Episode IV: Graveyard Shift a.k.a. Zombieland

The truck was on its side, but mostly intact.  Dust obscured everyone's vision, but our lack of sight was more than made up for by what we heard: an endless crescendo of groans and the scuffling of uncoordinated feet.  The area cleared to reveal in cool moonlight a graveyard full of the once-dead plodding toward our small band, still dazed from the crash.  Here, there, and everywhere limbs could be seen sprouting from the ground, bringing new hungry maws with them.  Over it all, at the far reaches of perception, there was a melody played on a string instrument.

It was unaccompanied, but also complex, entrancing but undeniably perverse.  It came from a source off in the distance, past a  nearby copse of trees, near the center of the graveyard, where I saw two figures about to be surrounded by shamblers.  One seemed to be muttering, and working with something I could not see, while the other cut through waves of undead with sword strokes of terrifying force and precision.  Our group was worse-for-wear, but we had a clue to how to stop the oncoming swarm, but with more shamblers exhuming themselves every second, we could not afford to take our time.

A battle rage took me and I proceeded to knock a tree onto a pair of shamblers with my bear hands while Caster rained acid those closest to him.  So it went, the tree splintered after I had struck a blow against it.  In the heat of the moment, my first thought was to either find something to kill or find a new weapon.  Isaac took to his usual strategy of flying and dropping shamblers with pebbles.  Ishmael set about performing a tactical assessment of the situation while aloft.  Lancer dashed into the trees, spearing the few shamblers that were there and got a better position.

My prayer for a new weapon was answered when I laid eyes on the burning wreckage of the truck.  Though my arms were stronger while in bear form, they lacked the ability to grip the weapon.  It was no matter.  I needed no finesse, merely an object that covered a large area.

"Beowulf, w-!"
CR-RIII-thcktathcktathckta...
Ready to kill, I ignored Isaac's admonition.  I slammed my hands into the truck and put my weight behind it, pushing it forward with abandon.  Gravestones shattered and limbs of digging shamblers were knocked away or ground into a bloody mess as I ran over them.  I could not see where I was going very well, but the bumps and fresh "paint" on the truck showed that I was making progress.

There was a flash of movement in front of the truck as Isaac opened a door in the burning wreckage.  Had I been calmer, I might have been worried by his recklessness.  Luckily, he popped out before having a shambler crushed up against him.  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him flying away with the unconscious Vanessa, who had still been in the flaming wreckage of the truck as I used it as a weapon.  Oops.

I could hear Lancer yelling at Caster behind me, "Quit stealing my kills!" as the Jabir splashed acid onto a group of shamblers that Lancer was ready to assault.  She readjusted her aim toward the magus working on the magic circle.

"Stop, Lancer!  He's trying to break the circle."  Ishmael stayed the hand of his servant and simultaneously alerted .  The magus and sword-wielding servant both looked up from what they were doing and noticed our motley band (though I am still wondering how they hadn't noticed us when I started my truck-plow).

The party approached the magic circle through the swath I had cut through the graveyard post haste.  More shamblers kept appearing, but we had to get to the circle.  The master and servant let us approach unharmed, and we could see a device (which the new master informed us was called a "boom box") being protected by the circle.  The other masters and servants started talking, but I hadn't been given any direct orders to stop killing, and there were still quite a lot of enemies popping out of the ground.  I continued to level the graveyard and put truck-shaped holes the size of trucks through shamblers.  It was difficult to tell what the magi and other servants were discussing over the roar of shamblers, the truck, and my own growls of fury.  I could not even tell whose voice was whose.  What I heard was roughly:

"...Don't really know how to..." CRUNCH, "....trying for..." screEEEEE, "...got me in...arm," WHOOSH, "...tech-bane?... Flabbergasted..." whump whump, "...really extend up that fa-..." something that sounded like, "My leg!" in shambler, "...BERSERKER, TAKE A CRACK AT THIS!"

I skidded to a halt, changed direction, and brought the truck crashing down on the magic circle.  The field quavered, but did not yield.  The truck underwent a transformation, going roughly from this:

To this:

I calmed down a bit after that, though the night was still full of the undead. I took in the surroundings.  The scenery had changed.

Before

After

"We need to divide the circle up into four parts to easily unravel the work done using the local leylines and-" I honestly couldn't understand most of what the new master said, but Isaac and Ishmael took to the task of disabling the circle with aplomb while Lancer and the new master provided moral support.  Meanwhile, the shamblers were regrouping, so Caster, the new servant, and I laid into the fresh corpses rising from the ground like a group of weresharks at a meat party (as an outside observer would probably describe it).  The monsters fell while the masters discussed and argued.  I flew back into a killing frenzy, grabbing a shambler by the leg and swinging it into another shambler, shattering both their frames.  When, at last, the master's yelled, "Done!" and the circle was dispelled, I took the nearest shambler away from fighting a group of homunculi that Caster had summoned and brought it down on the boom box as the new master went to work on it, much to his surprise.  "Berserker, you stole my kill," Caster complained.

The shades all around us fell limp, back to the cold embrace of death.  We could not hear the thuds of their falls but for a mighty roar emanating from the ground under the boom box's remains.

The ground exploded, knocking us back and showering dirt everywhere as an enraged beast pierced the earth and landed in our midst.  "Fascinating," Caster began scribbling in his book, "I have never seen this before.  Pliny the Elder called them manticores.  I did not think they were subterranean."  The mighty animal pawed the ground, deciding which of us to take in its jaws, its tail lashed threateningly.

Isaac's eyes brightened with glee.  "C'mere, boy."  His words were laced with his beast-tamer magic.  He picked up a nearby dismembered hand and held it in front of him.  He crouched as you would before a puppy.  "I got a nice treat for you over here.  Come 'n get it."  The manticore looked quizzical (perhaps even offended) for a split second until it looked longingly at the hand.  It quickly remembered itself and understood the sorcery afoot in its mind.

The manticore wasted no more time in choosing a target, it lunged at Isaac's leg, sinking long fangs through flesh and dislocating bone as it unwrapped its wings and took flight with my master dangling from its maw.

This would not stand.  I leaped onto the beast's back.  Lancer launched her javelin into the beast's belly and jumped in an attempt to use her weapon as a handhold before the manticore got away.  While her aim was true, her jump was not, and she remained grounded.  Caster used his magic to cause muscle spasms in the manticore, taking away its ability to fly, and causing it to crash down upon Caster's homunculi and Lancer.  I pounded hard on the beast's head, but it was not ready to fall, and quickly took off again.  Seizing upon an opportunity before the monster got too far away, Ishmael used a mage technique to make the manticore and Isaac relive the moment when Isaac attempted to tame the manticore.  Once again, the beast was distracted.  It went slack-jawed and dropped Isaac into Lancer's waiting arms.  I hit it again, and the manticore went down swiftly.  It crashed into the ground with a mighty thud, and I could heard its belabored breathing.

Isaac grabbed on to Lancer's shoulder and she led him to face the manticore.  Isaac got serious.  "No!  No!" he chastised as he rapped the nigh-comatose beast with a severed hand.  "That ain't how we do things around here, mister.  You are gonna behave, or I swear once we build a kennel big enough to hold you, I will put so many runes on it that you will, never leave.  Do y'all understand me?"  Caster wore an incredulous look as he used his magic to fix Isaac's leg.

"...Yes," the manticore was contrite.

As a professional slayer of monsters, I was not amused, but I was simultaneously glad for a moment of respite to mend my own wounds through the blessings of bear magic.

"Now, what're we gonna name y-wait!  I know.  I know.  I got this, you guys.  I'ma call you Bitey!" Isaac was very pleased with himself as he stretched out his mended leg.

Bitey dragged himself (herself?  How do you tell on these things?) to his feet, "That hardly seems dignified, but I suppose it is appropriate."

"What about Pliny, after the one who discovered manticores?"

"You presume to name me simply by virtue of my race?  I should name you all after the first manticore to discover a human?" Bitey retorted.

"And what would that be?" Caster asked.

"...Nothing," Bitey conceded.  "I suppose if you must call  me something, 'Pliny' is preferable to 'Bitey.'"

"Good, good, now Caster, can you give our new friend a hand?" Isaac beckoned toward Bitey Pliny, and Caster set to work healing him.

"Now for you two," Ishmael turned to regard the new master, who looked like he had been caught trying to slip away during the conversation with Pliny.  His servant looked irritated.  "Will you name yourselves, or do we need to come up with something for you?" Ishmael's tone had some element of mockery in it.

"Oh, uh, my name's Baltasar," he edged away a little further, "and this is Saber."

"Well met, mage, and Saber," I chimed in.  "I am Beowulf, king of the Geats, and I am honored to make your acquaintance and share the field of battle with you.  You fight fiercely, and it would be my great pleasure to engage in contest with you myself.  What is your true name, that I might know who it is I am killing?" I let slip a playful grin.

"I too would like to cross swords...or automobiles in your case, but I am afraid that the events of tonight were a bit much for my poor master," she said with a sidelong glance at Baltasar while she rested her hand on the pommel of her shortsword.  "As to your question, my name is lost even to be at this point, but telling you straight away hardly seems fun.  Let me know if you figure it out."

"Very well then, tend to your master as you will.  Goodbye," I let the two of them leave, and turned to face the rest of the group.  Ishmael and Caster seemed a perturbed at just letting another master go.  Lancer was cleaning the blood off her spear.

"Alright, fella's.  'Bout time to call it a day," Isaac said as the newly-healed Pliny took flight into the night sky, obscuring a star every so often as he circled the group.  

"Agreed," Ishmael, Caster, Lancer, and I all said at once.

We resolved to split up and head to our respective dwellings.  Unfortunately, as we walked back towards the inn, a dark truth became increasingly clear: Isaac and Ishmael were booked in the same house.  As we opened the door, we were struck with another dread reality: so was Baltasar.