I had now summoned five creatures to the battle—two Cougars and Three Whelps. The Whelps and the Cougars were level 1, meaning they used one summoning point each. This meant that I now had four Summoning Points left to use. One point had already been used up in leaving a Flora Whelp working on the garden back at the mansion. Experimentally, I reached for my connection to the ‘gardener’, but the link was opaque. I couldn’t control or de-summon it from this distance.

When setting out, I’d thought that the four of us plus up to nine summoned monsters would be more than enough for whatever fight we came up against. Now I found myself hoping that I hadn’t been overconfident.

The attack of the smaller snakes had forced us to retreat from the high ground, and the Cobra, still being harassed by the Whelps, began to lurch toward the cave. Then it stopped, and let out another roar. This time, it directed its roar at the cavemouth, and it seemed like there were almost words in the noise.

A blast of reddish-green light came from the Cobra’s open jaws, and blasted into the cave. Immediately, there was a horrible screaming and moaning from inside the cave. The Cobra moved back a little, swiping at the Flora Whelps again.

From the mouth of the cave, 20 half-decomposed zombie humans lurched, their arms stuck out stiffly in front of them, their mouths hanging open and emitting the most horrible cacophony of screeching and groaning that I’d ever heard.

The Cobra twisted, taking a massive swipe at the Flora Whelps and forcing them to leap backward out of the way. The cougars, still holding off the snakes, were forced to give ground as the zombies lurched forward in a dense pack, moaning like something straight out of hell. Astrid was shielding Belinda with her body, holding her rifle at the ready. Selena had my back, but in the face of this new threat, we all found ourselves retreating further from the cave mouth, further toward the trees.

We were losing this fight.

The Putrefied Cobra threw back its head and let out a gurgling peal of laughter, before throwing up a circle of Force Barrier around itself, keeping my Flora Whelps away from it for the moment.

“We’ve got to change tactic!” I shouted to the women. “Follow me!”