“Classifying the undead—” Rüdiger smirked at Adarin. “Constructs is no simple task. Many schemes have been attempted over the centuries.”

  Rüdiger floated next to them on the marsh, away from Northguard, surrounded by Adarin and a crowd of disciples.

  “I have a plan. Well, several, actually—but this one is about how we’ll use the undead, my dear disciples.”

  “For classification, I prefer Mackenweiler’s Trigram. Picture a triangle: three corners, three truths, and lines extending between them. That’s the skeleton of our system.”

  The crowd of disciples was listening with rapt attention, some even taking notes while walking. Adarin had noticed that they were using pencils. He had asked Rüdiger about it, and the man had held another long lecture in response. Apparently, it had been his invention, as he had grown, according to his words, “too goddamn annoyed with the bloody feather and ink.”

  “The three corners,” Rüdiger gestured broadly, “in Mackenweiler's system represent a mix of practicality and mysticism, which I do believe is quite elegant indeed.”

  “Zombies,” he gestured wide, and he stretched out a hand and drew something from his chest.

  The face of a woman emerged, howling and moaning. She seemed somehow real, while only being a projection.

  “Spectres, which are ectoplasmic entities bound to a location or artifact—like my sanctuary implant—whereas the zombie is merely a control matrix using signals.” He turned to Adarin. “A zombie is nothing but the control software of a flesh robot. A spectre is the distilled intent and memory of the dead, bottled essence instead of meat.” He turned to Adarin again. “Spectres are powerful, but they are bound to an object or location.”

  The final corner. He turned around and looked at Liora.

  “Would you care to venture a guess?”

  “Maybe…” She looked at the undead trolls.

  “No.” Rüdiger shook his head. “Abominations represent the lower side of the triangle—the connection between zombies and the necrophages. Whereas control dominates the zombie, and essence of thought is at the center of the spectre, desire and hunger is what drives the necrophage. They are more like a disease, to be honest. And why we place silver coins in the mouth of anyone who dies, or a wooden spike down their throat—which is the peasant solution to the problem, but nobody likes to talk about that.”

  “Where was I? Oh ja, ja.” He gestured broadly. Some of his disciples had to dodge the man’s gestures, whose threatening nature wasn’t helped by the fact that he was suddenly waving around a pistol in one of his hands.

  He stopped, froze, looked at the pistol, shook his head, and placed it back in a holster hidden in his coat.

  “Necrophages can be created rather quickly, but are poorly—if at all—controllable. That is why we are going to use them. They are simple to create en masse. If we cause enough slaughter, if we lose enough zombies, the city will crawl with the undead—and I will bring a hunger for orc and goblin blood into them.”

  Johan cleared his throat. “Where do the skeletons fit into this scheme?”

  Rüdiger gestured to the two swamp trolls. “Well, as I already mentioned, the abomination fits between the necrophage and the zombie. It is flesh suborned to will. The control is tenuous. It is in the spirit of the construct, which is what surrounds the zombie as an ideal. The most evolved form of a zombie is a mummy, and skeletons stand between zombies and spectres. A skeleton is essentially the essence of thought of a person bound to a basic platform and animated via the ectoplasm that would make up the spectre.”

  “Oh, and before someone asks—and this is where I find Mackenweiler's classification lacking—the connection between spectres and necrophages are ghosts. Ghosts are less substantial, but also not bound to an object. They are ever-present.” He smiled. “All around us. I think our dear Sir Adarin would have some interesting things to say about the nature of ghosts.”

  Adarin shuddered. Ghosts? Forget the mystical mumbo jumbo. He knew what a ghost was—the backup of a mind. So even with the system, no one ever truly dies.

  “And what about those lines extending from the side, from the peaks of the triangle?” Liora asked.

  “Oh, as I already mentioned,” Rüdiger continued, smiling fondly at her, “the mummy is the advanced version of the zombie, the vampire that of the necrophage...” A covetous gleam filled Rüdiger’s eyes. “The lich is the highest form of the spectre.”

  The conversation flashed through Adarin’s perfect memory as he returned to the present.

  If he could have seen what was going on in the city, dread would have mixed with triumph in his guts. But he only saw what was before him—how, around him, corpses that hadn’t yet been given the attention to be raised started twitching. How their physiology began to morph at a visible rate, turning into something predatory.

  The horror of the ghoul wasn’t its all to human face—it was the hunger behind it, a raw animal ferocity animating what had once been a person.

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  Where there had been an ordered enemy assault before—suddenly there was panic and screams. The dead and the dying were transformed, twisted, and the triumphant greenskin advance was turned into a vicious slaughter as the undead were suddenly not just in front, but also behind and below.

  They extracted the blood price of confusion and chaos amidst the enemy, and empowered by the necrotic storm that washed over the city, the undead advanced.

  Finally, the human militia was in full rebellion, slaughtering the orcish oppressors.

  He saw a boy, maybe ten, hammering an orc’s skull to pulp with a broken club. The child’s face was blank—too blank—as if some switch had flipped inside him.

  Scenes of similar slaughter surrounded them, and the militia's rebellion got even more vicious when the humans realized that the necrophages were ignoring them.

  Rüdiger’s programming had been correct. The ghouls—the terrible necrophages, eaters of the dead—avoided human meat. They were hungry for green skin and what lay beneath.

  Yes, if Adarin could have seen what happened elsewhere in the city, he would have jubilated.

  A patrol carrying arrows and other supplies stepped over one of the barricades. There had been a battle—undead, greenskins and militiamen had fallen.

  Suddenly, their leader stopped. He saw a twitch, leaned down over one of the corpses. Its head was split half-open, but the meat seemed to shiver, morph. He went for his axe, tried to bring it down, and sank it into the skull. He shook his head, muttered a curse, and turned to leave—when claws burst from the corpse behind him and hooked his calf. Screams erupted as his patrol was eaten alive by the hungering monsters.

  An old woman was watching from an attic in the direction of a crater that once had been the biggest marketplace in town. An impromptu encampment—a logistics center—had formed, but now it was an island in a storm of flesh.

  What had once been humanoids—goblins and orcs alike—was crawling, scurrying, and running on all fours. Not shambling like the zombies she had seen before. No. The starved-looking, half-naked corpses were animated by something more terrible, something more vicious.

  The old woman’s lips pressed into a thin line. Not satisfaction—recognition. This was the vengeance she had prayed for, and it terrified her as much as it thrilled her.

  Orcish quartermasters, armorers, medics, and injured were torn apart in an orgy of carnage.

  During all of that, Adarin had been in a fugue state—organizing the battle, pushing onward and forward, channeling the necrophages, who were quickly consuming their own flesh in a conflagration of metabolism, into the enemy. Herding them like vicious sheep toward fleshy pastures.

  He did not know how long he had been running around, coordinating with Mathilda and other necromancers.

  At some point, he had taken care of Liora. She had collapsed next to the dead necromancer girl, crying and drained. She had mumbled something about the sacrifices, about it not being her fault—that she had tried—but the ancient soldier ignored her.

  I need to talk to her later. Ensure that she understands what happened here. Ensure that her naivety doesn't kill more people.

  Now, as the pieces had been set into motion and were flowing downhill toward the inevitable conclusion, Adarin was floating in the air together with Rüdiger. The white walls of the citadel at the center of the city loomed before them.

  The din of battle roared beneath them.

  A battle that was not involving their own troops—apart from a few dozen mages strafing over the citadel in attack runs using fly spells.

  No—the local resistance of the Holy Land had been brought in by the assault. Their nobles had used secret passages and ways into the citadel and tried to free the hostages.

  As Adarin and Rüdiger landed, having flown over the streets where the vicious swarm of necrophages was ravaging the city and digging out the last hiding goblin, the grisly wall decorations at the gates were already being cut down.

  Women. Children. Mutilated. Violated.

  They were strung up on the white wall—some upside down, some with single limbs, some with ropes around their necks. More than a hundred decorated the wall and had red streaks like tears running down the white stone—crimson on alabaster.

  The gate opened ponderously, and a man stepped forward within, surrounded by an honor guard of knights in viciously battle-worn armor. Not one bit reminded Adarin of the sun banner or the crusader knights whose gold-adorned armors with feather plumes had been a constant irritation.

  Brown leather coats. Rusty repair jobs. Those men had seen battle for years.

  A gray-haired man took off his helmet, his face set in a grim mask, with gray hair sticking with sweat to his skin.

  Rüdiger landed ten paces from the man.

  The man's eye twitched, but then he unlined his head and spoke, “Margrave von Erlenwald. Archmagister of the Order of the Invisible Hand. I presume it’s an honor to see our city liberated of the green filth, even though you weren’t quite whoI was expecting.”

  Rüdiger smiled winningly. “I do have a tendency to surprise in all the right ways.”

  The man made a sound at the back of his throat that could have been a chuckle. Then he spit out yellow phlegm.

  “And your companion? An arcane servant of yours?”

  Adarin spoke. “I am—” he swallowed briefly. “Sir Adarin. Officer of the Order of the Invisible Hand. In the service of the Margrave. You did an impressive job—rebelling against the greenskins. Taking this fortress. It would have been hard.”

  “Mmm.” The man hummed. “Let’s not forget my manners, despite how feral we all look.”

  Chuckles erupted from the knights around him.

  “I am Count Marquardt of Hohenfels. Took up my father’s sword when the green bastards got him. I hope my title and deeds will count for something in your eyes, Margrave.”

  Rüdiger inclined his head. “I would not dream of denying the nobility of your birth or deeds. In fact, I was looking for a representative of those who stayed behind in the Holy Land. We will require cooperation and mutual understanding to build a prosperous future.”

  “Very well, Margrave. For now, I’ll work with you. But know this—if this is just another occupation, we’ll gut you the way we gutted the greenskins.”

  Rüdiger returned a smile, showing more teeth than strictly necessary, as the two men attempted to crush each other’s hands—the Count clearly surprised by the necromancer’s strength.

  Adarin studied the city. A base of operations. The foundation of Rüdiger’s empire.

  A thin, hungry smile tugged at Adarin’s lips. Not his empire. Mine.

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  LORD OF THE SEAS

  The sea does not bow… it judges.

  Julien Fronterra, had everything—fame, legacy, and a shot at immortality in the world of combat sports. But in his moment of triumph, his body betrayed him. As his vision faded and regret swallowed him whole, he made one final plea—to live again, to find his own people, to carve out a life worth more than just titles. The gods listened.

  “A saga with mythic depth and tidal stakes.”

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