“Be ready for anything.” Vharbukh warns the two with him while they move along the murky walls of the housing. Each building was carefully raised from the ground, shaped with the aim of replicating elven architecture of the south. Precisely metered out edges, trying to aim for a smooth surface, with little success evident from the jagged parts sprouting here and there. The elongated, narrow windows are the closest they managed to replicate, even if the special glass that filters the light into an ethereal glow is missing.

“Did a dullahan or something other entered through the back?” Gamal, clad in the same armour, his face exposed through the opening adorned with numerous scars, the direst being his missing left eye, carved out by a ravenous fey creature stalking the Middle and Lower Stratum of Mount Dhaugúz.

“Possibly, or worst, if we count in the enemy outside the walls.” Vharbukh adds while lifting his helmet over his head, pushing the flowing pale hair down with patches missing on the top. He unsheathes his sword, and pours mana into his gauntlets. Metal builds upon itself with loud clangs as it forms into a disc shape attached to the scaled sleeve of his. The other two behind him slowly unsheathe their weapons as they find the eerie silence warning them of the danger lurking ahead.

“Shit.” Vharbukh curses as they step into the square where the armoury was raised. Their fellow Dhau-Íssz slowly creep out from the buildings, their pale visages with pitch blackness in their empty eyes slowly revealed as shadows part. “How is this possible?” Sigvat, the youngest of the trio, asks while his hands start shaking as fear finds its way into his heart.

“Let’s retreat slowly!” Vharbukh orders them while taking small steps backwards, his mushy green eyes focused on the undead in front, slowly approaching them, circling around them. “I’m afraid that may not be easy.” Gamal adds as he takes a peek behind for a moment, noticing the undead already blockading the way for the three.

“Can I entrust the back to you, Sig?” Vharbukh asks while Sigvat tries to muster his strength, bravery. “Yes!” He yells out, his voice never reaching beyond the end of the path between the buildings. Vharbukh hesitant, decides to still go with this even if Sigvat is clearly overtaken with dread.

“Won’t they charge at us?” Gamal asks as he observes the eerie calmness of the undead. Thoughts of charging at them surfaces in his mind, but got hushed away thanks to a healthy dose of paranoia, recognizing that they may want exactly that. “For now, let’s just continue backwards.” The three of them continue stepping towards the rows of undead staring at them with emotionless visages, slowly rotting away.

“Idiot!” In a moment, Sigvat screams from the top of his lungs while charging at the undead. Vharbukh hearing it turns around for a moment, witnessing as a former mage of their clan conjures a raging sphere of flames in his right hand. It swiftly tears through the air, roasting Sigvat within his armour in mere seconds.

Without uttering a word, Gamal shifts to his back, cutting down a silently charging dark elven undead with a gaping hole in his chest. His soft head flies off as the axe severs it cleanly from the rest of his body. Vharbukh on the other side prepares himself as numerous instantly rush at them. His heart starts beating, wishing to break out from his chest, making his vision blurry. Just as he prepares to take, the blunt force of the undead leaping at him. He feels something cold, fluid, slithers into his body from his open helmet.

His bloody screams lead to the doom of Gamal as he turns around just for a moment, allowing an undead’s arrow to enter his eye mid-turn. It pierces through the white lake, plunging its sharp end into his brain. Blood starts slowly pouring out as his body falls on its knees before he too joins the rank of the undead of the Nameless.

Meanwhile, Vharbukh’s screaming dampens as the living Feigril finds its way into his mouth, completely filling it while the rest enters into his body. The feeling of a thousand small razors carving his body on the inside brings him to the edge of passing out, but something grabs his consciousness and keeps him awake as it reaches his organs and intestines, ripping them into a million pieces slowly as he finally dies.

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**

“Hurry your arses into shield wall! Mages and archers unleash the Nightscale’s fury upon them!” Haraldur’s voice echoes through the vast courtyard. His clawed, scaled hand gripping his longsword of silver and ebony set ablaze with runes glowing with a black light.

His remaining warriors quickly form into a stacked shield wall, while the undead charge calmly towards them from the between the erected buildings. The raised mages appear on the roof, creating a transparent mauve ward over the undead as myriad elements and arrows tear through the air from high up.

The ground beneath their feet shook like a treacherous current, sweeping away their steady foothold. They fell on top of each other, while some of the shields slipped out from their hands. Then it caved in, the front row falling in on top of each other, as the undead mages concentrated their spells on them. Their screams echoed as flames lit up, burning their flesh, melting their scaled armour on top of it.

The remaining quickly fixed their position, lifting their shields in front of themselves as a hail fire of arrows leashed upon them. The few arrows stuck in their round, large shields started to pour negative matter into them. The metal corroded away completely within minutes, while the ivory part cracked and disintegrated into white powder. They quickly steeled their senses, cutting the incoming arrows in two, with a few failed in this endeavour, leading to their death before turning upon their friends and kin.

Haraldur leaped over the dying, disorganized warriors of his, his blade severely reducing the number of undead with one vertical swoop, sending a single crescent shaped wave of black flames. Every undead it touched, burnt to a pile of ashes before it disintegrated into nothingness. “That’s the best you can do!” He screams while cutting through three more undead in a quite brutish manner.

Another, a dark elven undead, charge at him from behind. While turning around, he almost loses his balance as he swings his blade diagonally, still managing to cut through its head while the flames on the blade catch onto its putrid body. Then as he makes his turn back, his blade is parried by the liquid metal arm, formed into a long thin blade, of the Draurhot. Its skull head, glinting and pitch black, frozen in a wide grin.

The blade shaped arm form back into a hand that grabs onto the burning blade. The flames quickly die out while Haraldur is grabbed by his throat, lifted high up before it threw him away into the fighting group of warriors struggling against their own.

“Damn it.” He slowly reaches for his sword while coughing intensely, feeling something cold flowing down his neck. He touches it, and as he pulls it away immediately at the sensation of a dozen razors cutting into his hardened palm. Blood spurges forth from the wound while the same painful sensation overcomes his neck before his vision becomes dizzy as his heads rolls off, breaking the balance of a young warrior that gets impaled by his former kin through the chest.

The remaining mages and archers on the walls that kept their eyes on the undead, even after Haraldur ordered them otherwise, rush to intercept the undead from opening the gates. A large mound, forming into a hill of putrid corpses, piles up at the gate, riddled with arrows before set on fire by the mages. A few remaining warriors fight valiantly scattered all over before they too get overwhelmed, raised to serve their new master.

The undead stop their relentless march to the gate, stopping in front of the burning mound as if they were gazing upon it with wonder in their gaping, murky eyes of shadow and emptiness. Then as they hear the sweet ode, in unison climb the rigid walls, their putrid fingers digging in as if they were made of Adrinimium, a magically produced metal.

Fear creeps its way into the hearts of the mages, who start firing spells one after the another. Some fell before the undead would reach them, their blood turning into mud, flowing out from all their orifices as it excesses within.

**

“Seems like their attention is on your new creation.” Cacmieh notes as he sees the archers and mages that were watching them from the balcony towers, rush inside. The faint sounds of the battle reach his ears as he walks slowly closer to the wall.

“Yes, most of them fell already.” The Nameless speaks up in his deep, ominous voice as he coldly stares at the gates. His dark robe draped body glides forwards, stopping a few meters from the enormous gate.

A few more screams could be heard before an eerie silence falls, then the howling of the gates signals the victory to the others, while the Nameless with a faint smile enters the fortress, entering first into the Middle Stratum…