“Whilst some people inspire, others conspire!”

- Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

It was still night-time. Or was it night again?

Amber stumbled over a buried skeletal branch, spraying snow and nearly falling. She shifted her grip and clutched Lily- no- only her corpse, tightly to her breast. Gritting her teeth, she drew upon the cold void and easily hefted the weight.

Before her spread the farmland bordering the hills, she had been at it all night, and sometimes she drifted off into reverie, her body going through the motions without the strain that usually would entail. Lifting her gaze from the body in her arms, she looked at the walls of a small city. The place seemed small and squalid in comparison to Kronenburg. Barely a step up from a village. The amenities she was used to seeing in the streets, such as lights and transportation, were absent and the most advanced vehicle standing beside a farmhouse was a cart. Smoke rose from many chimneys rising over drab and small houses.

‘Wasn’t it decades since I was cast into the void? Where is the progress, the advancement of society the professor for humanities always extolled? The busy engineers working to erect the manufactoria, the skyships.

A whisper wove into her being. ‘Go into the town. Don’t waste time with the guards. Tell them Zygmund von Nordmark is waiting for you. He should have left instructions. Soon your daughter will be with you again, just as you remembered. Just as you want her to be.’

With the last of her sanity, she shook her head. She remembered the small bundle smiling at her. Her expectations for a future that never happened. The little girl she hoped she would grow into. Her Lily.

Dark flames blasted out of her scouring the dead woman in her hands whose flesh decayed rapidly. Gathering herself, she walked to the gates closed for the night.

“Halt!” Two guardsmen stood beside a third that held a bullseye lantern whose thin cone of light lit up her surroundings in unsteadily wobbling illumination. “Who goes there?”

Amber drew a deep unnecessary breath. “I seek Zygmund von Nordmark. He is expecting me.”

“And who might you be?” The guard was a bit wary after that proclamation.

“My name is Amber. But there should be only one person he is expecting so bring me to him. Hurry!”

The guards talked to each other in lowered voices, and the one speaking up ‘til now called, “Wait while we open the side door. I will send a runner ahead.”

Grinding her teeth, Amber tightened her grip and hissed at a crackling as the corpse shifted, an arm broke. “Shhh. It will not hurt. You will be fine!”

The door opened, and an old guardsman looked at her with bleary eyes. He reeked of cheap beer, and the tabard he wore was stained and worn, the chainmail underneath rusted through in patches staining the underclothing in brown. “Should I call a healer?” He squinted myopically at Lily. “She does not look so well.”

“That’s none of your concern. Let me in.”

“Aye, aye.” Shoving the metal banded door open, he stood aside and let her in through a corridor crossing the thick wall leading into the city proper.

Amber was thankful for the cold as she saw the nightsoil littering the street. Come spring and a thaw, the scenery should be quite indescribable. “Where do I go from here?”

“Just down the road and then, when you reach the marketplace, the large red house on the right. It should still have some lanterns out. Can’t miss it. It’s called the Candle.”

The streets are empty, the snow shoveled to the side, and big drifts of it grew around the narrow windows that had been kept free. The marketplace was silent and still. The mayor's house directly opposite was cloaked in darkness. To her right, an inn was illuminated by two great lanterns, probably using magelights. A copper sign showed an artistic rendition of a burning candle.

“There you are.” A shadow detached itself from the wall to her side, and an old man garbed in an expensive-looking fur-lined coat stared at her from deep-set eyes. There was a terrible vitality radiating from his lined features. His gnarled hands grasped a cane. “Took you long enough.” Eyes full of derision roamed across her body. “And why are you carrying a rotten corpse around? If you lack such, I can arrange some for you.” He chuckled.

“You must be Zygmund then.” Amber pulled more void into her body. There was a bit of nervousness interacting with a noble. As a commoner in the academy, she had kept her head down and not made any waves. It had seemed smartest at the time and probably had been, after all.

“Duke Zygmund von Nordmark.” He spat at her. “My lord would also be acceptable. Don’t test me. Even though you have her favor, you are but a useful tool. Don’t overestimate your worth.”

“You made that amply clear.”

An elf garbed in a dark robe walked into the light, his whitish hair painted gold by the lanterns. “Ivyander. Another servant of her who is eternal. As we all are.” He looked at the noble with some caution.

“Let us get inside. And drop that corpse somewhere. I will have a servant dispose of it.”

“No, she stays with me.” Amber’s fierce retort startled even the vampire a bit. Dark flames flickered in her breath.

“Have it your way. It’s not as if I had an appetite it could spoil.” Laughing to himself, the noble entered the inn. As the door began to close, his words drifted outside. “We have much to talk about.”

A small forest road in Nordmark

“What is that over there?” Annabeth asked Valens and raised herself on tiptoes to look over a snowdrift to the side.

Valens squinted his eyes and whispered a spell, then blinked and focused again. “It seems there is a village.”

“We are not taking the same route we took to get here the first time,” Alyssa observed.

“The way through the middle of the forest would be bothersome with so many people,” Alea remarked.

“That’s putting it mildly." Vivienne shook her boot and tried to remove the clumped snow from her soles. "Without magic we would have lost some to the cold."

The whole group had struck out along a narrow forester's path that the loggers had probably used to bring the supplies and machinery to their camp.

Teachers walked in the front and back, the students in the middle, with Calvin keeping a lookout to the sides. At least three undead animals had to be put down in the first two hours of the trek alone. It seemed to be getting worse.

Mireille had seen Talbert, Jeremy, and the two sisters in the middle of the group, and they seemed miserable. Supplies were getting low, and the undead and the pervading cold sapped the spirits of all the students.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to sleep under a proper roof and eat good food for once?” A girl that seemed to be a third-year lamented, walking a few meters behind them.

“Mh. I can only agree.” Came another voice. "My change of clothes is frozen through."

Mireille injected a bit of lightning into her legs and flitted just above the crumbling surface of the snow before coming to rest in front of Calvin. “Mr. Ambrose?”

“Mh. Yes, what is it?”

“Do we stop at the village?”

“I was thinking about the same thing. I agree we should take a look. What’s the worst that could happen? And we get a bit more information about what is happening everywhere.”

“Can we come with you?”

“I did not say I would be going! What if it's Escaldis. HE wouldn’t agree to your company, that’s for certain.”

“And? Will you go?”

“Mh. I will speak to Sarah. Wait here.” Walking back toward the group, he sought out the matronly healer. After a short conversation, he returned. “Get your friends. We will have a look.”

A village in Nordmark.

“Matt! Push! You have to push!” The two children heaved, and the table finally fell where it should. The redhead and the blonde child gave each other a quick smile. They had spent a lot of energy moving the table toward the stairs. Then there was a thump from outside and a scrabbling noise, and the smiles were gone in the blink of an eye, replaced by fear.

The walls were made of wood and led from the landing of the stairs into a cramped corridor with doors to both sides and a small dirty window at the end. A whispered voice from below sounded. “What are you doing? Come down at once, and for Gesserach’s sake, be silent!”

The two walked around the table and quickly descended the stairs. The middle-aged woman standing below wore an old off-white apron over a brown dress, and her dark hair, streaked with grey, was pulled into a severe bun. “What were you thinking? We can’t afford to rile them up!” She hissed the last.

“Yes, mom.” The redhead answered. Even inside the house their breath was steaming because of the cold. Ice-roses grew on the inside of the few paneled windows. The inn was the most prosperous and most well-made building in the village.

The common room of the tavern was thrown into disarray. All around were broken tables and chairs, as well as bloodstains. The front door was blocked by a heap of broken furniture. A man with a pale and drawn complexion sat behind the bar nursing a glass of spirits. A fringe of formerly blonde hair, now more of a dirty grey with a bushy beard, framed his head. Eyes sunken and bruised-looking, he wore bloody bandages on his left arm. “Matt.” He grinned and then nodded to the blonde child. “Chris. Please be quiet. The others are still sleeping and not in good shape.”

A look into the open door leading back into the kitchen showed other wounded townsfolk lying on blankets spread on the ground. A large man hugged an axe while leaning against the stove, eyes staring at nothing.

Matt and Chris sat down near the wall hugging their legs and talking quietly. The middle-aged woman looked at the man with concern written on her face. “How are you holding up?”

“Well enough. At least I don’t have a fever or something like that. Glad to see that old healing salve still had something to it.”

“There won’t be any more of it.” The woman swallowed. “Or do you think Joyce survived?”

“That old bat? Never. Too proud and stubborn to live in the village.” He grunted. “I need my peace and quiet.” He imitated a scratchy older voice.

“Don’t talk ill of the dead!”

As they were talking, the blonde boy cocked his head and listened. A scrabbling sound came from the wall behind him then there was a shrill squeak from some rodent or other. Then silence. Then more scrabbling. Something cold brushed over his back, and he shivered.

Pushing the boy beside him, he motioned to get away from the wall. Both cautiously rose and stepped away. The scrabbling became louder, and a bloody head pushed out of a crack in the wood paneling. With a snap, the edge broke, and the rat broke through, followed by others. Looked at closely, they were heavily wounded with entrails looping behind them, blood dripping from fatal wounds, some were mere skeletons animated by dark wisps of magic. The small eyes held sparks of greenish fire.

Screaming, the boys ran, followed by the undead vermin. The woman grabbed a poker from the fireplace while the man took up a heavy mace kept underneath the bar. Stabbing and smashing, they drove between the rats and the children. The older man that had been resting burst from the kitchen carrying his axe. “What is going on here!?”

A rat sprang forward, evading the poker, and bit into the thigh of the woman who screamed in pain. A smash from the mace turned it into bloody scraps of flesh and bone, the eyes dimmed, and the jaw loosened. Stripping the teeth from her flesh, the woman whimpered.

“Mildred!” The man with the mace dropped his weapon and stroked her back before leaning down for a look. He himself was bleeding from many small bites and grimaced against the pain. The remains of the rats, a dozen of them in all, were strewn around on the wooden floor cracked by the weighty swings of the mace. The boys were huddling near the door, and the redhead was crying.

From outside, thunder blasted into the tavern, accompanied by an intense flash of light. The panes rattled in the wooden frames. Objects only dimly visible through the dirty, uneven glass of the windows flew by and impacted the walls.

The blonde boy pressed his eye against the one glass bubble that was straight and easy to see through.

A girl in a green coat and shawl with her red hair blown back from a strong wind raised her arms, and lightning crackled over her flesh, illuminating her eyes from within with a sharp actinic glow.

She mouthed something, and then there was another bout of thunder as a bolt of lightning thick as the boy's leg blasted from her hands, impacting what seemed to be one of the walking dead people.

Excited to see more, he ran to the cracked window that Lutz, the tavern keeper, never got around to repairing. Pushing he dislodged some snow and could see more of the street. A white-haired teenager stood to the side, a bolt of fire forming between her hands. Near her, a blindfolded smaller girl with hair black as raven feathers raised her arms, lifting a multifaceted construct made of pure light into the air. Flashes of radiance stabbed from the sides, hitting dead but moving things and burning them to a crisp.

“Matt! There are wizzes out there, and they are burning things!”

The crying redhead raised his head and stared before pushing him to the side to get a closer look.

“Hey! I wanted to look too!”

“Get away from the windows!” Mildred, the middle-aged woman, shouted.

The redhead, Matt, did not listen and pressed closer, trying to see more of the street. The girl with hair the color of winter carrots slashed at several shambling corpses. Her thin blade wreathed in lightning. His mouth gaped open as he saw her spring backward, pushed by another explosion of energy from her feet. Rolling in midair, she landed in a crouched position before jumping up, sending a small blast of lightning at a still-moving corpse.

On the other side, several undead were straining against something invisible, their mouths contorting as the white-haired girl with brilliant amethyst eyes held out her hand from which tendrils of dark energy reached for the heaving mass of bodies. The boy swallowed as he saw the smith and the miller among the group, as well as several farmers he knew all too well.

Light washed over the scrabbling not-so-dead villagers, and steam rose into the air as flesh shriveled under the harsh glare. The blindfolded dark-haired teenager was pushing with her hands as if against a heavy weight, and the polygon hanging over her had blinded him for a moment. Her coat was flaring around her, and a construct in the shape of a spider sat on her shoulder, gripping tightly.

Tears streaming from his eyes, he saw the white-haired girl stumble to the side, surrounded by a flickering dark mist.

A man made of metal with a porcelain mask slashed long knives affixed to his forearm like a hand made of blades into a walking corpse, bisecting it and spilling foul blood everywhere.

The girl wielding the light stumbled away as her face contorted in disgust.

A hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away from the crack. “But mommy!”

A cuff to the back of his head silenced his protests as he was pulled toward the back where the other villagers that had survived were huddling together.

Sounds from the street became rarer, and then it was quiet but for the whistling of the wind.

A knock sounded on the door, and a soft female voice asked. “Is there anyone? Hello?”

“Who…” Lutz, the wounded tavern keeper with the mace, cleared his throat. “Who is there?”

“We are students…” Some words were exchanged too muffled to understand. “Ahem. We were nearby and saw the undead. Do you need help?”

“Are there any of the corpses left- The walking ones?” The woman, Mildred, asked with a quaver in her voice.

“No. Don’t see any still moving.”

“You would have to go through the window. The door is blocked.”

“No problem.”

Mildred walked up to one of the windows and tried to open it, but with the frost, she did not get it to budge. Lutz sighed and grabbed the frame shaking it before laboriously prying it open.

“Get away from the window!” The voice from before called out to them, and as they stood back, a blur lined by lightning flew into the room, carrying with it a smattering of snow.

The two boys stared open-mouthed at the freckled red-headed teenager as she posed in the middle of the room, lightning flickering around her legs.