More corpses burst into sight, and Raksha charged into their midst.
Sadea wasn't a necromancer, though she was very familiar with the Discipline of necromancy. After all, it was the most widely practiced type of sorcery in the Hegemony, and reanimated corpses, human and beast, all played crucial roles in everyday life.
Her beloved Pieter, for instance, was one of the finest reanimated horses in the province. She'd picked him out herself from his stable, a mighty stallion in the prime of his life, and then he'd been slaughtered and reanimated by a highly competent team of necromantic craftsmen. Now, he served her forever, the best hundred credits she'd ever spent.
On the other end of the spectrum were the shambling corpse-slaves littering every Hegemonic establishment that could afford them. Viktoria's brutish puppets would lie somewhere in between, she supposed.
Corpses reanimated in accordance with Church dictates were deemed sanctioned, and they bore a very distinctive, standardized signature of psychic energy. Needless to say, this did not apply to the ones piling onto Raksha as he hacked them to pieces.
"There might be something to what you were saying just now," she mused, futilely trying to shake off a layer of corpse ash from the top of her boots.
"Yeah?" Raksha had a dozen corpses hanging from his limbs. As their broken teeth and bony fingers scraped uselessly off his aegis, he peeled them off and decapitated each one in a grim, workmanlike manner.
"The unsanctioned dead here are suffused with psychic energy that is similar to the chimera's, which means that even after we're done here..."
"There will be more to do, elsewhere." Raksha smashed a crumbling skull against the wall, spilling its stinking brains all over the permacrete.
"More money to make, you mean." Sadea strode past the gore-soaked martial scientist. They'd arrived at the elevators. There were two small passenger ones and two much larger carriages meant for freight. She pressed the call button for one of the passenger elevators.
The button lit up. Machinery grumbled from behind the steel elevator doors, signaling the approach of the carriage. Raksha sighed.
"What's the matter? Scared of small spaces?"
"Only if I'm in them with you."
"Oh, come on!" Sadea punched him playfully on the shoulder. "Still bearing a grudge about the bathtub thing?"
"Who wouldn't? You electrocuted me!"
"Yeah? Well, you assaulted an intimate part of my anatomy! Me, a fair and modest maiden of impeccable repute and virtue!" Sadea pointed to her rear, noting how Raksha's gaze trailed to it before he caught himself and rolled his eyes.
"Fine. Not my finest moment." He folded his arms. "Won't happen again."
"We're even, then?"
Raksha glared at her. His left brow twitched. Eventually, he sighed again. "Sure, whatever."
"That's the spirit!" Sadea punched him again. "Now, come on, don't be so glum. Give me a smile!"
"We're fighting reanimated corpses that want to eat us, and we've got to kill something powerful before it's too late and everyone in town dies. That sure brings a smile to my face."
"It should!" Holding her staff between her knees, Sadea stood on her tiptoes, pinched Raksha's cheeks, and pulled. "So turn that frown upside down!"
He brushed her hands away with an irritated grunt, but Sadea spotted the faintest glimmer of mirth tugging at the corner of his lips. "Are you always like this in battle?"
YOU ARE READING
Shura Saga: Burn and Slay - Cultivation, Lightning Bolts, Monsters galore
Fantasy"If it lives, we can slay it. And then burn it, just to make sure it doesn't come back from the dead," she said. "...does that happen often?" he asked. "Slaying? Yeah, duh? It's what we're here to do in the first place, dummy." "I meant the coming...
