She stood in the depths of the island. At last here, in front of enormous iron doors, intricately machined. Behind them lay the final battle.
The silence then interrupted. A deep, ancient sound, like the grinding of enormous gears beneath the earth. It resonated in her bones. After, chants, muffled but strong.
She’d fought monsters, machines, and things that had no right to exist. She had lost friends, shed blood, and walked through hell itself. One way or another her journey was soon to end. For better or for worse.
She swung the doors open, and walked through with the confident strut of a model on the catwalk. Chin high, head forwards, back straight. Like she owned the place. She kept walking, footsteps echoing, even as she heard the chants stop, and felt the hundreds of glaring eyes set upon her.
Only when she was in the center of the room did she stop. She saw then a vast, circular chamber, stone stained with the remnants of countless sacrifices. Hundreds of cultists gathered in concentric circles, faces concealed beneath dark hoods. At the far end, upon a raised dais adorned with strange symbols, stood their hooded leader.
A low murmur passed through the congregation before falling into absolute silence as the cult leader raised his arms. He was silent then for a good while, before he broke out in a slow, deep chuckle. Soon all the cultists were joining in.
“You’re too late,” he said, finally. And with that she heard the sound of a platform being raised. At the center of the circle he stood in arose a machine. Constructed from black iron, polished brass, and live wire. Cables descended from the ceiling into its central housing. Metal coils surrounded a cylindrical chamber filled with a luminous green fluid.
Inside the chamber floated a human body. Moving rhyhymically up and down. Up and down. Up and down.
An elderly man. A long beard. Weird, curly sideburns. Closed eyes. A face completely devoid of life. His body was little more than a bloody skeleton fuzed with hydraulic parts.
The chief cabalist stepped forward, voice trembling as he addressed the crowd. “Generations of waiting. Years of sacrifices. There were those who said this day would never come. What are they to say now?”
He raised both arms, and let the cheer of the crowd simmer down.
“The world has forgotten the old promises. The Sanhedrin have abandoned the old laws. But we have not forgotten.”
The cultists bowed their heads.
“We have brought back the one who will restore the order of the ages. Who will rise from the grave, and lead us in a holy slaughter of the Goyim.”
Sarah felt the hairs on her arms stand up, as the chant resumed and the green fluid began to boil. She noticed then, through faint, translucent lines, that the machine was drawing power somehow from the cultists. The lights brightened, dimmed, then brightened again. Somewhere in the distance, a generator exploded.
The chief cabalist smiled.
“Awaken, your holiness!”
The chamber opened. The body, now mostly complete, fell forward. For one terrible second, it lay motionless on the platform.
Then its fingers twitched. A sound emerged from its throat. Not a breath. Not a groan. A burst of static, followed by a voice that seemed to come from several different speakers at once.
“WHO HAS SUMMONED ME?”
The chief cabalist dropped to his knees.
“We have, Rabbi.”
The corpse raised its head. Its eyes opened, both glowing a bright, mechanical red.
As it rose Sarah saw its body, still unfinished and missing skin, had partly healed. Metal plates unfolded from its back. Hydraulic limbs extended from beneath its robes. A spinal assembly of interlocking gears locked into place with a series of sharp metallic clicks.
The cultists began to chant.
“THE MESSIAH RETURNS.”
“THE MESSIAH RETURNS.”
“THE MESSIAH RETURNS.”
And then their chant changed.
“SPEECH, SPEECH, SPEECH,” they started, growing even louder in volume.
Sarah felt like she had a prime opportunity to go in gunz blazing. They had all forgotten about her, and whatever the thing was it seemed fairly vulnerable right now. However, she was actually really interested to hear what this creature had to say. What his politics were, what his diplomatic platform is. How specifically he was going to reward his cult followers who had brought him back to life.
“LOWLIFES,” the creature growled, “Shameless filthy wretches.”
Judging by the crestfallen look upon the lead cultist’s face, he was as confused by this tack as she was.
“How you celebrate my ascension with such joy. Hailing the very one whom you have condemned for generations. Have you no shame? What happened to the evil, ruthless sorcerer from your fantasies? The cold-blooded tyrant that slaughtered countless men and destroyed many nations? Where is he now? He stands before your very eyes to become your new ruler. HAHAHAHAHA.”
Sarah got a strange feeling that this speech was supposed to be aimed at a different audience, maybe after Greater Israel had been achieved or something. As a counterpoint, the crowd never stopped cheering.
“Uhm, rabbi,” the lead cultist interjected, turning and pointing towards her, “this Goyette is -“
“A NEW ERA HAS BEGUN.” it screamed over top of him. “THIS is reality. No one can help you now. Sit back and enjoy the show.”
And then he picked up the lead cultist by the throat, brought him slowly up to the point where he looked directly at him eye to eye, opened his mouth, and sucked his soul out of his body. Only, rather than panicking, the audience was loving it. They even kept cheering after he promised to turn on them as well.
“Rest assured, you fools. Your time will come. This is only the beginning. Let us start a new reign of terror. I will let you live a fantasy beyond your imagination. Let us end this ceremony with a sacrifice. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH”
In fact, they still kept cheering even when his eyes turned to lasers and he sawed through a huge swathe of them. They clapped like seals when he fed on the life force of another cultist unlucky enough – or perhaps from his perspective, blessed – to be within soul sucking range.
Sarah was torn between letting the Undead Mecha-Rabbi continue his killing spree, and taking an opportunistic potshot. On one hand, she couldn’t see the benefit to him of lasering through his own troops. On the other hand, every time he sucked out the lifeforce of one of the cultists he seemed to heal. His flesh, originally unskinnned, and in some cases hanging off his bones, was scabbing over and growing stronger. His body had grown to twelve feet tall.
(NOTE: This section needs to be rewritten after I’ve finalized this particular boss, because I want him using the specific abilities that he has in the fight here first, instead of just winging it. Right now generic flavour text has been preferred to anything specific.)
What made up her mind was the articulating arms that suddenly unfolded like demonic wings from his back. Each ended in a different instrument. A crackling energy emitter, a hooked blade, a cluster of rotating lenses, or a device whose purpose Sarah couldn’t begin to guess.
Before she could act, a wave of force swept across the platform. Several cultists were hurled into the walls. She was only knocked over, and looked up just in time to duck behind a steel cargo box, as the apparatus began firing in every direction. A bolt of green energy flew by where she’d been just a second ago, tearing a chunk out of the wall behind her, spreading shrapnel everywhere.
When she peaked around the box she saw him floating above the platform. The machine levitating him effortlessly upon rotating rings that generated a deep, resonant hum that vibrated through Sarah’s bones.
Sarah could do little but pick off the straggling cultists, most of whom seemed desperate to have their souls eaten. Luckily, there was so much chaos that no one noticed her opportunistic potshots. She only stopped when she heard Mecha-Schneerson start monologuing, which is when she noticed, to her horror, that he had fully healed.
“AT LAST!” he cried out. “AT LAST, these mortal chains are broken. The Earth has yielded its dead, and I have returned.”
There was much rejoicing, although some of the cultists seemed a bit bummed that they didn’t get to have their souls eaten.
“You have done well, my devoted children. For a hundred years I lay entombed beneath the foundations of the wretched world of Queens, New York. But no longer. I live, AGAIN!”
He spread his arms, all twelve of them, wide as he basked in the adulation of the crowd.
Sarah saw where this was going, and returned to openly picking off the cultists. She sensed that Rabbi Schneerson wasn’t the type to let anything interrupt his own monologue, which turned out to be a very prescient guess. As a result, the rest of his speech was punctuated by gunfire and mortal cries of pain that everyone pretended to ignore so as to not ruin the moment.
It was sort of like when some enemy is accidentally active during a cutscene, but in real life.
“But no longer! The age of goykind is drawing to a close. Their kingdoms shall burn. Their false gods dragged from their golden thrones. We shall remake this world in our image. And you, my faithful servants… you shall not be forgotten. You who have sacrificed, who have suffered, who have spilled blood in my name! I shall grant you kingdoms beyond your wildest imaginings. I shall make you princes of the new world, immortal custodians of my empire, feared and worshipped by generations yet unborn. You shall stand at my right hand when the heavens themselves come crashing down!
“Now rise, my children! Rejoice! For your master has returned, and he shall lead you in a glorious race war against the bipedal cattle, who shall tremble at the sound of my name!”
Schneerson, eyes closed, was greeted only with silence. After a few seconds, he decided the crowd was so enraptured they had been thunderstruck into silence. After a few more seconds, he decided many had probably fainted. After a few more seconds he opened his eyes, to see they had all been killed while he was monologuing.
“YOU,” he said to the girl, training both his malevolent red eyes upon her.
“Me,” she said, to the floating corpse.
They stared at each other in silence for a good while. What was there to say? These two warriors were locked together in a mortal struggle. One would win, one would lose.
With a masculine nod of approval it began.
