The cold breeze whizzing across the sweat of Dustin's brow caused his skin to sting. He gritted his teeth, embroiled in a close-quarters skirmish with the ghastly warriors Tanuk had resurrected with his magic. All in various states of decay, his unnatural foes marched doggedly onward. No passion gleamed behind their lifeless eyes, only an unrelenting resolve to bury Dustin and his comrades in the graves they'd just crawled out of.

Dustin caught a hooked blade with his own sword. Metal screeched against metal while the undead warrior pulled away to attempt a second attack. Lacking true life, the corpse moved slower than Dustin, allowing him to rush out of harm's way and stab the thing in the back. Blood dribbled from the wound, then gushed when he yanked his blade out, but the warrior hadn't been felled yet. Having died once already, it appeared the cadaver had developed a good deal of pain tolerance.

The rusty hook arced at eye level, and Dustin barely crouched in time to evade. Watching the blade pass by overhead, he moved to counter. With a mighty cry, Dustin slashed down on the corpse's shoulder. He put such power into the attack that it severed the entire arm. One-handed, the living carcass could no longer wield its pole-arm effectively. When it attempted to press on with the attack anyway, Dustin landed a high kick in the middle of its chest.

With that foe knocked over for the time being, Dustin took a quick glance around and spotted Paulo in trouble. Three undead warriors had surrounded him, each armed with meatier weapons than the sword he wielded. He warded off their attacks with power and vigor, but the effort visibly tired him.

Dustin charged into the fray, his blade a blur. Off with the tallest corpse's head. He leapt at the next foe, a skeletal body with a mere patchwork of flesh remaining on its bones. Once he crossed weapons with the sparingly-skinned warrior, he realized he'd left the first one too soon. Even without a head, the undead could continue to fight. A high blow raced for Dustin's shoulder blade.

Spinning out of harm's way, Dustin dodged, just in time for the axe blade to bury itself in the broken ribs of his skeletal foe. The two undead struggled to extricate the weapon from the bone cage, in which time Paulo dispatched the third and nodded at Dustin. Wordlessly, they coordinated an attack on the interlocked cadavers.

Dustin hacked away every single one of the limbs until the corpse lay in pieces on the snowy ground, each fragment too small to be of any concern. Then he glanced up to see Paulo had shoved the skeleton against a particularly tall gravestone and broken its brittle bones to dust. It dropped to its knees with such force that its jaw clattered to the ground.

The two men spun away from one another to engage new targets. Dustin dashed at an undead archer, cutting its bowstring before it could fire a single arrow. Gazing upon its form, he couldn't help but shudder; the man must have died only days prior. Much of the color remained in his skin, and little of his dark hair had fallen out. Even a little of the vitality of a spirit's presence seemed to have lingered.

He also moved faster than the more decayed warriors Dustin had fought thus far. Instantly dropping the ruined bow, he wrenched Dustin's arm and forced him to drop his sword. The fresh body yanked his royal victim about, completely oblivious to the brutal blows being thrown at his jaw.

Dustin managed to jet out his leg in such a way that his captor tripped. Down they went together. The corpse's grip still remained uncompromised. With all his might, he rammed his elbow into his foe's cold cheek over and over again. Not so much as a sound escaped his lips, no indication whatsoever that his strength had availed anything.

A crossbow bolt flew toward the pair, and Dustin threw himself aside as much as he could. The projectile buried itself deep in the corpse's free hand, pinning it to the ground like a board nailed to a wall. Distracted momentarily, it loosened its grip and allowed Dustin to escape.

"Move away!" Kyle's voice cried, and so Dustin did while glancing back.

Closing in swiftly with his thunder lance's fuse burning, Kyle aimed the nose of the weapon at the trapped warrior. With no heed to its own welfare, the corpse ripped its arm to shreds rather than remain in place. It leapt at Kyle, and Dustin reached out in vain to intercept.

As Kyle tumbled to his back with the bleeding cadaver atop him, the fuse burnt. His thunder lance erupted into a bright, momentary fire that spewed shreds of decomposing organs about the area. Torso completely eviscerated, the remainder of the corpse could do nothing but twitch on the ground.

"They haven't stopped comin' yet." Kyle remarked, following Dustin as he ambled over to retrieve his fallen sword. "What do we do?"

"We fight them." Dustin said, "What else?"

"Of course, but the archers can't do much. Look."

Dustin gazed across the graveyard to where Jude frantically fired a volley of arrows at a group of undead closing in on him. One after another, he loosed the projectiles from his perch atop a gravestone, but the most he could do was knock them back a step, and then they would continue their advance. If the arrow obstructed the free movement of their limbs, they simply ripped it from their flesh and that would be the end of it.

"It's hard to kill dead people." Kyle said as he and Dustin jogged across the snow to lend what assistance they could. "Small cuts don't matter a bit. No spare weapons we can give 'em?"

"Every one of these bastards carries a weapon we could use against it. We only need to kill them again to get it."

"Ripping these things apart takes time, though."

Dustin slowed his run for just a second to eye Kyle. "Then give us some more time."

With that, he broke into a sprint once more. The corpses creeping in on Jude hadn't even spotted him by the time he skidded to a halt and hacked at the nearest one's wrist, freeing its hand from the rest of the limb. Dustin caught the cadaver's axe before it could hit the ground, and then he backed toward Jude to offer it to him.

Jude wrinkled his nose, loosing an arrow over Dustin's shoulder. "A dead man was just holding that."

"And you'll be like them in no time if you don't take it." Dustin said, "Without hacking these things to pieces, you'll never defeat them."

Dustin leaned the weapon against Jude's perch to free his other hand. Then he engaged the incoming undead, sword rattling in his hand as he deflected blows from all manner of weapons. His strength drained as he fought off the unrelenting onslaught.

Then Jude appeared beside Dustin, cleaving a skeleton's head in two with the axe he'd been so reluctant to take. He wielded the weapon with amateurish simplicity, but outwitting dead men hardly took a stroke of genius. Where Dustin fought nimbly, weaving in and out of the undead horde and removing limbs before his presence became known, Jude took the more direct approach. Together, they proved quite a duo.

After a few minutes, Dustin knocked the last of the corpses over, and Jude hopped over to land a brutal hit in the middle of its spine. Even with its back cut open, it attempted to grasp their ankles, which Dustin easily remedied by removing its hands.

"I'll take a bow and arrow any day over that." Jude muttered, rolling back a stiff shoulder.

Dustin shrugged. "You get used to it. Better than being slain by the dead."

"I suppose so."

The two glanced down to the other end of the graveyard, where the situation had grown dire. Both froze for a moment in shock, seeing several Alcontean soldiers pinned to the ground with nothing but a shield between themselves and the vicious body atop them. Having been robbed of their weapons, the undead on the other side appeared to have somehow become desperate. They clawed, bit and crushed to inflict harm, as the trio of mangled troops to one side indicated.

"By the time you cut one down, three more crawl out of the ground." Jude said, racing Dustin to the calamitous scene, "Shouldn't we call for reinforcements?"

"Not yet. We can turn the tide yet."

"I sure hope you're right about that."

"Make it so, Jude. Make it so."

Dustin descended upon the bestial undead with ferocity even they couldn't match. Even without voices, their gaping maws expressed shock as they lost limbs and ribs to his sword. When Jude joined the fight, he began to crush their bones as well as sever body parts, which only added to the devastation.

The pair hoisted the dazed Alconteans back to their feet. While the soldiers charged toward another group of corpses with shields held high, Dustin and Jude took another moment to assess the situation. Their unnatural foes continued to ooze out of the ground, and even worse, ghastly newcomers had began to limp toward them from other areas of the city. Skeletons loosing crossbow bolts from afar nailed a couple Monteraynians, felling them with wails of pain.

"About those reinforcements..." Dustin mumbled.

"Oh, so now you'll heed my counsel? Now that we're surrounded?"

"I'm accustomed to fighting men with beating hearts, Jude. You must excuse me for blundering here and there."

Jude sighed. "Alright, let's think. We could fight them all off one by one, but that would take forever, and we have no guarantee enough of us will survive to accomplish the feat."

"What other option do we have?"

"If these undead have indeed been reanimated by the voice of Tanuk, then perhaps our recourse is to silence that voice. All I have is a hunch, but maybe if the one who gave them life is killed, they also go back to their natural state."

Dustin nodded. "All we can do is try. I'll fetch Paulo, and we'll confront him. Until I return, you are in command."

Jude mustered a wry smile, patting his old friend on the shoulder. "Fare well, my friend. I expect you to return with good tidings."

"I'll strive not to disappoint."

So Dustin darted off to find Paulo. Together, they'd slay the wretched sorcerer who had stoked the fires of war, torn apart a family, and even ventured to rob the dead of their peace. He resolved he would bring the wretch justice or die trying.