Ghouls'n Guns Read online

  All this, and he had yet to even see his assailant.

  This came soon enough, however. Davidoff’s eyes were watering; the pressure in his head almost floored him and he was struggling to think straight. The basement’s darkness threatened to cloud over him entirely. Then, through this fog, through his confusion and the ringing pain building up behind his watering eyes, five distinct figures emerged. They were all robed in pale cloaks. Flowing robes swished as they moved, striding towards Davidoff and Zeke.

  The one in the middle moved slower than the rest but came straight towards Davidoff and Zeke. The other four peeled off, circling around the two, staying in the shadows for the moment. The middle one’s features were revealed as she stepped out, emerging into the high-ceilinged center: she was a youngish-looking woman with bright, golden hair and a sweet smile spread across her warm lips. She was on Davidoff’s side, staring him dead in the eyes.

  Davidoff looked at her information and dread welled up in his heart.

  WARLOCK PRIME, it read, naming her as their fiercest enemy. She had 578 HP, impossibly high for such a lithe-looking figure, and her power set was unknown.

  Never mind that, though; he had a clear shot. In one, swift motion, Davidoff braced his Uzi against his shoulder and squeezed the trigger, letting loose a spray of bullets aimed directly at the young woman’s frame.

  She was too quick and she was far too powerful. She laughed, and her laughter made the floor shake. It made plaster fall from the ceiling and dizzied Davidoff. The bullets all ricocheted harmlessly away, skittering across the concrete floor as the power of her voice seemed to put up a defensive barrier around her.

  She is the banshee, Davidoff figured. As she laughed, the warlock prime held her hands out and down, her palms facing towards the ground. Surprised by the sudden gunfire, Zeke span around to look at the prime, his own rifle raised high.

  The prime then lifted her hands in an aggressive gesture, as if beckoning her flock to attack. She screamed and the full force of her voice caught Davidoff and Zeke from close range, knocking them backwards. Davidoff dropped his gun and fell to his knees as Zeke rolled over next to him, a look of agony carved on his face. Davidoff’s own head felt like it was caught in a vice, the pressure feeling like it was about to split him in two between the eyes. His skull felt like it had been fractured, cracked to pieces like a boiled egg, and he could feel that his ears were running with blood. He could barely see, his eyes were so blurred, and his stomach churned. Every bone in his body ached and he fought off the desire to pass out…

  He was down to HP 274 / 462. He could not take much more of this.

  The four shapes moved in from the shadows, circling Davidoff and Zeke from behind, and he watched them impassively. They were all young men and women, cherubic and handsome, and he was glad as their faces came into view. He was disorientated and he felt awful; so it was nice to him to gaze upon such beauty before the end came…

  The nearest one raised her hand, pointing a casual finger at Zeke. Davidoff quickly read her stats, along with the others, and found them to be quite weak. None had Defense above 10, none had HP above 200. They seemed to him to be pale imitations of the warlock prime, stunning as they may be.

  He was wrong, however. The one pointing her finger at Zeke squinted in concentration and unleashed a sharp, bright lightning bolt. It wracked into Davidoff’s friend, making him convulse, dropping him down to HP 181. His clothing smoked lightly, and he passed out entirely.

  Another of the warlocks was approaching Davidoff. He was a tall, muscular guy with long auburn hair and sparkling eyes. He held his palms out at his side and he leaned his head to the left, regarding his prey with an ambivalent air. Light began to gather in his palms as he approached: shafts grew and grew, and he seemed to hold them as though they were solid. He stood over Davidoff, smiling down as the light formed into two long, glowing blades. The warlock raised them high, preparing to end Davidoff’s life.

  Before he knew what was happening, Davidoff’s Counter Strike and Acrobatic abilities kicked in, his skills taking over for the moment. Despite his wounds and despite his confusion, the world span around him. It flickered and tumbled, and then he found himself on his feet, machete in hand, behind the warlock with the auburn hair. He had jumped and flipped over, parrying those two light swords by reflex alone.

  Now he was entirely awake; he was fully focused. Zeke lay unconscious and close to death, but Davidoff was alert. He lunged in, instinctively, his enhanced Agility and his skill sets combining, alongside that a hefty dose of adrenaline, to allow him to attack furiously.

  He slashed the warlock as the young man turned. His blade met its mark, catching his opponent across the ribs, above his obliques. Without waiting to see what damage he had caused, Davidoff pressed his assault. He slashed twice more in the space of less than a second, opening up great gashes across the young man’s torso. His opponent sagged and those swords of light dissipated; he fell backwards, crying out, and Davidoff swung once more. He caught a slash under the man’s chin, opening his throat in a spray of blood and finishing him.

  He received a decent amount of XP for the combos he had just put together, though he had no time to count just how much. He turned, pulling his pistol on the nearest warlock. She was slightly older, perhaps nearly forty, and almost elfin in appearance. Her eyes were too large, however, and they looked like every blood vessel in them had burst so that they shone an angry red. She squinted and the world began to shake with the force of her glare. First a banshee, now a gorgon, Davidoff found himself thinking.

  He fired three times, releasing the final few bullets of this magazine. Each shot was precisely aimed at the woman’s sternum. The first bullet disintegrated under the force of that gaze. The second ricocheted away, causing the other warlocks to flinch away as it bounced about the room. The final shot got through it all, however, as the woman’s defenses seemed spent. It caught her in the chest, felling her and reducing her from HP 193 to HP 87.

  He strode towards her, reloading quickly with his enhanced agility kicking in, before aiming his pistol over her head at the young girl behind her—the same one who had nearly killed Zeke with her lightning. Davidoff fired two shots, but the girl dodged them, moving incredibly quickly as electrical charges rumbled all around her body. The older woman was on her knees and he cut her carotid artery as he walked past, allowing her to bleed out.

  The fourth of the warlock prime’s henchmen leapt in next, as the electrical girl regained her composure and looked like she was recharging for another blast. This warlock was another boy, only perhaps fifteen years old or so. His hair gleamed white beneath his hood and his body was impossibly slim. His arms were like wires as they emerged from beneath his robes, wrapped in a tight silken shirt. The boy lashed out at Davidoff who, laughing maniacally, parried with his machete.

  He expected to cut the boy’s arm half off with that move. However, the force of the blow was tremendous. It bent his machete in half, knocked it from his hand and sent him flying backwards. The boy was fast, too. He jumped in, grabbed Davidoff and lifted him over his head. He threw Davidoff bodily into one of the pillars, knocking the air from his lungs and dazing him once more. The attack brought him down to HP 259 / 462 and sent stars buzzing around his head.

  The young boy approached, smiling placidly, intent on ripping Davidoff limb from limb. This is it. This is the end, Davidoff thought.

  We tried… we tried so hard… and we found the fear at last, after all these years of searching for the ultimate thrill… we found it…

  Be careful what you wish for, he finally said to himself, finding the situation surprisingly humorous as he faced his ultimate demise.

  As the young boy came to within three meters, however, a sudden roar burst through the basement, rattling dust from the ceiling once more. The boy’s head exploded, sending viscera and blood everywhere, and his body dropped to the floor with a heavy thump as another roar filled the room.
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br />   Stunned, surprised, Davidoff saw the young girl falling down, a great hole where her heart should be. Another roar erupted and the girl took another shot, this time to her stomach as she keeled over. Even as she dropped, sparks of electrical charge leapt about her body, though these fell silent soon enough as she bled out on the ground.

  The banshee turned around, looking for the source of the gunfire, and she screamed, screeching her full power out and away from the room’s center and through one of the many corridors through the pillars. Mara came staggering out, clutching her head, dropping her rifle. The hunting scope was attached. She had sniped the two warlocks as they were distracted by Davidoff.

  Now, however, she fell to her knees, tears falling from her eyes as she suffered under the banshee’s cry. She was in a terrible shape after everything she had been through, and now this new attack had made her even worse: her HP was down to 113 and plummeting every second as the prime’s fury rocked her head.

  Davidoff felt the screech’s own power building up behind his eyes once again, threatening to drown out his consciousness, doing him a little damage and bringing him down to HP 235 / 462. But he could not let the Warlock Prime win. He could not let Mara down like that. He was still holding his pistol—he was amazed by the fact. So he raised his weapon, aimed straight at the banshee with one eye squinting, and he fired and kept firing until his magazine was spent.

  ***

  Zeke roused himself, blinking and staggering. He tried to climb onto his knees and then fell sideways, his avatar still unsteady, and his controls fried for the moment. He scrambled around in the blood and slipped onto his stomach. Then he managed to heave himself back up to a crouching position.

  He stared around, his head thumping and his body hurting badly. Davidoff saw him out of the corner of his eye. He was briefly relieved that Zeke was OK, but he had no time to linger over the details. His shot hit the warlock prime in the shoulder, grazing a great gash out of her flesh. The blood that spouted out stained her nice white robes so that it looked like one of those inkblots in a Rorschach test. She cried, screeching in pain and rage, and a couple of the concrete columns nearest to her split. Concrete chips flew from their surfaces as a few cracks opened up, blistered under that hideous scream.

  The warlock prime span around as Davidoff frantically reloaded, ramming a new clip into his handgun. He raised it up as her eyes alighted on his own and he fired three shots. However, as before, the prime was far too powerful for him. She bellowed and the shots flickered away, chipping into the concrete floor and bouncing harmlessly away as though they were flies being swatted aside. The force of that cry knocked him back a few steps and, though he managed to fire a couple more rounds, they went so wide that the prime did not even need to bother defending herself. His head pounded and he felt as though the banshee was inside, kicking and screaming, fighting her way out.

  He fell, landing heavily on his rear as his HP dropped further, down to 193 / 462. The prime herself, meanwhile, went quiet for a few blissful moments. The ceiling had been shaking with the sound of her voice and every surface felt cracked and blistered, as though the very world itself rebelled at her power. The quiet was no let up, however. Looking up, Davidoff saw the prime seeming to swell and grow, gathering power to herself.

  She reached out one hand and it glowed. A fiery ball of light sat in her palm. Then it lengthened into a rod, a quarterstaff of pale light, seemingly made solid as had her henchman’s swords been just moments before. A halo of crackling energy also appeared around her, sparkling jolts of electricity writhing through the air. It glanced into the ground, flashed away from her in midair, and lit her up entirely. Her eyes took on a fearsome aspect, red raw and quivering so that as she looked around at Davidoff and his two friends the air seemed to turn black—where her glance fell, concrete split asunder and Zeke and Mara flinched away, their HP dropping by a couple of points each time.

  And I bet she possesses super strength, like the final one, like the young boy, Davidoff thought. This woman was a leech, he found out. She could take powers from the fallen. Or was she more benevolent? he wondered. Perhaps these powers were always hers and she merely gifted them to her followers…

  Either way, she was formidable. She seemed to have grown a foot taller, her shoulders had broadened, and the bullet wound to her shoulder was as nothing. Her health returned to HP 578, regenerating quickly.

  “I am the sum of all the warlocks who have ever been,” she whispered, and the words she spoke hurt Davidoff’s ears. All of her menace was within them; all the power of the warping rifts was there, hurting anything living, anything untouched by its madness.

  She laughed next and the laughter made his head spin. His health dropped down further, falling to HP 181 / 462. A few meters away from him, Zeke had been coming up to stand, but as the prime’s laughter rang out he fell once more, landing heavily on one knee. Behind the prime, Mara was slumped against a concrete column, half-dead and barely conscious. Even in that state, however, she was susceptible. She winced and groaned as the sound of the laughter both woke her up and hurt her more.

  We need to shut her up, Davidoff thought. The prime began to walk over to them, stopping before Zeke where he was panting, trying to stand. She dragged his standing leg out from under him with a negligent sweep of her glowing quarterstaff, and then smiled as the halo of lightning playing around her body flickered over his broken body, causing more damage, more pain, more harm. Next, she approached Zeke’s pile of explosives. It was blood-spattered but all still intact, ready to blow. She shook her head and reached out a hand. It blazed golden and the wires plugging the explosives all into one another popped out, rearing away like live snakes.

  “You will not come into my castle, my home, with such destructive intent,” she whispered, and once more her words hurt. She turned to survey the rest of the room and spotted the explosives that Davidoff had laid out, all taped up to the concrete pillars surrounding the center. She sighed and shook her head again. She waved that hand once more and the explosives all came undone.

  I need to shut her up, Davidoff thought, groaning as he sat up a little. The other two were out of action. They were far too badly hurt to do anything, and if they tried then the prime would stop toying with them as she undid their work. She would break them in an instant, now that they were so helpless.

  It is down to me, he thought.

  He felt OK; the wounds to his body were negligible. Most of the HP damage he had sustained was to the head, from her screech. Though he was giddy and sick-feeling, his attacks would all work and he could move nearly as fast as ever.

  Davidoff looked about, hatching his plan, as the prime dealt with the explosives he had set himself. He saw Zeke’s Uzi a few meters away… He saw his own machete a few more meters away after that, and he saw Zeke’s bag, opened with its contents spilling out, right in the middle of it all, a few feet from where the prime stood.

  OK, then, he knew what he had to do. He had only one shot, but he thought that the plan he had formed in his mind could succeed.

  He would just have to be fast. The agile ninja, as ever.

  He had his objective, now all he had to do was string together the movement combos. He chose each one carefully, whilst working as quickly as he could, to make sure that there would be no spare second in which the prime could attack him and put him out of action. He planned where he was going to move, what attacks he would make, and where he would end up. All in all, he lined up nine movements into a strung out combo.

  Then he thought, let’s do this! And the movements began, almost in freefall as he relinquished control of his body to his predetermined actions. The combo went off perfectly.

  First, he sprang from the floor, staying crouched down, and ran for Zeke’s Uzi. The prime was fast and she was strong; she attacked as soon as he budged. But it was no bother. She breathed in to attack, she raised her staff, crackling with golden light and electrical charge, and she made to relea
se it all on this annoying little insect.

  But he turned, cartwheeling in midair so as to avoid being hit, should his offensive fall flat. At the same moment, he fired for three straight seconds—in midair, once he landed, and as he moved onwards, facing her the whole time.

  The first few shots went astray, some missing entirely whilst others were blasted from the air. However, even the prime could not deflect half a clip’s worth of bullets. Three got through. Two grazed her body, thrown off enough by her scream that they veered from their course and only just caught her. They hit her right arm and her ribs, opening nasty gashes that spilled blood everywhere. They did very little damage.

  The third bullet, on the other hand, caught her fully in the flank. She crumpled up in pain as soon as it hit, knocked backwards a few feet and brought down to her knees. She lost a lot of blood and a lot of HP. Davidoff just had time to register that she was down to 402 / 578 HP.

  He had no time to think about it, however, as the next few movements in his combo were going off. He threw down the Uzi and dove for Zeke’s bag. He took out some of Zeke’s kit: a grenade, a roll of tape, Zeke’s flare gun and—more importantly—some earphones that Zeke had taken from the military base. They were noise-cancelling, for dealing with demolition.

  By now, Davidoff’s helmet was in pieces around his head. The fight with Roger did some damage and, just now, the banshee’s cries had cracked it open. He pulled it off and thrust the earphones on, getting rid of all noise. It was just in time, too. The banshee was kneeling down, spilling blood, and she opened her mouth. The ground around her began to vibrate and crack but, as he had hoped, Davidoff bore no ill effects. His head was clear and he lost no HP.

  Next, he fired the flare straight at the prime. It exploded in a shower of red sparks and Davidoff looked away so as not to be blinded. Then, taking his cue from Zeke just a few hours ago, outside the ghoul’s small town, he finished his work.