There were many ways one might react to seeing Undead slowly shamble towards you. Showing fear or anger would be reasonable, a demonstration of grim resolve commendable. But bursting out in amused laughter, not even trying to hide the giggles that shook me, as I saw skeletons slowly move towards us, their eyes burn in unholy, green fire?

Most would call me insane, just for that reaction.

“Are you alright?” Olivia asked, while Sigmir just rolled her eyes, obviously knowing the answer. She could feel the glee within me, as I watched the dry, dusty bones, held together by a vile mix of Life- and Death-Magic, with some other types thrown in for flavour, shamble up the path towards us, moving slow enough to allow even the elderly ample time to run away. On the flipside, the Skeletons would never get tired and unless you ran fast and far, they would get you… eventually. But not us.

“If only we had more time.” I lamented, my hand rising up, as I started to etch runes into the air, a simple triangle of Dark Radiance, Magic and Devour, quickly drawn and even faster empowered, with a lingering channel that allowed me to keep the spell up. As the runic formation flashed with dim, purple unlight, a beam of darkness, eating away the dim light in the vicinity lanced out, striking the first skeleton, some fifty metres away from us, into the chest, washing over it for a brief moment, before my Darkness-Magic changed the trajectory of the beam, aiming at the next skeleton.

The one struck remained upright for the briefest of moments, before the magic holding together the bones, binding the creature into a mockery of life fizzled out and gravity stepped up, reminding everyone that it was the law and not to be trifled with. We were too far away to hear the clatter of bones and by the time the bones had dropped, I had already targeted the third skeleton that was shambling up the narrow path, only to be reduced to clutter shortly after.

“Now, that’s what I call super-effective.” I laughed when no more skeletons were visible, my eyes flickering to the log, checking the experience-gain. It was a pittance, their levels barely high enough to count, but it was better than nothing, especially given the casual way I had destroyed them.

“Anyway, let us continue.” I shook my head, looking over to Adra, “If you find larger groups, I’d love to get some additional EXP, as you can see, those things are easy, as long as I can attack from range and they don’t have a swamp to hide in.”

Adra didn’t even bother replying audibly, simply nodding her head before pushing on, further up the Dorrian Mountains. Ever since we had moved into the area, Adra had turned quiet and subdued, the necrotic energies that had ravaged the land apparently depressing her. In a lot of ways, I could empathise, even without her affinity for Nature, the crippled and mutated trees were depressing. The trees were still alive, both of us could feel that, but at the same time, they looked very much dead, similar to the skeletons that wandered the area. The only more desolate area I had ever been to, had been during the second visit to Tegi, after the Devourer had sucked the life out of the area, but that had only been a relatively small, localised event, not spanning a whole mountain-range.

Still, we had to get over it, literally, and for that, we had to keep moving. And if I was able to turn a few more, maybe a lot more, undead into just-dead, I was happy with it, doubly so if they gave some good EXP.

“I’ll take a look from above, so far, we haven't seen anything that was flying around, so I should be good.” Lenore decided, hopping out of her Hallow and into the air.

“Did you see what I did?” I asked Rai, deciding to push yet another lesson on him, even if this one was only theoretical. He had some training with the anti-magic from the Deadmire, near Clan Ashenforge, but I wanted him to get those tricks to the next level, so he would be able to quickly and easily deal with any undead foe, especially those who had an armour of rotten flesh, hiding and concealing the magic keeping them animated beneath.

“I think so, Teacher.” He nodded and, on my prompting, formed a dark glow on his weapon. Normally, I would need Lenore to gauge just how effective his spellwork was, I couldn’t lick the magic on his weapon after all and even smelling it was a little weird, but Darkness was one of my specialities and it was a spell I had taught him, so I knew how it should look and act. And he wasn’t there just yet.

“You are making progress.” I admitted, the cohesion of his spellwork better than before, “But you aren’t there just yet. Try slicing this.” I ordered, casually creating an orb of Darkness, nothing but a small patch of concealment he could attack. The nasty part was, unless he was able to overpower the magic, as I had done with the Undead, he had to find and destroy the connections, literally cutting the spellwork apart. Relatively easy, if you could see the magic or if it was obvious, like the magical threads between the bones of a skeleton, but within a cloud of shapeless, featureless all-encompassing Darkness it was a lot harder. Which was why I made him train on it.

We continued on our merry way, not even trying to avoid the few undead in our path, instead simply crushing them as we walked past. For skeletons, I didn’t even bother with rune-magic, or even Darkness-magic, instead I tried something different, namely what would happen if a reasonably powerful Death-Sorceress starts messing with the necromantic magic keeping an Undead animated?

The results were most curious, making me almost feel bad inside, even as I laughed. In the most simple terms, the Magic holding them together was akin to strings, and quite precise in nature, necessarily so. When I started tugging at the strings, I stretched them, sometimes even accidentally ripped them if I exerted too much force and once ripped, the effect was similar to the effect of a partial dispel, causing the limb that the magic was previously attaching to drop.

With that discovery, I started to happily tug at different parts of the magic, even stopping to study more as I slowly took individual skeletons to pieces, trying to figure out where the magic originated and thus, where I could cause the most havoc. If I could find the core, a strong tug might simply rip all the threads, causing them to flop just like my dispel did, while also giving me skill-experience for my Death-magic. Destroying them with Darkness-magic was an old hat, not something that I learned something from.

“Lenore’s coming back and she found something.” I told the others, when I felt my companion enter my range of perception, filled with eager anticipation. The others stopped, Adra looking over her shoulder to look at me, before focusing outwards again. Moments later, Lenore landed on my shoulder, spreading her wings for a moment.

“And?” I asked, speaking out loud, so the others could hear, too.

“You’ll want to move up the mountain, not along the valley. If you head a little further east, it’ll be a relatively easy climb, following a small brook and you can cross the ridge into the next valley and up yet another slope.” She said, copying my voice. At the same time, she let me see what she had seen, the way she advised us to take, and ultimately, why she thought it was a good idea. The next valley was relatively empty, crippled trees, sparse, grey shrubs and grass, nothing too inviting and the valley on the other side of it was where the party could start. Even from a distance, while flying high above, Lenore had been able to make out the unholy, green glow of undead, the corrupt mix of life and death that animated them and there were a lot of them filling that valley, hundreds, maybe thousands.

All in a relatively small, steep valley, just right for some magical bombardement.

“Agreed, that should be good.” I added, already moving past Adra who looked a little confused. “There are hundreds of undead ahead, I think our best bet would be to stay up, on the hill, with the four of you defending Lenore and me, while we make something magical happen.”

Lenore happily hopped into her Hallow and we started to discuss the best way to blow up an entire valley, while giving the others a rough idea what we were moving into. While they weren’t too happy about wading into combat with so many enemies, they did agree that striking from a distance and retreating as soon as things got too dicy, had the potential to give us massive amounts of EXP, something all of us, but Olivia, were interested in.