Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

"Huh?" after a few seconds, he spotted movement to his side, right next to him, turning his neck to get a better look using whatever light was remaining from the small lantern, but there was nothing, no one, no figure of any sort was around.

'I don't think I should be in a state of delirium already…' he thought to himself, when he stayed in standby, awaiting to be deployed by Watchful Undeviginti, his need to eat and drink were paused, and he had made sure to prepare for that during his last deployment, it hadn't been more than a day since he had been captured and the corpses hadn't done anything particular to him yet, so there was no reason for him to start hallucinating.

He looked to the other side, seeing nothing either.

The lantern's flame flickered, growing weaker again, and he heard a sharp sound, one he was rather familiar with, that of a blade leaving its sheath.

'Someone forgot to put linings inside of their scabbard…' hearing the blade grinding against the sheath's iron was a dead give-away that whoever owned that blade didn't know how to take care of it, everytime they would take or put their blade away, the edge would suffer.

Though that thought crossed his minds, he didn't ignore the fact that an unseen person had just drawn a weapon whilst he was completely immobilised and vulnerable, not that he could do anything about it, the binds holding him place were much too resilient, and considering that this was enemy camp, screaming for help wouldn't amount to anything as it probably was another one of these corpses that was here.

"Who's there?" he asked in a composed tone, hoping that this vile cadaver was amongst those that could understand him, as only a handful seemed to be capable of communicating at all for reasons he could not yet grasp.

"Don't say anything, you fool!" a voice whispered back, quite lacking in the typical strangeness that he now expected from his decayed captors.

"Wait… What are you doing here?! Weren't you sent much further away than me? And why is there no lining inside of your sheath? Are you a freaking amateur?!"

"Oi, don't insult my scabbard, when I have come to rescue you!"

The knight knew that voice, somewhat, it belonged to another servant of Watchful Undeviginti, the man wasn't a knight like himself however.

"Watchful Undeviginti wouldn't let a loyal follower in enemy territory, I was ordered to help you"

"Naturally, I wouldn't expect it to be from the kindness of your heart"

"Would you stop antagonising me?!" the unseen man shook his head as he tried to slice the binds, taking much longer to do so than expected, that foul rope was even resisting cutting damage extraordinarily well, only coming undone after a solid minute of focused effort.

"And how am I supposed to escape stealthily? I am not an assassin like you, and I honestly doubt I could outrun them, they can use some sort of witchcraft to make things heavier and create invisible hands" revealed the knight, rubbing and stretching his weary wrist who had been bruised.

"Witchcraft, huh? Well, I suppose I could distract them while you run, I am adept at running away under enemy fire… But if that sorcery of theirs can't be dodged…"

"I doubt it can be dodged, it is literally invisible, even if it doesn't manifest instantly on the targets and needs to travel some distance, you wouldn't have clue where to evade to"

The knight and assassin stared at one another in silence, the latter's form was somewhat glowing, a pale blue energy filling his body as they spoke.

"Well, we better find a solution quickly, even when channelling Watchful Undeviginti's vapour, I thought I was going to be found out when infiltrating this camp… Not to mention that the layout makes no sense, it feels like they purposefully built it to be confusing" the assassin did not like being here one bit, he hadn't had the pleasure of directly interacting with these strange, animating corpses, but just seeing them go about was already enough.

Speaking to one another in a language that sounded like its words were trying to claw at him and patrolling or working without stop, at first, he had been waiting for them to rest, but they never did, the guards on the archer towers and those patrolling the area directly around the camp never stopped, and they always remained perfectly vigilant to boot.

Finding a gap to sneak inside had been a tall order, especially when he could feel that the boost granted upon his abilities by Watchful Undeviginti's glorious vapour wasn't going to be enough to fool them.

He hoped that these were all some sort of super elites, because if he was just trying to deal with the grunts, then he definitely didn't want to get anywhere close to the higher-command or whatever was giving the orders around here.

Not to mention that their camp was cold, it was actually colder than the desert when under the control of Watchful Undeviginti, this meant that they would be somewhat cool even if control was switched back to Prime Undeviginti, that was worrying, whoever could fight against the environment of the desert was dangerous.

"We don't have much of a choice, I'll prepare a distraction that will go off at a set time, I'll slip out undetected on my own and you'll take your chance when said distraction goes off, alright?" the assassin wasn't going to put his own life in jeopardy if possible, he may be a servant of Watchful Undeviginti, but he was still just an assassin, if it came down to a direct confrontation, he could only try to escape.

"Wait, I need to tell you something… Their leader can control the sand without armament!"

"They can do what?"

"Control the sand withou-"

"So I did understand correctly! What are you talking about? None of us can do that, why would a… A corpse be able to do it? You must be mistaken, there has to be a more rational explanation"

"Maybe, maybe not! But I spotted nothing that could explain it in another manner, so be careful" the knight warned, the assassin nodded and grabbed something slung over his back, a sword in its sheath.

"It's too dangerous unarmed, take this" he handed over the blade and swiftly went away, his figure growing pretty much unseen to the knight, despite also being attuned with Watchful Undeviginti's vapour, the assassin could easily disappear from his senses.

"Be careful…" the knight didn't know what to do as he waited, he guessed that he could only hope that his fellow would go through with the plan before an undead came back to check on him.

'I can't believe there weren't any of those corpses hidden behind me…'