The shambling undead filled the basin. Bones rattled, teeth clacked, fingers elongated toward the living. There was nothing remaining of the spirits once inhabiting those shells; now they were just puppets of rotten flesh and peeled bone made to dance at the tune of dark magic.

Even as they were emerging from their shallow graves, dirt pouring from eyes sockets, the undead reached for their victims.

The first three skeletons to arrive in reach were cloven by Durind with a single strike. The sword’s keen edge, reinforced by blessings and Aethyr, sundered foul enchantments and rotten body as it was paper, sending pieces of undead flying.

Trampling the still-twitching bodies, the Duke stepped amidst the shambling horde. He swung as he advanced, each strike cleaving undead by the couple. The Duke didn’t bother to defend; he just cut to pieces any undead with broad strikes long before they had a chance to reach him. Durind cut through wrists and chests without even slowing down.

Behind the Duke, the nobles came charging, cutting a swathe through the undead.

Barley and Owen stood beside the Duke, protecting their leader’s sides.

“Please, milord,” the dour lieutenant said. “There’s no need for you to expose yourself so much.”

“Don’t insult me, Owen,” the Duke coldly rebuked him.

Barley laughed, slamming his shield against a skeleton.

The warrior nobles, forming in a wedge-shaped formation, sank into the undead horde like a knife through butter. Axes and swords gleaming with power clove zombies in two, shields slammed against skeletons, breaking bones to pieces. The nobles fought as one, covering and complementing each other. Soon, they were cutting their way through the undead, leaving behind a carpet of trampled earth and dismembered bodies.

“Don’t break formation!” Edward shouted. Despite how easy it was for them to make headway through low-level undead like those, he knew that it was just the beginning.

A young noble, eyes blazing, forced his way between him and Owen, cutting undead as he advanced quickly.

“Back, i said!” The Duke turned a cut that bisected a zombie into a slam of the flat of his sword against the young man’s chest.

The young noble stumbled back with a yelp, then, full of outrage, he whirled toward the Duke.

“Back in formation, boy!” Edward ordered with disdain, unfazed.

The young noble understood his mistake. Bloodlust disappeared from his expression, replaced by mortification. Without a word, he fell back.

The moment lost forced Edward to fall back a step so that Owen could hack down the zombie trying to claw him.

“Young’uns!” Sir Ruthwald said with sarcasm even as he cut down an undead.

“That boy is gonna need another five years' worth of experience before being good enough for the frontline!” Barley quipped.

“Uhm, i’d say four,” Owen commented without a shred of irony.

The usual lack of anything resembling irony in the stern lieutenant had both the knights guffaw. Their laughter was picked up down the line. Everybody knew about the relationship between Owen and jokes, it was one of the running gags amongst their extended group. In the end, the entire group was guffawing, even as they kept cleaving undead.

War really was their natural element.

The Duke allowed himself a brief smile before calling everybody back to order, a shout that had them repress their laughter and focus back on the fight at once.

The Hags had started a new chant, this one interspersed by snarls of outrage for the humans that were ripping apart their defenders, and laughing as they did!

With eerie unison, the Hags swung their staves with a chorus of screeches. Spheres of stained light were shot from them, raining down on the basin. They hit indiscriminately, making no distinction between attackers and defenders. The undead that were hit stumbled, bones and flesh sizzling.

“Shields!” The Duke called.

As one, the nobles raised their shields, forming a wall. A moment later, the projectiles hit them. They smashed against the shields, the runes inscribed on the weapons flaring as they repelled the evil magic. Some of the nobles stumbled back. Two cried out as the projectiles slipped through their defenses and hit them.

“Call upon the Aethyr!” Edward shouted.

The hit nobles turned their cries into shouts, echoing their leader’s. The Aethyr inside of them reacted at their calling, surging to smother the magic of the Hags. Sizzling pieces of leather armors flared with light once and ceased to smolder.

“Forward!”

Holding their shields up, the nobles broke into a jog, holding a disciplined formation even as they slammed and cut their way through the undead.

The outraged howlings of the Hags were reaching a fever pitch now. The monsters made their magic rain down on the basin, but, between their lack of aim and the magic defense of the Aethyr, their attacks did more damage to their own minions than to the attackers.

By then the other two groups were steadily making progress as well. Skirting the edges of the Cup, the flanking attacks met more difficulty from the sharp incline rather than the fewer undead barring their way.

Edward cut down a last zombie and reached the foot of the Bone Ridge.

The ridge itself was less inclined than the initial descent, being more a disordered jumble of tiers of craggy rocks and shrubs rather than crumbly dirt. The gaze of the Duke zipped through it, searching not for the quickest path but for the safest and more comfortable to walk on. His warriors would need to fight uphill already. No point in making their work more difficult than it already was.

Soon, he found what he was searching for, a tortuous path that would need some managing to make. Still, he didn’t order the advance. Instead, he looked for the other groups, waiting for them to catch up. Only when the two Counts and their warriors had reached the base of the hill on turn, he gave the order.

“With me!”

The nobles ignored the remaining undead, charging up the hill behind their leader.

They had barely started their ascent that pockets of undead rose from the scraggly bushes.

“Careful!” The Duke called.

Just in time. As the Hags waved their staves, the undead pushed themselves against small boulders that had been hidden in the vegetation. They pushed them down the ridge, sending them rolling on the ascending knights. Some stopped, slamming against banks of earth or getting stuck between rocks but the others continued rolling, taking more and more speed.

“Disperse!” The Duke ordered.

With practiced speed, like it was a well-rehearsed play, the Aethyr broke formation and dispersed. They threw themselves to the ground, covering their heads with their shields, or launched themselves behind whatever rocky outcropping or conformation of the terrain that could give them shelter.

The boulders came bouncing through, sending dirt fountaining up where they touched the ground. They rolled over prone knights, smashing against the undead lagging behind or slammed themselves to pieces against whatever shelter the warriors had hidden behind.

It was a tense moment of banging and crashing, and then it was over.

“Anybody hurt?” The Duke called. Hearing no cries of pain meant nothing. A good hit from those stones could kill before giving one had a chance to raise his voice.

One after the other, the Aethyr signaled their being unharmed. Edward felt a surge of relief. Nobody got hurt, thanks to the Gods.

“The Smith be my witness, these animals never ceases to be crafty.” Lord Buckener gingerly got up, patting dirt out of his armor. “Hiding undead and throwing rocks? You think the spawns of the forest shouldn’t be able to conceive such tricks.” The noble’s complexion was red as an apple.

“I just wish they became less tricky,” Lord Warstone grumbled. The man’s face and head were covered in dirt fountained from a boulder smashing a palm away from his head. “A nice confrontation in open battle would be refreshing, for a change.”

Edward smiled. “Craftiness will remain as long as war exists, i fear, my lord.”

“Well spoken,” Buckener appreciated with the air of the connoisseur. “The words of Moore himself.”

Warstone got up, fastidiously patting at his head. “Well, nothing to do about it then. Shall we, my lords?”

Edward nodded and called for Barley and Owen. The two, a bit ragged by the encounter, were quickly at his side.

“Formation!” The Duke called, and the nobles formed up once more in a wedge.

“Advance!”

With a single, thundering word of acknowledgment, they resumed their advance up the Ridge.

Seeing the attackers completely unfazed, the Hags started to have their howls tinted by fear. Clutching their staves close, they held their brutish heads together, grunting and snorting at each other. After a while, they seemed to have grudgingly reached some kind of agreement.

Grabbing hold with their staves with both hands, they raised them toward the sky and bellowed at the unison. Their cries filled the Cup, again and again.

“What the hell is going on with those beasts now,” Barley exclaimed as they cut their way through the few undead occupying the ridge.

Beside him, the priestess frowned. “That’s not magic…” She muttered. “It’s like…”

The Hags gave a last, ear-shattering bellow, then quickly drew back, giving way to a group of dark figures.

As brutish and wild the Hags had been, these newcomers were poised and silent. Heavy suits of dark armor covered them completely, making them look more like steel statues rather than living beings. Cruel weapons were clutched into spiked gauntlets. Breath crackling with frost came from slits in helmets.

A wave of startled recognition passed through the nobles.

“Gods‘ Mercy!” Barley exclaimed. “Winterkin! The Winterkin are here!”

Winterkin. The cold, armored Fey that had marched with steely discipline behind the Winter King. The frigid, ruthless cold that numbed minds and froze flesh. The snowstorm that relentlessly beat over the vagabond’s head, crushing his spirit even as it sang of death to his heart. The silent, all-encompassing chill that grasped the land in a deadly embrace.

They had trampled cities and armies beneath their armored boots, their might such that all of Avurran had to unite to stop them. And now they were there, watching silently down the Ridge toward the humans.

The Aethyr wavered. Few of them had crossed swords with the Winterkin, the rest knowing them only through legends and tales.

But the Duke wouldn’t waver.

“Don’t relent!” He shouted. “They are nothing but already defeated dregs! We crushed them once! We will do it again!”

His words steadied the nobles. The Duke was right. Moore had led their ancestors to victory against those monsters. As their heirs, they would do the same.

Almost as responding to that defiance, the Winterkin’s breathings seemed to increase, the air before them filling with snowy fragments.

Then, without any warning, they disappeared into clouds of mist and snow. Howling as angry spirits, the mist rushed down the Ridge.

The Duke shouted a warning, and the nobles raised their shields.

The mist slammed into them like a battering ram. Aethyr right on its path were thrown bodily backward, those only grazed slammed against their own comrades.

Amidst the chaos, the mist turned back into the massive forms of the Winterkin. Even as they retook solid form, the Fey swung their weapons, slamming them against the humans. The nobles did their best to hold back the assault but the might of the Winter Fey was incredible. Each of their blows sent splinters flying from shields.

The line of the humans bent inward.

Edward shook his head, pushing the dizziness away. The assault had sent him slamming against the second line of their formation. Dots danced before his eyes and his chest hurt something fierce but he ignored it.

Districating himself from the grasp of two younger nobles, the Duke advanced toward the melee.

“How dares Winter return?!” He called in outrage. “Sniveling dogs! We’ve already taken your King’s head. You wish for us to wipe you all out?!?”

In all response, a Winterkin swung at him with a massive blade. The Duke deftly diverted the blow, sending it wide.

“As you wish, then!”

He smashed Durind on the Fey’s head with such strength that the creature’s helmet rang like a bell. The Winterkin wobbled for a moment, then, like it was a puppet drawn from invisible strings, it came back at him swinging. But he was slow, ponderous. Edward evaded it and hit it again.

“They are done!” He shouted. “They are just phantoms held on by lingering malice! Destroy them once and for all!”

“That’s right!” Amaliel echoed him.

The priestess dueled with a lumbering Winterkin, nimbly dancing around the massive fey while administering blistering fast stabs with her sword.

“The Winterkin are shadows devoid of purpose! Empty shells! Put them off their misery!”

She raised her sword, calling the blessing of Atlanta with a clear voice. Her weapon glowed with steely light.

Unfazed, the Winterkin swung, but the priestess dodged with preternatural speed. Her sword pierced straight through the Fey’s chest armor, leaving a smoking hole edged by pale flame. The Winterkin didn’t even flinch. He kept attacking the slippery woman, but the hole kept smoking and smoldering.

“Lady of Blades!” Amariel shouted, and the warriors all around felt filled with renewed strength.

Hearing the words of their leader and priestess, the nobles rallied.

The shock of the first assault overcome, the Aethyr attacked with ferocity. The Winterkin were powerful but slow and few, their movements jerky and cumbersome. They repelled some attacks but then swords started to find weak spots in their armors, sinking in whatever frigid essence laid underneath. Many of the dark warriors fell under a flurry of blows, disgregating in snow and mist even as they fell.

The line, that had looked to be on the verge of buckling, reformed, then started to advance, pushing the Winterkin back.

Edward found back his place between Owen and Barley. He exchanged a quick nod with his lieutenant and then they pushed on together.

It just looked like they would ascend all the way to the summit when the Hags’ voices returned to make themselves heard. More undead emerged from the tangle atop the hill, while those that the Aethyr had slain twitched back to unlife, struggling to put themselves back together.

“Oh gods, not again!” Ruthwald complained.

Bogged down by the Winterkin, the nobles found themselves surrounded by shambling forms.

Using a moment of pause from combat, Edward watched his soldiers. They still went strong but they were starting to get tired. Looking for the other groups, he saw one struggling to move around a trait of bad terrain while the other had met a knot of stronger undead and were busy cutting their way through.

The Duke set his jaw. Nothing to it. They would just have to slash their way through. If they could cut down at least a Hag…

He hadn’t completed that thought that a breeze like a cold breath rippled over him. He felt a shiver and, out of instinct, he looked back.

The reserve, seeing their comrades being bogged down, had been moving to help. They had been slowed down by the resurging undead and were busy cutting a path, but it wasn’t them that the Duke looked at. Instead, all of his attention was for a lonely figure standing on the rim of the Cup. Its tattered black robe fluttering in the wind, he clutched a long staff in gnarled hands. It should have been impossible given the distance, but Edward still saw withered lips move under the cowl.

As the figure spoke, a cold breeze swept the basin. It carried whispers of many voices, unintelligible but still everybody that heard them understood they spoke of rest and ending.

The humans shivered. The undead faltered. Their already jerky movements turned sluggish. Already rotten flesh failed and started to slough off. Bones creaked and fell from sockets.

The Hags screamed, not in rage this time, but in fear as their magic was dispelled. Even the Winterkin slowed down, like if their weapons had suddenly become too heavy to lift.

Edward swallowed. Whispers danced at the edge of his comprehension, just a breath away from understanding. Luckily so, his instinct told him.

Steadying himself, he raised his sword.

“The Bonespeaker comes!” He shouted. “When the need is dire, the Bonespeaker arrives!”

It was an ancient proverb but proven right again and again down the centuries. Overcoming their unease, the other Aethyr picked up the cheering.

As they did, a group of mounted horsemen bursted out of the woods. An old man swathed in priestly garbs led them, holding aloft a shining object.

The horsemen ran down the incline in a diagonal path, their mounts, horses small but tough-looking, showing an incredible ability to manage the terrain. The few undead trying to bar their way fell as puppets which strings had been cut the moment the light shone over them.

“The Bishop!” A noble called with enthusiasm. “The Radiant Light is here!”

The nobles cheered and redoubled their efforts, none as much as Amaliel, the priestess steely determined in showing her Goddess none the inferior.

Between the Bonespeaker and Bishop’s magic and the swords of the Aethyr, the battle was quickly concluded.

The Hags tried to defend themselves but as soon as the Duke cut down one of their numbers, something seemed to break in the remaining two. They tried to escape, only to be surrounded and cut to pieces. The Undead failed as soon as the magic binding them together disappeared, returning to be just dead flesh and dusty bone. The Winterkin kept fighting until only snow and mist remained of them.

In the end, the nobles remained masters of the field.

Tired but triumphant, they gathered on top of the hill. The evil power coming from the tangle of vegetation dissuaded anyone from entering it. They decided that they would just chop down anything flammable around the hill and then give the top at the flames.

But that was work for peasants. They had some cheering to do instead.

“Powerful on the charge but slow in protracted combat,” Lord Buckener mused aloud. “It’s a comfort that the Winterkin haven’t changed from the last time i crossed sword with one of their numbers.”

“They’re done!” The young Exford shouted. “The defeat of their King broke them!”

“And if they’ll ever try to rise again, we will be ready to face them!” A Count cheered.

His words were picked up by all the presents, becoming a mighty cheer as all the nobles raised their weapons.

“Always! For Blackstone!”

The Duke smiled, weary but deeply satisfied.

“A magnificent day, comrades. Once again, we upheld our duties and dispatched the evil tainting our lands. To victory!”

“To victory!”

“Rest now. You deserved it.”

The nobles cheered again, then broke ranks to take some rest before the ride back.

Owen at his side, Edward went to meet the group of horsemen that had come at their help and now waited by aside.

“Your Eminence,” he said, bowing formally at the man leading them.

The Bishop dismounted with the help of two of his soldiers. He carefully patted down his robe, then addressed the Duke.

He was a man of a stocky build, a fact only increased by the priestly robes he wore. Two large, inquisitive eyes stood in a face crisscrossed with deep lines and wrinkles. He wore a frown so deep that seemed to have been sculpted over his features, setting his ample forehead with three crevasses-like lines. His gaze was alight with suspicion, no matter where he laid it over. He was bald, his pate so shiny that it reflected the light. Thin, white hair clung to the sides of his head.

“Ah, my lord Duke,” the old priest greeted in a brusque manner. “A proper fight, that was. My skin still crawls from all that dark magic in the air. And i can still feel it, coming from those trees over there. The lair of the Hags, no doubt. What do you intend to do about it?”

The Duke accepted the Bishop’s brusqueness with good grace. Bishop Sanzanar had always been a man of action, a laudable trait in a man of the church.

He reported to him their intentions about the lair.

“Good idea.” The Bishop agreed after some moments of thinking. “Blessed flames will burn out whatever foulness has taken nest here. But you will have to cut the vegetation to keep the fire from spreading. My men will do it.”

“Milord, there’s no need. We’ll have peasants do that work. Your guards would do better to concentrate their strength in holding you safe.”

“Bah!” The Bishop made a sweeping gesture. “They’ll do it and be grateful for it. Blessed work is all the recompense the good man needs.” He turned to the rest of his escort. “Melvin! See that it’s done!”

Edward avoided adding more protests, and the men trotted away to start the job.

He accompanied the Bishop in his round of greetings to the rest of the nobles. The old priest was brusque and quick, turning coldly polite only when he had to greet Amariel, an attitude that the priestess gave right back.

“You should have waited for us,” the Bishop surly reprimanded once they had finished. “I gathered my men for this, even brought the Relic.”

The Duke felt embarrassed. He didn‘t want to admit that he didn‘t want to expose the old priest to dangers. “I am deeply sorry, Your Eminence.”

The old priest threw him an annoyed glance. “Bah! Whatever. At least you don’t try to search for excuses!”

They stopped at the rim of the hill. A figure swathed in dark was slowly ascending Bone Ridge.

Watching it, Edward felt a touch of cold sweat over his forehead. There was still some distance between them but he could hear the air hissing through the rotten teeth of the Bonespeaker as it was breathed against his ear, could feel the slight gurgling of his phlegm-filled throat as it was his own.

He heard the distant caws of the crows.

He noticed that the Bonespeaker left a trail of marks behind himself. With a start, he realized that it was blood: the bloody footprints left by naked feet that walked over fragments of bones.

He did his best to hide his discomfort, wondering for a moment how much of a good job he was doing. The Bishop’s soft sneer told him that it wasn’t too good.

He steadied himself.

“We offer our greetings to the Bonespeaker,” he said with a bow.

There was no other title amongst the priests of No-Eyes, and if there was, the secretive practitioners kept it to themselves. For the people, they were all the Bonespeakers, the mouthpieces of Lady Death.

The Bonespeaker stopped some distance away.

“We accept your greetings, o living man,” he said with a hissing voice that was like cold air escaping from a crypt. “And offer ours to you. May your light glow long.”

Edward said nothing, just accepting the greeting with a bow.

“We thank you for your help, venerable,” the Duke said.

The Bonespeaker nodded with his cowled head and said nothing.

There was nothing to add, Edward knew, no cheering to be had or further thanks to being given. The Bonespeakers didn’t accept the first and cared not for the latter. They acted following their own agenda and spoke only of things that were inherent to it. The rest was silence.

“Greetings, dark one,” the Bishop said brusquely, unfazed by the dark priest. “I trust you are in good health.”

The Bonespeaker just watched the man for a long moment, nodded and turned away.

“Damn creep,” The Bishop muttered.

Edward coughed awkwardly, making his best to look elsewhere.

As he tried to, his attention was caught toward the direction the Bonespeaker was looking toward.

The reserve group was making its way through the basin toward them, but it wasn’t that the old priest was watching. His gaze went beyond, toward a smaller group that had appeared at the brim of the Cup.

Edward frowned, recognizing the colorful clothes of ladies. And not any lady. He would recognize his daughters anywhere.

“What are they doing here…”

He was instantly alarmed. It was just like Claire to drag her sister and a bunch of their friends to look to the battlefield. Problem was, there could be strugglers around. Any kind of vermin gathered around Hags’ lairs, creatures that ran from fights and came out for ambushes.

He had just finished that thought when a ruckus exploded in the woods. Edward watched with horror as a pack of Dire Rats swarmed out of the foliage, bounding straight for the imprudent ladies.

“No!”