[67]

“Up ahead!” I said, spotting the blackened bodies before the others. My above average Perception was already showing its benefits in awful detail.

The pungent smell of the burnt corpses hit my nostrils soon after, like a runaway arcanowagon, nearly making me gag.

I willed my mage armor to seal out the offending air. Far beyond exceeding my expectations, I discovered I could alter my new mastery spell to do just about whatever I ever wanted a set of clothes to do. The material transformed to be light as silk, or hard as plate armor. There was no end to the color choice; my imagination was the only limitation. Raxx ensured we tested every possibility, as he found it immensely amusing to see me turn the armor into obnoxious, flowery designs. With a thought, the material became heavy and warm as a fur coat, or completely invisible. Joy theorized that mastery was a protection spell, and that the clothes were just an illusion. True to her assessment, I discovered I could in fact turn it into invisible plate mail that I could not even feel on my skin. No matter what configuration I put it in, the armor was silent, giving Joy’s idea even more credit. Overall, the mastery left me feeling ecstatic, especially knowing that I would never need to purchase clothes ever again.

Now, I was just happy it kept that awful smell away.

“Hard to think we worried about finding Reynold’s trail,” Joy commented at my side.

After two days of traveling south and east, we had almost given up hope of finding our quarry. Packs of undead were ever present, both in front of us and in the distance, and the constant fighting continued taking its toll. We worried that continuing ahead was a fool’s errand during the day, with only the fires of our convictions to keep us warm at night.

In less than a month, I felt like I had aged a decade. Thinking about my problems earlier in the year, like whom I should marry, or whether Elaine had genuine affection, was almost embarrassing. It was a testament to how horrible stalking through the undead riddled, freezing mountains truly was that I wished to go back to Ashmere. I would take a bug demon over a doom champion any day. While we remained exposed in the north, that monster was never far from my thoughts.

The Kestev group had to have traveled north, through an even worse parade of death. For their efforts, they left an enormous trail of burnt bodies and torched landscape. Their apparently successful method of blasting apart the undead explained how the hordes had them herded east. Undead from miles around would see the light show they put on.

Dropping off my horse, I stalked over to one of the crispy undead, still crawling along the cold earth in the direction it had seen Reynold’s group travel. Melting off most of its skin had made the poor creature unable to see or hear. I know, because it was not the first time we encountered one like this. Without preamble, I stuck the spear of my poleaxe through its head.

+2 Essence

Our group quickly moved away from the disturbing fragrance. It was an odor that lingered in our psyche, haunting and terrible. I did not need another reason to damn Reynold Kestev, yet he continued to provide me with reasons for doing just that.

“Think we are getting any closer?” I asked in a muffled voice over my shoulder.

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Joy said, riding up next to me, pulling down the scarf that covered her face so that I could hear her better. I did the same, letting air back into my sealed armor. It was getting hard to breathe with it closed off for long.

“What about horse feed? Or Water? Surely, their mounts can’t go through the northern wastes for too much longer,” I said.

“They probably have saddles, like we do, so that won’t be a problem. Well, not an immediate one,” the young officer explained.

I learned recently that sustenance saddles were a common item among the cavalry of the Ergentein military. They were expensive and hard to get outside the elite forces, but let the horse go up to a week or longer without food and water. Still, it was best to feed the animals when you could. As I had recently learned from my mount, just because they did not need it did not mean they did not want it.

It was not a stretch to think the Ankest noble team had access to such devices. As far as I knew, they were also the only group with horses. Everyone else had left the camps on foot; I remembered thinking it was indulgent at the time.

The nights were stressful. I could not stay up and watch all night long, because we had to move so much during the day. That left the others to take up a shift, and they could not see half as well as I could. Even Joy and Raxx, who had keen senses in the dark, could spot nothing over one hundred feet away. With the Blacktalons looming over every step, and the undead hordes directly south of us, it felt like the forces of Gozmyr had us boxed in. It had been a miracle that something had not attacked us.

On the very next night, something did.

“Enemy!” one trooper soldier shouted, jolting me out of sleep.

Because my armor was already on, the two corpses that leaped on to me did not pose a threat.

My helmet slammed into the face of the stinking corpse sitting over my chest, knocking it off me. Next, I kicked its companion, who was vainly gnawing on my legs. The heel of my foot connected with a satisfying crunch, and I jumped to my feet.

I slaughtered both of my opponents with my summoned poleaxe, bashing in both of their heads with the hammer portion.

Then I took a quick glance around.

Around us was a scene of chaos.

Tens of the zombies were tearing into several of the horses. The young officer had a ghoul pulling out his entrails while his remaining men tried to fight it off, and the man that was supposed to be on guard sat headless on a nearby stone.

“Help the horses!” Joy shouted at me.

I obeyed, rushing into the crowd of creatures, and chopping into heads. The nearby warhorses were armored and strenuously reared for battle. They assisted in the melee, stomping down, and tossing the undead near them in a wide circle.

Before I finished clearing the monsters, I knew my horse was done for. Horrible scratches and bites covered his torso, leaving no doubt to his fate. While my blood was up, I carved a deep cut into his throat, letting him mercifully bleed out where he lay.

Looking over the animals made me furious. Somehow Joy’s asshole mount remained unscathed. It had been only mine that died.

A second later, a loud booming sound took me from my dark thoughts.

Furious wind blasted around us in all directions, lifting the nearby undead and sending them flying in all directions. Raxx’s spell excluded his allies, giving us a chance to breathe and form up. Unfortunately, because of his low Willpower, the casting looked to have taken a lot out of him.

“You all right?” I asked, walking over to him at the center of the camp.

“No, I’m not alright!” Raxx said with a fang filled snarl. He lifted a paw to show that he was missing the top half of his ring finger. “I got bit. Had to cut the digit off.”

I winced.

“Harald!” Joy said, running up to us. “Something is very wrong with those corpses.”

“Is that a joke?” Raxx said, laughing without his usual humor.

“No, I mean, look,” Joy pointed.

I saw right away what she meant. Unlike normal zombies, these cadavers were ballooning up like a waterskin with too much water. Even the ones that I had struck down near my horse were swelling up. Though thankfully they were doing so at a distance. Raxx’s spell had pushed them away from us.

“I have a bad feeling,” Joy muttered.

“Me too,” I agreed. Then, turning to the men, I yelled, “We need to move!”

“We can’t just leave him!” a soldier said, exasperated, looking down at his dying commander.

“I’ll take care of it,” Joy said in an icy voice.

Herding the men away saved our lives. Well, that and Raxx’s wind spell.

The first corpse that exploded caused a chain reaction, even among the ones that were still up and walking or crawling back toward us. One by one, they popped off, sending a foul-smelling stench in the air. Black liquid sprayed into the air, leaving a sizzling sound behind when it touched the ground.

“RUN!” Joy shouted. All thoughts of the dying commander forgotten.

The six of us ran, leading the galloping horses by the reins. Dark smoke rose into the air from where the liquid landed, following behind us like a specter. The sheer number of the corpses created a large enough windfall that we did not want to stop running for close to fifteen minutes—even after we mounted.

“What in the abyss was that!” a trooper shouted.

“That was blackacid fog,” Joy said in a low voice.

“What is it doing inside of zombies?” the man asked in a shaky voice.

“I don’t know,” Joy admitted. “What I do know is that whoever is leading the undead has found a new way to weaponize them.”