When Masutap came to, she was puzzled as to her whereabouts. As far as she could tell, there was motion hence why the ground was passing by at an even pace. The motion wasn't on her part, she could feel her head bumping against the broad back of someone. Someone in black leather.
She thrashed, twisting herself free of the one who carried her but strong arms steadied her back in place. She wanted to deliver an upward hit with her elbow to the nape of whoever carried her but something caught her eye. Something following in the wake of whoever carried her.
People — No, those aren't people. Black guards and those who'd been at the tavern were giving chase. Their eyes! Their eyes were black, some of them had blood all over their bodies, others were dismembered but they moved as if none of these things mattered. She could make them out though dusk had been long underway and the cover of night had settled in. She could see because the Goddess Meena gave her sight.
"Put me down!" She shouted.
"If we stop we die!" Orgeeg said, his voice sounded panicked and for a moment she wondered whether it was truly him.
"What are those things?" She wondered, feeling dazzed. She remembered darkness, claws piercing through her and lifting her up. A voice, raw and bestial in its guttural intensity speaking from behind her. She shivered, remembering the cold, remembering...
"Leba." Orgeeg said while panting. "Leba." And it seemed that was the only thing he could bring himself to say. One name, one word. As if it encompassed everything and was the paramount purpose behind his stride.
They'd come for her, the black guard. She'd run to a domain, deeper than Meena's and there she'd found Leba and she'd, struck a bargain? Things were unclear. Her mind felt like mush, every bit of thought fractured and sticking out irregularly. It was as if someone else had used her body for a while and she was only now receiving it back.
They were being chased by people who didn't give off a heat signature, who ran despite missing limbs and who were silent, the whites of their sclera totally black. They had a head start but the chase didn't seem to relent meaning sooner or later they'd have to stop and fight.
"I can kill them," She said. "Let me go so I can kill them."
"They can't be killed." Orgeeg said.
They were running through a thick forest, by the moss she could tell they were on a steady pace north, hoping to find the road linking the West local to Binoria, the capital. Orgeeg was taking her to Dahli but something told her he didn't treat her as the main objective of his mission anymore. Otherwise he would have killed her while she was passed out.
"We can't run forever." A voice said from ahead. It was the man who'd tricked her into drinking tainted brew. Dulab, was it? "We have to stand somewhere and fight, might as well be here."
"They can't die!" Orgeeg screamed and Masutap felt his frustration. Here was someone who'd climbed the ranks, bit by bit. Overcoming adversity and all matters of foes to catch the eye of the King of Binoria. Here was someone her sister favored and Masutap fought the urge to kill him. If Orgeeg was this shaken by something then—
He came to a halt abruptly. Turned back to watch the approaching hoard of the undead coming their way. There in the glade, Orgeeg set her down. From his side he took out his short blade that gave a crisp rasp as it was unsheathed. His hands trembled. Dulab took to the left of her, long sword in hand. The trio looked on as the bloody hoard approached.
"They can't die." Orgeeg whispered. "They can't die." He said it again. Eyes wide as saucers. Masutap had never seen Orgeeg show fear yet here he was, panicking. He was a man who'd charged the mad Kolotian Ishar at the Ganidan Plain and lived to tell the tale, yet here he was, his bearings totally robbed of him, looking like he was one gust of wind from collapsing on the ground.
They were dead, yet they lived. By moonlight and her enhanced senses, she took in those who'd been chasing them. They were roughly twoscore. Some carried weapons but most did not. Many missed limbs and and majority were bleeding from slit throats and punctured flesh yet they refused to die. Undead!
As a child her mother had told her stories, passed down from her mother about the past, before Binoria even existed, before Meena favored the mortal Selarch and bestowed power upon his bloodline. Stories of when the Gods had walked the physical realm, a period when there was a great war at the gathering of the Gods. A period called Tunega. When the Gods united to fight one God, a God who'd ruled an army of the undead!
Here they were now, before her, charging headfirst towards her, a thing of myth. "It's just a story." Her mother had consoled her when she'd shown fear as a child. Yet here they were, a story made flesh. She charged without a second thought. Fast as light, neither waiting for Orgeeg or Dulab to react. She plunged headfirst into the charging undead, and with a gallant effort she said a silent prayer, not to Meena or any of the Gods. No, those ones would never know her piety. She prayed to her mother, prayed that she would be proud of all she'd done with her life in case it was cut abruptly short.
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