I flew through the chill fog, leaving a swirling wake behind as I shot toward the bow of the closest ship, barely 50 feet from the leviathan. Noctarus saw the glowing chain of my spell and spun about to give chase, as I'd hoped.

I landed on the bow rail, weapons at the ready, but no zombies came rushing out of the haze. The ship was deserted. Every zombie had left to join the attack on Lake Town or Tony's group.

"Give me back my crystal and I will disable the sleep spell on the lake and allow all of your parties to unite there."

I turned to face Noctarus, who had nearly reached the ship. He could really move on those 8 huge legs when he wanted to. Maybe he really had been holding back a bit at first.

"Wouldn't that make it easy for you to take us all? You can't think I'd believe you can't turn on the sleep spell again."

"I need that crystal. We can negotiate," Noctarus shouted. He'd sound a lot more convincing if he wasn't possessing a giant franken-elephant barreling toward the ship like he planned to plow right through it.

"You want to negotiate? How about you let me take your flagship until my people all escape?"

"Stay away from my ship!" He shouted.

That struck a nerve, and his twin skeletal heads dipped in chagrin as he realized he'd given away too much.

"Sounds like your ship's the place to be."

A beam of black mana shot at me, but I jumped into a quadruple somersault across the ship. I never touched down on the other side, but set Tether Slide and shot through the maze of rigging and lines and masts, flying over one ship after the next, headed for the flagship in the center of the fleet.

Weak pulses of light on the first 3 ships suggested unfinished rune matrices. Those were the ships not yet fully repaired. As I soared over the ships, I crossed small patches of open water glowing with the green sleep spell. I braced myself to fight off its effect, but felt nothing.

Either those bits of open water were too small to affect me before I shot past, or the ships were somehow shielded from the effects, or maybe the spell didn't extend to that part of the lake. Either way, I'd take it.

I activated Spellseer's Gaze again and when I soared over the first of the totally repaired ships, the sight changed completely. A complex rune matrix covered half the deck, glowing with a steady golden light. That was several times bigger and more complicated than the array I'd studied around the energy crystal.

"Don't!" Noctarus roared and gave chase, moving with shocking speed, but not as fast as me.

When I landed on the crow's nest at the top of the central mast of the big flagship, all I could do was whistle softly at the sight spread below me. The entire deck, from the tip of the bow, down its entire length, all the way up to the aft castle and the very stern, was covered in a mind-bending rune script. How long would it take just to draw out all those runes? Months at least, and that was assuming one knew exactly what to draw and never hesitated. The sheer majesty of the script blew my mind.

I got an instant headache from just staring down at the script. It eclipsed anything my fledgling rune powers could comprehend. I sensed vast power, and although I had no clue of deciphering the details of the script, it radiated a feeling of distance. Or maybe crossing an endless gulf.

That was Noctarus's E.T. Phone Home script. He hadn't been lying about knowing how to get his people back to his world. That had to be a tier-1 rune script, if not even higher tiered. I grinned. Plan A was to find the runes that were fueling his rune defenses and break them so I could actually kill Noctarus's leviathan.

Now that I saw all this, I realized why he didn't want me to see it, and a new Plan C gelled. He was coming fast and seemed panicked. His fast-approaching shouts seemed to urge me on. I could drop the supercharged energy crystal, along with a couple grenades and a remote timer, then Shadow Walk away.

When Noctarus swarmed up onto the ship to save the crystal, I could blow the entire thing. Packed with so much power, that crystal would go off like a giant bomb. Would probably destroy the entire fleet.

I hesitated though. If I took out Noctarus like that, we'd still have to deal with his huge army of zombies. We could definitely beat them, but how many would die before we won?

I glanced toward Lake Town and partially activated Shadow Walk again. From that high vantage, I could see for miles with Wolf Sight. Shadow Walk pierced all the shadows of the billowing fog still obscuring the entire area and my vision opened up into a panorama.

"Not good," I grunted.

Lake Town was besieged, with zombies pressing in thick masses against the flickering final barriers. The few defenders were casting spells, arrows, and everything else they could, but seemed to be running low on projectiles. The zombie horde would overrun the town in seconds and murder everyone.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Farther out on the far side of the lake, Tony's group fought a desperate battle against another horde. They had gotten hemmed in against the lake just like my team had, with zombies attacking from 3 sides. Tony's golden barrier was helping, but they too would be overrun soon. My old team, led by Jane on Switchblade, were barreling toward the fight to help, but they could just as easily get swarmed too.

I glanced from the ongoing fights back toward Noctarus's enormous charging form and the ship covered in glowing runes. I could blow it right now and take Noctarus out, but would that stop the zombies? Or would I finish off the boss in time to witness half the remaining people get slaughtered before I could save them?

Plan D, then.

Scanning the deck below me, I spotted a pedestal on the high aft castle near the giant wheel. Similar to the one that had held the crystal on the roof of the castle, that had to be the fulcrum point for activating the enormous script matrix.

I leaped down to the deck and flashed up the steep, narrow stairs to the aft castle and approached the pedestal. Walking across the rune script made me nervous, but no energy flowed up into my feet, no defensive barriers rose to block my passage.

I scanned the runes around the pedestal. Some of them were similar to the ones I'd seen on the castle roof. Good. I crouched and studied the runes closer. No energy was actively circulating through the runes. The entire matrix was dormant, waiting only for the power source to activate.

So I reached out and gently touched one of the runes. As soon as my mana touched the complex array, it got sucked in like dust into a vacuum. The pull came so fast, so hard, and so unexpected that I couldn't brace myself against it. Mana poured out of me in a torrent, hurled deeper into the array like a runaway flood. My mind got dragged in too, even though I managed to trigger my Indomitable Aura.

It didn't help. The world disappeared, replaced by a dizzying maze of glowing runes filling my vision as I was yanked into another plane. The rune script stretched in front of me, filling the world and stretching up into the void of space. My thoughts flowed out through it, expanding farther and farther, stretched to their uttermost limits in a heartbeat.

It was too much. I couldn't possibly understand it. Even applying all my Intelligence and Wisdom to the effort, I couldn't stop the flow. My sense of self evaporated under the overwhelming vision, and for a moment I felt one with the array. It was like suddenly becoming one with every individual particle of my body while getting trapped inside a single cell.

The glowing rune script flashed and my mind burned as the overload threatened to destroy me. Then the entire sky above transformed as a new vision carried me deeper from myself.

The impossibly complicated rune script shrunk to a tiny speck in the cosmos, linked to more and more golden lines of power that spread out through the multiverse. I sensed other scripts beyond the realm of my capacity to understand. It was like my mind was hurled to the far side of existence and filled with countless stars, all blazing with power.

I couldn't grasp even a tiny fraction of it. Impressions, like partial images, flashed through my mind too fast to study, and I barely comprehended the smallest part of them. I sensed branches, then a giant tree with a crown that seemed to stretch into infinity. Branches covered in mind-bending runes flickered past my mind's eye, as if I was an ethereal sparrow, darting among the leaves and around the trunk.

A riot of colors filled space, every leaf colored a different hue, and each one formed hints of images, maybe even different realities. I barely grasped vague impressions before my mind began breaking down. Only one branch of the giant tree, the closest of all, resolved into any clarity. Its leaves shone with more colors than I'd ever imagined possible, the riot of color forming a mind-twisting pattern that radiated with a sense of endless possibilities.

Then something deep inside of me awoke and shook me to the core. A wave of searing heat somehow mixed with absolute cold poured through every vein and shocked my entire system. The vision of the golden tree shrank in the distance as my mind was hurled up into blessed darkness of absolutely empty space.

Nightmares prowled the darkness, hints of twisted shapes and corrupted forms that filled me with icy dread. Then the boiling currents of heat and cold swamped my mind and consumed it in elemental fury.

I returned to myself so abruptly, it felt like I'd been punched in the face by the Ironwood Colossus again. I tumbled off my feet, gasping, mind reeling as I tried to orient myself back into reality. My entire body ached like I'd been pummeled for weeks with my own maul. My thoughts struggled to move through a mind stretched to the breaking point.

"What the Handel was that?" I breathed, then coughed a mouthful of blood.

Checking my status screen, I finally realized why I felt so bad. My health had plummeted to 20% and my mana was barely 10. How? Scanning my recent achievements, I spotted one that helped me understand a bit.

"For losing 70% of your health in less than 2 seconds, Mephistoles title activated. Your Shadow Mana channels are engaged."

What a trip. That rune script had nearly snuffed out my journey in a blink and I'd been totally helpless against it. Without my Shadow Mana channels smacking me back to reality, I'd be dead, my mind and mana sucked dry by that insane matrix.

Whoa. The remembered grandeur of that giant, golden tree still filled me with awe, but I forced it down before it could suck me back in. What was that thing? A vision, a hallucination, the product of an overactive imagination? I had no idea. I was just happy to be alive.

I rose, panting from the effort, my body covered in a sheen of sweat, as I tried to settle my whirling thoughts. At least while getting nearly sucked dry by the rune matrix ultimate vampire effect, I'd sensed a tiny percentage of what the matrix could do.

It was indeed the teleportation script to carry Noctarus and his armies on their ships back through the void to their home. All the other stuff it was connected to was way beyond my pay grade. Even though I felt like I'd experienced an epic journey, the whole ordeal had only lasted a few seconds.

With a bit of focused effort, I pushed the Shadow Mana back down, and that huge pool of extra power faded away again, letting my normal mana channels stabilize. My Tesla Coil bracelet was quickly replacing my lost health and mana, but I triggered a full regeneration potion too. The wave of healing warmth helped settle my mind just in time.

"Stop!" Noctarus roared as he heaved his giant bulk over the rail and onto the deck.

He'd fallen for my ruse when I was still on Plan A. Instead of killing him in a spectacular explosion, Plan D was more creative. He was here, at least some of the ships were ready, and I had the crystal. Time to activate the script and send him hurtling through space. Killing him might be more satisfying, but getting rid of him and his zombies would save lives.

"All aboard!" I breathed and saluted the charging leviathan of undeath.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.