it’s the middle of the night, the moon is nearly in the middle of the sky above and instead of fleeing from the undead we run right into the center of it all. The stone mansion, where all the undead have gathered, and I'm only thinking about it just now but there must be more armor wearing undead. Still, Guy insists that we can’t leave the reinforcements to die or to battle this terrible foe who controls the undead, they must at least see the letters and realize this is a job for a paladin or a whole battalion.

Another Pillar of light glows up as we approach, it must be a flare to let us know the reinforcements have arrived for us. They must be looking for Guys and his group, or at least for undead with the same robes. Just let them be alright when we arrive. The grim news from the unsent letters is already a touch too much for us to handle, I can see it on their faces, everyone is scared in this situation. Grey hasn’t cracked another joke and Lisa isn’t paying much attention to the wind knocking down her hood as she runs with us.

It takes about twenty, maybe thirty minutes but we’ve almost made it to the mansion. There hasn’t been another light burst like before in a while,. I notice that there aren't many undead, there are some dusty, plenty of it in fact. The more we walk the more we find dust and parts of undead that were not fully converted to dusty texture.

“Hey, how many reinforcements are there?”

“We don’t know, I thought they were supposed to come tomorrow or the day after, they are early.”

As we step into the mansion we find the reinforcements, it’s just one person though, in full white armor and a white sword, it looks like a piece of armor is moving on and even though there are many undead lying around most of them are out of commission.

“It’s a paladin!” Guy says aloud. Greys mouth is open wide and even Lisa is taken aback by the discovery… is such a big deal?

“Should we help him?”

“Help him? we can’t even compare, look at that armor.” Grey sounds characteristically enthusiastic, even if just a minute ago he looked on the verge of crying. Well, it is impressive armor, but that’s only one person against an army of undead. I can at least help pull out from the middle of the undead assault.

“Cover me, I’ll go help him.” I say before I run with my sword. I might have heard a “Wait” but I’ll ignore it, they can tell me whatever they want after we pull out and reach safety.

SLASH SLICE.

The walking corpses are capable as they were before, but the closer I get to the paladin the duller and weaker they seem, and instead of rushing over him they seem wary to approach him. Not to me though, as soon as I charge through they take attention and focus on me when they can.

“You, who are you?” the paladin asks, he finally noticed me… or rather she? I think I heard a female voice. “She’ll come back soon, you need to be careful, come to me!” The female paladin shouts and starts approaching me. slicing and slashing with her sword in one hand and with the other she’s holding something forward… it’s a chain necklace around her neck she's holding something that looks like an ankh.

“Where are the other reinforcements? Are they alright?” I ask, once I'm close enough, fighting the undead is a lot easier closer to her, is that the ankh’s doing?

“What other reinforcements? no one else should come, I can handle this alone.” She sure is cocky, she is single handedly holding back the undead but it’s still a bit much not to ask for help in this life or death situation. Is that just a paladin thing?

“It’s more than just undead, or a necromancer, there is something sinister at work here. We need to leave and come back ready.”

She almost says something but instead she stares me down and says “You’re not a priest, not by a long shot. What are you doing here?”

I almost answer but instead I hear the terrible unworldly scream that sends shivers down my spine.

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“She’s back, you need to go away, I’ll be finished in a few hours… I think.” The paladin brushed me off, I don’t want to stay and confront whoever is back but what can she do alone?

another scream, and this one sounds much closer. The paladin is looking to the sky.

WWAAAHAAAAAAAAACCHCHCAAAAA

The contour of a woman, or something of the sort, is taking form in the sky. ITS A GHOST!

“Yes, sort of,”

oops I said that out loud. anyway a ghost of a woman, that in itself looks like a rotten part opaque part see through undead, is floating in the sky. Not floating... it's actually it’s flying right at us. The paladin raises her sword to slice at the ghost.

“It’s like a banshee, or more like a vengeful spirit. I can harm her with my sword but I don’t think I can say the same about yours, you should fall back.”

“You can harm her? can you kill her?”

“No… umm… I did, but she will come back sooner or later, and she’ll keep coming back until we take care of her actual corpse. It'll take ages unless we know who she was though. I’ll just take care of all her undead so you can go now.”

I think for a moment between the sword strokes, and while she’s fighting the banshee. “What if I can tell who it was?”

“Then you should do it right away.”

I do have a letter, and even though it doesn’t reveal her name the person it’s sent to might know. We need to get to the nobles room.

“Alright, I’ll see you later. See you in a bit.” I need to make my way through the undead and back to grey and co, who were not covering me as I requested.

“Wait, just tell me who it is! Stop, where are you going?!”

“I’ll take care of it, just take care of the banshee.”

the undead don’t seem to be paying the same attention to me as before, fighting head on with the paladin is probably taking up most of the banshee’s focus. I have to thank her for that after this.

“What did the paladin say? Why are you back? what’s that spirit in the sky?”

All three shower me with questions, none of which are ‘what do we do now?’ “Forget that, the paladin says she can take care of that, and we have our own work to do. We need to get into the mansion and find the noble’s letters, received and unsent.” I show them the letter we found at the shack. “Who ever the shackman killed is that spirit and we need to-”

“We need to reunite her with this world! of course!” Guy 'completes my sentance', is that the paladin's plan? The other two nod in agreement… yeah, alright, if you know what that means then it’s good enough.

Walking past the undead and into the mansion is really easy now, albeit a lot louder with all the banshee screaming. The inside is just the same as before, dark and creepy, but a lot less corpsy than before.

“It’s too dark to see anything here!”

“Awh yes!” Lisa releases a sigh of relief, I think she’s back to her old self.

“I think this torch stand on the ground is alright… how do we light it?”

“We can use that over there.” Lisa points into the darkness and after we all make a confused face she just walks over and vanishes into the darkness of the room, a moment later she returns with a box of big firestarter matches.

“How did you find that?”

“Find it? it was right there on the shelf.” She is acting as confused as we do. Anyway, Guy lights a torch while murmuring something about Lisa being freaky, but now we can all see.

“Hey, Fren, the paladin, you said ‘she’ right? is it a girl?”

“I heard a girly voice, I think. Why? Are you interested in someone that much out of your league?” I tease him a bit, but he ignores it… is he really?

“Did she have something on her plate, like medals or something?”

“Medals? during battle? what do you mean?”

“oh right, no, forget it.”

He’s acting strange, I won’t tell him not to go for it, but at least see her face first I think is a good start.

“Shush, you too, I think I found the noble’s study, let’s look for the letters.” Guy scolds us

"Guess we'll talk about it letter." Grey says as he smirks.

If there was any doubt, now it is certain, all three are back to normal. Well, normal for them, each with his own quirks.