Chapter 24 Rewrite
Where is it?” a dark voice boomed over the rising chaos.
The Mercer Village erupted into panic. Villagers dashed about to find shelter, shouting and calling out to one another for help.
Distant orc roars and blaring battle horns drowned out the thunder.
Doors were locked and windows boarded, merchant stalls abandoned as goods tumbled from crates or tables into the streets.
A haunting, minty stench swept throughout the rainstorm.
“Kriqir,” Em hissed, hairs rising on her arms. After facing the necromancer once in his Cursed-But-Once-Uncursed-Tower, she’d recognize his frigid, minty presence anywhere. He was too stereotypical to forget.
“Well, crap,” Sasha hiccupped, fumbling to draw her knives.
Dozens of adventurer parties raced from within the Long Rest Tavern and Inn, their weapons drawn.
Their whoops and excitement drown out the frenzied fear gripping the village.
Before Kriqir’s hordes of orcs could even cut around the street corner, most were toppled into sprays of blood and guts by the excited guild members.
Roden and Gair soon followed. The dragon mutant’s bow sang as he shot each arrow into the swarms of orcs, while the half-elf charged headfirst into the gory onslaught.
Still, hundreds of wrinkly, yellow-eyed orcs swept across the village.
The snap of bones, squish of stabbed flesh, and splatter of blood drown the village.
Shit. Em’s stomach churned, her gut threatening to heave itself. She turned away from the gory corpses littering the streets, clutching her stomach. The reek of raw meat and blood clawed at her heavy breathing.
“You’re such a wimp, you know that, sweetheart?” Sasha swayed, giggling beside her. The dryad offered one of her knives to Em.
“Hell, no. I’m not fighting.”
Sasha wrinkled her nose. “Well, why don’t you rewrite your blood-aversion then? You can’t be a badass Main Character if you can’t even look death in the eyes.”
Em gulped, pulling the journal and Inky back out.
In less than half a day, she’d already clung to the pen like a crutch to save all her problems. The uneasiness with her sudden dependence hovered in the back of her mind, but she shook it away.
Right now, she couldn’t question every damn choice she made; she just didn’t want to throw up.
And Kriqir’s orcs all died, she hastily wrote.
Something hot and moist burst across her face.
Orc guts.
Em shrieked, wiping the oozing blood off her.
“Holy crap!” Sasha hiccupped.
More swearing erupted across the village, and Em risked a peek.
The orcs were exploding. In red bursts of shattering bones and spluttering innards, Kriqir’s soldiers burst like crushed tomatoes. Their armor clattered uselessly into the streets. Limbs popped off torsos, heads rolled, intestines flayed open.
Screams of horror cut through the air. Guild members and villagers scattered from the ruptures of gore, ducking into alleys or under porches.
Shit shit shit. Em threw up all over herself.
Sasha just hollered with laughter.
Mercer Village dripped in viscera, blood painting the walls and thatched roofs.
The job listings on the guild board were stained with shriveled chunks of orc brains.
A spinal cord was caught on the Long Rest Tavern sign, waving over Em’s head.
Even her journal was smeared in the violence, bleeding through the pages so that Inky’s tip couldn’t penetrate the tooth of the paper.
She couldn’t undo the disaster she’d committed.
Silence stilled the gored village.
All eyes locked on Em.
“What in Novella did you do, princess?” Roden demanded, cutting through the village to her, unbothered by the crunching and squelching underfoot. His whole body shook with fury. He wiped the gore off his own face and arms, spitting into the bloodied earth. “What did you do?”
“I don’t fucking know!” Em cried. “I didn’t mean to do this!”
“Oh, really?” Roden demanded.
She held out the ruined journal to him. “See?”
“Did you or did you not kill them all?” Roden growled.
Em’s heart skipped a beat. She fought to find the words past her tightening throat and parted lips. But nothing came out. Underneath the slimy filth coating her book, she’d written those words.
And Roden didn’t need an answer.
Her silence was enough.
“What were you thinking?” The half-elf snapped.
“Fool!” A cruel laugh cut through the tension. A looming shadow rose into the sky, lightening flickering ominously behind it. The armored silhouette of Kriqir the Living levitated over Mercer Village.
The antagonist held up his manicured hands, the chain mail and amulets draped over his body rattling. His silvery eyes flashed beneath his mask in glee.
“First, you underestimate me, foolish girl,” Kriqir boomed.
A buzzing hum choked off reality. Wisps of greenish smoke crawled out from sewer drains and chimneys throughout the village.
“Now, you will have no other choice but to give up the dragon relic!”
The once-brave adventurers from the guild retreated into the Long Rest Tavern. They shoved past Em to escape the necromancer. Their boots kicked up splatters of orc innards all over her as they rushed past.
Kriqir barely paid the fleeing adventurers any mind, fully focused on Em. With a flick of his claw-like hands, the splattered orc remains began to quiver and shift in the streets.
“You seem to forget…” the villain grinned beneath his mask, laughing again, “I am a necromancer. Not even death can stop my armies, foolish girl.”
In sickening squishes and spurts, the wisps of smoke stitched the exploded orcs back together. As the greenish magic wove between the sagging and dripping orc zombies, another crack of thunder shuddered across the sky.
Fuck.
Em’s companions scrambled to regroup with her, clinging to each other and gasping.
Pure fear drained Gair’s pale face, and Polo hid in her shadow.
Sasha leaned against the tavern’s signpost, still hiccupping and smirking at nothing.
Roden adjusted his grip on Destiny’s Song, alert eyes calculating the best risk versus reward as he took in the resurrecting orcs.
More orcs rose to life, animated by Kriqir’s sheer will.
“Give me the dragon relic!” the necromancer roared.
“You’ll never take it from us!” Polo shouted up at Kriqir from behind Em’s skirts. “It’s not okay to take stuff without consent from a lady!”
“This could be our chance to stop Kriqir, princess!” Roden called over the gurgled moans of zombie-orcs.
“Working on it!” Em struggled to wipe her book across her chest. If she could only get a clean enough page to write on. The orc guts saturated deeper into the pages, the paper wilting in the moist gunk. Still, she tried repeatedly to dry it and use Inky to write.
“Your pen just made things worse!” Gair snapped at her. “Maybe you should focus on getting the relic from Polo and throwing it at Kriqir!”
“But that would end everything!” Em protested.
“Um, isn’t that the literal point?” Roden argued back.
The zombie-orcs hobbled toward them, retrieving their chunky iron armor and cleavers from along the streets. Their eyes were still lifeless, but their limbs flailed about like marionettes on strings.
“The shitty story is trying to force me to kill Kriqir,” Em struggled to explain, swearing under her breath at the journal for being so damn drenched in blood. “It doesn’t like the changes I’ve been making.”
“Who cares what the story wants?” Gair exclaimed. “I don’t want to die!”
“No one’s going to fucking die!”
“Please.” Polo shoved the chunky, green relic into her hands, trembling as tears leaked from his eyes. For the first time ever, the sidekick wasn’t cracking jokes. Pure defeat creased along the imp’s face.
Em almost dropped the dragon relic.
“You have to stop him before he hurts anyone, Highness,” Polo begged.
“Aha!” Kriqir called out. His sneering gaze locked onto the stone in Em’s hand. He pointed one of his manicured fingers. “There it is!”
A chill wriggled down Em’s spine.
In a flash, the orc hordes rushed them. With roars and snarls, the resurrected armies slashed as they attacked her party. Everyone’s screams were drowned out by the slamming of cleavers versus blades. Rotten air swallowed them.
The pressed, dead bodies peeled her away from the others.
Shit shit shit. Em dodged the orc’s attacks, struggling to keep hold of the relic, Inky, and journal all in her hands without being sliced in half.
Sasha shrieked in agony somewhere.
“Sasha!” Em cried out.
“Em, do something!” Gair’s distant panic melted into her own.
She couldn’t see her companions over the crammed, meaty bodies of raging orcs. Their snarls flicked blood and saliva into her lashes. The heat of their pulsating, puppeted bodies choked her. Em was shoved to and fro in the packed chaos, never sliced or stabbed, simply tossed about like a rag doll.
“Inky!” she screamed. “Rewrite this scene!”
“Unfortunately,” the pen’s cheery voice contrasted the insanity drowning her, “I need access to a surface…”
Em fumbled to open the stained journal. But with a sharp elbow into her side, the dragon relic flew from her hands. Stars shot across her vision.
“FUCK!”
In slow motion, the stone bounced, spun, and was swallowed away into the swarming horde.
“Shit!” Em screamed, dropping onto her knees, dragging her hands through the dirt to find the green stone.
Boot heels stomped onto her fingers. She let out a shriek, retracting her hands. Something tugged at her hair. Another orc knocked against her back, stealing the air from her lungs. Em let out a choked gasp, and her book was torn from her throbbing hands, shredded and lost within the battle.
All she had left was Inky.
Em curled into a ball on the earth, shielding her face in her arms.
“WHERE IS IT?” Kriqir’s scream blistered in her stinging ears.
“Would you like to discuss your impending doom and consider the consequences of your actions so you may die peacefully without guilt?” Inky sang on.