Page 225 of Red Ruin

Ghoulschooseto be monsters, eating corpses and swearing their afterlives in service to the higher undead.

They keep their intelligence, and their bites can turn you into something like them—a creature doomed to crave flesh.

The ghoul hisses.

It can’t reallysmile, but it quirks its teeth at me.

“Don’t fucking look at my wife.” Snarling, Vhex launches and grabs the ghoul by the throat.

A palmful of hellfire melts through its spine.

More ghouls pour out. With dry howls echoing from the other directions, more are on the way.

“Pick any tunnel,” I call, gripping my glaive. They’re all packed with enemies. The wide chamber gives them too much room to surround us.

Vhex ignites what’s left of the ghoul in his hand and tosses it down the closest tunnel in a howling fireball. Screeches echo from the blaze.

His horn extends as he bulls ahead. As his skin reddens, flames flow over his muscles, forming a living, burning armor.

Vhex flames through ghouls to clear our path. Simms collapses the tunnel behind us, and Remy works at both ends, slicing ghouls in pieces, then dropping them in the bonfire. The flames glint off his mask, turning him into a shadowy god of battle.

I follow close, constantly combing their silks. They dance between feral and focused, a perfect balance of Sentinel and monster.

Tan moves beside me, stabbing at the still-twitching pieces of half-melted ghouls.

I sweep aside charred parts with the flat of my glaive.

We hit a fork where the tunnel widens and the ceiling towers too high for Vhex’s flames to light. Our boots fly across softer ground—there’s a layer of soil laid above the bare rock.

My instincts scream a warning.

Straining to find the danger, I slip into Vhex and Remy’s senses. Remy’s sense of smell is masked, and Vhex is drowning in sulfur. Their superhuman eyes see color and motion I can’t perceive.

Something metal glints high above.

I grab Tan’s jacket and yank, barely fast enough.

Boom!

A bolt of black lightning hits where he was standing, knocking us off our feet.

Remy catches me in a shadow blanket.

Ears ringing, I struggle to my feet.

“Shields,” I call. “Draugr.”

“Not these fuckers again.” Simms pulls Tan off a sandbank, then hurls a ball of earth power high into the dark.

Remy’s shadows cover our heads as the first draugr drops.

As if zombies weren’t enough.

Now we have to fight armored zombiepriestswho can cast spells and summon their own minions.

“Child’s play,” Remy mutters. He drags me into his cape. While shadow-silks run across my skin, checking me over with the greatest care, he shoots brutal shadow blades that cleave draugr in half.

Their bodies start to reunite before they hit the ground. Remy lobs them to Vhex for kindling.

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