by Jason Jones
“Are you challenging me to journey in this place, alone with you, in the middle of the night, Azenarik Thalanaxe?”
“Nope. The Shinayne I know, she would not need a challenge, for she fears nothing then.” Zen smiled.
“I am not afraid, dwarf. Just cautious.”
“Gwenneth, Shinayne and I be scoutin’ the area for a time, a cautionary bit o’ surveyin’ then. Keep an eye, magical or otherwise, on everyone.” Zen saw the raised hand from within green arcane light, letting him know she had heard him. Her face never lifted from the almost finished book from the dragon Ansharr, but her eyes glanced up once in the cavern.
“You stocky sneak, I did not agree to this at all, and---“
“Well, I be goin’ alone then, could use another set o’ ears and eyes, not to mention them swords.” He got to his feet, grabbed his blacksteel warhammer and shield, then his pack, and lastly put on his helm. His steps headed west, he looked back, and the elf was following without as much as a sound.
“Ahh, that’s me girl. Never sayin’ no, I like that about ye’ Shinayne, aye I do.”
“I am simply going to make sure you stay alive, this is still a poor idea, Zen.” Shinayne crept, step by step, alongside him as they headed down the ridge and made for lower ground.
“Just a stretch of the legs is all, not much more. Cheer up, elf.”
“Oh, I am full of cheer, do not doubt it.” Shinayne kept her hands on her blades, eyes up, never blinking as her steps crept between the ridges of yellow stone at night.
Slick rock gave way to soft ground after they veered from the Temple Way. Skeletons of trees that should be in bloom waved their branches. Dead brush that was either too dry or too wet refused to grow. Pattering rains had them soaked in minutes, the gloom of breezes and voices from unseen sources kept them on edge, and both of them strained to see a star or glimmer of anything in the dark canopy of night.
“I think this is far enough Azenairk, just more foothills ahead, nothing is getting any closer.” Shinayne had her blades half out, tight grips, constantly looking for the sources of the eerie feelings she now had. “No moons, no stars, and nothing but more twisting turns in the mountains.”
Azenairk…
“Ye’ hear that?”
“What? I heard nothing.” Shinayne stopped next to Zen, now a mile from their cavern camp high on the ridge.
“Shinayne, somethin’ said me name, whispered it. Out there.” He pointed west and a bit south, toward a high hill that was only visible with the flashes of intermittent silent lightning.
Shinayne…
“I just heard mine as well, this is far enough. Let’s head back to get the others.”
Others…
“Allright, enough o’ that. It be repeatin’ what we say is all. I have to know what it is.” The dwarven priest marched toward the hill to the southwest.
What it is…what I am…what we are….
Shinayne listened, the voice was but a whisper, neither male nor female, just hollow words on the breeze. The elven noble decided to try and trick whatever it was, to see if it merely caught words it heard.
“We are turning around now, heading back to our friends…”
Liar…
“Zen, it can see us, I do not like this.”
“Agreed, but we be almost there. Come on.” The last Thalanaxe trudged up another hill.
Strokes of angry white danced from the darkness above and all around the misty vale below. Time went on, the hills and valleys mirrored one another, all the while whispers crept on the hmid hanging air. Zen put his boot up on a piece of stone foundation of a crumbled tower at the precipice of a hill. It seemed an old outpost was here, now long forgotten and worn smooth on its south face, still rough on the northern face. Shinayne took cover beside a broken pillar, one of several, also worn smooth on one side.
“What by Vundrens’ boots is that?” Zen wiped his eyes and waited for another flash of the silent lightning.
They stared at a slow moving orange mist, miles across, as it wormed slowly around old structures and stone streets far ahead and below them, all smothered with still gray fog. The mist seemed contained by a ravine, a circular ditch of immense proportion that had no end and encircled as far as the eye could see. The mist of orange snaked in and out of the ravine, yet moving it was, most unnatural. It appeared that miles ahead in the valley, beyond this ravine, indeed lay a ruins. In the stormlit darkness only momentary glimpses could be taken, but that was enough to see that it was grand, immense, and flanked by mountainous peaks.
“Do you see what I see, my bearded friend?” Shinayne whispered.
“Aye. I see a ruin, mountains at its east, west, and south, road leads up to doors in the mountains. Ye think this is it?” Zen was cold, nervous, trying not to stare at the orange mist far ahead or the strange movement the whole ruins seemed to have, yet dead still the same.
“I believe we just found Mooncrest, my friend.”
“What is left of it ye’ mean.”
“Still, this must be it, or outskirts at least. I see a wall there, and some spires in the distance.”
“I’ll believe it when we reach the doors to Kakisteele. Tis pretty big though, even with the little we can see now.”
“Do you notice the buildings, the statues, the mist, see anything strange?”
“Aye, be all dark save for silent lightning with no thunder and some orange stuff writhin’ about inside the ruins.”
“Agreed. But I was speaking more of the way it moves, like the mist is chasing the shadows, something is unnaturally conscious here, something unseen watches us.” Shinayne looked, a mile ahead with the flashing of a silent storm, and peered across the ruined metropolis.
“Ye’ mean less natural than the giant trench surrounding a two millennia old ruin with an orange cloud that moves along the ground by itself like a giant serpent?”
Shinayne’s stare and raised eyebrow in silence let him know she was aware of his sarcasm.
“Closer look then?”
Come closer…
“Ahh, ye’ shut up stupid spirits. Little bit further elf?”
“This is insane, you realize that, right? We should head back.”
“That be a yes if ever I heard one.” Zen began down the slick hill, water dripping out of his black braided beard. He stared at the orange mist, somewhat entranced and curious.
“Zen, there is a chill here, it is cold.”
“Finally.”
“It was blistering hot just today, this is not right.” Shinayne turned as she walked, looking, listening, feeling nothing alive but she and Zen.
Step by step, down the two went into the lowlands. Dark yellow jags and peaks appeared far to the south with the flashes of lightning, old foundations in the earth held nothing but memory, and only muffled whispers and light rain in the night made noise. They stopped, the city ruins and orange mist still a half mile ahead. Shinayne and Zen looked down into the trench only inches in front of their feet. It was deep, thirty feet or more, and miles long and curved in each direction. They looked across, it was a fifty or more feet to the other side. Splashing and sloshing of water could be heard below them, something was moving in the enormous ditch. Many things.
“By Vundren, what coulda’ made such a trench? Looks recent too, I don’t understand it.” Zen reached his hand over the edge a bit and felt the loose soil and wet rock.
“Nevermind what made it, what is it that is moving down in there?” Shinayne tried to see in the dark, it was too far.
Nevermind…
“Those voices are getting closer now, perhaps it is time you shed some light on the area, they know we are here anyway.” Shinayne wiped the rain from her face and looked to Zen.
“Ye’ sure? Once I do that, everything from here to the mountains is gonna see us.” He held his hammer and moons symbol that hung from the chain on his neck.
“You wanted to come here and see, now we are here. Unless you are afraid.”
“Baah, don’t try that on me elf. Vundren eth edrith vun vast.” Zen spoke the prayer and channeled yellow light around his warhammer. The area glowed for fifty feet or more, in every direction.
“Oh by Siril!” Shinayne gasped as she pulled Zen back away from the ravine fast.
Hundreds, thousands there were, a ravine filled with skeletons trying to climb up the muddy embankment, brown water up to their knees. None had flesh nor clothing, not even a shroud, just mud covered remains that moved. White bones, all moist from rain, they were crawling over each other in a feeble attempt to make it up and out. There were no voices, no noise but the clacking of jaws and bone, and the sloshing of uncountable bones that moved and stared with a trickle of deep shadow from within their skulls. They pleaded without expression, to the mortals that stood on solid ground above, seemingly asking assistance with reaches and outstretched dead hands. They would glare with their flickering black sockets, then fall as the ones from behind piled over them, then they too would fall and struggle helplessly. Then more and more, like an endless wave of dead that fought itself, trying to emerge and converge where the glow was coming from, as if they had not seen the shine of light in thousands of years.
“By all that is holy on the mountain of God, what is this?”
Zen backed up with Shinayne, realizing the skeletons could not and would not reach him, yet the sight was unnerving and forcing him back. He looked to how far the ravine curved to his left and right in the darkness, assuming it stopped at the base of the Kaki Mountains or ended into a river or lake somewhere. It was a few miles in each direction he surmised, and not an inch without old bones moving in it, trying to get out.
“Zen, time to leave.” Shinayne whispered, pulling him back, step by step.
“Must be hundreds o’ thousands o’ the dead here in this trench! Vundren have mercy, why are they still movin’?”
“The orange mist is heading this way, look.” Shinayne pointed into the ruined city, closer now, she could make out taller buildings, a tower, and even part of a walled palace that still stood in the vast metropolis of what must have once been Mooncrest.
The mist was not more than three feet off the ground, its orange glow barely illuminated anything, and it was as silent as the ruins it traversed. Twisting and turning like a serpent through ruined homes and forgotten structures, it was at least a mile long and moving right toward the light, right for Zen and Shinayne, diving once more into the ravine with the dead.
This way, look…
Every step they took back was instinct, and every few feet away they went, the orange mist gained fifty. It was entrancing to watch, perhaps they did not notice how close it had gotten, or how loud the whispers had become, but both the elf and the dwarf watched as the mist slithered through the ravine, and then they covered their ears as hundreds of ghastly screams tore into the air with a flash of orange light.
Suddenly the screams stopped, and boney hands reached over the edge of the now glowing ravine. Hundreds, eyes glowing with orange fire bright, shambling to solid ground with some renewed awareness that seemed to guide them. More continued to reach the edge, thousands now, their bones slowly covering with gray ghastly flesh as they climbed to their feet, lifted by some unseen force of intellect. First the dead skin grew on the skulls, then worked its way down the vertebrae and ribs, then the thin gray membrane stretched over their appendages down to the tips of fingers and toes once only bone.
All at once the orange mist vanished, even from the thousands of eye sockets that held wicked remnants inside of their skulls. Tens of thousands more continued to scramble for the top of the ravine they could not reach, the sloshing of water the only audible reminder. The invigorated undead horde turned their necks, all of them, and glared with a grave emptiness in their gaze. The gray flash was tight on their bones and faces, giving them a stretched façade. Only one still held the orange glow in its eyes, and now the voices seemed to emnate from it.
All that arrive must not leave, as they belong to us…
The dead turned slowly toward the elven woman and the dwarven man with the light glowing from his hammer. It spoke what the mist told it to as the layer of flesh began harden, strengthen, and their former garb and armor began to take unearthly pallor and glow upon their bodies.
“I think it is time to leave.” Shinayne drew Carice and Elicras out of their sheaths, backing up slowly. The dead did not move toward her, just stared, only their heads turned to follow she and Zen.
“Aye, no further argument here.”
Zen backed up with the elven swordswoman, pointing his warhammer and the light emitting from it toward the horde of ghostly dead soldiers that were reforming somehow. They shielded their eyes as he waved the light across their faces from thirty feet away.
“Take them…” The banshee taking solid form with orange fire in his eyesockets drew a scimitar and pointed to the mortals before him. The sound of hundreds of ghostly blades being drawn followed.
“Run!” Shinayne grabbed Zen by the shield arm, turned him around and ran toward the hill with the old outpost. Only a few paces ahead, she saw that more of the dead had flanked them, quietly, and were moving to surround them and the hill they were heading for. Desperately trying to make the next few half mile, she could now hear the stomping of feet all around her.
As they ran, so did the ghosts of the dead, now looking much like the gray soldiers Zen had seen at the haunted pub in Estivar. He saw weapons now gleaming gray, shields of faded steel, and the orange glow from their speaker lit the darkness as much as his holy light from Vundren. The dead began to make noise as they chased, slowly taking some semblance of form and mass in their gray afterlife.
“How did they get there already, elf? Ye’ supposed to sense that stuff ye’ know!”
“I cannot sense them, they are dead!” Shinayne ran faster, Zen right besider her.
Azenairk huffed as he pumped his stocky legs as fast as they would run. He looked left, maybe fifty ahead and closing. Right, same yet more and closer, they were already at the base of the hill. Shinayne was pulling and running so fast he nearly tripped over his own legs. He looked behind, they were not twenty feet away and gaining.
Up the hill she scrambled, half dragging Zen to make it up before the dead caught him. Past the pillars she ran, then she stopped, she saw them. Gray soldiers drawing steel blades, all around the hill, already in every direction. Shinayne could not sense them, not here, not one of them. They were surrounded by hundreds now, thousands more arriving soon, silent and not twenty feet down the hill, climbing fast.
“Time to stand and fight. I told you this was a bad idea.”
“How many ye’ think?” Zen was huffing for breath, but swung the warhammer twice in the air, readied himself and his shield, back to back with Shinayne.
“Two hundred perhaps, another thousand behind that. Stay close to me.” She took a low stance inbetween the crumbled and worn pillars. Her right hand back and longblade crossing her chest, left hand out halfway with the shorblade on point. The top of the hill gave them advantage, as did the crumbled pillars, yet with these numbers, Shinayne felt little hope of survival.
“Only that many? Well, by Vundren, you was right then.”
“How so?”
“Shoulda brought the others.” Zen slammed his hammer to his shield.
“Feast upon them!” The dead warrior banshee with the orange glow pointed his blade, and the hundreds of long dead gray soldiers swarmed the hilltop at his command.
“Vund erstal var ith darmanvun!” Zen twirled the glowing hammer and smashed it into the stone pillar in front of him. The rock shattered, then the base split, and lastly a golden glow erupted and split down the hill farther than he could see. The chasm it caused filled with rubble, making the south side an impossible climb and claiming dozens of the dead as it happened.
The first wave of the reborn dead from ages past staggered to the top and felt the enchanted steel of Shinayne’s whitemoon blades plunge
into their cursed remains. Carice slashed through false steel shields and blades as Elicras followed with rapid stabs past ghostly flesh in the shadows. Her ancient weapons cut through the undead as if they were made of water.
Four, then ten, then fifteen burst into dust and screams, all but the skulls disintegrating as she sliced like a desperate whirlwind on top of the forgotten hill. Only a faint echo of steel sung in the night as the elven swordswoman stepped, attacked, ducked, countered, and held the northern edge of the ruined outpost. Lifeless skulls and dust were piling at her feet, but there was no end to the horde in sight.
Azenairk ducked a blade, returned with the hammer, and thudded another ghastly soldier to the ground. His light seemed to hurt them more than his blows were, yet he stomped the skull anyway and watched the body and visage of flesh and armor burst into dust and fade away. His shield was blocking and pushing back to his left, his divinely lit warhammer swinging wildly to his right, and his back was never more than a foot from Shinayne. He thought of the others, realizing they were miles away, and how foolish it had been to travel these lands at night.
“Still alive back there?” Shinayne feinted to back up, bumped her rear into Zens, then slashed in wide arcs into the much slower risen soldiers. Three fell on her left, five on her right, and she never slowed her parries nor lowered her guard.
“Aye, not… for long. Tired…too.. many…killed ten now…you?” Zen was grunting, struggling against five of the horde pushing on his shield while he ducked and swung with his hammer to those shielding their undead eyes from his light.
“Holding. Too many to… count at my… feet, too many…” She was calm on the outside, but all she could think of was survival, that Zen had not worn his armor, and that they would not last another thirty seconds unless something happened. Shinayne kept up her inhuman flurry of attacks yet noticed the one orange glow of eyes getting closer as the horde of dead continued surrounding the hill. She pondered, inbetween sure sword cuts and parries against ghostly steel.
“Wha…? That is a lot there…” The last Thalanaxe turned after shoving the mass of undead that pressed him. His jaw fell open and his eyes bulged with awe as he realized his partner was not slowing and there was a pile of uncountable skulls at her feet, some rolling back down the hill in a second death.
