The snowy, unforgiving wilderness can slow down even the most adamant of assailants, and no one understands this better than the Necromancer, his undead army frozen and halted in northern Finland. Sitting inside one of the rooms of a recently conquered fort – to him, the last. “I have lost.” He marked a map used to keep track of his path of destruction. Starting in the area around Moscow, he finally stopped here. 250 valiant defenders had managed to incapacitate his forces before going down. Left with only 650 “men,” he could no longer go on.


The cold of this land had rendered the undead brittle, and useless. Much to his body’s dismay, he often had to force the defenders off the walls himself: searing and decaying their bodies, yet causing great strain upon his own. Blood seeped from his mouth as he held back vomiting, continuing to label the map. “No allies, no comrades…” whispering to himself. One could often find themselves becoming lonely when your only companions stare at you, expressionless and dead.


He knew what awaited him. An Assassin, a girl he knew long before now, had ventured out to kill him and stop his reign of terror once and for all. Upon arriving at the nearest port to the Necromancer’s location, she trudged through the icy blizzard, vision blurred by the constant barrage of snow and ice. She soon made it to her destination, scoping out the area. The undead wandered…like he had released his grip on them partially. Sneaking up to a hole in the fort, she got inside.


Gawking at entrails and blood left on a catapult projectile, she gasped, covering her nose from the stench of rot. Stalking through the living quarters of the fortress, she finally crept up to the room the Necromancer must have been in, a blast of force, no; energy threw her backwards, damaging her.


The Necromancer laughed, puking blood and phlegm through his helmet. “So you have tracked me here! I can only guess you came to kill me. Come, death would be a release, for me.” Readying his staff-halberd, adorned with 3 skulls where the blade began, he braced himself. She unsheathed her scimitar, and charged at him.


Parrying the initial attack with the blade of his halberd, the blade cut through her scimitar with dark power. “Even your weapon is tainted!” Charging again, and avoiding his return swing with a shift to the right, she forced her blade through his neck. Quickly pulling it out, bubbles formed as he tried in vain to breathe. He fell over, dead and defeated. Turning around, her old friend finally put to rest, she walked off.

Well, that’s what she thought, at least. An awful screeching noise wailed from behind, the souls of the undead the Necromancer controlled coursing through his veins and into his staff. Standing back up slowly, he blinked away in a cloak of shadow. Then, the veil dissipated, the Necromancer now in front of her, his hand gripping her neck as she felt her skin burn. “You…cannot…kill…what is already dead!” She flew through the wall with another blast of necromantic energy, knocking her unconscious shortly.


Getting back up became more difficult, and she looked down at her hands after being unable to feel them. To her horror, she found that she could see some of the bone and muscle on them! The magic caused her hands to decay, and she feared that the next attack may make her turn. “You’ve become a monster!” She rushed at him as he stepped through the hole in the wall, attacking the relic he held to try and destroy it.


Managing to crack the center skull, energy began to seep out, and the Necromancer yelled in rage, launching one last shot of dark power, making her fall over. However, this last bit of stress caused the crack to break, the souls being released and the undead that would have attempted to kill her keeling over, laid to rest. She observed herself: wounds that were possibly unable to be healed all across her body. She sighed; her objective completed, and walked back off into the blizzard, back to her boat to return home.