Jeze, Grifus, and Lady Kalina rode for days on horseback through the thick pine forests and the rocky plains beneath the snow capped mountains. As they neared Mount Dragon they traveled through switch back trails that meandered through rocky mountain passes and heavily wooded groves. They walked their horses through the uneven terrain. Grifus knew the land well and led them to a small clearing surrounded by tall pine trees where they could set up camp.

  Jeze took every opportunity to train, and she exercised her body with calisthenics. True to his word, Grifus trained Jeze on how to blend magic into her fighting. He coached her on casting Stoneskin with one hand while fighting with a weapon in the other. Kalina meditated often. The undead lady remained satiated through hunting animals. Kalina's body did not require breathing, and she was able to sit very still while hiding for long periods of time, which made it easy for her to snatch an unsuspecting forest creature.

  "Were you a Templar?" Jeze asked.

  "I never stopped being one," Grifus answered.

  "Why are you not in armor?"

  Grifus chuckled. "Armor does not make the Templar." He redirected her attention to her training. "Now, I want you to cast Stoneskin while parrying my attacks."

  The teacher jabbed her with his staff, forcing her to deflect with her sword. Jeze failed the stoneskin spell.

  "Again," Grifus intoned, continuing to prod with his staff.

  Jeze gritted her teeth as she practiced. The instructor's attacks were consistent but slow and gave her the right amount of struggle so that she could achieve mastery. That space of calm among the storm. Jeze was starting to succeed with her spell more often.

  "Good!" Grifus praised. "Let us take a break."

  "Can we keep going? I feel I am getting the hang of it," Jeze insisted, panting from her mental and physical exertions.

  "You are," Grifus agreed, nodding toward Kalina. "Now you need to meditate and let this knowledge be absorbed."

  "A few more rounds," Jeze shot back.

  Grifus smiled. "Think of your mind as a cup. Once it is full of water, it can not hold more. But, if I were to continue pouring it risks spilling the water and causing the cup to turn over, thus losing everything."

  Jeze threw her hands up in the air and marched off to sit next to Kalina to meditate. In moments, Jeze was calm like a stone. Grifus nodded with a twinkle in his eye as he tended to the horses. Dusk approached, and the academy instructor prepared their camp while the other two continued to meditate. Jeze was processing how to attain mastery so that she could blend Rune magic into her fighting. Kalina was learning to strengthen her essence and control the hunger that threatened to consume her. All three glanced up at the sound of a twig breaking in the distance. They waited, and Jeze's sharp ears caught another sound.

  "Someone or something is out there," she whispered.

  Grifus nodded as he quietly removed his staff from the pack on his horse. Jeze summoned and shaped a blanket of shadows among the base of the pine trees. Lady Kalina unsheathed her sword and the three slinked off toward the sound. A short distance from their camp the trio spotted a dozen hunched over forms loping through the woods.

  "Ghouls," Kalina whispered.

  The creature's sharp ears picked up her faint voice. They paused, sniffing and searching. The ghouls were equipped with padded armor and carried weapons in their gnarled hands. Jeze recognized them as once being guards who traveled with merchant caravans. How many vampires with the red gem were set loose?

  Grifus looked serious with a tight jaw. "There is no way to tell how many undead are being spawned. This is not good. We need to find out how to stop the lich from doing this," he growled.

  The ghouls' heads snapped to look in the direction, but Jeze's shadows hid them well. She readied her sword and channeling tools.

  "Why are we hiding? It is just ghouls," Kalina growled, leaping to her feet.

  The equipped ghouls loped and converged on the three in an instant with their hisses and snarls. Kalina smashed into them in a burst of speed and steel, but there were many ghouls remaining. Grifus completed the gestures, and his skin turned to stone, but he stood back.

  "This is as good a time to train as any," he said.

  Jeze nodded and rose to meet the rushing ghouls. Her free hand tapped her channeling tools and shaped the glyphs that covered her skin with magical stone. Five undead crashed through the undergrowth, and Jeze caught one through the throat with a thrust of her blade. The other four hacked and slashed at her, their blows batted the smaller fighter about, but she recovered while drawing her axe free. Jeze parried aside a mace, hacked the attacker's arm off with her battle axe, and weaved out of the way of grasping gnarled hands as the ghouls tried to overwhelm her.

  Jeze tried to enter mastery in order to form the glyphs with her weapons but failed when she was struck hard by another mace. The force of the blow hurt her even through her armor and stoneskin, and the pain prevented her from casting spells. The one-armed ghoul tackled her, with the remaining three ghouls pouncing close behind. Utilizing proper wrestling technique combined with the ghoul only having one arm, Jeze rolled and shucked the creature off of her. Coming to her feet, she stabbed another undead through the chest while circling around a tree where an enemy's axe missed her head by moments to embed itself into the wood. Jeze spun back with a chop of her axe and removed the ghoul's arm.

  Jeze pulled her magic sword free from the one she just stabbed, and before the undead could recover, she planted her axe in its head. That left her facing two one-armed ghouls and a single healthy one. Without fear and with pure malice and rage, they charged her. Jeze took a deep breath and shaped glyphs with her weapons as she dodged and weaved the clumsy attacks from the pair of one-armed ghouls. They missed and stumbled into the trees as the third one circled for an opening. It attacked but was struck in the chest by a boulder. Jeze grinned. She had entered mastery. Jeze weaved her Rune magic as if it were a third weapon, along with her axe and sword. She struck with fire, earth, and steel. In moments, the remaining ghouls were destroyed.

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  "Very good!" Grifus cheered.

  Lady Kalina held two ghouls by their necks as she drained their energy. "Took you long enough."

  Grifus chuckled and shook his head. "Jeze weaved rune magic and fighting. She looked remarkable!"

  Lady Kalina dropped the two husks and appeared replenished. "We need to find your friend if we want to stop the lich from raising a horde."

  Grifus looked to the sky. The sun was setting. "My guess, we will be at our destination tomorrow."

  Jeze wrinkled her nose. "What should we do with the bodies?"

  "Only with a phylactery could an undead be reanimated twice. It is unheard of for it to happen otherwise, but we shouldn't leave the corpses here," Grifus answered.

  He summoned, shaped, and controlled the holy aspect, and the bodies withered to ash, leaving their worn gear behind. Kalina scavenged the remains but found nothing of use except for a handful of ducats, which she pocketed. The three returned to their camp where Jeze set up a perimeter of security discs, the magic traps she kept in her pack, while Grifus prepared dinner. Kalina had already consumed the dark essence from the ghouls and returned to meditating in order to conserve her power. Grifus and Jeze ate hard bread, cheese, and beef stew. Jeze wondered about something.

  "Why do some undead spawn as ghouls and others as zombies?" She asked.

  Grifus stroked his goatee. "There is a lot of discussion on that, but no way to prove it as Necromancy is outlawed. One theory is that it is connected to the ranking of the individual. Zombies are from regular people. Ghouls are from prospect-ranked victims. Wights are from initiate rank."

  "Vampires are from adventurer rank?" Jeze observed.

  "So the theory goes," Grifus replied.

  Jeze glanced at Lady Kalina. As if sensing that she was being watched, the undead lady opened her pure black eyes.

  "Before cursing me, the Lich mentioned something about remarkable people being able to withstand the necromancy spell," she said.

  Jeze's curiosity got the better of her, and she blurted out, "Were you not able to?"

  Kalina shook her head. "I chose it for vengeance."

  Grifus remained quiet and ate his supper. Jeze had more questions.

  "Only vampires can spawn more undead?"

  "And liches, but the process usually takes days, if not weeks," Grifus answered.

  Kalina added, "And maybe every five in ten victims return as undead."

  "But the lich discovered a way to make it quicker and more often," Jeze observed.

  "That is the troubling news and why we need to find my former student," Grifus said.

  Jeze narrowed her eyes. "You never told us their name."

  Grifus averted his gaze and coughed. "Yes, right. Her name is Zel."

  "What are you not telling us?" Kalina demanded.

  Grifus sighed. "Aside from Zel being an outlaw for practicing Necromancy. She is also my niece."

  Jeze's eyes went wide as she connected the puzzle pieces together. "You stay in contact with her!"

  He nodded.

  "A Guild Academy instructor that allowed a necromancer to continue practicing their forbidden magic!" Kalina cried.

  Grifus bowed his head, ashamed. "She is family."

  Kalina laughed. "Don't feel bad. I'm an undead revenant. I have no right to judge."

  "I do," Jeze said. The other two glanced at her. She smiled at them. "I'm joking," and she asked, "Is this why you know so much about undead?"

  "No, I know about the undead from being an adventurer, a templar, and an academy instructor."

  Jeze had another question. Thinking about Swordslayer, she tentatively asked, "What do you know about the Vampire Lord, Vornicus?"

  Grifus’s head shot up, and he whispered, "Do not say his name out loud."

  Kalina snorted. "Bah, don't be superstitious. There is no way he could hear us."

  "Why tempt fate?"

  Jeze crossed her arms. "The only way Vornicus could hear his name being spoken is either through the Mind or Spirit aspects, and from my knowledge, they can not travel that far. Unless he is in this very wood with us."

  Grifus sighed. "I can't deny your logic, but please, it is best that we avoid saying his name."

  "Do you know anything about him?"

  "Why do you ask?" Grifus arched an eyebrow.

  "She has a friend named Swordslayer who's a disciple of Vorn - err, the Vampire Lord," Kalina said.

  "You traveled with such company?" Grifus, shocked, asked Jeze.

  "Such company? kept a necromancer hidden," Jeze shot back.

  Grifus bowed his head in silence.

  Jeze sighed. “Besides, Rainbow and Swordslayer are apart of the Amber Guard now.”

  "Really?" Surprise clear like the sunrise on his face.

  "It's true," Kalina confirmed.

  "What do you know the Sanguine Blades style?" Jeze prodded.

  Grifus scratched his head. "As I said earlier, it is very rare for vampires to spawn. It takes someone of at least Adventurer rank. Even then, there is only a fifty-fifty chance."

  Kalina resumed meditating while Jeze listened with apt attention.

  Grifus continued. "A newly spawned vampire is cunning but no more than a wolf. After they have fed, do they start to develop more intelligence."

  "So, Vornicus is training disciples in the hope of creating more vampires that are intelligent like him?" Jeze asked.

  Grifus flinched at her mentioning the ominous name and replied, "Yes, so we think. No one from the Guild has had a conversation with him about this."

  "How is the Sanguine Blades style connected to the Bloodlust?" Jeze wondered.

  She witnessed Swordslayer and Ozun, two disciples of Vornicus, enter a state of enhanced speed and strength without using Rune magic.

  "There are many rumors about that. Some believe that Vornicus gives a little of his blood to those who survive the initial training with him. That is how they are able to enter the state of Bloodlust. But, there is not enough evidence for that theory. Additionally, there are records of Berserkers in the Frozen North entering a similar state through deep breathing. We believe that Vornicus discovered another way for a person to enhance their speed and strength somehow through specific body movements and patterns," Grifus answered.

  "Without Rune magic?" Jeze asked.

  "Yes, there is much to be discovered about the power of the body. After all, there are Adept Rank adventures that achieve Elite rank without the aid of Rune magic," Grifus stated.

  "How does one achieve Elite rank?" Jeze asked.

  Grifus chuckled. "That's enough lecturing for tonight." He rose to his feet and stretched his stiff back.

  "I thought you needed some sort of magic to break out of Adept rank," Jeze pressed.

  Grifus wagged a stern finger at her. "Do fifty more reps of the stoneskin spell. Twenty-five with each hand."

  "But," Jeze started.

  "Now!" Grifus barked.

  Jeze jumped and started the reps with a weapon in hand. Kalina, eyes closed, smiled.