Finn stood outside the castle walls, its stone silhouette looming over her. The vagabond knight held her shield close to her body, a torch blazing in the other hand. Curly brown hair bubbled in small rows from underneath her helmet. The stars swam in the black sky above the massive keep, and a shadow hung over the structureโthe same shadow that loomed over Finn. Zimbarah, disgraced elf king, nekromancer. This keep bore his name, and his foul odor crept through its brick. Mossy stone stairs rose in front of Finn, their steps leading into the small bailey around the tower. She knew better than to enter through the front door, yet had lost her climbing tools to the bandit, "Neglect." After this, I'll buy a thousand more grappling hooks and a crossbow just for fun, she thought. Finn snubbed her torch into the ground and pulled her short sword from its sheath. She climbed the stairs to the entrance and stood for a moment before its gate, holding her blade upright before her face, concentrating. Three runes at the blade's base began to appear in the steel. From these marks, warm light spread over the sword, from dull orange to crackling yellow-white. Finn was no mage, but the sword carried its own magick, enchanted long ago. Illuminated in the sword's glow, the knight breathed deeply in through her nose and steeled herself for what lay behind the iron gate. Finn crawled under the bars of the portcullis; the spiked tips of the iron lattice hovered hardly a foot over the cold dirt and dragged slightly across her pack. Inside, the small bailey was blanketed with dead straw and grass that filled the air with a rank moisture. Floating on top of this miasma was the lingering smell of something sharper, rotten, but less dull. Rotting flesh. Finn's stomach turned. As she began to march forward, Finn raised her sword overhead, casting its magickal light as far as possible into the venomous dark. As she walked, her eyes scanned the ruins of the once-opulent keep. The bailey was pocked with broken carriages and half-slumped hutsโthe skeletal remains of a kingdom that at one time had been full of promise and life. Soon, at the edge of the sword-light, a hunched figure broke the darkness. The figure, dressed in tattered peasant's garb, stood bent over a small mound of yellow mushrooms growing from the rot at its feet. Finn slowed to a stop, pulling her buckler close. "Who's there?" Finn called firmly, adrenaline creeping into her voice. Crouched on the ground, the figure turned its head to face her, and its gaunt features were revealed in the sword's magickal glow. Finn swallowed a gasp. A living corpse. In its bony hands were fistfuls of the yellow toadstools that sprouted at its feet. It slowly transported the strange fungi to its purple-gray mouth, where it stuffed them haphazardly and chewed with deliberate zeal. The gaunt figure made no motion to acknowledge the question but continued its fungal feast; and though it looked in Finn's direction, its eyes were empty. Finn fought the rising disgust in her throat. Seeing no answer to be had from this zombie, the knight gave in to her primordial compulsions. Finn approached the corpse slowly and raised her glowing sword above her head. In one stroke she brought the sword down on the monster, releasing it from its undeath with a violent cleave. As the corpse lay at her feet, pale yellow dust flowed from the wound in a great, growing plume. It quickly filled the air immediately around Finn, obscuring her vision and blighting the air. She coughed, and the earth began to vibrate angrily. Mud and rotten straw flew into the air as the ground erupted, spattering Finn's already freckled face. โ "Light and Order, what have I..." she grumbled, and steadied her footing, wiping the mud from her eyes. Staggering figures began to shudder and squirm free from the disturbed earth, four or five of them by Finn's count. The creatures gained footing and awareness, swaying in Finn's direction as she scrutinized her surroundings from behind her buckler.โ I must make for the tower! Her eyes fixed on the squat stone structure on the other side of the bailey. The zombies stood spread about in a loose U shape, slowly advancing on the invading knight. Finn flicked a thin curl of brown hair from her eyes, and a spark of inspiration danced across her mind. There, on the far left corner of the group, one of the zombies struggled to free itself from the damp earth. Finn inhaled shakily, drew all her strength inward into a deep lunge, and then sprang forth decisively into a bounding sprint. She ran deftly, closed the considerable gap between them, and leapt toward the zombie on the left, her shield forward. The small iron buckler connected with the fiend's skull with a loud CRACK! The zombie was sent sprawling back into the dirt, its skull in fragments around it. Nearly through the leap, above the body, Finn stopped suddenly, jerked backward against her momentum. One of the zombies to her right had grabbed her chainmail shirt and was dragging her backward. Finn hit the ground hard; the breath left her lungs in a hot blast, her vision shook, and her magickal sword left her hand, continuing in the direction she had been running. Finn choked loudly on impact but rolled instinctively, and broke the undead's grip on her sleeve. The clawed hands of the creature dug violent handfuls out of the dirt where she had landed.Not good. On her back now, Finn's eyes darted around her for her sword and found its glow some distance away. Definitely not good. Out of the spore cloud, flailing arms tore at her armor. Instinctively she swung her buckler high to protect against the gnashing teeth of the undead fiend. With all her strength she held the corpse's gnawing jaws from her flesh while she extended her arm to the right for her sword, its yellow glow just outside her peripheral vision. The fear of further impending attacks built anxiety in Finn's chest. She began to shuffle backward, having to use both arms to hold the zombie at bay. Finally Finn leaned far back and released a powerful kick into the undead's lower ribs, the force of which sent the creature stumbling backward. She dived right and wrapped her fingers around the hilt of her sword. She swung the blade backward immediately upon grabbing it, catching one of the zombies that pursued just behind her. The swing lopped off the creature's skull cap, and in one motion Finn brought the blade around on its leg, severing it above the knee. The abomination collapsed in front of her, and spores exploded from each wound. There was no time for celebration. Finn dashed in the direction of the tower, leaving the last zombies groping in the cloud of spores behind her. When the knight reached the tower, she was covered in mud, coughing up spores, and thoroughly annoyed. The keep, at least 30 meters tall, was spotted with small glassless windows. The door was at least double Finn's height and width, made of a dark wood covered in dents. Dense brambles and thorny green vines, thick as ropes, covered both the door and the small stair-set leading up to the architrave. She approached the thorny growth and slashed a well populated area with her sword. The vine spurted a crimson red liquid in heavy streams at the place of her cut. However, the vines seemed to grow over the wound, tightly coiling in an even thicker layer until the stream was only a trickle. A magickal ward. Looking around, the knight spotted a set of shuttered windows closer to the ground than the others; one of these was open, and the shutter hung loosely off its hinges. It was not large by any means, and still a couple of meters off the ground, but Finn concluded that this window was her best shot at entry. She neared the wall and grabbed at the stone brick below the open window. The gaps between the bricks were just large enough to make workable handholds and footholds. She wiped her blade on her pants, sheathed the glowing sword, and began the brief climb to the window, disinclined to waste any more time in the bailey with the undead. Expertly she made her way up the mossy brick until she reached the windowsill. Finn pulled herself up to the open shutter; the window was narrow, maybe a meter across. She turned to sit sideways in the sill and looked back into the bailey, where the cloud of spores faded slowly in the distance. Then she dropped off the other side into the keep.
Continued in Pt. II...