[b]Marching Orders; Road to Nubina - 19th Day, Dusk[/b]
 
 
For a moment, Hild found herself wishing that she could say the attack was a surprise. But in truth, the creeping sense of dread that had crawled its way up her spine as time rolled by said otherwise; she was only surprised that it had no come sooner, and she only regretted that she hadn't been able to sense them sooner.
 
The environment was... Difficult. Hild gritted her teeth as she dismounted carefully from her horse. She sent it on its way, and prayed that her uneasiness was not visible to those she had deposited herself among. [i]A priest should stand strong, not quiver and bend in the wind of conflict,[/i] she chastised herself, perhaps overly harshly; She was neither quivering nor bending. She was simply weary.
 
Blasted, fetid trees and hoarse whispers in the dark condemning her gods and her people had been the chorus of her dreams. The lingering hum of the environment was only just beginning to become a sort of background noise, taking the place of the noise of wildlife in her senses. It was a tainted slice of the world, and the foulness that threatened to make her nauseous with its disconcerting ringing in her skull had deprived her of some sleep. Gradual exposure over several days of travel made it significantly more tolerable, but it had only recently lost its cloying edge. Not soon enough to warn of the dead, evidently, but nevertheless.
 
The sensation of grinding in her ears had stopped, at least, and with the coming of their bloated enemy, clarity had begun to return to her senses. [i]Better the foulness of dead things than the hopelessness of dead air, [/i] Hild decided as she tracked the encroaching noise. An awful screech like the ring of steel -ghouls, she recognized- was followed at a slower pace by an unholy caterwaul and thrumming in her bones. That was likely the sheer push and presence of other undead things.
 
[i]Let them come.[/i]
 
Hild's staff thumped once against the dirt, before swaying to and fro to bump softly against knees. Shuffling to her left, the priest of Nethelin nodded as the whistle of arrows became the pattering of impacts on both the solid and the soft. She turned, and vacated the area with a slow and steady strut until the noise was more distant and a quiet guilt had ceased to gnaw. She was safe behind a greater force, quieter and less discontent. Veterans, like herself. Her human shield was thus deemed satisfactory, and she settled down. The priest would have gladly crushed any that came for her with her staff, but her place was not among the brunt of the hungry dead, even as others died or were broken.
 
Her presence was largely meant to be seen, rather than felt, in times such as this. Her armor served her little, and though she was capable of being dreadfully effective, she would not lose herself to arrows and simple chaos. With a deep and steadying breath, the follower of the death god contemplated the beat of her heart and the noise of metal, and waited for her time.
 
Sure enough, the ghouls came with the scrabbling of claws and the screech of horrendous hunger that defied words. Tucking her head, Hild hummed a low hymn beneath her breath, and felt that familiar press of power. The somber notes were lost within the raucous, but so was Hild, and so it did not matter; all that mattered was that she focused. The scrabbling and noise was growing closer.
 
Closer. She could feel their noise dying as they were returned to the grave, but still they came in small but deadly numbers, pressing with the hunger of starved and rabid predators and lost, dead things.
 
There. Hild bared her teeth, and allowed the somber noise of her prayer to Nethelin grow loud in her throat. She could feel the impact beside her as one of the beasts threw itself over the heads of veteran warriors, one of the few to reach so far. It turned, then seized. Doubtlessly, it was feeling the weight of Nethelin's presence, his aura.
 
It winked out with a sharp crack of her staff before it could find its footing again. It had only been a minor diversion of her focus a few moments before, to utter a prayer so that it struck with enough force -even for its usual unnatural strength- that the ghoul's head was shattered. The creature's presence had been vivid with proximity, and its positioning was known almost instinctively. Its hunger had been felt in the ringing of her bones, and it was a relatively simple matter to flick the staff up, and end the beast with a harsh jab.
 
Another landed, losing its celerity as it withered and faltered, and felt the same bone-shattering force. And then another. There was a shiver on the back of Hild's neck. Something was wrong. The noise of the world returned to the forefront with all the subtlety of a battering ram against her eardrums. Cacophonous ringing, hoarse screams, the noise of men and women dying and weapons biting flesh and bone, the trampling of feet. Cries for retreat. Retreat?
 
Hild squeezed her staff until her hand ached, and ground it into the floor. [i]Unacceptable.[/i] Whatever the cause was, it was absolutely [i]unacceptable.[/i] "To Nethelin goes the first bastard who turns his back! There is no retreat, only a slower death!" she barked, hefting her metal instrument of bludgeoning into her grasp once more. In truth, not many aimed to retreat. It was a remarkably disciplined force, and the presence veterans at their backs only hardened their resolve. Her words simply served to give further surety.
 
Hild refocused, and felt the cold kindness of her lord grasping at her once again. The wall of noise continued relentlessly, hammering through the more mundane commotion of men and women like a pick to stone. [i]A breach. How? Curs, swine, bilious filth unfit for this realm, let them all be damned...[/i] Thus was her internal litany, as externally her god was exalted by the hymn of an old language. The dead were far, far too close for comfort, and far too numerous for the weight of Nethelin to crush them without remorse, but she did not falter.
 
The power of Nethelin was quiet. It was not the noise and blast of a more human magic, or a more bombastic god. It was [i]presence[/i], the chill of the grave and the rest of the dead. The noise of the dead who drew too close sputtered, rasped, and disappeared, and those who lingered were cut down swiftly by soldiers amidst their confusion. She could hear the way their unlife resonated as they coalesced in greater numbers, as the presence of things fouler than the normal undead -the Undying- tethered them tighter to the world. They were too dense in numbers and power for her lord to simply seize them all and cast them away.
 
But still, his presence could pluck at that resonance like strings being strummed by the hand of a child. An unholy melody became discordant desperation, and she knew that the undead who were farther away yet still near were feeling the consequences. Whatever little formation they had was crumbling, and the surety of purpose was failing. The undead did not know fear, but the weakest of them lacked a coherence of their own, and so their driving force began to crumble.
 
Men and women rallied around the master priest of Nethelin who had seen fit to grace the area, aware of her presence and her effect upon the undead. Weapons rattled and voices more charismatic than her own took up cries, and she firmed her resolve once more in her little island of protection. [i]Be seen, stand strong.[/i]
 
She turned her sense for foul things towards the search for the hidden Undying. Their destruction would not mean the destruction of the undead, but they were the truest threat hidden within the ravenous horde. She could [i]feel[/i] them, sharper and more nauseating than the presence of the base filth, and she made their locations known with sharp, precise barks, as she had done in other battles. Her voice was hoarse with long years of growled threats and hollered litanies, and those nearby who were experienced with such commands and such seasoned voices moved in response almost instinctively.
 
And so she stood, weakening the undead and warning of the fouler things, surrounded by those that found a bastion in faith. She had her part in this chaos; she would stand vigilant.