“And here we were, having a moment,” Cadence growled. Her bow sat where she had left it after the girl–Allana, apparently–had cut her bow string, but she had kept her melee weapons on her belt when the fight had suddenly ended, and both sprung to her hands as six undead emerged from the weeds, surrounding the group.

  They were ugly. Cadence supposed she shouldn’t have expected anything else from undead, but still. They looked like butchered corpses–still showing ragged cuts at the joints–that had been sewn, patchwork style, onto a series of battered old scarecrows. Straw and bone and twigs and limbs jutted out of the tattered, bloodstained clothes, and sightless, crow-pecked eyes stared at them from rotting heads. The air was filled with the smell of dank, musty straw and putrid flesh, and the drone of countless flies.

  Cadence’s disgust at the sight of the undead, the first she had ever seen, paralyzed her for a critical moment, and the nearest of the scarecrows staggered towards her with jerky, unbalanced movements–and then it was tackled by a diminutive shape, an ugly monster the color of rotten fruit. Claws flashed, driving the scarecrow back and sending a scattering of gore and dust flying through the air. Cadence shook her head, trying to focus, and leaped forward, raidblade and hatchet both swinging. One arm, sewed clumsily into an old tunic sleeve went flying, and the scarecrow’s head went after it.

  The green creature then whirled on Cadence. Beady, bloodshot eyes locked onto her, and she flinched when it started to reach towards her–then it froze. Cadence blinked, surprised, then the thing turned with a gleeful cackle and threw itself at another scarecrow.

  “Sorry,” Tenebres said behind her. “Little bastard gets a tad bloodthirsty around cute girls.”

  Are they controlling it? Cadence thought. Then, Did they call me cute?

  Any further thoughts in either direction were interrupted by another scarecrow staggering at Tenebres from behind.

  #

  Olivia tensed, trying as hard as she could to break loose of the knot of tentacles. The girl with the daggers had cut off a couple before the undead attacked, but she had dashed off when the scarecrows appeared, leaving Olivia exposed, desperately flexing against the living bonds, slimy suction cups gripping her clothing and armor.

  As if sensing her helplessness, two more scarecrows–how many of them were there?–wheeled on Olivia, shambling aggressively towards her.

  Olivia tensed again. If she could just move, she had no doubt she could cut down these clumsy grotesqueries, but the purple girl, maybe purposefully, hadn’t yet cut the tentacle holding her sword arm in place.

  “A little help!” she called, voice cracking with fear–and then the tentacle monster suddenly unwrapped itself from her and began to tangle itself around the leading scarecrow.

  Olivia didn’t let her confusion slow her down. She raised one hand and used a Gust Blast on the rear undead. As she had expected, a body made mostly of straw was much lighter than a person of the same size would’ve been, and the scarecrow went flying in the dense weeds. That left the one becoming increasingly entangled by tentacles, and Olivia didn’t bother to distinguish between the two monsters as she lashed out with her sword, leaving both in pieces.

  Bile rose in her throat as she looked down at the still writhing mess of tentacles and scarecrow and corpse–then the tentacles seemed to dissolve into shadows, dispersing and leaving behind–well, the remains of the decaying undead scarecrow, which was gross enough on its own.

  Olivia averted her eyes from the destroyed corpse, but the sight of the other undead didn’t exactly help her nausea. The squire moved forward, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth, and she waded in to take down another.

  #

  While the appearance of the undead was startling, Allana and her allies, unexpected and not, turned the tide back on them quickly enough. There had to be nearly a dozen of them, a mix of the unsettling scarecrows and more complete zombies. None were much of a match for any of the four of them. Tenebres’s green imp further turned the tide, consistently engaging one undead after another until a zombie caught it and bit through its neck.

  Then Allana saw one of the zombies starting to move again, awkwardly clambering to its feet despite the hatchet still buried in its head.

  “Well. That could be a problem,” Allana muttered. She darted forward and buried one dagger in the zombie’s throat while it was getting its bearings, forcing it back to the ground. Of course, that didn’t kill it, and one arm flailed in a blow that hit Allana’s side like a club.

  She winced, the impact forcing a grunt of pain from her, but she kept her pressure on the undead’s throat. With it held down, it was easy enough for Allana’s other dagger to saw through its neck. Once the head was removed, its movements finally ceased.

  Unfortunately, in that time, two more scarecrows had risen up too, one literally shoving the head back onto another. Cadence and Tenebres were surrounded now, leaving them exposed. Tenebres tried to fend off one scarecrow with a blood-red force missile, but another closed in–at least, until Cadence’s glass shortsword cut through the center of the scarecrow’s body with ease.

  “Allana!” Cadence called. Though they were barely any bigger than Tenebres, the blue-haired teenager stared down the remaining undead gamely. “There’s chanting in the weeds, over that way.” They pointed with their free hand, even as the other sheared off a reach zombie’s arm. “Can you handle it?”

  “Since you asked nicely.” Allana looked in the direction her new ally indicated, and thought she could make out a shape standing in the overgrown weeds. “Let’s try something new.”

  [Poison Cloud] - Poison, Trickster - Active, Manifestation - Manifest a low potency awareness poison in an airborn cloud. Lesser quintessence cost.

  Allana hadn’t had much chance to test her augment yet, but it was instinctual for her to manifest it. Suddenly, a cloud of green gas simply appeared in the general area of the shape she had seen, drawing a fit of startled coughing.

  Allana grinned eagerly.

  Undead didn’t cough.

  “Let’s see you try to chant now, necro-asshole!” Allana ran forward, confident that the conjured gas would be of no concern to her Poison Immunity.

  #

  Tenebres watched as Cadence dealt with the remaining scarecrows with ease, turning the second ambush into a rout. Across the road, the swordsman, Oli, had accounted for himself just as well, with what seemed to be a half dozen undead destroyed by him alone. The knight looked a little green around the gills, but was otherwise fine, apparently having not even taken a hit.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Cadence and Oli both held their ready stances, watching the destroyed undead carefully, but after a couple minutes without so much as a necrotic twitch, the two relaxed.

  “Well,” Tenebres observed, “I think I’m happy I’m on your side.”

  Cadence gave a wide grin. On the other side of the little dirt road, Oli turned, lifted a finger–then dropped his sword and fell to his knees, heaving out his breakfast. Tenebres and Cadence winced in sympathy. The sight of the butchered undead was far from charming for Tenebres too, but compared to Sloan’s cellar, it wasn’t too bad.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Allana asked from behind Tenebres.

  Cadence jumped at the sudden words, their weapons flying back up as they whirled around.

  Tenebres merely rolled his eyes. “Excuse her. Sneaking up on people is Allana’s hobby.”

  “It is pretty fun.”

  “Did you take care of the necro?”

  “Nope,” Allana replied, her voice a little bitter. “He had one more of those scarecrow things with him. It kept me busy while he booked it back to town.”

  “Should we chase him?” Cadence asked.

  “Following a necromancer into a town he’s had months to prepare is probably not a great idea,” Tenebres pointed out.

  Cadence took a long inhale–then sighed and nodded their agreement. “Okay. Any thoughts on what we do next then?”

  “We,” Allana pointed at herself and Tenebres to clarify, “go after the necro. You two can go back to wherever it is you came from.

  Tenebres rolled his eyes with a sigh. “Allana…”

  Cadence turned to face the taller girl more fully. “Don’t be stupid,” they said. “We’re both going after him–why not do it together?”

  Allana snorted. “Why not? How about because I don’t trust you? How about because we don’t need you? How about because we could’ve killed the both of you already?”

  “Allana.”

  Cadence huffed. “Look around! Even if you had beaten us, you would’ve gotten yourself killed if we weren’t here when he attacked!”

  “Yeah, according to you–”

  “Allana!”

  “What?” The girl whirled on Tenebres now, luminescent violet eyes flashing as her temper flared up.

  Tenebres met her eyes, and simply arched his eyebrow. After a long moment, the girl visibly deflated, realizing she had let her tempter get the better of her.

  “I agree with them,” Tenebres told his friend simply.

  “‘Her’ is fine,” Cadence interjected.

  “Okay, I agree with her. We knew when we left Emeston we couldn’t take on a hag by ourselves, and this only proves it–and this was just a flunky! A flunky who is now ready for us, on a field he prepared. We need help here.”

  “Wait, hag?” Oli asked, staggering over to the conversation, still looking a little sickly.

  Allana crossed her arms stubbornly. “Do you not even know who you’re after?”

  “We’ve been on the trail of some bandits who attacked a caravan a couple weeks back,” Cadence explained. “Supposedly, they were taking orders from a necromancer who lives in these ruins. Xythen.”

  “Who I think we just had the pleasure to meet,” Oli added.

  Tenebres nodded along. “So this Xythen must have a favor from the hag Allana and I are after.”

  “Egin did think an outsider was involved,” Cadence pointed out to Oli.

  The swordsman seemed about as excited for a possible alliance as Allana, but he reluctantly admitted, “I guess some help couldn’t hurt.”

  “Okay,” Cadence said, nodding to herself and looking back at Tenebres and Allana. “Then we do this together. We take out Xythen, we slay this hag you mentioned, then we go from there. Deal?”

  Tenebres looked to Allana. The girl still had her arms crossed–a lifetime on Emeston’s streets wasn’t so easily forgotten, and she was clearly having a hard time trusting a couple strangers. Tenebres suspected their shared battle with the undead was the only reason she finally waved a hand in acquiescence.

  “Deal,” Tenebres told Cadence.

  #

  “First, we burn the bodies,” Tenebres announced.

  “What?” Olivia couldn't hide her disgust at the thought, and she had to fight down another gag, the sour taste of bile still burning on her tongue. The squire had fought plenty–but undead were a whole different level of disgusting, particularly these ones, which had all suffered from weeks of obvious decomposition. Adding to her discomfort were the flies, buzzing past her ears and filling her head with droning whines.

  “You saw what happened during the fight,” Cadence said. “We can’t let Xythen get behind us and reanimate all of these again while we’re fighting whatever he has in town.”

  Olivia cast another sickly look at the butchered remains of Culles’s citizens. Thankfully, they were withered away enough that they clearly hadn’t been alive in weeks, or even months. If they had still been lifelike… Olivia shuddered.

  “You can just help us get the fire going, Oli,” Cadence suggested.

  Olivia felt a flash of gratitude at the girl, for more reasons than one. Cadence had carefully used only her nickname since they met the other two travelers, keeping her eclipsed identity just between them, as Olivia had requested.

  “No…” Olivia wished her voice sounded a little stronger, but she continued, “I’ll do my part to collect them.”

  “Great,” Allana said, not even bothering to hide the satisfaction in her tone. Olivia still didn’t trust the wraith–she seemed much more pragmatic than her partner, and Olivia couldn't shake the feeling she’d betray them at the slightest provocation. “Well, you guys have fun with that.”

  “And where are you going?” Olivia shot back at her.

  “To scout,” Allana replied, her tone implying an unsaid, “Duh.”

  “We need to know what we’re up against,” Tenebres agreed. “And trust me, Allana is better at sneaking around than any of us are.”

  “I still noticed you,” Cadence pointed out.

  At least I’m not the only one who doesn’t trust her, Olivia thought with a hint of satisfaction.

  “Yeah, because I had to stay close to this one,” Allana claimed, hiking a thumb at Tenebres.

  The slender celestial–or at least, that’s what Oli assumed, based on their slender figure and androgynous features–rolled their eyes. “Take a contact tab.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” The taller wraith reached down Tenebres’s pants as she passed, fishing out a small piece of ceramic tile from his pocket which she displayed overhead. The crimson-eyed boy simply sighed, the level of intimacy between the pair obvious in his lack of reaction. “I’ll be back in a bit. Have fun burning bodies. Seo, try not to tell them all of our secrets while I’m gone.”

  Olivia, blushing, pursed her lips at the ominous words, but Cadence giggled, and Tenebres replied smartly, “No promises.”

  Then the girl took a step into the brush–and simply vanished.

  “Alright,” Cadence said casually, as if she saw people teleport every day. “Let’s get this over with.”