Bob, Mork's second dinner companion, was one of the few people that could tell whether or not something was a death knight.
He had a little icon that told him where the death knights were. That little splotch on his HUD was always present in his mind. In fact, every night when he returned back to their staging area, what he did was his work to check where the death knights were.
There were three circles each about with a radius of ten meters that Valerie used to triangulate their distance. Each night, Bob would go to each of the three circles and stand in the center and double check that none of the death knights had moved significantly. If they had, he would move one of the rocks and headed their direction relative to the circle. It wasn't perfect, but it was enough for Valerie to work with.
Bob had been close enough to two death knights in the flesh that he knew that the icon grew larger. Sure, he only had that ability for the second death. Knight, as it was something that Mork had given him specifically, so when his scouts told him otherwise he was confused. Whatever creature that was down among the zombies, it had to be intelligent.
That meant that there was a death knight controlling it, or had controlled it before and sent it off on an errand.
"That's not a death knight! That's just an errand boy!" He yelled, shooting at it, wondering how the words errand boy had left his unconscious thoughts.
A crossbow bolt that should have sheared what had to be an head off just stuck into it.
Errand boy was just the only thing that popped into his head and he knew instantly that the ladies would remember that one.
They had been on him about his vegetable intake for a while before he told them that vegetables were a culinary distinction, thank you very much. They still regularly filled him up with the local equivalent of broccoli: purple cabbage.
"Fire!" Stella said from next to him.
It was midday, but he could feel the sparks of the fireworks as Sophie released whatever she had.
He loaded up another bolt. It was still just there looking at him.
As he was loading his second bolt, the being lowered his hood and Bob got a better look. It had to have been an orc at one point in time. But now its lifeless black eyes leered at him, as if trying to beseech him to just give up.
Bob was not going to give up. He had, against so many people's better advice, opened up a cake shop in Hoboken. He wasn't known for taking advice.
He would rather tighten his belt than ask for help.
The crossbow bolt was still sticking out of the orc's face.
The orc pulled out the bolt, and then waved an envelope at three of them before melding into the crowd of zombies.
"Did he just wave an envelope at us?" Stella yelled.
"You've got mail!" Sophie chimed in.
Bob continued attacking the horde but now the tension had broken. He realized that even though he knew instinctively that it wasn't a death knight, seeing an intelligent undead do something deliberately to them for a purpose, meant that somebody knew. One of the death knights was tracking them. He was reasonably certain now that it was the orcish one. So he was going to have to have a heart-to-heart with Borgan and Song.
It wasn't long before they got the reinforcements that they needed to push the zombies back. Once again, Bob was still worrying what he was going to say to the orcs when he got rotated out.
He didn't want to be rotated out but still made it clear that it was his time to go.
He shook it out. They needed to talk.
They were on a guard tower that was not connected to anything, there was a chance that the zombies could eventually push it over and then there would be really screwed.
He resolved to install a zip line if needed. His grappling hook card, while awesome and have great help in destroying a zombie dragon, did not reach between the guard tower and the beginning of the maze.
Yet.
---
Finley rotated into the fighting and then back out. All the chosen had very strong abilities that made them deadly in a fight. They also had deep mana wells. He would never want to fight one of them. He would lose to even the weakest chosen.
Each of them was a world class warrior.
He was so glad that they chose to keep him on board everyday. The elf would not have survived the zombies otherwise.
When Bob brought back the news that they had received a message, the mood of the camp soured a bit. Whatever it was, the fact that something had seen fit to send them a package of some sort was not a good sign. Though Gloucester was remote, it had a direct trade route to the dwarven capital. It was a major trade hub, or at least it had been. What it wasn't by any stretch of the imagination was close to the orcish meritocracy.
Finley had tried to explain the distances involved at that length. It was a very far distance for anyone to go unless they were deliberately doing something.
Even then they would have to bring a lot of support. That was why most adventuring groups traveled in packs or groups of at least eight to twelve. He hadn't had to while he was protected in the settled North.
But here? Despite being close to the Capitol? They were definitely monsters lurking, looking for an easy breakfast.
"And you are certain that this was an orc?" Borgan said.
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"Fairly certain," Bob said.
"And they were this far from the meritocracy's lands..."
Song signed something to his brother and Bob. Finley struggled on what the verb was.
"He's saying that they have to travel very far to get here. There's something going on," Bob said.
Finley had to re-calibrate his interpretation of the sign that Song had made with his fingers. Or had it been a wheel? He would find out later.
"That would be so much travel that they would have had to start when we started traveling. Not from the dwarven kingdom where we met most of you," Finley said. "From Dunnamore."
Bob scratched his beard. Finley remembered his introduction to Bob. The slightly younger Bob had been overconfident.
That first encounter had begun with Bob assaulting a fortified position where an intelligent undead had captured virtually every other member of the Caravan that was with them today. Aside from the two orcs and Valerie, every single other human and dwarf had been there.
Bob's summoned eldritch being had finally arrived with a haul that made previous hauls look poor by comparison. Rather than carrying everything, it threw it all up at Bob's feet.
The crown jewel of the hole was of course the folio that held something that nobody wanted to touch.
"Do you think it's cursed?" Bob said.
"When you say cursed, what are you talking about?" Finley said.
Humans had some strange sensibilities about these kind of things. There was probably some backstory that they were not going to tell them until much later that he probably should have known by now. But that was just working with humans in general.
"Like through evil spirits. This might have some sort of card effect when we open it?" Bob said, holding it out at arm's length.
Beneath his knees, the cat shaped thing lounged.
"Bob, you have an eldritch beast right there. Why don't you have it open it for you?" Borgan said.
Next to him, Song signed to have the cat do it. This one, Finley understood entirely.
"All right. Ca'at, would you do us the honors please?"
The small beast apparently understanding the context either through Bobs instructions or from everyone else shrinking away from the package.
Ca'at cut a thin line down the envelope. Opening it slowly, everyone reeled back, expecting some sort of spring trap.
But it didn't disappear and didn't explode, which was probably par for the course for them. He couldn't ask much more for his cat than to not explode upon contact.
Bob could ask for it to not destroy his carpet, but that would be a fool's errand.
Ever so slowly, the little beast pulled a piece of parchment out of the inside of the envelope.
It took the envelope, separating it with its paws and teeth and then brought the piece of paper up to Bob. All eyes were on it as the cat brought the paper up.
The expectation was that this was a message from a death knight. They had never needed to interact with the death knight before which was concerning on many different levels.
Of course, when the paper was turned over, the writing wasn't orcish and Finley couldn't read it.
He was about to guess that perhaps the chosen got the ability to read other languages as one of their powers because that would just be so broken.
"What the heck does this say guys?" Bob asked, showing the paper to the orcs and then to Finley.
"It says that the rightful heir of Mork wants to meet you and discuss the future--their future plans?" Borgan said.
The tension became a miasma of confusion. Bob looked to Song, but the mute orc just shrugged.
"Who the heck is the rightful heir of Mork?" Bob said.
"Well the bottom it's signed... His name is the Flesh Weaver," Borgan said.
Bob paused for a second. His eye drifted off, focusing on something that only he could see. Finley had seen this before and he expected that Bob was getting a quest.
Every time the man completed a quest, he got something that he couldn't otherwise have gotten from his deity. It was the reason he had the ability to even detect where the death knights were.
His killing of the first death knight gave him the Pathfinder ability that helped him detect zombies and the death knights themselves. When they killed the second death knight, their reward was the gate card.
That card had proven invaluable so far. Finley was trying to think about what Bob would get from the next three death knights. As he waited for Bob to announce what his quest was about.
"I got another quest," he said, slumping down.
"Is it one of those evacuation type quests?" Finley said.
"No. More of a Faustian bargain type thing," Bob said. "The quest wants me to meet the flesh weaver in single combat. That's probably not going to happen. I wish I could just wave away the quest from my list though. Terrible name though-if true."
The first time that they gotten a quest of that type, a horde of zombies had swarmed upon them. This was before they figured out how to use earthen walls as barriers. This was far before they had come together as a team.
They had ran. That same feeling that he needed to run to safety tugged at the base of his neck. Finley scratched his chin. He wanted to run. Everything on his long life was telling him that he needed to run.
"Guys I think it's time to get this airship working," Finley said.
"My feelings exactly," Bob said.
---
"In light of current events and a new understanding of what is behind these dragon attacks, I'm posing that we begin our final preparations and if we're not airworthy within two days. Then we'll go for the sea-worthy route. I understand that there's a lot of shifting around needs to happen so that we can make sure that all the horses have a spot on board as well as all the goats. Seeing as how the horses don't have a choice in the matter, we wanted to put it towards the goats to make their own decision."
The council and all the goats assembled took up a very large amount of room. In fact, Anthony had to ask Sonya to prepare the so that everyone would have a place to stand or sit. Finley had made a treat for the goats, giving two of them druid class cards with wild shape abilities.
Two new dwarves joined them on that day. An unfortunate side effect of their base state being that they were goats meant that they had to wild shape into their former dwarven selves, and could only keep that form for a short while.
"Therefore, let's decide this together. Anyone who wants to make it on their own, we can let you go, but our core group needs to stick together. We assume that every one of you dwarves wants to come with. This means that we'll have to find you all food as well."
A goat bleated.
The two new dwarves nodded.
They'd only been able to hold their wild shape for a part of that day. They had reserved this time to be able to speak to everyone quickly.
The older, male dwarf took a turn. When he was asked his name earlier he said it was Higgins-no last name.
"As many of you are aware, we can't really talk to each other when we're in Goat form. We do get a sense of what each other are feeling. And since I understand that they all have the same intelligence as me, I can clearly state that they are hearing this and we heard you before," Higgins said. "Also, because of this faith that's coming upon us, I feel that I need to stay that we are fully in support of your efforts. We may not be as powerful as you chosen, but we are many. And we will do whatever it takes to get our Kingdom back."
Anthony briefly wondered how strong they could make their wild shape. The younger female dwarf with him, one who had the form of a pygmy dwarf had said that her name was Gigi. She had died and her previous name didn't matter anymore. It was a dwarf thing that Valerie explained after she reverted to goat form.
"If we stay here because there's not enough room on that boat, we can make accommodations."
"No one is saying that there is no room. We are simply on unaccustomed to traveling with thirty extra bodies," Anthony said.
"You guys have the twenty horses though?" She replied. They had dressed her up with clothes that had been found in one of the promontory Mansions. She looked like she was ready to go to a costume ball.
"None of the horses that are traveling with us used to be dwarves or zombies. They are here because of Finley's strength in animal handling. Plus we think that they are interested in their own self-defense."
"Well I speak for the both of us and the rest of my brethren when we say thank you for reviving us. All you goats that want to continue onward with the caravan of the chosen, please stamp your hooves."
The cacophony of noise filled Anthony's ears and his heart.