Julius and Meredith, my dear friends,

  I write to seek your guidance, for I have reached the end of my wits.

  The Wizard Order has escalated its operations within my borders and no longer bothers hiding. Their Sworn fanatics openly wear their feather tattoos. Their members openly preach wizard supremacy in my border towns, luring many of my Kingdom’s wizards into their fold. What is more, my spies witnessed one of their Archmages, Makoa Pele, within my very capital.

  I fear they will act against me soon.

  The time has come to put aside our differences and unite against this common foe. Let us purge them into the Dead Lands, the Sea of Sands, and the Jewel Archipelago, where their sharp fangs will find little purchase. Let us protect our Three Kingdoms.

  The Wizard Order does not reveal itself as openly in your lands yet, but after Escarbot falls, Alabaster and Moonlight will be next. By then, it may be too late to stop them. I implore you to assist me, my friends. When my Kingdom is safe, I am willing to offer any compensation within reason.

  I await your response,

  ?The King of Escarbot,

  ?Palagon Autumn

  - A letter allegedly depicting communication between the three Kingdoms, intercepted at the Moonlight-Escarbot border.

  A tidal wave of undead barreled against the Wall of the Damned, falling on it with unstoppable force. Stone cracked and metal groaned, but fortunately, pure physicality was insufficient to overcome the Wall.

  “MEN!” a commander shouted from above, a tall, well-built woman with fiery eyes. “ATTACK!”

  The soldiers roared, the undead shrieked, and all hell broke loose.

  Watching through Birb, Jerry was speechless. How was this a common occurrence?!

  The horde of zombies crashed against the Wall. Many were instantly stampeded, but even more fell on the first wave and climbed on their shoulders, mindlessly striving to reach the top. Their eyes were hollow, their features twisted in a desperate desire to kill.

  The skeletons fell on the zombies a beat afterward. Being lighter, they scrambled atop their fleshier brethren, cutting through them to reach the top. It was a heavily inefficient attack riddled with friendly fire, but the undead were thousands, and the Wall fifty feet tall. Lacking ladders and intelligence, the horde was climbing itself.

  A command rang out from above and pots of burning oil were poured on the undead, sizzling their flesh and making them fall like a rotten staircase—they could not feel pain, but the burning of their body weakened them nonetheless. For a moment, the undead retreated—and then returned in force, slamming against the Wall’s stone with even greater momentum and breaking against it like water on rocks.

  Suddenly, a dark power spread out and filled the undead, empowering them. Birb instinctively turned its gaze towards the center of the horde.

  A different undead stood there. It was a creature wrought in dark mist and donning black plate armor, crimson flames burning under its open helmet and shining through the gloom. A greatsword was held in one of its hands, seemingly weightless, while the other was raised at the Wall as if trying to tear it apart by sheer force of will.

  Jerry stumbled and almost lost his connection to Birb by the shock; whatever this thing was, it wasn’t only strong, but it had magic . It was doing something, and the undead grew stronger as their numbers thinned.

  “A death knight!” the Wall’s commander shouted, surprise coloring her voice. “Men, you must hold! Wizards, focus your fire! Destroy it!”

  The Wall’s battlements flashed on cue. Balls of fire, stakes of ice, thin jets of water, and blinding light; a wild torrent of magic burst forth and headed for the death knight, but it was protected.

  Three lumbering figures stepped forth, using their misshapen bodies to block the spells. Through steam and smoke and hissing shadows, their forms were revealed—burned, wounded, but having borne the full brunt of the wizards’ attacks.

  These creatures were made of several bodies stitched together, combined into horrific statues of grotesqueness. Jerry’s mind shuddered at the sight; these weren’t just grafted bodies, but grafted souls, forming a tangled maze of thoughts and personalities. They weren’t even real creatures, in the sense that most undead were; when so many souls smashed together, they became one jumbled mess, losing every source of individuality they had and coalescing into one monstrosity of terrible power.

  With a soul that strong, the undead body it inhabited was naturally overpowered as well—that was how they’d been able to block so many spells. It was the same principle that drove Axehand’s and Boboar’s power, but Jerry had taken care to harmoniously combine the two souls into one creature. That was also the reason why he’d never managed to build a triple-bodied undead, and why the octoskeleton had been a failed experiment.

  In strength and durability alone, these three monstrosities were far superior to even Axehand—but they lacked his intelligence, personality, and skill, as well as his ability to use his axe hands to create beautiful sculptures.

  No, these were not undead; they were monsters. Jerry hated their creator with a passion.

  However, monsters or not, these three remained obstacles that the soldiers had to overcome. Behind them, the death knight had sheathed his greatsword and raised both hands in the air, releasing pulses of dark magic that only Jerry could feel. The undead revolted and descended into deeper madness, a crazier frenzy; they threw themselves against the Wall with zero regard for their own safety, and Jerry felt his very soul ache at the sight.

  This is not right. Undead are not supposed to be like this! Stop!

  But they would not stop, and he had no way to make them.

  The soldiers had run out of oil pots, but they still threw rocks and arrows down at the undead. The projectiles buried themselves in the mass of bodies, dealing damage but soon sinking. The undead kept climbing.

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  The flying undead reached the Wall. They fell on the soldiers like hail, wings and beaks and claws breaking against weapons and sturdy armor. Spears jutted out of the soldiers’ formations to smash the birds apart. The undead cawed and cried out, circling in the air and charging the living repeatedly.

  Most failed, some didn’t.

  The birds were weak, but they were many. Under their relentless attacks, some soldiers screamed as beaks pierced through the gaps in their armors. There were casualties, albeit few.

  However, even now, the undead assault was far from over. Regular undead, zombies and skeletons, suddenly started flying. Birb turned around.

  The three lumbering monstrosities were grabbing undead and tossing them all the way up the Wall. They missed, most of the time, but a few landed on the battlements, and their impact alone was enough to disrupt the soldiers. The birds were still coming, and the main horde still slowly climbed.

  Jerry’s breath was caught in his throat. The undead were advancing, and they seemed like a flood that could not be stopped before it drowned everyone. If this continued, the Wall would fall right here and now!

  “Soldiers of Escarbot!” the commander’s voice echoed again, cutting through the sounds of battle to reach everyone’s ears. “Push back! Destroy them all!”

  They roared, and they pushed. Zombies were driven off the battlements, tumbling into the horde below, and the birds were swiftly eradicated as half the wizards turned their attacks at them. A wide spray of fire destroyed many birds or made them unable to fight any longer, and water jets cut through the flock, felling them by the dozen.

  Even the biomancers had acted, including the two-feather leader, the one who had experienced his Awakening. They had a shorter range than other schools of magic but weren’t any less destructive. Where the two-feather wizard pointed his finger, the birds screamed and fell to the ground with multiple tumors growing on their wings. The rest of the biomancers didn’t have such effects, but they could still bring down birds by the flock, letting them struggle on the stone as their bodies malfunctioned.

  On Jerry’s instructions, Birb flew higher, just to be sure. Biomancers had their weaknesses, but against creatures of flesh and blood, they were terrifyingly effective.

  The grafted monstrosities kept catapulting zombies and skeletons over, but the trained soldiers had formed a wall of shields which intercepted them right at the Wall’s edge.

  The birds were now dwindling, the catapulted undead were blocked, and the horde was climbing slower and slower, struggling to support its own weight. As soon as the undead reached within ten feet of the Wall’s top, a rain of spears fell on them, expertly diving in and out and dismembering several undead with each stab.

  Whenever a spear got stuck or caught, its wielder simply let go, abandoning the weapon to the horde.

  As time passed and the undead were unable to make progress, their numbers decreased. Before long, there were only a few hundred left, and the horde lost steam as there were no undead left to jump on the staircase of bodies.

  Only a small core still held strong: the death knight, the three grafted monstrosities, and the few dozen elite undead surrounding them.

  Jerry released the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding—dead himself, breathing was only a habit.

  It’s over… he thought. The undead could no longer win, so they would retreat. It made sense. Jerry could clearly feel the death knight’s intelligence.

  As one, the death knight and the three monstrosities sprinted at the Wall. Even Birb’s eyes opened wide. It can’t be! Jerry thought.

  The four superior undead reached the base of the horde staircase, and then they jumped .

  The ground cracked under their feet, dirt and rocks exploding as their four large bodies launched themselves at the Wall. They flew over the horde, instantly reaching the top. The soldiers, as if expecting it, had already stepped back, leaving them room to land—and the second they did, every single soldier in the near vicinity fell on them like pack animals, crying out war and striking with every bit of strength and expertise they had.

  The wizards unleashed another torrent of spells, far stronger and more numerous than the previous waves, and even the commander drew her longsword and leaped into the action, spearheading the attack.

  The four undead were strong, but they were ill-prepared for such a quick, all-out assault. The grafted monstrosities waved their arms around, several soldiers falling off the Wall or flying backward with caved chests, but the sheer number of bodies thrown at the undead was impossible to stop. Moreover, these monstrosities might have been strong, but they were slow, and stupid, too. Some of their strikes went so wide they missed the literal flood of humans, and they didn’t think to stand close to each other to negate the pressure.

  They were also exceedingly tall, each towering nine feet in height, making it easy for the arrows and spells to hit them.

  Dozens of weapons bit into each of the monstrosities, cutting off arms and bits and pieces, and spells plowed their bodies like hoes on a freshly minted field. They stumbled; and then, one by one, they fell, on and off the Wall. They had caused many injuries, but the casualties were limited—of the two hundred soldiers, barely ten had died.

  The death knight, however, was a different story.

  It was only slightly taller than the soldiers, making the spells and arrows struggle to hit it. It was also intelligent and skilled with the blade, expertly twirling it around to prevent itself from being swarmed. Bodies, limbs, and weapons went flying; screams filled the air. The death knight’s strength was not too inferior to the monstrosities’, making most of the soldiers completely unable to meet its blade.

  Most, but not all.

  The commander had stepped forth, meeting some of the undead’s strikes by herself and living to tell the tale. Her strength was clearly superhuman, but she was no wizard; only now did Jerry realize she was a nature spirit like Jericho, though perhaps less unkillable.

  She was strong enough to block the death knight. By herself, she might not have been a match; thankfully, she had an entire army to support her. The soldiers fearlessly jumped into the openings she created, slipping into the death knight’s guard, where its greatsword could not hit them.

  The superior undead was surrounded. Their strikes started landing, few at first, then many at a time.

  The death knight released a feral cry, abandoning its intelligence in the face of certain destruction. It also abandoned its greatsword, using its bare hands to decimate whoever it could grab. Its plate armor held strong, blocking most of the desperate hits, but the soldiers were fearless, and they kept attacking despite their fallen comrades.

  More and more blades pierced its armor, and the death knight grew weaker. Its movements slowing, it dropped to a knee. Its crimson eyes flared a final time. The commander stepped close, driving her longsword straight into the death knight’s face, piercing flesh and bone until it met the back of its helmet, sending it flying and revealing a square-jawed, dark-haired man underneath.

  The crimson disappeared; the flames went out. The death knight tumbled to the ground, completely lifeless.

  And the soldiers cried out in massive triumph, yelling for their devastation, grief, and glory.

  The death knight by itself had claimed more than a dozen lives—as many as all the other undead combined—and injured twice as many; but in the end, it had fallen, and the brave soldiers had won.

  The Wall had held. And may it hold forever.