The Unlife had increased their efforts to take the walls since this afternoon. They were no longer holding anything back. Even now, Unliving pterosaurs were dive bombing over the moat to ravage the soldiers.
Rasmeth raised his right hand, his Symbol of Torean clenched within his fist. He shouted and Holy Fire sprang from his symbol and struck the pterosaur on its long neck. The Unliving beast screeched in pain and scrambled to try to avoid the fire.
Teragdor, with the time that Rasmeth had bought them, finished his gestures and made his pronouncement, a Ban of Holy Righteousness. The pterosaur suddenly collapsed, it’s Unlife banished from the corpse.
“Chop that thing into little pieces so it can’t be reanimated,” Teragdor told the soldiers nearby. He wasn’t actually sure whether or not a corpse could be reanimated after a Ban of Holy Righteousness — having never done one before — but he figured it was not worth taking the chance.
Rasmeth had already moved on to the second pterosaur, this time managing to hit it in the eye, searing through it and burning out the brain. “Incredible shot!” Teragdor shouted to the other apostle.
He glanced down off the wall to where one of the D’Orc regiments was clearing the field near the base of the wall. To say the view was incredibly surreal was an understatement. The D’Orcs were wielding insanely massive weapons that were out of proportion even to someone of their great size. He had no idea what sort of strength it would take to wield such weapons.
There was one D’Orc down on the ground simply spinning in circles, wielding some sort of cross between a sword and scythe. His circles were wide and he moved up and down among the Unlife, creating a massive swath of carnage. Bodies and limbs were rendered and then smashed on a second pass.
The problem with that, Teragdor thought, was that, in the case of zombies, their limbs were still active — at least until the head was destroyed. He blinked, realizing that behind the D’Orc with the giant blade, another, smaller D’Orc — a child D’Orc? — was coming along and stomping on and smashing any severed heads it found.
Teragdor shook his head and grinned. His grin faded, however, when he looked further down the wall, in the direction the D’Orcs had come from. Soldiers, most likely ghasts and ghouls, were shoveling the mangled zombie parts into the moat. If they managed to dump enough zombie mush into the Holy Water, it would become contaminated, allowing the aerial Unlife an easy route over the moat.
He gave Rasmeth a small thump on the shoulder and directed the other apostle’s gaze to the moat-stuffing ghouls. “We better head that way!”
Rasmeth nodded and said, “I’ll get word to Leighton. He can relay that to the Sky Wardens.”
Leighton was about a thousand feet north and two hundred feet above them, on one the Sky Warden’s MAHCs, Mobile Aerial Healing Carpets, which were extremely large flying carpets that served as flying triage and healing centers. The carpets were heavily loaded with protective spells to keep Unlife at bay and were manned by not only priests, but also by Brothers and Sisters of Krinna. Wounded Sky Wardens could either land or be brought to the carpet for healing.
Leighton thanked Rasmeth for the information and quickly threaded his way to Leftenant Tylyr Felbs. “Leftenant,” Leighton said to get the MAHC commander’s attention.
“Yes?” the leftenant asked.
“I just received word from the Apostle Rasmeth that ghoul soldiers are moving in behind the D’Orc carnage and shoveling zombie parts into the moat near wall checkpoint 34. They are moving down-wall to intercept, but wanted to alert Sky Command,” Leighton said.
Leftenant Felbs nodded. “Good — or rather, bad, but good to know. I will relay to Sky Command.” He shook his head. “I am unbelievably thankful for the return of the D’Orcs, but it would have been nice if we could have coordinated our work better, to avoid this sort of situation.”
“Indeed. However, compared to where we were this morning, I’m just grateful that we have the power to fly the MAHCs,” Leighton said.
The leftenant grinned broadly. “Leave it to a priest to always find reasons to thank the gods.”
Leighton chuckled, returning the grin. “We all play our own small roles in the gods’ plans.”
“Incoming!” one of the lookouts shouted.
Leighton turned to see a gryphon and rider coming in for a landing. Both were looking much worse for the wear. He moved in to assist once they were onboard. Brother Thelen was also readying himself. Leighton would work on healing the Warden, and Thelen would heal the gryphon. Once more, he was very relieved to actually have the mana to do this. He didn’t even want to try and imagine how bad things would have been if Lord Orcus had not come to save the day.
“This is sick, man!” Reggie said with a frown, staring at the goo on his claws. He, Boggy and Estrebrius had gone out on their own to a less D’Orc-heavy region and were wading through undead, ripping them to pieces. At the moment they were wading through zombies and wights. The putrid corpses were really disgusting.
“When can we go back to ripping apart ghouls?” Reggie asked. “This is just nasty!”
“I don’t know. I like squashing the heads between my claws. It’s like squishing rotten cantaloupes or pumpkins!” Estrebrius said.
“Remember not to breathe!” Boggy shouted as he broke a zombie in two over his head.
“Definitely!” said Estrebrius. “Half the nasty is the smell!”
“It’s hard to talk if I don’t breathe!” Reggie yelled back.
“Breathe through your mouth,” Estrebrius suggested.
“Be careful though; I was doing that and ended up swallowing some intestinal splatter,” Boggy warned as he shook his head.
“Hey, is Tizzy going to join us?” Reggie asked. “He’s no longer singing; it’s been all instrumentals for a while now.”
Boggy paused and a zombie tried gnawing on one of his wings. “I would think so.” He frowned. “Normally he enjoys this sort of thing as much as the next demon! I wonder why he hasn’t shown up?”
“His loss!” Estrebrius shouted in glee has he smooshed two severed zombie heads, which were gnashing their teeth in frustration as they tried to bite him, together between his two hands. Reggie winced at all the rotten brain goo dripping through the demon’s fingers. Things seemed so much cleaner in zombie movies. Well, most zombie movies — that guy with the chainsaw hand splattered lots of goo, and his zombies could also remote control their body parts.
Tom released the flame from the Rod of Tommus and watched the smoldering remnants of the lich he had spent the last few minutes barbecuing flutter to the ground. Or sprinkle to the ground, as he was mostly dust. The problem was that simply incinerating a lich would not slay them.
He and Talarius had touched base about an hour ago, and the knight had told him that liches were problematic because the source of their immortality was a phylactery that contained their vital organs. Until one destroyed the phylactery and the organs, the lich could eventually return. Typically, Talarius informed him, the lich’s spirit would seek to possess someone’s body and then use that body to capture, kill and embalm a new body for it to use.
So, in many ways, this was futile from a long-term perspective, but it was more pleasant than fighting ghouls and ghasts, which looked like normal, living people. Flesh-starved, insane people, but still people. Zombies and most of the other animated undead seemed to be easy enough to leave to others. Thus, he’d been seeking out liches and larger threats. He’d run up against a few vampires, but none had presented too much of a challenge. The liches and their ice dragons could at least put up a fight using wizardry.