“Between wolf and man, who would you guess has the stronger bite?” a teacher had once asked him.

“The wolf,” he’d answered.

“And there you would be wrong. It is folly to say man has none of the beastly strengths. Now take a good set of developed jaw muscles, and subtract fear and pain and self-preservation, and there you have all the threat the living dead need.”

The merchant closed his teeth on the steel shaft of the mace and snarled. Marcus punched him in the nose twice, but the dead man did not budge. He swung the mace and shoved the shambler, and released his weapon so that the zombie would collapse against one of his comrades.

He drew his sword over his right shoulder with one motion, and took the head off a lipless child with the next. He danced away from a lunge coming from his left, and then hacked a leg in two at the knee. When the corpse went down, he drove the point of his sword into the back of what turned out to be an old man’s neck. He didn’t sever the head, but the spine was enough.

His next swing met steel, and Marcus cursed. That shambler was dressed in full plate with a gorget, which in theory was a good idea for hunting the undead, except for the weight of the armor and the threat of exhaustion. Book could not see how the knight had died, but now he made an armored zombie.

Thankfully he also made a particularly slow zombie.

The paladin hacked off the merchant’s head, and then retrieved his mace where it had been left on the ground. He fought with a weapon in each fist until he bought enough time to sheath his sword again. The mace ignited once more, and each blow brought hellfire and battery together. Corpses went down smoldering, and did not come up again.

Rhiannon.

At first he panicked when he saw bodies where she’d been standing a moment before. Had she fallen? Were they bent over her, pinning her down as they took chunks off her? But no, they were true corpses and she was gone. He could only hope she was finding her way to Herobrine, and hadn’t met the grisly end he feared for her somewhere beyond his sight.

He hopped and spun before landing a brutal back-handed swing, and a skull exploded like a melon before the mace’s burning flanges. He let the momentum carry him in a sort of horrific dance, a second skull here, a knee there, an extended hand, and then a jaw, and then a flourish before he brought his mace down on the prone man like a sledgehammer.

The bones were brittle, and split with muffled cracking noises.
Whatever magic it was that animated them burned bright, and the light dazed the yet unburned, buying Marcus precious seconds now and again. His upper arms ached with the bloody work, but it was a satisfying pain. Every impact was like curing disease with anger, every flare of hellfire an avenged murder. It was good work.

And yet, they kept coming.

Marcus growled and pushed the armored zombie over and almost laughed when it struggled to get up again. Instead he sneered, and thrust the burning end of his mace into the faceguard and held it there until the monster inside caught in holy flame. It cooked inside its armor, and then fell still.

And that gave Book an idea – a reckless, dangerous idea. Those were often his favorite kind.

He dodged away from another lunge, and then sprinted away from the shambler and toward the center of the field. He spun, pranced, dodged, shuffled, and struck his way between the horde, hellfire leaving a stream of fading light in its wake. The horde grew thicker the farther he went on, but it was only a matter of getting them to chase him one way, then dodging back the other before they could recover. They were gathering behind him, yes, surrounding him, but if his gambit paid off it wouldn’t matter.

The Dark Stone loomed, pulsing with dark magic. It had tendrils of it, thousands of invisible fingers stretched over the field, all stretching from a dense, malignant center. It was a remarkable piece of magical workmanship, and for the briefest moment Marcus thought of all the wizards he was about to disappoint. Then he smiled, broke a skull, and then leapt forward and swung his torch to shatter the Stone of Orox.

At first he thought it was the wind, because the air roared across his ears and ripped at his clothing and resisted the swing of his mace. He saw then that the zombies were not similarly afflicted – indeed, the air around them seemed still as…well, a corpse. He retreated a few steps from the artifact, shoved an attacker away, and then summoned up a fresh burst of hellfire before he swung again with all of his might, screaming.

This time, his mace did meet the Stone. The zombies around him tensed, and a potent wave of foul energy washed over the field toward the rock. It did not shatter, but instead glowed, briefly reclaiming the power it used to animate the dead. With that power, it pulsed with an audible hum, and sent Marcus Book and his burning torch soaring bodily overhead and across the field.

He landed hard and rolled with a harsh grunt, jarring his left shoulder. Though there was a dull pain in his left hip and shoulder, he forced himself quickly to his feet. For a moment the dead were frozen, their bodies rigidly tense, and then the tendrils reached out across the field again and they became animate once more, starring about themselves dazedly.

Book cursed and searched for his mace, but it was not at hand. He drew his sword again, and took a steadying breath. It seemed the stories were true: the stone could not be destroyed, even by hellfire, so long as it had power to draw from the dead. He counted himself wiser, and hoped that the brief moment of respite had been useful to his allies...if they still lived.

Then he started his bloody dance again.