Brin gripped his spear, waiting for the gates to come down. After the battle yesterday, the town had retreated behind the walls and the undead had been hacking at them ever since. Even Bog Standard gates had limits, and they were about to hit theirs.

“[Carpenters] and laborers hang back. Infantry, steady. Archers, ready,” Kevim shouted. As the only surviving member of the town council with any combat experience, he was the de facto leader of the town. It was a miracle that the leader of the [Hunters] hadn’t been taken by the curse, having taken the only [Hunter] higher-level than him instead. He was doing well enough as near as Brin could tell, but he was no Prefit Elmon.

The thumping continued, undead axes against the other side of the wall. From this side, they looked perfectly fine, but he knew that couldn’t be the case. The undead had been chopping at the walls all through the night without tiring. At first, the town had put [Hunters] on the towers to pick them off, but the undead had responded with swarms of arrows in return, and the [Hunters] had been forced to retreat. No one voiced the opinion that they should charge out of the gates and try to whittle the enemy down again, not now that they were missing all their best fighters. Now, the game was all about survival. They would meet the undead after the gates fell, and only long enough to drive them back so the laborers could replace them.

The logs and beams were cut and placed in carts. The workers held their tools, ready to go. All they needed was the space to work in.

Until the gates fell, all they could do was stand and wait, listening to the steady thunks. It had been strange, to go to bed with that sound in the air, in a house that felt so empty without Marksi or Hogg. He had slept; he’d needed it. He’d slept like a baby, and nearly missed the rallying cry for the defense.

The first chunk of wood was pulled away, and all at once the ghastly pale face of an undead peered through the door of the gate. An arrow immediately struck it in the forehead, followed by a dozen more.

A pike-holding [Candlemaker] stepped forward, no doubt to jab his long weapon through the opening. Kevim shouted, “Infantry stand back! Let them all the way through before pushing them back out!”

As if in response, a black arrow came through the hole in the wall, hitting the shield of a defender.

The defenders waited, holding back, and the chopping resumed. The undead were staying clear of the holes they made, but the more of the gate they tore down, the less they had to hide behind, and the archers picked off a few more.

Davi began to play his music, and Brin felt his courage rising, and felt clear understanding on what he was supposed to do. After Brin had left, it had been Davi that rallied the troops. He’d apparently learned a lot from his short time shadowing Jeffrey; and besides, Davi was a person who’d read a thousand battles. He’d known what needed to be done, and he’d acted in time to make it happen. He’d used his music to send instructions to the defenders, and formed a capable defense until one of the Lantern-men took charge. Brin had only joined the very end of the battle as the defenders made an ordered retreat back into town. No one had accused him of cowardice from running off earlier. He didn’t think anyone had even noticed him leave.

Now Davi played a simple marching tune, but from the look of concentration on his face Brin thought he was probably sending different motivations to the three different groups, which wasn’t simple at all.

All at once the rest of the gate fell inwards, and the undead rushed forwards. Black clad ax-wielders ran in front. There was no expression on their faces, as if they were bored by this whole experience. Or rather, as if they were already dead.

The front line of defenders were the best of what Hammon’s Bog had left. A Lantern-man threw a tree trunk straight into the oncoming line, which smashed through them and into the crowd of undead behind. A wave of water splashed more undead to the side and then Zilly’s dad threw his artillery-coal into the grouped-up attackers. It exploded, flinging limbs in every direction and clearing an area on the other side of the gate.

[Farmers] holding greatshields with both hands and no weapons poured through the opening, creating a line and pushing it outwards. More men with weapons filled in the space between them as the ring expanded. As many defenders as could get through the gate charged in after them, and soon Brin found himself running over the bloody ground, through the gate and into the battlefield.

In no time he was on the front line, shield forward and spear to the side. [Inspect] told him that the undead soldier headed for him had a really nasty downwards chop, but it was only level 16, so after that it would be an easy kill. All he had to do was dodge the chop–but he couldn’t do that.

The Prefit’s lesson the other day hadn’t been a metaphor. He had allies behind him and to both sides. He couldn’t dodge.

He raised his shield, and took the chop straight on. The powerful strike knocked him to his knees, left his shield-arm numb, but it didn’t push him back. He stepped up and forward, lashing out with his spear and stabbing the undead in the stomach. It wasn’t enough to kill the thing, and it wound up for another chop, so Brin pushed [Shape Glass] into his spearhead and detonated it.

There was a muted thump, and the undead slumped to the ground.

He stepped back, and another defender moved in to take his place. He took the time to replace the spearhead on his staff, taking one from a bag on his hip that he’d prepared beforehand. He just stuck the spearhead on the end, and used [Shape Glass] to affix it. He could probably float the spearhead out of his bag and onto the spear shaft, but he’d need more practice before he could move glass that precisely, and besides, it was a waste of mana.

Not that he couldn’t afford it. Last night, he’d decided that the time for waiting was done, and put every spare attribute point he had, all twenty of them, into Magic. Now, his mana pool felt like a great, swirling ocean.

The defender in front of him threw a scythe, and it slashed through four undead before getting lost in the mob. A [Harvester’s] cooldown Skill, according to a quick [Inspect]. Brin stepped up to replace the [Harvester], quickly moving his shield up in time to stop an ax-blow that would’ve hit the man next to him.

“Crafters! Repair the gates!” Kevim ordered. Now that they had the area clear, the [Carpenters] could get to work. Brin’s previous world-knowledge told him that repairing a gate in the middle of a battle was a ludicrous idea, but the crafters of Hammon’s Bog knew what they were about. They’d have the gate rebuilt in no time, and it would hold for another day.

Fighting in a line was surprisingly easy. No, not easy. Simple. There weren’t a lot of options. You could block or stab. There wasn’t room for anything else. Brin blocked, and he stabbed, and the defenders held their ground. Once, he felt a hard rap on the top of his helmet, a glancing blow from a spear, but Perris did quality work and he wasn’t hurt at all. Other than that, he didn’t take so much as a scrape.

The undead were fighting more cautiously now as well, so he didn’t make another kill, but got a couple good stabs in.

A tap at his shoulder told him his time was done, so he stepped back.

Before anything else, he replaced the spearhead again. The glass spearheads were very effective on the first cut or two, but they lost their edge quickly. Luckily, they were replaceable. Once the ones in his bag ran out, he’d be fine sharpening them with his magic or just summoning them from scratch. For now, it was easier to just replace them.

He risked a glance back. The craftsmen were about halfway done with the gate. It looked like they were going to make it.

He saw that Zilly had ended up on the frontlines nearby, and even though he knew he really shouldn’t, shuffled his way over towards her.

She stood with sword and shield, and Brin could tell she was struggling. [Rogues] weren’t meant for fighting in a line; her relatively low Strength was hurting her, and from the exhaustion he could see in her shoulders, her Vitality wasn’t up to snuff either. As he watched, he saw how she compensated with Dexterity. She never blocked anything head-on, rather parried things out of the way just enough and conserved her strength.

When an undead soldier swiped at her with a mace, she made a perfect parry with her shield, knocking it upwards. Her sword snaked out and caught the undead’s neck. Not deep enough to kill, but enough to force it back. This would all be easier if the undead kept fighting until they fell, but they fought just as the townsfolk did, swapping out their injured for fresh reserves.

When the spear of the man next to her cracked, Brin stepped up to replace him.

“Maybe you should take a break!” Brin yelled. “You look tired!”

Zilly barked a laugh. She pushed forward with her shield, forcing an enemy spear to stick into it, then used the opening to step forward and lash out, decapitating the undead spear holder. Then she used [Dash] to jump past the enemy line, and cut into the backs of the necks of the two undead on either side, and [Dashed] back before anyone could complain that she’d left a hole in the line.

Brin didn’t even get a kill notification for the undead in front of him, which meant that she got all the experience for it.

“How was that?” Zilly said, shaking her head to fling her ponytail back behind her.

“That was ok, I guess,” said Brin, trying and failing to hide how impressed he was. She snorted in amusement.

He thought about what he could do to show off, but decided not to be stupid for once. Zilly was fighting more viciously now, taking kills and gaining experience rather than just barely hanging on. Hopefully she’d have enough sense to withdraw when she got too tired.

Brin’s next opponent was a crafty sword-fighter; they went back and forth with neither of them finding purchase, until Brin was forced to detonate another spear head, wounding the undead’s arm and forcing them both to withdraw.

A burly [Woodsman] took his place, and pretty soon Zilly stepped back as well. He met her eyes, and they both chuckled nervously.

On the other side of the defensive line, he saw a man go down. One swing of a warhammer broke through his shield and caved in his chest. Brin only got a brief glance at the undead’s armor, but what he saw left no doubt who that was.

“It’s him!” came a shout, and Brin winced. Why shout it out? They’d be better off not knowing. “It’s the undead in Simao’s armor!”

The southern gate had been attacked in just as great numbers as the north-eastern gate, despite the fact that there were only a fraction of the defenders. When Toros had fallen to the curse, Simao had bravely stepped forward to hold off the undead’s charge to give the others the chance to flee. He’d saved dozens of lives, but hadn’t made it through the gates before they closed. It was a heroic story, and would’ve been inspiring if they were fighting against anything else.

The undead wearing Simao’s armor. That’s what they were calling him now.

Several Lantern-men swarmed the section of the line where Simao had been seen. He retreated before they got there, but the damage was already done.

The effect on the defenders was immediate. Some were angry and stepped forward too far, swinging too hard and leaving openings that the undead quickly exploited. Others grew cold and their movements grew sluggish as they were overcome with dread. The townsfolk tried to pull away the bodies of any who fell, but they didn’t get all of them. Anyone who was left behind would soon be fighting on the other side, just like Simao.

Davi played louder, but the song was wrong. He was still playing a song about glory and triumph, about marching toward victory, but that wasn’t the mood anymore. This was now a somber, tired fight. People were enduring because they had to, because there was no other choice. His song clashed with their spirits, screwing up their reflexes, causing them to make mistakes.

“Stop the song!” Brin shouted, using [Call Sound] to project his voice. The man in front of him fumbled a block and dropped his shield. Brin pulled him out of the way of an ax-swing, and then stabbed the attacking undead, taking his place in the line.

He wasn’t any better at resisting the song, and against the next undead he had a few close calls as the soldier kept putting a spear where Brin least expected it. He summoned a ball of silence around his head with [Call Sound], and it got better. The undead in front of him seemed to slow down a bit. He couldn’t do much for the others, though. People were taking injuries left and right.

The line shrank as those defenders who had one-off Skills used them and retreated. It shrunk further as more and more wounded were pulled back behind the walls. He found himself walking steadily backwards, to stay with the men at his sides. Maybe they were following orders that he couldn’t hear, or maybe they were being pressed back.

The retreat stopped; they weren’t walking backwards anymore, and the men at his sides seemed to be moving better. He dismissed the orb of silence around his head, and found that Davi had stopped his music.

By now there were only a hundred defenders left outside the walls.

“Done! Get back inside! We’re ready to shut the gates!” came Kevim’s call.

The hundred couldn’t all move inside the gates at once; only about eight at a time fit through. Brin was one of the first to disengage and fall back. A row of eight Lantern-men held the front as the rest of them moved through the gate.

Right as the last of the defenders were through the gates, Simao appeared again. He smashed his way through the attacking undead and brought his hammer down on the centermost Lantern-man, shattering his arm and flinging him to the ground. He reared back for another strike.

“[Blunt Shot]!” Kevim called out his Skill name right as it landed. An arrow knocked Simao’s hammer to the side just enough to stop the hammerblow, and the undead apprentice [Smith] fell back.

The wounded Lantern-man barely scrambled back in time before the gates closed. The few undead who’d already come through were quickly cut down and then… it was over.

They’d done it.

They mostly stood in place, catching their breath. Some girls Brin’s age or younger walked between the defenders, offering them water. Brin took a tall glass thankfully and gulped it down. The glass was foggy and brown, one of his earlier pieces.

He checked himself for any injuries that he’d missed in the heat of battle, and found none. Perris’ armor had done its job. He replaced a glass spearhead and then thought about his shield. He’d just taken one that they’d been passing out to everyone, but he might be able to cover the surface with glass. That would make it easier for him to use, but he wasn’t sure if he had the time.

They didn’t have time to sit around for too long. There were two more gates to repair.

Brin walked around the outer edge of the town, following the walls. The undead didn’t only attack the gates, after all. There were many who tried to scale the walls, and more than half of the [Hunters] patrolled every inch of the boundary for anyone trying to sneak through, while many other defenders waited in groups here and there, ready to plug any gaps if there was an incursion.

Even as he watched, an undead crawled over to the top of the spiked wall. Some kind of enchantment slowed it down as it reached the top, and it struggled to pass over, as if the air had suddenly turned to molasses.

That gave a passing [Hunter] more than enough time to put an arrow into its head.

He heard a cry from two blocks over. “Alert! Incursion!” The voice was loud, but strangely monotone. Brin ran to the source of the alarm, and when he got there it was already over.

Seven undead soldiers lay dead on the ground, and a man in a cloak stood over them. He didn’t have any weapons that Brin could see, and he was seven feet tall. There was no one that tall in this town. Brin could see vaguely human features through the hood, but couldn’t make out exactly what he looked like. Which was strange, since in the middle of the day a hood shouldn’t cast such a dark shadow.

[Inspect] just told him “A hooded figure.”

One more undead crawled up from the ground, and the man stomped down on its head, smashing it. Then he turned to leave.

“Wait!” Brin called out.

The hooded figure paused, and looked over to consider. He shook his head. “Request denied.”

He turned and ran into the city. His movements were oddly fluid, like a loping gazelle.

Strange. Alarming, and yet he was definitely on their side. He’d helped with the undead, and he’d called the alarm. Brin focused on where they were coming from, and saw a hole in the ground, with another undead pulling itself through.

“Alarm! We’ve got a tunnel!” Brin shouted with [Call Sound]-improved loudness.

A group of a dozen defenders arrived before the next undead even made it through. An [Earthmover] stepped up. This was an older man with a stooped back, although he wore a nice set of Bog Standard chainmail. He had to set his cane down to use his Skill, but with a wave of his hands the tunnel plugged up, trapping the squirming undead underground. Brin didn’t know if they’d die from that or not.

“We’ve been seeing lots of these. Not a problem if I can get here in time,” said the [Earthmover].

“Did you see that guy who found them?”

“It wasn’t you?”

Brin shook his head and trotted off. He went the direction that the man had gone, but after seeing no sign of him, continued on his way towards the other gate.

The battle for the next gate was worse than the first. Everyone was talking about the “undead in Simao’s armor”, and the defenders were demoralized before the fighting even started.

Davi played a more somber tune this time. It was a song about fighting even when all hope was lost, of moving forwards against impossible odds, even when you knew you couldn’t win. It fit the mood quite well.

When Simao showed up, Zilly’s dad shot him immediately with a blazing fireball that demolished all the undead around him and scorched the shields of the unlucky defenders nearby.

Simao’s armor was too damn good, and the undead laughed as he retreated again.

By the time they got to the third gate, everyone was exhausted. The Lantern-men didn’t need to conserve their mana anymore, so they launched everything they had at the undead from the beginning. The undead ranks were pulverized by an unrelenting wave of fire, wood, and water. Return volleys from the undead archers were a problem, but dedicated shield-only [Farmers] protected the casters. Brin was in the reserves, but didn’t do any fighting. Few undead soldiers approached the town’s front line.

Zilly’s dad and several other Lantern-men were so exhausted that they’d needed to be carried away, and Brin barely felt any better. A weary army shuffled through the gates, and they closed behind them.

Kevim stammered out a speech and then sent everyone home.

Most people left immediately, trudging home, or running to check on loved ones. Some were visibly steeling themselves for bad news they had to bear. Others formed into teams to carry the casualties away to be cremated. The [Midwife] and anyone else whose Classes could be applied to healing crouched over the worst of the wounded, who lay on blankets near the gates in rows.

There were also some who didn't do anything. They stared blankly in the air, processing the insanity, overcome with the death and violence of the day. Now that they were briefly free of any urgent task, they were left naked to the horror of it all.

Brin was one of those. He sat and looked at the sky. It was a beautiful day, nice and sunny with only a few white fluffy clouds. That was starting to fade in half the sky as the sun sat right on the edge of setting. Hammon's Bog didn't have too many beautiful days; it was usually overcast.

He needed to move. He'd sit here forever if he didn't force himself to do something. He wanted to go home, to make dinner for Hogg and Marksi. Then maybe a nice pot of tea. The warmth of that vision called to him, and so of course he'd never be able to go to that empty house now.

A [Baker], an older woman with gray hair, handed him a sausage roll. She had lots of them in a big basket, and she was walking from person to person, handing them out. Brin tried to protest, since he wasn't a worker or a nurse. She pulled out a damp cloth, wiped off his grimy hands, and then pressed the food into them.

He took a bite. It was delicious. He started walking, munching on the sausage roll, and felt some of his humanity return. The crust was golden and flaky, the bread was soft and the sausage was rich with spices and flavor. All too soon, it was gone and he started licking his fingers and looking around for something else to eat. What had he been doing? He didn't have time to sit around. There were a thousand things he could be doing, like sleeping if he couldn't think of anything else.

Before sleep, though, he was curious about something. Brin walked towards Ademir’s workshop. He had a hunch about something. He didn’t know for sure, but this was the best bet.

The light was still on inside, but curtains had been drawn over the windows. Brin tried the door, but it was locked. He knocked.

He heard a shuffling sound from inside, but no one answered.

“Come on, Ademir! I know you’re in there! Open up!”

The door creaked open, only an inch, and Ademir peered out at him. “Brin? What brings you by at this–”

Brin pushed the door open further. In the workshop, just behind Ademir, stood a large hooded figure, seven feet tall.

“I knew it! Ademir, you have to introduce me to your familiar.”