Louis straightened up and stretched, his back was hurting. That was fairly common lately. He dropped his mattock and arched his back, his hands pressed in as he tilted his head back and looked at the sky. At least the weather was good, the Dark Ones be praised. Sweat dripped down his arms as well as his brow as he grumbled to himself, “I’m getting too old for this.” At forty-six, his body was starting to give out, and the strength of his youth that he once thought was boundless, was now very, very, bound.

  In spite of himself though, there was a little smile on his face. ‘The harvest is going to be good this year, I can hardly believe we’re going to be blessed by both the priests of the Dark Father and the Dark Mother.’ That hadn’t happened since the boyhood of his grandfather’s grandfather, if his father’s stories were true.

  Usually a village was lucky to have either visit at all since such chosen of the Shadow were scarce. So much so that armies were forbidden to cross the paths they walked for as long as the shadow imprints of their feet remained. Battles would be aborted, and even whole wars would halt if one of them walked the line dividing two nations, and borders were sometimes redrawn just along such lines. Nor did anyone fault the masters of Kingdoms for such a practice, as relentless aggression crossing holy paths inevitably brought the divine wrath of the deity whose priest’s path was crossed.

  ‘If they bless our fields, we’ll have fertile soil for a hundred years at least. Then at least this work will be a little easier. And maybe we’ll even have enough for a few feasts?’ He licked his lips at the thought, and glanced longingly at the forest. Were it not for the monsters and magic within, he had no doubt the village would eat even better, but nobody dared venture farther in there than it took to harvest firewood. As it was, they knew even without going within that it teemed with game, since deer boar occasionally raced out of its borders to escape a monster, only to be slain by a villager instead.

  He shrugged, ‘If wishes were bread then beggars would feast.’ He thought and bent over to pick up his mattock from the dark earth around his feet. Before he could resume the backbreaking and repetitive work the fields required however, cries of alarm went up from the far side of the village. His fingers tensed around the wooden shaft of his tool as he spun around to face the source of the chaos.

  The cries of alarm spread, but what they said was nothing but an unintelligible cacophony of noise to his ears.

  Far from skilled as a warrior, having had only the modest training provided as part of their worship of the divine, Louis had at least one thing going for him that required no further training.

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  Courage. And that propelled his feet toward the noise of unknown danger rather than away from it. He held his mattock at an angle across his body in the way he was taught to move with a spear, his legs pumped and the soft soil gave beneath his feet, slowing him down just a little.

  ‘Please, don’t be a monster…’ He prayed the Dark Ones that the forest had not sent out another undead, or that something worse might have emerged to wipe out their homes. Life in a village could be a wonderful thing… but there were terrors in the world, creatures of horror gone wrong that were born of lost ages or from living minds that were warped and twisted beyond reason with a hatred for either the living, or the peaceful, or both, and in the dark magical places where time had no meaning, who knew what was merely waiting for the right time to emerge again?

  Louis might have prayed next for the strength to fight but…

  The cries of alarm were gone, and the crowd of villagers he closed in upon, while they were shaky and nervous, had grown quiet and neither ran nor attacked.

  Louis saw why when he saw her familiar face standing atop her wagon. ‘I didn’t expect her back this soon either, but why are they standing around as dumb as fish?’ He wondered as he called out to her.

  “Lady Lithia…Lady Lithia Sygdria, isn’t it?” Louis asked as he pushed and shoved his way to the front of the awkward little mob, and his jaw went slack and his voice gave out the same as the others.

  The wagon was made of bones, two small children knelt behind her, but those surprises paled when set against the figure seated to Lithia’s right. “An Elder Lich…” He gasped the words out in disbelief. There was no mistaking it for anything else. The long white hair, the horns, the mystic robe that glowed with the hue of powerful enchantments, the red orbs that served as eyes, and the fleshless face… everyone knew the many creatures of unlife as a matter of course, from the simple skeleton to the mighty Elder Lich, but he’d never seen one before this moment.

  Were it not for the Valkyrie woman standing fearlessly beside the unmoving creature, there was little doubt in his mind he would have had to turn around and chase after his fleeing courage.

  The moment was as silent as the grave, and Lithia answered him with a faint sense of relief in her voice. “Yes. That’s me.” She flashed her brilliant, charming smile and swept her hair back. “I found the source of the skeletons that came out this way,” she leaned down a little and settled her right hand on the top of Varus’s skull, “not him, though you might think that.” She straightened, and then turned her body to wave to the two small children who knelt and watched with great, wide eyes as they became the center of attention.

  “It was them.” She said, and the spell of silence that seemed to exist in the moment between relief and confusion before, was broken.

  “What?!” The little mob shouted, and Tuesday could not keep back her grin as she prepared to perform her part.