Green fires enveloped the gray sky. Through the walls of inferno, the dead rose. Flesh melted from the bone and fell to the cobble streets. Willis, the potion addict, the sea elf mage, and every other fallen party member stood on the edge of the flames with soulless eyes. They stared bleakly at the living as Fike, his five companions, Ryder, and Durge found themselves surrounded. The party leader started the fight with a crossbow bolt destined for the returned sorceress but it disintegrated in an instant. His five party members charged at her and the wall of undead, hoping to break through.

But with a swift demise, they all fell to Sindara’s flames and the merciless husks that rended their skin from muscle. Fike and the duo stood together as Sindara watched over them. As the flames continued to spew from the earth, the five that pooled blood into the stone began to rise. Their limbs hung from stringed tendons as their soulless eyes glowed a faint green.

“We’re not packmules anymore Sindara! Leave us be!” Durge exclaimed.

Her lifeless body sighed unexpectedly and her head tilted upward, “I must thank you, my companions. For the life that you have given me is far greater than I could ever imagine. And to think all it took was a single candle, forged and enchanted centuries ago that you stole from me was the key to power. When I crawled from the rubble and corpses of Rock Hollow, I saw a familiar lantern washed upon the riverbanks.”

Ryder had his fingers ready on an arrow while Durge held taut to his mace and shield. The heat from the fire and the worry of the end made them sweat profusely.

“Yes, Ryder. The lantern you carried. Did you misplace it? Lose it? Throw it wayward in hopes of forgetting about me?”

“I did,” Ryder said. “But I never asked for your death! Leave us be and leave Locria alone, the city has gone through enough terror!”

“Terror?” Sindara laughed, “I do not wish to bring terror onto anyone. I wish to free you of your mortality.”

Durge raised his mace and pointed it toward the corpses that surrounded him, “To make us your slaves!? What would Hadic think of you!?”

“I believe he’s in agreement,” she said with a smirk. The sorceress lifted her finger and the wall of fire parted, allowing for a nearly unrecognizable man to shamble his way through the flames. Hadic scraped his longsword along the cobble as he walked to Sindara’s side. His armor melted to his charred skin as if it was grafted together, presenting a monstrosity of steel and bone.

Fike slung the crossbow over his back and presented his palms. “Sindara! I apologize for the bolt I fired upon you. I was foolish then, but it is to my understanding now that you have history with my party members. Seeing how I for one have no quarrel with either of you, I will gladly take my leave.” He gently stepped toward the parted flames and past the wall of undead. Once he was through and Sindara didn’t retaliate, he gave a quick two-finger salute to the boys and disappeared into the eastern forest with a proud smirk across his face.

“I will only present you with this one opportunity. Accept my gift now or I will have to force it upon you.”

“Bring it!” Durge shouted, slamming his mace against his shield. Ryder drew the arrows to his bowstring and fired them in succession. Any that flew toward Sindara disintegrated like Fike’s bolt before, but any aimed for the surrounding undead, pierced their soft bodies.

Durge struck down two of the monsters before Sindara snapped her fingers and ordered them to attack. Mangled fur-beasts, tuskless orcs, armless dwarves, and rotten elves shambled forward. Ryder shot four more, burying the idea of them once being alive days earlier, before they neared close enough for him to unsheathe his sword. To deal with the overwhelming mass of undead, Durge would charge and bash one of them with his shield to force them to fall and trip over one another.

The dead began to thin as the duo brought them back to the earth. They expected for the undead to rise again in an even worse state than before, but they never did. The last husk they fought was an armless skeleton that Ryder recalled apologizing to in the dwarven hideout long ago. With the sword held backwards, he crushed the skull of the husk with his guard and pommel, reducing it to a powder that the gustful winds blew away.

Sindara witnessed the demise of her creations and grew furious. The flames grew brighter, and the shadows that loomed over the bodies grew darker. But before she could raise her children again, rain began to fall. Heavy droplets fell upon the surrounding fire, without dwindling or suffocating, the flames kept burning.

Streams of water fell between the cobblestone and turned red with the blood of the party members. Steam filled the area like a torrential fog rolled into the golden shores of paradise. Ryder and Durge could only see faint silhouettes of the sorceress and her guard, until the sorceress vanished all that remained was a monster charging after them.

Hadic’s hollow eyes burned a vibrant green as he slashed his longsword wide. Durge caught the tip of it against his shield and threw it off, bracing for the next attack. Ryder’s quiver grew depleted as he fired at the rotten monstrosity. It seemed to have no impact. When he pulled his sword and dagger, he sprinted to skewer Hadic through his unarmored waist, but Ryder felt as if his legs had become steel.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Like bricks in an ocean, Ryder felt pulled downward to the stone. His knees collapsed under him and all he could feel was the cold rain and shadows that consumed him. He lost sight of his companion and the noise of clashing steel soon faded in the mist.

“Free yourself, Ryder Lovell.”

The voice came from everywhere but nowhere distinct. It sounded as if she was inside the noble’s head, drowning every thought and emotion. A gentle hand grasped his shoulder and he could see Sindara’s fair and inked hands pressing against him. She stepped in front of him and knelt down to his level, gazing at him with soft and kind green eyes.

Her hands were ablaze with fire as she held Ryder’s face. He felt no pain, instead, a comforting warmness washed over him. He felt as if he was on the white sands of the Locrian shore after a swim in the ocean. Imagery of childhood flooded Ryder’s head. Laughter with Durge, tales from Kincaid, and the enveloping hugs from his mother made him smile greatly. But the memories soon melted as Sindara whispered in his ear.

“Be free, Ryder. Only pain awaits you.”

A multitude of images flashed in his mind. An elven forest decaying from disease. A scaleless dragon crying in a meadow. Slaves kneeling before a master. War-torn fields of mud and smoldering bodies. And a sea of blackness he swam in until the eye of a dragon as big as the moon stared at him. Within its slit pupils he saw himself holding hands with his mother, her fingers rotten and her eyes hollow.

In an instant, Ryder let go of his mother’s hand and watched as the dragon eye closed. Lady Locria faded to dust, and the mist began to fade away. He came to reality, startled as if he was put unconscious. With eyes finally open he saw his own hand clutching a dagger that dripped with blood along his arm. Sindara’s eyes were open but her body was still and lifeless. Ryder unstuck the blade from the sorceress's throat and watched as her body fell with the rest of the corpses that covered the ground. He had no recollection of his actions or the tears that fell from his cheeks, but felt relieved as the cold rain kept pouring from above.

While Ryder was put under Sindara’s spell, Durge had to duel Hadic alone. The lumbering beast made of flesh and steel relentlessly slashed at his once party member.

“Come on, you rotten bastard!” Durge shouted, before glancing the sword off his shield and hammering at Hadic’s legs. Durge tried repeatedly to bring his foe down with strikes to legs, but as if they were made of iron, they never broke. He went for Hadic’s arm for him to lose the grip of his longsword but he held on to it as if it was an extension of his arm.

Durge tried to save Ryder as he was grasped by the sorceress, but whenever he turned, Hadic would attack. As if he was created to serve his lady, Hadic would be empowered to defend her. He grabbed the back of Durge’s head and tried to skewer the life out of the oaf until Durge managed to slip out of it, losing a few hairs in the process.

The white heater pressed against the monstrosity’s body as Durge pushed Hadic to the fountains. He cracked at Hadic’s kneecaps until the beast fell backward into the green flames that spewed from it. The hollowed man uttered a terrible scream that frightened Durge, he repeatedly slammed the mace into its chest but the ghastly cries never ceased. More of Hadic’s flesh melted away and his armor turned red hot. He reached for Durge with his other hand and grasped onto him, pulling him onto his longsword. But before the blade could enter his chest, Hadic fell limp.

Durge hastily stepped back and crushed his mace into Hadic’s cranium, shattering it into hundreds of pieces. The oaf fell backward and watched as the flames from the fountain and the wall of inferno vanished. Hadic or any other corpse did not rise again, except for Ryder with an exhausted stare toward his friend.

“You noble bastard, you did it!” Durge ran over and grasped his arm. “You killed the hag! Her piece of shit lover will rise again no more! You did it!” he cheered.

The same level of enthusiasm was not matched by Ryder. His head pulsated and all he wished for was a warm fire and a bed to lay in.

“Come on Rye, let’s get out of this damn rain.”

Durge led him to a familiar bakery, although torched from the inside and out, it still had a roof. He started a fire and together they bandaged each other's wounds and shared their travel provisions.

“Eating hardtack in such a fine establishment could bring a tear to my eye,” Durge said.

Ryder scoffed, “If Dragon Bakes served hardtack you wouldn’t be complaining.”

“Even with broken teeth I would’ve savored every bite of the delicacy.”

Lightning flashed through the shattered windows and thunder shook the crumbling walls. A tempest enshrouded the ruins of Locria, hastening it further to ruin.

As the duo rested, thoughts plagued Ryder once again. “That bastard Fike. Why was I such a dullard to not realize they were Vultures the entire time?” he groaned.

“Between killing their own party members, looting anything of value, and leaving us for dead, I thought it was pretty obvious,” Durge smirked.

“Why didn’t you say anything, oaf!?”

The oaf shrugged, “Figured you wanted to test out the life of a scavenger.”

“So far it only brought us back to Sindara,” Ryder muttered.

“And now she’s gone… for good… hopefully.”

“Hopefully… What are we doing about Fike and your lover?”

“They said someplace called Rofaun? Aye? We’ll go there. Can’t risk returning back to the Guild Hall and have him stab us in the back on the streets,” Durge said.

“They’re probably halfway across the continent now,” Ryder said.

“No one would travel in this weather. We’ll catch up.”

Ryder tsked, “If you wake early enough.”

Durge awoke to the beautiful smell of baked bread as if he spent the night in a lively bakery. When his eyes opened, his dreams turned to nightmares as the charred ruins of Dragon Bakes surrounded him and all that was cooking was pieces of weevil-ridden hardtack that Ryder threw out.

“Good, you’re awake. We have to get moving.”

Durge loudly groaned, “Take me back, Dreamlord, I beg of thee.”

The last day of Firth was a gloomy one. The rain stopped but everything was still soaked. The leaves dripped with water. The crickets chirped. The frogs croaked. And each step into the mud left an easy track to follow.