The air within Duke Valerius Chorn’s primary audience chamber had become a viscous soup of copper-scented blood and the sharp, ionizing sting of a failing System. Azuma, Caelum, and Kairah stood in a tight triangular formation, their breathing synchronized against the rhythmic, wet thud-scrape of the approaching horde. These were no longer the men and women who had built the industry of Chornov; they were hollowed-out shells, their muscles twitching under the command of a Craft that had outlived its caster’s sanity.

  High on the marble mezzanine, Duke Valerius stood framed by the flickering gaslights, his fine silk robes torn and stained with the soot of his own burning district. He laughed like a man who had finally looked into the abyss and found it funny. He glared at Kairah, "What will you do now, Butcher?!" he shrieked, his eyes wide and bloodshot. "You can’t kill what’s already dead! You're all doomed!"

  Kairah didn't answer. Azuma's thumb "cracked" the guard of his katana. In a blur of silver, he performed a Nukitsuke, the blade whistling through the air. Four undead guards were sliced clean in half at the waist.

  But they didn't stop.

  The severed torsos hit the floor with a wet thud, then immediately began crawling toward Azuma’s feet, their finger-bones scraping against the marble.

  "See?!" Valerius yelled, his voice cracking. "They are eternal!" Suddenly, his bravado broke into pure cowardice. He turned and began sprinting toward a hidden exit. "Eat them! Tear them apart!"

  Kairah immediately created walls of shadows. Ink-black darkness surged from the floorboards, sealing every door and window in the chamber with solid shadow.

  Valerius slammed into the dark barrier, screaming as he realized he was trapped in the room with his own creations. Kairah pulsed her Craft again and another wall of shadow rose between them and the crawling undead.

  On the other side of the shadow-veil, the trio heard a sickening, wet tearing sound followed by the Duke's final, high-pitched plea. The man who had ruled Chornov was being consumed by the very tide he had unleashed.

  "Azuma, your lightning?" Caelum asked, his hand tight on his broadsword.

  "In an enclosed place like this, it will only bring the building down on us," Azuma replied, his eyes scanning the area. "Your gravity?"

  "We’d fall through the floor..." Caelum grunted. "We can try mowing through them..."

  "We could," Azuma said, "but that'll slow us down. In order to kill these things, they will either need to be completely vaporized, turned to ash, or completely crushed. Kairah, how many of the Duke's guards and soldiers did you manage to kill on your way here?"

  "I'm not sure," she responded, her voice slightly trembling. "I killed whoever was in my way, but my constructs probably killed more... several thousand, maybe?"

  Azuma and Caelum looked at each other. The scale was impossible. Azuma then looked out toward the large stained-glass windows. He performed another Nukitsuke, the shockwave of the draw shattering every pane of glass into a million diamonds. He then looked down from the broken windows.

  "Follow me!" Azuma leaped out. Caelum and Kairah paused, looking at the drop, before diving after him.

  "Hey, we're five floors up!" Caelum screamed as the wind whipped past them.

  Azuma said nothing until they nearly reached the ground. "Caelum, gravity!"

  Caelum understood instantly. Instead of increasing the weight, he created a Negative-G space. They touched down as light as feathers amidst the chaos of the streets.

  The three of them hit the pocket of negative gravity and touched down in the mansion's courtyard with the weight of feathers. Above them, the Duke’s screams was cut short by the wet, muffled sounds of the dead claiming their creator.

  Azuma didn't look back at the shattered window. He looked at the massive, soot-stained stone pillars of the citadel. "Caelum, bring it all down," he said.

  Caelum stepped forward, his boots sinking an inch into the cobblestones as he activated his gravity craft again. His hands didn't glow; the air around them distorted and turned a bruised, sickly violet.

  "Fifty fold." He reached out and pulled the atmosphere itself toward the earth. The pressure spike was instantaneous. Stone groaned, then shrieked. Under the sudden weight of fifty times the planet’s natural pull, the mansion didn't just collapse—it was pulverized. The massive spires snapped, and the central dome imploded into a singularity of dust and gravel, leaving nothing but a flat, circular crater where the seat of power had once stood.

  Across the district, the "Iron Waltz" was a desperate grind. Anneliese took the rear guard of the column, her movements a blur of redirection and frozen steel. A dozen armored laborers surged from an alleyway, but she stepped into their guard, her blade drawing a silver arc that flash-frozen their limbs to the pavement. As their formation moved forward, Anneliese created a sheet of ice on the ground directly behind them, causing all of the undead chasing them, to slip and fall, creating a mound of zombies failing to right themselves up.

  "Keep the pace!" she yelled over the guttural moans of the thousands of zombies.

  On the flanks, Elowen’s hands were stained green and black as she forced gnarled briars to erupt from the sewer grates, weaving a wall of thorns that separated the terrified slaves from the reaching hands of the dead. On the other side, Kaien was a flicker of blue and red light, blinking from one side of the road to the other to shove stragglers back into the formation. He only attacked zombies that got too close to their formation.

  At the front, Gerrick had become a literal mountain of iron. He increased the density of his body to slam the undead into the ground, crushing their heads. When the creatures got too close, he shifted his body density to become intangible, moving through several zombies as if he were a ghost. Then striking them from behind with his twin daggers. When he shifted back to high density, he simply walked forward, his sheer mass tossing bodies aside like leaves in a gale.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  The fighting was intense and the waves seemed unending. They needed to come up with a different plan or they will surely be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the undead army.

  In the wake of the mansion’s destruction, Azuma’s group began their sprint toward the Western Gate. They weren't fighting for territory; they were carving a devastating path through a city full of relentless dead.

  Azuma moved with a mechanical rhythm. Every time the crowd of undead became too dense, his blade left its scabbard in a flash of white light. A massive, cone-shaped shockwave of thunder and electricity would erupt from the draw, vaporizing the front line and tossing the rest aside in a spray of ash. Beside him, Caelum slammed his palms together, creating large, localized rings of crushing force that flattened a hundred corpses at a time into the stones. Kairah moved like a shadow within shadows, her dark energy manifesting into jagged, multi-limbed constructs that tore through the remaining dead guards with predatory efficiency as her other constructs rooted several dozen against the walls of buildings and the ground of the paved roadway.

  The three of them moved with brutal and ruthless efficiency, like the winds of a sweeping hurricane devastating everything unabated. Above them, the clouds began to darken as the sound of thunder, not from Azuma's Craft, but from a natural storm, began to rattle the city.

  Near the city’s edge, the escort team heard it—the rhythmic, explosive sonic booms of Azuma’s thunder strikes drawing closer.

  Just as hope seemed lost and their stamina began to fade, the air grew heavy and cold. Above the industrial smog, natural thunderheads began to roll in, thick and black. Then, the sky broke. Rain began to hammer the city, turning the soot into a grey slurry.

  Anneliese stopped, looking up at the downpour. She didn't see a storm; she saw salvation. "Kaien, take the rear!" She commanded as she ran to the front of the column. "Gerrick, move back!"

  She raised both hands, her Craft seizing the falling water. As the rain touched the air around the formation, she wove it into a massive, crystalline tunnel of ice. It surged forward, encasing the street in a translucent white shell. Elowen reacted instantly, shooting thick, rope-like vines through the ice walls to serve as a reinforced skeleton.

  "Move now!" Anneliese commanded. "Gerrick, take out whatever is in front of us."

  "Alright." He replied.

  Inside the tunnel, the slaves were safe from the claws and pikes outside. Gerrick took the lead, his high-density frame acting as a battering ram to clear whatever obstacle was ahead of them. Anneleise continued to create the "ice tunnel" toward the main gates of the city.

  The group didn't stop at the gates. They pushed the column of over a hundred slaves nearly half a mile down the main merchant road, away from the soot-clogged air of Chornov and the reaching hands of the dead. Only when the city was a dark silhouette against the horizon did Anneliese call for a halt.

  She raised her hands, seizing the torrential rain and freezing it into a wide, reinforced dome of ice that spanned ten meters. It was a cold sanctuary, but it blocked the wind and the downpour.

  Anneliese stepped into the center of the shivering crowd. "Listen to me!" she called out, her voice steady and commanding. "Does anyone here possess a Fire Craft? We need warmth, now."

  Two men, their hands shaking and faces gaunt, stepped forward. "I do," one rasped, a small spark flickering between his blackened fingernails.

  "Me as well," the second whispered.

  Anneliese nodded toward Elowen. "El..." Elowen slammed her palms into the earth, and thick, dry roots erupted from the soil beneath the dome, coiling into piles. Within minutes, the orange glow of two large campfires reflected off the ice walls, finally bringing a hint of life back into the survivors' eyes. They huddled together near both camp fires.

  "We aren't finished," Anneliese said, turning to Gerrick, Kaien, and Elowen. "Our horses are still at the stables near the inner gate. We aren't leaving them behind."

  They moved back toward the city with practiced efficiency. While the slaves stayed guarded in the dome, the four of them breached the vine-wall Elowen had erected at the gate. They navigated the thinning edge of the horde, and retrieved the panicked animals. They led the horses out just as Azuma’s group finally emerged from the industrial smog, their clothes somewhat scorched and blades stained with the blood of the dead.

  Azuma gazed at the long tunnel of ice that Anneliese created for their escape. "She always finds a way to impress me." he said under his breath with a smile.

  The trio quickly made their way through the frozen passageway, then Azuma turned back toward the city. The vine reinforced ice-wall was buckling; thousands of mindless shapes were beginning to spill out onto the road. As soon as they cleared the gate, Kairah didn't wait for an order. She slammed her hands together, and the shadows of the massive stone gatehouse surged forward, weaving into a towering, obsidian-black wall that slammed shut across the main entrance. The sound of thousands of undead crashing into the dark barrier was a dull, rhythmic thudding that shook the earth.

  The entire group continued moving until they reached a clearing, roughly seven hundred meters from the city.

  "We can't let those things escape." Azuma said. "We need to stop them right here and right now."

  Kairah stepped toward him, her breathing ragged, her face tight with strain. "Azuma, you need to hurry! We're losing light... my shadow-wall is starting to disappear! I can't hold them back much longer! Whatever you're going to do, do it fast."

  "Everyone, move back as far as you can." Azuma said as he looked at the sky, where the natural thunderstorm was peaking over the city center.

  Kairah and the others retreated a hundred yards back, putting distance between themselves and Azuma. He stood his ground, his overcoat whipping in the wind.

  "Caelum, activate your Aegis. Full spread."

  The shimmering force field erupted, a barely visible hemisphere of protection that locked his companions safely behind a wall of pure energy. Azuma stood outside the shield, but his focus was entirely on the roiling black cumulonimbus clouds hanging directly over Chornov's spires.

  He raised his katana, pointing the tip of the blade toward the heart of the storm, situated above the city.

  "Kōshūha Renzoku Rakurai "

  "High-Frequency Continuous Lightning Strikes"

  The words were a quiet command, not a shout. A constant, brilliant pilot-bolt of white light shot from the steel and lanced into the clouds. For a heartbeat, there was a terrible, expectant silence.

  Then the atmosphere over Chornov simply ceased to exist.

  A barrage of massive, continuous lightning strikes cascaded from the heavens, hundreds of bolts every second slamming into the industrial district. At twenty-five thousand degrees celsius per bolt, the strikes didn't just burn; they pulverized. Buildings vaporized instantly. The stone walls of the gatehouse turned to liquid, and the very sand in the cobblestones fused into jagged sheets of glass.

  Behind the safety of Caelum’s Aegis, the others watched in stunned silence. The light was so bright it turned the night into a blinding, artificial noon. The roar of the thunder was a physical weight, a constant vibration that rattled their teeth.

  For several minutes, the sky vented its fury until every structure, every undead soldier, guard, laborer, and every trace of the Duke’s rule was reduced to atoms. When the last bolt finally faded, the city was gone. Where Chornov had stood, there was only a vast, glowing crater of fused glass, steaming silently under the cold, night rain.

  Azuma dropped to one knee, visibly exhausted and breathing hard. He drove his katana into the ground just to hold himself up. Anneliese quickly ran over to him and prevented him from falling over.

  "Azuma, are you alright!"

  He looked at her then nodded slowly, "Yeah... I think so." His head resting on Anneliese's shoulder. "I think I need to rest for a bit..."