“We’re surrounded, mage. Be ready,” William grunted. He moved cautiously, trying to remain silent enough not to draw too much attention from the shadowy figures surrounding them. Though most wrote William off as an uneducated brute thanks to his vicious nature, he had spent a lot of time in quiet study over the years. During his intensive research into the reports that the few survivors of Dragon’s Folly had made, William had discovered that the undead creatures in the valley were sensitive to sound, as their dragon progenitor had been.

William moved around to put his back to a cracked boulder, making it harder for the fungal zombies to reach him en masse. He blinked tears from his stinging eyes and gauged the distance from their position to the silhouette of Arztschlange’s corpse. Judging from the scale of the great beast’s remains, there was still at least half a league between it and them.

William cursed silently and looked skyward as he heard the cry of a hunting bird. Ioder was circling overhead, though William couldn’t see him through the thick rolling fog. The creature was supposed to be scouting ahead and using its piercing cry to herd the zombies away from their position. But he and Atzar had been forced on a wide detour to get around a particularly large puddle of Green Sap and even with a buzzbird’s eyes it was likely that he’d lose them. Now, instead of leading them away, it seemed the creature was leading the zombie horde in their direction.

“Damn that fool,” William hissed, then cursed again as a particularly foul patch of air filled his lungs and bit into him, forcing a barking cough. He bit down hard on his lip to stifle the rest of the noise, hard enough to draw a line of glowing blood, but the damage had been done. Several fungal zombies turned towards them, drawn buy the noise.

William barely had time to react as the first of the zombies stumbled out into view from behind the sheltering boulder. This particular specimen was unfortunately enough to still resemble a human, though only barely. Patches of sickly fungus sprouted in patches all across the length of its body, and one side of its head, most of the neck, and a single shoulder had all been subsumed by a single bulbous gray fungus. Sickly tendrils spilled out the remaining side of its mouth, twitching as the creature emitted a high pitched whistling shriek upon seeing William and Atzar.

“So much for the stealth approach,” William spat and lashed out with the razor edge of his warscythe. The obsidian blade sliced cleanly through the zombie’s chest, but instead of falling into two pieces, as a creature of meat and bone would have, the creature’s body stumbled and slammed into the boulder before falling over. Roots and veins of twitching vegetation burst from the wound, spurting a thick brackish liquid across William and Atzar. It was one of the worst smelling things William had ever had the misfortune to be doused in, with a reek of rotten flesh mixed with fecal compost which had been left to ferment in the sun on a sweltering day.

William retched involuntarily, then fought the urge back and struck out at the creature a second time. Others were coming in fast, angling on the noise that they were making. William grimaced as more fluid sprayed across him. At his back, Atzar was muttering something, doubtless using his magic against one of the creatures that had come up from the other side. William hoped the mage could handle himself, because he had more than enough to worry about on his side.

“Damned undead,” William swore as he knocked an approaching trio of zombies a step back into the fog with a back swipe of his scythe. He had to remember that wounds which could incapacitate a mortal were nothing more than an inconvenience to these plant creatures. In evidence, the first zombie continued to try to stand, through William had split both its head and guts open. William frowned and slashed at the creature a third time, the angry strength of the blow finally parting the zombie from its unlife.

“Ioder, down here” William roared, hoping that the creature could hear him overhead. These things were tough, and if there were as many of them as it sounded, then William and Atzar would need all the help that they could get.