Chapter 12
Morning brings new opportunities and the team is back on the trail. They’ve figured out where they need to go and that path takes them through a village. It is quiet in the village. Too quiet. as they move through the small area they start to wonder why they are the only people moving. they are the only people around it seems. They start to question each other and their guide as to what happened. He doesn’t know. He knows the prison sits on the edge of a keep that this village feeds/belongs to. It isn’t terribly far and they can expect to be there by nightfall. He’d been hoping to stop here and get more ale (he’s a bit of a drunkard which has been a problem so far). He chooses to go inside the bar and sees a body just inside the door. He shouts and they join him. Marek is definintely on edge and advises the others to ready arrows. Ikrivain joins him inside and starts to look around. He’s getting a bad feeling about this situation and says they need to leave this place now.
This is the problem with working with unscrupulous types. Their guide decides to hop behind the bar and get himself a bottle.He is attacked by something undead and he screams. His screams enliven more of the creatures to the point where there are a few more rising out of nowhere outside including a young boy who scampers towards the group. Thea is frozen unable to take the shot and her sister is forced to take the shot for her. That change of target creates an opening for another of those things to grapple her sister to the floor and take a huge bite out of her arm. Thea recovers and stabs it through the nape of the neck as Marek and Ikrivain come outside dragging the nearly dead guide.
They escape the town after killing two more of the undead and flee further (east?) towards the prison.
This leads into the black moment but also forces me to make some more sense of the zombie thing. I think there is a sphere of safety around this prisoner. I feel like the area closest to him is safe and under the influence of whatever they are trying to make him do with his power. At the rim of that sphere is a larger sphere of decay in which power is drawn to create his effect and that power victimizes people, sapping them of their essence until they are the walking dead. It weakens as it distances from him, which is why only the girl was susceptible, but here so close his power raises the near dead (the guide will turn into a zombie and need to be put down) or turns people into such monsters to fuel the effect.