LIGHTNOVELONLINE Ch 34 – Where Angels Fear To Tread
~Hold On! WAIT FOR YOUR BACKUP! You can't just go rushing in like this!~ Jack's concern echoed around Adam's head, ~WE NEED A PLAN!~
"While we're planning, people are DYING! Besides, I got a plan!" Adam muttered as he kicked open the door to the auditorium. He entered a large room with a lecture stage, seating for about two hundred people, and a movie screen that was half retracted into the ceiling. Adam had been studying The Golden Knight's equipment as well as the ghosts they fought so far. He felt he could imitate a magical aura fairly well, as well as knew how to imitate sunlight from Jack's stunt with Ivy last Friday.
He dramatically entered the room to the boom of the double doors swinging wide and impacting with the wall. Adam started glowing brightly from the formerly faint halo that flicked over his head. It wasn't anything damaging in a traditional sense. In this case, he gave off a bright aura of pure magical sunlight. So bright it might blind a normal person, except he made sure it only affected the undead.
"STOP EVIL DO'ER!"
Most of the creatures were down by the lecture stage, but a few rotting corpses were wandering about the room. Maybe two dozen in total. Another three ghosts hovered by a rune and blood covered table in the middle of the stage. Upon it was a corpse from which a fourth ghost was rising up out of the freshly sacrificed life. Jack's plan had some merit to it, because every zombie and ghost in the room recoiled and shielded their face by throwing up an arm across the empty sockets where they once had eyes. Off to the side on the stage were three people who were stacked like cordwood. While they did not react at all to Jack's arrival, they appeared to still be among the living none the less.
The one being in the room that did NOT recoil was the large, skeletal humanoid that was bathed in blueish corpse-light. It was clad in the tattered remains of a jumpsuit that appeared to have once been the uniform worn by the research staff. It hung loosely over the desicated skin that was taught and stiff over its unholy form.
In one hand it held a rod that ended in what appeared to be a large greenish eye with a slitted pupil. It was surrounded by a crown of wriggling tentacles. The creature was standing over the table with the rod in one hand, and a knife in the other. Said knife was currently imbedded up to the hilt in the throat of some poor woman who was lying on the sacrificial table. If one were to give the creature a label, the word 'lich' certainly springs to mind.
Twin tiny pinpricks of light in the Skelton's eye sockets winked in and out a few times, as if it were blinking rapidly. It stared up at Adam and spoke without moving its mouth. There was a dark reverb that sounded like speech which echoed forth from the horrifying creature.
"Holy Shit It's An Angel!"
The Golden Knight, her aura a swirl of gold, blue, and greenish light, came running into the room and leapt into the air, shooting past Adam, "Thou And I Shall Have A Conversation At A Later Time!" She barreled into the gaunt creature, arcing through the air, her sword held high over her head with both hands as she prepared to deliver a blow to the monster before her in an attempt to bifurcate it into non-existence.
The rod in his hand reached out with wriggling tentacles to block the blow. As she slashed down, the rubbery pseudopods were sliced through and fell to the ground, flopping about. The Lich looked impressed, "Wow! Is there anything you can't do?"
On The Golden Knight's heels arrived Wanderer. As she stepped into the room, "Angel, boost me!" The light from his aura dimmed as Adam refocused his attention on Wanderer. She placed two fingers on each of her temples and squinted at the Lich, "I cannot believe I am reduced so something this crude."
A bolt of blue, etherial mist shot forth to hit her target square in the forehead. It staggered back and rubbed its forehead, "Ow! That actually hurt!"
Wanderer frowned, "That should have dropped it."
"IT???" The light in the lich's eyes took on a reddish glare, "I AM A MAN, YOU CUNTS!!!"
~This is bad. This is real bad. We need to get the fuck out! Tell Goldie and Wanderer to get the fuck OUT!~
Adam gritted his teeth and switched his focus to boosting The Golden Knight and glowing harder. He growled as he ground his teeth, "We got this. If I can keep all the zombies and ghosts at bay, this becomes a two on one and it is in the-"
And that's when the lights went out.
Specifically, the Lich twitched his wrists and the eyeball on the rod opened wide. An eye that was both sensory organ and MAW. All light in the room didn't so much as vanish as was CONSUMED. This didn't just fail to debuff the undead in the room, but in the darkness Adam panicked and lost track of Goldie. Without being able to see her, he could no long buff her. For a few second he stumbled about, calling out and trying to get his bearings.
In the darkness her heard screams and a battle cry of some sort. The clanging of metal, the sound meaty sound of something impacting dry wall. Something swung to hit Adam in the back and sent him string through the air to land on the center stairwell that led down to the stage.
~Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK! Adam, Let me take over! We need to get out of here!"
"I'm not abandoning anyone! We're all gonna get out of this-"
Suddenly he could see again.
He stood in the middle of a crowd of zombies and ghosts. Both Wanderer and Goldie were lying at the Lich's feet unmoving.
The lich stared at Adam from the stage and tilted his head to the side as he lifted the rod in his hand up to his face, "Now now..."
He turned to face Adam with cold burning eyes, "I actually want to ask the diversity hire a few questions."
Adam just slowly looked around, suddenly realizing just how screwed he was. Inside his head Jack muttered, ~Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw.~
Adam mumbled softly, "What do we do?"
The Lich stepped off the stage, but didn't fall. Instead he walked forward, staying at the exact same height, floating in the air, until he reached the stairwell, then started walking up the steps until he reached about ten feet in front of Adam, "So..." He repeatedly tapped the creepy rod into the palm of his other skeletal hand causing the tentacles that surrounded the eye to slowly wave about, oddly reminiscent of a sea anemone.
"What are your thoughts on Ivan Ilyin?"
Adam just blinked.
Inside his head, Jack thought but one word.
~STALL.~