Chapter 689: So That Is It

Thoren stood on the ledge and watched his undead throw themselves at the Mother.

His breathing came fast and ragged.

The undead Horn Lizard King’s cudgel bounced off a raised palm. The Scorpion Men King was swatted aside like an insect.

The undead rhinos hit its legs and the undead wolves tore at its arms, and the Mother laughed through all of it, healing every wound before the blood could finish falling.

Thoren’s chest rose and fell.

His hands shook, and his heart hammered so hard that it hurt.

Then the trembling stopped.

His eyes slowly turned red, the whites filling with thin, crawling veins as something in him snapped.

The fear drained away and left a cold, dark emptiness in its place. He lifted his head and looked at the abomination that had broken so much of what he had built.

It was laughing.

It was lost in a frenzy of its own.

’Since you’re going crazy, then why can’t I be crazy also...’

A grin spread across his face. It was wide and crooked, with nothing sane left in it.

He raised his hand and opened his Undead Space.

The air above the ledge rippled and tore open. A low, grinding sound rolled out of the dark, and then the undead Scorpion Men began to pour out.

One, then ten, then a hundred and their soul fires burning in endless rows. They spilled across the ledge and kept coming, hundreds of them, until the ground itself seemed to move beneath their bodies.

Thoren’s grin stretched wider.

’Now, let’s see if you can survive this...’

He had run out of clever plans.

He had no trick left to try, no weakness left to find.

The Mother could not be worn down, so he would not try.

He would bury it under every undead servant he owned, and no matter how fast it healed, it could not heal faster than it was being torn apart.

"Attack," he whispered, and the word carried through the mental link like a blade.

The undead Scorpion Men surged forward.

The Mother’s many eyes turned toward the tide of bodies, and its mouths stretched into hideous smiles.

It raised its dozens of arms and met them head-on.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Undead Scorpion Men flew through the air, one after another, crushed by its fists. Others leaped onto its arms and legs, sinking blades and stingers into its stitched flesh.

Some climbed its back, hacking at the black threads.

Some gripped its limbs and pulled with all their strength.

The Horn Lizard King and the Scorpion Men King pulled themselves up again and rejoined the fray, swinging at its head.

The undead rhinos rammed its knees, and the wolves bit into every opening they could find.

Crack! Clang!

Thud!

The Mother roared and spun, flinging bodies in all directions.

Black fluid sprayed across the ledge.

Armor shattered and bones snapped, yet for every undead Scorpion Man it crushed, three more took its place.

The wounds opened.

The wounds closed.

The stitches tore, then healed.

Its arms were severed, then grew back, only to be hacked away again.

Jejeje.

The Mother’s laughter rang through the chamber, maddened and endless.

It tore an undead Scorpion Man in two and hurled the halves into the lake. Thoren laughed as well, a low, broken sound that echoed beneath its voice.

The cavern shook with the clash of the two monsters, the one of flesh and the one of bone.

The battle swallowed the whole ledge.

The undead Scorpion Men did not hesitate, and they did not retreat. An undead Scorpion Man was struck down, and the one behind it climbed over its body without a pause.

An arm was torn off, and it kept swinging with the other.

A tail was snapped in half, and it kept stabbing with the stump.

Undead had no fear to break and no breath to run out of. Every one of them came forward with the same blank, burning gaze, merciless to the end.

Bang! Bang!

The Mother’s fists came down in rapid succession. Three undead Scorpion Men were crushed flat in a single blow.

Five more were swept off its legs by a sweeping arm and sent spinning across the cavern, where they hit the walls with a sharp crack and fell in broken pieces.

Another dozen were flung into the air, their limbs flailing, and rained down into the black lake with heavy splashes.

Dozens flew through the air, one after another, faster than the eye could follow.

Yet more took their places.

The undead Horn Lizard King pulled itself onto the Mother’s back and brought its cudgel down on a pale skull with all its strength.

Bang!

Crunch!

The head burst like rotten fruit, spraying dark blood across the stone.

The undead Scorpion Men King leaped from the other side and tore into a swollen arm with its dented gauntlets, ripping the limb from the shoulder.

Black threads snapped and flew loose.

A cluster of undead Scorpion Men hacked at its legs, and the Mother staggered, its stitched flesh splitting open beneath their blades.

The undead rhinos drove their horns into its thighs. The wolves tore strips from its waist and spat them to the ground.

The undead Alpha clung to its shoulder, jaws locked, shaking its head violently.

The Mother screamed.

It was not one scream but dozens, each from a different throat, high and low, shrill and cracked.

Its many mouths opened wide at once, some howling, some laughing, some weeping, and the sound shook dust from the ceiling.

"..H-Hurts..."

"Kekekeke..."

"..Mama...Mama..."

"Jejeje..."

Then the flesh began to move.

The shattered skull swelled and knitted back together.

Bone crawled beneath the skin, pushing outward until the face was whole again.

The torn arm sprouted a new limb from the shoulder, black threads weaving through meat and muscle until fingers uncurled and gripped the air.

The deep gashes across its legs sealed themselves with a wet, crawling sound, and the pale skin pulled tight over every wound as though it had never been touched.

The Mother straightened. Dozens of eyes rolled toward its attackers, bright with delight.

Its arms exploded outward in every direction.

Boom!

Undead Scorpion Men were hurled away in a ring of shattered armor and black ichor. The Horn Lizard King was knocked off its back and thrown across the ledge.

The undead wolves yelped and scattered. An undead rhino’s leg buckled under a stomping foot.

But the undead rose again.

The undead Horn Lizard King pushed itself up on one arm, its armor split down the middle, and charged again.

The undead Scorpion Men King crawled out of a pile of broken stone and sprang back into the fight.

The undead Scorpion Men climbed the Mother’s legs with their claws, hundreds of blades rising and falling, hacking and stabbing in a tireless rhythm.

Dark blood splattered the stone like rain.

Limbs, bones and pieces of armor littered the ground.

The cavern echoed with the clang of steel, the crack of bone and the Mother’s wild, broken laughter.

Thoren stood at the edge of the ledge, watching it all.

His red-veined eyes followed every strike. He saw the Mother’s hands snatch the undead Scorpion Men from the air.

He saw the black threads writhe across its skin each time it healed. He saw how its attention darted from one attacker to another, never resting, never still.

He saw how every wound it closed cost it something, and how the undead Scorpion Men never stopped coming no matter how many it killed.

His grin faded.

Slowly, a look of realization crossed his face.

’So that is it...’