Despite wanting to rush headlong into battle, Dane decided that they had enough time to strategize. Despite how long the two had been together, they still knew very little about one another. Mostly, they just did their own things and hoped it worked out, but with the number of monsters attacking the village and the size of the behemoth spikey thing. They needed to strategize.

  "Zeph, can you pester the colossal monster while I thin out the little ones?"

  "That thing is fucking massive. Why don't you distract it?"

  "I don't have wings right now, or else I would. I need you to buy some time."

  The Eagle grumbled, but Dane took his lack of response as a confirmation that he was going to be taking on the role of annoying housefly.

  "When we go to fight it, what type of runes can you do?"

  "They aren't runes. It's called blood poetry. Depending on the stats of the enemy, I can write just about whatever I want. The problem is that if I write something that can't take hold and debuff the enemy, then I get backlash. This thing probably doesn't have much intelligence, so the best thing to use will be confusion."

  "Got it, you use that but only after me and the remaining village guards join."

  They split up. Dane snuck in around the watch tower. It wasn't hard to go undetected with the guards preoccupied with monsters throwing themselves at barricades. And the monsters were likewise enamored with the guards. Upon closer examination, he could see that the monsters were ghouls that resembled decrepit Beastmen. Why is it always undead? But the behemoth wasn't undead; it was far from it. The shadowy figure that Zeph was now preoccupying was the most enormous troll that he had ever seen. The thing looked like a yeti wrapped in shadow. Its eye glowed crimson, and its movement looked unnatural.

  Dane felt his Axe vibrate slightly when he approached the undead. He was wondering how he would know that the Axe judged his enemy guilty, but now he knew. No notification came telling him that he could use it, but he just knew that if he willed Judgment Strike, then it would activate. He didn't want to waste the attack on low-level mobs, so he tried to send his thoughts to the axe telepathically, telling it that he wanted to save it for something bigger. He just hoped that it was enough.

  He began to hack and slash at the shambling zombies. None of them registered pain, and it was a lot like fighting training dummies back at camp. He slashed, chopping through several in one go. He lost himself in a battle trance. During his time at the slave camp, he had to do too much thinking. If he strikes, then this is how I'll parry and so on. It was nice to get back to something dumb and numerous finally. Sure, monsters could get tricky, but almost always the right move was to press the attack and use Huntsman.

  Almost an hour had passed, and Dane was still hacking away. He must have killed hundreds of undead, but it was like they were getting resupplied. He didn't quite understand it. He hacked his way almost to the gate. Not a single arrow had rained down. Not a warrior had come to help him in his assault on the enemy. Dane looked up to see what was going on, and he saw the guards just sitting there playing cards.

  What the actual fuck. Dane was down here risking his life, and they couldn't care less.

  Dane cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed at the wall. "Hey! A little help here!”

  One of the guards lazily looked over the battlements, shrugging with the fatalism of someone already dead inside. "Try all you want," he called back. "No matter how many you kill, there'll just be more."

  Dane's jaw clenched. The man wasn't wrong; he had hacked through a hundred easily, and still the tide lapped at the walls. It didn't feel natural. Even the undead ran out eventually.

  He forced his breathing steady, let his focus slide inward. His vision shimmered as he strengthened his Mana Sight.

  The battlefield shifted. The snarling ghouls dulled into pale outlines, each with a faint tether, like puppet strings glowing in the aether. All those strings bent back, knotted together, and stretched across the churned earth.

  Dane followed them, cutting down a shambling corpse as he walked. The threads converged not on the troll, no, that was just another thrall, but on something absurd.

  A bunny.

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  The little creature sat in the churned mud in the center of the chaos, licking a paw, completely unbothered by the carnage raging around it. Its fur was the color of new snow, but its eyes burned with emerald fire, too old, too clever. The ghouls surged whenever its ears twitched.

  Dane almost laughed.

  Of course, it wasn't funny. The mana around the thing was thick and heavy with necromantic rot.

  Zeph swooped low, wings buffeted with shadow from the troll's massive swing. "What are you staring at?" he shouted.

  Dane just pointed his axe at the rabbit. "That."

  Zeph blinked. "That's… a bunny."

  "Yeah," Dane growled. "And it's the one pulling the strings."

  Zeph shook his head in disbelief, but had more important things to worry about, like dodging a swing from a club the size of his torso. Dane walked towards the cute little bunny and sat next to it. The furry little animal let a hint of malice slip before it went back to being adorable. The ghouls all stopped what they were doing and turned towards Dane.

  "I know that you are a necromancer of something like that, but can you explain how you enthralled the troll? It looks very much alive." Dane said as he counted the number of undead encircling him.

  The bunny twitched its nose. For a moment, Dane thought it might just hop away and vanish into the undergrowth. Instead, its eyes widened, and a voice slithered directly into his mind.

  "The troll?" The words weren't sound, but thought, smooth as oil. "He was easy. A creature of hunger and bone. I whispered the promise of endless prey, and he bowed."

  The troll bellowed in the distance, as if in agreement, swinging madly at Zeph.

  Dane kept his face flat, though sweat prickled the back of his neck. "And the ghouls?"

  "They are mine. The village abandoned the old ways. No more hunts, no more balance. Livestock penned, fields tamed. They starved me. So I take what's left of their dead and make them useful."

  The words dripped with scorn. The little creature tilted its head, looking almost curious. "Why should they live, if they have turned their backs on the Accord?"

  The ring of ghouls pressed closer. Dane's axe hummed with quiet fury, as if it too was waiting for judgment. He gritted his teeth. "Because they're people. Because they still have a chance to turn things around."

  The bunny gave the smallest, most unsettling chuckle. "Na?ve." Its ears twitched, and every ghoul lunged at once.

  Dane surged to his feet, axe already swinging. The first three ghouls went down in sprays of black ichor, but there were more pressing in, clawing, teeth snapping at his armor. The Executioner's Axe vibrated so hard his arms ached, begging him to call judgment.

  Zeph's voice cut through the chaos overhead. "Dane! That thing's not just pulling strings, it's feeding! The more it commands, the stronger it gets!"

  Dane ducked a swipe, cleaved another ghoul from collar to hip, and shouted back. "Then we cut the source!"

  He took a breath, set his stance, and let the axe rise. The hum crescendoed in his bones. Judgment Strike, he willed.

  The world snapped. The Executioner's Axe came down, not on the ghouls, but aimed directly at the little rabbit.

  It was by far the worst kill Dane had ever gotten. He sliced the hateful little bunny right in two. Without the necromancer dooling out orders, the horde lost control, and it was a free-for-all. The troll tore through the ghouls. They attacked anything that moved. And Dane once again showed his impression of the Tasmanian devil as he cut through anything and everything.

  The troll decided that it wasn't worth the fight, and to Zeph's disappointment, he got an anticlimactic battle. But he supposed that trolls usually stalked their prey in the woods and would have very little reason to remain in a siege, especially if there was nothing in it for them.

  The dust settled, and Dane started to burn the bodies. He really needed a shower.

  The stench of charred flesh rolled low over the fields, clinging to his armor and hair. Dane stood with his arms folded, watching the last of the ghouls collapse into ash. The Executioner's Axe was quiet now, but he could still feel the echo of the strike thrumming in his bones. That judgment had been different.

  Behind him, boots crunched gravel. A handful of guards wandered out from the gate, eyes carefully averted from the pyres. The same man who had been playing cards earlier muttered, "Guess you sorted it out."

  Dane turned, glare sharp enough to cut him in half. "Sorted it out? You had a horde climbing your walls and a troll battering your tower, and you sat there with your thumb up your ass. If you'd lifted a bow, I wouldn't be standing in the stink of a thousand corpses."

  The man shrugged, not meeting Dane's eyes. "Wouldn't have made a difference. You kill a hundred, a thousand, they keep getting back up."

  Dane's grip on the axe slackened, just slightly. He exhaled through his nose. "You're… right," he said, his voice lower, less sharp. "I shouldn't have snapped at you. You didn't know."

  The guard blinked, surprise flickering across his face. "Didn't know what?"

  "That you've had a pissed off necromancer and it was throwing undead at you," Dane admitted, stepping closer. "Fortunately, it is dead now."

  The guards shifted, uncomfortable, shuffling their feet. Dane nodded. "But that doesn't mean you do nothing. You should have helped."

  He bent down to the first pile of bodies. The axe hummed faintly, still resonating from Judgment Strike. He placed his hand over a corpse and let Mana drift through it, feeling the threads of a wandering soul. The idea came automatically, almost like muscle memory from the dungeon.

  "These ones," he muttered, "their souls aren't just gone. They'll search for new bodies if you leave them lying around." He gestured to the villagers, who were still hesitant. "Burn them. Every corpse. Let the fire guide their spirits to the astral so they don't wander back as something worse."

  The villagers exchanged looks, then slowly nodded, picking up torches and dragging bodies toward the pyres. Dane moved among them, showing the proper angle to stack the corpses, how to maintain the fire so it burned hot enough, and the subtle signs of lingering corruption in a body that might resist release.

  "I have seen the Beast Tide burning there, dead. Why don't you?" Dane asked, clearly confused.

  The guard just shrugged his shoulders. "Because all that old ways nonsense don't really matter. We could hunt, but why when we can have cattle? We could burn the bodies, but why, when the bodies will keep the land beneath us fertile?"

  Dane just raised his palm to his head. He was going to have a long discussion about why that little bunny was so pissed.