Webb's a dead guy with no memory of his life, and that's how he likes it. He'd sworn he'd protect After, the city of the dead, from monsters, but the monsters have all been killed off. Now he has only one thing left to do: go through the Gate and fi...
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Rotting corpses with gnashing jaws swarmed me in a feeding frenzy, blocking out the light of three suns with their tangles of decaying limbs. Hands held me firm. Teeth sank into my flesh and tore it away. If I screamed, I couldn't hear it over the unceasing moans of voidlings.
Then there was a spray of blood and an unveiling of a swath of red light. Some ghosts before me slumped to the ground, the tendons in their legs slashed. A small, tanned hand snatched me by my hood and pulled me from the fray into the light. I fell on all fours at Jacob's feet.
"Jake!" I wheezed out.
Jacob just smirked at me and twirled his tiny blade in his fingers. "I'll keep them distracted, Webb," the boy said. "You go stop him!"
He nodded at something behind me. I had to slice through reaching arms while I looked over my shoulder, standing on the tips of my toes to see over the writhing wall of rot around us. But I saw who Jacob referred to. Separated from his army of the dead, Void had his bony fingers embedded in the outer rim of the Gate, and he heaved, intent on the portal's destruction. I turned back to Jake at the sound of blood hitting sand. The kid held his own, for now, against his enemies. But all the same, he was just a kid. "Go!" he screamed at me, flecks of black dappling his fierce face.
I wanted to say no. I wanted to stand by his side. I wanted to scoop him over my shoulder and take off running.
But that tugging at my heart pulled me around, and I hated myself for it. With a yell, I hacked off limbs that tore at my clothes, keeping certain not to hit any vital bleeding areas. When one of the voidlings that threatened to swarm me again crumpled to the ground with an animalistic screech, I placed a boot on his back, then launched myself up and over Void's army. I landed in a cloud of black dust alight with the eerie white glow of the Gate. Just like After's Gate, this portal screamed in agony as the skeletal ghost dug his talons further into its rim. Sparks of lightning assaulted the struggling monster, but he was unstoppable. A wail like shrieking metal filled the air.
"Void!" I called out, sword raised and stained black. "Stop!"
The skeleton whipped his skull around. His eye-flames lingered on me briefly before seeking the sky above us. One of them twitched. "He's right," he murmured, as if talking to himself like I wasn't only a few mere meters away from him. His grip slackened, just slightly. "Stop this."
My breath made the falling ashes in the air dance. Void continued his assault, but he seemed...distracted in my presence. Conflicted, even. I let out a snarl and charged. He seemed weak.
But one last voidling side-stepped in between him and me, this one tinier than all the others. Her tiny sundress was stained black from the blood of her comrades, and her long rivulets of raven black hair hid her vacant eyes. Even so, my heart throbbed with recognition. I dropped my sword to the ground with a clatter. Then my body followed as I fell to my knees.
