It was nearly dusk when we ran into the first real issue of the day. We were looking for a good campsite when we rounded a bend and found a small group of people surrounded by eleven decaying humanoid creatures that looked like...

  “Are those zombies?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes, they are,” Harper agreed. The group consisted of a man around my age in robes, three scruffy-looking men in rough leathers, and a scruffy woman dressed in the same rough-looking leathers.

  “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Those actually exist?” I asked, shocked. I had seen zombie movies, but they were mostly a joke.

  One of the scruffy men noticed us while barely fending off a swipe from the zombie in front of him. The zombie was missing its lips and nose. The man looked at us and frantically cried out, “A little help here?”

  Harper looked at the group suspiciously. “Uh, Finn? I’m not so sure—” she started.

  I immediately rushed in, digging my heels into my horse’s sides. Once I was close enough, I cast three Firebolts at the nearest undead. Harper swore behind me as she followed. I heard and felt one of her knives fly past my right ear, and it lodged itself in the head of one of the zombies. It fell over dead. Again.

  “Christ, Finn! Aim for their heads!” she yelled as she galloped past me.

  It was like in horror movies. Just had to do enough damage to the head, and the zombies were done. I hadn’t thought about it and had used the wrong spell. Long Ice shards flew from my hands as I aimed for the slobbering monsters’ heads. I took two of them down, while another three fell to Harper’s knives.

  With our intervention, the disparate group went from being on the defensive to actively fighting the moaning, decaying undead. We finished off the rest of them quickly. The scruffy four started looting the corpses, which irritated me. I relaxed, though, looking at their rough clothing and poor hygiene. They obviously need it more than I do.

  I got off my horse, and the guy in the robes approached. He carefully stepped over the bodies of the quickly decaying undead with distaste. “Sir, my blessing and the blessing of my God Nathas be upon you! I don’t know how to ever repay your kindness,” he said pleasantly.

  “Don’t mention it. You and your, ah, friends were in danger, and we could help. Are any of you injured?” I asked.

  The priest double-checked himself and shook his head. “I seem to be fine, but thank you. My name is Brother Kendrel,” the priest said with a polite, yet shallow bow.

  Sticking my hand out, I grinned at the robed man. “Nice to meet you, Brother Kendrel. I’m Finn, and the scowling woman is Harper,” I said as he shook my hand. He was a little taller than I, and wider in the shoulder. And his grip! It did not fit his pleasant, scholarly demeanor. The unruly red hair on his head was almost a shock in itself.

  The priest smiled and bowed to Harper. “Thank you, Miss Harper, for your timely and deadly accurate assistance,” said Brother Kendrel. He then glanced at his scruffy compatriots. “These are not friends of mine, as instead of the good and honorable lessons of my God Nathas, they required my coin,” he continued in a low voice. “Yet when we were surrounded by the unholy minions of evil, they did their best to stand with and protect me. Please don’t think unkindly of them.”

  “If they’re bandits—” I began.

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  “AAARGH!” screamed one of the bandits as a not so dead undead ripped off a sizeable chunk of meat from his forearm. He grabbed the bleeding arm and lurched away quickly into the woods. His fellow bandits stepped back from the reviving zombie. I raised my hand to cast Ice Shard once more, but it was unnecessary. The knife sprouting from its eye socket was hilt deep.

  “Never mind,” I said dismissively. “They don’t seem to be much of a threat.”

  “As I said,” the priest replied with a smile. “They are not the enemy. If anything, they are more of a danger to themselves than anyone else.” We watched them tentatively stab each undead corpse in the head before approaching.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, Brother Kendrel. Finn, we should be going,” Harper said. She gestured sharply at my horse.

  I nodded. We still needed to find a camping spot. And if there were undead around here, I wanted to put more miles in before we stopped for the day.

  Harper waited until we were at least a mile away before speaking. “What the hell is wrong with you? That was a priest of Nathas!”

  I gave her a sideways look. “Yeah, so? He seemed pretty chill to me,” I replied.

  “You don’t remember, do you? Nathas is the god of the Guanthas Empire. You know, the one invading the Twelve Kingdoms? Wanting to get rid of all the Earthborn? And don’t forget they want to capture you!” she yelled at me.

  “Oh,” I replied sheepishly.

  “Oh? Seriously? Is that all you have to say? That priest is working for the Empire, just like the Steel Falcons,” she said, exasperated.

  “Look, I forgot about the name of the empire and the god they worshiped. And Brother Kendrel seemed like a decent guy. Not the evil minion type,” I replied defensively.

  Vessa, who had been keeping a low profile, looked at Harper quizzically and meeped at me. ‘Aren’t the Gods supposed to be good?’ I repeated it out loud to Harper.

  “That’s not something I really know too much about, but Juan was always of the opinion that staying out of the way of all the Gods was a good idea. Not because they were good or evil, really. It’s just that they have a way of complicating things,” she replied.

  The small dragon puzzled over this for a moment. ‘But why is the priest scary? Or this Nathas?’

  Harper thought about it before she answered, “So Nathas has decided that everyone not born here, like Finn and me, needs to go back to our world or die. And he also wants Finn. Because he is a Mage.”

  ‘But Finn is a good person. He protects me. Why is he in trouble?’ Vessa thought to me.

  “Too many past Mages were changed by that demon,” Harper answered with a pained expression. “They rampaged across the world, seeking all forms of power. Finn, being a Mage, is in trouble because of what they did, not because of anything he has done.”

  Vessa growled then, a deep sound that shouldn’t have come from her compact form. ‘That’s not fair! I don’t like this Nathas.’

  Harper shrugged at Vessa’s pronouncement. “Then we’ll have to keep him away from the God. And away from people who want to capture him. Except for the Steel Falcons. We have unfinished business with them,” she said.

  I give Vessa’s head a good scratch. “It’ll be okay, little one. I know this is a lot to take in. I still don’t think I fully understand everything surrounding this madness.”

  She purred at the attention. ‘I believe you. Maybe we can figure it out. Together.’ The structure in my mind that was Vessa radiated trust.

  It was weird to know things like that. But that was my life for the foreseeable future. I was a Mage, able to shoot fire and ice from my hands. My best friend was a purple half-demon who grew up in California during the nineties and just had her heart broken. I was now the caretaker of a baby dragon that was apparently the key to getting home.

  I am also a killer. No matter how much I deny it or say that it’s necessary, that’s what I have become. As Juan said, this place does things to you. He was right. It hurt to reflect on what he would think of what I’ve become. Would he approve? Or would he mourn what I had lost? I knew I couldn’t focus too much on that without beating myself up.

  I kept the guilt pushed down so I could continue moving forward. Killing had become... too easy for me. And I’m good at it. Someday, I’ll have to deal with the reality of what I’ve become. Someday.

  But for now, as we rode toward more conflict, more bullshit, I rode with my friend. We were going to kill a lot of people to avenge our shared mentor, Juan. And I doubted even the Gods here knew how many more people I was going to have to kill just to finish this quest.

  Vessa moved her head into my hand to remind me she wanted a good scratch as we approached a small village. I could use a drink and a good meal, I thought. And not to think myself into an existential crisis.

  I rode on, knowing that someday I’d get home. Someday.

  Just not someday soon.

  Friggin zombies, am I right? Thought I was going to get through the entire book without the stinking undead. But, they are such a staple of so many types of fiction. Luckily, they won't come to bite Finn and co in the butt!