Utterly Mad

Ferrets footing slipped on something beneath the mire. A stone maybe. It was not the first time one of the stones hidden beneath, their surfaces coated in the thick slime of the swamp, had tripped her up. The least she hoped for, was that she wouldn't get stuck again and this time she was pleased to find that she was not. Still, the slip had only added to the water soaking into her clothes and filling her boots. The mosquitoes were not yet an issue, but she knew from Stam's notes that they would be, come evening. Thinking of Stams notes, she realized that her pack would probably be filled with water. She hoped it wasn't, and when she checked the outcome was distinctly opposed to the last time she hoped for something. The water had drained quickly through the seams in her pack, but before doing so had fouled Stam's notes, her grandfathers map, and several other supplies she had brought along. "Bah!" she cried, casting aside most of the contents of her bag. As she did so, she had the feeling that she was no longer alone. She could not yet see them, but she knew they were there all the same. Their kind had followed her through the woods bordering the cold desert. When the sun had set, she thought they would have shown themselves, but they had only whispered or laughed in the dark. The undead. They were thick in this land. Such bodiless spirits as had harassed her in the woods were commonplace, as were the variaty she saw now. Emerging from the thick fog from whence she  came. A group looking almost like old militia men, Wearing the uniforms Gulgatha's ancient regular army. They came in crude formation, a wall of copper chain links and bone. A skeleton from the front suddenly broke away from the group and stopped short by a few feet, brandishing a rusted sabre. "Vaads yeh waads?" came the buzzing whisper from somewhere beneath it's skull. Ferret could't think of what to do. Somehow, these were different than any of the undead she had encountered on this side of breakers endeavor pass. More menacing, yet somehow less threatening. The skeleton stood still, it's saber held at it's side. Words of her tutor came back to her in that moment. "When you speak not the language of the land, and find yourself at the mercy of that lands guardians, raise your open hands to them. It is a gesture of harmlessness, and accepted as such from bright point to the cities of the rat kind and even across the sea in Zantia or the plaguelands." She doubted it would work, but she couldn't possibly take on this many. She raised her hands to the level of her eyes, palms open and facing outwards. There was a long moment. "Vaa-a-adss...s.." It's speaking was labored, and ferret could see that the bones could no longer hold themselves together. The skeleton dropped it's saber, staggered, stumbled on something beneath the murk, and fell apart. The others, had already done similar or were in the process of doing so. "They just can't keep going." Ferret said aloud, lowering her hands. "Just bones in the swamp." She didn't know why, but there was something sad about what she had just experienced. These undead had lain in wait for none knew how long, only to burn through whatever energy held them together and kept them somewhat sentient in the time it had taken them to approach her and seemingly ask a question. They had clung to whatever form of life they now had in the hopes of continued service to whatever master had bound them. The fog thinned then and out in the swamp, she spied an old farm house resting on a barren mudbank well above the water level. The weather had become overcast since that morning earlier when she had looked down at the shrouded ruin in the swamp. She only looked back to where that old contingent had collapsed and though she felt deeply for them, she did not weep for the dead and for the plight they faced after death, and so the sky chose to do so for her.