Ahead of him, the dark village moved. It began to walk at them. It seemed as if the houses became shadows which lurched and shambled. Out of every still silhouette, limbs drew forwards.

Eyes began to shine. The street moved and now Lantal heard it. Rasping, unsteady footfalls.

The remnants of breath, escaping. Bubbling gasps, sound with no real meaning. The click of bone on bone. He smelled rot and blood and…death.

The Thronebearers shuddered.

“So many—”

First dozens, walking from behind houses. Hiding…shambling outwards. Then another dozen, down the main street, from the sides. Dozens more. Dozens more. Until you only saw moving bodies, open mouths. The eyes. Watching you, drawing nearer.

Hundreds. A village’s worth of dead. Lantal stared at the moving figures. Zombies. And between them—

thinner shapes. Glowing heads, burning fire in empty sockets. Yellow bone and teeth, grinning at him.

Long-dead bodies worn away until they were only bone.

“Skeletons. The [Necromancer] found…a tomb? A graveyard.”

He whispered. How had this happened? The long-dead skeletons moved amid the faster zombies. They clicked as they walked, jaws bouncing together. But that was not what drew his eyes.

Crypt Lords. Two of them. Huge, hulking monstrosities. First shadows, drawing closer.

What was a Crypt Lord? The Thronebearers got to see one at last. They looked like…they were made of people.

But they were no longer anything like people. Each one stood at least nine feet tall. They dragged themselves forwards on huge, plodding arms, which could strike like hammers. Pallid flesh—two massive limbs that supported a center body.

Two vast, staring eyes over a mouth of huge, jagged teeth that dragged in victims to be torn apart. Each Crypt Lord was different. These? These had little arms on their backs and sides, to grab the unwary.

That was not why a Thronebearer retched in his helmet. It was because the Crypt Lords had been…people. Every part of them, from their long arms to their eyes…they were made of people.

The Crypt Lords had two vast, multi-compartment eyes like an insect—until you realized they weren’t.

The vast eyes were in fact made up of many, smaller, Human eyes. Each one staring at different angles.

Their huge arms were made of countless limbs. Long and short, thick with muscle or pale and dainty.

Hands twined together. Fingers bent and broken, glued together by magic.

Their teeth were shards of bone. They towered above the Humans. Hulking brutes, dragging themselves forwards. Spawned in mass-graves and where death occured in great numbers. Fusions of dead bodies.

Undead that thought.

He could feel them thinking—Lantal saw the dark intelligence, simple, malevolent, in the undead’s advance. The Crypt Lords sent the zombies and undead forwards in waves, trying to encircle the living while they advanced in the rear. The mindless zombies shambled forwards alongside the skeletons, reaching for him.