Blink skipped over the sword the zombie had swung at her and giggled. She was having a great time. It was hard work stopping zombies, but it was also fun. Fighting without worrying about others getting hurt meant she could try things out. Her lizard girl form had some delightful advantages being small and fast chief among them.

She dodged another swipe of the zombie orc’s sword. While the monster looked like it had once been a powerful orc, it seemed hollow to her. The last orcs she had fought were all faster and more powerful than this one. Even though he had a big red hand print on his face which should have meant that he was more powerful.

Her mind was playing as she stepped on the blade of the sword as it made its backswing and jumped backward in a flip. The problem was, unlike orcs, these guys just didn’t bleed. Nor were most of her critical strikes working. Severing tendons didn’t even slow down the zombie at all. It was a matter of removing whole limbs. She had already broken three of the five orcs, but it was taking too much time.

She landed in a crouch and looked at the two zombies she still had to take out. She pondered the two orcs. The one on the left had a sword large enough that not even her daddy could lift. The one on the left had a giant axe that had a head bigger than she was right now. She would be in a world of pain if either landed a hit on her right now. However, neither had enough control to touch her.

She loved being able to change into different forms. In her first form, she looked like her daddy’s little girl. She could talk correctly and do all the things humans did. She could even make pancakes! Her natural form of a ropola was splendid in that she could fight and hunt. Yet she couldn’t use weapons or heal her daddy when he got hurt, and he did that a lot. She also couldn’t talk well or think about much more than hunting.

She loved being the lizard girl. She could talk and interact with Daddy and Kasidy so much better. She even liked the little crossbows that her daddy had gotten her. In many ways, it was the best of both worlds. The problem was zombies didn’t die right.

She grumbled. “I can’ts even run aways. Theys as fast as me.”

Then she triggered her skill to change forms. Her body grew and morphed as the zombies closed in on her. First, her thin little scaled arms grew out until the weight pulled them down. Then her body grew back as her head changed shape. She hated changing back into her natural form. Not because it wasn’t better but because it always hurt.

Going to the little girl form or the lizard girl form was just a moment of time. Changing back into her authentic self, however, took time. Her daddy hadn’t seen her full-sized as of yet. She always tried to limit her growth so that she had more to hunt. If you were too big, it was hard to hunt the small things, and they hid better.

She felt the worries that she had begun to vanish as her body changed. The first zombie orc closed in and swung his sword toward her. She couldn’t move yet, which was fine, as the blade hit and bounced off her scales. She hadn’t been herself in a while. Not fully; she had kept herself small to ride in the wagon.

A full five seconds of the two zombies hitting her passed before she stood up. She shook her head back and forth, causing her large frill to slap the orcs. She glared at them in the eyes. They couldn’t feel fear as they were obeying their master, but they should have.

She stood eye to eye with the orcs now with her head riding low between her massive shoulder. Blink felt her primal power coursing through her body as her heartbeat. Her eyes flicked back and forth on the sides of her head. One focused on the orc with the axe, and the other bored into the sword zombie.

Then Blink drew in a deep breath and roared. Her first true roar and the zombies staggered back, and she pounced. Her body slammed into the one with the sword plowing it down. Then she brought up her foreleg and crushed its skull under it, her foot larger than its head. She roared again and whipped her tree sized tail around, slamming into the axe-wielding zombie.

It blocked her tail, but that didn’t matter with its size now. The zombie flew back eight feet. She rushed forward, each step shaking the ground. When she closed on the downed monster, she sunk her teeth into it, breaking through its armored chest. Then she picked it up and shook it back and forth as she crushed it in half.

Blink threw the foul-tasting orc away and scanned the area around her. She raised her head and let out a challenging roar. She knew deep in her heart that there was no one that would answer. None of her kind had reached this level in so long. She felt the desire to call out again to seek the black mountains and find one worthy to challenge.

Blink paused before moving and thought. “Daddy needs me to hunt the lich. Not fight world today.”

She took a deep breath and then vanished as she ran forward. Her thoughts were angry as she cut a path through the plains. With how big she was, she could easily see over the top of the tall grass. However, with a glance behind her, she could see her trail of destruction. In her full-size form, she was no longer a proper creature of stealth but rather one that would fully embrace the chaos of battle.

It was only an hour after finishing off the orcs that she stopped running miles away from where she had started. The lich’s trail took him out of the plains into quickly forming foothills. The grass fell away, and scraggly trees began to appear. The ground turned from softer grass to hard-packed dirt and gravel. Leading to a large pile of stones and rocks.

There before her was the first thing that she would need to deal with. The lich had controlled this approach for years. Which meant that he had the time to have his horde build. They didn’t have the skill to do a great job, but what they lacked in skill, they had made up with in size.

At the top of the pile were over a dozen zombie mages. Just below them were zombie and skeleton archers. Then ringing the mound was the rest of the guard detail, close to a hundred armed undead soldiers and creatures.

Blink laughed in her mind. The pile fort would work great against most foes. The lower ones would keep the mages and archers fighting long enough to do heavy damage. However, she didn’t need to start at the bottom. Instead, she would start at the top and claim the hill as hers. Make them come to her.

She gave a big toothy grin and thought to herself. “Daddy would love to see this fire strike.”

Then she launched her massive twenty-foot self across the sixty feet from where she stood to the top of the pile. She triggered Fire Strike and Pounce at the same time. The first and only warning to the undead that something was wrong was when she slammed into the mages. Her whole body was the weapon that the spell used, causing fire to billow out from around her as she flattened the undead mages.

She roared, stunning the rest as she spun. Her tail which was now the size of a small tree, swept her rightful place at the top. She had kept Fire Strike active on her tail, causing flame to erupt when it hit. Dozens of undead were set on fire as their robes and hair lit up.

The first attack cleared out most of the mages; her second wiped out the rest. The undead creatures were the first to respond as they came running up the pile toward her. Low-level hellhounds and other empowered animals charged at her. The guards were the next. The problem was the archer had been ordered not to move from the pile and just shoot.

As the guarding undead tried to attack, they had to push through the archers, who were mostly stunned by the roar. The ones that weren’t stunned still didn’t move but started to shoot at her. Their little arrows bounced off her burning blue-black scales.

Blink gave the undead a chance. She took the time to grin again before she tried something that her daddy had told her about. He once told her a story about creatures that he had heard about growing up. A smart wyvern with four legs that could breathe fire. She knew that she couldn’t do that. So she laced the fire strike around her roaring stun and roared again.

Out of her mouth, a flaming roar billowed out. It wasn’t what her dad had talked about. A plume of fire jetting out. No, it was more like a wave that rippled out, but it would do. The skeletons were the first to fall apart. As they took increased damage from fire.

Then she was into the guards and archers. Tooth and claw, roaring and swinging her tail. She was the ruler of this fight, and the undead didn’t understand what had fallen upon them.

The fight wasn’t long as she ripped through them all. Only the guards with the pikes gave her any problems. They were able to keep their blades between her and their bodies. However, they only slowed her down once she remembered that they could only scratch her scales. So she whipped her tail low and fast-breaking legs of the undead.

In the two minutes of the fight, the fighting power of hundreds of undead was broken. She climbed to the top of the pile and looked into the valley where the lich had gone. She let loose another great roar. Her eyes flickered back and forth, taking in the sight before her.

Dozens of stone pile forts stretched up as far as she could see. None of them looked alarmed at what she had just done. None of them answered her roar; they just stood in silence, defiant of her majesty. Her nose twitched as she smelled the undead around her. She flicked her tongue out, tasting the mana. Then she gave a toothy smile. She had his scent again.

She wanted to chase after the lich directly. However, he went up the valley, which was covered in more piles with the undead. She knew that her daddy was coming this way and he would have problems if she didn’t clear the way. With that, she sent a prayer to Chaos, offering the battle to them. She would bring Chaos from the shadows to the undead.

She roared a mighty challenge if no one else knew the lich would. She was coming; she was the priestess of Chaos. She would reap what others had sown to make this way clear for her daddy. She smiled and vanished. Kasidy had given her a great title, a name that would be known the moment after she struck.

She was Blink the Murderous, and this night was hers.

* * *