"Concentrate." Godrey of Bouillon, the very senior commander of templars, says just one word as he creeps soundlessly over the leaf mold. 

The word brings Farnese's attention back to the present. She shakes her head. Viscount Van of Orlais and Rowan the Templar  look exasperated for some reason she doesn't understand. Métiers, the commander in chief of this Orlais army shrugs, clearing away the reeds with what seems like irritation. 

The trees block out the sunlight, the humid air stagnant. 

"I...I know.." Farnese, the youngest one among them answers, dismayed and confused but alert to the smell, which is different from the heretic's lair she encountered before at Albion. She bites her lip and looks at the ground, she has been heedless of her feet. "I know... I really do..."

She looks just like a child who has been scolded by her parents. She squeezes her luxuriously decorated sword sheath, resenting her surrounding, feeling pathetic. 

She should have said something. Why didn't she speak out? Why had she let the moment pass? Was it fear or something else? 

Perhaps it was just that her brain couldn't keep up with her emotions. Even now, hours later, she wasn't sure.

She repeats the name of God the father and the son of God, trying to regain some some measure of composure. If she doesn't concentrate, she would die. She understands that all too well. 

She is perfectly familiar with sight of others who normally engage in easy banter have focused all their attention on preparing for the combat. She, who is the least experienced, try to imitate them, she thinks as she takes in deep breath and let it out. The dregs of her ire stay with her, of course, but there is such difference between trying and not..

"Hey, do you smell something?" Métiers whispers, his nose twitching.

The battalion stops. A beat later, Farnese comes to a halt too, and looks around. An army could live and die on the sense of its scout, and Orlais has very good scouts. 

They listen hard and they hear something around them, a rustling as of something heavy moving through the leaves.

Maybe the sky above the trees is overcast and grey. That is what Farnese sees in her mind's eye as she sniffs the air. The scouts are also restless. Rotting leaves, earth, humidity all mingled together into a stale taste, that clung to their tongue. 

"It's different from the smell of a cave." She thinks.

A fine mist has sprung up but the scouts' eyes are untroubled by it. This battalion exceeds four hundreds men with a quarter of them are elite knights of church while three quarter of them consist of soldiers from Orlais noble families. Orlais scouts are the best in the continent at least among the civilized people. Although it is a mystery to Farnese how the scouts could see so well in so little light. 

She swallows heavily and clings to her luxuriously decorated sword. She feels a prickling on her soft neck, her golden hair standing on end. It is familiar but unpleasant sensation. She has the same feeling when chaotic event was about to occur in the heretic's lair in Albion weeks ago. 

So, she pays close attention to the funeral mound, and everything within the vicinity, fixing her eyes on the shadows that flit through the fog. 

The pillar of stones pile one atop the other. The vestiges of a funeral mound of heaped earth. Does she see something moving in between them?

It is not fair, perhaps to say that is the reason she notices. But she is the one who notices the sign. 

Zzzf. Almost soundlessly, all by itself, some mossy earth trembles, that is what Farnese notices.

The next instant, an arrow is flying. A scout draws a bow and releases it with a twang like a lute string, too fast to see. A mound of earth seems unperturbed by the arrow that is now sticking in it, but it rises up, as if crumbling from within. 

It has body of a man. It has nasty eyes and a foul smell. 

Farnese is reminded about the crazed men in Heretics'Lair but this one is very different. Before them, a rotten body is standing without breathing. 

"Impossible. A ghoul?" Godfrey seems very shocked as if this is the first time he sees this creature. 

"Not sure." The scouts shout as they ready arrows, some of them shout, "These creatures are coming from every direction!"

And so they are. The mounds of earth all around begin to shake and collapse, enemies rising from the soil on every side. 

Farnese groans and presses hands to her mouth to resist the nauseating stench that surrounds them. 

"A sneak attack from within the earth?" Métiers jokes as he readies fighting stance. He looks around, his eyes sharp, but beneath his thick facial hair, is a smile. 

"Please don't joke about this." Rowan says that while move to in front of Farnese. 

The figures get closer, step by step and Farnese feels a chill run down her spine. 

"They didn't go down no matter how many times we shot them." The scouts tell anxiously.

Viscount Van responds, "I don't hear the arrows hit any armour. Something feels off about this."

The figures are numerous but their number is still far lacking compared to their battalion but the mysterious enemies give off eerie aura that the men become panic.

The armies are being attacked from left, right and behind. Shouting is heard from everywhere and the battalion is quickly being overwhelmed by the foes.

***

"What's this?"

A man with rotten, disfigured face tumbles backward, a spray of blood erupting from his throat, where a thrown sword has mercilessly stabbed him. Even from behind the veil of fog, the rotten stench of flesh and blood make their nose prickle. 

The enemy falls with a thump, but then soundlessly, its body floats up, rising slowly in the mist.

"These are not men." Godfrey spat in frustration.

"They are obviously undead!" Viscount Van shouts.

"I agree!" A scout shouts back, firing off a literal hail of arrows. The bud-tipped bolts fly like lightning at angles that would be impossible for a normal archer, disappearing into the mist. The ensuing thock, thock, of arrows piercing flesh prove that their aim is true. 

But the squirming shapes in the fog continue to devour many of their comrades despite the arrows bristling out of the creatures. 

"Let's begin by breaking their legs!" Métiers gives his command in almost barking tone. 

He and several large men lashes out with their large weapons hitting the enemies' legs, and slamming their owners to the ground. 

There is a perverse sound like a bursting fruit but the creatures can only writhe on the ground and do not get up again.

Métiers wipe the filth from his large metal club and howls to his comrades,

"The flesh and bones are but complications. Destroy them and that things will not move again!"

"Thought you are not an expert on dead bodies!" Rowan tells him while kicking away creatures that approach Farnese.

"To my knowledge, the dead will only do one thing; return to the earth.."

"Are these these things ghoul, perhaps?"

Godfrey shrugs at Métiers's easy reply to his own banter and hefts his large axe. This massive axe is two handed weapon. 

The blade of the axe bites through the creature's limb like tree branches, but it does little to forestall the other undead creatures who know no fear. 

"This is endless. We need to find the necromancer!" Godfrey barks.

"Necromancer?" Viscount Van replies in confusion.

"Necromancer is the black magic sorcerer who controls these undead creatures!" Godfrey explains.

The scouts have already their bows on their back and are holding their daggers in ice pick grips. They wave the daggers menacingly, as if to say "If you come closer, we will cut you.", but the emotionless creatures don't waver.

From left and right, they pop from the ground, drawing ever closer. 

Circled at the centre of the horde, the army continues to move, not sure where are they going, but diligently maintaining their formation. 

They are however gradually being cornered as more and more of their comrades are killed. It is only a matter of time until they break ranks. 

From her place in the centre, Farnese strains to see into the fogs, she put a finger to her lips as a thought comes to her. 

Necromancer; good or evil, it is anyone who uses black magic to control corpses, or so she has read. So, that means this is a spell at work. An accursed one. And that means..

"It must be coming from somewhere."

Her knowledge of the subject is fuzzy, but Farnese follows this flash of insight. 

"What did you say, Lady Farnese?" Rowan is stunned by her sudden words.

"This is most like at the top of the funeral mound.."

The soldiers nod at each other and begin moving as one. They

work their way up the gentle slope, carving a path through the creatures

that come at them from every side. There are few parties that could have plunged through a horde quite like this one did. Undead corpses might stand in front of them, but they are hardly in the way.

“Just have to cut off their legs—right…!”

A scout mumbles as

he run ahead. He pulls out the bud-tipped arrows that had been so little help earlier. As he jogs along, he taps one arrow with his dagger, causing the tip to split like a blooming flower.

A scouts holds his dagger between his teeth, and with all the

grace of a flowing stream, he takes the great bow off his back and looses the arrow. The bowstring twangs with a sound like a musical instrument, and the arrow slithers along the ground before bouncing upward.

It goes where it is intended: right at a ghoul’s loins…

“—?!”

The arrow spins around the point of impact, tearing through the legs with a sickening sound. If corpses had been capable of surprise, this one would have been shocked.

The knights step on and over the body where it lay, pressing ever forward.

"Rowan.. look beside you!" Farnese's shout is answered by the immediate whoosh of a club. Métiers's weapon splits open the head of a creature that is working its way out of the

earth, trying to grab Rowan’s foot. He kicks the creature in its newly concave face, then looks around without a word.

The enemy is indeed numerous. Overwhelmingly so. He could see ever more shadows writhing in the fog ahead. They almost look like a single massive creature.

Further behind them, there is mound with a humanoid figure standing on it.

As they come closer, the figure becomes clearer.

It seems like a woman in an attire unknown to them.

She has long black hair that reaches her waist in her back. Her skin is snow white but her eyes are silver coloured. 

There are several unique short sword on her waist. 

She is obviously a living human but the undead creatures don't attack her. 

"Could it be that woman is the necromancer?" A scout voices his opinion. 

"Wait. There is another one behind her." Another scout points at the mound.

Although not clearly seen, there is a shorter girl behind her wearing the same weird attire. Her black hair is short and boyish. There are also the same short swords on her waist. Her eyes are red. 

***