouring in from the army behind him and didn't need to look to know that it wouldn't make a dent in the numbers. Nate caught up and started hammering blows into the monster.

Daryl stopped running and stared up helplessly at the brilliant conflagration. "Please stop… we can find another way!" The fire was getting too bright for him to see anything. Then the screams cut off.

Enemy Raid Leader Defeated…

"Adrian…" The bottom half of a skeleton crashed to the ground only a few feet away, the spine ending in a melted nub. Adrian appeared as the light dimmed, his body looked diminished, the colorful feathers now dull. The man's stomach was black… and it was spreading to the rest of his body. He was looking at the sphere. "You did enough! No more!" Daryl screamed up at him.

The sphere of darkness was pushing deeper into Zeke's golden globe, and pushing back the light. Daryl looked frantically back to Adrian. He could see the man he loved in the eyes looking down at him. "No… don't do it!" Then Adrian flew into the sphere.

Once again the darkness was pushed back and Daryl saw the translucent zombie within. Claws slashed through it once, twice, and had no effect. The third swipe met the obsidian point with a crack and an explosion of darkness. The sphere of corruption slid backwards, following the Zombie as it was driven back by that blow.

Daryl could see Zeke standing in the gap of the Tower, hands outstretched against the dark. Eve stood at his side, Walter on the other. All three of them looked bad… corruption consuming them. "Zeke can't save us…" Stanley was still going, still raging against the dying of the light. But his struggle was getting weaker as well, fading…

Magic streamed from the Undead army in a visible stream to the Shard, as Adrian's hand rotted down to the bone. He struck it with his other hand with similar results, driving it back again as it relentlessly pressed onwards. Then he breathed out his Heart Fire.

"Nooo!" Daryl screamed. He knew the Undead were dying by the thousands, but he couldn't look away from the dying man above.

Then the White flames dimmed… and went out. A body floated slowly down. Flickers of red and gold flames danced over Adrian as he landed. His body was a blackened husk that looked more dead than alive and there was a tiny flickering of white fire inside his exposed ribcage.

The flame burned quietly as his body started crumbling around it. Daryl tried to grab him and only ash filled his hands. "No!" One skeletal hand reached slowly up and touched a fingertip to his cheek. And then Adrian collapsed into a pile of ashes.

Daryl's legs gave out and his vision went blurry as landed on his knees. Princess howled beside him and leaned against his legs as she trembled. His own body was rotting now but he couldn't feel it over the pain in his chest. "This can't be happening…" his words barely escaped past the choking sobs, "we were going to be together forever…" A small flicker in the ashes caught his attention through the tears and he wiped them away with a crumbling sleeve.

There in the ashes was a small, golden, egg the size of a golf ball. Tiny red-gold flames flickered around it. "Adrian?" he choked on another sob, "this can't be what you meant by take care of you… can it?"

Something hit the ground nearby and he turned to look. Nate was hoping on one leg… the other nothing but blackened bones. One of his arms was in the same condition. Daryl looked up at the Zombie, closer than ever to the Tower and saw Nate jump up to meet it. A brilliant glow appeared on his one remaining hand, and he punched the black Shard in the things chest. The Zombie slid away from the Tower, and he saw Zeke, still standing with hands outstretched and tears running down his face. Then the dark slipped forwards again…

Nate landed and immediately jumped again. His one leg glowed bright and slammed the Shard back another dozen feet. He landed helplessly on his back, his arms and legs useless and spreading rot into his chest. "We lost anyway…" Daryl thought with despair. "Adrian, you died for nothing…"

"It… is… over…" Nate wheezed out slowly, a brilliant smile on his face.

Daryl just stared dully. "Why is he smiling?"

"We… won…" Nate said, and started laughing.

Daryl looked away from the crazy man and down at the egg in his hands as the flames around it dimmed. It flickered like a lone candle flame now. If it went out… he tried to summon up the Phoenix fire that he had copied so many times before, but it came out wrong… and dark. "I'm sorry…" he sobbed, "my magic couldn't…"

A new sun appeared above him, shining down with brilliant light and soothing warmth. "What…"

Debuff Downgraded: [Corruption III]

Debuff Downgraded…

Debuff Removed: [Miasma]

Debuff Removed: [Corruption]

Buff Gained: [Purified Light]

The dying flame around the egg flared up into a blazing little inferno and Daryl almost dropped it out of reflex. But the flames did not burn him, they felt good, felt right, felt like hope!

Nate was still laying on the ground but no longer laughing. He still smiled though, even as tears trickled from behind his eyes and his previously rotted flesh was rapidly restored. Princess was sprinting happy circles around both of them. "We won?" It didn't feel real... but it was.

Daryl looked back at the egg. "You didn't fail. I will wait for you! As long as it takes."

The golden light shone brighter above.