A fortnight had passed since we had left Thornwell. The forest to our right became thicker, and the Cel Mountains ahead loomed ever larger. We were still a few days from the base of the mountain range. When we reached that point, we would head into the forest, where the path leading up into the mountains would be a few days travel to our left.

Meir had long ago completed its semi-annual trek across the sky, so the nights had been darker, and the bright blue skies of the days were missing its presence as well. We were now deep into the heat of High Star; the detour to Thornwell had cost us a few days of travel. If we had any further delays, it was possible we wouldn't make it to Whispermere until early Red Moon. If that were the case, that would mean I would arrive in Whispermere a full year after my mother had written her letter requesting me to visit.

Travel had been relatively calm in terms of trouble from wildlife or enemies since our little run-in with the orcs back before Thornwell. It didn't mean the trek was easy. The days were hot, particularly while stinking and baking in leather armor, and water was hard to come by this far from the ocean. We would run across a small stream now and then, and I'd even created rain a few times for purposes of relief, but full on bathing was out of the question without a larger body of water. Theron had spoken of the existence of hot springs in the Cel Mountains, which was news to me. Right now, in the heat, the idea of a hot spring was awful. I was sure that once we were freezing in the mountains, however, it would be a lifesaver.

It was mid-day, and the sun was relentless upon the earth below. Because we were following the forest anyway, we'd decided long ago to walk just within the line of the trees, allowing the shadow to give us relief. The group of us were quiet, in the midst of pleasant silence.

That is when we heard it.

It was an ongoing crackling, coming from to our right, deeper in the forest, getting closer. It reminded me of when mages would wield lightning, letting the bolts strike out directly from their palms...only this was different. It was magic, yes. But it wasn't air magic.

Theron was in front of the group, as had been his place since the beginning of our journey. Since he was both a ranger and the only one of us who'd been to the Cel Mountains, it seemed only natural. But now, he stopped in his tracks, and we eased up behind him.

The mercenary turned, made a gesture to lower ourselves to the ground. We did so, squatting amongst the brush, without a word.

Seconds later, footsteps—lots of footsteps—followed, clomping down in the forest, overriding the crackling. Then, a roar. My heart began to race at its familiarity.

Orcs.

As the sounds got louder and closer, more became audible. Orcish war horns, the harsh warning echoing off the nearby thick tree trunks. Larger footsteps, though just one set, that sounded much larger than even the orcs. Then, the clash of metal, followed by the skidding of it as one blade was sliced down the length of another.

By the gods. How many are there? As the noises came closer, my eyes darted through the thick foliage, looking for the sources of them. A moment later, a flash of black passed through the forest ahead, followed by a small army of orcs.

There was one man. Hidden beneath a cloak of black, the man was not equipped to handle the entire orc army that was after him. He held a scythe in his right hand, but the weapon's long pole handle had been cut to half-length, giving the man the ability to wield it single-handedly. The man quickly backed away from the orcs, nearly tripping over the mess of foliage beneath him, but he didn't fall. It was almost as if he knew this forest inside and out.

Before him were masses of orcs. At least three times the amount we'd had to fight weeks before. Surely, all these orcs weren't just after him. I figured the man was part of a larger group—army, even—and was the last one standing.

The man finally broke through the edge of the forest up ahead and to our left, thick black boots backing up over the smoother ground. The orcs charging after him were still in the forest, rampaging over fallen trees and bushes. Somewhere farther into the forest, a frightening, deep roar sounded that shook me down to my core and ran a chill down my spine. Whatever it was, I couldn't see it yet.

I felt such sympathy for that lone man, then. I knew my friends and I were ill equipped to help him, and that Theron was being smart in simply waiting out the man's death. It didn't mean I was going to like watching him die.

Then, standing a small ways away from the edge of the forest, the man did something unexpected. His scythe was sheathed on his belt, the long curved blade arced downward to avoid accidents. With his hands free, he had both arms splayed downward toward the ground, his palms parallel to the earth. Beneath the shadow of each hand, I saw dark energy begin to form in swirling balls.

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My exhales blew out shallowly from my nostrils. The energy was so dark; it wasn't just black, but it was darker, like an abyss. I was a mage of the six elements. I found it absurd that I didn't recognize it.

“Earth magic?” Nyx murmured, just behind my ear.

I shook my head, distracted. There was no way. Was there?

Then, the mage thrust his arms downward, directing the energy to the ground. The black, thick energy spread like fog over the patches of dirt and grass, before separating into vein-like tendrils, slithering across the ground in dozens of directions, before further splitting, and splitting again. Seconds after he'd released the spell, there were hundreds of tendrils, crawling over the land in all directions like it had free will.

Concerned, my eyes followed the tendrils that came closest to us, though the magic seemed to stop a few meters ahead of us, the blackness sinking into the ground, as if the spell had fizzled out.

And maybe it had. The orcs were preparing to break out into the open field, and so far, nothing had come of the spell. But then...

The earth began to tremble. It started as just a vibration, and then it deepened all the way to where it felt like an earthquake would split the ground beneath us. In the forest ahead, some of the orcs tripped up, falling clumsily to the ground as they lost their footing. One of my hands held onto the bark of the tree beside me for balance.

The mysterious man stood in the same place he'd been in, his head low beneath his black hood. His right hand reached for his scythe, pulling it back out of its sheathe as the ground nearby his feet broke.

Crack! Dirt erupted from the broken earth, before a single, bony hand rose from the earth, followed by a bony forearm, and then a humerus. A dark energy connected the bones in the place of muscle and tendon. The arm bent at its elbow, the hand falling to the ground to help push the rest of the skeleton out of the ground.

It was only when I began to feel light-headed that I realized I'd stopped breathing. Before us, in dozens of places in the field and along the outer edge of the forest, the dead was rising. Skeletons of humans, orcs, and animals alike began to rise from their slumber. Partially decomposed corpses were gathering around their master, leaking a sludge of brownish-yellow fluids as they shambled into place. One particularly bloated zombie was missing its entire right leg, but was still determined to heed the request, and crawled slowly toward the man in black, leaving a trail of decomposition from the stump at its hip.

My eyes were glued to the sight. This was the type of thing I'd been fascinated with reading about my entire life. Here it was, before me. Somehow even more intriguing and gruesome than I could have ever imagined. In seconds, this one man had managed to raise an army willing to blindly fight against all odds against a normally unstoppable force.

The necromancer reached behind him, pulling a long, orcish sword from his belt, possibly looted from an earlier enemy. Moving his head to his left and away from us, he held the blade out to the nearby skeleton of an orc. As if the orc could read its master's thoughts, the skeleton reached out, taking the blade and readying itself for battle.

Then, the horde of orcs broke through the border of the forest, spreading out over the field like a plague of green. The sickly hisses and gurgles of the undead rose as a collective battle cry to meet the roars of the orcs as the two small armies clashed.

The necromancer fought among his minions, clashing his scythe with orcish metal, switching from one-handed to two-handed depending on his move. All around him, the dead fought with limitless energy and no fear. Though the dead were plentiful, they weren't nearly as strong as the heavily muscled orcs. The skeletons, in particular, could shatter in an explosion of bones with one heavy strike of a club, and it happened numerous times, leaving the grasses scattered with bones from various bodies. A few orcs were deceased, fresh blood staining the grasses below. The undead, however, were much fewer in number. Those that had lasted this long would loot weapons off of the dead orcs, equipping themselves with better weapons as they became available as if they'd had the brains to plan.

The clang of metal called my attention back to the necromancer himself as he held his own against a hulking beast of an orc with a two handed ax. The hooded figure switched from using his scythe with both hands to just the right hand, before he thrust his left arm out. The crackling noise from earlier popped and sizzled in the air as a fog of black energy was siphoned through the air from the orc to the man.

He's leeching. It was a sight to behold. The man had raised an army, was fighting alongside it, and now was regenerating the energy he'd lost with the enemy's own life. As the energy rapidly seeped from the orc's chest, the brute became slower, clumsier. Finally, with no wound on his body from an enemy weapon, the orc fell, dead, its life drained from its very soul.

More orcs had fallen, and even more undead. It was now the necromancer and just a handful of undead against a dozen or so orcs, though more enemies were piling out from the forest. The shambling footsteps from earlier shook the ground until a huge, giant monstrosity of a creature exited the forest and let out a deafening roar.

I stared at the creature, stiff from both fear and shock. The word ogre came to mind, but I wasn't sure why. Perhaps I had seen a drawing of the creature. Either way, it was one of the ugliest things I'd ever seen. Its head rivaled the trees at the edge of the forest, so the creature was at least thirty feet high. Its skin was also green, though it was a lighter, milkier color than its smaller orc allies. It was muscular and fat all at once, its eyes spread far apart on either sides of its bulky head and uneven in both shape and size. It suffered from such a hunchback that the ribbing of its spine stuck through the skin of its upper back, the bone brown with exposure. It wielded a club that was essentially three meters of an entire tree trunk, the bark still attached. Thick leather straps over its shoulders and around its waist led to a backpack of sorts built out of wood, where it carried war supplies and extra weapons. It also wore a pathetic excuse for a waist cloth, the short pieces of fur and leather not doing enough to hide the creature's dangling genitalia.