Chapter 126: Undead
They rode for two full days, pushing the Horned Horses to their limits. The Glimmerwood Forest grew thicker and wilder around them.
The narrow track they had been following disappeared completely, forcing Rhys to rely on his own senses and the general direction Emma provided to navigate the dense woods.
The trees here were massive, their dark leaves forming a canopy so thick that the world below was trapped in a perpetual twilight.
Strange, glowing fungi grew on the bark of the trees, casting an eerie, pale light on the forest floor.
The air was heavy and still. There were no sounds of birds or insects, only the steady clopping of their horses’ hooves and the soft rustle of leaves as they passed.
Rhys’s beast-repelling potion was working perfectly. The minor spiritual beasts that roamed the outer forest were giving them a wide berth.
But as they traveled deeper, Rhys felt a change in the atmosphere. The faint, cold killing intent of the Crimson Sun assassins had long since vanished, but a new, older sense of danger began to permeate the air.
This was a wild, untamed land, a place that had not known human rule for a very long time.
On the morning of the third day, Emma, who had been quiet for the entire journey, spoke.
"We are close," she said, her voice a low murmur against his back. "The valley is just beyond this ridge."
Rhys urged the horse forward, its powerful legs carrying them up a steep, rocky incline.
When they reached the top of the ridge, he pulled the horse to a stop. Below them, nestled in a wide, misty valley, was a city.
Or what was left of one.
It had once been a magnificent place. He could see the skeletal remains of tall, elegant towers and wide, sweeping bridges.
A massive, crumbling wall surrounded the entire valley, a testament to a time when the city had been a fortress. But now, it was a ghost.
The forest had begun to reclaim it. Thick vines, like green snakes, snaked their way up the sides of the broken towers.
Trees grew from the center of what had once been grand plazas. The entire city was a ruin, a sad monument to a fallen house.
This was the ancestral home of the House of Lyra.
"The capital was named Silverwood," Emma said, her voice quiet and full of sadness.
"It was said to be the most beautiful city in the province."
Rhys said nothing. He could feel the history of the place, the echoes of a thousand lives lived and lost.
But he could also feel something else. Something wrong.
An eerie, unnatural smell drifted up from the valley on the morning breeze. It was a smell of decay, of damp earth and rotting leaves.
But mixed with it was another scent, something sharp and corrupt, like stale, stagnant Qi.
It was a smell that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
"We go on foot from here," he said, his voice practical. "The horses will make too much noise, and the ground is uneven."
They dismounted, leaving the two Horned Horses tethered in a hidden grove on the ridge. They began the slow, cautious descent into the ruined city.
The closer they got, the stronger the eerie smell became. The silence was absolute. There were no animals here, not even insects. It was a dead place.
They entered the city through a massive, crumbling gate, its iron doors long since rusted away.
The streets were paved with cracked cobblestones, and the buildings on either side were hollow shells, their windows like empty eye sockets.
The silence was the most unsettling part.
A city, even a ruined one, should have sounds. The wind whistling through the broken buildings, the skittering of rats in the rubble.
But here, there was nothing. It was like the entire city was holding its breath.
They walked down what had once been a grand avenue. Rhys’s hand never left the hilt of his sword.
Emma walked close behind him, her green eyes darting nervously into the dark, empty doorways.
Then they saw it.
It was a figure, standing in the middle of the street about a hundred yards ahead. It was a man, or what had once been a man.
He was wearing the tattered remains of a city guard’s uniform, a rusty helmet still on his head.
He was just standing there, his back to them, perfectly still.
Rhys held up a hand, signaling for Emma to stop. He moved forward alone, his steps completely silent on the cracked stones.
He approached the figure cautiously.
"Hello?" he called out, his voice a low, questioning sound in the dead air.
The figure did not move. It did not seem to have heard him.
Rhys got closer. He could see the guard’s armor was covered in a thick layer of green moss and dried mud.
He could smell the stench of decay coming from it. This man had been dead for a very long time.
He was about ten feet away when the guard suddenly moved. It was not a natural movement.
It was a stiff, jerky motion, like a puppet on a string. It turned its head slowly, the rusty helmet creaking with the effort.
Its face was a nightmare.
The skin was grey and pulled tight over the bones. The lips were gone, pulled back in a permanent, lipless grin that showed yellowed teeth.
And its eyes... they were empty sockets, but in their depths, two small, pinpricks of a cold, blue light glowed with an unnatural, malevolent energy.
It was an undead.
The undead guard let out a low, guttural groan. It raised a rusty sword and began to shamble towards him, its movements slow and clumsy.
Rhys felt a sense of dejavu, but it quickly dissappeared before he would probe into.
He had faced an army of the dead in the Labyrinth. This single, slow-moving corpse was not a threat.
He drew his sword, the simple iron blade looking plain and unremarkable in his hand.
He met the undead’s charge.
The corpse swung its rusty sword in a wide, clumsy arc.
’Undeads can do this?’ Rhys wondered. Whatever,
He easily sidestepped the attack. He did not use any of his advanced skills. He just used a simple, clean thrust, the same basic technique he had used in the sect’s trials.
The iron sword pierced the undead’s chest. There was a dull, wet sound as the blade went through the rotten leather of its uniform and the soft, decaying flesh beneath.
The blue light in the creature’s eyes flickered and died. It collapsed to the ground, a lifeless pile of bone and rotten cloth.
It was an easy kill. Too easy.
Emma ran up to him, her face pale. "What was that?" she whispered, staring at the fallen corpse. So the people here had no idea about undeads?
"The dead," Rhys said, his voice grim. "It seems this city is not as empty as we thought."
He had a bad feeling. He looked around at the silent, empty buildings. He had a feeling they were being watched.
"We need to keep moving," he said. "Your portal. Where is it?"
"The ancestral castle," she said, pointing towards a massive, ruined structure on a hill at the center of the city. "It’s in the crypts, beneath the main hall."
They started walking again, moving faster now. The single undead guard had been a warning. Where there was one, there were likely more.
They were halfway to the castle when the ambush came.
It was not a subtle attack. It was a sudden, overwhelming explosion of violence.
From every dark doorway, from every shattered window, from the very cracks in the street, they came.
Dozens of them.
They were all like the first guard. The tattered remains of the city’s population, their bodies rotten, their eyes glowing with the same cold, blue light.
There were guards, merchants, commoners, even women and children, all of them moving with the same stiff, shambling gait, all of them driven by a single, mindless hunger.
They poured out into the street, a wave of death that completely surrounded them.
Rhys pushed Emma behind him. "Stay back!" he commanded.
He was no longer the simple outer disciple. He was the Grey Ghost, the hunter, the god of death.
He held up his empty hand, and the Twilight Edge blade, a construct of pure shadow and light, formed in his palm.
The first wave of undead was upon them. Rhys moved. He was a whirlwind of silent death. His shadow blades flew from his hands, each one finding its mark.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
With every silent burst of white light, an undead fell, its body collapsing into a pile of dust.
He was a perfect, efficient killing machine, a single man holding back a tide of the dead.
Emma watched, her back pressed against a crumbling wall, her own dagger held tightly in her hand.
She was not a warrior, but she would not be a helpless victim. She stabbed at any undead that got too close, her movements clumsy but desperate.
They were holding them off. They were winning. But for every undead they killed, two more seemed to take its place.
The street was becoming a thick, chaotic mass of groaning, shambling bodies.