The air in the corridor was thick with the copper tang of blood and the acrid stench of scorched stone. Xerollion could feel the heat of his own blood trickling down his cheek, a warm reminder of his own mortality, or at least, the mortality he had so carefully simulated.
Behind him, the third corpse, a young soldier whose face was twisted into a permanent mask of agony, lunged with clawed fingers aimed at his spine.
SHHHH TICK!
Without so much as turning his head, Xerollion flicked two fingers behind his back. A razor-thin blade of compressed air screamed through the air.
FIIIIIIIIIIII ZIP!
The invisible edge sliced clean through the necromantic threads connecting the corpse's joints. The body didn't just fall; it collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut, hitting the stone with a wet, hollow THUD.
The golem, sensing its opening, roared in a sound of grinding tectonic plates.
KRAAAAA RUMBLE!
