Lightning lit up the sky and Emrys could see multiple lightning strikes across the city. Screams echoed through the streets. But there was no thunder.

“It’s the necromancer, it has to be. What the hell does he want with Sonora?”

Another zombie lurched into view, and Zereh cut off its head with one swing. The headless body continued to stumble toward them. With her second swing she cut from the neck down, splitting it in two.

Jason buried his face in Emrys’s neck. The boy was shaking.

“How much further?” Emrys asked.

“We’re almost there. But…there’s so many of them.” The zombies were individually weak, but already a huge crowd of them were walking the streets. Everywhere the lightning struck, the zombies rose.

The arcanist held Jason steady with one arm and freed the other to form a fireball. Steam rose around it where the rain fell, and Emrys felt the strain of holding onto fire in a rainstorm.

“I’m not going to be much help,” he said. “My fireballs are weakened, and if I use any of my stronger spells I risk damaging the town.”

“That’s fine.” Zereh readjusted her grip on her swords. “If I cut them in half, they stop moving.”

The two nodded and crossed the street toward the undead. They noticed the newcomers immediately and came stumbling towards them. They moaned unintelligibly. It shouldn’t have meant anything, but it was enough to catch the attention of the other creatures nearby.

Zereh flashed through the group, cutting several of them in the midsection with one swing. Her sword glowed yellow; she was using a skill,

Four zombies fell apart. Six more were still incoming.

Emrys threw fireballs at the downed zombies to ensure they were dead. Again he heard that terrible screech as black smoke rose up from their skulls.

They continued on like that. Zereh leaped ahead to cut them down, and Emrys followed more slowly to finish them off.

At long last, they reached the school house.

The door was barred.

“Mary! We’ve got Jason, let us in!” Zereh pounded on the door.

Moments later, the door opened. Zereh and Emrys rushed inside, and Jason was passed to Mary. He clung to her. She stroked the boy’s head.

“Maybe next time you’ll listen to me, hmm?”

Jason nodded tearfully. “I’m sorry, I’ll never run out ever again.”

Zereh shifted uncomfortably. “We’d better get going. Those monsters are all through town.”

“Here. Take this, for your trouble.” Mary handed Zereh a small pouch of coins.

“Thanks.”

Emrys poked his head out the door before stepping out and motioning Zereh to follow. The street was clear, but they could hear the sounds of fighting.

“We have to help,” Emrys said. “These people are farmers, they’re not equipped to fight monsters like this.”

“No. We have to stay on track. We came to Sonora for a reason.”

“You want to go after Stephanie’s mom? Now?”

“No better time,” she said. “Just think how embarrassed you’ll be if we go around playing hero and she ends up killed by the zombies.”

Emrys felt sick. He wasn’t sure he agreed with that logic, but either way they had to hurry and he knew how stubborn she could be.

“Fine. She’s not far from here.”

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He followed Zereh and wondered again how she seemed to always know where to go. He hadn’t noticed her cast any sort of tracking spell, but she never hesitated, despite never having been to Sonora before.

“Hah! Stay back, devil!” A young farmer was fending off a pair of zombies with a pitchfork. They were pushing him up against the wall of a barn, and his jabs with the pitchfork were hardly scratching them.

Emrys shot two fireballs one after another. The rain weakened the spell so it wasn’t enough to stop them, but they turned their attention to the arcanist.

The farmer plunged his pitchfork into the creature’s back and twisted. There was a gruesome squelch followed by the eerie screech, and the undead collapsed.

Emrys knocked out the other with two more fireballs.

“Get inside!” he shouted.

The farmer nodded. He turned to run but was stopped by another creature. It was bigger than the zombies and looked sturdier. Its bones were bigger, and the flesh of its body was more put together. Its features were distended, like someone had combined two or three bodies and not bothered to maintain the proportions.

The farmer yelled and backed up. The revenant picked him up and raised him high overhead.

“No!” Emrys fired off a few spells, but they barely even singed the undead beast.

Zereh leaped in with a swing of her sword, only to miss entirely as the revenant easily side-stepped her attack. It was faster than the zombies, and it had no interest in engaging with her.

The farmer beat his hands against the creature’s skull, but it barely noticed.

The bones of its jaw rattled. “This one is miine,” it rasped.

“Not today.” Zereh lunged, but again the creature dodged and refused to engage. It kept backing away until finally it turned and fled.

“Brandon!”

Zereh held Emrys back. “Let him go! There are other people here who need you, people we can actually help.”

Emrys ran a frustrated hand through his sopping wet hair and let out a guttural cry. “Fine. Fine! We still have to check on Ms. Turner.”

He followed Zereh through town to what he still thought of as Stephanie’s house.

“This is the place, right?”

Emrys nodded.

The small house was entirely surrounded by undead, all moaning and banging their hands against the walls. He thanked the gods that they were all the weaker, killable type.

A perfect opportunity to vent his rage.

It only took two fireballs for the monsters to turn their attention to the newcomers. Zereh swept through them like an avenging angel. For the first time, Emrys noted that aside from water running down her armor, the warrior was otherwise untouched by the rain. Her hair looked just the same as it always had, complete with a perfect lock of hair that had escaped her ponytail to frame her face.

“A little more firepower, please!”

Emrys shook himself. Focus.

If he didn’t finish them off with a fireball after she cut them down, the bones would rattle and start to merge back together, like some sort of sick regeneration. In his moment of distraction, one zombie had managed to right itself enough to slash at Zereh’s ankles. The damage was slowing her footwork, and without him she would have been overrun.

Emrys cast fireballs as quickly as he could while aiming carefully to minimize collateral damage. One by one they let out that horrific screech that signaled their death, until finally they were all defeated.

As the last one fell, the rain at last began to slow.

Zereh rapped on the door. “You okay in there? We’ve taken care of the undead.”

There was the sound of movement inside, and the door creaked open just wide enough for one terrified eye to look out.

“Ms Turner?” Zereh asked. “We’re here to help.”

The woman’s gaze softened when she noticed Emrys, and she opened the door wider. “You can call me Tiffany,” she said. “Come inside.”

The two hurried indoors, and Tiffany shut the door firmly behind them. The house was modestly decorated with handmade furniture. At the center of the room was a large fireplace that was already crackling merrily. It brought some comfort in an otherwise bleak situation.

“Are you alright?” Emrys asked. “Did they hurt you?”

Tiffany rubbed her arms. “I’m okay. They weren’t able to get inside. Thank you for taking care of them. I don’t know what I’d have done on my own.”

“You did great.”

Zereh cleared her throat. “We were actually on our way to see you for a different reason. Forgive me for being abrupt, but have you seen Sven? We’re worried he was taken by the necromancer, and if today’s events are anything to go by, I’d say the sooner we find him the better.”

Tiffany’s eyes widened. “Oh, that poor boy. Yes, he was here last week. Stephanie’s death really did a number on him, you know. I don’t know that he’ll ever get past it.”

“Did he say anything about where he was going, or what he was planning?”

“I don’t think so.” The woman shook her head. “He didn’t look well at all. I do hope you find him. He kept going on about how things went wrong and who was responsible. It was just an accident, a horrible accident, but he was looking for someone to blame. You should talk to the Wardlaw boys. They were with Stephanie that night, so if Sven was investigating, he would have talked to them too.”

“Thank you for your time.” Zereh stood. “It looks like the storm has cleared, so you should be safe now.”

Emrys hesitated at the door, but followed her out.

“I hate to leave her like that,” he said.

“I know, but we can’t do anything for her. It’s safe to say the necromancer caused that storm, and he took that farmer. If he’s kidnapping people, I want to know why.”

“Maybe Sven went looking for him. He thought Stephanie’s death wasn’t an accident… Maybe he thought the necromancer caused it, and went after him.”

Zereh shrugged. “It fits. We should see if anyone else was taken. There might be some sort of pattern there. Let’s talk to the Wardlaws first.”

Sunlight broke through the clouds, and in moments the sky was as clear as it had been that morning. As quickly as it had begun, the storm was over.