[Lord Stanley]

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Edur could hardly believe his eyes—but to tell the truth, he had stopped believing them long ago. It was part of his job as a SKRUT.

The Keuja stood more than a hundred feet tall, armored tough enough to shield its inner flesh from lasers, with tentacles strong enough to crush houses with one mighty blow, but even it was no match for a Mudokon. One Mudokon.

The Keuja was having its brain hacked to pieces by a psychotically possessed, morally ambiguous, sword-wielding, undead Mudokon known as the Ninth Chieftain. While that was a great thing to see, since the Mudokon had just saved him from a messy jetcopter crash, and since the undead Mudokon was their only hope to save Denzling Base from the creature, to see the two supernatural beings fighting it out in the fields was…awing.

And more than slightly frightening.

* * *

The Ninth Chieftain felt a fleeting moment of justice pass through his undead mind. Once he had died a thousand years ago, feelings ceased to exist, and emotions became gray shades of what they once had been, but as he drove his shining see-through blade deep into this monster’s mind, he could almost feel his soul again.

The Keuja writhed insanely, its massive frame rocking and bucking in an attempt to dislodge the unwelcome passenger-attacker, arms flailing madly, trying to destroy the Mudokon like every other being it had ever faced in combat—but there was a significant advantage to being undead.

Things go right through you, when you want them to.

Lightning bolts flashed from the tips of the Keuja’s many arms, bolts that would have destroyed an acre of ground at a touch—bolts that were nothing to an undead Mudokon, veteran of fifty wars before his death, a thousand more after it.

Once I am summoned…I do not leave until my purpose is done. Today, my purpose is…to Destroy The Oppressors!

“Take this, foul spawn of hell,” he spat, and drew back for the final blow.

* * *