Chapter 1
"Uum, sir?" Kynan's voice somehow flowed through the battlefield without hesitation, other than the obvious one in the kid's tone. "We won't be able to hold them for much longer, maybe we need to retreat?"
Percy took another shot and another wraith disappeared just like that. It was so easy, yet there were so many.
"As long as Whitestone stands, I stand by its side." Percy said recharging his gun. "It hasn't fallen yet, has it?"
Kynan fired too and one of the ghouls screamed as one of its eye sockets got a giant hole in the center to replace it. He looked behind him, the castle was still standing like a great old monument without a single scratch.
"I guess not, s-sir."
"Then we haven't either." Percy yelled. "Keep them at a distance, the traps will go off any moment now!"
The traps did eventually go off. Percy was not proud to call these things "traps". They were more like dirty tricks that any toddler with a willing hand and a witty mind could have thought of, but right now this was all they had so he had to make do.
Explosion after explosion, half the raiding "party" disappeared in the smoke caused by the ignitions.
It was something. The troops gained a little morale while watching their foes get disintegrated before their eyes without them having to risk their lives. But what little comfort the sudden change in the battle gave was taken away almost immediately by the second wave of enemies clambering over the dead bodies like starved beasts.
The gunslinger already had his gun in hand and at the ready. When the first enemy appeared in sight. BOOM. His head was off. A second creature with three heads and strange needles in his body appeared right behind. BOOM. The baseball hole in his chest sent him flying backwards and colliding with various other creatures.
This kept up for what it felt like days. the trembling in Percy's hands got worse and worse every shot he took, but he kept taking them. He never once stopped himself or doubted a shot and he never once missed.
Everything was lost. It had been lost for a long long time now, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to fight until his last breath. Oh, he was going to do much more than that now. This war was far from finished, and if everything went as planned, everything WOULD change.
But for now, he just needed to survive long enough for-
"Hope I'm not late."
A blurred shadow flew by the battlefield at such a speed that Percy couldn't keep up with it. The dark creature moved in an erratic pattern from undead to undead.
Every sudden stop came with a scream as the surprised creatures lost their un-lives. The wave changed again and suddenly they were winning once more.
"I will not grant you the satisfaction of thanking you for that!" Percy yelled as he run out of his cover followed by Kynan and the rest of the soldiers.
The few monsters that weren't being mutilated by the winged rogue started in his direction, getting closer by the second. Bad News wasn't ideal for a close-up scenario, that was a place reserved only for his new Scattergun.
Percival unleashed a relentless attack on all the creatures that dared come closer than 30 feet from him. But in the middle of his second volley the gun jammed almost blowing off part of his hand. The creatures were upon him and he didn't have the support of his riflemen to protect him. Taken by his own frenzy he had gotten himself too far into the fray.
This was not himself, he used to be calm and methodical in this kind of arts, at least after the whole dealing with the Briarwoods. But he didn't really feel like himself since the fight with him, with the one-eyed monster that had taken everything away from him one more time.
He had to be patient, he had to wait just a little more, but patience was running thin in his mind. He damned himself for realizing this just now, moments before his imminent death.
He counted at least ten different undead beasts throwing themselves against him trying to tear him apart and consume what would be left after.
A shower of black feathers fell around him and, in a second, he was off the ground and into the air as he felt Vax's arms grab his torso with all his strength and lift him.
"Hey whitey," Vax said with a half-smile in his face, "don't go dying on me just yet, there will be time for that later, now we have this whole shmock of things to kill."
"Already on it." He answered while taking Bad News out of his back one more time.
"Only take sure shots, Kynan asked me to tell you that you are running low on gun powder, so only shoot when you know you'll hit." Vax added as he flew around at half his normal speed.
"It offends me that you'd insinuate I would ever waste a shot," Percy said with a straight face, "all these bloody zombies don't deserve more than one bullet."
He kept firing from the sky, where none of the enemies could reach them. At the same time this gave a big clearing for the rest of the rifleman to shoot and regain terrain while the monsters were distracted.
This was the winning strategy, at least until the second shadow appeared.
The pallid sun hidden behind the always present clouds disappeared from Percy's eyes as a three sizes bigger than the rogue shadow appeared out of nowhere.
"Gloomstalker!" Vax yelled as he yanked them to the ground in a forced landing. The huge wyvern-like monster flew only inches away from them, hitting instead a group of three man that where northward of them.
The screams of the dying riflemen got stuck in the gunslinger's mind. This did not distract him or slowed him in any way. They would only been added to the countless others. The ones from Exandria, from his family, from his friends, from Vex. There would be time for mourning their deaths later, all of them, but only if he failed, only if he wasn't able to fix everything.
One second. Everything in the battlefield halted to a stop as the gloomstalker turned around on top of the corpses redirecting his sickly green glowing eyes towards the two of them. Two seconds. Neither man nor undead made a move, as if the creature would not be able to sense them that way. Three seconds. That was enough.
"Every man with a rifle shoot the weak ones!" Percy commanded as he resumed his position as the true leader of his people. "Vax and me will take care of the big one."
"Just like old times," Vax said and he threw himself in one of his super speed attacks. Percy tried to keep sight of him through the eyesight of his weapon. He saw one dagger come in and out of the creature's chest, followed by another big cut with the offhand to his knee and a third one to the throat.
The monster opened his mouth wide as the third strike was about to end trying to bite Vax at the same time, completely ignoring the damage he had received.
Percy lined the shot, held his breath and let a bullet fly directly into his mouth knocking the creature back and letting the rogue get away from it unharmed. Before the gloomstalker could begin to regain his senses, the gunslinger had already a second bullet in his chambers. He shot, and shot and shot without drawing another breath, letting his fingers do the work, the routine they were so accustomed now, when all he could do was this.
The wound in the monster's throat got bigger and deeper with each shot hitting the same exact mark. The gloomstalker tried getting away from the source of its damage and flailed his needle-like tail around him sending various of his supposed allies flying in all directions.
Vax took the opportunity. He swore his Vow of Enmity in the form of what sounded to him as a promise of soon death and jumped right into the beast's range with his magical daggers in hand. One dagger went in after the other marking and X shaped scar into the gloomstalker's torso. A strangely dark energy flowed through the wound and bursted in a sudden explosion of radiant power.
The monster lurched forward in spasmed moves, its whole body dripping a thick black liquid from where Vax's energy had pierced. It slashed with its claws at the rogue three consecutive times, missing the first one and hitting with its second. The half-elf got pushed to the side as the giant hand hit him directly in the chest knocking the wind out of his lungs, or it would have if he were any other person in the world. Instead, as Vax got hit, he used the momentum of the slash to avoid the third attack going straight for his face.
The claw slashed upward destroying the afterimage of the annoying paladin in one swoop.
Vax got out of the way and Percy appeared just behind him with a metallic sphere in one hand and Bad News in the other.
"Manners!" He yelled as he threw the machination against the creature's face.
Its tail swung in a spiral and sent it flying away with ease.
"I assumed it wouldn't work," The gunslinger said as he stood with his gun pointed directly in to the gloomstalker's mouth. "After all, you can't teach that kind of stuff to garbage like you."
He took three more shots, the last ones he had.
The top half of the undead beast disappeared in a mess of blood and flesh while the rest of his body dropped dead in the ground with a wet thump.
He swung around prepared to continue fighting but to his surprise the riflemen had already taken care of almost every other threat.
Whitestone stood one day more. Its walls untouched, its citizens safe. But what was more important, his last to-be invention laid still protected beneath it all, and as long as he had that, he had hope.