"Are you all right?" Suddenly a hand touched Lagiel's shoulders breaking her out of her inner turmoil. She instinctively jumped back and crossed her arms in front of herself bringing up an arcane shield in front of her face. "What do you want?" Lagiel hissed at the other tiefling woman. Seeing the young girl’s startled expression made her look around the clearing, only to realize that she forgot where she was. “Sorry…” Taking a few calming breaths, she closed her eyes and let the tension ease out of her body. When she looked up again, the arcane shield has already dissipated from her vision, but she could still feel its magical presence around her. “I may have overreacted a bit. And I guess I am not…” She sighed. ”I feel a bit shaken about all of this.” The tiefling across her struck out her hand for a shake with an apologetic face. “Sorry for scaring you, I am Kyleena Flametamer, I am a druid.” She accepted the handshake. “I chose Lagiel for my name and Wizard for my class. ”Kyleena then pointed at the nearing gnome, orc, and lastly at the human. ” He is Melior Theron a Cleric, then there is Garrot Keldar a ranger, and last but not least Jergal Mazten, He is supposedly an oracle, but he can’t see the future soo...” Lagiel could hear the man groan.

“I am an oracle, but that doesn’t mean I can see the future any better than you could. Oracles don’t seem to work that way in this world. Have you even read any of the class descriptions?” Jergal grouched. Kyleena's face scrunched up in indignation, but before she could really get into a tirade, the orc interjected.

“As amusing as it is hearing you two fall into this argument again… we should leave and find a place to sleep for the night. I don’t think we have the time to build anything sturdy. And I don’t want to camp out in a world where magic is real. Who knows what might happen if we did… I don’t think we get to respawn.”

“I second your idea Garrot, however, we should try to remember where this clearing is.” Kyleena nodded in acceptance, still glaring at Jergal. “I will try to look around and see if there is a good place for us to go towards.” She transformed into a squirrel and ran up the side of a tree, showing up shortly after and she started chittering animatedly.

“Er… you do know that you are still a squirrel right?” Lagiel asked the small animal.

“Or maybe this isn’t Kyleena? I mean how would she not notice how much bigger we are compared to her?” Said Jergal and he squatted down to the squirrel. Who as if provoked, jumped on him and bit his ear in response, before transforming back into a tiefling on his back, with a gleeful smile, as Jergal fell on his face with a yelp. “That will teach you, Oracle. Next time if I ask about my future I don’t want to hear any sass coming from you.”

“Ye, ugh… I will remember how heavy you are… for sure… now get off, I can’t breathe.” He wheezed. “Oh, do you want me to turn into a bear? Of course, I can.” Kyleena stage whispered sweetly. After which the human let out a small whimper, making her wince, with a look of guilt on her face. She then swiftly climbed off of his back. Then she stooped down and held out a hand for him. “Sorry I will stop, but you deserved that for your comments. I might have gotten overboard. You behaved like someone I think I knew from my life on Earth, and I kinda fell into it.” Jergal just smiled ruefully at that after accepting her hand. “I understand completely, sorry if my comments were untoward, and yes let’s find some safe place to sleep.”

"In that case, I saw a few interesting things around us. One is the lake right over there, then we have ruins to the North East, which is still quite close to the lake. To the North, you might even see them if you walk away from the edge of the forest, are mountains." Kyleena pointed off her fingers. "To me, the place, that feels the easiest to repair, are the ruins, it is also the closest to us, but I don't want to force you to do anything."

"The ruins sound good to me." Lagiel assented.

"Everyone else in favor as well?" Kyleena pressured for nods and agreements. "Then that is where we will go, follow me."

——————————

They moved slowly through the underbrush. The forest was thick and Kyleena went ahead to blaze a trail. Garrot followed her closely because he insisted that he, as a ranger, should be on the front, for the slim chance of something bad happening. After him, walked the gnome, whose name Lagiel already forgot. Then it was she and finally Jergal, the not-oracle but still an oracle, who watched their backs. As they got closer to where Kyleena saw the ruins, the party entered a clearing, where a massacre had to have happened a long time ago. It seemed as if people have been, either made an example of or sacrificed to some unknown power. There were lots of skeletons strewn around, dressed in fancy clothing or armor. As Kyleena passed by a skeleton slumped by a rock, suddenly jumped up and put a short sword to Kyleena's neck, speaking up with a weird clacking voice. "Stop right there! Who are you? And what are you doing in this place?" That was when the skeletons around them started to move, standing up, one by one, lifting up their weapons and pointing them at the earthlings. The first skeleton to stand up spoke once more. "I asked you a question flesh bounds. Who are you and what are you doing so close to Nouxxror!"

"I am sorry, sir skeleton. My name is Jergal Mazten, and we have been sent here from another world, by Lucifer and the Gods of Asgard." Jergal stepped forward raising his hands in what he thought was a friendly gesture, only to have several spears being thrust in his direction, and archers swiveling at him. "We have appeared on the shore of the lake not far from here. We are only looking for a place to stay. We don't want any trouble." The undead looked them over with his unnerving empty gaze, and then he nodded.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Alright, you may come, but you have to be restrained, and blindfolded. If our leader doesn't assent to you, you will be killed." As he was saying this, the skeletons started moving around, pulling out black cloth strips and ropes, tying them around their eyes and hands respectively. "We have to take this precaution if you don't mind. Most folk don't appreciate us. My name is Kieran and I am the Guard captain, of Nouxxror."

As darkness enveloped Lagiel, she tuned out Kieran's babble and tried to focus on not tripping in roots, or bones that seemed to sprout out from the ground everywhere. As she was walking in darkness, she could hear and feel so much more, than before. There was the skeleton who was guiding her, she could feel the skeletal fingers digging into her shoulder. With each step they took, she could hear the bones creaking, and upon descending, a strange clicking noise arose from the teeth of the skeleton as they met. There was a cold wind surrounding the skeleton as if it was what kept it upright, and she could feel the skeleton… not breathe, but do something very similar, the cold air seemed to expand and then compress. It felt as if the whole skeleton was breathing. Lagiel decided to ask about that, from her captor.

"Ummm… Hi?" She ventured awkwardly.

"Hi. Can I help you?" The skeleton guard clacked a question. It might just have been the clacking but Lagiel thought he or she didn't answer unkindly.

"I have been wondering, what is that cold wind that I feel coming from you? Is that your breath?"

The skeleton laughed out loud. "Definitely not. We don't need to breathe as we are basically dead, yet it is something similar to that, you are correct. While we don't need air to survive, we do need some magic to hold our souls tethered to these bones. Necromancers usually inscribe a rune of tether somewhere on the body of the resurrected undead, and then it draws in some kind of magic, be it divine, arcane, or primal, to keep us together. Since magic is in every living thing we don't need to fear becoming undone if we don't get to an area where magic is really scarce that is. So in short what you are feeling is my rune of tether, drawing in new, and then expulsing used magic."

"So if I understood correctly, undead are leeching from the environmental magic, if they aren't close to a necromancer who feeds them?" Lagiel asked frowning, while making mental notes.

"Not exactly leeching, no. If we just took all of the magic that we found, there wouldn't be 'wasted' magic that we expel from our bodies. We mainly take the Negative energy aspect of magic in. Basically the more undead gather in a place, the thinner the Negative energy is there. If someone overloads an area where undead are with other types of energies, then we would basically suffocate, as we need that Negative energy to live. If you were to send positive energy into me then that would burn me if I don't have enough Negative energy to counteract it. By the way, the name is Aren, nice to meet you." The skeleton took Lagiel's hand into her own and shook it over her shoulder.

"Thank you for your information Aren. This is all so new to me, and magic? I never thought I would see something like this in my life. Honestly, I somehow find myself wondering if I fell into a coma, back on my world, and my mind is conjuring these images and ideas up for me." A sigh escaped Lagiel's lips as she tried to remember anything about where she lived. "I know that I always wanted to learn magic, magical worlds were my escape from reality for some reason, but I can't seem to remember why. It feels as if there was something blocking my memories of important events and persons. The only one I can remember is my sister. And the only thing I can recall about her, if you can even call it that, is that she existed and that I loved her. I know that I had to have parents because I remember that everyone had them, but nothing apart from that."

Aren's hand relaxed on her shoulder quite a lot during their conversation. Now the hand on her shoulder was only there to guide her along the path and catch her if she were to stumble on the rocks. Even through the weird clacking voice of the skeleton, Lagiel could feel the emotions, the skeleton went through due to the information she provided about herself. "Noone should have to go through something you did. What the Gods and this Lucifer fellow did was unacceptable, but when have the higher powers played by our rules? We have been killed because Hela wanted a stronghold in the Eastern continent. She sent one of her higher agents to kill and resurrect us as undead. Now we have to fight our brothers and sisters nearly every day so they don't overrun the neighboring human country." Lagiel patted the skeleton's hand as a soothing gesture and after that, the conversation lulled to more neutral topics until they suddenly stopped and the leader skeleton shouted.

"Open up, we have arrived with flesh bounds. They have supposedly been thrust on us by the gods. Someone go and notify Father Estan that we need a zone of truth prepared. Someone else go and fetch Major Yera to do the interrogation."

A few minutes later everyone was standing in what looked like a ruined chapel, surrounded by a horde of undead. There were what looked like ghosts, vampires, ghouls, skeletons, zombies, willow wisps, specters, and spirits. Essentially, if it was undead, it was present. Lagiel and the others were eyed up quite uncomfortably. As Lagiel started to ponder about the ramifications of so many undead to the magic of the area, a very emaciated woman stepped into the building. She looked to be 1.76 meters tall, with crimson-colored hair. Even though she required a staff to aid her movements, she stood tall and proud. She had a regal expression on her face as she addressed the crowd. "Greetings my beloved citizens. Today we have gathered here to see if the living who asked for safe passage, and lodging. If they are trustworthy, they will get that and more, if not..." She let the threat hang in the air, then she turned her piercing gaze on the five living people in the room. "If not I am quite sure there are some rituals that need human flesh, somewhere in my Grimoire. But let's start evaluating shall we?"