Minotaur battled men for every square inch of their homeland, but eventually the legions of Doljinaar proved too many. The throngs of men overtook the ceremonial chamber in the deepest, darkest dungeon of Jahaeddra. At that exact moment Xzoron tore a horn from his head and plunged it deep into his chest. He uttered a curse upon his fallen country with his dying breath. Only a small remnant of Minotaur escaped by ship to the island now called Kildore.
That night the legions of Doljinaar threw a great bonfire and got drunk in celebration. Men fought over the spoils of war. Doljinaar had swelled its ranks with mercenaries and poachers to compensate for the heavy casualties. Mino hides and horns were worth much on the western markets. Other far more spineless poachers and bandits had waited on the outskirts of the battle. They descended on Jahaeddra like a host of vultures, opportunistic thieves of the same spine as Shade’s father.
At midnight Xzoron’s bovine wail rang free for the first time. The cry was so great and terrifying that it chilled the very ale in the men’s blood. The undead Minotaur wizard came raging out of his tomb. He pointed his horrible staff and melted the very skin off the bone.
War-hardened soldiers ran screaming into the night, but the very dead rose up—dead men and Minotaur. The undead behemoths tore through the legions, but even undead men heeded the command of Xzoron. Fallen human soldiers slew their fellow brothers in arms, taking the lives of comrades they had just given their lives for just hours before. By morning not a single living man remained behind in the old Mino country. All joined the ranks of the dead. Only one man escaped on horseback to tell the tale. Some years later he threw himself off a cliff.
Shade felt that cold and familiar chill seeping into his skin as the sun at last winked out of sight. The assassin made a living sending people to their grave. He found it to be a grim reversal to the natural order of things that some mortals were permitted to crawl back from death’s door.
The moaning of Xzoron rose to new heights as the red, cobalt and silver marred moons of Covent appeared in the late dusk sky. They glimmered faintly through the clouds and then the fog swallowed them. The chill air breathed icily down the back of his neck. His hairs stood at attention. Then when the last stabs of sunlight had finally retreated, Xzoron’s wail reached its vengeful peak.
The deafening moan raked his eardrums and ripped through his mind. He clamped his hands over his ears in a feeble attempt to drown out the awful noise. He closed his eyes and sprinted in a desperate rush to widen the distance between himself and that accursed cromlech. He heard the door to Xzoron’s tomb fly open. And then came the most chilling sound yet. The sound of Xzoron’s unmuffled wail ringing free and clear in the night air. ‘YOU FOOL!’ Shade seethed in his very thoughts, ‘You ran too close to the city!’ He just could not tell how close on account of the fog.
Xzoron’s wail was answered by a hundred wretched moans in some horrific undead call to arms. The ground hummed with the moaning of the dead. He began to see the bodies moving through the smog. The dead rose from the earth, mounds of flesh and bone lurching and limping into writhing existence. Skeletons of the ancient dead stripped of all flesh, eye sockets burning with eerie violet glowing spheres. Men of centuries past: soldiers, mercenaries and poachers…slaves to the black will of Xzoron. Zombies with flesh still hanging and rotting on their bones. Xzoron’s latest brood. Shade could even make out their tribe; reckless Braznian warriors, scheming Shamite merchants, simple Durnish traders who had chanced the ruins. Death cloaked all its servants.
A skeletal hand broke through a patch of soil up ahead. He watched in horror as it clenched its fist and dug its fingers into the earth. He saw a skeleton’s mud-streaked skull emerge. Its jawbone dropped as it emitted a roar filled with contempt for the living. The skeleton wrenched its right shoulder blade free and pulled out its other bony limbs. The skeleton was at last free with one final frightful yank of its left leg bone. The skeletal fiend bent over. It pulled a long rusty scythe from the muddy earth. The undead menace turned and blocked the assassin’s path.
Shade dashed for a thin alley between two stone huts, but more skeletons and zombies closed off the gap. He shot a glance behind him. They were everywhere! They closed him in between the many large square buildings. He froze. At long last the unbreakable assassin felt fear, coursing through his veins like a sudden jolt of ice water. The minions of death lurched forward, moaning with mindless hunger. Their cold ashen hands reached for him. They raised their old rusted swords and axes, pitchforks and meat cleavers, eager to hack him to brutal pieces. He stood…an instrument of death rendered helpless by its eternal slaves. The assassin closed his eyes and prepared himself to feel the icy hands of death tear him violently from the land of the living…
Shade was surrounded. The wretched undead horde lurched forward. They climbed and struggled over one another, moaning from toothless mouths for the taste of warm blood. The words of the spooky old hag echoed in his ears, ‘And they will taste your highborn Elvish blood, Dark Elf!’ The assassin wasn’t certain what seized hold of him. He froze. His thoughts screamed, trapped in the impotent prison of his mind, but his body refused to respond. He felt cold lifeless hands grab hold of his flesh. He winced. Their touch burned like infernal frostbite. The undead raised their rusted blades and crude tools. Yet he did nothing!
‘WAKE UP!!!’ Shade’s consciousness finally reawakened him. His fingers closed around his blades and he whirled around, slicing through hands and fingers. His momentum sent long dead limbs flying.
A zombie roared enraged. He sliced its jaw clean off.
Shade cut two more skeletons at the legs. He kicked another zombie straight through his putrefied chest. He flipped backward vaulting smoothly into a reverse handspring. Free of the horde, he went on the attack. He aimed at the fragile joints of the skeletons and the loose ligaments of zombies. If he could not slay them, he would maim them beyond any capability of pursuit. Shade cut a path through the moaning undead. He aimed at every appendage or limp body part that would slow them down.
The Dark Elf searched the stone huts wildly and worked his way toward the hut he had been searching for. The relentless assassin cut through the walking dead like a finely sharpened sickle through dry grass. Soon dozens of hapless undead could do nothing, but crawl and drag their undulating bodies after him. The grasses were littered with wriggling hands, flopping legs and moaning heads. He looked up and scanned his position. He took in a long deep breath. He was almost there.
Another skeleton swung a rake down. It got lodged in the earth.
Shade slammed his boot down on the skeleton’s bony forearms. Its skull jerked forward. The assassin cut cleanly through its neck. The skeleton’s vertebrae broke to pieces. The skull rolled through the brown Bullgrasses. The decapitated skeleton was left patting the ground in a desperate search for its head. He spotted his destination at long last. All that marked the hut from the dozens of other crude buildings were overgrown shoots of dried vines and dead ivy that covered the broad faces of the monolithic stones.
Shade gasped relieved. Refuge was near. Nothing could stop him now.
A savage bovine low pierced the air like the jarring of some cacophonic horn.
Shade felt the very warmth drain from his blood. Half a wall, a huge monolithic stone, flew forward. The assassin flipped backward. He barely avoided being crushed by the massive block which tumbled end over end. The monolith crashed to the ground and stirred up a cloud of dust. The assassin coughed. The dust stung his eyes. He could not see his enemy yet, but he knew what manner of horrible new foe he faced…a Deadhorn, an undead Minotaur.