PETROV POV

Commander Petrov sat in a barracks hall impatiently waiting for the briefing to begin, idly dismantling, cleaning and reassembling his trusty Dragunov sniper rifle.

He wasn’t the only anxiously waiting, to his left sat Sergei, his long time spotter and the man he trusted with his life, was also fidgeting in his seat, his eyes darting around on the lookout for threats. With blond hair fading to a burnished silver in places and a wiry build, Sergei didn't look like his age, he could pass for 30, whereas Petrov would be lucky to be mistaken for 40 on a good day. Petrov's build was more broad shouldered and stocky, where before he was firm and muscled, the muscles were slowly but surely turning to fat from too many hearty stews and too much vodka and not as much exercise. Old age was catching up to him as it did to everyone who didn't die early.

Sergei was armed with a simple side arm, with binoculars hanging around his neck. Even without his binoculars, his eyesight was impressive even with retirement rearing it’s ugly head, though considering the rumours, retirement may no longer be on the cards.

They weren’t the only ones armed, many of the people that filled the tent were also armed, mostly side arms, though some were armed with AK47’s and others hid their weapons under coats.

By the looks of it, a lot of important people were gathering here to be briefed.

Petrov only lifted his head up after the third time he had finished cleaning his rifle parts, just in time for the General to arrive at the front to start this meeting at long last. The room hushed, eager to hear what the General had to say to all of them that could be so important to take them away from their usual posts.

“There is terrible news, China has been overrun by the undead and they are currently occupying Vladivostock.”

There was a collective gasp of shock, Vladivostock was familiar as it was the home port of Russian Pacific fleet and a terminus on the trans Siberian railway. More importantly it was a beautiful ocean front city, home to over half a million people and a popular place to be stationed, at least compared to outposts in Siberia. It was also a popular holiday destination and known to many from childhood trips to the sea and at later ages for beach-side getaways.

“Because of this, we’re pulling out our secret weapon in order to stop them establishing a foothold.” He gestured off to the sides and a group of fifty oddly dressed people strode forward to stand behind him with haughty expressions and heads held high. Interestingly enough, more than half of them were women, curious and curiouser.

The general explained further “These are members of the newly founded Gifted division, headed by the KGB, each one of them not only volunteered to help protect Mother Russia but have abilities that may lead Russia to a new golden age.”

As a military veteran and one could call a bitter middle aged man, who had lived longer than he had any right to considering how many young people he’d seen fall in battle, he was sceptical of that claim. He’d heard a lot of idyllic hopes for the future that never really panned out the way anyone expected or hoped for. Still he was curious, what kind of abilities.

“If you could demonstrate…” The General continued glancing toward the strange people expectantly.

One of the women pointed upwards above their heads and a torrent of flames spread out from her, rapidly increasing the temperature of the room along with sending cold sweat down the back of his neck. He glanced at Sergei, whose eyes had gone soft and dreamy.

If Sergei had one major fault, it was women, he was notorious for his spectacular failures with women, the more unsuitable for him they were, the more interested he was in them. It was lucky for the both of them that they spent a lot of time isolated from women and in some cases people in general.

If previous experience was any indicator, he’d get burned again, this time maybe literally by the woman rejecting him. A twisted part of him was amused at the terrible pun and the thought of his partner in battle being taught a valuable life lesson about the dangers of pushing his luck too far. Still he’d keep his partner out of trouble because it was his duty, no matter how funny it’d be to see him roll around on the ground with his clothes on fire.

A human flame thrower was interesting but could be achieved by anyone wielding an actual flame thrower. There was a reason that flame throwers weren’t used on the battlefield any more, since there was a real risk of friendly fire and actual fire spreading uncontrollably. Also the stench of burning flesh and hair lingered in the nose and mind long after the battle.

His doubts about the usefulness of such a strange ability were thrown into disarray when another woman stepped forward and lifted up a hand in their general direction. The ground trembled beneath their feet and moved like water to create low walls of dirt and stone around those seated.

“As you can see, they have been blessed with unnatural abilities over the elements and even over life itself. Sadly we only have a hundred of them battle capable and only half can join us in this battle. The rest are busy training up the next generation of magical warriors. If this only happened a month later, we could have fielding thousands more. As always time waits for no man, it will be your job to protect these new warriors on the way to Vladivostock to tear these invaders out before they can establish a foothold or advance further. The future of Russia depends on your actions in the upcoming battle. Any questions?”

“Why don’t we just nuke them?” A younger military man asked.

“We can’t, we've tried, their Skeleton Dragons bring down our long range missiles, while something keeps causing our pilots to pass out before they can get in range with air support. We believe their mages are interfering with our attempts, so we are relying on you to distract them enough so we can wipe them out with one good strike!”

“What about the city?” Someone else asked.

“It’s a loss we’ll have to accept, the people are as good as dead anyway, they turn our people into monsters to grow their army, this is a better death for them.”

We moved out, my trusty Dragunov in hand for a final mission in defence of Mother Russia.

This sounded like a suicide mission, he knew from personal experience as he had survived several supposed suicide missions during his long bloody career as a Russian sniper with a mixture of patience, stealth and luck.

A month ago, a special force of magic users joining the army to fight off a zombie invasion would have been laughable. After the zombie outbreak in Japan, the strangeness had just increased rapidly and claims of magic power and special abilities were no longer as ludicrous.

We were told that each group would escort a mage to the area and sacrifice our lives if necessary to keep them safe. We were assigned a female ice mage named Khristina.

Petrov rolled his eyes as Sergei promptly tried to hit on her and was met only be an icy silence.

He tried to smooth things over as per usual, so as not to screw up the mission. “Sorry about him. Ignore him please. I’d really appreciate it if you could tell me more about yourself and what you could do before we head out, it could save all of our lives.”

She eyed me suspiciously before sighing and saying. “As you know my name is Khristina I can control water, I specialise in ice, using it to create ice walls and spikes of ice.”

He saw Sergei about to speak and glared at him in our unspoken language to shut the fuck up before he got us both killed by the scary ice witch and thankfully he took the hint this time.

“That sounds remarkable, how’d you know you know that you could” wiggling his fingers about in the international version of ‘woo woo magic stuff’ “Do magic.”

“I didn’t really, not until a couple weeks ago when during a snow storm I felt like I was one with it, which is hard to put into words really, it was like if I reached out I could become the storm or control it. So I tried and it made it worse for a bit and I passed out from trying to be a million million snowflakes. When I awoke I found agent of KGB knocking on my door and I ended up enrolled in a special program for others like me. The person who found me was a scary guy with actual psychic powers, he could read my mind, that was awkward.”

“So what kind of training did they make you do?” Petrov asked.

Of course, the military jumped on this new thing and conscripted these gifted people into service. How did you train ice magic though?

“It was a hellish nightmare.” Oddly enough she seemed to thaw out after given a chance to complain. If women liked anything more than talking about themselves, it was complaining. Or at least that’s what his experience with his wife led him to believe. “They had us training for like 20 hours a day, making us do exercises to train our bodies, teaching us how to use various weapons, trying anything and everything to make our powers stronger. I got the privilege of many dips into frozen lakes in Siberia. Still I got to fire off ice lances at moving targets.” Then she giggled evilly “and on occasion at the trainers themselves.”

Yep definitely not a good idea to piss her off.

Had to focus on the job, escort her to the engagement zone, provide cover with my forces and seek out and snipe as much of their command structure as possible. A prospect made difficult by the fact that some of the enemies are apparently invisible to the naked eye.

GLORY TO MOTHER RUSSIA! and avoidance of old age by dying in patriotic duty.

JIANJUN's POV

Lich Jianjun oversaw the creation of more Bone Dragons and Bone Galleys. In a way it was like factory work, organising teams to assemble parts to make something and send it on it’s way. Except now he had power far greater than as a mere factory worker.

When he was given a choice, not that long ago, as to whether he wished to join the army of the undead as an officer in command of a legion or simply die, it wasn’t a hard decision to make. His family was poor and had worked long hours just to survive, the Lich offered immortality and the chance to gain unimaginable power. He accepted, the chance to live forever and wield powerful magics and kill some of his bosses was too irresistible to pass up.

According to the Lich that converted him and several of his fellow factory workers, he had an above average strong soul (which translated to mean he had a shitty life) and an aptitude for bone magic. As such he normally oversaw a legion of skeletons and now he helped manage Bone Dragon and Bone Galley manufacture. His second in command was a skeleton Knight Captain, who led his legion in battle while he stayed in the back casting various reinforcement magic as necessary.

It felt rewarding to wield such power and influence over others for once, even if his soul was now owned by an undead otherworldly traveller.

An echo of the supreme one’s mind, named Lex324 lived within him, helping to manage the souls he harvested and turn them into books or to be added to a think tank of sorts. It was weird at first hearing their voices within him but he learned quickly how to tune them out when he wanted some peace and quiet. In a way it was like listening to the radio and lettin the noise fade into white noise. Lex324 provided the information on how to do so effectively.

Lex324 was surprisingly helpful.

The conquest of China was surprisingly easy but still we had received orders to retreat immediately across the sea, to avoid a real threat to our final objective. We travelled East as quickly as we could on foot and occupied the port city of Vladivostock.

The resistance was minimal, their fists and guns too weak and disorganised to have any real stopping power against the horde.

We didn’t really need the occupants as new soldiers, so we left the citizens alive for the most part as ordered. They’d be of more use as human shields, than as more cannon fodder. Those with exceptional aptitudes for magic were recruited forcefully wherever possible or killed to prevent future inconveniences.

The elites of the horde were to first to make use of the abundance of ships to make their escapes, those without bone dragons to ride. Even in undeath, the rich and powerful always leave first.

It should have been upsetting to be left behind, but he thought of it as a great opportunity to advance even further. Making use of the opportunity to create more bone dragons so that even more of those above him would leave, giving him greater responsibility and power over this city. His magic was also steadily improving given all the practice, which was gratifying in a way, the feel of more power at this finger tips to command.

There were so many of the undead horde to evacuate and as time went by, the bone dragons laden with higher ranking undead would leave as vanguards or rear guards or simply on scouting missions.

As each new group came, their elites left on Bone Galleys or Bone Dragons and their foot soldiers remained in their wake, the basic zombies and skeletons taking up a lot of space. The skeletons at least had a use, being harvested for their bones to make more Bone Galleys or Bone Dragons. The zombies were sent out of town to maintain a perimeter and to keep them out from under foot.

We had so many to deal with, too many to easily organise travel for in fact. As such we simply ordered them into the houses to supervise the civilians and keep them out of the way as we got to work on mass manufacture of transports. We used the sacrificed bones of bone dragons to create more bone dragons and sacrificed the weakest skeletons to create large bone Galleys.

It seemed like a good enough place to rule over, a nice view, a huge army to keep it from being an easy target for retaliation and yet...

The Russians resisted violently.

At first it was just fists which were ignored and impromptu militia armed with knives or guns, who were killed for their trouble and simply left to rot to serve as a warning to others thinking of rebelling. Still didn't stop them from fighting back, as they started using Moloktov cocktails to set fire to some of the weaker, slower zombies. It was a minor nuisance, not even worth hunting down the roaming bands of 'resistant fighters'. Their efforts were meaningless after all, since no one really cared how many of the zombies died. They were simply undead animals with the shapes of humans at this point and had little value other than to fill out the ranks.

Then they came, the Russian army.

We weren’t too concerned, there were only ten thousand of them, spread out in military vehicles and even on foot, so we didn’t consider them much of a threat. We had tens of millions of troops at our disposal, mostly zombies and skeletons and more heading in from further west.

Millions of the higher ranking troops had already left to reinforce our new home land of Japan, with only a small percentage of elite remaining behind to oversee occupation of this port. I had gone from overseeing a legion to overseeing ten, along with mass manufacturing transports. War is fantastic for advancement.

It wasn’t until they started opening fire that it was clear that they had learned from previous engagements and were targeting us, the Liches in command.

They couldn’t touch the higher level Liches with their own Bone Dragons but for the grounded Lich commanders, we were vulnerable.

Bullets struck from out of nowhere, landing head shots on other Liches like me. I grew a bone helm over my head and my action served as an example to the others who adopted the strategy themselves.

Even when other Liches fell to enemy fire, their bodies damaged beyond easy repair, their souls were collected by other nearby Liches, their power consumed so that there was little loss to our forces. A wave of expendable zombies and skeletons were sent to wipe them out.

Mortar fire and grenades rained down on the disposable troops. For every one we killed of them, ten of ours died. We’d win the battle easily enough and get rid of some unnecessary zombies and skeletons along the way. Nothing to be worried about.

Then they showed something unexpected, they started using magic against our troops.

The ground swallowed up the skeletons by the hundreds, a massive fireball rained down devastation on the zombies, spreading fiery death through their midst. A storm of swirling ice shards slowed our troops as they tried to advance upon their elevated and entrenched positions.

Not to be outdone, the more impressive Liches rained down death in a multitude of spells, rains of bone spears, jagged ice lances, storms of wind and rain and lightning took out the enemy mages. They were spread out throughout the landscape, sniping at us in small groups, making it harder to gain a decisive victory. Victory was inevitable, even if it would take a lot longer than if they were conveniently massed together.

Except it was all a distraction.

A dozen ICBM’s with nuclear payloads targeted us while we were distracted by their ground assault. We only managed to take out half of them before they reached their targets. Fiery death rained down around the area, wiping out their troops and millions of ours.

My body was incinerated in the blast but my soul was collected by a Lich outside the blast radius and I found myself in his Soul Library along with thousands of others. A recently harvested soul, wore a Russian military uniform, armed with a Sniper rifle in hand, looking at me with hatred in his eyes.

How interesting, he managed to manifest a soul weapon so quickly. I had a bone staff in hand and I eyed up the threat with interest.

This campaign had been a failure, what would our glorious leader do in retaliation?

More importantly how long would I have to wait for a new body?

Only time would tell, time to have a soul battle with a Russian sniper, should be fun.