We arrived at the abandoned castle sometime later on horseback. I say we, but it was mainly just me and Rachel, my AI companion residing within the insides of my skull. The time was already approaching midnight, and although I initially wanted to handle the quest while the sun was still up, I was told by Rachel that the castle wasn’t going to be accessible to outsiders until nightfall. So, I eventually had to delay my arrival by a few hours, opting instead to swing by at the appropriate time.

The place was rather small for a castle, standing alone at the edge of nowhere. There was a draw bridge that went over a river to the location, and the building itself looked quite old. In front of the castle was a large wooden gate, which was wide open to reveal the insides of the castle courtyard. From that distance I could make out shapes on the ground in the courtyard, but I couldn’t make out much else as I was pretty far out.

So, I decided to get closer.

I gave the horse a little tap with my foot in its side and it began to walk forward. As we passed over the drawbridge, I took note of how quiet the entire place was and it gave me an eerie feeling. As soon as we passed through the wooden gates of the castle and entered the courtyard that feeling almost doubled. The things I once thought to be shapes on the ground turned out to be bodies littering the castle grounds. they were everywhere.

People. Knights. Watchmen. Even women. They all appeared to have been dead for quite some time with parts of their bodies already showing signs of decay. Suddenly I felt like I had made a mistake bringing the horse passed the castle gates with me.

The fact of the matter was, the people on the ground were dead. But not really. The moment I accidently touched one of them or the moment I made a loud noise they were all going to wake up and attack in unison. They were like undead zombies or something similar. The only difference was that they were a little faster than your average zombies. Rachel had filled me on the necessary information on our way to the castle, telling me about the monsters at the castle and its defenses.

I summoned my sword from my inventory then climbed off the horse a second later. I grabbed the horse by the reins then turned it around and nudged it a bit to begin walking. I guided the horse outside the castle gates and escorted it over the draw bridge. And after securing it by a tree and making sure it was safe, I proceeded back towards the castle on foot, going over the bridge and passing through the gates a second later.

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the moment I entered the courtyard I took a deep breath and readied myself for what I was about to do. Holding my sword in my right hand I proceeded to slam my open palm against the wooden gate repeatedly, making as much noise as I could. At first, I thought I wasn’t being loud enough as none of the bodies on the ground did so much as move. So, I stopped, and the entire place fell silent again.

But then, something happened.

First was that the wooden gates to the castle suddenly slammed shut behind me, locking me inside and causing my heart to almost skip a beat from the loud noise it had made on impact.

Then, I heard it.

A groan, and a shuffle, as one of the corpses on the left side of the courtyard slowly got to his feet, with the rest soon following. They all began groaning and getting up to their feet, and the thing that freaked me out the most in that moment was the fluidity of their movement. They all brandished weapons of their own with some of them carrying daggers and others carrying spears and cleavers. And as soon as they were all standing, they began to slowly move towards me.

“How many are there?” I asked my AI companion as I tightened my grip on my sword in preparation of the pending battle. They were getting closer by the second, and the last thing I wanted was for them to box me into a corner this early on in the fight. Luckily there were no archers among them I could see, as that would have proven quite the problem for me to handle if I was out numbered, which I clearly already was. But as soon as Rachel answered my question by saying, “14! They are 14 of them currently in the courtyard.” I immediately jumped into the offensive.

One of the three walking corpses that were closest to me suddenly lunged towards me with his knife and I dodged to the side before burying my sword deep into his stomach. I didn’t wait to see if he was dead or not. I pulled out my sword with a single yank, then slashed it in a wide ark towards my right, taking off the head of the second walking corpse in the process. The third one tried being quick with his axe as he lifted it above his head to strike me in the chest, but I was quicker. I swung my sword in his direction, and watched as the hand carrying his weapon dropped to the ground an instant later. I took off his head soon after.

However, the entire time I had been fighting the three zombies, the remaining eleven corpses standing behind them did not advance. They just stood there. Watching.

After I had killed the walking corpse holding the axe, the first one I had stabbed in the stomach tried getting back to his feet and rejoining the fight. But it never had the chance. I turned my attention over to him, then lopped off his head with another clean cut through the neck. As I watched his head fall to the ground, I couldn’t help but notice the absence of a familiar sight. There was no blood with these things.

“Hunter, we have a problem!” Rachel said, causing me to quickly turn around to face what I thought was more bloodless zombies coming towards me. But that wasn’t the case. At least not quite.

Where there were just eleven frozen corpses watching me just a second ago, there were now more than twenty. The entire castle courtyard was packed with the bloodless creatures standing in every corner, waiting for the moment when they all rushed me at the same time. They had somehow multiplied in the time it took me to fight the other three, and they were quickly blocking my entrance to the castle with their sheer numbers. They were now well over thirty of them, and already expecting it, they suddenly began rushing towards me at the same time.