We approached what used to be the gates. Standing before them was a man.

  He was nearly eight feet tall, clad in heavy, full-plate armor. In his hands, he gripped a massive greataxe capable of hewing ancient oaks—roots and all—in a single swing. Mira walked toward him with absolute calm. There were about thirty yards between them when the giant took his first step.

  The sword from our bundle leaped into Mira’s hand of its own accord. The knight began to accelerate. Despite the weight of his armor, he moved with surprising agility. Fifteen feet. The giant leaped, raising the axe for a vertical strike.

  Mira simply froze in a low stance. The moment she began her swing, the blade in her hands exploded with blue sparks.

  ZIP.

  Lightning sliced through the air. Mira finished her movement, standing behind her opponent’s back. A second later, his body fell neatly into two even halves. Armor and all.

  We kept walking.

  Inside the city, it was pure hell. The surviving residents had completely lost their minds: they were tearing each other apart with their bare hands, sinking teeth into throats, screaming incoherently in fits of primal rage. The Fear Demons had done a spectacular job—they had drained everything out of these people except animal aggression.

  A few madmen lunged toward us. Mira’s sword slipped from her palm, spun through the air like a silver disk, and a moment later, the attackers' heads tumbled onto the cobblestones.

  "Mira, why are you only throwing electricity around?" I asked, stepping over a stray severed arm. "You’ve got a whole arsenal of elements in there."

  "Are you a total moron, little brother?" She didn't even turn around. "Do you want the enemy to know all our tricks from the first move? We’ll save the surprises for dessert."

  I felt my strength fully returning.

  Suddenly, the ground beneath us vibrated. The earth began to heave, shattering the paving stones. We jumped back in sync.

  KABOOM!

  A massive scaled beast, looking like a cross between a snake and a centipede, burst from underground. Perched on its neck was a girl. She was laughing, and there wasn't a drop of humanity in the sound.

  The beast slammed down, and the girl leaped to the ground, baring her teeth predatorily. In her hands was a dark sword, heavily coated in various shades of blood—from bright crimson to deep blue-black.

  "What interesting little humans have wandered into my garden," she said, licking the blade. "You seem sturdier than the previous ones."

  A second later, she moved—fast—appearing directly in front of Mira.

  They clashed blades. It seemed sparks were about to fly, but at the last microsecond, Mira’s sword ceased to be whole. It shattered into hundreds of shards that flowed around the opponent's guard like a living swarm.

  The girl didn't even have time to be surprised. The fragments pierced her chest, shredding her lungs. She fell, choking on blood.

  "Wow," I muttered. "Flashy."

  But the girl didn't die. She began to slowly stand up. The wounds on her chest were closing, pushing out the excess blood.

  "Interesting..." she wheezed. "So there are strong beings here after all."

  CLICK.

  Mira vanished. She appeared behind the enemy's back before the girl could even finish her sentence.

  SLASH. SLASH.

  Two short movements. The girl’s arms and legs flew in different directions. All that was left on the cobblestones was a torso that was still trying to regenerate but no longer knew where to start.

  "Poor regeneration," Mira noted, wiping her blade. "No efficiency. Zen, look at her. Is this their 'commander'?"

  The creature at our feet twitched in convulsions, let out one last raspy chuckle, and finally went silent.

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  "Just a puppet," Mira stated, disdainfully kicking the torso stump with the toe of her boot. "The owner is pulling the strings from somewhere else."

  "Alright," I wiped my hands on my pants. "Mira, I still don't get it—who are we looking for?"

  "A Fear Demon. I haven't learned much about them myself yet. I killed a couple—they seem like ordinary parasites, feeding on terror. Where they come from is unclear. Either they're too weak, or we’ve only been running into small fry so far."

  We wandered further through the ruins. The city was silent, except for the crunch of bones under our feet. I stopped at a large pile of bones heaped in the middle of a square. I poked the top skull with my finger. It crumbled into dust.

  Local beetles were already hard at work on the remains of the feast.

  I got bored. I poured a bit of mana into the pile, shaping it into what these bones used to be.

  CLACK-CLACK.

  A skeleton rose clumsily. I took a step—it followed. I spun in place—it did the same, its joints rattling comically. I raised my hand—and suddenly three skeletons were reaching for the sky in sync.

  Mira stopped, watching my improvised dance troupe. A strange smile played on her lips.

  "Zen... raise them all."

  I froze.

  "All of them? Are you serious? Do you have any idea how much work that is?"

  "Go on, go on," she winked. "Remember the good old days."

  I sighed. Fine, let's have some fun.

  I opened my palm, and a fine, glowing dust of mana drifted from it. The wind caught it, carrying it across the city. I began to pull on invisible strings.

  CRACK. RUSTLE. CLACK.

  The city came alive. Or rather, it started rattling. From all directions, out from under the rubble, those who shouldn't have been walking for a long time began to rise. Clean skeletons, half-rotted remains with tatters of flesh still hanging off them... It was a massive spectacle.

  Granted, from the outside, it looked less like an army of darkness and more like a drunken parade. Most of the "recruits" tripped over their own feet, fell, got tangled in their joints, and crashed back into the dust.

  Mira raised a skeptical eyebrow, watching one skeleton try to walk backward.

  "Be more careful with them, Zen. This looks pathetic."

  "OH, SORRY!" I protested, concentrating and wiggling my fingers. "They aren't walking on their own! I have to manual-drive them! I have to control every bone, every joint, every knuckle... I’m not a supercomputer capable of managing a thousand puppets at once!"

  We moved on. In front of me, limping and rattling, marched a whole legion of the dead.

  We left the city ruins. The sight was monumental: I was leading the way, and a whole horde of skeletons rattled behind me. A literal parade of the dead.

  Soon, a large village appeared on the horizon. Judging by how the people started scrambling, we were spotted from a distance. The locals quickly threw together a militia—a handful of soldiers in dented cuirasses and a crowd of peasants with pitchforks and scythes. We stopped about twenty yards from this bristling crowd.

  A man stepped forward, red with rage and fear.

  "SO YOU'RE THE ONES WHO KILLED THEM?!" he roared, pointing at us. "MONSTERS! SPAWN OF DARKNESS!"

  Mira didn't even flinch. In a calm, lecturing tone, she began to explain that we had actually liquidated the threat in the city and were simply "delivering" the remains of their loved ones home.

  I decided the atmosphere was too tense. And what’s the best way to break the tension? Exactly.

  I started dancing.

  My legs remembered the moves on their own. I made sharp lunges, glided across the grass, and snapped my fingers. My entire bone army behind me repeated every movement in sync. Hundreds of skeletons twitched in time, performing a perfect rendition of Michael Jackson's Thriller.

  Instead of applause, I heard only silence, punctuated by sobs.

  "YOU HAVE NO SOUL AT ALL!" someone from the crowd screamed.

  "LEAVE THEM ALONE, YOU FILTHY NECROMANCER!"

  "What's your problem?" I stopped, wiping away imaginary sweat. "They're dead. They don't really care anymore."

  At that moment, several people burst from the crowd. They rushed toward my "dancers."

  "My baby... my son..." "Brother! That’s his ring!" "Mom... Dad..."

  People clung to the cold bones, weeping. I looked at them, and I felt... uncomfortable. Too much emotion.

  I snapped my fingers.

  POP.

  The magic evaporated, and the skeletons went limp all at once, collapsing into heaps of bones right in their relatives' arms. The people clung to those bones as if they were afraid they would disappear.

  "Alright," I sighed, looking at their haggard faces and hollow stomachs. "Looking at you is making me sick. You're starving."

  I made a wide gesture with my hand. All the bones lying on the ground suddenly took flight, drawing together into one giant pile above the center of the square.

  "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" the peasants screamed, raising their pitchforks.

  "I’m helping you, idiots!" I snapped. "Look at your fields—nothing but weeds. I’m going to turn these bones into pure bone meal. Bury it in the ground, sow your grain, and you’ll have a harvest the likes of which this kingdom hasn't seen in three centuries."

  "NO! DON'T YOU DARE! THESE ARE OUR KIN!" the crowd wailed.

  I looked at Mira. She gave a barely perceptible nod of approval.

  SNAP.

  A flash of mana—and the massive mountain of bones instantly turned into a fine gray dust. The wind caught it, spreading it in an even layer across the surrounding area.

  "NO-O-O! MONSTER!" one of the residents, crazed with grief, lunged at me with a knife.

  But he was intercepted by another old man, older than the rest.

  "Stop..." he wheezed. "They are dead. Nothing can help them now. But us... we have to survive somehow."

  Mira and I didn't wait for thanks or more curses. We simply turned and walked away.

  "Did you see me dancing?" I asked once the screams behind us faded.

  "Magnificent," Mira smiled with the corner of her lips. "You always did have a flair for the dramatic."

  "Where to now?"

  "The next city. Igeston."

  "Why there?"

  Mira silently pointed to a field by the road. There lay the carcasses of cows and sheep. No wounds, no bite marks. Just... empty shells, with the life sucked right out of them.