You are Summoned

“What in the name of the gods are those?” The leader of the first company shouted as the doors to the barracks buildings burst open and a horde of nightmarish undead creations poured out.

These undead were like nothing I’d seen before. Each one seemed to be cobbled together from spare parts taken from various humans and animals. Some had trouble walking as they pulled themselves along with misshapen limbs. One had a gnomish torso with a wolfs head grafted on. From the edge of the forest, our archers began to fire.

Only a half dozen or so of the gnomes in each company were ranged specialists, but what they lacked in numbers they made up for in skill. From the north and south, the other attacking companies joined in, rushing into the open area around the lumber camp and trying to form their shield walls before the wave of undead abominations reached them.

Fitzfazzle and I were firing off magic missiles as fast as we could, trying to hold back this latest wave of attackers. Knowing I had the best chance to stop this attack cold, I marched my mech forward, expecting Fitzfazzle to call me back at any moment. Moving closer, my mech seemed to attract most of the undead’s attention. They were simple creatures and without a direct command, they seemed to default to “attack the closest thing that might be food”.

Just before the mass of nightmarish creatures reached my mech, I triggered the second blast of my blunderbuss. The barrel glowed red-hot as the stones inside were ignited, and a moment later, the compressed gas fired the weapon. A swath of undead were cut down, and many more had burning stones imbedded in their flesh.

Swinging my spear, I sliced and bashed a half dozen more of the monsters, granting the gnome companies coming from the north and south enough time to form up inside the lumber camp. With my job done, I slowly walked back to my original position firing missiles and swinging my spear at any monster that got too close.

Fully half of the new wave of attackers was down. Between my blunderbuss blast and the continual shower of crossbow bolts, the horde lost its momentum. As they crashed into the shield walls, and the gnomes started to make short work of them. Each attacker was met with multiple spears, and the bodies of monsters began to pile up in front of our formations.

“Watch out, they’re in the trees!” Several gnomes behind me shouted.

I didn’t let the shouts distract me and kept focused on my job, hammering the undead with magic missiles. Most of the first company were formed up in front of our two mechs, and we were right at the edge of the lumber camp clearing. A few gnomes, the ones with ranged weapons and a few reserves to plug holes in the lines were still in the outskirts of the forest.

“Rico, swivel your mech torso to the rear and engage the enemy there,” Fitzfazzle ordered.

It was easy enough to spin the torso of my mech and a few seconds later I had a good view of what the gnomes had been shouting about. Several undead beasts, and even a few humanoids had been hidden in the trees. Now, the undead were dropping right on top of our reserves, biting, and clawing at the gnomes as they landed.

The torso of a human logger landed atop my mech, the undead thing trying unsuccessfully to get at me through the armored shell. It was no threat to me, but the other undead were doing a number on the shocked and surprised gnomes. One after another I fired magic missiles into the falling undead. With my shots relieving some of the pressure, the gnomes had time to form up into small groups and defend themselves.

We lost at least six soldiers to the undead, and unfortunately, they soon rose and joined the enemy ranks. I felt sick to my stomach as I fired on the undead gnomes that were my allies just seconds ago. Now, the spark of life had left them, and they were just monsters. All I could do was grant my comrades a quick, and final, death.

“We can handle the rest,” one of the gnome squad leaders said after I had gunned down the bulk of the attackers. A few smaller undead bobcats were attacking, but they were all on the ground and not falling on our heads. It would be easy enough for the surviving gnomish reserves to gang up on the last attackers. Based on the sounds coming from the forest to the north and south, the other attacking companies had also run into zombies dropping from above.

Turning my mech to face the main battle, I spotted the door to one of the lumber camp buildings smash open. Out of the shattered doorway stepped something I couldn’t even begin to describe. A big hairy torso from a large animal walked on four human legs. Three pairs of arms stuck out at various parts of the monster, but instead of hands or claws at the end, there were zombified human heads.

On top of the beast’s torso were two zombified gnomish heads that seemed to be spitting things out as fast as they could. One of the things pinged off my armor, but I couldn’t get a good look at what that creature used for ammo. Fitzfazzle and I shifted our fire to the monster, but I noticed it wasn’t alone. Several ghouls poured out behind the monster, and these ghouls seemed much faster and more organized than the ones that I had fought at the farmhouse.

In the middle of the pack of ghouls was what looked like a living human dressed in the same black robes with a red sash that the necromancer acolytes had been dressed in. The ghouls and the human were headed toward the west, where only a couple squads from the 3rd and 4th companies had spread out to cover the area. The necromancer raised his hands and pointed toward the gnomes, casting a spell of some sort.

I fired off a magic missile at the necromancer, but one of the ghouls jumped in front of the shot, taking the magic missile to its hip and knocking the ghoul to the ground. A cloud of greenish-yellow gas enveloped the gnomes to the west as the necromancer’s spell was released. On contact, the flesh rotted off the bones of the affected gnomes, though some seemed to resist the worst of the spell.

The necromancer and his ghouls ran through the gap in our lines, as I tried to fire more magic missiles at the man. The ghouls continued to sacrifice themselves for their master, and I had picked off two more before the group disappeared into the forest. Our scouts could probably track him down, and it looked like my help was still needed with the crazy monster that was terrorizing the army.

Shambling forward on its human legs, the monster charged my part of the line. Arrows, and a constant barrage of magic missiles hit the monster, tearing gouts of flesh off the dead carcass. Spears penetrated deep into its body as it crashed into the shield wall. Its weight proved too much, and before I could intercept it, the monster had broken through.

The heads at the end of its long arms snapped at any exposed flesh it could reach on the nearby gnomes. From the two undead gnomish heads atop the beast, more of the foul projectiles were spat into the mass of soldiers. With my spear I took a swipe at the monster, the blade of my weapon shearing off the two spitting heads.

I triggered a magic missile into the monster every few seconds and Fitzfazzle closed in on it from the other side. The two spears held by Fitzfazzle’s mech sunk deep into the monster’s body. With a final shudder, the beast collapsed.

Before I could shift my focus to mopping up the last of the undead, the monster’s body bulged out and then, with a sickening pop, spewed another greenish-yellow cloud of corruption into the mass of 1st company soldiers. A score of gnomes died in the first seconds before a blast of golden light washed away the foul gas. One of our mages, an older gnome in white robes, closed in, casting another spell over the mass of wounded, and dying gnomes.

Several of the bodies began to twitch and stand as they reanimated, but a second blast of light stopped the infection from taking root in any more of our troops. The mage then collapsed to the ground as the spell he had just cast took its toll on the older gnome’s body. A nearby soldier checked on the mage, only to shake his head as he signaled to us that the mage had died.

Our mages would have been incredibly busy trying to heal the wounded and keep their wounds from spreading the undead curse. I didn’t think they could purify such a large area, but whatever the mage had done, the exertion from casting two of the spells had killed him. Several of the recently killed soldiers stood; the spell not countering the curse of infection fast enough.

Another gnome shouted as a pair of the monster’s arms detached from its body and attacked. The arms looked like a warped snake with a human head attacked. They bit down on the gnomes’ thick leather leggings, but the arms were cut to pieces by several other soldiers. Thankfully, I didn’t see any blood on the gnome that had been attacked, which meant that the gnome was probably going to survive the experience.

“I know they look like our brothers, but they’re just dead things now. Put them down men, send them to their final rest,” one of the gnomish officers said as some of the soldiers seemed reluctant to attack their recently turned comrades.

The officer set an example, running one of the freshly created zombies through with his spear. Tears streamed down the officer’s face as he moved to the next friend turned monster. When I moved my mech toward the remaining zombies, the officer held his hand up to me.

“No disrespect human, these are first company soldiers, and we take care of our own,” the officer said as he and several other weeping gnomes finished off the last of the undead soldiers.

The battlefield was remarkably quiet now, and I could see that while we had been dealing with the monstrosity, the rest of the gnomes had cleared out the rest of the enemy. It had been a horrifying and brutal fight, but we couldn’t consider the battle over until we dealt with the necromancer that had run off.

That man was far more dangerous than the acolytes I had dealt with, and to let him escape meant that even more horrors would be unleashed upon the gnomes. These poor folk had suffered enough, and I was going to do everything I could to keep the necromancer from bringing them more grief.