Free Game Over by Andrew Klavan Page A

Favian—scared ashe was, he was not running anywhere. He had gathered the diminishing energy inside him and sent it zigzagging out of his outstretched hand like lightning.
    The blast smacked against the darkness and drove it back—away from Rick, down into the coffin. Horribly, Rick felt the blow as if it had hit him too. As the darkness sank away from him, he staggered backward, his mind reeling. He let out a hoarse gasp and dragged in a fresh breath of air.
    â€œRick, behind you!”
    He didn’t need Favian’s warning cry. He knew what was coming.
    He spun round, Mariel’s sword gripped in his hand. He faced the swarming dead.
    His vision was filled with the screaming skull of a rotten Harpy. It was sweeping down out of the high church shadows, its long talons swiping at Rick’s face.
    There was a loud metallic sting as Rick raised his sword and blocked the talons with its silver blade. Then he turned and swung the weapon almost like a baseball bat, sending the Harpy pinwheeling through the air. He didn’t wait to see where it landed and swung the sword back just in time to block the thrusting open mouth of a half-rotted Cobra Guard. The sword’s blow removed the Cobra’s head, and the beast dissolved in a snap-and-fizzle of purple light.
    With the same motion, Rick raised the sword above his own head crosswise. The horizontal blade caught thepowerful downward blow of a Boar’s sword. Dead Boar and living man froze like that together, sword to sword. Dead though he was, the Boar was strong. He was trying to force his blade down through Rick’s skull by sheer muscle power.
    Rick lifted his foot and kicked the Boar in his putrid stomach as hard as he could. The Boar went flying backward, knocking over two other Boars as if they were pins in a bowling alley.
    â€œThere are too many, Rick!” Favian shouted. “Run!”
    Rick could hear the panic in the blue man’s high-pitched cry, but all the same, he knew the sprite was right. They had no chance against this mob of creature corpses. They had to get out of here.
    Rick glanced over at the large coffin in the center of the nave. The darkness was bubbling and seething in there, as if it were preparing to leap up again and seize him.
    And the waves of dead creatures kept pouring toward him.
    â€œThis way,” Favian cried.
    Favian had a big advantage in these run-for-your-life situations. He didn’t have to run. He just flashed away like a streak of light. A single second—a single line of glowing blue—and he was no longer standing beside Rick at the coffin but was instead at a door in the back of the church. It was a great heavy wooden door with iron reinforcements. Favian was using both hands and all his might to drag it open.
    Mariel had taught Rick that he could manipulate the Realm’s reality. With enough focus and concentration, he could bring the power of his spirit to bear and actually change the shape of things in MindWar. Not only could he turn himself into the shapes of the various monsters he saw—for a brief period, anyway—but if he really worked at it, really brought his old quarterback focus to the game, he could even occasionally flash like Favian too.
    What else might he be able to do?
    He didn’t know. But this would be an excellent time to find out.
    Because now he was surrounded. The dead creatures had spread out around him in a circle and were now closing that circle like a noose. Cobra fangs darted at him, Harpy talons slashed, and Boar swords jabbed, each looking to slip a strike in past Mariel’s flashing sword. Where the large sarcophagus blocked the dead’s advance, the darkness within was beginning to surge and rise and lick at the edges of the box. Even if Rick could focus his mind enough to flash away, there was nowhere to flash to. He had to think of something else.
    â€œRick! Come on!” Favian shouted. He had the heavy door fully open now.