You are Summoned

Ghouls clawed and hissed at the door, but the barn was built much sturdier than I had expected. It was likely the reason the barn door had held up under the zombie assault when the house did not. The ghoul claws were horrible things and through the gaps in the exterior boards, I could see that each swipe a ghoul made tore thin strips of wood from the barn.

They would eventually get through, but maybe there was a way I could thin out their numbers before that happened. Taking stock of what I had to work with, I gave the barn a good once over. A wagon was parked just inside the main doors, and there was just about every type of farm tool stored neatly away. Whoever ran this farm took care of their tools, which was something I always respected.

A ladder led to a loft that held large bales of hay and there was a sliding door up there that opened above the main door of the barn. A pulley and rope system to haul the bales of hay up to the loft was mounted on a beam above the sliding door. That sliding door on the upper level would make a good perch to snipe ghouls with my wands of magic missile.

Only a single ladder led from the ground level to the loft, and once I was up there, the ghouls would have no easy way to climb up and get me after I pulled up the ladder. I’m sure they would find a way to get me eventually, but the longer it took them, the more time I gained for Fitzfazzle and the others.

A quick check of the rest of the barn revealed there was one additional entrance. At the back of the building was a normal-sized door that had, thankfully, already been locked down. The only bad thing was that this door wasn’t made from the same thick, reinforced wood of the main barn doors, but it was solid and should hold up for at least a little while if the ghouls tried to force it open.

Before climbing up the ladder, I tossed several of the tools up to the loft. My mace was gone, but it didn’t take much skill to stab down on a ghoul with a pitchfork, slice them with a scythe, or bash them with a shovel. Once the tools were squared away, I climbed up the ladder, pulling it up behind me. Making my way to the sliding door, I positioned the other tools around the loft for easy access.

Keeping a solid-looking pitchfork within arms reach, I slid open the hayloft door and looked down on my foe. It was hard to get an accurate count on the ghouls, but I was beginning to doubt that my supply of magic missile wands would be enough to clear them out. The largest group was right outside the main door, scratching and banging away at it. Others spread out around the nearby walls, clawing, and pounding as they sought to find a way in.

If I was honest with myself, the ghouls really freaked me out, much more than the zombies had. There was a feral intelligence in their eyes, which was harder to take than the blank indifference that the zombies possessed. Hissing and almost speech-like grunts from the monsters were responded to by the others, giving them some limited capacity to communicate and plan. I was one scratch or bite away from joining their hellish gathering.

I wanted nothing more than to hide and wait for them to lose interest, but even if they couldn’t sniff me out and left, they would undoubtedly move toward the village. From my vantage point, I could see Fitzfazzle’s mech firing away at the giant zombie, luring it away from the village gates. His mech wasn’t forced to provide cover for fleeing farmers, so he could keep out of reach of the monster while he picked it apart.

The other mech and the gnomish warriors were holding fast against the rest of the zombies, and given enough time, the mechs and the chokepoints the warriors were defending would sway the battle in our favor. By taking out the fledgling necromancers, I’d at least been able to deprive the undead of any coordination. They were acting on instinct alone now.

While things were okay at the village, if fifty or a hundred charging ghouls joined the fight, the results could be catastrophic. I didn’t know if the ghouls could do anything against the armored mechs, but these things could just outrun them and pick off the villagers one by one. If the villagers turned into undead from the wounds the monsters dished out, they would multiply and overrun the entire village, the cave, and then just starve out the mech pilots.

Picking up a wand in each hand, I leaned out from the hayloft and got to work. One after another I fired off glowing magic missiles. Each missile hit, but the ghouls were resilient, and a single hit was not always a clean kill. Many ghouls required a second shot to finish them off. A few weren’t even destroyed after two, but those were typically damaged enough that they were less of a threat.

The wand I had already been using ran out of juice before too long, and I replaced it with a fresh one. Down at the door, I could hear a crack as the first ghouls finally broke through a spot on the stout wooden doors. They went into a frenzy, hissing at me while redoubling their efforts to break in. I had killed a good dozen or so of the ghouls, but the crowd was still huge.

From the back of the barn, I could hear the rear door of the place crash open. Some enterprising ghouls must have circled the barn and figured out that the door there was a weak point. A ghoul charged in looking around the bottom floor of the barn as it sought out its prey. I didn’t give it a chance and fired my next magic missile at the monster. The missile was a lucky hit and crashed into the ghoul’s head popping it like a grape.

Another made its way inside and I could see that several of the ghouls clawing at the main doors started to peel off and run toward the back of the barn. More began to charge inside, and I blasted them one after the other. They ran around frantically, looking for a place to climb, but soon realized that there was no easy access to the hay loft which was a good twelve feet off the ground.

The front doors began to give way, the claws of the monsters finally breaking through more of the thick wood. Possessing some intelligence, one of the ghouls reached in through the hole that had been clawed into the door and lifted the locking beam. It wasn’t strong enough to do it on its own, but other breaches in the door allowed more ghouls to add their strength to the effort.

I couldn’t do much about the front door of the barn, as I had my hands full with the ghouls charging in from the back. Missile after missile flew from the wands and I burned through the stored magical energy. Ghouls fell rapidly even as they sought a way to climb up and reach me.

Shifting targets to whatever ghoul seemed to be making the most headway in climbing up, I kept them at bay. The only trouble was that I was down to two wands now, and one of those two was almost empty. Giving Psionic Jolt a try on the nearest ghoul proved a bust. Their undead nature seemed to make them immune to the attack.

The bar to the front door clattered to the floor and the bulk of the ghouls made their way inside. My efforts at stemming the tide had helped, and the swarm of undead was noticeably smaller than it had been. One of the ghouls finally figured out that the most expedient way to get to me was to do so on the backs of others. The monster climbed up the back of another ghoul and leaped up, its claws digging into the edge of the hay loft as it kicked and struggled to pull itself over.

I ended the ghoul's climbing attempt with a well-placed magic missile, draining my third wand. The fourth wand I had fired a few times, so it had only seven or eight shots left. A quick count told me there were close to thirty ghouls inside the barn now, and many of them were following the example of the ghoul I had just blasted.

A fight broke out among the ghouls as each tried to use the other as a stepladder. They were getting the hang of it, and with just one wand left, I could fire a blast of magic missile only once every nine or ten seconds. It was then that I remembered what Fitzfazzle had told me. I could channel my own mana into a wand to fire it. Grabbing one of the expended wands, I pushed mana into it surprised to see that it fired at my target.

One mana drained from my mana pool, and after the Psionic Jolt I had cast, I now had ten mana remaining. This was a mana rich world so I would probably regenerate some soon, but I could at least count on an extra ten shots. Pushing mana into the wand instead of using the stored mana seemed to reduce the cooldown as well, and after only a few seconds it was ready to fire again.

One by one I dropped the climbing ghouls, but my wand ran out of juice and soon after, my last mana point was expended. I counted fourteen ghouls still trying to get at me, and I was down to melee weapons. The ghouls might make this the end of my summoning, but before they did that, I was going to cut through as many of them as I could.