Lightning struck again and the sound of thunder followed the hellish flash of light as it illuminated the faceless faces of the undead wandering in the distance.

‘Quickly, run! They are almost upon us!’ cried Rhyddion Lux as he kept his greatsword close, but when he turned around he saw the corpses closing in in front of them now as well.

‘Tristan! Clear us a path!’

Tristan raised his broad shield and stormed into the crowd of corpses with a sound that equaled the thunder that rumbled in the background. With loud screams, the hideous creatures fell to the ground and were quickly cut down by the weapons that followed Tristan’s charge. They stormed through the dense crowd until the rotting arms couldn’t reach them anymore.

‘Keep running, don’t look back!’ yelled Rhyddion as they ran across the plain.

The stable faded in the distance and so did the undead.

‘I need a breather, Lux. Stop!’ cried Shanondarion.

‘They’re not that far behind us, so we cannot stay in one place too long, Archmage,’ said Rhyddion.

‘Where’s Zakariah?’ asked Tristan when he couldn’t spot the oversized backpack anywhere.

‘Forget about the old man! He is lost!’ said the Archmage as the rain descended on his exhausted face.

‘No! We will hide till dawn, when the creatures return to their earthly graves, and then we’ll look for Zakariah.’ said Varius Darren.

As another flash of lighting lit up the nocturnal sky they saw a house on a hill, not far from their location.

‘That house still seems in good shape. That’s where we’ll go!’

Varius turned into the direction of the house and everyone followed him towards the safe haven.

The sun rose and the storm had passed. Not too far from the house upon the hill were the remains of what went down that night. The house upon the hill was still in perfect shape and wasn’t anything like the small shacks that our heroes encountered before. It looked more like a stone mansion than a house actually.

‘This must’ve belonged to a nobleman,’ said Tristan as he looked at the luxurious furniture.

‘Strange place for a nobleman to live,’ said Shannon as he looked at some vials filled with a dark, red liquid.

‘The sun has risen, people,’ Rhyddion opened the door and stepped outside. ‘We’d better find Zakariah before the sun goes down again. Afterwards, we’ll come back here to prepare ourselves for the long journey ahead. We cannot stay here any longer, the Countryside isn’t safe anymore.’

The others agreed and followed Rhyddion back to the abandoned stable. The air around the stable was filled with flies and the smells of death and decay and the ground covered in corpses.

‘Varius, why don’t you scour the place for any signs of Zakariah,’ said Rhyddion.

As Royal Scoutmaster, Varius had some skill in finding and following tracks, but the tracks he found behind the stable were far different from any he had ever seen.

‘Rhyddion, look at this,’ said Varius as he knelt down and smelled the ground around the tracks. ‘This set of tracks turned into drag marks are definitely Zakariah’s, but these belong to something different entirely.’ Varius pointed to a huge hill not too far away. ‘I think they lead to that hill over there.’

The hill was surrounded by large stones and crowned with a single dead tree. The tracks did indeed lead to the hill, to a dark tunnel on the bottom of the hill, carefully hidden by the large stones that were placed on both sides of the entrance. A foul smell emerged from the darkness ahead and the ground was littered in all kinds of bones.

‘Do we have to go in there?’ asked the shaking Simon.

‘Zakariah’s down there, we have to go in there,’ said Tristan as he lit a torch.

‘Lead the way, Tristan, we’re right behind you,’ said Rhyddion as they, although some reluctantly, entered the narrow tunnel.

There was no light in the seemingly endless tunnel apart from the single torch in Tristan’s hand. The ground cracked at every step they took and Simon nearly fainted when he noticed the skulls beneath his feet. In the distance, Tristan saw a light.

‘There’s light over there! Let’s head towards it to find out what hides in this foul place.’

The light came closer and closer as the tunnel became wider. The end of the tunnel revealed a large cave. The ceiling was littered with holes through which rays of sunlight lit up the cave. Tree roots were reaching down in to the abyss below them and huge cocoons were hanging from their narrow tips. Tristan looked down from the edge into the darkness below them, a darkness untouched by the sun’s light.

‘Was this place underneath us all this time?’ asked Simon.

‘I think we’ll soon find the answer to the riddle of those missing villagers, Lux,’ said the Archmage grimly.

‘I bet Zakariah’s down there,’ said Varius as they started following a narrow path along the abyss into the darkness until they reached the bottom.

‘The air feels heavy down here and I can smell that stench from the stable again,’ said the Archmage.

Suddenly they heard some sort of demonic screech in the distance, it chilled the very marrow in their bones.

‘What in the world was that?’ asked Simon as his face grew pale.

‘It doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before,’ said Varius as he peeked into the distance.

‘Look!’ cried Tristan. ‘It’s Zakariah!’

Zakariah was bound to the wall with some kind of slimy threads, but he was not alone. He was surrounded by some villagers who were also bound to the wall. Their faces were pale, but they still seemed to have some life left in them. Zakariah raised his eyes and saw his companions rushing towards him.

‘Stay back! Stay back! They’re coming!’ hissed Zakariah as he looked in terror at something stirring in the distance.

From the darkness a flock of strange creatures emerged. Eyeless, earless, their faces replaced by huge, gaping holes filled with rows of razor sharp teeth. Long, thin arms and legs, which they both used to crawl across the cave’s surface, with hook-like claws attached to their fingertips. Long tails followed their slender, black bodies as they rushed across the bone-ridden floor, towards their prey. Tristan recognized the creatures from one of Zakariah’s drawings.

‘Leeches! They’re Leeches! They’re real!’ whispered he as he and his companions hid behind a rock. They quickly dimmed their light and darkness was all around them now. Slowly their eyes got used to the darkness and they now noticed that Zakariah’s body was missing from the wall.

‘Where did he go?’ said Tristan.

‘Over there!’ said Varius as they quietly started following the Leeches to a single room where they noticed a faint light and on the walls they saw a shadow, it wasn’t one of the Leeches’ shadows, it was the shadow of…a man.