The memory of Melin's words, crystallized in Femi's mind at this moment.
Three chances that's all I will give you.
A strange calm settled over him as the thoughts flowed. Okay, then, he thought, the resolve hardening his gut. One more chance.
The Necromancer's raspy voice, cut through the cold night air. "Shall we?"
They stood, locked in a silent stare, their eyes fixed on each other. The silence was broken only by the distant, muffled clashes of the Krag line holding back the remaining skeletons. Femi's fur had returned to its normal, earthy brown, but his left eye still retained the faint, storm-grey ring, which was already a dull echo of the power he'd already spent.
The silence between them continued to drag on.
Until, Femi's round ears twitched, swiveling independently as it picked up a strange sound,from directly beneath the snow at his feet.
"O boy!" he hissed, his instincts screaming a fraction of a second before the attack.
As the Necromancer's thin finger twitched upward in a subtle, gesture, but Femi was already gone. He launched himself into a sideways dive. The ground where he'd been standing erupted, spraying snow and frozen dirt as a skeletal hand, armed with a rusted short sword, shot out of the earth. The blade whistled through the air his throat had just occupied.
"To bad," Femi sneered, landing in a low crouch that sent a fresh, white-hot jolt of pain from his bandaged side. He gritted his teeth against it. "I thought you'd be foolish enough to fight one on one."
A second skeleton, this one missing an arm and half its ribcage, clawed its way out of the snow to his left, while the first one fully emerged, its jaw clicking silently. This is probably his personal guards, Femi realized. Look at them hiding like thieves in the night, waiting to gang up on a innocent person. How shameless.
The one-armed skeleton lunged, its single hand outstretched like a claw. Femi had no choice but to meet the charge, his body flowing under the grasping fingers. He grabbed the extended arm, using the creature's own momentum to swing himself around its back. As he spun, his sharp claws grabbed the vertebrae, which was enough to unbalance it. He planted a foot on its spine and kicked off, sending it stumbling into the path of the sword-wielding skeleton, which was already bringing its blade down in a clumsy chop.
The rusted sword bit deep into the back of its comrade. Femi didn't wait to see the result. He was already moving, his earlier limp replaced by a rapid rush as adrenaline overrode his injury. His goal was the Necromancer. He just had to get past the personal guard.
He closed the distance, his eyes fixed on the robed figure who hadn't moved an inch. As he drew near the Necromancer's hood shifted slightly. From the deep shadows within, Femi noticed a faint, purple light that pulsed.
The ground in front of Femi erupted and a dozen more skeletal hands burst forth, from the front, and his sides, forming a semi-circle of grasping, clattering death. They were rising too fast.
"Eh, this is too many."
He tried to leap over them, but a hand snagged his injured leg, the bony fingers digging viciously into his soft flesh. He cried out, in pain, and was yanked off his feet.
Femi hit the snow hard, the breath driven from his lungs. Immediately, the weight of the other skeletons was upon him, their cold, hard bones pressing him down, all filled with malicious intent.
"Your defiance is… pitiful," the rasping voice stated, devoid of emotion. " Soon you will join me in understanding the truth of the world."
This is it, he thought, na skeleton go finish me. A strange calm settling over his fear. This is where the show ends.
Show ends.
The word echoed in his mind, but it wasn't his own thought. It was a memory, clear as water and cutting through the terror of the present. It was Melin's voice.
---------
Ah, my eye! Femi screamed. The pain felt as if a hot brand had been pressed directly into his optic nerve.
"You will only get three chances, nothing more!" Melin said to him, her tone was infuriatingly as she casually removed her bloodied hand from his left eye socket.
"You demonic spawn, I knew you were after my life!" Femi cursed, as he continued to scream, rolling across the pristine white floor to put distance between them.
"Oh, calm down, mortal! You're so fickle and dramatic. You did agree to take my gift, and I made sure it was clean and fast. Look at it, it's already healed, see." Melin waved her hands, and a silver mirror shimmered into existence before him. Femi, still clutching his face, forced his hand away after A moment to gather his thoughts. A grey-ringed eye now stared back at him from his reflection, its strange, stormy hue adding a certain, unsettling charm to his furry features. Wetin be this? Femi thought, shocked into silence.
Femi gazed at his reflection, still reeling from the phantom pain and the sudden transformer eye. Melin continued, not minding his confusion face "Three chances...that's what the power I left in your eye will give you. It'll temporarily unlock part of your body's mutation potential. Call on this power with the chosen phrase, and your mutation will activate. After that, you will have to slowly master it yourself. I've told you enough about it."
Femi got up and stepped back, anger and confusion warring within him, but a weary resignation won out. He had agreed to this bargain, and now wasn't the time to complain. At least not yet.
Melin smiled, a flash of blinding white, and raised her hands. "Now, mortal, show me my efforts haven't been in vain. Go, survive and grow." Her glow became even more unbearable to look at, a miniature sun forming in the center of the space. "Remember, don't die to soon..."
A bright, all-consuming light spread from her and covered the entire realm, rushing towards Femi.
"Oh, and give me a good show, Mortal!" Her voice sounded immensely pleased. that was the last thing he thought before he woke up.
---------
"A good show, eh?," he muttered under his breath. "You are lucky I don't plan on dying till I am seventy or eighty, minimum."
The world seemed to snap back into its normal speed. The weight of the skeletons, the bite of the cold, the searing pain in his leg.it all rushed back in.
'One more chance,' he thought, the memory solidifying his will. 'Time to make good use of it.'
He twisted violently, his body coiling like a spring. A skeleton wielding a misshapen, sword swung down at where his head had been. The blade whizzed past his ear, so close he felt the displacement of air. Femi used the momentum of his twist to kick out with his good leg, connecting with the skeleton's knee. There was a satisfying crack as the joint shattered, and the creature collapsed. He flipped backward, landing awkwardly, and felt a sickening tear under his bandage as fresh, hot blood began to stain the cloth. Ah, another wound wouldn't help.
Another skeleton, this one armed with a crude copper looking axe, charged. Femi dodged again, the movement sending another spike of pain through his side. He considered ripping off part of the bandage to move more freely.
"Coward, fight me one on one," Femi shouted at the Necromancer, as he dodged aother stab from a third foe his frustration building. "Okay, then come on, you dirty bones!" Femi snarled, as a skeleton lunged again, he dropped and swept its legs out from under it with a low kick. Before it could hit the ground, he grabbed its ankle with his clawed hands.
With a grunt of effort, he swung the entire skeleton like a flail, slamming it into two others that were closing in. The skeletons tangled and crashed to the ground in a heap of bones, creating an opening for Femi to get closer to the Necromancer.
Another one came at him, but Femi slammed it, using his body to crash into the skeleton's ribcage. Both of them tumbled to the ground. "My back!" Femi groaned, holding it.
He couldn't continue like this. Femi got up, running towards the Necromancer. Just for another guard, larger than the others, to emerged from the fray. It was unarmed, but it moved with a purpose. As Femi tried to dart past, it lashed out with shocking speed, grabbing Femi's tail in a vice-like grip. With a powerful heave, it yanked him off his feet and threw him backwards, sending him tumbling head over heels, farther away from his target.
Femi landed hard, as he struggled to push himself up, his mind racing for a solution, he heard the Necromancer begin a low chant.
"Küröß-mæñīpülàtîøñ<éñtrøpy>pîérçïñg rõt."
A thin, dark, smelly aura, like that of a long buried old man's grave appeared before the mad juju priest and then vanished. Femi threw himself flat against the snow, his face pressing down as a dark, viscous beam of energy passed so close above his head he felt its chill.
It struck a skeleton that had been rushing up behind him.The beam didn't explode as he expected, but it simply bored a perfectly round, finger-width hole through the creature's forehead. The skeleton froze mid-step, its bones rapidly turning a sickly, corroded black before crumbling apart into dust.
Femi breathed heavily, his chest heaving as he sized up the dire situation. That was a one shot kill.
The Necromancer watched on as if evaluating why Femi was still alive. Femi tried has hard as he could but he still couldn't see the damned juju priest face, but he could feel its gaze. So heavy and cold.
Femi felt the sweat trickling down matting his ur . "Na, small thing, save me," he muttered to himself
He turned back to face the Necromancer, his right hand closing around the haft of the fallen axe, dropped by that skeleton that had been shattered moments before. "I no go die here" with that short roar, Femi rushed straight at the cause of all his current troubles in life.
From the corner of his eye, he could see that some skeletons had disengaged from the main battle with the Krags, turning to aid their master. One, wielding a thick wooden club, swung at his legs, which he deflected the blow with the head of the axe, and used the momentum to spin, throwing the axe to smash into the skeleton's skull, shattering it into pieces
Another, lashed out with a dagger, scoring a deep, stinging line across his already wounded back. "Why... am already injured?" Femi seethed, using the fresh pain to fuel his rage. He grap the axe and awung it in a wide, horizontal slash burying it deep into the hip bone of the skeleton. The axe severed the spine, disconnecting the hip from the rest of the body. The skeleton collapsed into two separate halves..
He desperately needed a moment to catch his breath. His lungs burned, his vision was spotting at the edges, and he was completely surrounded. "I just need that moment, one single moment, and I've won," he told himself to calm is nerves. "And I know the perfect moment," he said, his tired mind latching onto his last desperate gambit.
The Necromancer spoke again, his voice rising as he closed his thin hands together in a crushing gesture.
"Küröß-mæñīpülàtîøñ<éærth+lífé>bøñê rüptūrè!"
For a moment, Femi sensed only death. It was in the air, in the ground, in the very marrow of his bones. The air around him exploded. Dozens of skeletal remains, both from the fallen and from those still buried, detonated simultaneously, creating a maelstrom of razor-sharp bone shards flying towards him from every conceivable direction. It was inescapable. Femi's eyes widened, his body bracing for the inevitable, shredding impact.
His furry face twisted into a fierce grimace. "Well, I have my own jazz too," he declared, widening his grey-ringed eye.
Badam....Badam
he whispered,"let's fly!"
His fur rippled, the brown becoming tinted to grey. For a moment, the world seemed to lose its grip on him. Gravity became a suggestion. Femi felt himself become lighter, his mutation surging to life as he tapped into the very last fumes of power Melin had 'gifted' him.
The bone shrapnel arrived, like a cloud of piercing white daggers.
"Ah, I deceive myself, I thought I was flash for a moment... damn it!" he grunted, as a shard grazed his arm, another his thigh. But he was moving, his body a blur. He didn't so much as run but more like flowed between the flying fragments. He weaved and ducked, his movements impossibly light and nimble, the world itself seeming to slide past him without resistance. He was just another gust of wind.
Before he even knew it, his light feet had carried him through the storm and positioned him directly beside the Necromancer. His claws, extended and gleaming, hovered mere inches from the robed figure's neck. His body was a testament to his ordeal, battered, covered in weeping wounds, his bandages soaked through with new crimson. He had put everything, his last chance, into this single attack.
But the Necromancer shifted at the last possible microsecond. Femi's claws, meant for a killing strike, ripped through the thick cloth of the hood instead, tearing it away to reveal the horror beneath. The face was zombified, the skin grey and taut over the skull, one eye a milky white, the other burning with that malevolent purple light..a sight so disgusting it nearly broke Femi's concentration.
The last of the power fled his body. His fur flushed back to brown, the grey ring in his eye vanishing completely, leaving him utterly drained. He collapsed into the snow, his body drained.
"Ah, you nearly succeeded, ratling," the Necromancer said, his uncovered face making the rasping voice even more horrifying. The purple eye glowed brighter, focusing on his helpless form."But you fell short, at the end."
Femi struggled, using the last dregs of his strength to push himself up onto his elbows. "You walking corpses... all of you really have an issue.... with looking up," Femi grinned.
The Necromancer's response was suddenly interrupted by the solid, wet thunk of an axe blade burying itself deep into the side of his head.
Femi had waited for that exact moment. He had gambled everything on it, the split second where the Necromancer, having just finished chanting and releasing his most life-threatening technique, would be savoring his victory. That moment where the Necromancer was at his most dangerous was also, where he was most vulnerable.
Right Oga skeleton.Femi thought to himself quietly as he remembered the dungeon. There always that moment... always a moment after a release were focus was most narrowed, and awareness of the wider battle at its lowest point. where someone quick enough could strike back.
"I got you now, you can die, rubbish," Femi said, while coughing up a spray of blood.
The Necromancer just stood there, frozen, the axe handle protruding grotesquely from his head. But something was wrong. A deep, instinctual dread settled in Femi's gut, but why was that.
The answer came as to why, when the Necromancer's hand, moving with calm, deliberate slowness, reached up and took hold of the axe haft. With a sickening crunch of bone and desiccated tissue, he pulled the weapon free. Putrid, black blood oozed sluggishly from the grievous wound, and the Necromancer's purple eye flared up.
"Do you really think your little trick is good enough to best me, ratling?" the Necromancer asked, his voice unchanged, as if commenting on a minor inconvenience. "My flesh is already dead."
"Ah, so wait, you no fit die? Is that what you're saying now?" Femi said, his voice a mixture of astonishment and utter despair.
"Now I shall pay you back for your attempt."
The Necromancer raised his hand, the bony fingers curling, towards Femi. The air began to hum with concentrated malevolence. "Küröß"
So.. again abi... Femi thought, the fight draining out of him.
"mæñīpülàtîøñ.."
You know what? am tired... He closed his eyes, too exhausted even for fear.
"Ēær.."
"Shhhhhen!"
The Necromancer's chant was cut off...
Femi's eyes snapped open.
... quite literally.
"You did well, ratling," a familiar, deep voice said. Femi turned his head,to meet Aerius's gaze. The war Chief Krag stood there, holding the severed head of the Necromancer by its matted hair. The purple light in its eyes was already beginning to fade.
"How...?" the Necromancer's head gurgled, its jaw working weakly.
"Well, it was easy," Aerius said, a wicked, predatory grin spreading across his face. He brought the head close to his own, as if sharing a secret. "Since you were so focused on the ratling, you didn't notice we broke through your forces." He gestured with his free hand to where the remaining Krag warriors were dispatching the last of the leaderless skeletons.
"And I," Aerius continued, his grin widening, "couldn't resist such an easy prey."