“That can’t be. It can’t be.”

My heart pounded in my chest oppressively while I paced around the room. So lost I was in my panicked thoughts that I didn’t notice the pain of my fingers digging into my palm until I felt the warmth of trickling blood. But no matter how many times I stomped across the creaky wooden floor or massaged my temple or muttered distressedly under my breath, I could not erase what fell under the vision of the mystic eye: a thousand beings marching to this city, the pulsing of their existences as one – and carrying the familiar character of my own soul.

If what I saw was true, then swift action was necessary. But I needed to look again, just to be certain, just to hold out hope that I had seen wrong.

I stopped and stood still. One long breath entered, and after one, two, three seconds, it exited. I crouched back down on the floor and my legs folded over themselves. In an instant, my mind became tranquil.

Carefully, I poured mana into my mystic eye. As I tapped deeper into its ability, it went beyond physically seeing the traces of mana in front of me and turned into a new, innate sensation, an addition to my five senses. My body grasped and became in tune with the currents and swirls of mana of the world around further and further and further until the sphere of sight extended to beyond the walls of Lefke.

And the reality I saw before remained: a thousand beings marching, now even closer to the walls. But, this time, there was a new addition; within the walls was another being that shared the heartbeats of the thousand outside, mere minutes from here.

I rushed up back to consciousness and turned off my mystic eye.

That decided it. There was something threatening this city, and I needed to take the fight to them before things could get worse. I took a deep breath and scrambled to fit my scimitar and estoc onto my belt. But, I remembered something else, or, rather, someone else. My gaze wandered to Shara as I finished my preparations, and I walked up to her, my eyes not leaving her peaceful figure sleeping by the moonlight.

Tonight would be an eventful, messy night. Urgency was needed. Who knew when and what would happen? But despite that, I spared a few moments to watch Shara sleep serenely into the night. I savored the peaceful sight like an eerie calm before the storm. The gryphon princess enjoying her slumber, the moonlight falling upon the graceful contours of her face, her long dark eyelashes, her hair sprawled messily and haphazardly about her – why was I so paralyzed as I watched on? Had she always looked so beautifu– er, no, graceful? And why did I not simply shake her awake?

The illusion of her beauty was broken when she suddenly belched out a loud burp in her sleep, and somehow it caused her head to slide off and dangle over the bed’s edge. Incomprehensible sleepy mutters left her mouth all the while, and I softly chuckled at her. Gently, I put an arm around her shoulder and lifted her head back to the pillow. After that though, instead of withdrawing my arm, my hand gently approached her and rested on her cheek, cupping it. As I enjoyed her warmth, more than I rationally should, I decided: I didn’t want to wake her up.

There were many things I didn’t understand about her. Behind that pretty face was someone I knew I would never fully understand, maybe by virtue of her nature. But if there was one thing I had learned about Shara, it was that she had no taste for battle. Though she had shown skill with the spear, during our travels, she left all of the fighting against monsters to me, not out of laziness but almost out of a fear to engage in battle. Not once had I seen her wield the spear in real combat.

And it will stay that way tonight. Even if it came to the case that she had to fight, I trusted in her abilities more than my own, but I didn’t want to push her to fight with me. If I could help it, tonight would be my battle alone.

Was that a foolish sentiment? In every single way, I knew the answer to be yes. But such seems to always be the case with sentiment. What a horrid thing sentiment could be.

I released my hand from her hesitantly. The moment I took it off, I already missed the warm contact, and such a thought made me both laugh and shudder. If she found out about this, she would never let me forget about it.

My eyes caught one final look at her before I jumped out the window and landed in the streets.

***

“Where is that fool…”

Orlando found the street quiet. Too quiet. Only his hurried footsteps across the stone-paved way could be heard, though it might be that his tunnel-vision attention proved deafening.

“Metis! See anything yet?” he asked a figure on the rooftops above.

“No.”

“Damn it, at this rate, we’ll be wasting the night going nowhere.” The man leaned his sore body against the wall of an alleyway.

“Then, shall we split up?” the voice above suggested. “I’ll head south, and you check the north? If we make haste, then we may find him still on the streets, wherever it may be.”

“Good suggestion as any,” Orlando said. His companion gave no audible farewell as she disappeared in a blur of shadows across the rooftops. Though weary and drunk, the man rested for only a few moments before walking into the street to continue his search.

As he peeked into the alleyways adjacent to the street, lighting them up with a small lantern in hand, Orlando lost himself in thought, mainly regarding the person he was searching for. Maybe it was the pained expressions or the anxiety hidden away behind his forced braggart-like pride, but the adventurer Marcus reminded the War Lion of many soldiers that fought under him in the past — young soldiers who saw cruel, unimaginable sights or lost their limbs in battle or found that their homes had been burned down to the ground, and soldiers who in turn found the kiss of death preferable to living with the scars of war. War had a special way of killing off good-natured, gold-hearted folk and leaving the irredeemable dregs of humanity alive. Orlando counted himself as one of the latter.

As such, the least he could do was make sure that Marcus wouldn’t do what Orlando feared he would.

He peeked into another dark alleyway, one sandwiched between a tailor’s little cozy shop and an apothecary, to find that, instead of the usual empty, if-admittedly-dirty space, there was a shadowy figure leaning against the wall, huffing forcefully.

“Hey,” Orlando greeted, holding up the lantern to get a better view, “I’m not looking for trouble. I’ve got a–”

His mouth clamped shut when he saw the face of the figure, who had suddenly turned his head towards Orlando. It was the one he had been trying to find, though Orlando was slightly alarmed by the sickly pallor of Marcus’s face. The eyes especially looked vacant, like a dead fish staring up at the fisherman.

“Marcus! You alright?” Orlando scrunched his nose at the familiar rancid smell emanating from the alleyway, but he did not hesitate to approach while making sure to avoid the bile on the ground.

Sweeping relief rushed through Orlando as he approached, relief that what he feared did not come true. It was the one thing on his mind, so as he came closer, he did not make note of Marcus’s expressionlessness nor his eerie silence nor the sticky saliva drooping from his mouth. Nor did he fully realize something was amiss until Marcus had leapt at him.

“What the hell!” Marcus charged at Orlando, cornering him against the wall. Amidst the scuffle, the lantern crashed into the ground, and the weak light it provided died out. The sudden impact of his back against the wall knocked the air out of him, but Orlando still managed to catch and hold back Marcus by the wrist. “Marcus, what is with you?!” Hollow eyes and attempts to rip his throat out were the only answers he received. The clatter of Marcus’ attempted bites were too close for Orlando’s comfort, only mere centimeters away.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Orlando retaliated by kicking, repeatedly digging his knee into Marcus’s stomach and then his crotch and then at his legs, but the adventurer-gone-mad did not flinch in the slightest. Try as he may to push back and escape, the rabid man pushed back with a superhuman strength, unnatural for someone even of his size. Marcus only got closer and closer, and Orlando felt his muscles growing more fatigued.

“Aaagh…” A long groan escaped Marcus, one that was almost a tragic elegy. With it, Orlando hesitantly accepted it all. The lifeless eyes, the unnatural strength, the unresponsiveness, the beast-like aggression—he recognized it and realized he couldn’t be naive anymore. Whatever his fears were before, something much worse had come to pass for Marcus.

The least he could do now was fight back and put Marcus to rest.

Resolute, Orlando slammed his forehead against the mad adventurer’s face and used the window of opportunity to slip from his position and forcibly slam an elbow right in the middle of Marcus’s left forearm. Despite the brutal crunch of bones snapping and blood flowing from his nose, Marcus leapt once more like a mad dog — and slammed face-first into the wall when Orlando sidestepped at the very last moment and ran out of the alleyway.

“Damn it.” Though he sprinted as swiftly as he could, he heard the mad adventurer quick at his heel. Truly, these were the worst possible conditions of battle he could have landed himself in: fighting against an enemy of unknown capabilities, whom he couldn’t negotiate or reason with or even taunt, in a dark, narrowly-spaced environment, all while being weaponless, aside from a small dagger. At the very moment, he utterly regretted having sent off Metis.

The hurried steps from behind drew closer and faster than his pace of escape into the corridor back into the wide open street. He would have to fight here, whether he wanted to or not.

Orlando spun at his feet, drew his dagger, and readied himself to face the figure charging at him. He found himself grinning madly as he awaited his foe, one of the few habits from his past that had survived. After so long, he couldn’t remember if it originated as a tactic to scare his enemies or to steel his own mettle — or maybe purely because it was a matter of nature for the War Lion.

The habitual grin disappeared however when the air instantly turned from autumn cool to winter chill.

And it curved down further into a confused frown when Marcus went from rushing forward to being pinned to the wall by a large icicle through the abdomen. A third figure now stood in the alleyway, his cloak billowing in the wind, standing with a frame much shorter than the other two. As Orlando tried to get a better glimpse of the newcomer, his confusions were answered; while they had only met today, he couldn’t mistake those silver locks and piercing blue eyes for anyone else.

***

“Ugggh…” The man – no, monster – clawed confusedly at the icicle. It was strange. No panicked cries of pain escaped him, only drawn-out, whispery moans, despite the blood flowing to the ground. But, there was no doubt: this was the being I sensed within the walls, the being whose soul was stained with the very same color as my own.

“Luqa, is that you?” the tall figure across the alleyway called out. As he stepped closer, the rugged face of Orlando came into view, visibly worn out.

“Yes. What… are you doing here?” Magically enhanced eyes gave me a good glimpse of him through the darkness. While he looked somewhat roughed-up, he was unwounded.

“I was trying to find Marcus,” he said, pointing to the monster pinned to the wall, “but I found him like this. Just a few hours ago, he was normal, if somewhat sickly, but…” Instead of continuing, he simply looked sorrowfully at Marcus, who was still trying to pull out the icicle lodged in him. “…What are you doing here?”

“I have a sense for these sorts of matters.” The two of us came closer to the monster. “Do you know what happened to him?”

“I don’t know.” He approached Marcus even closer, just beyond arm’s reach. “I can’t even make a good guess. The closest thing I know of would be undead. Someone may have killed him and then used necromancy to turn him into this… but I’ve never seen undead like this.”

Small cracks were beginning to form in the icicle, and, on closer look, it was budging slightly from its place under Marcus’s struggling. Despite his injuries, he was still a threat that needed to be disposed of — and I owed this poor man a death. Somehow, someway, my carelessness long ago led to the current moment and to the ultimate fate of this man: his corpse being used by some terrible force.

I drew my sword. I exchanged looks with Orlando, and he gave a small, resolute nod of approval. Marcus — or the body of Marcus — gave no reaction when my blade pierced through his eye and exited through the back of his head, and I fluidly pulled it out. Dark-red blood spurted in pulses from where my blade had entered.

“Agghh…” But he wasn’t dead. His hands still clawed at the icicle, and his movements were as restless as before. A ghost of a smile on his face seemed to mock me for thinking that a wound like that would be enough to kill him.

“What? What is this thing?” I hissed in frustration. “How is he still moving?”

“Undead creatures tend to be more persistent, but even a wound like that should have done something if not killing him,” Orlando commented with a gasp of surprise.

I readied my blade once more and it swiftly pierced through his other eye, a bit more hastily and drawing more blood than my attempt before.

When I pulled my blade out roughly, he was still moving. My grip on the hilt grew tighter out of frustration.

Once more, I aimed my blade and pierced it through him, this time through the heart. The motions of my blade were beginning to become sloppier, departing from the clean and minimal movements that Arnulf emphasized in his teachings. As I pulled out my blade, I felt a bit of unnaturally cold blood from him spatter and splatter my cheek.

But he was still moving, unaffected. The cracks in the icicle deepened as he kept struggling.

“Luqa, calm yourself!”

I readied my blade overhead and it fell down in an arc, bisecting partway through his head, cutting even through his skull. I had brought down my sword with more force than I intended, and it caused me to wobble slightly out-of-balance.

But despite the sword lodged between his two eyes, his arms were still struggling about. My breath grew ragged as I felt the fiery stirrings of anger or frustration or resentment or fear or whatever damned emotion it was.

“Luqa!”

I pulled the blade carelessly from his head and cleaved it through his neck, separating head from body. The head landed on the ground, face-up, with the same empty, unimpressed expression, the same hollow eyes boring into me. The face was finally frozen still.

I laid my eyes on the rest of the body, and growled in frustration. It was still moving. How damned useless was I to not even be able to put down this one man? I readied my blade once more. Maybe, if I sliced him into a million pieces, then that would do it—

“Hey!” A hand on my shoulder nudged me to my senses. “Calm down,” Orlando said.

“Apologies…” I sighed wearily and shook my head. For a few seconds, the two of us remained in silence as I recollected my composure. “But how do we deal with this?”

“It might be a matter of magic. Perhaps divine magic is required to still the body. It may be that the nature of his undead state is magical rather than physical, like the case of skeletons in certain dungeons… Maybe I should get Sumako…”

Magical rather than physical. The phrase was sobering, like a splash of cold water to the face.

I reactivated my mystic eye, and the headless monster began to be surrounded by a dark radiance, and the more and more mana I poured into the eye, the clearer it became: a minuscule core around which the aura surrounded, right in the middle of the base of his neck. It was somewhat similar to the quality of the mana reservoirs that humans and demons alike had.

I aimed my blade right where the core was and made a deep, clean stab. At the moment the tip reached its mark, the aura collapsed in on itself. And when I pulled out the blade, his arms were limp at his side. I melted and dematerialized the icicle, and he fell to the ground in a puddle of blood. He – it – was dead.

“Good thinking, Orlando,” I said.

“Huh? What’d you do? How did you kill him?” he asked.

“Using a bit of magic, I found that he had some sort of magical core right below his neck, and destroying it seems to amount to its death.” A horrid, distinct stench grew from the corpse, which was now beginning to ooze out a thick, dark liquid from its wounds.

“I’ll be damned if this isn’t one of the stranger things I’ve seen.” Orlando crouched down beside the corpse to closely examine it. “Thanks for the help, Luqa. Now, let’s report this with the guards—”

A loud stampede of noises from the street interrupted him. Armed men in armor dashed through the streets, many with panicked looks on their faces. One of them, a young man, almost too young for the armor he wore, carrying a torch, stopped by and peeked into the alleyway.

“Beware! You two, you must flee— huh?” He flinched when he saw the corpse on the ground, and he covered his mouth in disgust, perhaps at the smell, perhaps at the gruesome sight. “D-don’t tell me, have they made it this far inside?” he muttered.

“They?” Orlando stood up from his crouched position. “What do you mean, they?”

“Oh, Sir Orlando, it’s you. T-they’re here. It’s t-the Horde.” The youth’s face turned as pale as the moon. “The Undead Horde from the wastelands northeast has broken into the city. And every major gate facing the demonlands — North, East, and West — those things ’ve overrun every single one of ‘em.”