Emmaline shivered as she watched the ghouls clash and surge around each other. There was something profoundly wrong about them. They were like sharks, filled with instincts and reactions that had long departed from humanity. According to what little she knew ghouls arose from the practice of eating human flesh, something she could all too easily imagine in an out of they way colony on the far side of the world. Weather, crop failure, trouble back home, all could lead to a settlement like this going under and landing the inhabitants in desperate straits. Sss'Tomek had suggested that some dark stranger had arrived but she suspected that the arrival of some greater undead horror had only occurred after the transformations had begun.

“Are there leeches in the river?” Emmaline asked suddenly, recalling going swimming in some of the tributaries of the Riek as a girl, and emerging with several blood sucking black slugs on her body.

“Leeeeessshe?” Sss’Tomek asked and Emmaline waved him away, attempting to explain what a leech was far more effort than she was willing to undertake. Markus would find out in a few minutes she supposed. Sketti was stomping off into the jungle presumably to lay a charge or whatever he had in mind for a distraction and Emmaline settled into wait.


After a subjective eternity Sss’Tomek stiffened and extended a finger. Far below, at the old docks, I saw Markus and his men emerging to shelter beneath the rotted old timbers. Still nothing from Sketti. Time wore on. Still nothing. A mirror flashed to us from the docks as Markus began to grow impatient.

“Steiner go and find what is keeping Sketti,” she told him.

“I’m in command here and I don’t take orders from a woman,” he snapped, clearly under stress from the unexpected delay. Emmaline rolled her eyes and waited till he turned around, then headed off in the direction in which she had seen Sketti go. Sss’Tomek looked at her in alarm but refused to follow, unwilling or unable to break the taboo he had mentioned. Emmaline followed the ridge line for perhaps five minutes until  a strange sound reached her ears. It sound like someone was trying to strangle a smithy bellows, a ragged hissing sound like someone squeezing the air out of a bladder. Following this strange sound, she stepped into a small clearing and found herself confronted with a horrifying sight. A huge serpent, easily thirty feet long and as thick as her bottom was coiled around a very red and desperately gasping Sketti. It’s coils were wrapped around the dwarf and squeezing. Hard. A human  would have been crushed to death by now but the Elder Race was made of sterner stuff. His face was red as a tomato and the muscles that were visible, just his shoulders, were bunched in the incredible effort of resisting the constriction. Even so it could only be minutes before he was crushed to death, his eyes were already protruding alarmingly.

Emmaline let out a shriek of fear and the wheel barrow sized head of the serpent whipped around, red and black scales glistening, to stare at her with its cold serpentine eyes. Emmaline pulled a pistol from her sash and aimed it at the serpent before remembering that a whole army of ghouls were only a few miles off and would very likely hear the shot. She threw the pistol at it instead, the weapon bouncing off one scaly eyebrow and earning her an irritated hiss. The snake strained towards her but could come no closer without letting go of the struggling dwarf.
“Shoo! Shoo!” she yelled at the snake instead, waving her hands at it as though trying to chase away a fly or a mouth. Predictably it had absolutely no effect. Gritting her teeth she began to mutter to herself, gathering golden energy around her hands. The spell was not an easy one, and using it was dangerous but she couldn’t just leave Sketti to be eaten. She extended her arms and… abruptly the snake tattoo on her arm seemed to wake up, lifted its head out of her skin like a cobra, and made a series of sharp hisses. Emmaline had no idea what the little snake said but whatever it was, its giant kinsman was not amused. It opened its mouth and hissed like a boiler, its great coils rippling and loosening, tossing the gasping Sketti aside and launching itself at Emmaline with the force of an oncoming steam tank. Emmaline let out a panicked yip and abortively cast the spell she had been preparing. Unfortunately her hands were now out of position and rather than a beam of golden energy, a bolt of glowing force smashed into the ground flinging her into the air. The serpent struck the earth she had just vacated, plowing the undergrowth aside and body checking her legs, sending her into an undignified tumble. She fell down and landed on the snake's neck instinctively gripping its surprisingly dry scaly body and hanging on for dear life. The already irate serpent went berserk, thrashing and twisting, trying to dislodge it’s unwanted passenger. It hammered through the jungle sending up shrieks of cawing birds and eliciting howls of rage and derision from nearby monkeys.

Down in Crotonburg the ghouls ceased their internecine struggles to look up at the ridge, from which an ungodly noise had erupted. Their hungry eyes watched as the trees and shrubs thrashed, as though a great army were rushing through them. After a moment an enormous snake, apparently being ridden by a woman, burst from the trees, thrashing spastically as it half slithered half tumbled down the hill, the whole display punctuated by flashes of gold light. Even the living dead took a moment to wonder what in the name of all the hells this could mean, then as a group, they howled and rushed to meet the oncoming serpent.