“What are they doing Elendria?” I asked later that night. We had gotten back after killing the fetch and the gancanagh, and I was surprised to see that it had been barely enough experience to level up. I was just pulling up the list of possible adaptations, eager to spend my points when Elendria warned me that the undead were coming.

“I don’t know. There are a lot of them, but they are staying about a quarter mile away. They’ve spread out in a semicircle.”

“Right. Help me make a shield?” I asked, reaching out a hand. She smiled as she took it, and we worked together to blend our magics to make a barrier against whatever they were going to send against us. We kept it simple, infusing it with light magic as well to try and counter whatever they attacked with. It wasn’t long after we had set up our protective sphere, having made sure to protect from underground attacks as well, before we felt the first of the attacks.

“What, is that?” I asked, confused. It felt odd, as if it were just brushing up against our shield and not really trying to break it. It surrounded us, only coming up to about our knees and would rhythmically hit the barrier gently and bounce off.

“Poison gas.” Elendria said after a while. “They must have place a barrier around us to prevent it from esc-“

*KABOOM!*

Her words were lost as a massive attack slammed against our shield, the sound of an explosion deafening me for a split second. Once we recovered, we looked at each other, fully expecting another attack. After ten minutes, we relaxed a bit.

“That was unexpected.” She said, and I started to get a sinking feeling in my gut.

“Or maybe not.” I replied, sitting down. “Have I mentioned I hate having intelligent opponents? Because I really do.”

“What do you mean?” She asked, slipping around behind me and massaging my shoulders.

“If I’m right, and I pray that I’m not, we are in for a long and annoying night. They are smart enough to realize that we are too strong for a head on confrontation. So they are going to weaken us in the most efficient matter possible. They’ll hang back, and keep that poison there so we have to maintain a barrier. Yeah, if we head out we could kill a few of them while they scattered, but it would waste our energy. If we bunker down, they will hit our shield with a loud attack at random intervals. It’ll rattle our nerves, preventing us from sleeping as we wait for the next attack.”

*KABOOM!*

“See? There it is. They have enough casters there that they can alternate and never run below half mana. And undead don’t need to sleep. So they wear us down mentally, and wait for us to start making mistakes tomorrow.”

“Oh, those insidious bastards!” Elendria snarled, grasping the point immediately. “And we can’t even use your sound cancelling shield, because then we would suffocate.” I nodded, trying to relax.

True to their plan, the bombardment would occur anywhere between five and thirty minutes. Occasionally they would let the same gap occur twice or three times, but that was all. The trios? Almost immediately followed by a new attack at five minutes. By the end of three hours, we were both snapping at each other, almost immediately apologizing. At four hours, the pacing started.

“Hey. What if.” Elendria started, animatedly talking with her hands as she continued pacing. “What if we set up some sort of early warning system? At least we would know when something was incoming and we-“

*KABOOM!*

“we could STOP HAVING TO WAIT OUT THE NEXT ATTACK LIKE CHILDREN COWERING IN THE DARK!” She screamed, facing the direction the attacks had been coming from. Her chest and shoulders were heaving, and I’ll admit a certain part of me enjoyed the view for a brief moment before I realized just how close to the edge she was.

“That’s a good idea.” I said, pulling her into a hug. I gently started rubbing her shoulders and arms, holding her close. “Why don’t you set up a thin shield of mana between us and them? Just enough that if it gets broken, you’ll know and can say incoming.”

“Okay. Okay. I’m okay.” She muttered, but I could feel the tension in her arms as she was constantly clenching and relaxing her fists. “Ok. Yeah, early warning sounds good. I’ll, I’ll get right on that.” She took a few deep breaths to calm and center herself, then a few more as they didn’t seem to work. She immediately calmed down a bit, relaxing into a bed.

“Incoming.” She calmly said fifteen minutes later.

*KABOOM!*

For the next hour and a half, we both managed to remain calm as she predicted each and every attack. “Thanks Sean. For supporting me on the warning system, and for helping me keep calm. You were right, the not knowing when that. Oh crap, incoming again.” She said, closing her eyes and waiting for the explosion. The explosion that never came. “Huh? I could have sworn?” She muttered, and I felt her reconnect the mana screen. “Anyway, the not knowing. That was worse than knowing it would be occurring at the same interval. What the? Incoming again.”

Again we waited, but nothing happened. “Oh no. No nonononono!” Elendria started talking so fast the no’s merged into one mumbled word. “You can’t do this YOU CAN’T DO THIS YOU SADISTIC BASTARDS!”

“What’s wrong Elendria?” I asked.

“They. Them. They are sending a small spell to interrupt my warning system! Incoming again!”

*KABOOM!*

“There! They’re doing it on purpose!” She cried, hands trembling as she shrunk in on herself. She curled up into a sitting ball, and started muttering, “Be strong. You are strong, find your inner strength. Be worthy.” After a few minutes, she stopped rocking, and stood up. “Damnit grandmother, I could really use some of that tea.” She turned to me and asked, “Hey, you got any long range light attacks that could kill them as they group up?”

“Yeah, I got something. I think I can even make it break the sound barrier.” I said, convinced I could make a bullet infused with light energy.

“Sound barrier? I’ve never heard of that.” She said.

“Ah, it must be something from back on my world. They used to believe that humans would never move faster than the speed of sound. So they called it a barrier. They didn’t realize people used to do it quite often, they just didn’t survive the experience.”

“I see. So why are you so excited about it moving-“ She trailed off, eyes widening. “Wait, if it moves faster than sound, then it will hit before they can even hear it coming!”

“That’s my girl.” I said, smiling. “Now, you are better at soul sensing than me. Tell me which one is the strongest, and the top three targets if you can.”

“Yes!” She said, excitedly. “Oh, tricky tricky! The strongest is the third from the left. The next two strongest are anchoring the right side of the line. The middle group is the weakest, despite the staff the middle one is holding.”

“Alright, I think I’ll just take out what I can on the left side. Switching so far over will probably make me miss.” I said, taking my time to aim the spell. I had never actually fired a bullet this far, and wasn’t about to try my luck with a headshot when a center of mass attack would do just as well. Once I had what I thought would work, I fired two bullets toward the strongest mage, just in case one missed. As soon as they were on the way, I went almost to a spray and pray sort of attack. I did manage to notice that the strongest mage had tried to react to my spells, only to be struck long before he could finish his shield. His death caused a split second of confusion in the ranks, until they started hearing the sounds from my attacks. That caused all of them to kick into gear, scattering as they desperately tried to conjure shields. The strongest of them simply teleported away, making me glad that I didn’t try and take them down as well.

“Damn, I think I only got four of them.” I said, shaking my head.

“Three. The last one only lost an arm.” Elendria corrected. “Though it was amazing how fast your spells crossed the distance! I wonder how fast they were going?”

“If I remember right, it should be somewhere around 750 miles per hour. I think just over that.” I said, dropping back into our shelter and reestablishing the spherical shield. We had simply turned it into an open ended cylinder when we went out to attack.

“And you said people travel faster than this? How?”

“That is probably something where you will claim we are all mad. We made machines for flying, and a lot of them started out as basically machines that would use controlled explosions behind them to throw themselves forward.”

She shook her head at my explanation. “That is really madness. What other wonders does your world hold that started out as some form of madness?”

“Oh, I’m sure we have a lot you would have thought was absolute madness. If you thought small explosions for flight were crazy, we made it to space by strapping ourselves to tanks of explosive chemicals that were several stories tall. We have beaten diseases by injecting ourselves with the dead organisms that cause it. Instead of the randomness of cross pollinating species of plants, we have gone inside the plants themselves and picked and chosen what traits we want, then implanted that into a new species. We have created ships that can go safely underwater, and some that are so well armored that they can survive incredible amounts of water pressing upon them. Imagine the weight of a column of water as tall as a mountain. Now imagine a machine that can protect someone inside it so they can dive that deeply and return safely.”

“Do you think I could visit your world with you when you go?” She asked quietly.

I pulled her in close. “Yes. Even if the gods can’t send you there with me, I’m an Astral Wanderer. I’ll just get there, then make a portal back to Vitae and get you.” She leaned her head back and relaxed. “Go ahead and get some rest hun. I’ll keep an eye out for them to return, and wake you up if need be.”

“Thanks Sean.” She said, eyes slowly closing and soon enough her breathing was calm and even. I let her sleep for about six hours before I woke her for my own shift, knowing she would need the extra rest after all the stress we just went through. I was surprised that the mages hadn’t returned to harass us in the night, but chalked it up to our unexpectedly effective assault.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

“Are you sure this will work like you say it will?” Elendria asked one last time.

“I’m positive. We just have to make sure to contain the gas. It is really nasty.” I said. She was concerned about my latest idea for taking out the undead.

“And how again are you guaranteeing that it won’t destroy the items in the stores? Because we sort of promised that we would try and destroy as little as possible.”

“Right, but most stores keep their stuff on tables. This gas will fill the room from the bottom up, and so long as we don’t let it get above the table we will be fine. Look, here’s a group of skeletons to try it out on.” I said, pointing out the group that was already charging at us down main street. To their shock, I made a bubble shield around them. “Oh excellent, they have a ghoul as well.” I said, noticing the fleshy creature as I started filling the bubble with hydrogen fluoride gas. Combined with a bit of water, and it became a nightmare of a chemical: hydrofluoric acid.

“So tell me how this stuff works again.” Elendria complained as we watched the skeletons futilely attacking the shield. The mana they were draining from it form their attacks was barely outdoing my regeneration rate.

“Ok. The strength of your bones comes from something called calcium. The fluoride portion of this gas pulls the calcium out of your bones. It also goes straight through skin, leaving it alone. I don’t have time for that, so I’m using a high concentration. That’s why the ghouls feet are showing signs of burning.” I pointed out. As we watched, one of the skeleton’s ankles broke, and it fell backward. As soon as it dropped below knee height, all the metal it was wearing started to corrode. “And that’s the downside. This stuff reacts with glass, metal, bones. Damn near everything. If you want to store it, you really need plastics. Something your world never invented.” Elendria watched with dawning horror as everything in the shield died.

“Sean, you can’t use this.” She said, staring at me. “This, it’s too much.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused. “They are undead. They don’t feel anything.”

“Yes, but it’s slowly dissolving them! I never would have thought your world would actually have a way to poison the undead, that’s why I suggested it this morning! Just imagine the trauma you are inflicting on those souls!”

“Alright, alright.” I said, letting the shield fall and using a large gust of wind to disperse the gas I had summoned. “I had forgotten about the souls involved. Lore from my world always portrayed undead as soulless things.”

“Thank you.” She said, though for what exactly I didn’t know. We started forward, only to pause by an alleyway as we heard crying. I started down there first, noticing a small girl hunched over something.

“Sean.” Elendria warned.

“Daddy, it hurts. It hurts I’m so hungry Daddy.” She was sobbing, but I was having none of that. A single little girl surviving in a city of undead? Yeah, right. “Let me drink from you DADDY!” So when the little vampire turned and flew at me, I was more than ready to catch her in a gravity field, chuckling as she swung her arms ineffectively at me.

“Why do you vampires always go for the little girl thing? Like a small girl would ever manage to survive in a city of undead.” I asked, shaking my head. “Burn in the light.” I ordered, creating a solar sphere around her, and a barrier outside that to keep her screams from alerting the entire neighborhood. We were near the market area today, and I was worried about one of two possibilities.

The easiest possibility would of course be that all the undead stayed at home. The bad one would be if they went about their daily lives as if this never happened. As we approached the main bazaar, we could hear clinking and shuffling bodies. “This is going to be a nightmare to clear.” Elendria said.

“Maybe, maybe not. Can you make a bunker here for us?”

“Easily. What are you going to do?” She asked, eyes narrowed at me.

“I’m going to get their attention, then run back down this empty street to you. When they come out after me, I’ll have overlapping fields of claymore fire to turn it into a killing field. Coupled with the Death’s Embrace constellation, that should take out anything physical. I’ll add in a bit of light magic to the claymores just in case they have incorporeal undead as well.”

“Very well. I’ll make my ice a few inches thick, just in case.” She said, sitting down to create an oversized bunker. I made two claymores to each side of the bunker, followed by six on each side of the street in a staggered pattern. Each claymore was on a stone post, elevating them to between hip and shoulder height. So far all the undead had been humanoid, but just before I went to gather those in the bazaar I remembered the vampire. Sighing, I went back and added a few claymores at ground height, just in case there were child sized undead. A look back at Elendria assured me she was ready, and I headed toward the bazaar to see what we were dealing with.

If it wasn’t full of undead, it honestly would be a normal day. The center was dominated by a massive statue of an elf holding up the sun one handed, with several different varieties of elves arranged in a circle around him and bowing in prayer. The rays of the sun shot out jets of water into the pool below. Shops were arranged on each side of the street, most of them with simple cloths between them. Shopkeepers tended to be normal skeletons, their guards looked like undead trolls. Vampires, zombies, and ghosts did their daily shopping, while skeleton guards walked around keeping a spectral eye on things. There were child sized undead, some with their parents and some looking like street urchins. True to crowds everywhere, they all seemed to ignore me for the time being. At least they did until I blasted the nearest skeleton in the head with a bullet.

“What? He was looking at me funny.” I said, taunting them.

“EEEIIIIAAAAEEEEEEE!!!!” A little zombie girl screeched as she pointed at me, and I took off with the horde at my heels. Just as I was jumping over the wall Elendria had made, I made the coffin constellation above us and set off the claymores. A shock of cold went through my foot as something spectral clawed at it, but it was obliterated in the destruction that followed. I had to cover my ears from the cacophony of wails that were being emitted, but it was worth it to see almost the entirety of the bazaar being destroyed in one fell swoop. Unfortunately the slowest ones were the troll guards, and there were six of them that avoided the destruction. They held back, shielding their eyes from the light of the constellation.

“You ok?” Elendria asked, helping pull me to my feet. I stumbled a bit, my right ankle having lost feeling.

“I should be ok. Something slashed at my foot, but it wasn’t physical.” Elendria stared at me, but I gave her a reassuring smile.

“Ice lance.” She turned to the trolls and sent a lance in their direction, shocked when it simply shattered against their fat. “Damnit. Whose bright idea was it to turn a troll into a zombie? You’ll have to take their heads off, then incinerate the body.”

“Alright.” I said, stumbling forward. It wasn’t that I couldn’t walk normally, but having lost feeling in something like the heel of your foot just makes coordinating difficult. You don’t trust your steps. As I neared, the trolls seemed to sense my weakness, and charged. That made it much easier to raise up with a bit of gravity magic and send several void slashes through their necks, their bodies tumbling forward under their momentum and crushing whatever was in front of them.

“These are going to stink, aren’t they?” I asked Elendria.

“Well, they stink when you burn them normally, so I think yes. They are going to smell even worse.”

Nodding at her, I went ahead and created a mana shield around the bodies before filling the area with the hottest plasma I could create. Once I felt everything was burnt to completion, I extended the shield into a vertical chimney so we wouldn’t be pelted with the smoke. With that out of the way, we entered the now empty bazaar and started looking around.

“Split up but stay close? I want to see what they have for items and potions here.” Elendria said.

“Sure. You take one side of the street, I’ll take the other. Let’s go clockwise.” She nodded, heading toward the inner ring of the bazaar. The first shop I came to had a bunch of rugs, but nothing seemed magical. Their designs tended toward repeating geometric symbols, with a lot of bright reds and oranges.

The next shop I thought I would hit paydirt, as it was a jewelry shop. Each piece was intricately carved, though most of it was of nature scenes. As I reached for a fantastically carved wolf head howling at the full moon behind it, I started feeling queasy. For a second, the wolf howling turned into a demonic beast snarling, the moon shedding a bloodlust inducing red light. I quickly jerked my hand back, only to see it return to normal, making me wonder if it was all in my imagination.

“Easy Sean. It’s just a piece of jewelry. You can’t be scared of it, can you?” I muttered, moving on to a different piece. Ah, the tree of life. This one grew thorns, and the limbs and roots started shifting. It was as if the plant fed on blood, and would slowly drain you to nourish itself. No matter what piece I reached for, it would always warp just before I touched it.

“Sean?” I heard from behind me, and I saw Elendria looking sickly.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, across the room in a flash.

“Everything. It all warps! I thought it was just in my mind, but I’ve checked three shops! I think, I dunno.”

“Easy now, you aren’t crazy. I’ve been feeling the same thing as I reach for items.”

“Oh thank Shalora it isn’t just me!” She said, pulling me out of the store. “It isn’t just the people. All the items here are cursed too!”

“That’s why nobody has been bringing out loot, isn’t it?” I muttered as we walked through the now creepy bazaar. “It’s all been cursed, and nobody has been able to break the final curse and free everything.”

“I guess so. Come on, let’s head to the noble’s district next. I’ll bet that’s where a lot of the more evolved enemies are.” She said, pulling me away.