Anapa had never been in a battle before. Pandemonium was the only word which came close to describing it: a synonym of chaos and the capital of Hell.

The discord was more than just physical. If he’d thought the headache was bad at home, it was nothing like being in the thick of the fighting. Destinies shifted and fates rewrote themselves with alarming frequency as arrows flew and swords clashed. It happened when Tahl raised his bow; before he’d even fired, Anapa felt a death which wasn’t supposed to happen for another hour moved sharply up to the present. The archer toppled from his perch. Anapa neither saw nor heard the body hit the ground, but he felt the life force drain away. And another, just feet away from where they were standing, felled by a sword. And another. And another.

Tahl grasped his shoulder briefly, reminding him why he was here. Having still not fully regained his breath, and not sure what he’d say if he had it, Anapa just nodded once. He sidestepped nimbly a split second before a spear thudded heavily into the ground where he’d been standing, just as a blood-curdling howl lifted above the noise of battle. A wave of nausea and faintness washed over Anapa and he gripped Tahl’s arm involuntarily, trying to prevent himself from blacking out. The last time he’d felt anything close to this was on the last day he’d spent in Canidia, when he’d felt the death portal open up. Everyone, he’d told his mother then when she’d asked who was going to die; death is coming for everyone.

He’d fought the feeling then and he could fight it now. Releasing Tahl’s arm, Anapa moved his feet slightly apart to steady himself and focused on pushing back the overwhelming onslaught of death. Tahl’s black-and-gold eyes were following the retreating rebels on the other side of the clearing, beyond the wolves slipping amongst the raging wildfires. Seriously? He wanted to go that way? In other circumstances Anapa might have argued, but it was becoming desperately, agonisingly, hopelessly clear just how far removed he was from, not just his comfort zone, but also the zone where he was any use whatsoever. Now that he’d accomplished what he’d come for, being stuck in the middle of a warzone made him nothing more than a liability. He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t run long-distance. He wasn’t quick or agile or endowed with any kind of magic which would help with this.

Fortunately, Tahl was. Flames licked his arms and his skin melted away, his body replaced with a burst of Tahl-shaped black fire. Unnerved, Anapa took a step back in spite of himself. What the hell kind of magic did the people of this world possess, that they could become fire demons? And they thought he was unsettling because he could sense death?

There was no time to dwell on it further. Tahl led the way, blasting back threats with his demon firepower and ploughing straight through the wildfires without consequence. For the most part, Anapa just tried not to get in his way. They’d only made it a few metres when his headache throbbed sharply, sending a tumbling image plummeting into his brain: an arrow piercing him right through the neck. Anapa reacted instinctively, moving his arm up to protect his neck. The ground beside him shivered and a large femur – probably a fairy one – hurtled up from the earth, soaring into his hand. The arrow thudded into the bone harmlessly. Anapa pulled it out as he run behind Tahl, adrenaline thudding in his ears. He shouldn’t have been able to summon a bone so quickly and easily, unless…

Trusting in his friend to redirect any other threats for a moment, Anapa exhaled, trying to calm his mind and focus on the world beyond the battle. Now that he was looking for it, it was hard to imagine how he could have missed it: this place wasn’t just filled with the dying, it was also full of the dead. Below the corpses that the day had already claimed, not too deep under the earth, were the remains of hundreds of others. An ancient burial ground? Gritting his teeth as he ducked under a burst of ice blasted in their direction by a blue-robed guard, Anapa reached out to the dead with his mind. Where he was from, the deceased were usually willing to help the living – if you asked.

The response he got was one he never could have dreamt of.

All across the clearing, the earth erupted as skeletal, mud-caked arms burst from the ground. They curled over, what was left of the hands pressing against the soil as the dead hoisted themselves out of the earth. Some were entirely animated bones; others still had flesh and fabric clinging to them. Some of the dead campers and guards clambered to their feet, retrieving their weapons where they’d dropped them.

Even for Anapa, this was new. Stopped in his tracks, he stared, stunned, as a grinning skeleton came clattering over. It stopped in front of him and Tahl, silent, unmoving. Waiting.

“Stop the people in blue,” Anapa told him, with less politeness than he would usually employ towards the dead. “And the wolves.”

The animated corpses turned in unison towards the wolves and the guards, who had been momentarily frozen at the sight of the grotesque army.

“Come on,” Anapa gasped at Tahl, pointing towards the retreating campers.