Apocalypse Reset: My Crab Can Heal the World!

Barns pants, hand resting on his knee. "Please tell me that was the only one."

Eldrie lowers his bow, eyes still glowing faintly. "No promises. Whatever that thing was, it wasn't the Corpsie we were talking to earlier. That thing is still around, somewhere. I'm sure of it."

They stare at the pile of steaming filth.

Then, slowly, the hero and the archer begin to walk back toward the barrier.

"Now what?" Barns asks, looking around them in every direction. "That thing can get through the barrier. We need to find and kill it before it can go any further."

"Do we have any idea how to do such a thing?" Eldrie shoots back.

Suddenly, a cold envelops them - an unnatural pall of chilly fog.

Barns shivers. There's something familiar about the cold, but it couldn't be - the Pale Court and its fog were far behind them now.

"Miss me?"

Barns turns suddenly, his eyes widening. He recognizes the figure standing before him, though her face is obscured by a large black umbrella dipped just low enough to hide herself.

"F-Francois!?"

The vampiress performs a polite bow. "The very same."

"But I thought - "

Francois tips the umbrella up enough to reveal her eyes, and she winks at Barns. Suddenly, the aggravating, lustful allure of the vampiress activates. It's all Barns can do to stay still and not dive into her like an animal.

Eldrie, knowing better, doesn't look into her eyes, keeping a safe distance from her allure and perfume. At least out here in the middle of nowhere, she didn't have such a concentrated presence.

"You thought I was killed by the Sentinel Nazakiel, of course," Francois says sweetly. "And…he did hurt me quite bad, didn't he? But remember. I know Osmond told you quite clearly. A Master Vampire can only be killed by a blood relative, and Nazakiel is no kin of mine."

"There was nothing left of you!" Barns objects. "You were…dust!"

He recalls it vividly - watching her be reduced to atoms with just a look from the Sentinel. Not before she got a few good bites in, though.

"Nothing left of me, but you admit there was dust. Do you think me so lowly a creature that I can't survive being 'dust' for a day or two?"

"Uh, yeah, I think that lowly of everyone," Barns argues back. "That's not exactly something survivable. Master Vampires are truly something else, aren't they?"

"We got lucky with Adon and Adea..." Eldrie reflects.

"Not lucky, little Eldrie. You simply had me on your side."

She turns to Barns, folding her arms in her kimono and allowing the umbrella to tilt slightly to the right.

"I cannot die. I promised you a gift, did I not, Barnacles?"

Barns nods. She did - the day he unlocked Bubble Breathing. A gift that only she could give, though he still did not understand the meaning of her words fully.

Her blood red eyes scan the horizon carefully.

"I may have another gift as well, in the form of knowledge. It would appear you have encountered the Corpsie."

"Encountered is a word one could use to describe it."

Francois chuckles. "And I suppose you have no idea how to deal with it."

"Do you know, Francois?" Barns asks, desperate for answers. "Please, tell us!"

She takes a deep breath. "The enemy holds a strange power. One not even I can counter. And I do not know everything."

"We need to know. Anything."

Francois nods. "Of course. Corpsie. It can move anywhere. As fast as you can imagine. But only when it is unseen. If eyes are on it, it is severely limited. But, as I am sure you observed, it is still quite fast."

"So we can't look away once we encounter it. But how do we kill it? It ing back. Over and over. And then it created a huge monster!"

I only have my speculations," Francois notes, her voice lush with otherworldly allure. She shifts her weight slightly, her black and red kimono fluttering in the breeze.

"But I think if you could kill it and keep the spacesuit itself under 24/7 surveillance, you might be able to stop it from grabbing another corpse to possess."

"Are you serious!?"

"Perhaps there is another way," Francois muses. "But this is the solution I came up with. You are welcome to find your own."

"Barns…it's possible," Eldrie offers. "Next time we see it again, we grab hold of it. Take turns blinking, and bring it back to Dimartino. We can surrender it to the police and have them create a task force to watch it, day-in and day-out."

Barns shakes his head. "And then have that thing IN Dimartino? That's way too risky…and so many resources would be required to…"

Suddenly, a memory flashes into his head. Something Absalom, the former zombie, told him last night.

There was a way to steal Corpsie's Necromancy powers and transfer them to Barns. Absalom knew something. But it required defeating Corpsie…

"You're both right," Barns realizes. "It's possible. And Absalom might be able to help us with that. I think he knows some way to control or mitigate Corpsie's power."

Francois smiles. "Yes. Your zombie ally. How could I forget? I imagine he knows more about Corpsie's power than any of us, since he was once a user of it himself."

Barns sighs. "The only problem now is how to find Corpsie again. That thing may have acted like an idiot, but it's frighteningly clever. I can tell. If it knows we have a plan to capture and defeat it, there's no way it will come out easily."

He scans over the corpses left behind by the spacesuit-wearing zombie. All of them were reduced to mush. Even if they cleansed them with the barrier, he wouldn't be able to perform a Resurrection, not in their sorry state.

"We should return to Dimartino and regroup," Barns decides. "Francois, will you join us?"

She ponders for a moment. "In your court you have a Zombie Lord and a Demon Lord. Would you really want a Master Vampire around, with powers like mine? I might drive your human men mad."

There was a time when Barns couldn't trust Francois - now, it's clear to him she's an invaluable ally.

"If you'd rather stay in the Pale Court, I can accept that. But Francois - I want you to come with us. We're stronger together."