— Keir —

As the sun began to set Keir carefully broke the mana stream connecting her pool to the nascent beast core. She hadn’t made much progress overall throughout the day. In fact, her pool of mana was rather depleted as she left much of it within the core to preserve her progress.

The time and effort hadn’t been a waste, even disregarding the progress towards claiming the core. The process of claiming the core had began to purify and condense the mana still inside of her. As her more potent mana flowed through her body she could tell her stats were already beginning to improve. Her skills didn’t allow her to see the exact numerical improvements but she suspected it was at least a few levels worth of stats gains.

She might have been imagining it so early in the process but she felt like she was increasing her understanding of the blood and venom Affinities.

For most non magic wielder classes the increased mana pool was just a bonus. The main draw was the mana improvements required to reach higher tiers and the ability to gain or enhance related Affinities.

After stowing the core in a concealed pocket of her pack she rose from the large rock she’d been using as a seat. She took a deep breath and let out a cathartic sigh as she stretched. She was still a bit sore and stiff from her injuries but they were almost entirely healed.

There was still a bit of time before the sun was set enough for the most resistant of the villagers in tents to be able to move freely so she picked up where she’d left off on the book about Stoneshield.

As Keir worked her way through the dense and dry text she found herself thinking about the much more interesting book focusing on the history of the city sitting next to her. She felt like she was back in her lessons she’d had to take as a child. However, instead of her civics and economics tutor forcing her to set aside more enjoyable activities, she was doing it to herself.

She would return the books to Antheia before they set out. Antheia’s book vault would be a safer place than her fang stuffed pack, but Keir hoped she would be able to borrow the ones she hadn’t gotten through the next day. That and the knowledge that she needed the economics information more was what kept her reading about tariffs instead of ancient battles.

As the sun began to set properly it quickly grew dark enough that only her undead vision allowed her to continue reading. Not long later the first villagers emerged and began packing away their tents.

Packing up and preparing to leave was already becoming a well established routine and soon enough the pair of vampires and the spectral little dwarven girl were emerging into the full darkness of early night.

The little ghost bolted over to check on her father. When it was clear he was fine she literally hovered around the kobold, apparently looking at the plate sized patch of flowers that resembled crystals and stone. The roots formed a thick mat holding it all together and the stems and flowers formed a pattern with a strong dwarven esthetic. Keir didn’t recognize the pattern or know what it might mean but was rather striking regardless.

Keir moved over to Antheia to help with what little packing the enchanted tent didn’t do itself. As they finished Keir retrieved the books and said “I didn’t get through all of these but they are probably safer in your storage item. Thanks for letting me borrow them.”

Antheia smiled slightly and said “It was really no problem; you can borrow some books anytime. I do hope they proved useful and or entertaining.” As she spoke she activated her heavily enchanted tablet and stored the books away.

With the last of the tents, and most likely the strange flower arrangement as well, stowed away they made the newly legless dwarf comfortable and set off into the night.

They hadn’t been traveling long when they came to an abrupt halt. It was the dwarven combat engineer, Eshtan, who noticed first. Something or more likely many somethings were barreling along the simple road they were building. Immediately they prepared for the attack that was likely on its way. Eshtan and Mycenia moved to the back and began building up a barrier.

Eshtan built a wedge shaped earthen work wall before moving on to creating ditches and small pitfalls to trip up the large number of hooved enemies approaching.

Mycenia instead called on her nature magic to grow thick thorny brambles and sturdy protruding tangles of roots. She also showed her skill with fungi as she created fist sized gray puffball mushrooms spread over the ground and nestled in the brambles and roots. The rest of the group moved the carts into a final defensive line for the noncombatants to hide behind.

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By the time they were well set up even those with no tremor sensing abilities could feel the rumble of the ground and hear the thunder of heavy hooves.

As the dust cloud became visible over the nearest hills, Mycenia and Eshtan finished what they were working on and hurried over to the defensive line.

Keir gripped her blade tense but ready. She didn’t know what foe was approaching but she did know her group was extremely outnumbered.

As the thunder of hoofs reached its peak a veritable tide of heavily armored dwarves riding powerfully built rams with stone horns and armored barding thundered over the peak of the nearest hill. As they approached, Keir placed their numbers somewhere around five hundred give or take about fifty.

Rather than charge straight at the defenses the calvary moved in and surrounded Keir and the villagers. Theoretically the dwarves were allied with the village, but the cavalry unit didn't seem to have gotten that missive. Keir was about to call out to the dwarven forces when a pair of riders split from the rest and drew closer.

One of the riders was a heavily armored dwarf riding a more impressive ram of the same breed as the bulk of the force. She held an impressive battle ax that looked like it might be a artifact quality weapon and her armor didn’t look notably inferior.

The other was a dwarven woman riding some type of drake. The woman was wearing a sturdy armored robe and lightning occasionally crackled around her. The dwarven mage looked to be relatively young considering the massive amount of mana pouring off of her with each crackling bolt. Her black hair was worn pulled back with silver, or perhaps mithril, wire wrapped around it.

Keir couldn’t see the face of the armored woman but the mage looked at the group with fury and derision written plainly across her face. Before either Keir or the dwarven pair could speak two voices rang out from behind her.

The voice of the young dwarven ghost yelled excitedly “Mommy!” and the confused voice of Alasdair joined saying “Tha’ you Mum?”

— Minira —

Once she gave the order the troops under her command assembled quickly and by the time the sun had fully set they were already on the trail of the group who’d rebuilt the old trade road.

The constant chatter of conversation from mere hours ago was silent. The time for remembrance would be put on hold while they sought the first of their vengeance. Also absent were torches. The moon was fairly bright above the foothills with only sparse trees to block the light. Dwarves could see in near darkness and their mounts needed even less light.

The chill night air wiped past as the thunder of hooves shattered the quiet. The path was not terribly wide but it was smooth and clear of debris so they made quick time.

When she crested the final hill, Minira was surprised to see makeshift defenses around small carts rather than the camp she expected.

The reason they were traveling at night became clear when they approached and circled the enemy. It seemed clear that the group was mostly or perhaps entirely made up of undead. Several semi petrified dwarves stood ready alongside other obviously undead people of other races. From deeper into the group behind the wagons was even the opalescent glow of at least one spectral undead.

Minira froze in place and it seemed like she wasn’t the only one as Marsaili came to stop alongside her. It seemed not only had the ones who had taken the village claimed the legacy of the dead they were using their bodies as well. Minira was just about to call out for the necromancer to make their fate clear when she heard a voice she thought she never would again.

From deep in the ranks of those arrayed before her came the voice of her daughter yelling “Mommy” at almost the same time as an adult man asked after his own mother.

Minira was so stunned she barely noticed her warrior friend beside her real back at the second voice. Before Minira could even process the voice of her dead daughter or what must have been Marsaili’s son calling out to them a small glowing form launched over the wall towards her.

From behind her a short javelin was launched to intercept the form even as Minira recognized that the glowing thing was the spectral form of her daughter.

With an instinctive thought a lance of crackling lightning lashed out from her and struck the javelin shattering mere feet from the hand of the dwarf who’d thrown it. A fraction of that bolt went on and knocked the dwarf from their saddle.

Minira knew that it was possible, if not likely, that her daughter could be under the control of the necromancer that raised her. Regardless she would not let anyone lay their hands on her.

A moment after the bolt launched Aina flinched back fear creeping onto her face. Before she could second guess herself Minira opened her arms and said “My lil’ gale storm. I missed you so much.”

A trap was possible but as much as Minira hated to have to think that way she could tell the amount of mana in her daughter's ghost wasn’t enough to damage her robes let alone hurt her. She also knew ghosts often could not touch physical objects so she created a thin film of mana across her body. It would further protect against anything unexpected and allow her to hold her daughter for the first time in years.

After a moment's pause that made Minira’s heart tighten, Aina darted into her arms.

From beside her Marsaili shouted an order to the troops to stay in place and began speaking to the person who’d called out to her. Minira didn’t really register the exact words as she clung to her daughter, her steely facade crumbling as tears welled up in her eyes.

After a few seconds or perhaps longer her daughter squirmed around to look back in the direction she had come from and said “Daddy, I foun’ Mommy.”

When Minira looked up she saw the face of the man she’d been in the process of marrying. Even from where she sat on Torrent’s back she could see he was also undead. She could also see the surprise and love in his face.