Zilara really wanted to peek over the fence and find out whatever was causing all that ruckus. Jelena insisted she hide back in the inn.

  Eerie silence reigned outside, punctuated only by soggy, flopping sounds from just beyond the firelight.

  It was Calaf who first peeked out over the wall. A wave of flesh and ragged clothing stood, idle, maybe thirty paces from the bonfire. Eyes glowed in the dark. Some members of the crowd were Branded, and many more were not. Calaf examined a few with the Brand.

  An army of corpses, sprouting mushrooms out of rotten flesh and odd stalks through fissures in their skulls, just sat there, waiting through the night. Fires kept them at bay, a phenomenon Calaf was well-acquainted with. It was good that the unnamed village had discovered that fact early on. Otherwise, the posse would have found only a ruined hamlet in the wilds, with no structures left for protection as the sun went down.

  “Ahoy!” came a familiar, rustic voice. “You there, on the ground. Out-of-towner. Get on up here.”

  A watchtower had been hastily arranged on the roof of a barn at the village’s edge. Calaf followed a ladder up. An older fellow awaited.

  It was Harold the Peasant, whose previous chance encounter had ended with a commission to solve the mystery of the town’s resident barrow dungeon.

  “Hey. Glad you’re back,” said Harold. “Martha’s been wondering about you. Good thing you broke that barrow when you did, eh? Otherwise tourists would’ve been coming out en mass right into this mess, yeah?”

  Calaf looked out over the wall from this high vantage point. The moonlight offered a degree of visibility out over the sea of bodies. He could not see where the undead army ended, which proved disconcerting.

  “How long has this been going on?” Calaf asked.

  “Thereabout six months. Started slowly. Couple people went missing overnight. Caravans stopped coming in. Then these things started approaching the town every night.” Harold motioned towards a pile of dirt and stone just past the perimeter. “Used the ruins of that barrow to make the first fortifications. Repaired them with wood since then.”

  There was a ripple out past the walls. Yet more corpses joined the horde.

  “We haven’t heard anything about this. We were in Plains Junction and Deepwood not long ago, but they haven’t encountered anything like this.”

  “Maybe not yet, eh?” Harold let out a morose chuckle. “Awfully isolated, out here in the hinterlands.”

  As the night wore on, Harold went on to explain that they recognized a few of the earliest undead assailants as members of the heretical levelers – sometimes called cultivators – that had been put down near the Battletower last summer. Some of the corpses had been among the levelers who had terrorized this very town before being run off into the wilds.

  “Hear the Battletower is working on somesuch solution,” Harold concluded. “Sent some people out on dire-horses to try and reach some of the other settlements out here. Crew from the tower is the only one that returned.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Distant torchlights appeared on the eastern horizon. A caravan, traveling slowly.

  “Ain’t’ hardly enough light to keep these things at bay,” Harold said. “Been trying to signal to anyone we see to turn around. But…”

  A shimmering, moving mass upon the horizon diverted towards these distant lights. With surprising speed, the torches snuffed out.

  Some hours later, another group joined the horde. Only a handful were Branded, including:

  Clopping sounds joined the lineup. Reanimated dire-horses, still in their wagon harnesses, though the wagon itself was long gone.

  “We’re glad they won’t touch fire with a ten-league pole,” Harold said. Then, lower: “Otherwise they could try to burn us out. Hope they haven’t thought of that yet. If they can think.”

  It was a phenomenon Calaf was well familiar with. He’d encountered it in Port Town, once. Dozens, maybe a hundred disappeared into the sewers and cisterns. Dead that still moved. They even talked to the Squire, taunting him with surprising affability for rot-addled mushroom beasts. That infestation was cleansed at great cost. Clearly, though, the infection was not localized to the coast.

  There has to be thousands of them, Calaf thought.

  Mass death. Corpses piled up in close quarters. It induced rot, an essential prerequisite for reanimating these corpses. Branded had a level of resistance against the rot – insufficient, clearly, but Effect Resistance counted for something. For the unbranded the rot could take over a host nearly as soon as the life left their eyes. Enkidu could take care of himself, but Calaf suddenly felt renewed concern for Jelena.

  “You said the Battletower was aware of this?”

  Harold nodded. “They’re in the same boat we’re in. Though they can summon fireballs at will so they’ve got a slightly better time of it if you know what I mean.”

  The town’s lone merchant’s station was barely operational. Jelena had bought what supplies remained at considerable markup, enough to last until the Tower. The quartermaster’s office, however, was open all night. Calaf descended the watchtower and examined their wares. He haggled for a dozen basic spears; one thing the nameless town had no shortage of was weaponry.

  Back up on the watchtower, Calaf spotted that merchant, Uldred, out in the crowd. He cast Flaming Sword of Faith to imbue this basic spear with fire.

  Thrown Weapon was an inadvisable combat ability technically appliable to any weapon. It worked best with spears, knives, and occasionally axes. Calaf had used it a few times and was getting pretty good at it. The Squire took aim and used Thrown Spear.

  The first Basic Spear flew through the air, visible as its spear tip was ablaze. The spear flew long, missing the reanimated merchant and hitting a dire-horse. The infected horse went up in flames as if the entire body was desiccated. So large was the dire-horse that a handful of other corpses went up around it. But Uldred the Intrepid Merchant remained.

  Flaming artillery sent into their ranks did not cause the undead to scatter.

  Another Thrown Spear hit an unbranded caravan guard two spaces over from Uldred. He was getting closer. The third spear flew true, striking the corpse of this merchant in his shoulder. Within a minute the merchant was charred on the ground.

  That would come in handy, presuming they survived the night.

  An hour before sunrise, the horde began to filter out. It occurred slowly, with no rhyme or reason behind which corpse left and which remained. Only when the sun began peeking out past the east horizon did the final corpses slink away.

  Calaf had spent all night pelting the horde with fire spears. It did little to diminish the besieging forces. With the horde dissipated, though, it left behind more than twelve burnt corpses.

  It would be a long day’s walk to the Battletower. The party was ready to go immediately after dawn.

  Calaf went out beyond the wall, seeking out the corpse of that merchant.

  Fire burnt Uldred’s muscles and tendons away but his Brand endured. Calaf pulled up the Interface and forced a trade, looting the dead merchant of whatever valuables he kept close at hand in his Inventory.

  “Hey, Hot Shot.” Jelena rubbed some sleep out of her eyes. “Did you stay out all night?”

  Calaf pulled out numerous Camp items as well as any healing supply or antidote he could find. The rest of the inventory were personal effects: a locket, a letter from Plains Junction, and a healthy supply of gold. Calaf took it all.

  “We’ve got Camps if necessary,” Calaf said. We can activate them to keep the fires going all night if we have to. “Hopefully it won’t come to that. Come, let’s go.”

  None of the party had received a worthwhile night’s sleep. Still, there was little time to tarry. Should any trouble arise, the plan was to cast Flaming Sword of Faith, spread it to Enkidu’s blade, and let him handle the problem.

  The residents of the nameless hamlet left the safety of the wall only to mend damaged sections, gather firewood for the next night, and do some light foraging within sight of town. They saw Calaf and company off with terse nods and the expectation that the travelers would send help when they reached their next destination.

  “Ayup, head straight to the Battletower,” Howard told the Squire. “Nothing else is left out there. At least we know the Tower’s still standing.”

  Along the route, they passed piles of corpses fried in the sunlight. The sun cleansed the rot from infected corpses. And the host bodies did not heal, growing more fungus-addled as they aged. Some bodies were too old or damaged to slink away and so fell with the dawn. Rather than burn or decay, these unfortunate victims merely disintegrated in the light of day.

  Onward they traveled through the hinterlands.

  “Sure do miss those dire-horses right around now,” Zilara said all smugly.

  “They never would have been able to climb or shimmy across a rope,” Jelena said. “We were going to say goodbye to them eventually.”

  The road north was littered with ruined caravans, destroyed bridges, and hastily erected, now-toppled barricades. Destroyed bridges were particularly troublesome as they slowed their progress further still. Almost as if the rot was acting purposefully.

  At least they did not encounter any wild animals or bandits on the route. In that manner, the entire trip north was eerily quiet.

  It took a steady, constant pace set by Enkidu, with the party endurance jogging the length and breadth of the hinterlands, before the Battletower appeared in the distance.

  Everyone (save Enkidu) was tired. Natural springs and sheltered glens for rest beckoned by the trailside. It was all a little too comfortable looking, with springs too close to caves and fissures just an arm’s length away.

  The land flattened out near the Battletower, a multi-tier structure with a wide base that narrowed at the midpoint, then grew wide again towards the top. Like an hourglass.

  Many archways beckoned around the tower, but only one would offer access inside. The rest sent would-be intruders right out the way they came or even whisked away elsewhere. Calaf had been here before, and Jelena multiple times. And so, they ran through the correct arch with time to spare.

  Within, fire pits, barricades, and all manner of strange mechanisms were pointed towards the lone entryway.

  “Hold your spells, these are live ones” came a tired voice. “Welcome, weary travelers. No doubt you’re aware of the late unpleasantness in these parts. Rest assured there are plans underway to resolve this issue. We have portals to take you anywhere you need to go, but it needs to be done before nightfall…”