The Zombies were attacking again.

It helped that as one of the Touched, a Human who had been infected by the Zombie plague and assimilated the magic within it as my own, I was able to feel them coming long before the undead could see one of my other three companions.

If it had just been me and Val, then this group of hungry monsters wouldn’t have been worth concerning anyone. The former Zombie Wrangler had plenty of experience handling Zombies. It didn’t hurt that she’d made the complete change into a Bokor, sporting the purple swirls on her face and arms that let anyone who saw her know that she not only had the authority to wield the sword that was resting close to her bedroll, she had access to the magic that it provided.

I’d lived my entire life as an apprentice, learning how to fight Zombies and how to harvest the purple stones in their hearts that powered the magic that protected us back on the island. The Bokor stronghold had been built there not only because Zombies avoided water, but also to protect us from the Humans who converted our power.

At least that’s what I had been told for most of my life.

I’d been given the mission to check in on the walled cities on the peninsula with Max, another potential. Things had gone seriously wrong in the first town we’d visited, which ended with Max and Val’s sister dying while Val and I had been forced to attempt ascending in order to survive. Despite very few women surviving, Val had fully completed the ascension and become a Bokor, while I had only partially changed into a Touched.

I adjusted the goggles that I was wearing as I stood up. They’d been a gift from another Touched at the last town when been to. The purestone that made the lenses filtered out the purple glow that my eyes gave off, which marked me as a Touched. It helped me pretend to be a Bokor, since a real Bokor and most Humans would kill me on sight.

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The other three members of my group were sleeping by the fire and I wanted to let them stay that way. After ascending, I’d needed very little sleep, though it seemed to have an impact on how fast we recovered our magic energy. Val and Eveth, a blonde woman from the last town that had been turned into a Touched with raw powerstone, were laying next to each other to the right of the fire. Ziggy, Eveth’s seven year-old cousin and probably the reason why the Zombies kept coming for the camp, had refused to sleep next to the two women and was under the blankets I’d given him on the left side of the fire. For only being seven, the boy seemed to think that he was a full grown man and as such, he didn’t need to share warmth while he slept.

I took out my sword as quietly as I could as I walked through the thin forest towards the Zombies. Despite it being the middle of the night, I could still see almost as good as if it was day thanks to the physical enhancements becoming a Touched had afforded me.

There were only five of them, so I could let the others sleep. Plus, I didn’t mind the exercise. I was still coming down from fighting the army of Zombies earlier yesterday morning, so having something to hit would be a welcome change to watching three people sleep by a fire.

I thought about how if I had still been Human, we would have tied ourselves into the trees before going to sleep and we wouldn’t have made a fire. As an apprentice, Master Bran would either have made me keep walking through the night or he would have put me on a tree. Usually when he went with the tree option, there were fresh Zombies for me to harvest their hearts in the morning.

For a moment I thought about showing Ziggy how to harvest the hearts and then the heartstones from the Zombies I was about to kill. If it had been a week ago, I might have, but after learning that the Bokor could get addicted to consuming the magic from the heartstones, the luster of having orphaned boys like I had been join the Bokor had lost a lot of its appeal. While we were the ones looking after him since the town had been destroyed yesterday, I seriously doubted that him staying with us would be good for him. Especially since Val, Eveth, and myself would be hunted down by the Bokor if we couldn’t prove our usefulness.

I put the thoughts about the future out of my mind. For now, I had a group of Zombies to kill.