The Many Faced Man

"Run to the room! I will cover you!" I yelled out, as they approached, I swung my club in anticipation of a zombie encroaching on Nathan from behind. As they passed by me, my club caved the head in of that forerunner zombie on his heel. Then I began to retreat as well.

"Sorry" I heard in a small voice behind me.

Looking back I saw the air begin to ripple and shake, Nathan's hand open and outstretched, a wave of distorted air was coming towards me.

'f.u.c.k'

I tried to move out of the way quickly, but the wind-front moved much faster than I was, and it encompassed a rather large area as well.

I tried to run against it, while simultaneously fighting off the nearby zombies, but the wind was ridiculously powerful. It lifted me off my feet for an instant, and I flew a meter through the air before crashing back down onto the ground. It didn't really hurt me at all, but the key fact was it knocked off my feet and towards the zombies.

I caught myself before I hit the ground, but before I could even get up there were already zombies trying to bite at me.

I didn't stop to think of anything else, I fought back. But with every part of a second I fought the zombies around me, more and more of them surrounded me. I remembered the scene of the man I saw in the alley, and thought perhaps soon I would look just as he did.

But at that thought, adrenaline flushed my body. All I saw was tinged red, but I didn't even notice. All I did was dodge, and kill.

Actually, I wasnt sure if each hit was a kill. A lot of the time I was not even looking at what I was hitting. I saw a head, I hit it. I saw one lunge, I lunged by it and hit the one next to it.

Carried away, I think I killed a lot, but in a rage my pain was dulled. I didn't notice for a moment but I had already been covered with scars shortly into the encounter. There were simply too many of them to dodge everything.

I was not woken up until a particular zombie firmly lodged its teeth into my shoulder. This particularly bite sent a shock through my body, and in a panic I threw myself towards a wall. Slamming myself against it repeatedly until the zombie let go, whether due to its death, or that I simply knocked out the teeth that were lodged within.

I found I was next to the open door by chance, I had forgotten my original goal in the fight and recalled it just at that moment. I knocked over the one zombie in my way and went inside the room, knocking another away and closing the door promptly.

The zombies outside quickly began knocking on the door, they would soon be knocking it down to get at me. I fumbled for the bottle of cloudy water and managed to open it haphazardly, throwing it on the door and then on myself as well.

Intense pain rolled over me and I felt like my body was burning up. Everything went black again.

...

I woke up again from another intense jolt of pain. Particularly from my shoulder, where the deepest bite left a good mark but the blood had already well clotted.

My whole body was a mess, ravaged with bites, scratches, and bruises. On top of that, my entire body was sore. I had used every part of my extremities when fighting against the zombies and it was entirely possible I had fractures in some places from the impacts of my blows on them.

Frankly, it was a miracle I had not bled out from all of my injuries. It seemed the zombie infection significantly increased clotting. Though, it was dumb luck but I managed to prevent any of them from tearing off significant chunks of flesh after sinking their teeth in.

If I hadn't done so, no amount of help in clotting would have mattered, I would have bled out in seconds. Instead, all I had was a bunch of minor wounds, painful but certainly not fatal. Unfortunately, the issue with many minor wounds is the matter of infection, which in this case could easily prove fatal.

Especially since in this case it was zombies. So likely, it was the zombie virus I was infected with. Which meant...

My life is over.

But no, that can't be right. It is not like there is proof there is no cure. And besides that..

Pain raked through my body again, unbelievable pain.

And it was with that, I noticed.. I could see Death Qi all around me, and I could see it very clearly.

Is this what it means to approach death?

The pain came again and again in pulses. I tried to move, to get up, to do something with my last moments. However, my body wouldn't even listen to me.

I laid there thinking what can I do, what can I do. Would these be my last moments, stuck in place, slowly dying and unable to do a thing? Was this any better than dying like that man in the alley?

Yes, I thought. This is at least better than that. My body would not be torn to pieces like his was at least. A little tattered, but still intact, at least.

The pulses of pain died down as more time passed, but somehow that was the opposite of reassuring. It felt that, as my pain slipped away, so too did my life. All I could feel was my head was in fire, my body was on fire, but it no longer hurt.

And at that moment I felt closer to death than ever. The death qi felt closer to me than ever, and at that moment I felt something else as well. My sense of Death Qi and spiritual energy amplified many times over as my other senses died away, to the extent where I even developed internal sight.

I could see, in my body, there were large amounts of death qi, together with something else. Something more pure, another form of dark energy, similar but different.

..

It moved most quickly and pooled within the blood, but it slowly dispersed into all of other tissues from the bloodstream as well. The energy did little to no harm to the body, until it managed to hit the nerves.

It's behavior would rapidly change at the moment it came in contact with certain portions of the nervous system. The entirety of the dark energy within would pulsate cyclically, as though it were it's own perfect circulatory system.

Each pulse would result in another portion of the nervous system being infected with the dark energy. The dark energy infected nerves would warp into irregular shapes. At the rate of spread it would soon take over the entirety of his body.

He would no longer feel pain, touch, taste, no longer have sight or smell. There would only be the Dark energy, the other undead, as he remembered it from the time in the Necromantic symbol.

The thought of such an existence, the shock of how stark such an existence was, that it would truly mean his end, snapped him to his senses again from the midst of the pain. He resolved not to give in, as the dark energy devoured his mortal senses it brought his spiritual senses to new heights. This also increased his capabilities in terms of devouring energy with his spiritual domain.

Projecting inwards, he put his all into devouring the energy coursing through his veins. But the energy was belligerent and voracious, insistent on assimilating his nervous system and turning him into one of the undead.

The fight went on and on, but no matter how much of it he devoured, the parts assimilated into the nerves were impossible to re-claim, and would act as a new source to constantly push more dark energy into his system. The dark energy was tireless and endless, and the constant fight wore on him.

Despite all his efforts, it was a losing fight. The ravenous dark energy encroached upon his mind, and all thought was washed away.

...

'So that was how I died'

All emotions, all senses, gone. I felt a sense of liberation from self, from being. Maybe, death was not so bad.

Something resembling thought still remained within me, what was left was but a dull innate curiosity. Trying to understand what had happened, I 'looked' about myself.

I could vaguely 'see' my body around me. I could see my entire body, the dark energy, everything. I was no longer thinking and seeing with my mind however, but instead with my soul.

Looking over the situation again I came to realize the dark energy had taken but a small portion of the entire nervous system. It occupied just a few key nerves throughout various locations in the body.

The reason my mind ceased it's function was a small branch of energy stretching into my frontal lobes. It slowly surrounded and encroached upon a single spot, a spot between the brow, where I could see the energy become distorted as it encroached upon it.

As it acted on that location, it simulataneously attacked me, my soul. In reflex I tried to counteract with my spiritual energy. As I did so, I noticed my surroundings alight with a dull glow.

I could sense two ethereal energy systems, attached loosely to my soul. One closer to the soul, one close to the body. I found, drawing on the one closer to me, my spiritual energy could easily channel through it.

The two systems, should be the meridians, one for spiritual energy, and one perhaps for a more bodily energy?

Sensing the energy of the spiritual meridians, I managed to pull a strand of energy from within them.

That one strand of energy, minute as it was, felt as weighty as a mountain. Impossible to wield freely. With all I had, I cast it out with one intent.

A ripple spread out, and the dark energy within me was annihilated in an instant. The energy, unabated, radiated out into the surroundings as well.

The little dark energy still remaining within my mind and nerves seemed to have lost their will, assimilating into the regular nerves and almost reverting to their old forms with few irregularities.

The threat of the dark energy disappeared, consciousness returned to my body.

...

My senses returned to me, I opened my eyes.

The room I had been in had been entirely annihilated, together with a portion of the hallway and the rooms around it. It seemed I had fell down to the floor below. Somehow the energy that caused all that destroyed the harmful energy, and caused all that destruction, had left me unharmed entirely.

The fall itself, if it caused any damage, that damage was negligable compared to the previous damage inflicted by the zombies and the dark energy. As the pain had returned to my body, I figured my motor skills should have returned as well.

With a thought I got up slightly. My body, miraculously now able to move, allowed me to unsteadily get to my feet. I walked over and wiped the dust off of a nearby mirror. Looking into it, I found I looked exactly like I felt.

Now I can play the part of a Necromancer perfectly.