A dream: A repetitive thump drumming in your ear, beat after beat, like someone smacking sticks together. You can also hear the clanging of metal on metal. There is a dark cloud overhead seeming to be coming from behind you and slowly sliding forward. The leading edge of it rises and falls and is moves ever forward. The edge of it is like a line with a small bulge in the center. You yourself are motionless unmoving, as the dark cloud passed overhead, your gaze too is fixed facing only foward, as the light of the sun is obscured by the depth of the cloud, you feel a chill pass over you. A sensation passes over you, like the same chill now passed into your emotion and the warmth of happiness is gone and a cold sadness is all that remains. The sounds are getting closer, you can hear it coming from behind you, a large mass of sound. It seems to be surrounding you coming from almost all the way around behind you. Then you start to see a single skeleton, articulated and moving, walking forward. It seems to be wearing shreds of armor a rusted helm on its head. A spear in its hand, the tip is metal and it too is rusted, the shaft made of wood that is covered in moss. Then another appears in your view, then another, then more and more appear. Some appear to be in different stages of decay, some still with flesh attached to the shambling bones. Some still with gleam in the metal of their armor, and others all remnants of armor are gone. As they pass you the ones in the front begin to slow and the group of them becomes more and more compact. The repeated drumming is bone against bone as they walk. The ground begins to shake in time with heavy footfalls, a huge skeletal form steps over you and joins in the mass of those ahead of you, the skeleton is only bone now browned by age, It stands several times taller than the other ones around its feet. It has as a weapon some kind of club or cudgle, the size of a small tree with a large bit of stone attached to the end. It makes its way into the midst of the host and smaller ones around move out of its way without even seeing it coming. They are all just standing there, unmoving.

At the crest of the hill on the other side of the field you are on you can see figures start to appear. First to appear are riders, but the steeds they ride while they appear to be horses, something is off with them and it isn’t until they ride closer that you can see the horses and riders of the oncoming force are also not quite alive. Horses half bone and half decaying flesh wreathed in a sort of light that fills in the gaps in flesh. Those coming toward you loft a pole into the air, atop it some kind of emblem a skull, fashion in artistic form from metal, it glitters in the light as if gilded, or possessing some magic. The riders with their standard now lifted continue to the foot of the hill. Over the hill comes more, this time infantry, walking, or marching rather in close formation with great order. Blocks of troops moving together They crest the top of the hill and stop, coming to a halt all at once without audible instruction or command. The two forces, one in ordered blocks the other in a seamless rabble stand opposite one another, neither moving. There is a stillness here unlike normal troops who would still be shuffling or whispering to one another or nervously shifting there gear. There is no movement, only the wind causing some of the loose bits of armor to sway and strands of sundried rotting flesh to flutter slightly.

Then suddenly the dark clouds that are over head erupt and red lightning cracks the sky. It falls toward the riders and seems to instead deflect hard off some invisible force. Then another bolt of crimson lightning comes and another and another and they two deflect off whatever the barrier may be and strike the ground leaving deep holes, searing the ground and setting alight what small grass there is. These small fires quickly growing larger and spreading. Neither side reacts to the fire but instead their dead stares each fall on the others. The field ahead of you quickly becomes obscured by filling black smoke rising off the burning grass, rising like a sheet between the two forces. All you see now is this thick black smoke and the horde of undead before you.

Suddenly the sound of crackling flame is replaced by the sound of marching troops. The ones in front of you are not moving. Suddenly through the smoke the enemy emerges, hundreds upon hundreds bear down on the force in front of you, moving at a near jog in their heavy armor. In no time at all their front lines meet. You see shift out from being a large shield the face of the enemy. Undead. Skeletal, like the troops that you saw move past you. There is more thunder and the undead riders smash into the side of the large mass of troops before you.

You wake