Worlds War One

xlvii [Ji]

War.

Ji paused for a second. A snippet of recollection made him freeze—being torn limb from limb by a dragon, half of his appendages turned to ash in an instant. The pain. The fear. A few short hours ago, Ji had thought he was going to die. Now he faced monsters stranger than even his frankensteined form. But Ji wasn't the man anymore who had been defeated by a dragon in a matter of moments. He was something else—several something elses. Ji charged ahead, a step and a half behind Lieutenant Robinson.

The undead swarmed across the Court on High. Like maggots crawling over a fetid corpse, they seemed to be everywhere. The lieutenant wielded her First Blade, slicing through all manner of undead tribes—Golem, Fauna, E.T.s, Ghosts, Magi, Demons. And Humans. Ji watched people drop, bodies belonging to innocent tourists who didn't deserve this. Many were pustulant and decomposing—these things had died a long time ago. The original souls within had already gone long before, leaving behind these decomposing forms still moving and menacing. These were hijacked husks, like someone driving in someone else's stolen Mercedes.

Ji couldn't waste time having regrets for the people who had been the previous occupants inside these undead husks. These zombies were reanimated corpses, grave-robbed by Johnny Rotten and made into his undead offspring. Initially, they were primarily unfit tourists taken from Senado Square, as intimidating a fighter as Ji would've been without any arms and only one leg.

But Ji had been remade. His stone leg could bend and reshape in ways flesh and bone could not. Ji easily avoided the clumsy attacks by the inept army of zombies by changing the pivot of his Gol-limb. His half-Angel abilities included enhanced speed and strength—maybe inadequate against dragons but entirely effective against the untrained undead. He racked up two mercy-kills for every one completed by the efficient and deadly Lieutenant Robinson.

Then his Ghost eye detected an attack from the right flank, his boosted speed from his father's side making him fast enough to defend Lieutenant Robinson from a deadly strike. He put himself between the lieutenant and the undead Ghost. Shed the glamor that had made it look Human, this specter could've been anyone back in the regular world. Maybe it was Autumn's sister he faced. Whoever it was, the physical entity was merely someone's shed skin now worn by a new snake.

In this case, incorporeal skin.

"I can't touch the Ghost," Ji cried. "How do I stop this thing?"

"There's a spell that can bind it," Saanvi said, on his six, the two of them back-to-back.

"Well, use it," Ji demanded.

"I don't do spells, soldier. You must be a Magi. Or at least have Magi hands."

Ji examined his hands that were white and manicured with tiny blonde hairs at the knuckles, once someone else's and now his. How different was his situation from the zombies' around him? He had taken an eye, two arms, a leg. But those were pieces either freely given or not being used anymore. Donations. These zombies were thieves. And the effect of their crime had been death.

"What's the spell?" Ji asked.

"It isn't something you say," Saanvi instructed. "It's something you feel."

Mystical mumbo jumbo. Ji's sisters would've rolled their eyes. Facts and figures can be proved and supported. Magic was maybes made manifest. He remembered when his family had taken a trip to Los Angeles, and there'd been a street performer doing tricks on a corner, pulling flowers out from behind the ears of pretty girls and yanking quarters out of kids' noses. "Fake," Yu-na and A-ra had declared in unison. But Ji had been fascinated. Thinking back, he recalled the man doing tricks had had blonde hair and perfectly manicured hands. Ji might have been a relation to Elena and Hristos and Argyro. He'd been doing real magic.