Scourge - 4 (Patreon)

Donovan circled overhead three times, slowly descending and giving people time to get out of the way before landing as close as he could to me and Sergeant Fallan's men. On his back was Lorna, as could be easily expected, but...

Vivi was there too, nimbly leaping off his back and keeping a hand on her sword as she watched the mob of angry townsfolk. She'd come after me. Or maybe just followed Lorna as her friend.

The reason didn't matter so much to my surprise at seeing her, relief at the reinforcements mixing with relief from the thought that she still cared; that despite the mess I'd made of things, whether for good reasons or not, she hadn't written me off just yet.

"Lady Crowley!" Sergeant Fallan barked, saluting. He kept his vision on the mob but paid respects in place of his men. "It is good to see you, my lady."

"We set off as soon as your rider reached Northglade, and I am glad to see you have the situation well in hand," she replied. Wearing shining steel plate armour and with a shield strapped to her side, Lorna made an imposing figure on Donovan's back as she overlooked the villagers. "I assume the cultists have been handled?"

"Secured and rendered unconscious until such a time as they can be interrogated." I answered firmly, noting that the mob was recovering from the shock of Lorna's arrival. "No casualties on any side, save their victims prior to our arrival, and their necromantic apparatus has been destroyed utterly."

A stone was thrown, only to be cut out of the air by Vivi before it could strike anyone.

"Fuck that! Lady Crowley, they burned down our bakery and imprisoned Maris and 'Lari! They're innocent and the witch's been poisoning us!" The woman who threw the stone yelled. "You gotta arrest them!"

Vivi snorted, then swung her sword and sent forth a blast of air that rolled the woman over, knocking her to the ground. "No. Gwyneth Arevin, Witch of the Order of Amber, acts with Lord Crowley's authority." Though she appeared to hold a relaxed stance, her clothes rippling in the wind, I could see the tension she held as she looked over the crowd. "As her bodyguard, any attempt to interfere with her work will have to contend with me first."

My heart skipped and my face flushed with heat as she stood up in my defence. "Vivi..."

"Lady Mistmantle is correct, Witch Arevin is my father's retainer and personal magic user. She executes his will in rooting out the Plague." Lorna said, spurring Donovan to flare his wings. "Disperse back to your homes, the Royal Alchemical Society will arrive shortly to determine the extent of the infection."

There was a great amount of shuffling, a reluctance to obey, and only a few individuals broke off from the crowd to slink away.

"She stole me papa's rifle!" One of the men whose gun I confiscated yelled in protest, pointing an accusing finger towards me. "Ripped it right out of me hands, she did!"

Lorna looked my way with a raised eyebrow.

I crossed my arms. "If you didn't want to lose your father's gun, you shouldn't have aimed it at those who stand in your defence." Frowning heavily I mulled it over. "The weapons will be retrieved by sundown, to be reclaimed after that point."

"Acceptable." Lorna said with a nod, and though not mollified there were no further protests on that front. "Sergeant, see they disperse. I must converse with my father's witch."

"Aye ma'am!" He answered. "You heard the lady, move or be moved! You're getting enough lenience as is with the lack of arrests for assaulting a noble's retinue during a buildup to war!"

He kept barking orders, moving his section – save Frieda, who took over watching the unconscious cultists – forward and corralling the people away while Lorna visibly kept her attention on them for a minute or two. The villagers might not be happy, but with their constant glances towards Lorna, it was clear they had at least heard of Lorna Crowley, her gryphon, and had little intention of defying her directly.

Even if they started muttering that Lord Crowley was a fool for siding with a witch, that he was blaspheming, and all sorts of other accusations that they flung out which the wind carried to my ears. The unrest wasn’t dealt with, merely dispersed for a moment.

"Are you well, Gwen?" Lorna asked softly, moving in close. "No dangers like the last necromancer?"

"None." I shook my head and set my ponytail bouncing. "Just... I slipped in as a bird and fox, tied them up, and drugged them to sleep. Aderic's potion helped with that." I rubbed my eyes. "Haven't slept since yesterday but that's it."

I bit my lip and looked up at Vivi. "How... how are you two?" I wanted to ask if Vivi had forgiven me, but the words stuck in my throat. "I– did you get more training done, at the wall?"

Rather than answer, Vivi punched me in the shoulder, staggering me back and maybe even leaving a bruise. "You left me behind. Again." She hissed. "I'm your bodyguard. You aren't supposed to run off into danger without me."

"I–" I swallowed my protest. That... was a valid complaint. "I thought you were too mad at me to care." I whispered.

"Idiot!" She snapped, reeling about and marching off.

Lorna shook her head as I watched Vivi go, something akin to a gaping pit feeling like it was reopening in my chest. Of course Vivi was mad at me leaving her behind, when she had ranted at me over leaving her behind that very same day.

I was supposed to know better than this. "How–" I choked, swallowing to clear my too-tight throat. "How did your flight with Aderic go?"

"Expedition Point, the new port, was an incredible sight. More ships than I've ever seen before all in one place." She answered, clearly glad of the change in subject. I wouldn't want to be between two feuding lovers who were my best friends either, so I understood that. "A great number of Lordainian refugees have been arriving over the last week or so and William has things well in hand. Admiral Candren intended to send off a preliminary force, to break ground and make a settlement for the rest of the fleet to follow, yesterday."

"William, huh?" I said, forcing a bit of teasing into my voice and trying to distract myself from my less-than-pleasant thoughts of Vivi. "Wil-Liam. Do you have a type, Lorna?"

The unamused look she shot my way got an abortive giggle out of me, and a chortling bark out of Tricks as she clambered down from Donovan. My little fox had come too; the way Donovan made a ramp out of his wing to let her down was adorable.

"It's good to hear it's going well. So much else is a mess I can only hope... Jaina will be joining up with them at some point. I hope it helps." I said, answering more seriously. "And that they get away safely."

Lorna hummed, her gaze drifting to the cultists. "What are your intentions for them?"

"Divination. I don't have anything good for interrogation," I said, thinking with some disgust that now would be a time that He would be useful, "but I can use them to try and find more like them. Associates, fellow cultists, people they worked with. They were part of the Society of the Unburdened..."

I went over everything I'd learned, the aspects of the Plague here and how far it had spread. Knowing that I wasn't in any danger meant I started yawning more, the tension that had been keeping me awake fading away, and rather than question me on the details Lorna bid me rest.

It was a good thing she was here. I was too hated, still subject to too much suspicion, as a witch to handle the situation properly. And... and I was glad to be able to push the decision of what was to be done onto Lorna.

The responsibility of what happened to the villagers here wasn't something I wanted to have.

-oOoOo-

It was a little over a day before the army proper arrived behind Lorna, a full company of infantry and a troop of cavalry under the command of Baron Ashbury. They didn't quite outnumber the entirety of the village but it was close; the king and his advisers were taking the situation seriously.

And, as Lorna had said to the villagers, the alchemists were with them. Krennan Aranas had come alongside the baron to the campsite we'd set up in the half-built chapel.

"That bird of yours is damn magnificent." Baron Ashbury said to Lorna. "Could've been far worse if you weren't here to keep the folk bottled up. The idea of spending weeks riding them all down isn't a pleasant one."

Lorna put on a faux smile at the praise; she hadn't enjoyed the task she'd fulfilled with riding down those villagers that realised what it meant for them to be infected and had tried to run. None of us had, but apparently that was the king's order from the moment he learned of the village's situation.

"I am sure the good sergeant and witch would have managed without me." She said humbly. "They did neutralise the cultists before I arrived after all."

Baron Ashbury sneered. "Yes, the cultists. Are you sure that your pet witch needs them? I would rather they were sent to the stocks as swiftly as possible." He waved a hand at the village. "We can hardly risk the sympathisers trying to release them."

"She does." Lorna replied. "They remain our best lead–"

"Miss Arevin, might I have a moment of your time?" Krennan asked, drawing my attention away from the noble's conversation. "I wished to speak to you prior to your hunting trip, but you were gone before my apprentices could find you."

Thinking while I looked up at him, I vaguely remembered an alchemist amongst those that looked for me while I'd hidden myself away. "Of course. What is it you need?"

He offered his arm politely and, after a moment's hesitation, I took it and followed him as he walked me to his makeshift workshop in the wreck of a bakery.

"Firstly, I wish to thank you for the control you provided in my tests. Being able to have affirmation of who was, and was not, infected with... the Plague," he said the word with great affrontedness, "whoever named this 'Plague' is an incompetent. Plagues are contagious by their very definition, not a form of poison and– I digress." He waved a hand, taking a moment to get his thoughts back on track. "Your aid has drastically increased the speed of my work. I have devised a functional method of determining infection from blood samples."

"Wait, really? Already?" I looked up at him in surprise. "That's fast!" Far faster than I thought would be possible.

He smiled at me. "Indeed, it is. There remain worries of cross-contamination if the samples are mishandled, danger of infecting someone as a blood transfusion could carry the Plague along with it... but it is a success. An expensive and slow success, but a success." He sighed deeply. "It takes myself or my apprentices hours to process a sample and determine if it is Plagued or not, hardly the momentary glance you utilise. And largely useless with how swiftly so many die when afflicted."

"But, it's progress." I said, undeterred. If he managed this in weeks, what could he get done over the course of months? Over the course of years?

Mouth swabs to detect the Plague? A way to determine if grain is contaminated? There were a thousand different uses for all of those things, so many times in the future they would be needed in order to beat back the Scourge and end the Lich King for good.

The inevitable war in Northrend would be near enough impossible if we couldn’t trust our food supplies to not be contaminated. I had vague memories of the Cult of the Damned making a mess of at least one part of the Alliance forces during that, a ruined town or something; they were going to be a continuing problem for a long time.

"That it is." Krennan released me and moved over to his work table, taking over from an apprentice who was watching a vial of blood boil over a small brass… alcohol burner, by the smell of it. "The process is quite involved, but by agitating the blood and adding catalysts we can trigger the demonic magic within – if it is present – to react violently. Not all samples respond to the same treatment, differing based on the level of infection... liferoot is quite explosive in the later stages while grave moss congeals in an identifiable manner in the earlier."

Watching him work as he explained the details of the process was fascinating, even if much of it went over my head due to me scarcely even being a novice at alchemy; I was glad to listen to every word.

"–and with that, we are done. Proving that Miss Genedd is free of the Plague. If you would confirm for me?" He said, gesturing to a woman who had been sitting patiently in a corner.

I spent a moment staring, the woman fidgeting under my gaze. "Confirmed, not even a fragment."

The woman sagged with relief at the verdict. She wasn't one of the villagers here, had Krennan brought her from the wall?

She was ushered out by the apprentice, leaving me alone with the alchemist who was performing bloody miracles.

"There is one more matter." He said, raising a finger, then hesitated and added a second. "Well... two. Firstly, if you are to continue your hunt, I would ask that you leave intact some measure of infected material for me to study."

That... wasn't something I was entirely comfortable with, but if it allowed him to work more miracles, then I would do it. "If it is safe to do so."

"The second, and why I wished to speak with you before... you mishandled the king."

"What?"

He looked at me disappointedly, as if he were a schoolteacher and I were a student who had failed to answer a question he thought was simple. "When you spoke up against his proclamation in public, you challenged him. You challenged his authority. Lest he wished to be viewed as weak he could not be seen to back down, and in doing so you restricted his actions going forward."

"Had you not done as you did, I would have spoken to Genn in private and explained the details of the Plague and its transmission to him. Guided him away from his rash and foolish decision. But, he cannot change course now. Not without being seen to bow to the whims of a young girl."

I stared at him dumbstruck. "But– he straight up said that if he saw a single zombie, the wall had to be closed! If anyone did!" It was utter insanity that was set to doom thousands to being used as weapons against us.

Krennan sighed. "The rationality of his decision is not the issue, it is the position you placed him in. I merely wished to guide you so that you did not make similar mistakes in the future."

It was Genn, he was... he... he was the idiot king who destroyed Gilneas through stubbornness. And when I saw him making a decision that led to just that, I confronted him over it.

If I hadn't, if I'd tried to speak to him in private and offer advice... would he have listened? He had been receptive to the Order of Amber, had given us influence and power, hadn't baulked at our existence, and had embraced us thanks to the narrative we wove.

Looking back on my actions and realising I'd looked at Genn as an enemy in that moment, someone to be fought just because of my pre-existing biases, wasn't comfortable. A clear point I'd made things worse rather than better.

"Keep up your hunt, Miss Arevin. It is the best way for you to ensure the king's ultimatum does not come to pass."

"I will." I answered immediately. If I hadn't had enough reasons to do so already, I certainly did now.

-oOoOo-

Fish, stinking fish that were sold in the midst– a mill spinning in the wind as a man knelt before a black tombstone and– a woman, Cassandra, meeting with another in hooded robe, supping from a chalice of bone– graves, stone upon stone before a mausoleum beside a broken church that rotted from within–

A man and woman, brother and sister, glared up at a brown-haired girl under the light of the stars–

I took in a deep breath and opened my eyes, blinking away the flickering images that had imprinted themselves onto my vision.

As I stood from where I had knelt, Maris and Laris glared up at me. Bound and gagged, they were trapped in the centre of my divination circle, the magic aimed at finding those they felt kinship towards. And it had worked; worked as well as I could have hoped.

"Map," I said, holding out a hand to Sergeant Fallan. Chewing on my lip I placed what I had seen, where I felt things were, and marked them down. The map was hardly as the raven flew, an approximation with travel times along roads rather than distances, but it was good enough. "Teemsbrook, Aldmill, and... is there an abandoned church in this region?"

Lorna glanced at the map, frowning for a moment before nodding. "Yes, there is. Used to be a gold mine in the area but it dried up more than a century ago. No one lives in Geldenshire anymore."

"Shall I ready the men, ma'am?" Sergeant Fallan asked, his words abruptly punctuated by a gunshot that made us all wince.

Shouts and bellowed orders echoed from the edge of the village where the baron had been erecting a holding camp for the villagers, a new and cramped quarantine to store them until Krennan finished processing them. People were resisting and he had been cracking down on them since the morning.

Already several of the shacks had gone up in flames in the mess, and I was sure I'd seen some of his men sneak into some of the more complete homes to loot them.

The whole affair was a shitshow and thanks to his written orders from Genn we couldn't do a damn thing to interfere. He was to ensure the Plague didn't spread, the advice of the Royal Chemist or myself be damned; plagues were infections and that was that in his mind.

"Yes." Lorna said, staring off into the distance with her frown turning to a scowl. "We don't have much reason to linger here any longer. Inform the baron we're turning the prisoners over to him now."

I didn't give the two cultists a second look. The baron might be the one making hell here, but they were the ones who caused this. They didn't deserve any pity when all of this was their fault.

"Will you ride with me, Vivi?" I asked, with little hope of a favourable answer.

And I didn't get one, she just stared for a moment before moving over to Donovan and swinging herself onto his back. Sighing I plucked Tricks off of the ground, letting my fluffy friend situate herself on my shoulders and head. "Guess it's you and me." I whispered to her, getting a huff from her as she peered out from her new vantage point. "Your lessons helped with catching them, you know..."

I quietly told her the story of how I used the play she'd taught me to sneak up on the cultists as we rode away, the little fox adding her commentary and advice. She was right when she said I should make time to practise with her, stealth was a useful tool I hadn't been considering enough.

-oOoOo-

Teemsbrook wasn't a new settlement, though it had gotten a lot bigger recently. One of the many tributaries to the Ember River, it was, well, teeming with fish – which was where it got its name. It didn't take long to find the merchant-cultist who was selling tainted fish and arrest them.

A newcomer, and with suspicious wares, there were far fewer infected here than back at the last village. Barely six all in all, and all of them were severely ill. It was all we could do after explaining what happened to stop them lynching the merchant on the spot, and with how badly off the infected were only one refused to travel along with a pair of Sergeant Fallan's men to undergo the possibility of treatment by Krennan Aranas.

The story of him saving the life of Princess Tess when she was a baby had made him more of a household name than I'd thought, and they trusted that if anyone could save them, it would be him.

Leaving Teemsbrook behind, we tracked down the miller at Aldmill – a villager, perhaps unsurprisingly, named for the six mills sitting above the canopy of the Northgate Woods on its hilltops – only to find he had already been dealt with a few days back. According to the villagers, Magroth was out and performing the same task as us now, hunting down what leads he could find and chasing any suspicious illnesses, and he’d gotten here before us.

The fact he was a paladin, and genuinely trusted by common folk due to that, might well make up for his lack of divination magic.

At both Teemsbrook and Aldmill I performed the same divination to try and find more leads to chase, which lead us to a disturbed grave site; an old battlefield amongst the clearings of the Northgate Woods. But, after growing a new grove of grave trees, it was on to Geldenshire.

“Don’ like this.” Frieda muttered, staring out over the fog filled vale as she brushed down her nervous and whinnying horse. “I don’t like this at all.”

Geldenshire was nestled into a valley between two hills, beside a small brook that supplied it with water. The hills surrounding it was where the gold had once been mined, but despite its one time prosperity, we could hardly see anything. We had arrived early in the morning and found the whole valley shrouded in a dense and thick fog, and rather than wander in we’d decided to wait.

But even in the midmorning sun, nothing had changed. The fog still hung so thick over the abandoned town that the only building we could see was the chapel at its heart, and even then only the ruined steeple which once would have housed the town’s bell but now stood empty.

“This feels like a trap.” Sergeant Fallan said, staring at our destination with narrowed eyes. “Can you–?”

He cut himself off abortively, but I nodded anyway. “I should be able to clear it.” I answered, closing my eyes and spreading my arms to get a feel for the wind. The air here was… thick, cloying, and strangely heavy. It weighed down on my limbs and felt like it was sapping the warmth from my bones, even without any wind.

That feeling lessened as I called on my longtime breezy friend and stirred it, the stagnation fading as the wind picked up. Slowly the bank of fog was rolled back, spilling over itself and revealing the husks of abandoned buildings on the edge of the village. But, as I kept going, as the wind kept howling, I felt the pressure built; here and there tendrils of fog were seeping back in, and though I kept up the gale for over a minute, two minutes…

I hadn’t even reached the chapel.

Much, maybe even most, of the town was still covered in fog. As I released the spell, frowning at the dismal result, the mist started seeping back in earnest. In perhaps double the time it had taken for me to clear it, it had returned.

“I assume that wasn’t what you had in mind?” Lorna asked, now frowning herself. “It looks like we’ll be having to spring the trap the hard way.”

Still frowning at the fog, the very clearly unnatural fog, I wondered just how much of a trap this was. All of the divinations I’d done pointed to Geldenshire. Even the one at Aldmill, where all I’d had to work with was the miller’s old home.

Walking into a trap blind, possibly a trap they had laid out lures to bring us into while knowing about my divination skills… I didn’t like it. “I could keep the fog away, if I kept up the spell, but…”

“It’d exhaust ya’.” Frieda said with a snort. “Save your magic for the fancy healing, Lady Witch. Light knows I’m banking on it if stuff goes south.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” Wallon muttered quietly beside her, holding his rifle loosely aimed at the fog in case anything crawled out of it.

As much as I’d like to banish it, they were right. If I focused entirely on keeping the fog away I could do it, maybe even all day, but it would be exhausting. And only more so if I had to keep moving while doing the casting. No, the best I could do was something simple and easy; soon everyone had a starlight floating above their shoulder, a little beacon in the fog so that we could keep track of everyone without getting lost.

A serious concern when visibility was barely ten feet in any direction. I didn’t want to suffer from the horror trope of people just going missing and us being none the wiser as to what happened to them.

Moving through the fog, my sense of unease only grew stronger. The wind whispered through the sun-starved remains of the grass, urging caution and warning of danger. Vivi marched alongside Donovan, her sword at the ready and on alert for anything, and all of the soldiers kept shooting nervous but professional glances out into the mist.

The deeper we got the worse it was. The trees were utterly silent, almost all of them devoid of the life they should have held even in the depths of winter. A single scraggly conifer clung on, but even it was lethargic and cold for an evergreen.

Yet, for all the ground felt like it was gnawing ineffectually on my soul with every step forward, nothing happened. The rotted and hollowed-out buildings lying long abandoned that we crept past slowly, checking one by one, held no signs of activity. No monsters lay in wait to leap out at us, no terrors lurked in the fog to tear our flesh from our bones, and no defilers were working dark rituals here.

The ground was wrong, the air was wrong, but I couldn't see anything beyond that. Just the pervasive discomfort of Life perverted and turned against itself.

Somehow, the lack of anything only put me more on edge. Starlights flew from my hands to hover over each of our number, a beacon to show where every member of our force was and to let us keep track in the murk.

Reaching the chapel, the once grand oak doors rested against the wall; the hinges having rusted away and fallen under their weight. To the side of the church the graves lay undisturbed as far as we could see in the fog, moss and grass growing over the resting place of the dead.

I would grow a grave grove here before we left, no question. Or... I would try to. The soil here was going to resist such a thing I was sure.

"Nothing." Wallon, letting out a nervous laugh. "Nothin' at all. Jumping at shadows, ey, Fri?"

"Shut it." Frieda muttered, elbowing her partner.

Vivi was staring off into the distance with narrowed eyes, trying to spot something in the fog. The wind still whispered danger to her, to me, and the horses remained on edge. But why?

Chewing on my lip in thought, I looked up at Lorna. "Going inside is a mistake." I said to her. "We need to wait until it's actually light, this is–"

"How frustrating." A rasping and cold feminine voice echoed out of the chapel. "You came so close to falling into the mistress' web and you stop at the last moment? I suppose there was a reason His Herald decreed your capture our highest priority. You can’t be completely stupid."

Rifles snapped up, aiming into the interior, and I pulled on the Astral magic that I could. It was diffuse here, the ground empty of roots and plants I could command – snatching seeds from my pouch I scattered them, pushing

on them to grow.

"And if I had disagreed and decided to enter regardless?" Lorna asked curiously, not showing a hint of fear atop Donovan. "You ruined your element of surprise."

The woman laughed, two shambling figures marching out of the fog in the chapel. "Surprise? You still allowed yourselves to be surrounded. Now, Crowley girl, you and your pet bird will be useful... alive or dead, it matters little. The rest of you... Perish."

I ripped a wall of thorns out of the ground from the seeds I'd scattered, the bolt of shadow from within the church splashing against it and rotting it away.

"Ambush!" Sergeant Fallan bellowed, stating the obvious, and his men formed up. The first shots from a rifle crashed into the oncoming horde, dropping one corpse, but more replaced it.

Dozens, hundreds, of figures were charging out of the fog around us and making their way in. The moment they entered my sight the rotting Death they bore became plainly visible. It hadn't just been imbued with magic, it had been hiding it.

I reached out to everyone and imbued them with the resilience of Nature, magic to strengthen their arms and speed their reflexes. It took but a moment and would help immensely.

"Vivi! Get the necromancer!" Lorna yelled, swinging Donovan about and skewering a ghoul on her lance. "Gwen, deal with the rest of them!"

Looking where she pointed, I focused and heard the humming of a chant off in the graveyard. Far beyond our meagre line of sight. "On it!"

A great mass of zombies lay between me and them, but they wouldn't be an impediment – raising my hands in the air I whispered of howling gales and roaring storms, the crack of thunder. The wind churned between my hands, the fog whipped into a frenzy as it fought against my magic, until the sky above my target mirrored the force I held.

Sparks traced from my hands to the sky, and the world was engulfed in a flash of blinding light as a bolt of lightning struck the oncoming horde.

And illuminated the circle of cultists calling the dead back from their rest to serve their whims. More bolts rained on the horde, the storm behind my ability to direct perfectly, but it still relieved the pressure on the soldiers.

By the light I gave them rifles retorted, striking the cultists. Two fell to bullets, then a third to a bolt of lightning, and–

"Duck!" Vivi screamed, the wind screaming with her, and I responded immediately.

Rippling shadow passed over my head and struck Wallon, his mail corroding under its touch and the skin beneath blistering and blackening.

"Child, stop moving!" The necromancer cursed. "Die for the Master! It is all you deserve and more!"

Vivi sidestepped a bolt of shadow, cutting down a shambling zombie, and closed with the necromancer. Her sword was shrouded in the same fog that had led us into this situation. "I'd rather live!" Vivi hissed at her, her words carrying.

I turned away, I couldn't focus on her. I reached out to Wallon, suffusing him with all the attention and magic I could spare to stave off his death.

Sergeant Fallan had dropped his rifle and was struggling in melee with two zombies, but a slash of Donovan's claws dealt with them.

Others were being pressed hard too. While I was healing Wallon, one of the ghouls ripped the shield out of a soldier’s hands, taking his glove with it, and bit down on his unprotected arm. “Fresh meat!” It gurgled, giggling and slurping even as a rifle bullet impacted its side. Though it was put down by a spear thrust and the soldier retrieved his shield and hung on for dear life, the small wounds were adding up.

Pulling on more of the seeds I pushed back some of the zombies, giving us a degree of shelter on one side – but a zombie slipped by before I was done, pulling itself out of the thorny mess that captured half a dozen others. It swung wildly at one of the horses, leaving a bloody gash on its flank.

It spooked, and within moments most of them were rearing and whinnying in fear.

“Shit!” Frieda yelled as a horse slammed into her, knocking her out of formation. “Shit, shit shit!” In moments a swarm of undead were all over her, and while I tried to divert the wall I was making to protect her–

The horses stormed over where she was, near a dozen of them trampling over her and the zombies in their way.

I couldn’t keep playing stopgap. I needed to deal with the source, these weren’t Plagued zombies, they were being reanimated directly. With the sky above us still free from the windstorm, though the fog was already creeping back in, I called on the stars above and drew a furious beam of starlight from the sky down to finish off the last pair of cultists in the circle I could see that were raising the dead.

"You! You PEST!" The woman roared, bleeding profusely from the stump of her right arm. "Cassandra, get out here and kill them!"

"Yes, mistress." A sadly familiar voice groaned loudly.

Lorna took one look at the monstrosity, the abomination, the lumbering giant that walked through a house's walls towards us, and roared. "Fall back! Fighting retreat! Gwen, clear a path!"

The creature – Cassandra – bore the face of a woman I'd once saved from gnolls. "Will play, mistress." She laughed, her misshapen jaw twisting her voice but not changing it completely. "Much fun with little witch friend. Show not need saving now."

"I said kill them!" The necromancer screeched, retreating behind a cultist and a pair of zombies that Vivi cut down.

Turning away from the horror ahead of us, I looked down the path we'd come down – Frieda was dead where she had been knocked down, her head and helmet caved in by a horse; and all but two of them had bolted.

Tricks was defending Sergeant Fallan as he struggled to lift Wallon onto one of the horses, tricking the zombies into walking into one another.

Raising my hands I did as Lorna bid, growing a wall of tangling thorns to open a path behind us. Snatching and impaling the zombies that blocked the way, pulling them aside to give us a clear path – and shelter as we moved between them.

"Almost have her!" Vivi called, another scream from the necromancer coming from the chapel. "Hah!"

There was a wet gurgle and I glanced over my shoulder, two figures surrounded in fog, but the shape of a sword clearly impaled through one's neck.

"Play birdy, play!" Cassandra giggled childishly as Donovan raked out her insides through the hole in the abomination's belly, spilling guts and organs across the ground. "Big and strong birdy!"

Tricks chirped at me, asking if I needed help. If I needed Renard's boon. But this... this wasn't that important, that big, this was just... this was just a fragment of the Scourge. This wasn't anything.

"No." Clutching my amber and truesilver necklace I focused once more, the air shining as the Astral lights I had conjured picked up on the magic I was drawing. "Not yet."

I pulled on the stars above, on the shimmering light of the Blue Child in the sky, and drew down a bolt of Astral fire from the sky onto Cass– the abomination. Its flesh burned and charred, the magic holding it together melting away under the assault.

"Ow!" The abomination cried, sounding like nothing more than a hurt child – if a hurt child was gurgling blood. "Mean witch girl!"

Lorna lanced the abomination in the eye, twisting her spear before Donovan darted away to dodge a cleaver blow. He was bleeding from wounds, but still standing.

"There's more–"

"Fer Khaz Modan!" A deep resonating bellow, echoed by the sound of a gryphon's cry, screamed down. Followed by a thunderous crash that sent topsoil, shards of tombstones, and the broken bodies of a second circle of cultists flying. "Fer Aerie Peak!"

Donovan cried out in answer to his father, rearing back and crushing a zombie under his weight.

Blasting a surviving cultist illuminated by Caedan's strike with a lance of starlight, I turned to damage control. We'd won. Barely. Again and again Caedan’s storm hammer streamed down from the sky, obliterating zombies and ghouls left and right. Lorna and Vivi were mopping up the zombies and ghouls; they could finish off the fight, but only I could stop the people who’d been injured from dying.

Frieda was dead, killed by our own horses more than the ghouls, but Wallon and everyone else should still make it.