Calin stood amazed at the sight of the rainbow-mage who stood around eight feet away from him; his flesh was bright red in color and covered in a thick sweat that dripped from his body.
Calin noticed a thick cloud of steam rising from out of the top of the rainbow-mages head as the two looked each other in the eyes, the rainbow-mages being blood-shot and watering heavily.
Then a scream from outside broke the tension in the room. Momentarily Calin turned his head on hearing the scream which he recognized to have come from Croll. Noticing this distraction Malog-Tog lunged towards Calin, his hands outstretched seeking to grab hold of Calin's face. Calin reacted fast although the fingers from one hand of Malag-Tog connected and Calin felt the flesh on his face burn from Malag-Tog's touch.
As Malag-Tog prepared to strike once more at Calin's face, Calin quickly brought up his knee, connecting with the red hot testicales of Malog-Tog.
Malag-Tog sank to his knee's holding his crotch which burned a different fire than the one that boiled his blood. Calin then swung his longsword from left to right in a great sweeping ark, severing Malog-Tog's burning head from his neck.
Blood fountained up and Calin was splashed with boiling hot droplets, making him wince in pain. His face had been burned badly and small red dots were the blood of the mage had caught him would soon turn into tiny blisters. At least it was finally over.
Malag-Tog was well and truly dead…but then he remembered the scream. He quickly walked out of the tent, however, as he walked into the other room he noticed something different though he did not stop to check it out as the scream indicated that his surviving comrades may be in trouble. He'd noted that the lid on the stone box had been moved aside; also something else about the room that he could not at the moment put his finger on was also different in some way. Then he was outside once more, the sight that greeted him was not a pleasant one.
Looking over to where Croll lay on the ground he saw a stream of red blood running from out of Croll's throat. The grass about the body was covered in Croll's blood from the large gaping gash in the dead warrior’s throat that had ended his life.
He realized that an enemy still lived and guessed at a Quib as the one place the assassin could be was down one of the holes in the ground, hiding in this unseen place where the Quibs had made there den. A thought struck him though; all the Quibs he had seen here carried clubs. Whatever had slashed Croll's throat must have been something sharp. He guessed at some kind of blade.
Next he turned to investigate Mulk to see if he was still alive or had been murdered in a likewise manner. What he saw made him gasp in astonishment.
Mulk was slowly beginning to rise to his feet. His movements seemed odd to Calin, sort of puppet like. The fact that this man had held onto life by the thinnest of threads and now rose up looking as if he would not only live but make a perfect recovery, shocked him at first then brought joy to his heart as he realized he was not the only survivor. His good friend would be able now to share as well in the victory over the evil mage.
Then Mulk picked up Haurick's large scimitar that lay a few feet from him and turned towards Calin taking slow ponderous footsteps to do so.
It was at this point that Calin saw Mulk's face. His black eye-patch had been removed and both his one good eye and one blind eye had been gouged from there sockets. His cheeks had lost all color and now appeared a sickly clammy grey and drool flowed out over his pale dry lips.
A shiver ran down the back of Calin. It was quite obvious to him that Mulk was dead and the walking corpse that approached him was a zombie intent on slicing him into a thousand little pieces.
The zombie Mulk's movements started to smoothen out and quicken as it swayed from side to side and half walked half ran to meet Calin. Calin tried to cover as much of his body with his well battered shield as he readied himself for the on-coming combat with the corpse of his dead friend, plus the hardiest and most skilful of the warriors that had been in the group.
A great clatter was heard in the air as the huge scimitar slashed across Calin's shield. Calin swept his own blade at the legs of the zombie which made no attempt to block or dodge his blow. A large cut was made in the right leg of Mulk's walking corpse. No pain or expression registered across the zombies face and it continued to swing the heavy scimitar back and fourth at Calin. Calin managed to land another blow but still it did not seem to bother the zombie. For several minutes the combat continued in this way. The zombie was being cut to ribbons but Calin had not stopped it as fatigue began to edge its wicked way into his limbs. The zombie was tireless as Calin grew more weakened. Fortunately for Calin the style and finesse that Mulk had possessed while he had been alive was not in his zombie, although that did not help his situation that much as the blows kept constantly raining down on him.
A thought struck Calin as he fought, he knew about zombies from his earlier days of fighting in the war with and against the priests of Hock. He knew the only reason zombies could be created was if someone had used magic to do it. He had witnessed the concentration a priest would put into controlling a zombie and how they would always have to watch there creation at all times, if the concentration was broken then so would be the spell that animated the dead.
He began looking around as he fought, his eyes searching at every opportunity he could grab. It was then that he spotted something in the doorway of the tent. He did not get a very good look at what looked back at him, but what he did see was enough for him to duck beneath a great swinging blow from the zombie and quickly draw out of his boot one of his throwing knives. As he stood up he performed a back-flip so he was out of the way of the zombie’s flashing blade for the merest of seconds. Then he hurled the knife, not caring to take too much aim at the doorway. As he did the zombie closed on him and this time he was left wide open to its attack as the blade slashed him across the left side. Fortunately the slash was more of a graze and his chainmail averted the blow from cutting his stomach wide open.
Then the zombie dropped to the ground, it looked dead once more and Calin knew that the thing that had created the abomination had been whatever he had glimpsed inside the doorway of the tent.
As he quickly made a make-shift bandage to stem the bleeding in his left side the image of what he'd seen formed in his mind. Although he had only glimpsed it for a split second he remembered those eyes clearly. Whatever they belonged to was not human. They hovered about a foot from the ground and were large and lemon green in color. They had a serpent quality about them and seemed to glow with a vicious hatred as they glared straight at him. Whatever it was, he knew he would have to kill it and once again he headed carefully inside the tent, ready once more to draw blood.
He studied his surroundings inside the tent; he could not see anything different from when he had left only minutes before. It still felt strange inside and he could not think why he found it unusual. As he took a step forward, something squished beneath his boot. Looking down he gazed into a white eyeball with a blue iris, it lay disembodied on the ground. Lifting his foot he discovered what he had stood on was also another eyeball, though from what he could make out from the squidgy mess the iris in this one was grey, suggesting that the previous owner of it had been blind in this one eye. A nauseating feeling swept through him as he realized these of course had been Mulk's eyes.
As he squinted down at them he also realized what it was that was wrong in this room. For some reason it was darker and colder than it should be. It was a hard thing to notice at first but he had found his answer to the puzzle that at first he had not got.
Something above him laughed at the shock on his face as he drew back his head in disgust from seeing the eyes of Mulk. Looking up he spied a creature like no other he had seen in his travels on Oldabrock. The top half of the creature was of a small child, age wise it looked like it had just left the teat of its mother. It was covered in a dark blue skin with thick yellow veins all over it. It had long black fingernails and bat like w
ings that sprouted out of its back. Its legs were like those of a goats, with brown curly hair covering them, a black scaled tail swished about behind these, always keeping a slow steady rhythm.
The head was again baby like, with a mop of long black hair and the mouth was filled with small black fangs and a serpent tongue that darted out as Calin watched it.
It was the eyes that Calin recognized; they had been the ones he had seen in the doorway, the ones that belonged to the one responsible for the zombie that had just attacked him. No doubt this creature was also the thing that had slain Mulk and Croll as both lay helpless on the ground. On realizing this, anger boiled up in Calin for the loss of his fellow fighters and comrades having to die in such a dirty and defenseless way.
He quickly bent down to grab his last remaining knife from his boot. Then in one swift movement, sent it hurtling towards the body of the creature. The thing was fast and it dodged the blade easily, as it did it though it let out a scream.
The scream made Calin wince, it sounded like a cross between a child and a young animal being tortured. Never had Calin heard anything so horrible. Then it clawed at the roof of the tent with its long nails, tearing a hole in the canvas. Once the hole was big enough it slipped through and Calin ran outside and saw it flying off towards the forest. It was gaining height and by the time Calin could have retrieved his spear it would be to far away. Still the creature was gone and he watched it as it became nothing more than a dark spec in the light blue sky.