Silver Peak, page 10
part #2 of Sky Realms Online Series
With a quick glance back at the others, Hall stepped off the path. He moved quietly, each step careful.
Skill Gain!
Stealth Rank One +.1
The noise grew louder as Hall walked through the woods. He saw a shadowed form about ten feet away, its gait awkward and shambling. It continued, ignoring him, ignoring everything and just moving through the woods with no purpose that he could see. It thumped into a tree with a squelching sound, shifted a bit and kept walking.
Hall paralleled it for a bit, waiting for a break where he could see it clearer. When he got a good look at it, he wished he hadn’t.
It stood about seven-feet tall, or would have if it wasn’t sagging forward. The thing walked as if its spine and muscles could not fully support the upper body weight. Taller, thicker, and wider than Hall, the creature was a Firbolg. Or it used to be. Rotting flesh fell from the body, exposing muscles and bones. Clothes were falling off, what remained of them. Patches of fur and scraggly hair, eyes that stared out at nothing showing no life.
A Zombie. A Firbolg Zombie.
That explained part of the Brownpaw clan’s reluctance to take on the threat of the Undead. It was their ancestors, their loved ones, that were being reanimated.
Skill Gain!
Identify Rank One +.1
Rotting Brownpaw Warrior
The wind changed direction, and Hall got the scent of the creature. The smell assaulted him, foul and rank. He fought back the gag that threatened to erupt. He had never smelt anything so horrible. It made his eyes water.
Rotting Stench
The smell attacks your senses and clouds your mind, distracting you.
Your Attack Power is decreased by 2.
Your Attack Speed is increased by 1 second.
Your Protection is lowered by 2.
There was no timer associated with the debuff, which told Hall it was a constant effect. The negative effects might even increase the closer he got to the Zombie. Would it stack with more Zombies around? That would be bad if the Protection debuff stacked. Protection was the stat that reflected how well a blow from an enemy was avoided or how much damage was mitigated. It was a reflection of Agility, actual armor worn, and other factors. One of those was the ability to avoid the blow completely. The Rotting Stench debuff lowered the Protection stat by making it harder to focus and avoid attacks.
Zombies were not a tough foe when faced one-on-one. They did not use tactics; they just attacked. Magically strong, a hit from one could do some damage, and they sometimes hit with a Rotting Touch attack that added a little Poison Damage, but they were slow and easy to put down. A Zombie’s true threat was in numbers. A pack of mindless Zombies could overwhelm almost anyone.
Because there was no controlling a Zombie, they were rarely raised.
Hall listened for more. They would not be quiet; it was impossible for a Zombie to not make noise. Hearing nothing, he crept forward, coming up behind the creature. He moved carefully, not making a sound. Somehow a Zombie’s senses were heightened. The slightest sound would alert it, and the creature would have its target, not stopping until the target, or it, was dead.
Skill Gain!
Stealth Rank One +.1
Holding his spear, he jabbed it forward. The ironwood tip punctured the Zombie’s chest, slamming out the front in an explosion of gore. The Zombie stopped moving, not even looking at the long shaft of wood sticking out of it. The creature tried to turn but could not as the spear impaling it kept it facing forward.
It was strong, constant movement as it tried to turn to get at Hall. He had to keep rotating, holding the spear shaft between arm and body. If the Zombie had tried to step forward, it could have pulled itself off the spear, but it was too dumb. It just wanted to get at Hall.
Holding the shaft tight, keeping the Zombie away from him, Hall pulled out his short sword. Raising the sword, getting it ready, he pulled the Zombie toward him. When it was close enough, he swung the sword.
The Rotting Brownpaw Warrior’s head landed on the ground with a wet thud. The body sagged, and Hall let it fall to the ground, pulling his spear out of it. He shook the tip, pieces of Zombie flying off. Hall grimaced at the disgusting mess left along the smooth wood spear.
SLAIN: Rotting Brownpaw Warrior
+25 Experience
Skill Gain!
Polearms Rank Two +.1
THE ROAMING DEAD I
Slay 1/12 Undead
Find a Clue to the Cause of Undead Uprising 0/1
He studied the rotting body, trying to see if there was anything useful to gather. Not seeing anything, and not wanting to sift through the rot, he headed back to the others. Once he got about twenty feet from the body, the Rotting Stench debuff disappeared, and his stats returned to normal.
Crazy distance, Hall thought, wondering if more than one Zombie would increase the range. Could wind direction factor in as well? Would it make sense to attack from downwind?
He stepped out onto the path behind the others, all of them turning swiftly.
“Well?” Sabine asked.
“We saw the quest notification,” Leigh added.
They weren’t in a party yet the quest was shared? Hall found that interesting. They had tried to party up at various points from when Hall had met Roxhard outside Grayhold, but it had never worked. It seemed that was because it was unnecessary.
“Zombie Firbolg,” Hall said, looking at Jackoby.
The large Warden seemed to deflate, his normally angry eyes turning sad.
“Yes,” Jackoby said. “Whatever is doing this has been using our own dead.”
Hall knew he should have assumed that would be the case. What else would a Necromancer use? The only dead around would be Firbolgs. Suddenly, he knew where Jackoby was taking them and it worried him.
“We’re going to the Fallen Green, aren’t we?”
Jackoby nodded.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hall looked out across the clearing at what gave the forest its name.
The Fallen Green was an immense tree laying on its side. Twenty feet in diameter, one hundred feet long. Just the trunk with knots where the branches had been removed long ago. By who, no one knew. Just like how no one knew why a hundred-foot tree had fallen in the first place. The stump was off to the side, itself twenty feet above the ground with a smooth top. Jagged edges had been removed from the stump but not the end of the great tree. The tree had fallen, not been cut.
It lay in a large clearing, something preventing other trees from growing. Only grass covered the clearing, tall and waving in the breeze. Some flowers scattered here or there but mostly on top of the mounds. The entire clearing was covered in burial mounds, still more on the other side of the tree.
Burial mounds that were open, dirt piled on the side as something had dug its way out.
Zombies and Skeletons roamed the clearing, the Zombies wandering aimlessly, the Skeletons with some purpose. Hall counted about two dozen. Luckily there were more Zombies than Skeletons.
Where the Zombies were mindless, just walking slabs of meat, the Skeletons were not. In Undeath, the walking pile of magically strong and connected bones possessed almost all the skills and training they had in life. That made Skeletons very dangerous and unpredictable since it was hard to tell what they had been when alive. They carried an assortment of weapons, rusting and rotted, or nothing at all. Warhammers and a couple swords, some shields, and a scythe.
Skill Gain!
Identify Rank One +.5
Brownpaw Bone Warrior
Brownpaw Bone Hunter
Brownpaw Bone Blacksmith
Brownpaw Bone Leatherworker
Brownpaw Bone Border Guard
Hall picked Skeletons at random, using the Identify skill. Only some of them had fighting Classes. Which would make it easier. It seemed the Necromancer had not been picky when raising the bodies. Which, with Undead, it didn’t matter. Zombies and Skeletons, it was the numbers that mattered.
He had never understood how Skeletons retained the skills from life. The mind was gone, any soul gone. It was just a pile of animated bones. In one of the forums, someone had tried to explain it as a type of muscle memory but had been trolled fairly quickly. Skeletons were bones, not muscle. Hall had given up trying to figure it out. Skeletons were animated by magic, that was why they worked. Logic had nothing to do with it.
Really, the only important thing was how to destroy them. Which was pretty simple, just hit them until they broke.
“How do you want to play this, boss?” Roxhard asked in a whisper.
They were hidden at the edge of the clearing, behind bushes and trees, slightly higher than the clearing, giving them a good view. Hall peered up into the sky where Pike circled. Closing his eyes and then opening, he looked down upon Fallen Green. The tree nearly divided the clearing in half, the tip at one edge and the stump at the other. Zombies and Skeletons roamed on both sides of the immense tree. There was nothing else, just the mass of Undead.
He closed his eyes again, dismissing the Shared Vision. Looking around at the others, they all watched him, waiting for his command. He silently cursed, hating that he had somehow become the leader.
“Will you three fight with us?” Hall asked, staring straight at Jackoby. The look told the Firbolg what Hall expected the answer to be.
“Yes,” Jackoby said a little reluctantly.
Hall couldn’t blame him, not really. The Undead were his ancestors and his people. Hall wondered what he would do when faced with the possibility of fighting his zombified grandfather.
“It’s just a body,” Leigh said, picking up on Hall’s concern.
Jackoby nodded. Hall could tell the Warden understood but it still didn’t change the facts.
Hall watched the movements of the Undead. It was hard to plan as there was no pattern, and with the way the creatures reacted, they would be hard to pick off one by one without getting swarmed by the others. He wished one of them was a Shaman. A good Fireball or Chain Lightning spell would be great, he thought, remembering the lightning spell that Vertoyi, the corrupted Custodian, had used on them.
“What we need is a place that will limit the number of them we will face at once,” Hall said, eyes darting around the clearing, looking for anything.
He remembered what Fallen Green had been before. The burial mounds had been there, the great tree itself, but no Undead. Just Badgin grave robbers. The land was the same, just more of it, as he tried to picture it in his mind. The tree, stump, mounds, grass. There had to be something they could use to funnel and control the Undead’s movements. Hall looked to Jackoby. This was his home; he should have some idea.
The large Firbolg shrugged.
“It is all open land,” he replied.
Hall cursed. So much for that idea.
“What about the stump?” Roxhard asked, pointing toward what was essentially a large hill made of wood. “That’s a ramp around it right?”
“Yes, it is,” Hall said, cursing his own stupidity.
Twenty feet high, twenty in diameter, the top of the stump had been smoothed by the Firbolgs for their ceremonial use. A thin ramp had been carved into the side of the stump, spiraling to the top. It was perfect.
They crept carefully along the edge of the woods, eyes watching the clearing and the Undead for signs of movement. Spread out, keeping space between them, they all worked to keep the noise down.
Hall could hear the clack of bones as the Skeletons moved, each motion a popping of the magically held joints. The Zombies just uttered their low moans, feet shuffling across the ground.
The one drawback in the plan was that using the stump would open them up to all the Undead on both sides of the Fallen Green. It was high enough that none of the Undead could climb up the steep sides, and the ramp was thin enough that only a couple of the Undead would be able to go up at a time. Control of the numbers but it still would be a lot of them.
It took a fair bit of time to move across the wide clearing at their pace. Stepping carefully, quietly and watching where they were going as well as the Undead in the clearing. Hall stopped about thirty feet away from the bottom of the ramp, a direct line with no burial mounds between. There were a few Undead, Zombies, shambling about.
He motioned to Roxhard, pointing to one of the Zombies. The Dwarf nodded.
“On my signal,” he told the others, not bothering to look back at them, concentrating on the movements of the Zombies. “Run for the ramp.”
“What is the signal?” Jackoby asked.
The Firbolg seemed annoyed. Had been since Hall had come up with the plan. The top of the stump was where the Brownpaw performed many ceremonies. It was kind of sacrilege to fight from there, but Hall wasn’t caring. Yarbole hadn’t specified how they were to accomplish their task, so Hall would use what was available.
“This,” Hall said and activated Leap.
He arced out over the clearing, a good ten feet or so high. The Zombies, three of them, looked up as he soared overhead. He stabbed down, and the ironwood tip of his spear sliced right into the rotting meat head of a Zombie. Hall didn’t even need to pull the spear out, his own momentum and the rot did it. The Zombie fell backward, arms and legs kicking uselessly.
Hall landed and pivoted, thrusting out with the spear and catching another Zombie in the side as it tried to get at him. Standing up, he twisted with the spear, pulling the trapped Zombie, moving it away from the group’s path. He saw the third Zombie go down hard, the barreling form of Roxhard slamming into it. Guts, muscle, and bone flew everywhere as the Dwarf’s momentum blew the Zombie apart.
The others raced by, heading for the ramp. The three Firbolgs stopped, watching the Skeletons and Zombies start to react to the noise.
“Go,” Hall yelled.
They started moving again. Hall watched as Pike swooped down from above, diving for the first Zombie Hall had skewered. The dragonhawk hovered in the air, screeching and released a jagged bolt of blue lightning. The strike slammed into the Zombie’s chest, gore exploding outward. Pike flew off and the Zombie stopped moving.
Slain: Rotting Brownpaw Farmer
+10 Experience
Skill Gain!
Polearms Rank Two +.1
THE ROAMING DEAD I
Slay 3/12 Undead
Find a Clue to the Cause of Undead Uprising 0/1
Rotting Stench
The smell attacks your senses and clouds your mind, distracting you.
Your Attack Power is decreased by 2.
Your Attack Speed is increased by 1 second.
Your Protection is lowered by 2.
Hall stumbled as the Zombies’ Rotting Stench attacked his senses. His back was to the clearing, facing the forest, and he could hear the sounds of the Undead approaching. Some would be chasing the others, but most would be coming to attack him. He cursed as the impaled Zombie tripped and fell, almost pulling the spear from Hall’s hands. Holding it tight, the Zombie just slipped off the weapon. He glanced at Roxhard, seeing the Dwarf was following the others, the Zombie he had knocked over unmoving. That was the extra kill he had received counting for the quest. Roxhard had killed one and they shared it.
He turned and watched the line of Undead slowly marching toward him. Pike flew down, blasting a Skeleton in the face with a lightning bolt. The creature tried to bat at Pike, but the quick and agile dragonhawk soared out of reach. Hall reached for his javelin, meaning to impale the creature that Pike had attacked but realized the weapon would no longer return to him. He didn’t want to lose the weapon, not yet.
Instead, he pulled one of the throwing knives from his bracer. Taking aim, he launched the magical weapon. It slammed into the Skeleton’s chest bones. A normal knife would have ricocheted off, doing minimal damage, but this one exploded on impact. Sparks erupted, spreading all over the Skeleton’s chest. It hesitated before starting to walk again, smoke drifting up from the charred bones.
The rest of the Undead kept marching, ignoring the one that was smoking.
A quick glance to the ramp showed the others were already at the top, Jackoby and Roxhard midway down and attacking the few Undead that were following up the ramp. It was then that Hall saw the flaw in his plan.
And it was a big one.
The Undead did not care that the path up the stump was only wide enough for two to stand side by side. They just kept going, the ones behind pushing the ones ahead. There were not many at the moment, but Hall could see more and more of the Undead in the clearing heading for all the noise. It was only those on the far edges that did not react. The mass of Undead would just keep pushing up the ramp and his companions would have no choice but to keep retreating.
Hall cursed his stupidity. Once on top of the stump, they would have nowhere to go.
From the top of the stump, he saw the two Brownpaw Hunters firing arrow after arrow into the Undead, not the ones on the ramp but the ones still advancing. Which was smart. Each arrow found its mark in a Zombie’s head, instantly stopping the creature. Another smart move. The arrows would have been wasted on the Skeletons. Hall was glad that Jackoby had brought experienced fighters with him.
Sabine and Leigh were casting spell after spell down at the Undead. The Witch alternated between Hexbolts at the Undead on the ramp and Shadowbolts at the others. Leigh was using her Gust of Wind to push the Undead into others, causing them to attack each other. Splinter Storms launched into Zombies in the clearing.
THE ROAMING DEAD I
