Alicya was kind of terrifying when she went all out. Noblin warlocks that fell within her reach were torn apart. Literally. They blasted her with spells, and weird sigils appeared under her feet that she just ignored, pushing through despite the flesh that was pulled free from her body with the effort.

  Then my zombies arrived. Deadlins? Zomnobs? After a moment's reflection, I concluded they didn’t deserve a collective noun. If you’ve never seen a demonically possessed noblin warlock fall under the weight of his brethren, eldritch spider-limbs and bursts of hellfire slashing at uncaring dead bodies as the demonic douchebag falls beneath the combined mass of their former minions, well, it was strangely satisfying. On the plus side, those warlocks wouldn’t be shat out and need pooper scooping in a day or so, as the ones that fell into Alicya’s grasp would.

  “Do it!” hissed Hurg. The demon used Remy’s lungs and vocal cords to create a discordant secondary bellow that was distinctly unpleasant.

  The primary noblin warlock was lost in his trance. He started humming and swaying back and forth above the body of the rat king. The stone knife in his hands caught the light from the flickering torches around the top of the ziggurat.

  “Kill him!” Hurg really wanted Remy dead, which suggested to me that it probably shouldn’t be allowed to happen. As the blade began to descend, I opened a portal beneath Remy, dumping the body next to me at the edge of the plaza.

  “Shi—”

  My hand closed around Hurg, right next to the point where the thing emerged from Remy’s skull.

  “It’s up to you, but I can choke you like a teenage boy when his parents leave the house, or you can behave.” I’d leaned down to hiss the words into the snake-thing’s face.

  A series of desperate gasps came from Hurg.

  “I’m not letting go, asshole. What the fuck is going on?”

  Before the demon could answer my perfectly reasonable question, the chief warlock screamed in fury, holding up a now broken sacrificial dagger and glaring around.

  “Alicya, any chance you can eat that dickhead, please?”

  This was a mistake on my part. The surviving warlocks locked eyes with me a second after I shouted. They ignored the zombies and the angry werewolf ripping them to pieces and pointed both hands in my direction. That was a mistake on their part.

  I don't understand why, but the horde went into a frenzy at the same moment my sphincter tightened. My fear, not that I was scared, seemed to instantly translate into a berserker attack from the zombies, and a bone-chilling howl went up from Alicya.

  Arcane runes began to form beneath me. They spiralled outwards, filling in a circle around Remy and me. Jarring lines and angles, alien sigils that radiated evil, it all pointed to Bob not having a good time. Was referring to yourself in the third person a bad sign? What levels could demons fuck me up on?

  “You’re doomed, Bob. There will be no Primal Empire.” It had been Remy who spoke in a groaning voice. Hurg was starting to change colour and go limp. “Without us, you will fail and die… hideously.”

  I opened another portal beneath our feet and dropped to the ground twenty feet away from whatever spell was being cooked up where we’d been.

  “I don’t give a shit about that. I damn near ate the minion who might bring it about!”

  “You are doomed—wait, what?” Remy gasped a breath of air as though my grip on Hurg was around his throat rather than the serpentine demon.

  I dragged Remy up to eye height, eliciting a strangled hiss from Hurg, my handle of choice. It must have hurt them both. It would be like being picked up by your hair if the hair were plugged into your brain.

  “I just want to make money, not get hunted down, and have sexy fun times with my wife. What did you think I wanted?” A level six glare was appropriate for this situation, but it seemed to have no effect. The golden motes I was shedding did, though. Hurg squirmed and tried to stay away from them as best he could.

  “Why conquer the furkin?” Remy groaned.

  “I’m not here to—what the hell did you think I was here for? Conquest? Taking territory? If it wouldn’t make me so fat that I couldn’t fly, I’d just burn these ball sack islands to ash and move on.”

  Alicya slammed into a barrier and growled as she tried to reach the head noblin. He twisted his wrist, and she was yanked into the air, her arms and legs twisting with hideous cracks. Then her skull imploded, before the grey matter and skull fragments sprayed out.

  My zombies hurled themselves against the glowing red shield. They strained to push their arms through, clawed fingers grasping for the noblin’s throat. Flesh dissolved and ran from bones as they pushed through the magical defence, but it didn’t slow them down at all.

  “Ptah Fnagan!” said the big swinging noblin. A wave of power swept out, knocking away the zombies and tearing away the arms, legs and faces they’d pushed through his spell wall. “Kana Deiic Falato!”

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  I wasn’t learning these spells. There were no sigils of mana, no sense of mana moving through the noblin at all. Even without the system holding my hand, the result of the spells was easy enough to work out.

  The bits that had been torn off flew through the air and glued themselves to the warlock's body. It built an armour of body parts, bulking out the spindly, robed figure. It was like watching Napoleon Dynamite turn into the Hulk.

  Noblin's blood was a lime-green colour, and the tattered fragments that came together formed a day-glow monster. It took a step towards me, its limbs crunching the undead scrabbling at its ankles.

  The fucker was big now. Nine feet tall? It turned a face made of reprocessed meat towards me and stepped over the altar.

  “What’s your mate's name?”

  “Bablick,” hissed Remy. Hurg was looking distinctly unhealthy now, the pale yellow skin had faded to a burnt orange colour, but I didn’t release my grip.

  “Oi! Ballprick! How about you put down the body parts and step away from the altar. There’s no need for this to go badly if you cooperate.”

  My yell seemed to enrage him… it? The amalgam stomped forward, unearthly, guttural chanting coming from somewhere around the head. “Slave. Servant. Minion of the light and the dark. Time to die for the good of the world!”

  “The fuck have I done to you?” I had some people out there who could legitimately claim a grievance against me. I’d eaten Hateskales dad, for example. And obviously Dalgliesh had a legitimate hate boner for me, but otherwise? I was a pillar of the community!

  Beloved by peasants, annoying nobles' daughters, and barlords everywhere. I was a paragon, an exemplar of virtue and wisdo—

  I ducked as a column of corpse-bits flew out from the Bablick, aimed at my head. I rolled to the side and clenched my fists, pulling back my right hand in preparation of charging the bastard. My boxers were already ruined, but I didn’t want to have to explain noblin bits stuck to my undies when I spoke to Esme.

  “Got to do better than that!” I said, shaking my fist in the air. A fist that contained about four feet of dangly snake demon thing.

  Brain Worm (level 42) slain!

  Gold earned… Nothing!

  Biomass earned… Nothing!

  I grinned. Probably looked a bit evil from my enemies' perspective. The surviving warlocks shied away, and even Bablick in his robo-zombie body flinched. I threw Hurg’s body down as it began to dissolve into smoke. I’d probably just made an immortal enemy who could come back from hell at some point in the future, but hey, I could kill those things without getting podgy. No big deal.

  “You fuckers want to play?”

  A series of green heads rapidly shook, bar one giant amalgam of body parts. The wrists and hands that formed Bablick’s body suit’s mouth split open in a disgusting smile.

  “Your mission is lost, Uniter. You are doo—”

  Alicya leapt onto his back and began pulling chunks of his corpse armour away. Her teeth sank into the side of the thick neck, and she pulled her head back with a vicious shake that sent a spray of gore off to the side.

  “Unite that, asshole.” My banter skill had reset to zero, it seemed. Uniter? Did they mean the portal system? Sure, it made distant places close, facilitated the movement of goods and food and people, all of which made me rich, but I was hardly trying to bring humanity together.

  And the dwarves could go fuck themselves, stingy bastards. The elves were weird, and the pixies were psychotic little shits. The only other race… scratch that, the only race I kind of liked was the orlics. Simple, honest, brutal, and they had a thing for cybernetics that I thought was pretty cool.

  I didn’t even like the other dragons for gods’ sake.

  Another savage bite from Alicya ripped away the armour on the throat of Bablick’s construct, and I saw frightened eyes within the ragged flesh golem. “Jabe Rewock Ycunt!”

  Setting aside his language, nothing happened beyond Alicya becoming even more enraged. Her fur stood out from her body as though she was electrified, claws and fangs slashing again and again.

  One hand came up and tried to pull her over his shoulder, but she just snapped her jaws, ripping away the fingers and ignoring the flailing blows from what was left.

  “Alicya.” She looked up for a second, teeth and lips painted lime green. “Kill.”

  She snarled and renewed her assault, slashing and snapping. Bones crunched, bits were liberally redistributed across the plaza, and then a faint wail came from the noblin within the necro-hulk.

  The other warlocks were dead, eaten, both of the previous, or fleeing. Demonic shadows flitted through the air to cover their retreat. As much as the apparitions hurt my eyes and ears, the zomnobs didn’t seem bothered at all. I leaned down and poked at Remy. The rat king farted and rolled over.

  Still alive then. I lifted his head, ignoring the weak swats he made with his right arm to knock my hand away. The hole was rapidly shrinking, but I could see all the way down to what I assumed was his spine. It was at least eight inches. I had no idea how the four-foot-long Hurg had fit into the available space.

  Hmm. Gentle or effective? I slapped Remy in the snout. He stirred, rheumy eyes blinked open, and he glanced around nervously.

  “Who are you? Where the shit am I? I’m a king, you know!” He tried to surge to his feet, but all he could manage was a feeble attempt to sit up.

  “You had a thing in your brain. I… killed isn’t the right word, but I got rid of it. When did you get brain raped, how long ago was it, and what was the noblin plan?” I dragged him up by his tunic and held him off the ground in front of me.

  “I needed them!” Remy squeaked. His arms flapped uselessly against me. The stink of his fur and brain hole was thick around us. “Needed cheese!”

  “What was the deal?” I demanded, snapping his head back and forth as I shook him.

  “I just needed cheese, man! You’ve no idea what it’s like. Being a rat is weird. I don’t care about shit lying about, showering, or cleaning up after myself! I love cheese, though.”

  “What did they want?”

  “War. They wanted the preykin at war.” His tail reached up and wrapped around my wrist. “They knew he was coming. The one. The peacebringer. We have to stop him!”

  I looked up to find Alicya ripping apart the insides of the flesh-golem, scattering Bablick about hither and thither. The lights flickered, the crimson glow intensifying for a second, then fading. She looked up and met my eyes.

  “You are the Uniter,” she said. Her voice was soft, but it carried across the corpse-strewn plateau and the moans of the zombies.

  “How many more infected are there?” I asked Remy.

  “I don’t know. The Bronze Bull for sure… my memories after the implantation are… murky.”

  “OK.” I dropped Remy, and without my having to issue an order, the noblin dead moved in to take him in multiple mouldering hands and hold him in place. “Alicya. I’m not the Uniter, I’m a very angry dragon, and we’ve got brain worms to kill.”