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“I CAN SEE SOME LOW mountains ahead,” Aurora said when we reached a break in the woods. I’d have to take her word for it, since my vision was only good for a couple of hundred yards. Everything beyond that limit was a blur.
“The main road is heading straight for the range,” Ruen said, peering off to the left. I could hear soldiers and hounds patrolling the path. A medium sized town was bustling with people. I longed to rampage through the settlement and smash everything I saw, but curbed my impulses.
“Can you sense any intelligent beings ahead?” the demon asked me.
Sending out my senses, I shook my head. I couldn’t tell if any predators were lurking around, since beasts didn’t show up on my radar. I took off across the field of gray grass. It wasn’t dead, or sickly. It was just a dull, lifeless color like the rest of the landscape.
We made it to the foothills of the low range and I quickly scaled to the top. I could sense a magic user on the edges of my radar and hunkered down to make us less visible.
“There’s a big town in the valley below us,” Aurora said, peering over my shoulder. It was just a blur to me, but I could hear the sounds of thousands of people.
“Which direction is the scroll in?” Ruen asked.
Her arm lifted to point directly ahead. “The main road is heading directly for it,” she said unhappily.
“I can see a huge graveyard beyond the town,” the vamp said. “It’s bound to be full of zombies, so we’ll have to skirt around it.”
“We’ll need to circle around the top of the range and descend on the far side,” Aurora told me. “We might be able to sneak past the cemetery if we keep our distance from it.”
Lifting my head, I sniffed the air and caught a whiff of rotting meat. The magic user I’d sensed had to be a necromancer. They were hiding out here and had some minions with them.
“Are you going to get moving, or are we going to stay here forever?” Ruen asked me snarkily.
I turned my head far enough to glower at him, then began making my way around the ridge that curved around the valley.
“I can smell something dead,” Aurora whispered after a while.
“I assumed it was Saige’s breath,” Ruen muttered.
My bestie snickered, then her uneasiness returned. “Can you sense anything dangerous?” she asked me.
I nodded, then paused long enough to hold my arms up and shamble a couple of steps.
“Zombies,” my ex-partner said unhappily. “What are they doing way up here?”
“Who knows?” Aurora said. “Maybe the necromancer is using them to guard the town from an invasion from other towns. I can see a village in the distance to our right.”
The stench of rotting meat grew stronger. I could now sense a couple of dozen undead. I could also sense the necromancer who’d raised them.
“There’s a ramshackle hut ahead,” Ruen whispered. “I can hear someone inside it.”
“It has to be the necromancer,” Aurora figured. “No one else would be stupid enough to live up here where zombies are wandering about. We should sneak around them and try to avoid a confrontation. The people in the town below might hear us if we make too much noise. The last thing we need is a legion of soldiers chasing after us.”
I skirted around the hut, but the zombies were spread out across the top of the range in a wide line. One of them sensed us and began to shuffle in our direction. As poorly made as the other walking corpses we’d seen, it moaned loudly to warn its master. The door to the shack opened and the necromancer came to investigate the intruders.
“We’re going to have to fight our way through them,” Ruen said in anticipation when more zombies headed our way. He dropped to the ground and Aurora took his gear when she climbed down as well. Her skills wouldn’t be of much use in this battle, so she moved back to give us room.
The necromancer scurried through the sparse trees and rounded a large boulder. Old and wizened, her hair was long, white and straggly. She halted in surprise when she saw us. “So, my nemesis has sent a master vampire and his servants to kill me, has he?” she croaked in hatred.
I snorted out a laugh that she thought Ruen was a master and that he’d compelled us to do his bidding.
“We’re just passing through, madam,” the leech said after shooting an annoyed glance at me. “No one hired us to attack you.”
“Liar!” she spat and raised her gnarled hands. “Kill them all!” she ordered.
“Do you want to do the honors, or should I?” Ruen asked. I shrugged, leaving it up to him. Sliding one of his knives from its sheath, he threw it at the cackling necromancer. The blade lodged in her throat, ending her mad laughter. Her zombies halted in mid-step, then collapsed when she fell onto her face.
“That was easy,” Aurora said in relief. “I wish all of our battles could be over that quickly.”
“I prefer to get my hands dirty,” the vampire said with a smirk. “But you were right about not wanting to rouse the soldiers. We don’t want to have to fight several hundred of them.” His tone was wistful as he trotted over to the dead woman to retrieve his knife.
I felt a slight pang of regret as well. My troll instincts wanted me to tear into my foes and rend them limb from limb. I hadn’t even gotten to dismember any of the zombies and felt a bit cheated.
Ruen cleaned his knife on the necromancer’s ragged clothing, then sheathed it and they climbed back onto me. I couldn’t sense anything else on my radar as I sped across the range. Dawn wasn’t far away and I wanted to be back down on lower ground before we could be spotted.
“We might have a problem,” Aurora said as I was descending the slope.
“Zombies are everywhere down here,” Ruen said sourly. “I can smell them.”
“Me, too,” she agreed glumly.
There were hundreds of undead shambling around. Not even I could fight that many if the necromancers who’d raised them hid from us. Without being told, I turned right and sprinted through the trees. Once I could no longer sense danger, I veered back in the direction where the scroll lay. The detour had added a couple of extra hours to our journey, but I’d make up for it.
Ruen stepped into his sack just before dawn and I was finally able to relax again. His constant sniping was getting on my nerves. I was worried I’d snap and tear his head off in a fit of rage.
Aurora felt the tension seep out of me when I tossed the sack containing our companion over my shoulder. “You know Ruen’s only being mean and petty because he feels hurt,” she told me as I took off running again.
I flicked her an incredulous look and grunted in disbelief.
“You dumped him as your partner when you quit,” she reminded me. “How would you feel if he did that to you?”
He had done that to me when he’d told me he was glad we were no longer a team. Guilt wormed its way into me. I thought Ruen would be happy not to be lumped with me, but it seemed I’d been wrong. Maybe I owed him an apology for the way I’d handled things. It wasn’t his fault that Drake had played me and used me.
Fresh anger at the dragon’s betrayal spiked. I sensed a pack of werecats ahead and didn’t bother to veer around their territory. There were only five of them. I could easily tear them apart if I had to.
“Don’t attack the troll!” Aurora shouted when the gigantic tawny felines sprang into my path. “She’s on a rampage and I can’t stop her!”
They understood her and instantly parted to let us pass. One of them hissed at me in warning and I roared into its face. The shifter cowered away from me as I raced past him. They knew better than to take on an enraged troll.
“That worked better than I’d hoped,” my bestie said in relief when we were out of earshot. “I know you’re spoiling for a fight, but try not to get us all killed during your meltdown.”
I couldn’t articulate my misery and explain why I was so upset. I knew she was right and that I was endangering all three of us with my tantrum. It wasn’t easy to contain my emotions, but I tried to clamp down on them as I raced across the realm.
