Every town within a hundred miles had heard about Fallowfield. About the terror of a walking army of undead marching straight into town and just…moving in.

Kal had thought it sounded like a bad joke the first time he’d heard the story, but the truth was that Fallowfield had been as gruesome as many of the major battles fought against the Scourge over the years. In many ways, it had been worse.

It still wasn’t clear if it had been an intentional tactic to instill fear, or just the inscrutable working of whatever [Necromancer] or [Lich] controlled that particular army, but the undead had snuck into the town in the dead of night and never left, taking up villager roles like they were gruesome marionettes in some sick, sad puppet play of the undead. Somehow the undead had known who in town was just visiting relatives or their on a trade mission, and every non-local had been killed on sight, their bodies let to rot where they fell. Until they rose again.

If anyone else tried to leave, they were killed. If anyone screamed, or did anything out of the ordinary, they were killed. Even basic zombies had sharp claws, and they knew how to use them.

The villagers who survived were forced to continue with their daily routines, pretending to go about their business amidst the shambling, rotting corpses of their friends and family, but unable to mourn or make a sound at all.

It had been three full weeks before an army big enough to liberate the town was mustered. Kal had heard the story because it was the reason an outpost of the abbey had been stationed in Brill at all. If there had been a [Dragon-Mage] within a hundred miles, every villager might have been saved. A mage on dragonback could have been at Fallowfield within a few hours of the army being sighted. As it was, the mist had covered the whole region, and while High Command had known there must have been an army somewhere, they had assumed it would be one of the major cities farther to the north, where the battle lines had been drawn for the past year. They had been wrong.

Only a handful of villagers survived, and those that did were never the same. To a person they moved out of Fallowfield, haunted by what they’d been through. And they’d brought the story of those terrible weeks with them.

The news of the gruesome end and suffering of Fallowfield had reached far, even to places like Krinth, where the news of its death was probably the first anyone had heard of the place.

Fallowfield had not died quietly.

Its legacy had spread. And even after a hundred years, that legacy of ruin remained. In the wake of it, townsfolks’ fear had spread like mist, and like the mist that so often accompanied the warriors of the Scourge, it had been impossible to fight, and it had spread and spread until it covered everything in its wet, smothering haze.

So the townspeople did what humans did when they were faced with the unknown, and with the threat of a horrible death.

They prepared, in any way they could. Walls had been put up, militias trained, scouts posted.

Shelters dug.

Like many mammals and other animals, humans had an instinct to hunker down when threatened.

So towns had built shelters, as extensive as they could spare the labor for, often adding to them as the years went on. The image of trying to fall asleep with a putrid, decomposing servant of the Scourge laying next to you in your bed was a powerful motivator.

And even as the rest of the precautions dropped off one by one in years of peace, the shelters had remained, even as the memory of Fallowfield and a dozen towns like it faded. Testaments to the lost, now forgotten themselves.

Kal put his shoulder against a heavy oaken barrel with a gold-and-black plaque stamped into the wood. As [Innkeeper] William fretted and hemmed, he shoved the barrel to the side. It moved with a grating creak, probably only the second time it had done so in fifty years. A thin, barely-there haze of light filtered out from an entryway into the wall.

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Kalin sighed.

He hated tunnels.

***

Kalin held the sleeve of his robe over his mouth as he stepped through muck and filth. Apparently the shelter tunnel had at some point become a sewer tunnel. Kal suspected many of the shelters had undergone similar transformations, though he’d hoped this one was just used for storage. A whiff of something unpleasant reminded him of the truth.

Only thing better than a cramped and creepy regular tunnel? That’s right, a tunnel full of sh—

A splash of sludgy liquid coated his leg to the knee, and he resisted the sudden, very strong urge to cast a [Minor Cleansing] spell.

A tar torch burned in his left hand, filling the narrow space with acrid pine smoke that did nothing to help the smell. He would’ve conjured a simple [Magelight], but even that tiny use of magic would cost him Mana, and he couldn’t afford that right now. As ever, he felt keenly the limitations of being a [Novice]. It had been one thing when he’d been in training, and pushing up against the limits of his pre-class felt like an engaging challenge. Now it just felt…limiting.

He carried on walking.

Eventually he started to notice signs that someone had been through the tunnel. It wasn’t obvious, since most of what they walked through was liquid or close to it, but in the patches of dirt and debris every few dozen feet he saw a clear trail.

Someone had been dragged through here, perhaps only minutes ago. He thought of the poor old Professor, and hurried his step. He was acutely aware of the pack on his back and the solid weight of the egg within.

Despite his warnings, Sam the [Tanner] had come with him, apparently too curious and at this point too invested to give up the chase. Kal got the feeling that she didn’t exactly appreciate having a bandit or some other knucklehead stroll right into town and nab somebody, even if it wasn’t someone she knew.

She trudged silently next to him, a nasty looking dagger in her hand. Kalin wasn’t sure how much good either of them would be in a fight right now, but it didn’t hurt to have someone with combat experience along. It also didn’t hurt that she still had that health potion.

Luckily [Innkeeper] William had stayed back to talk to the city [Guard], who had showed up just as Sam and Kalin went down. Kalin assumed another [Guard] or two would be making their way into the tunnel before too long, which would certainly help if the bandit was still somehow on his feet.

A faint yellow-green light shone ahead, and Kal tried to tighten his grip on his staff before realizing. You exploded it, remember?

He tightened the hand bunching up the fabric of his robe instead. It wasn’t quite as reassuring, though it was keeping his robe close to clean, which he appreciated.

Sam grunted and pointed with the dagger, and Kal nodded. He saw it.

A human-looking figure was hunched over something up ahead, backlit by whatever was casting that sickly green light. Kal got a bad feeling in his gut, but wasn’t sure if it was intuition about the situation or just the remnants of an internal injury that had barely healed. He swallowed and let his robe drop into the filth, raising one hand into the air before him to cast an offensive spell and keeping his other hand back to shield if need be. So much for clean robes.

He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to muster the mana for a shield as well as an attack, but it was too late to turn back now, and that hunched, shadowy figure was doing something that sounded an awful lot like chewing.

Sam looked over at him and nodded, and he released his spell. She threw her dagger at the same time, then pulled another and moved forward. [Tanner] Sam went about her day well-prepared, it seemed.

Kal’s [Force Bolt] wasn’t as strong as if it had been amplified by the wards in his old staff, but it was precise. Using his fingers to shape the spell gave him a degree of control that he marveled at after using his staff for so long. Maybe working with his hands for a while wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He’d never heard it said at the outpost, but he suspected precision could open up just as many possibilities as power, properly applied.

His sliver of force shot through the figure’s chest and blasted out the other side before dissipating against the oozing stone blocks of the wall.

Sam’s dagger found its home as well, sinking into the thing with a sickeningly wet thud.

The figure toppled over backward, and Kalin sighed in relief, though he remained tense as he approached. As he neared the figure, his tension doubled. Despite falling over like it had been killed, the thing sounded like it was…laughing?

Unnerved, he mustered the dregs of his mana to cast a [Magelight] to see what was going on without getting right up next to the thing.

As the first clear rays of light illuminated the body of the bandit, Kal sighed in relief. Then he saw the torn, gaping wounds in the bandit’s flesh, and the hunched figure next to the body stood up.

He got a brief impression of something vastly old as he saw a ridged plane of pale white skin stretched taut beneath a tattered robe. Glowing amber eyes stared down at him from a height a few feet above even his own tall frame.

Then he saw the tufts of bushy white hair on top of the thing’s head, and he cursed, even as the creaky voice of [Retired Professor] Jeremy came from the monster’s fanged and drooling mouth.

“Why, Kalin,” the thing said. “You brought a friend!”