Being barefoot didn't usually bother me. I had spent most of my time out on the steppe with fresh air, clean grass and beautiful expanses of natural scenery. The occasional stone had long since stopped being a problem for me. Now I was slamming my way upstairs, and the corridors were littered with my recent kills. Their blood was splashing up my legs, and their bodies were being pulverised as my feet landed on them to launch me forward again.

My toes had bits of people stuck between them. On some level, I was happily ignoring this as I strove to reach the roof, but on another, I was revolted and missing the open steppe. My open steppe.

I skidded to a halt as the Haste wore off. I was most of the way back to where I'd started, and a spray of gore and splinters of wood flew away as I came to a stop. I was being a fucking idiot. I slapped a gore-covered hand against the stone wall and cast Shape Earth.

A platform of stone flowed out beneath me, and I rose towards the ceiling. My senses spread out, and the stone above me ripped away the floorboards and joists. I used the insides of the keep to create a pathway towards the sky, making it pull itself apart to suit my desire to gain some altitude.

The stones shifted and drove me upwards until I emerged on a column of rock, rising over the keep on a granite spear. I was staying up to date with the battle via Glimpse. Ashrot's move had been noticed, and the cavalry had bolted away, the lancers retreating while the archers continued to pepper the horde with ranged attacks. The legion had split into two groups, pulling back to either side of the fort. Wooden walls wouldn't do anything against the shambling mass of constantly shifting flesh that was the amalgam called Ashrot. The damn thing was absorbing the undying as it reached them, eating the rear out of its own support troops as it moved towards my own very-much-not-dead soldiers.

I looked down on the city like a god descending from heaven as I drank a mana potion. My little tower grew a platform, crumbling stone barely held together by my magic, giving me the runway to the north I needed. I used the last charge on my Haste amulet and sprinted forward. As soon as I started running, I lost my connection to the rock as both feet were in the air, and the tower began to lean and tilt to the north. It didn't matter, I only needed a couple of seconds. I reached the end of the platform and launched myself away. The wind was blowing from the north, which wasn't helpful, but it would help me gain altitude even as it slowed me down. Don't go too fucking high! I reminded myself.

Major Shapeshifting activated, and my body flowed. Arms, legs and torso flattened out into an aerofoil, and I shifted my weight for ten mana, making myself lighter as my "wings" caught the air and I flew north. Well, it was more like I was falling with style, but this was a prime opportunity to indulge in a little aerial bombardment.

The iron rings that had been on my fingers were now partially melded into my distended limbs. As I passed over the section of wall housing Mortimer's soulbound and wizards, I released a string of fireballs that fell from the sky and obliterated the top of the wall, leaving nothing but ash and smoke behind.

Soulbound Servant slain x124

Two thousand four hundred Souls harvested.

Normalo Humanos slain x142

One thousand, four hundred and twenty Souls harvested.

Can't block what you can't see, and these people had no idea about the good old "death from above" that was so commonplace back on Earth. I glided over the wall and began to descend. I'd only have a few more seconds before I returned to normal, and I did not want to be hundreds of metres above terra firma when it happened.

I slammed into the back of one of the amalgam zombies, throwing it forward. Jandak swung his blade down and split the thing's head. He glared at me and shifted his grip, planning to attack me. I cancelled the last second or so of Major Shapeshift and returned to my normal form.

"Mond! Can you fly now? Can you make this lot fly away?" he called as he spun and tore into the next amalgam.

"No. You need to fly away, bloke. The big bastard is coming. Go find Mune and Kos. The cavalry and the legion are falling back. Take these!" I tossed him a handful of mana potions that he caught smoothly while decapitating another zombie with the other hand. "Get the fuck out of here!" I turned my back but kept track of him among the threads linking my mind to my troops. If he didn't run, I'd pluck the soul bond and force the idiot to get the hell out of the way.

I triggered Shape Vegetation and rapid growth, rising up on a platform of grass and trees that sprouted from seeds long dormant in the soil beneath me. They wound together to leave me five metres above the earth, perched on a tangle of growth.

The clouds above me condensed, making the gloom even deeper, then flashed red as streaks of white began to fall, ruining everyone's night vision. A swath of landscape between my eerie and the city exploded in ash and smoke. My fire didn't leave much behind when it was done; fine ash was all that was left of the section of the horde I'd just removed from existence.

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Reanimated Humanos slain x3272

Forty-nine thousand and eighty Souls harvested.

I cast again, and another wave of destruction washed out from me towards Ashrot as it surged in my direction.

Reanimated Humanos slain x4921

Seventy-three thousand, eight hundred and fifteen Souls harvested.

My perch of greenery shook and tilted as the lesser amalgams closed enough to begin to tear at the plant matter below me. I threw myself off towards the north and began retreating, slicing through the handful of undead between me and the rest of my troops.

Reanimated Humanos slain x12

One hundred and eighty Souls harvested.

As I broke clear, I spun back around and braced myself to fight in melee while casting Burning Skies once more. As the sky flashed red and fireballs fell in the distance, I lay about me with my blade, slicing and dicing the lumbering amalgams into chunks. The parts kept crawling towards me unless I struck the skull or severed the head. A tide of dismembered parts pulled themselves towards me convulsively.

I gave ground as the bits that used to be people clawed their way towards me across the mud. I didn't get any more kill notifications, so I figured my nuke had landed on Ashrot. I reached for Glimpse's senses and saw I was right. The mound of dead flesh had taken a beating, but even though the front of it was five hundred metres away from the wall now, it was still pulling its bulk from the east and west as the body condensed into a more mobile form. I chugged a mana potion and danced backwards, chopping grey fingers from limbs as I went to stop them dragging themselves across the muck.

I stamped down on a blue hand, feeling bones turn to paste beneath my foot, and released more fire from the heavens. Streaks of fire fell towards Ashrot, and it flicked tentacles up to block some of them, but not all. Another cast and the same again. The thing was still swelling towards me like a balloon preparing to burst. I released Bob from my storage, realising I didn't need to worry about my immediate environment if I set the murder-bot loose.

"Threat assessment: Omega level danger. Raymond, you should run." The array of blue eyes turned to me even as the metallic tentacles lashed out and began finishing off the crawling body parts creeping towards me.

"Just keep the riff raff off me, Bob," I muttered as I cast again.

"These foes are unworthy of your concern. The megaton abomination of undead flesh is beyond both of us. Aresk would want us to retreat, Raymond." The machine blurred around me, stomping, slashing and blending the local threats into paste.

"It's not a million tons. Is it?" The latest round of fireballs was falling on the monster, cutting spheres out of it and reducing those portions to smoke.

"Estimated fifteen thousand tons, give or take ten per cent. You will run out of mana before we can exhaust its mass reserves." Bob's voice was more mechanical than usual.

"So just kilotons. We can do this!" I snapped.

"We cannot. I suggest a fighting withdrawal?" replied Bob as he came to a stop, having cleared the area around us. The mechanical monster moved towards me slowly.

"If you try and pick me up, I'm ripping your fucking limbs off, bloke."

"Can't blame a bot for trying!"

"Yeah, I can. Go find the Fangs, make sure they are falling back. I'm not going to die on this hill, Bob!" I glared at the multiple blue eyes as the brass focusing arrays shifted to examine me. "I just want the thing to know it's been stung and should fuck off south. Buy some time for the army."

"Raymond, a fighting retreat will achieve this goal." Fucking machine, all logical and accurate. Dick move, Bob.

I snatched up a handful of dirt and zombie fingers with my right hand. I shook out the muck and was left with a dozen small rocks and decaying digits.

I shuffled all bar one into my left hand and used enchant on the… pinky finger? Whatever the hell it was, it now carried a charge of Fire Wall. My arm reached behind me as I stepped backwards, then blurred forward, launching the thing towards Ashrot. The rest followed in quick succession. I was down to one hundred and eighty mana, so I drank another mana potion while my new weapons were in flight.

They all slapped into the side of Ashrot in rapid succession, and lines of fire cut their way across the metamorphic flesh. A series of maws opened along the flank of the monster, and a deafening roar rang out before it surged towards me.

"Bob. You might have had a point," I said gently as I cast Burning Skies four times, leaving me with eighty mana. "Try and keep up!" I took to my heels, and the machine crunched along behind me, its head spinning back and forth to track where it was going and what was following.

Four casts of Burning Skies would be overkill against almost anything I could imagine, but Ashrot took them like a champ. It lost a sizable amount of biomass, but it still stretched along the walls behind us. From Glimpse, I could see it had drawn almost all of its bulk into the mobile form, but it was still vast. I sprinted north until I caught up with the Fangs and their golems.

"Golems, pick them up and run!" I yelled, and the bronze mannequins snatched up their charges and surged ahead of me.

"Mond, you asshole!" yelled Mune as the automatons cut left to pass by the fort. I skidded to a stop and turned while I drank another mana potion.

"Don't even think about it," I said, and Bob stopped moving towards me, its arms and tentacles falling down to its sides. The spiderlegs tap danced for a second, but then it stilled.

Wilson padded out of the darkness and pushed his snout against my shoulder. I patted his head, ruffling the fur between his ears as I stared back at Ashrot.

The thing had humped into a mound that was dozens of metres tall and had a footprint like a mansion. The roiling mass of grey body parts rolled towards me, and I took a breath. As long as I could keep my distance, this bastard should be whittled down in… two or three fucking days. Shit.

"Raymond, I strongly suggest we continue to fall back. That thing cannot be taken head-on."

I hated to admit it, but my bot with a god's voice was right. I needed to buy time by ceding ground. We'd done some damage, at least. The soulbound, casters and Undying had been largely destroyed, but the real threat was shambling across the dirt, looking to even the score and just as mean and dangerous as it had been before.

"Yeah. We fall back and catch up with the troops. Once we're all together, we can figure a way to finish Ashrot off."

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