Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

Running through the weirdly winding paths, stepping upon unfamiliar soil with his bare feet, carrying only a weapon he wasn't very familiar with, and dressed in naught but a loincloth of some sort, the knight pushed himself forward, although his chances of escape would be slim if those sorcerers from last time got involved, if he could just reach and dune hide from their sight before they could pin him down, then freedom would be his and he would be certain that no information would be funnelled out of him and grant these accursed corpses knowledge of the desert.

Though, he actually needed to succeed in his escape, which was a tall order, within just a few second of his rushing out of the tent, he encountered his first setback, and not a small one at that, but he instantly ran into the two undeads who had hung out close to the leader during his previous battle, the warrior with the stone sword, and the sorcerer of sorts wielding an old weather-beaten wand.

Without hesitation he threw himself out of their sight, most fearful of the latter as he could potentially instantly render all of his efforts null by simply casting that odd curse of heaviness or grasping him with one of those unseen hands, in fact, as the living rushed to take cover, he felt something brush up past his shoulder.

'That was too close!' cursing his absolutely awful luck to run into these two guys, he weaved through tents, knowing that the whole camp was probably aware of his escape already, but he wasn't planning on surrendering.

He didn't know if had lost those two, whomst he presumed to be elites of some kind, but he never slowed down, the original path he had been aiming on taking out of this place had been cut off, but the camp wasn't that big, any direction could do.

As he squeezed in between two tents and emerged back onto a path, he was faced with one of the strange trees that were placed around the camp, which all sat in pools of what looked like waters, although he didn't trust these corpses to use actual water.

To the knight, that tree just looked weird, he had only ever seen one sort of trees in his entire life, and they had small trucks but an excessive amount of leaves that made them look like big bushes, all to create a shaded interior to provide a cooler air to the main body of the tree.

These tall things and thick trunks simply did not look right, but then again, so did the inhabitants of that camp.

He was preparing to leap over the water-looking liquid and go straight ahead, but his momentum was ended as he had to lean backward, ending up sliding on his knees against the harsh ground to avoid the swing of a massive blade.

A bit curved, this sword was easily longer than the knight was tall, and was wielded by a bloated undead that seemed ready to burst at any second, his dried flesh and skin looking stretched to their very limit.

Despite the rather rotund and graceless looks, the corpse was awfully swift on his legs, swinging his blade with deceptive dexterity, not at all relying on its sheer size and weight to deliver devastating blows.

Pressing against his stomach, the undead forced pungent, miasmic air out of him and onto his blade, coating it in this sickly haze that seemed so thick that one might actually be able to grab it with their bare hands.

'I don't have time to deal with this!' thought the knight, seizing the first opportunity to run away from the bloated cadaver, resuming his escape as hastily as was possible before more showed up and they surrounded him, but even the few seconds his confrontation with that corpse had taken seemed like too much as warriors began appearing from everywhere.

Most wielded curved swords of various kinds, scimitars, khopeshes, shotels and the likes, but spears, axes and such weren't excluded either, and unfortunately for the living, ranged weaponry wasn't lacking either.

The only saving grace was that they were trying to re-capture him instead of kill him, so that allowed for a bit more breathing room than otherwise, though their idea of subduing him wasn't exactly tender.

They must trust in the capabilities of their so-called medics as they, on multiple occasions, tried to chop one of his legs off or strike him with attacks that certainly wouldn't kill him instantly, but wouldn't allow him to live very long if they landed either.

Still, he found the edge of the camp to be right before him, with the augmentation of the vapour, he should be capable of leaping over them if he focused, evading a spear throwing at his stomach area, and bending backward to evade a rock thrown from a sling that came from one of the tower posted at the border separating the camp from the rest of the desert.

Then, spotting what looked like a minuscule window of opportunity, the knight forced on his legs, the vapour condensing upon them as he leapt, an arrow brushing past him and tearing into his skin, it failed to stop him.

Passing over the pelts of unknown creature drawn in between the towers, he sound landed upon the pure white sand with a roll, yet, his expression was not one of joy, his eyes darting to his left shoulder, the imprint of a hand clutching and pushing down on him was clear to see.

Then he looked back at his right ankle, where the marks of another invisible hand grasping into him with strength, it wasn't quite enough to harm him badly, but they pulled when he tried to push forward, severely slowing him down.

He had dared hope that he had somehow managed to not run into any of the mages, or perhaps managed to blindly evade all of their acts of bizarre witchcraft, but he had been wrong, either he had been terribly unlucky and they only got him in that brief instant, or they had simply waited for him to be in a position in which they wouldn't be able to miss, and when soaring through the air, one's path was incredibly easy to predict with near-certainty.

Still, he struggled against the unseen grasp of these hands, doing his best to get away from the camp, but it was no use, the corpses were already catching up.

"You'll never take me! Be it alive- Or dead!" rising up the sword, he brought it up to his neck.

"My everything is in the service of Watchful Undeviginti!" as he said this, the pale blue sun looked down on him, the eye taking on an expression that was hard to place, regret? Sadness? Contempt? Naught but a squint that meant nothing? It was simply unreadable, even whilst watching one of the loyal men who had sworn fealty cut into his own neck and make his own head roll to the ground.

The sword fell and planted into the sand, whilst the corpse dispersed into pale blue vapour, vanishing entirely, leaving only the cloth the knight had worn behind.