Gareth had barely a moment to breathe after taking the castle.

  His victory against the Count should have put an end to things—the few local soldiers and the remnants of Pollus' army were no match against Oz's forces. Having watched the wards break apart after he disrupted their schema, he had expected the city to fall soon after. Instead, fighting erupted all over Volten, and what should have been a straightforward operation turned into a bloody slog.

  The Eastern Revolutionary Army had forced its way into Volten according to plan, and Gareth had sent a few men ahead to direct the fighting while he held the castle.

  But rather than find a broken, retreating enemy, his men faced fierce resistance. Blockades were set at every corner, and loyalists attacked relentlessly from rooftops and chokepoints. They had been forced to retreat lest they be overwhelmed before reaching the main force.

  His second attempt saw Lady Amelia’s spirits return with disturbing accounts of seemingly crazed soldiers fighting despite mortal wounds.

  Deciding that he’d have to see for himself, Gareth left Elder Wei in charge of holding the castle and went to put an end to the madness. He hoped that once he took to the field and started crushing the defenders, they would understand just how hopelessly outgunned they were and surrender.

  Around him, the remains of his strike team gathered, bruised and tired but steadfast. Two dozen warriors, human and orcs alike, waited in the shadow of the market plaza for his orders.

  “Be prepared for fierce resistance," he warned before advancing through the inner city’s narrow alleys. They walked quickly, their senses alert, the noise of distant skirmishes pressing in from all directions. Shadows loomed from the edges of broken buildings, and the flickering glow of distant fires gave the streets a ghostly hue.

  They moved in formation, checking corners and pushing through possible choke points. Gareth's lightning-charged spear acted as a beacon for all who stood in their way. Every so often, a group of royalists would ambush them from the gloom, seemingly unheeding the danger.

  Gareth dispatched them without mercy, cracking skulls and piercing hearts. Around him, his men fought with equal ferocity, and Gareth found himself fighting alongside a particularly fierce orc, Crokk, who wielded an enormous warhammer that crushed plate armor as if it were paper.

  "Should be in retreat by now," Crokk growled as he smashed his hammer into another soldier. "But they keep coming."

  Gareth nodded grimly, but his focus remained on the street ahead. They passed the shattered remains of storefronts and homes, barricades strewn with debris, signs of desperate last stands. Yet, no matter how many soldiers they cut down, more seemed to take their place.

  This is exactly the opposite of what I wanted to happen. What kind of idiotic commander would order his men to fight so suicidally despite knowing the city is doomed? Are they really so loyal to Pollus that they are willing to sacrifice every man in Volten to give him a couple more days to reach Hassel? I haven’t even managed to interrogate one yet because they keep fighting until I have to put them down.

  Only after another brutal skirmish that had held their ground with wild, unsettling fervor did Gareth begin to suspect something else was going on. The streets were slick with blood, and everywhere he looked, fallen bodies lay sprawled across the cobblestone. And still, more soldiers approached, emerging from alleys and charging from within buildings. Their faces were hidden behind helmets, but he thought he could feel great hatred from them.

  With one wide swing of his spear, Gareth took down three more soldiers, his movements becoming increasingly mechanical. His men began to tire, and their eyes filled with growing horror. This was no ordinary defense, no resolute last stand. Something darker was at work, though Gareth couldn't quite put his finger on what.

  Are they drugged? I heard that the Alchemy Guild had put its weight behind the King, but it should be impossible for them to have shipped enough stimulants here with the siege.

  After felling another group of soldiers, Crokk turned to Gareth, wiping blood from his brow. "Just how many damn humans do they have in this cursed place?" he snarled in frustration.

  The words struck Gareth like a jolt of lightning. He looked around, his mind suddenly working over the strange details—the endless waves of soldiers, the rigid, unthinking manner in which they charged, the way they emerged out of the shadows like specters. And then he understood.

  Appearing before the corpse of a man he had just slain with a stab through the neck, Gareth ripped his armor off the body and looked at the wound-riddled flesh beneath. There was no way this man could have stood, much less thrown himself into the fight.

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  "There's a necromancer in the city," he whispered.

  The realization settled heavily over the group, and Gareth watched the horror sink in as his men absorbed what that meant. The soldiers they'd been fighting weren't just loyalists clinging to a lost cause; they were the dead, risen again and again, sent to throw themselves at the revolutionaries without fear, without hesitation.

  Ignoring bloodstains and broken armor during such a brutal battle was easy. So easy that Gareth had been killing zombies for the past hour without even noticing.

  "They're raising the dead," he repeated louder, his voice hard. "The bastards have found a way to keep throwing their soldiers at us, even after we kill them."

  He didn't know for sure that there wasn't a rogue necromancer at work here, but Gareth felt it was a safe bet to say that they were working with the loyalists—at least with the brass, as he doubted the men themselves had agreed. Why would this mysterious dark mage have gone through the effort of controlling the thralls to prevent the ruse from being revealed otherwise?

  The horror turned to anger, and his men's faces hardened. They were fighters, trained to face any type of danger. Whether the monster was a slaver or a necromancer, it didn't matter. They would destroy any enemy of the Revolution.

  "Men!" he called, rallying them. "The forces of the enemy have always been depraved! They have always been willing to do anything they could to prevent the Light from shining on the good people of Hetnia! Necromancy is just another abomination, and we will purge it from Volten!"

  A fierce roar of agreement rippled through his men. They thumped their shields and shouted their willingness to fight.

  Gareth scanned their faces and knew they were ready to face whatever horror lay ahead. They wouldn't retreat; he could see the resolve in their eyes, the shared understanding that they needed to hunt down this darkness to the end.

  Turning to Crokk, he gripped his arm firmly. "Take half the orcs and clear the parallel street. Push the zombies back if you can and funnel them towards us. It'll give us a better chance of clearing them all."

  Crokk grinned savagely. "We'll crush every last one of them."

  Gareth nodded, motioning for the remaining few to follow him.

  The air grew colder as they moved, and the distant fighting now took a darker meaning. Gareth could feel the mist thickening. His knuckles tightened around the shaft of his spear, and he muttered a quick prayer to the Light.

  Now that he knew what to look for, Gareth could spot the faint, sickly haze of miasma swirling around the corpses. It was subtle, hidden by the natural mist clinging to the city, but Gareth could see it now. Dark magic permeated Volten, weaving through every street like an invisible web.

  I wonder how the spirits missed this. I thought they'd be more attuned to the weave… Fuck, the necromancer might be a strong one. Amelia didn’t leave behind high-tier elementals, but to hide from them, he has to be at least an Expert.

  The strike team worked their way through the narrow alleys, funneling the undead into choke points where Gareth's lightning magic could be unleashed to the greatest effect. Again and again, he raised his spear high, purple lightning crackling along its length, before thrusting it forward and releasing a surge of power that left behind charred bodies and sizzling stone.

  Armor clattered as the zombies dropped to the ground, the foul magic that animated them dissipating under the Pure lightning.

  "Forward!" Gareth ordered, forcing himself to spread his aura over his people, just in case the necromancer was capable of wide-area spells. He did not want to waste valuable elixirs if he didn't need to, and no one in his group could reliably use Light Magic.

  Crokk led his group of orcs through the side alleys, bellowing war cries through the city as they slammed into pockets of undead soldiers, shattering bone and armor alike with their war hammers and axes. The orcish brute strength may not have been as immediately devastating as Pure Casting, but it certainly kept the zombies from rising again.

  Deeper into the city, they found living soldiers. The first group was horrified at what their comrades had become and dropped their weapons once they realized the foul creatures hadn't found them.

  Gareth held up his hand, signaling for his men to stand down. "You've seen what's happening," he told the frightened soldiers. "There's a necromancer in this city raising the dead to bring the Blight to all, loyalist or revolutionary. Stand down, and you’ll be spared. Some things take precedence over everything.”

  The men looked at one another, grimly calculating their chances of survival. They lowered their rifles and put their hands up. "We didn't sign up for this," one muttered, sickly pale with terror.

  "Then make yourself useful," Gareth replied firmly. "Barricade yourselves in the buildings. Carve the Revolution's sigil on the doors so we know you're with us, and let no one in until we've cleared the streets."

  The soldiers hurried to comply, retreating into the nearest buildings and carving the simple rune of a sword into the doors.

  But not all were so easily convinced. The next group they found, a small band of guards wearing the Count’s standard, raged against his claims defiantly, shouting that Gareth was a traitor and that no true soldier would ever flee from their duty. When his words of warning failed to reach them, his spear did, the crackling energy leaving the loyalists lifeless at his feet.

  He made sure to burn the bodies so that they wouldn't rise again.

  As the night wore on, they slowly cleared each pocket of undead, finally making some headway now that they knew what type of foe they were facing.

  Gareth's stamina was running lower than it ever had since he achieved the Master rank, and he could see the weariness in his men’s posture, but they fought on, determined to root out the dark force within Volten.

  At last, they reached a barricade held by a group of soldiers bristling with spears. Mages stood among them, prepared to strike down anyone who dared approach with fire. Gareth halted his advance, raising his voice above the crackling energy.

  "Stand down!" he called, his voice carrying through the chaos. "In the name of General Gareth Doomspear, I order you to stand down! We're with the Revolutionary Army!"

  The soldiers lowered their spears uncertainly, looking at each other before one of them shouted, "Hold! Hold, in the name of all that's holy! That's the General!"

  Interrogating the soldiers quickly revealed that, as he suspected, the advance into the city had been stalled almost immediately after the undead were discovered.

  General Oz had ordered various squads to scour specific paths and report back. The soldiers remembered enough of his orders for Gareth to realize that the man was trying to triangulate the necromancer’s base.

  He's right. I haven't thought about where the necromancer might be because we've met so many zombies that it looked like an outbreak, but unless we're dealing with a Champion, they must get close to the corpses to turn them. I need to find them before the entire city falls to the dead.

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