Between Theodore and Humphrey, they made good time traveling through the Black Wood. Especially since, just like the last time Lindle had gone on an undead hunting quest, the local population had become sparser the closer they got.

  It was still a few hours until noon when they found their first straggler. A mostly skeletal Speartalon, the bipedal theropod’s characteristic long talon on each foot remained in undeath as it stalked eerily between the trees. Alone, it had gone down easily to their ambush. Rosato was taking the opportunity to test Snowblind Rage’s effects before smashing it into a pile of bones. Fortunately, it seemed that despite not showing any visible indications of rage, the Speartalon had entirely ignored everyone else while Rosato baited it around.

  While their scouts had gone to confirm that no others were in the immediate area, Lindle and Thalia were crouched over the once-again corpse. Thalia placed the hand covered with Decomposers Palm on the skull as she cast a necromantic inspection spell. Lindle, meanwhile, was scanning the Ethos in the monster's foot, sorting through the combination of bestial and undead aspects.

  He held it up to Notwick on his shoulder to look at. “What do you think? Undeath has to lend itself well to harmful effects, right?”

  The homunculus hummed. “For traditionally living creatures, yeah. As your first weapon artifact, you could do worse. Now that your size limit is enough for simple arms, we could try making a dagger or short sword.”

  “Too bad we can’t turn a Speartalon into a literal spear,” Lindle joked. He pocketed the foot and looked at Thalia. “Anything unusual?”

  Thalia cut off the flow of MP to her spell, Lindle’s Ethos sense picking up on it while this close, and she shrugged. “Definitely animated by a miasma leak source. Minion skeleton subtype though, which is kind of cool, those are rare to find in nature. Must have been because the Spear Tyrant was nearby and reanimated at the same time. It’s a good thing we already planned to separate them from their leader, they’ll be good at coordinating with each other.” Lindle listened patiently as Thalia continued to share her observations. It was good tactical information, but it was pretty clear the beastwoman was just nerding out. Catching the smile on his face, Thalia scowled, the bit of red on her cheeks made more obvious by her mask-like marking. She looked away and waved her glove artifact over the bones, sucking away the miasma to top off her Mana pool.

  The Soarians, especially Chip, looked uncomfortable at the display of casual necromancy in front of them, even if Lindle didn’t really think using undead aspects counted as actual necromancy.

  The cleric coughed. “Are you, ahem, sure you don’t want me to purify the remains?”

  Thalia stood up and dusted the snow off her knees before showing off the glove with a grin. “It’s fine, with this thing I didn’t even need to use any mushrooms. All the miasma’s gone.”

  Chip cringed slightly, looking at the glove and the mushrooms dotted along Thalia’s clothes, no doubt filled with miasma. “And you wouldn’t want some purification yourself by any chance?” He looked at Lindle too. “I wouldn’t want either of you to come down with any health issues or spiritual corruption…”

  He trailed off as Thalia crossed her arms. “Our druidic circle has a long tradition of handling necromantic energy and miasma safely and responsibly. I can handle myself, thank you very much.” She glanced at Lindle. “And Lindle’s… tough. He’ll be fine.”

  Humphrey appeared from the treeline, and Thalia left to greet him. Lindle was 90 percent sure that Thalia was just teasing him, but… “We’ll talk later,” he told Chip before getting up to join everyone else.

  Following the stragglers’ tracks had revealed the trail of the greater pack leading off out of the Black Wood. Pulling out the map, Humphrey believed that they could probably catch them as they crossed over Lake Gelid. The frozen expanse of ice was crossed regularly by herds of Windsworn elk. If the pack of undead chased one down and reanimated enough of them into zombies, this could spiral into a much longer term problem.

  As they strategized, Lindle heard Thalia mutter to herself. “It’s really bad luck that we had to get another miasma outbreak at the site of another bunch of pack hunter corpses.”

  Lindle furrowed his brow. Yeah, it was weird that two miasma outbreaks within just a few months of each other occurred in places containing a large collection of corpses. Most of the time when wild undead in the Reach popped up, the leak usually hit a disparate collection of different species whose corpses were preserved enough to reanimate. Packs of undead who could start hunting in groups like this and Lindle’s first quest were rare, even if at that time it had been a mix of two different species. All things considered, it had been a good thing that they encountered a powerful solo beast like the White Mammoth, which had taken down a large chunk of the undead with it early before they had spread and converted any other packs or herds.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Lindle’s expression twisted a little more. That wasn’t just unlucky, that was almost suspicious. But these were wild undead, not the work of a trained necromancer, the differences were obvious. And they had plugged the site of the miasma outbreak themselves. It had been a natural occurrence coming from deep below ground. He shook his head. Either way, it wasn’t really relevant to their immediate goals, so he shouldn’t be distracting himself. But he might mention his thoughts to Madam Holly later.

  Lindle turned his attention back to the conversation as Dorothea pointed to a location on the map. “What’s this place?”

  “That’s a peninsula leading into the lake. If the undead move straight across the lake, they should pass right by it.” Humphrey answered.

  “Why wouldn’t they leave the lake by heading back onto land? Wouldn’t they sense more life that way?” The mage questioned.

  Humphrey shook his head. “They can’t, it's a cliff all the way around. The ground there extends up really high.”

  Dorothea rubbed her chin. “Cliff you say?” A toothy grin spread slowly across her face.

  Rosato’s fox tail puffed up as he saw his cousin's expression. “I know that look. Don’t say it.”

  She was unmoved. “That gives me an idea.”

  The knight fell backward into the snow, groaning the entire way down.

  ~

  “And you’re sure your spell will cover all of us?” Lindle asked for the nth time. He looked nervously at the side of the cliff only a couple of feet away, the massive expanse of frozen ice they were overlooking at least a hundred feet, maybe half again, down. This high up, Lindle could even see the Border, the gargantuan never-ending storm creating a wall of wind and ice extending from below the horizon up into the sky.

  His friends looked equally as nervous behind him… well, Humphrey and Notwick did. The ranger was fiddling with an arrow and kept trying to avoid looking at the cliff, and Notwick had wrapped extra vines around Lindle’s body. Thalia must have recently gained a wildshape form capable of gliding or flying. She whistled innocently as the three of them glared at her before Dorothea recaught his attention.

  “Of course! No self-respecting graduate of the Grey Owl Academy Adventuring Mage Program doesn’t know the [Feather Fall] spell so thoroughly that they couldn’t cast it in their sleep!” She proclaimed proudly, making a little hand sign over her chest Lindle didn’t recognize.

  Lindle looked to the other members of Dorothea’s adventuring party for reassurance. Rosato and Chip seemed to be a mix of exasperated and anxious, but they didn’t seem outright worried. Theodore, surprisingly, was standing at the cliff's edge without worry.

  Chip saw him and tried to give them all a comforting smile. “I know it’s a lot, but Thalia has used the spell on us plenty of times without fail. I don’t doubt her capability.”

  “And this is a good plan.“ Theodore added in, scanning the lake's frozen surface. “It’s the only viable place we can launch an attack without letting the Tyrant or Spears see us coming for miles. We’ll be fine.”

  His confidence started to calm Lindle’s nerves, before Rosato crossed his arms and grumbled at him. “Of course you’d say that, you don’t take fall damage.”

  Somehow now less impressed with the man’s confidence despite the fact that admittedly was a pretty useful ability, Lindle sighed. “Fine.”

  Dorothea smiled, holding her wand excitedly. “Don’t worry! This is going to be so much fun!” She turned, speaking under her breath, but Lindle still caught it. “Plus, we’re already up here anyways, a little too late now.”

  Rosato gave Lindle a sympathetic shoulder pat before they all moved into a waiting position. Lindle tried to take the time to relax, but unfortunately it wasn’t long before Theodore pointed out the pack of undead in the distance approaching.

  At their head was the Spear Tyrant, its body still covered by a good percentage of zombie flesh with bone peeking out. The much, much larger theropod walked with ice shaking stomps that would have risked cracking the ice if it wasn’t dozens of yards thick. It lacked the large talons on its feet that its lower tier counterpart had, its racial evolution into journeyman tier instead giving it a set of three extremely long claws on each hand to go along with a massive predatory jaw as weapons. Judging by the length of the claws, it had likely been around level 35 before it died.

  Following behind it was a pack of mostly skeletal Talonspears. Their lower level flesh must have decayed faster. Interspersed with the raptors were a few zombies of different species, all apprentice tier beasts that must have been caught and added to the horde. All in all they numbered just above 20, more than the posting had estimated. Taking those numbers head-on when they just started out would have been a death sentence, but now Lindle and his friends were a lot stronger, and they had the Grand Nine-tail Flaming Heroes at their backs.

  Remembering their companion party’s title made Lindle let out a little snort. Feeling a lot better, Lindle got ready.

  The pack of undead wouldn’t be passing directly underneath the cliff, so they would have to jump and let Dorothea pull them forward with her spell as they fell. He checked his alchemical pouch and artifacts one last time before he exchanged looks with his friends, nodding.

  Rosato started counting down. “3… 2… 1! Go!”

  They all ran, and as one, they all leapt into the open air.