The street seemed smaller here. It seemed stronger. Stronger? Was that the word? Was that appropriate? The bricks were big. Bricks. Stones. Bricks. Red bricks. Pretty. Different to ... different to...

...before...

Amanda blinked, then again, then frowned. There were sounds. Familiar sounds.

Bricks. Stones. Cobbles? Stones. Red. Red, here. Not below. Grey below. Red around. Above. Aqueduct. Aqueduct.

"Aaaaqueduuuct."

Something in the air. Something between the big red aqueduct and the empty blue beyond.

"Haaand. Myyy haaand? Myyy hand. My hand. My hand?"

Amanda became aware that her hand was raised and that she was staring at it and talking to it. This awareness led to another awareness, or a discovery of sorts.

"I ... I think—" Amanda stopped and lowered her hand, then spoke to the aqueduct before her: "I remember how to be embarrassed."

For a time Amanda simply stood there, staring at the aqueduct, at its high arches and the shaded areas beneath, experiencing embarrassment and vaguely wondering how it was that she had come to be dead, which led to further vague thoughts as to how it was that she had come to be undead.

Eventually she came to the realisation that she was thinking. That she was conscious. That she was ... that she was.

This was soon followed by another realisation; that she had a name, and that this name was being shouted at her, and that this shouting had been going on for some time, and that ... and that...

Amanda turned, surprised and pleased at how easy this was. She was standing on a street, and she was also pleased to be able to understand the concept of 'standing' and the concept of 'a street'. There were regular patches of earth to the sides; gardens, she thought. Except empty. Empty gardens. Old gardens? Dead gardens. And an aqueduct. Except there's no water. What is an aqueduct without water?

"Just a ... duct?"

Speaking was easier too. There was less rattle in her voice. Less 'groan' to it. That being the case...

"Oh," Amanda said, after taking a step forward that was, while not in any way elegant, far from a lurch. She took another step, then another. She was slow, she was stiff, she felt as if her body was stuffed with cotton wool, but she had control. She had freedom.

"I can walk," she said, as she continued to do so.

Meanwhile, nearby, crouched behind a stack of crates and with more than a little urgency, a goblin and a dwarf called Amanda's name. Nala had an arrow through her arm and a long graze on her cheek, and Tzugakk's leg was bleeding.

"What is she doing?" Tzugakk asked, as another arrow thudded into the crates. He flinched, then continued: "Is she coming?"

"She was looking at her hand," Nala said. "Now she's walking."

"To us?"

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Just walking."

An arrow shattered against the street nearby, and Tzugakk shrank back from it.

"Can we do anything?" he asked. "Can we escape?"

Nala was silent.

Down the street a little way, Amanda was staring at a house. There were lots of houses nearby, now that she looked, all of them made from the same red brick as the aqueduct. It was a nice shade of red. Not too bright. Not too dark. Perfect, in a sense.

"Amanda! Please come! Please help!"

The voice seemed like it should be familiar—and the name certainly was.

"Oh," Amanda murmured, as a vague sense of identity once more returned. She looked up the street, the one she'd been walking down. There were houses, nice red brick houses, and beside one of the houses was a stack of crates, and behind the stack of crates was a small worried face. Just a face? No, Amanda thought, that doesn't work. A small worried face connected to a small worried body, that's more sensible.

As she studied the house and the crates and the face, Amanda noticed that there were a lot of small straight wooden things around—arrows, her memory helpfully supplied—and that the longer she watched the more of them there were. Where did they come from? Why were they there? These mysteries occupied Amanda's attention until inspiration struck and she walked forward, slow, measured steps that took her closer to the house and the crates and the arrows. Arrows are loosed from a bow, she thought. So the bow is ... there. Attached to that person. Wearing a bucket. On his head.

This seemed unusual, to Amanda. She wasn't entirely sure what a bucket was used for, but it didn't seem quite correct to wear one on your head.

She stepped back, then slowly frowned. She hadn't meant to step back. Looking down, she saw something sticking from her chest; the back half of an arrow.

Amanda took another involuntary step back, and when she looked down this time there were two arrows sticking out of her chest.

This feels wrong, she thought. I'm almost certain I don't usually have arrows in my chest. This does not seem like a normal situation.

"Amanda!" came a voice from nearby, but by the time she turned to see who it was Tzugakk and Nala had already taken her bandaged arms and were dragging her away, up the street and towards one of the aqueduct's arches.

"She IS useful!" Tzugakk cried, as they half-ran, half-stumbled beneath the arch and through to the other side—more streets and more red brick houses greeted them. "See, Nala?"

"Useful for being hit by arrows," Nala muttered, steering Amanda into turning.

"Arrows," Amanda said. As if on cue, one impacted against the ground behind the group—but they were around the corner and into a new street now, away from the bucket-helmeted archer ... but straight into two fighters.

"Heh, hey there," said the shorter and broader of the pair. He held two wicked-looking axes, both glowing with dark auras. His breastplate appeared to be made of carved bone, which clashed somewhat with his metal wolf-head helmet and plate-and-chain leggings. The taller and slimmer of the two wore similarly mismatched equipment, his weapon a red-orange lance, his helmet made of some kind of blue metal with a dragon motif, his cloak green with a gold feather insignia. Meanwhile his black leather armour had a definite 'spidery' look to it and his pointy blue-and-pink-auraed boots could have clashed with anything. He was also holding a long, thin stave that appeared to have been made from dozens of finger bones all joined together, which didn't help his hodgepodge appearance at all.

"Already got the necro," said the lancer, his voice low and hoarse. "Looks like we're following him with a zombie girl chaser—"

"Nah," the axeman said. "Zombies take ages. You get whatever the hell that little green thing is, I'll take stumpy roughskins, then we'll let Bucket use blue girl for target practice. Even split."

Nala had been looking around as the two had talked, searching for a way out—but there was nothing, just houses all close together and the archer behind, and she heard Tzugakk's shrill cry as the lancer launched himself into the air, an impossibly high leap with an inevitably deadly arc, and then the axeman was before her, grinning in her face before she felt his axe bite into her neck and everything went...

...white?

Glowing white, no pain, just discomfort, and she could hear the axeman talking through the growing sense of distance:

"See that? One crit and she's down, they should give a damn overkill bonus—"

His rough voice faded into the light as Nala fell, down and down and ever-down, a new voice rising to meet her:

"Here's another one—skimmers are earning their merits today, aren't they? Let's take a look ... hmm ... nasty hit to the neck, before we do anything—"

And then things went properly black.