Bunbun braced her tiny self as best she could while approached the half dozen doomed classers, most lost in their torment. Yet somehow Elly’s wildly gyrating eyes managed to lock onto Bunbun, the poor dying girl managing a bloody smile.

  “You’re his familiar, aren’t you, little thing?”

  You have successfully raised 1 dozen locust Revenants of a modified 170th level!

  Congratulations! You enjoy Pristine Autonomy!

  All your Master’s perks and necromantic affinities and abilities are also your own!

  By way of answer, Bunbun clenched her fist in silent command as a dozen fallen locusts sprang back to supernatural life, earning fresh cries of dismay from the tormented crew before desperation became sobs of relief as the revenant locusts use their indestructible Vorpal-tier mandibles to snip the dying mercenaries free of their crosses, gently lowering them with scuttleling limbs moving far more gracefully than they ever had in life. Within a handful of seconds, the six mercenaries were free of their bonds. Yet their screaming continued, writhing on the ground, thanks to the wires attached to the steel caps bolted upon their skulls.

  “Please!” Elly sobbed, her hands claws as she held in her intestines, blood leaking upon the thirsty parched lifeless ground. Her desperate smile of hope became one of dismay when the locusts refused to cut that final connection.

  “Can’t,” Bunbun curtly said, her blue eyes fixated the hideous contraption of soul steel radiating such a shocking degree of torment. Her eyes widened with dismay.

  Realizing that it was those souls torment that was serving as the containment vectors for the shocking amount of power that would soon collapse upon itself, because it wasn’t a single starship core, but three that she somehow had to gain control of, entangled in ways that transcended common sense or rational physics.

  “Please! Mercy! Free us of these cords and I can cast healing spells and save us all!” A broken and bleeding Svena sobbed even as she held a wheezing Bennett close with her own broken body, blood bubbling from his lips. Her knotted hands raised imploringly a distracted Bunbun’s way.

  Soul Sight perception check made!

  You understand why doing so would be a monumentally STUPID idea!

  You have less than 4.35 minutes to save the world of your birth and enjoy MULTIPLE Silver-Tier boons!!

  “You’re one of the deadman switches!” Bunbun snapped. “The instant your pain cords are cut, the torment dips to the point that this bomb no longer holds itself together. Then this entire planet is cooked. Now shut the fuck up and let me figure this out!”

  “Bunbun! I’m coming!” Eric screamed in her mind.

  Bunbun’s eyes widened with dismay, suddenly seeing the massive overlapping runic masterwork surrounding the rift a good half mile in all directions. A masterwork inscribed with micro traces of his master’s skin, hair, and whatever else their scurrying enemies, who truly had been planning Earth’s conquest and the Sylvan Alliance’s downfall long before the apocalypse, had managed to find and use.

  “Don’t! You’re another one of the deadman switches! The minute you or your sister or mother get close, something’s catalyzed! It might not be able to hurt you, but it CAN trigger something else! Something like this fucking BOMB! Malice covered all his fucking bases this time, preparing his final hand in case ANY of your family makes it this far in Earth’s tale.”

  “But he didn’t account for you.”

  Bunbun froze, knowing those words were right. Hating the truth of it.

  Hating what she needed to do.

  She swallowed. Throat dry. “Eric...”

  She closed her eyes, distantly sensing her master’s bitter despair, the twisted fury he felt, knowing damn well what this would cost them both… even as Bunbun felt the fresh surge of every last locust that had fallen to Wormy II’s Hyperion radiation rising once more to serve Eric for all time. Or the handful of minutes they had left.

  She sensed the sudden flood of power shivering through her as her master achieved yet another Master Necromancer milestone… and chose his boon. A boon that was countless steps and pathways beyond what might normally be allowed, but clearly Terran and Conceptio were more than happy to make exceptions in this, Earth’s final hour.

  Now the only question was… did Lilly herself have what it took to see this through?

  She closed her eyes, recalling the halcyon joy she had experienced being lost in the wonder of Elonia’s fairytale realm. The excitement she had seen in so many innocent faces as the thought of attending a wondrous magical academy.

  The secret dream she had of attending herself.

  Not as her master’s beloved familiar… but as a living, breathing girl once more.

  And the gentle promise in Wyrmwood’s eyes…

  Bunbun blinked back tears as she nodded her tiny head, glaring at the formerly hidden gate now shockingly bright with Malice’s Hyperion-flooded cords, just a short ways away.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Yeah, you know what? Fuck it. Let’s do this.”

  She spared only a moment to gaze Elly’s way, bowing her head as the half dozen shuddering mercenaries were rapidly covered by every revenant Bunbun had summoned, the only ones even available in this otherwise utterly lifeless and sterile region, with their near pristinely resilient armor that she could only pray would protect her master’s friends and lover for at least a few precious seconds.

  Lone and Myl screamed, yet somehow Svena, even through her agony, seemed to understand, bowing her damaged and bleeding head in turn before she was covered in locusts.

  “Go with the gods, little one.”

  Bunbun wanted to laugh. It was such an absurd thing for her to say! How could that poor girl who had been writhing on a cross less than a minute ago, possibly understand and pity poor Bun?

  “Thanks, I hope you survive this,” She said in turn, before forcing herself to say the words that would determine whether or not she would endure eternal agony trying to play the fucking hero…

  Or the entire world vaporized in the blink of an eye.

  She placed her trembling paw upon the device thrumming with the screams of a thousand souls twisted in steel’s darkest torments. She then took a shuddering breath, losing himself in their agony and daring whisper the words that would change everything.

  “REPUDIO!”

  “I release you from your bonds.”

  “YOU ARE FREE!”

  Time itself seemed to freeze as Spirit Mastery, Rituals of Summoning and Binding, Flesh Sculpture and Transcendent Abjuration all worked together in perfect concert. Save for one horrific flaw that could doom them all.

  You are attempting to fuse MULTIPLE Necormancer affinities and spells into ONE GREATER WORKING!

  CONTENDER STATUS NOTED! Lilly (BunBun) Hendrix has been ELEVATED to CONTENDER STATUS! New Title: Earth’s Last Hope.

  NOTE! YOUR RITUAL IS IN PERIL! DOMINION ESSENCE NEEDED!

  Yet before Bunbun could cry out with dismay, before the ritual could escape her utterly and destroy them all… she felt Eric’s desperate burning hands, ripping off a piece of his own soul and giving it to her, in the agonized blink of an eye.

  (Emergency Transfer initiated and approved! Your mentor has granted you 1 rank of Essence of Dominion!)

  Skill check: CRITICAL SUCCESS! (113 Total Skill Ranks in play!)

  You have SUCCESSFULLY Abjured Soul Steel binding!

  ALL 13 Wards, Traps, and Countermeasures have been Successfully Dispelled in PRISTINE Unison!

  HYPERION BLAZER PERK IN EFFECT!

  Servant Master BONDS OF RECIPROCITY IN EFFECT! (Your master’s resistances and health pool is now your own! Your master is channeling as much of your pain and peril as he can!)

  You have SAVED versus Instant Annihilation!

  You have SAVED versus Agony!

  All 12 adjoining locusts have FAILED to save against annihilation.

  All 6 adjoining Allies have FAILED to save against oblivion!

  You have SUCCESSFULLY gathered ALL 3 HYPERION CORES inside your newly forged Extradimensional Storage Space!

  GO, SPEED RACER! GO GO GO!

  EARTH IS COUNTING ON YOU!

  DON’T LET US DOWN!

  Lilly did her best to ignore the frenetic System messages screaming within her mind, compelling her to move, to think to ACT beyond the screaming pain that was devouring her from within. Pain so many times greater than the accident that had left her crippled.

  Agony so much worse than the hideous things the orcs had done to her before devouring her alive.

  A never-ending ball of SHRIEKING agony that was causing Eric every bit as much pain as she, he eating so much of it, visions of him crossing a fiery pit of hell to save his sister blazing so brightly across his mind as his mad father laughed and still tried to squash him like a bug as Eric desperately weaved and darted and distracted just long enough for Wormy II to hide for a desperate final surprise, Eric struggling to survive just a few more seconds against a mocking Malice who was so clearly savoring their despair. Yet all Eric felt was pain so shockingly intense, Hyperion Radiation burning him from both ends, that had left him so off balance that Malice had actually been able to smack him like a fly swatted out of the air. And had Eric not had absolute mastery over inertia… it might have been over right there.

  Instead, he sped through the air like a bullet, even as Lilly forced herself forward.

  One hop through the dust that began to bubble like melted glass as a fiercely glowing Lilly struggled forward as every last one of the revenants and the six former mercenaries she had so desperately wanted to save exploded in flame, so horrific was the heat Lilly was giving off even with the frozen time elements of her ES Space reducing the radiation leakage to a millionth of what it would normally be as she struggled forward one bloody agonizing footstep at a time over flickering crimson runes that did NOTHING to stop her, for she wasn’t Eric or Elonia or Aurelia Silver. She was none of those vaunted people.

  She was just a simple girl enduring the agony of transcendent flame searing through her soul as she howled and stumbled forward. She was a girl willing to sacrifice her life, her hope, her future, her everything, for the sake of people who would never be able to say thank you.

  Hers was an act of sacrifice that a monster like Malice, no matter how twisted, clever, or spiteful, could never hope to understand.

  She was his blind spot.

  And now she was the only hope they had.

  One step after another.

  Compelled by love and fierce adoration. Lost in the vision of Eric saving his sister in flames and agony so very like what she endured even now.

  How fierce was the love she felt for both of them. How many shared secrets she and Elonia would take to the grave in a life that now only one of them truly recalled living... And Eric, the father of her daughter, System shenanigans or no...

  For them? Yeah. She would accept her final goodbye.

  You have successfully accessed DIMENSIONAL GATE!

  Your bloodline has NOT been specifically warded against entering this gate!

  Do you, Lillian (BunBun) Hendrix, CHAMPION OF EARTH, wish to cross this barrier and SAVE YOUR PLANET?

  Bunbun gave an agonized wheeze, a heartbeat from collapsing as her ears burst into flame. “Stuff it, Conceptio. You already know the answer. YES! Port me through.”