As the ritual progressed, Yacob first heard the snapping of twigs in the forest, something being dragged through the mat of dry leaves on the ground through the woods. They both turned and began to channel their mana much more consciously.
Wali shook Gale and pushed a spark of mana into the spear. “Wake up!” He said to the spear. A spark of electricity rolled along the obsidian spear tip.
“I’m awake. I’ve never been so weak as to need sleep!” Gale’s voice came into his head. “This place is disgusting. The Death energy here is foul to my taste.”
“That sucks. We have to fight now. Kill some zombies, maybe.” Wali said as he took up a station to Reg’s left and Yacob on the opposite side. They had planned only to use the magic necessary to kill as this would be a long day, and resource management would be essential.
More sounds came to them through the woods, and they could see movement among the trees. The shadows cast by Reg’s medallion made whatever it was challenging to see. The first creature to arrive was a wolf, or what remained of a wolf. Half of its body was a tattered mess of rotting fur and exposed bone. Parts of its entrails hung below it, dragging through the leaves. The smell was atrocious, sickly sweet, rotten flesh and old blood. Both boys had previously dealt with rotting flesh, but this was overpowering. Both of them retched as they fought down their stomachs. The wolf was closer to Yacob, who channeled stone into his arms, the gray covering his flesh up to his biceps. He dashed forward as the wolf began to charge. It made no sound, did not breathe, bark, growl, or howl. It leaped onto Yacob, who caught the snapping jaws with a stony arm. Teeth shattered against stone, and Yacob slammed a fist into its skull. The goopy flesh exploded with the force of his strike, and the skull crunched into splinters. The thing dropped but kept going. Headless, it had no senses, the dripping gore of the neck hunted around as if the head was not missing. Yacob wasted no time, kicking the zombie wolf off its feet and back into the woodline. It lay there scrabbling, unable to get upright with no sense of “up.”
This was the best way to deal with the undead with no controller—removing their senses effectively rendered them harmless. Removing the brain did nothing to Wali’s surprise. The undead would keep trying to attack as long as there were eyes, ears, or even a nose. They didn’t eat the flesh or brains but were driven to kill. If the only weapons the body had were teeth, then biting was an issue. Aside from their brute strength, the most dangerous part was the disease their teeth and claws carried, as virulent as the bite of a Savannah Monitor. Reg had taught them how to fight the undead the night before dinner. This was their first time seeing an actual undead, however.
More were coming, though; they heard and saw several coming now. Wali had called Crocodilian into his skin and Gulli into his muscles. Greenish scales covered his skin underneath the leathers he wore., and he grew in strength. He dashed forward at a human zombie missing an arm and its lower jaw. It reached forward, shambling clumsily. He slapped it with Gale, releasing a blast of electricity. This did not kill it but disrupted its mana for a moment. Wali spun, sweeping Gale through its neck, decapitating it. He kicked the body away and rushed to meet the next. Yacob fought two more humanoids, beastkin of some sort. Their skinned skulls were frightening, with snapping fangs and long claws. Yacob was a brute, though. Where Wali depended on grace and skill, Yacob applied stone-empowered force—smashing and throwing one zombie into another. Their teeth and claws could not pierce stone, and his newly acquired armor shrugged off most of the rest. They fell into a rhythm as the ritual built; at the halfway mark, the power crested.
They felt an innate change in the very mana around them. The Death aspected mana was declining, and so were the zombies. Twenty-seven headless corpses lay in a writhing mass surrounding the chanting priest. Two young men covered head to toe in slimy stinking goo, and bone splinters stood panting near him. The young men took a moment to breathe; their eyes were wary. The fight had been one of endurance. The enemies were numerous and strong but not exactly tough nor skilled. A few rustles in the woods nearby signaled that there were other enemies around, but none approached. The light from Reginald was like standing under the noonday sun in the desert. It warmed the exposed skin like an intense tanning bed, almost tinglingly painful. The corpses around the boys began to shudder and writhe; black smoke rose from them as the Death energy that had corrupted them was burned away. The gore sticking to Wali and Yacob began to dry like mud and flake away. Both boys shook and rubbed the dried blood and viscera off of themselves. They kept watching as the zombies de-animated. The rustling in the woods nearby also ceased.
After some time Reg’s voice began to decline, the feeling of some unseen presence lifted away, the light dimmed, and finally, the ritual came to a close. The air felt clean despite the dried-out husks of the now cleansed zombies. Reg stood on shaky legs, having been kneeling for too long. He looked around and smiled, “Nice work, gentlemen.” He said as he wobbled out of the salt circle and took a drink from his canteen. Wali and Yacob looked at each other and smiled.
“That wasn’t too bad. I assume it gets worse than this?” Wali said as Reg looked over the ring of desiccated corpses.
Stolen story; please report.
“Looks pretty average, really. Sometimes one, sometimes fifty, sometimes a necromancer or other thinking creature. It is different every time.” Reg said as he picked up one of the dead things. “Help me pile them up in the salt, please. We’ll remove the possibility of them being reused.”
As Wali and Yacob started the gruesome task of hauling bodies over, Yacob asked, “How long will the cleansing last?”
“If there aren’t any incursions, then at least a month. But the Imperial Throne folks are never still. This removes soldiers from their ranks before they know they are missing. It weakens the incursion because they have to spread more Death-aspected mana over the area to fill in what we cleanse. It also removes reinforcements from being generated. Last and most importantly, this is an act of worship for my deity, Demise.” Reg said as he dragged a three-legged bear husk over. After a few more minutes, they piled the bodies together, and Reg said a short prayer. White fire licked through the bodies, instantly reducing them to ash and swirling that ash up into the sky.
Reg thanked his god for interceding in the war, and they prepared to move on. Ten miles through the rough country would take them several hours, so they took a break here. Some water only and a few minutes spent in meditation to recuperate spent mana as there was clean natural mana filling the area now.
They hiked, and Wali proposed his plan to Reg. The ritual Reg did was simple but empowered by his connection to Demise. It drew all of the Death aspect mana over a wide area. One continuous protective circle would ruin the effect, but otherwise, the mana would flow around other obstacles. Zombies and other undead could be repelled by a simple set of runes or sequence of glyphs. As they walked through the woods towards Reg’s second destination, Wali used his hatchet to lop off saplings they passed, collecting eight spears of timber.
Wali had a plan. One of the few genres of video games he always enjoyed playing when he had time to kill was Tower Defense. Most commonly, the open field sort of these games had you build defensive turrets to kill enemies that came in waves. Wali could not easily or quickly make some sort of magical turret. But he could build a fence, something that let the mana through but not the zombies. Something that channeled the undead into a funnel where both Wali and Yacob could quickly deal with them instead of having a continuous stream of enemies coming at them from all sides.
Once they were halfway to their next destination, the Death aspected mana again pressed down on them. They saw a few zombies wandering the woods here, but none of them sensed the trio of adventurers. They reached the following site shortly before noon. As Reg began his preparations, Wali and Yacob got to work on Wali’s plan. Yacob raised a stone from the earth some five paces from the salt circle. Wali had him mark a particular set of glyphs into the face of the rock toward the light. He then cut linking glyphs into each spear and walked out a spiral placing a spear into the ground every five steps. When he ran out of spears, he had Yacob raise another stone to be inscribed. By the time this was complete, Reg was already in his circle chanting. Power rose, as did the light.
This was when the plan came into play. The first stone began to glow, the glyphs marked on its surface shining brightly. A soft ring of light sprung around it to about four and a half paces, and then the first spear began to glow. Like cups filling from a tap and overflowing into the next cup, the linked sequence of glyphs ended with the last stone. A spiral of glowing stones and spears encircled the ring of salt and chanting priest. Death-aspected mana flowed through the gaps between the soft circles of light of the fence posts. Each gap was ten and twenty centimeters, too small for most zombies. Anchored by stone and wrapped in light, Yacob stood at the opening of the spiral. Wali walked inside the circle of marked saplings, ensuring his plan would work.
The first zombie came. Some human, maybe an elf, shambled forward to a side of the fence. It stopped when it reached the ring of light glowing from the fencepost. It looked like it was pushing against an invisible wall, not one made of glass but one that was soft. It tried to push into the light but slid to the side. A power current flowed along the fence toward the opening, toward Yacob. Yacob stood with feet planted, a short wall of stone at his knees to protect his feet. A loose head had bitten into his boot in the last fight. He called on his stone fists and readied himself. Wali walked inside the fence of light, watching as the zombie bounced around the glows and noting that two of the spears were a bit too far apart. It was too late to correct, but the spot would need monitoring. When the first zombie reached Yacob, he slapped the head, which popped like a melon to a huge mallet. The thing fell away to scrabble around to the side of the opening.
More were coming, many more. Reg continued to chant, the light from his medallion a second sun. Wali and Yacob traded places, one fighting, one resting and guarding the weak spots. When it was his time to rest, Wali measured the effects of the posts, marking the distance of the light bubble with a piece of string. Over the next hour, the ritual was completed. This time there was a mound of the dead in one small spot. Eventually, the dead had been forced to climb over and past their headless brethren, which made things a bit more complicated, but the plan had worked well.
When Reg finished the ritual, he smiled at Wali and had Wali walk him through the magic. They repeated the process of destroying the desiccated corpses. Wali reclaimed his spears, and they moved to the next area. On the way, Wali claimed another five spears to expand the ring and allow Wali and Yacob to retreat further as the mound of dead grew. Again Yacob raised a pair of stones as the anchors for the fence. As night fell and dusk struck, the ritual reached its crescendo; the pile of dead was even more extensive than the last two. Reg healed the minor wounds the boys had acquired during their battles. This time, the fence was spaced perfectly, and the boys had a wide hallway to battle the undead.
They packed the spears, and Yacob sent the stones back under the dirt. Exuberant and exhausted, they returned to the wall and followed it to the gatehouse. Guards at the top notified the gatekeepers, and the trio trudged back inside. Reg told them to meet him at the Society House in the morning; they would take a day to rest and then go back out a day later.