The time for battle was ending and the day was growing long. Sensing that there would be no chance of breaking through the forces arrayed against them and that the nobility had failed in their task, the Ruskian peasantry turned tail and ran. As the men and women of Rusk got far enough away, the Darksol-aligned forces let out a victory cry that seemed to shake the earth. In fact, it was so loud that many stopped their yelling to wonder what could have added to the noise. It was only when they marched back to camp that they realized who, or rather what had added to the cheer.

Lying in the center of the camp was a now visibly less zombified Zombie Dragon. Its rotten flesh was now only occasionally exposed from beneath a layer of thick obsidian-black scales. The beast’s eyes still were naught but ethereal flames, its wings still had holes and tears in them, and its face still had a good 1/4th of the musculature exposed, but the dragon looked far less like it was a ‘zombie’ and more like it was just ‘heavily battle-scarred’. Also, it looked… bigger. A fair bit bigger. Did Lord Kain replace the other one for a newer model?

The massive monster lay upon a pile of gold, jewels and other precious objects, the pile reaching higher than the chins of most of the men. Everyone who had arrived eyed the pile with greed, but none were foolish enough to try and test the beast’s wrath. A deep and terrible laughter emanated from the dragon; whose head coked slightly as its eyelids narrowed around its flaming eyes.

“Oh ho? You envy my bedding? By all means, test my patience and throw yourselves into oblivion by attempting to take what does not belong to you. I am always ready to fight, and I am always hungry.”

“Holy shit! It can talk?!”

No one was sure who spoke after the dragon did, but everyone knew that the one who spoke had signed his own death warrant. The rumbling growl that came from the great beast showed its obvious displeasure, but it then huffed and rested its head on the pile of treasure.

“I have not the patience needed to swat every gnat that buzzes. Supplicate to me, and I shall be merciful.”

The one who had made the dragon angry cautiously walked forward and threw a coin purse on the pile.

“Did I say that I wanted your wealth, worm? Acknowledge that, without my presence, you would have been charged in your vulnerable flank and crushed utterly! Admit my power is what spared you from oblivion!”

“Y-yes! Thank you, great one! I owe my life to you!”

The dragon huffed again, and a smirk crossed its reptilian face.

“Then repay that debt by getting that wretched thing out of my presence.” The dragon said while lifting a claw and pointing somewhere. All eyes followed the claw and came to fall on the form of a Ruskian noble who had found himself in the undesirable position of having been bucked from his horse during the dragon’s attack and landing in the camp latrines, falling in just the right way to leave him a paraplegic. Somehow, this had not killed him and he had, in what seemed to be blind zealotry, pulled himself out, grabbed his sword and tried to fight the massive beast that made him like this.

Said man was now bound by the risen corpses of his fellows and was still struggling against the force applied to him. Occasionally, the sounds of muffled shouts could be heard from the crippled man as he strained against his bonds.

“Uh… Okay…” the unnamed soldier said as he picked up his coin purse and approached the struggling Ruskian noble.

“Let’s get this over with.”

A voice that was as intimidating as that of the dragon, if not more, filled the awkward silence. Kain Anathemas Nekronus, the Emperor of Darksol and the Abominable King that all followers of the Goddess Lumina feared, walked out from inside a tent and tossed a broken sword to the unnamed soldier.

“Ha! Haha!” the dragon laughed. “Yes! The irony would be most enjoyable! You went on and on about how that blade was over a thousand years old, an heirloom passed from father to son, and now the line that the blade started will be ended with that very same blade! Do it, boy! Drive that ancestral sword of his through his flesh, and then let him watch with what little time he has left as that very same weapon is added to my hoard!”

As the soldier approached the noble, the man struggled more and more. The soldier readied the weapon and-!

“Hold it! Forgot to do something.”

Kain snatched the blade from the young man’s hands.

“But why?!” the dragon cried, seemingly heartbroken that it couldn’t watch the show.

“Because,” Kain said as he walked over to the latrines. He flexed his magical muscles a bit and the broken shards of the ancestral sword floated out of the cesspits. “the irony will be much sweeter if the sword is fixed.” The shards reattached to the part that still was connected to the hilt and the connecting points glowed molten hot for a moment and fused the weapon back together. Kain then manifested flames all over the blade, from end to end, which burned for a while before vanishing.

“Besides, I won’t let you have a piece of treasure that is covered in filth, Pluton. We both know that you have standards and that you would spend a very long time griping about how the residual nastiness ‘polluted your hoard’ and how, ‘you needed more stuff to make the contaminant less of a problem’.”

Kain then handed the now reforged weapon back to the stunned soldier and went about his business. The man looked at the sword in his hands, back to Kain as he walked away, to the dragon Pluton, and finally to his target.

“I’m not paid enough for this…” he muttered as he raised the blade and thrust it into the nobleman’s chest. The Ruskian noble screamed through the gag in his mouth and violently twitched, but the solider simply pulled the blade out, walked over to Pluton’s treasure pile and laid the weapon carefully down in front of the dragon’s face.

Pluton’s face twitched with glee as he watched the life force slowly ebb away from the former owner of the sword. As soon as the last light of life left the man, Pluton smirked and raised the noble as an undead, which crawled over and began to cut itself into tiny bits with its own sword. The crowd were ultimately both impressed and unimpressed by the show they were given, but at this point they had fought for so long that they all just wanted to sleep (save for the undead of course, who never sleep).

The undead soldiers kept watch as the living slept, all those in the camp trying to get some shut-eye before the battle picked up where it left off the next day.