On The Field

The sunlight was warm on my skin and bright in my eyes. I almost collapsed, not accustomed any longer to flesh and bone. A smell of filth rolled over me and I gagged. Now I fell to the ground, face buried in the deep, cool grass, and retched. Sounds came to me now: shrieks of terror and pain mingled with an unearthly, rumbling moan. I had heard them both before. It was the sound of the horde falling upon the living.

Jumping to my feet and almost losing my balance in the process, I looked around. There was a vast, fortified city wall less than a mile before me. Behind me there was the army of the undead. In the midst of this ghastly scene were living women and men. Some were standing as though in shock, others appeared to be passed out in the grass, and increasing numbers of them were falling beneath the advancing. Slowly, it dawned on me. My body had been reanimated to join the horde, and now, somehow, I and many others like me had been restored to life even as our undead corpses had been advancing on a city. Looking down at my dirt-caked skin and ripped clothing I realized the rank odor that had overpowered me at the first was my own.

Everyone else seemed to be in shock. Thinking fast, I glanced around and noticed a deep patch of woods to my left, apparently leading steeply downhill into a forest that began (or ended, depending on your perspective) at the northwestern corner of the city wall. I ran, stumbling at first but then gaining speed fueled by desperation. I plunged into the first of the trees and continued on without slowing, dodging saplings, stumps and stones as I went. Suddenly, the ground dipped unexpectedly and I fell, rolling down a small shallow creek. I came to rest in a pool at the bottom of the hill. Cool water sprayed down on me from above and I was possessed by the urge to scrub the clinging uncleanness from my skin and hair.

Drawn Back

Like all villages, towns and cities across the known kingdoms, Krem had a nightwatchman. He was paid a pittance, all we could afford, to warn us of bandits or burglars. To his credit, he did try to sound the alarm, but by the time he realized that the overpowering smell of decaying flesh was the zombie vanguard of a massive undead hoard, it was too late. Really, there was nothing we could have done but flee. A few managed that. I didn't.

The last moments of life I can remember were horrid. Unnaturally cold, clawlike hands grasping my limbs...putrid jaws tearing at me. My attempts at combat had been weak, uncertain. My weapon, the small axe we used to chop wood for the kitchen, hadn't even slowed their advance. The pain and horror was more than I had ever known, and then there was nothing.

Of the afterlife there is little I can say. There was most definitely something, as I remember peace and even joy. Perhaps the living simply aren' t meant to have knowledge of what exists beyond mortal realms. I do know that I had found a refuge from childhood hardships and the misery of my last moments of life, and I also know that being drawn away from that perfect calm terrified me more than had the undead horde.

Beginnings

On a field of battle my spirit was reunited with the undead flesh my body had become, both death and the curse were reversed, and I breathed in fresh air beneath sunny blue skies. My hatred for magic users was born that day. Not all magic users, mind you, but for the worst of them. The greedy, power-hungry bastards who gave rise to the army of undead that ravaged the rural village in which I had been raised, and the self-centered, unthinking scum that restored life to undead troops in the midst of other undead troops.

Life hadn't been easy in the village of Krem, particularly given my mixed-race heritage. My father had been an elven adventurer, a spell-casting warrior, on his way with a band of friends to the Crypt of Krem in the woods north of the village. My mother was a simple peasant girl, a human, who had been captivated by the thought that this exotic outsider could take her away from the hardship and monotony of her life. He had promised riches, taken from the tombs said to by inhabited by a liche. He had promised marriage. Like so many before and after him, he never returned. Nine months later I was born.

Childhood passed slowly for me, and I was outgrown by all who had been born when I was. It was the elven blood. Treated as a runt and mocked for the conditions of my birth and parentage, I was never fully included or accepted. Despite the stigma and difficulty, Krem was all I had ever known.

Then, one night as everyone slept, the undead shuffled into town.