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It’s Ivy! But where is she and what is she doing?
A huge black pot flew from the window above, slapping the fat zombie and causing it to burst like a balloon. Horrendous smelly green ooze flew in all directions.
“It only works on the fat ones—trust me—I’ve done this more than once.”
In an instant, Daemona was up in the room with Ivy. “I’m sorry, I thought they got you for a second there.”
“They nearly did, but I ran up the back step. Now we’ve got worse than pudgy zombies though.”
“What’s that?”
“Those rotten Necro Priests is what!”
Ivy pointed to the top hat-wearing, skull-faced priest that Daemona had seen earlier. He laughed at the carnage he was causing.
Daemona then realized why Ivy was horrified. The Necro Priest wove his dark magics over the corpse of a dead townie, and despite being covered in blackened scorch marks from a witch’s lightning blast, and having fallen off an upper roof, he jerked upright—a zombie powered by sheer evil.
“He was my friend, and now he’s my enemy!” snarled Ivy. “I’m not gonna let it happen to any more of my people!”
“I’m with you,” said Daemona firmly.
“Wait—,” said Ivy just as Daemona ported away.
She stood hip-deep in the murky water right behind the Necro Priest. Her daggers lanced out like a serpent’s strike but something hit her—hard—and then she was flying away from the Necro Priest. What happened?
Then she was underwater. She choked on the foul green and rose up, spitting out a mouthful.
The ugliest thing she had ever seen, this side of the three-headed Ettin, stood before her. He looked like a zombie but was at least three times the usual size, and had other things grafted onto his massive purplish frame. He had stiches crisscrossing his body, demarcating where different bodies had been sewn together. Here and there slabs of metal protruded, but the strangest thing, besides his eerie cold eyes, was the massive hand of a giant bolted to his arm. It was terrible to behold, and he was charging at Daemona.
She blinked away just as his great foot stomped down where she had been squatting. Unlike the other zombies which only moaned if they made any sound at all, the gruesome foe howled in a rage. His head swung back and forth like a predator as he scanned for his quarry. When he saw Daemona up on the balcony once again, he rushed forward and yanked a post from its Swamping, causing yet another of the stilted homes to topple.
“Maybe that took care of him, just like the others,” said Daemona.
“Not this one,” said Ivy. “We’re going to need something more to take down Gruesome George.”
“It has a name?”
Ivy threw a burning skillet at Gruesome George, saying, “Yeah, you can’t have a thing like that running around without calling it something.” The grease from the pan splashed across George and he caught on fire for a moment, but he simply ducked down into the water and extinguished himself before again attacking the stilts of the town.
Arrows flew swift as lightning from Harlin’s bow as he spotted the great new foe, but George just plucked them out and straightened up as if the wounds made him even stronger.
“What could make such a beast?” asked Daemona as she looked for something to throw.
“Some demented gnome Necro Priest, always tinkering with the secrets of life, I’d wager,” answered Ivy as she pushed a bathtub down at George. It barely missed. “Goddess! I missed. I was really hoping that would crush his bones.”
“He packs a punch all right,” said Daemona. “Any other ideas?”
Ivy looked grave and shook her head until her braids swayed back and forth. “I don’t know what else to do—he’ll climb up here any minute. Best we can do is cut the rope bridge when he comes.”
“I’m all for that. I’ll set something terrible up for him to land on.”
“You better hurry.”
Daemona ported to the lower level beneath the rope bridge, looking for anything that might damage the behemoth if he should fall on it. Trouble was, there wasn’t a lot of that sort of thing in Tall Town, especially on the spot beneath the bridge.
She saw a broken section of railing from one of the toppled stilt houses. No one else could have possibly been fast enough to grab it and set it beneath the bridge, but Daemona was. She pushed herself hard, taking two sections and crossing them upside down beneath the bridge like an X. Broken sharp points faced upward like spears. Daemona guessed that any way George fell, he should get stuck by a section of the trap.
Daemona ported back to Ivy and saw they were now faced with George, who howled at them and lumbered across the rope bridge. More zombies crowded in behind him.
