"It probably took centuries before all my neighbors realized that I was content with my little slice of land, that I just wanted to be left alone, unbothered by their ambitions and vagaries. That I had by then a large enough horde to take on all of them at once probably played a factor as well, but they left me alone since.

It was a peaceful, if lonely existence that I lived out at the land I made into my home for the first century or so, and it was in the second century that the first refugees wandered into my lands, driven by desperation due to heavy famine that had struck their own lands, they fled their lands and had apparently hoped to cross mine to quickly reach another.

Instead what they found was an unworked land, fertile soil just waiting to be worked on, and they hedged their bets and wagered their lives to settle down in my lands. I was alerted of their presence not long after they settled down and started working the land, subsisting from the plentiful wildlife in my domain, and when I met them, with a horde behind me, it was nothing other than fear that overwhelmed them.

Their village head prostrated before me and begged me to spare his people in exchange for his life, promising that they would be gone before they could disturb me any further. It was to his utter bafflement when I demanded neither his life nor the removal of his people from my lands, and instead allowed them to live there, to rebuild their lives, under my watch.

At the time, it was just a momentary sentiment, a reminder of the days where I strived to find a land that would accept my unnatural presence, though their exodus was driven more by a desperation to survive, yet I somewhat saw them as kindred spirits.

They were the first living citizens of what is now Ptolodecca." - Nec Aarin, the Bone Lord.

A day's travel from La Fiachna, former Vitalican territory, sixth day of the fourth week of the fourth month, year 68 VA.

The past week and a half had both been a smooth, yet depressing journey for the expedition army.

It was a smooth journey because other than the small clash at the border, they encountered no further resistance in their march, and most of the delay in their travel was because they spent time helping the people left behind in the evacuated villages and towns they passed.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

On the other hand, most of the Vitalicans amongst the expedition members were in low spirits. Every village they ran into so far, only had the old, the young, and a few crippled or sickly adults left, with all the able bodied men and women gone.

What information the remaining villagers and townspeople had offered them, painted a grim picture. The able bodied adults were slaughtered, reraised as zombies, then taken away by the overseers, all while their families could only watch aghast.

Aideen felt guilt when she saw the young children left behind, knowing full well that the Antemeians had reacted like this - Ansel told her that it was not an uncommon reaction of theirs when faced with tough odds - because the expedition army came. Coupled with the other detachments that had the borders surrounded and made it impossible to enter or exit the old Vitalican territory, it was just natural for the Antemeians to have thought of the situation as a dire one.

Regardless, it didn't stop Aideen from feeling pained whenever she heard children crying out for their lost parents. Some of the people they encountered even laid the blame on them, not with words, but their looks of undisguised anger and hatred spoke on their own already.

Aideen honestly had not known what else they could have done. Were they to remain silent as their old homeland was taken, and the people there reduced to slaves? To just watch and do nothing instead of trying what they can to help?

Yet their interference also caused suffering for the people they intended to help out. Rationally, she knew that she was not responsible for how the Antemeians acted to the invasion, yet at the same time, she couldn't help but feel some guilt as well, since if they had not come, neither would the suffering the villagers had gone through.

The rest of her family mostly shared the depressing sentiments, except for Clovis, Mimia, and Kestera, who had less attachment to the Vitalican people, and thus have a different point of view. In their opinions, there would have been suffering for the populace either way. Better to excise the wound now, if painfully, than let it fester and trouble the future generations to come.

Aideen couldn't argue against their more detached view on the matter either, and in the end, she just decided to do her best to ensure that the conflict ended as soon as possible, so that such suffering won't have a chance for a repeat.

By afternoon the next day, they reached La Fiachna, where they were welcomed by a truly massive horde of zombies, easily more than six times as large as the one they encountered by the border. The thought that a portion of those zombies were once her countrymen filled the Vitalicans with grief and anger, but this time they held their ground, waiting for the signal.

There were far too many zombies for their previous tactic to work, and on top of that, Aideen spied advanced variants amongst them as well. Here and there, abominations made from many corpses patched together stood head and shoulders above the normal zombies, and since those were present, it was not unlikely for other more specialized undead, used by Antemeian Ascendants, to be present as well.

As it was, there were too many zombies to the point that the city would not have enough room for them, and the majority of the zombie horde was arrayed outside the city, with necromancers standing by the city walls as they commanded their horde.

Both sides stared at each other over the distance, knowing full well that this battle would be the one to decide the fate of the people in the region, and without a signal given, in relative silence, both the zombie horde as well as the skeleton soldiers marched towards each other.