I shook my limbs in turn but the bloody golems were well and truly latched on.

  “You see? How do you defeat an unkillable beast? By having your own unkillable creations!” Moonslight cackled.

  “So all of this was just bait to lure me in?” I snapped, managing to pull one of the dozens of two metre golems attached to me free and tossing it away, scattering human troopers like bowling pins.

  “You really do think you’re something special don’t you? You’re an outremonde, were you loathed in your previous life for your colossal sense of self importance?” Moonlight sneered. A blast of lightning flashed towards me from her hand, but it smashed into one of the golems as I flinched away, doing no damage to either of us.

  “I was a perfectly normal dude back on Earth!” I lied convincingly.

  “No, you weren’t. You fell down the karmic ladder to arrive on Helstat, and here the gods chose to make you into a monster.”

  “I don’t think the WOO are actually all that involved in the process? My impressions from Kat is that it’s basically all done by an algorithm and they only step in when the AI goes a bit squiffy.”

  “Who are the WOO?” she asked in confusion. One of her minions looked like he was about to do something with his ornate staff that I wouldn’t like, so I sent a flame from one nostril to incinerate him.

  “I think they’re like Karen’s bosses, or Uber-Karens I guess, but meta-theology isn’t exactly something I’ve invested a lot of thought into since I found out Earth wasn’t the only world and that I had a soul.”

  At the mention of Karen, Moonslight’s officers flinched. “May she be blessed in triplicate!” All of them chanted as one, making the sign of Her glory: they mimed a piece of paperwork being stamped three times.

  “But you were no hero, no Champion of the insipid forces of Light! Something darker lived in your soul, Robert Robertson. You knew jealousy, fear, rage and hate!”

  “I was more a petty asshole, to be fair. But, what’s your point?” I asked as I finally pulled another golem off my front leg and started using it to smash at the others. “Of course! Seems an Arkendrite bludgeon was all I needed!” Trails of sparkles surrounded me as I used a golem as a flail to chip away at the others.

  “You should embrace what you are! I can sense your hatred and anger, I feel it with in you! Use it to fuel your strength! Bob, surely you want to get rid of the sparkles?”

  “You can do that?” I asked, three-quarters of a golem clutched in my right claw, pulled back ready to smash back into my side and knock another one of the bastards off.

  “Only shadow can defeat the light, Bob. Join the Umbra-side, and together we can rule the galaxy!”

  “Dad? Is that you? Did you get offed and reincarnated as a crazy woman?”

  “What? No, I’m not your father, Bob!” Moonslight snapped, looking confused. “Boobs!” She pointed at the appropriate area of her anatomy with one gauntlet.

  “Sorry… hang on,” I swatted another golem off me, only too conscious of the big ones marching into position around us. “It’s not true! It’s impossible!” I wailed dramatically.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Moonslight demanded.

  “I am wondering about one thing, though. It’s a bit… personal, and I can see why someone wouldn’t want to, you know, talk about something like this. I guess I can try one more thing, but then thee and me are going to have to have a serious heart-to-heart, Moony.”

  “Don’t call me that–” she began to say, but then she threw herself to one side and put her hands over the back of her head as I hosed down what was left of her command group with fire and acid. Kill reports flooded my mind, and I grinned: I made another fifty grand with one sneeze. I was starting to sympathise with Raytheon executives.

  Two-thirds of the golems stopped moving, shoulders slumping, arms hanging loosely at their sides, including a few of the big ones that I was genuinely worried about.

  Only a couple of the golems attached to me were animated now; I must have gotten the people carrying their control crystals with my napalm. The stony buggers were unfortunately locked in position now and would require a lot of effort to remove.

  “You bastard!” Moonslight screamed, leaping back to her feet, clumps of grass caught in the plates of her armour. “You’ll pay for that! You have no idea of the forces Umbra has aligned for this war! You think it’s just humans and one stupid fucking dragon? Hells no! My Lord has brought in the–urk!”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  An arrow had sprouted from her throat. Moonslight clutched at the wound, a river of red running down her chest and spoiling the shininess of her armour. She coughed and spluttered, sagging to her knees, and finally fell forward, the dirt around her head gradually staining crimson.

  I slowly turned my neck back to glare at the rapidly advancing Fighting Dolphins. Nimbra was throwing bolts of light that melted baddies and healed our bunnyborgs as they took damage. The bunnyborgs were enjoying themselves a little too much, by my estimation. It’s hard to claim to be the good guys when your troops are pulling off enemy arms and shoving them into… It was, at best, highly unethical.

  I hit Halefire with a Hunter’s Gaze and he locked up, eyes flashing in fear. I spun, my tails bowling over the now inanimate golems that had gotten close to me, and stomped towards the suddenly terrified elf.

  “That was a badly timed arrow, long ears,” I growled.

  “She was a villain. I killed the villain. You’re bloody welcome by the way,” he sneered, regaining some of his courage.

  “Not that I want to get involved in this, but he did shoot the bad guy. It’s not like she was some innocent. And those unkillable golems all stopped working after he hit her,” Handock said. He raised his hands over his head and backed up as my glare swung to him. “Bulb’s balls, Bob! No need for that. We’re here to save the town, right? So we did it!”

  “She was monologuing. It was in her nature, as it is for all truly great baddies. She was just about to reveal something important from the sound of it, and a certain ungrateful elf killed her before she could spill the beans.” I turned back to Halefire. “You dick. I’m also claiming all the golems as loot. I know exactly how valuable Arkendrite is.”

  “I couldn’t bloody hear her! She might have been casting a spell for all I knew!” he objected.

  “That’s true,” Lockso grunted. The team of adventurers had stopped charging once I turned to greet them, but the bunnyborgs were spreading out in small groups, continuing their violence. The sizzle of mana-cannon beams lashing out mixed with the screams of horror as they practised their odd form of still-living taxidermy.

  “One of the things I like about you is that you don’t talk much, but now here you are, chiming in on the elf's side?” I muttered. Lockso just stared up at me blankly.

  “Nimbra, any chance you can, I don’t know, interrogate her soul or something?” I asked.

  “You want me to snatch the essence of her being, drag her back into reality, which is an unimaginable torture for the deceased, and ask her to finish her sentence? Bob, we’re the good guys, remember?” Nimbra said, shaking her head.

  “Just for a minute? I mean, I think she only needed about thirty seconds without some asshole shooting her in the throat for her big reveal.”

  “You sparkle, Bob!” Nimbra objected.

  “I bloody know, and I’m not appreciating constantly being reminded of the fact! While I have a deep and abiding love for all things shiny and glittering, I am not super happy at the kind of self-affection the bracelet is causing in my mind. I think Lust-monkey and the Greed-goblin are going to be parents soon, and god knows what that is going to do to my brain.”

  “Lust-monkey?” she asked.

  “Not your concern,” I grumped.

  “I meant you’re the Champion of Light, you should know what that means.”

  “It meant I got to raid Bulb’s version of the warehouse from the end of Raiders, and I’m going to make a killing at auction. And I got a great item with a really annoying side effect. Your point, if you please?”

  “We don’t do that kind of thing, Bob. We’re the good guys,” Nimbra sighed. “Necromancy is not a talent you’ll find among Bulb’s followers.”

  “So there’s no nice necromancers? Like those mediums from Earth, but not fake, and they actually let you talk to the dead.”

  “Necromancers are all either evil or so insane they might as well be,” Nimbra said flatly.

  I sat back on my haunches and looked around. Bunnyborgs were mutilating soon-to-be corpses, creating grotesque, Dahmer-esque sculptures and still lifes. Jardin and her soldiers were moving through the broken attackers, blasting them with beams of light, and putting the ones that survived the bunnies' attention out of their misery.

  “You sure? I know this warlock, and he seems ok. A bit obsessed with the old nookie, but I don’t think I’ve met anyone in the city other than a psychotic, and now menu-approved, gangster who wasn’t.”

  “Warlocks aren’t inherently evil, just like Hell isn’t pure evil. There are good demons and bad, same with the gods and angels,” Halefire said before closing his mouth quickly as I shot him another glare. I had toned it down this time; it was only a grade two, but purple motes mixed with the golden ones falling from my eyes, and it was enough to remind him that he was still in the dog house.

  “So what you’re saying is that because itchy bow-finger over there gooped the commander, and nicked the gold I get from kills by the way, we’re screwed.”

  “Pretty much. Besides, it would be bad for your soul, Bob,” Nimbra said.

  “Bulb said it turns out it’s fine to do whatever to these guys. They worship the shadow, the civil war is breaking down along theological lines, and killing these guys is morally good. Yay for relativism, I suppose.”

  “Fighting them is fine. Ripping their immortal souls from the embrace of their gods and torturing information out of their reanimated corpse, not so much,” Hand added helpfully.

  “I wasn’t going to do that!” I objected.

  “How do you think Necromancy works, Bob? It goes one of two ways: either the flesh is taken over and enslaved by the necromancer, creating mindless zombies. Or the soul is dragged back to this world and forced to inhabit their own corpse as it slowly rots. The ones with souls are more powerful; they keep most of their skills and knowledge from life, but they tend to be a bit pissy about all the mind-churning horror,” Nimbra explained.

  “So we keep the body on ice? Then it can’t rot.”

  “And they’ll feel that as well, Bob.”

  “Any other options?” I asked, tapping a claw against my chin as one of my back legs tried to scratch one of the last golems off my body like a dog with fleas.

  “No!” all four of them chorused at me.

  “Dammit. Ah, well, shame to let good protein go to waste. I haven’t eaten a good person yet, but baddies have this delicious flavour that I can’t quite explain.”

  I ignored their horrified expression, a dragon’s got to dragon, and made my way over to Moonslight's body. I picked her up between a pair of claws and dangled her over my open mouth. It wasn’t until I let go and she landed on my tongue that I realised what an idiot I was being.

  “Shtim ish a Necromansher!” I spluttered as I spat the lightly chewed body out in front of me.