3rd Book: the Book of the Mountain
Copyright© 2025 by Luvirini
Chapter 10: Little Birds Arrive
January 2
Little birds bring a message that Hiipi has some problems in the forest. Jaysek makes purchases a couple of times before the group goes looking for horses. First, Jaysek buys a couple of revolvers and then a large number of training sessions. The training sessions were supposed to go to different members of the group, but they all end up going to Jaysek. They find one good horse for Neeia, and one pack horse and a light riding horse for Kieron. In addition, they hire a boy to take care of the horses in the camp.
January 3
In the afternoon of the second day, the group arrives at Falcon’s Hollow. They go to a tavern to listen to news, and just as they are sitting down at the table, from outside comes a shout of “Alarm!” They go outside and see that a horde of zombies is coming toward the town. Kieron, Jaysek, and Neeia block the road coming into town, and Ra goes to block another route from the side. No one comes after Ra, but a large number of zombies come after the rest of the group. Kieron and Neeia cut zombies with their swords, after Neeia had first tried a couple of acid balls, but the zombies didn’t care about those at all. Jaysek shoots one of the zombies next to Kieron and Neeia with a really big explosive fireball, killing three zombies from it. Kieron and Neeia don’t take any damage from it. After this, they manage to drop zombies, but just as enemies are going to the other gate, Ra, who is there, gets bored and comes to the others.
Ra hacks a couple of zombies away, and at this point, Kieron shouts that zombies are coming to that other gate and starts running in that direction. She stops the zombies coming there but notices that among them are a couple of ghouls poorly pretending to be zombies. Ghouls are already a somewhat worse opponent, so Kieron retreats to safety while Ra comes to the zombies’ back. The zombies hack at Ra as Kieron retreats backward and gets one ghoul dropped while the other moves to attack Ra. Meanwhile, Neeia has run at a speed of almost 100 feet per second to the other gate and attacks the two ghouls there.
Neeia cuts her target ghouls down and then attacks the zombies. There are several zombies attacking Ra, and when the second ghoul can’t get at Kieron, it goes after Ra. Next, more zombies come after Ra, and when Kieron comes back into view after dropping her ghoul, the other ghoul comes back to attack her. Kieron hacks it away and continues fighting against one zombie.
At Jaysek’s gate are those five lumberjacks, and when more zombies come to the scene, the village priest also arrives and scares three zombies away, and three remain a little distance away wondering. Jaysek creates a big fire at the gate, which begins to burn away the zombies standing there wondering.
At this point, seven zombies are attacking Ra, and he is beginning to be in quite poor condition. Ra tries to get to the other side of the walls for protection, but progress is slow. Jaysek comes to the second gate just as Kieron drops her last enemy, so all that remain are the zombies following Ra. Some of them turn to attack Jaysek and Kieron, but two continue after Ra. Ra almost gets through the fire before losing consciousness. Kieron and Jaysek destroy the rest of the zombies, and the lumberjacks at the gate take care of the rest.
The group heals local lumberjacks as well as group members. They can’t get Ra back to consciousness, so they go to rest in the tavern. When they have rested there for about half an hour, the local gravedigger comes to explain that these are definitely not corpses he has buried. When the group goes outside to look, Neeia notes that those clothes were already old when Riddleport was founded 300 years ago.
The group rests and heals themselves. Kieron goes to ask the healer for ointments, but they are hard to find. Instead, she finds bandaging supplies, so she buys them for Jaysek.
Around eight o’clock, the group leaves the town intending to camp on the forest side. The group follows the zombies’ tracks and reaches the forest. The group camps at the edge of the forest.
January 4
The group continues following the tracks forward. After a couple of hours’ journey, they come to an old cemetery. From here, a really large number of zombie tracks lead forward. A large horde goes south toward Falcon’s Hollow, an even larger horde of tracks goes northwest, i.e., quite directly toward the dwarves’ old monastery. Surprisingly, some of the tracks also arrive at the cemetery from the northwest.
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