[Lord Stanley]

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Edur watched, unable to keep from holding his breath, as the fabled Ninth Chieftain and the Keuja drew together.

Two of the most powerful supernatural beings on Oddworld stared head-on at each other, and ran.

Lightning crackled up the Keuja’s spine and raced into its flowing tentacles as it marched across the ground. The towering monster was roaring in a language that was old when Glukksonia was new, launching bolts of energy at its new foe.

The Ninth Chieftain ran faster than any mortal being, his ghostly legs blurring across the ground. Easily he ducked and dodged around the energy blasts that the Keuja fired at him. A sword glittering like ice, held in both hands beside his right hip.

Edur felt his heart beat quicker and quicker as they drew closer together. The Keuja was a being of unimaginable strength and power, the Ninth Chieftain an undead foe, both of them beings that should not exist, both beings from an age long gone. Only one of them could win. If the winner was the Ninth Chieftain, they could turn their attention to the rebuilding of the kingdom. But if the Keuja was the winner…

They could kiss their hopes of life and prosperity goodbye.

The Keuja swung every tentacle on its body to point at the Ninth Chieftain, and a bolt of lightning blasted out of each tentacle tip. The sudden storm of energy and light nearly blinded Edur, even through his helmet shaders, and he had to throw a hand over his eyes.

He heard roars, screams, the blazing of energy bolts through the air, and then a series of sequenced explosions as each of those energy bolts struck. Even from a quarter mile away, Edur could feel dirt particles bouncing off the back of his armor.

Ten seconds after he had covered his eyes, he looked again.

The Ninth Chieftain stood atop the Keuja’s head, his glimmering blade buried up to the hilt in the monster’s pate! Edur had no idea how the ghastly Mudokon had managed to make it up there, but it was certainly not a good place to be, even if undead. The monster’s towering frame shook with a fierce roar, swinging its upper body and head, and its tentacles whipped about the Ninth Chieftain, still crackling.

The Ninth Chieftain rushed about faster than anyone Edur had ever seen. The Mudokon somehow managed to keep stabbing his pale blade into the Keuja’s skull while ducking and dodging near the speed of light and avoiding all the tentacles.

Then Edur realized something: the Mudokon wasn’t dodging all the tentacles. They were just going right through him.

Edur found he hadn’t taken into account all the things that being undead can give you. Apparently they included the ability to be substantial to some parts of physics without touching others.

And if it feels like hanging around and ruling the world after defeating its greatest threat, Edur thought, who’s to stop him?

* * *