The Pearl Fox

Boiled Pearls

It happened in the city of Dream Rocks. Gloder Max found some cloth in his cupboard made of jute fibre. He wore gloves to wrap the Hag Pearls in the cloth, and went down into the basement. There was a forge, complete with red smouldering charcoal. His own forge was used to make iron rods and steel wands. He unwrapped the cloth and dropped the Hag Pearls into the hot fire. It took time for natural pearls to burn, as he found this by adding them to his welding of metals. The Hag Pearls were different. They didn't burn quite the same way, and each one popped as they exploded, quickly turning the colour of the flames deep crimson. The poison trapped inside every individual Hag Pearl boiled, and sent up faint yellow smoke with a mild whiff of sulphur. Gloder burned the jute cloth, which blacked so fast that it curled up and resembled a small bat with outstretched wings, flapping upwards in the air, floating down and veering off towards Gloder in spiral turns. He quickly lifted his arms to cover his face. As soon as the black cinder bat touched his sleeves, it disintegrated to nothing. The flames in the forge were gone and it was now thick with steaming brown stodge, bubbles boiling, hissing and stinking like the worst fart in history. Gloder Max was so overwhelmed by the horrid putrid smell that he vomited and fell to the floor, gasping for air. He yelled a few chants for protection and passed out before he could finish saying the ancient wizard words. 

The village of Southernville 2 was active. The kind priest Unjic had always looked after them and helped to run their town during the day so that they could rest, as the citizens didn't cope too well in the sunlight. Now that he was gone after being arrested, they all had to function the town by themselves. They struggled to keep the town alive as the lights failed, the water became stagnant, the tavern relied on very old wine stores because the rest was used up. People didn't notice when the food ran out, because they didn't get that hungry. If they ate, they would find slugs, worms, insects, maggots, lizards, mice and spiders. 

In the tavern, a girl was wiping the tables with a dried sponge. Within seconds, she fell to the floor completely dead, though she'd already had been dead for a long time. Every person in the village dropped down lifeless, then quickly decayed. Some of them turned into skeletons soon after they collapsed. The village had been abandoned for years, and only recently the undead moved in. Now they were totally dead, and will never walk again. The village of Southernville 2 was a ghost town, once again, filling with a new incoming population of carrion birds, wild dogs, rats, beetles and ants to feed on the corpses.

Far away, up north in Hillside Lake City, the Wild Hunt stormed outside the city walls. The city guards shot arrows from the ramparts as the infantry faced the Hunters with steel. Fresh red blood from the guards spilled across the walls and the grass. Hanzak was raging and angry. He pierced bodies of the Hunters and found black blobs issued from impact, instead of scarlet rivers. There was so many of them. A large number of the city guards and some Night Patrol were lying on the ground, screaming in agony from severe wounds but many were now dead. Arrows flew down but did nothing. Hanzak was relieved the Cavistan Gate was closed, because he didn't want the horror entering the city. He felt alone, and he thought it was his final night. Then all turned silent. The Wild Hunt collapsed like piles of rags. All around, the whole scene was strange and he didn't know what was happening. The Wild Hunters and their beasts were dead. Much of them were decomposed, and rotting or skeletal. Only the dead fighters from Hillside Lake who perished in this battle looked like fresh corpses. 

It was the night when the living dead fell down dead.