The Northern Approach Read Online Free PDF

failed them. Their weapons were set too low for the shape of the cliff. They set it in a hurry.”
    Kneeling beside one of the halflings—a woman probably no older than thirty—Raeln gently closed her eyes to keep her from staring at him accusingly. From what he could see of her wounds, it was not the stones or the explosion that killed her. The woman’s body bore clear signs of claws ripping at her and teeth biting and tearing at her flesh. Most of the bites looked like human teeth from what he could make out.
    “The army already came through. This wasn’t just a couple zombies out for a walk,” he noted, pointing at the bites. Turning in place, he pointed at hundreds of footprints in the mud around them.
    “Raeln, if we lose the four people here, we have already failed,” On’esquin reminded him, drawing a sword he had brought. “I may not know much of what I’m looking for, but we need those four according to the texts. Lead the way and hurry.”
    Drawing his own sword, Raeln pushed on toward the pass. The going was slow for the first twenty minutes, mostly because of to the deep mud from the stream and fallen stones blocking much of the pass. Eventually, the path cleared, his sight limited only by the trees that filled much of the narrow gap between sheer cliffs.
    The farther they went, the more corpses lay among the trees. Most were dead in the conventional sense, hacked or torn apart and left to rot where they fell, while a handful appeared to have been dead a long time. The regular corpses varied greatly, ranging from humans, wildlings, elves, dwarves, and even an orcish woman, whose axe was still lodged in the forehead of a human zombie that lay as still as she did.
    The moon had already come up by the time the pass began to widen, opening up into sparse trees on the far side. What Raeln saw beyond brought him to an abrupt halt and nearly caused him to drop his weapon.
    Hundreds of bodies were everywhere in a large, flat area between the mountains, illuminated by moonlight. For as far as he could see, corpses lay among smashed tents and hovels that appeared to have been trampled flat. Though the bodies filled the valley, the vast majority lay in a tight circle around the broken remains of one larger tent to one side. That single location held at least a hundred corpses, most of which were facing in toward the tent, as though a group had held off the undead for hours. It was also that tent that smoked endlessly, the canvas apparently having collapsed onto a fire.
    At the south end of the valley, a low mist hung in the air ominously, obscuring Raeln’s view of that area. As he watched it, the mist moved in odd lurches, sparkling and almost glowing faintly in the moonlight. Something about it made his skin itch and he instinctively scratched at the skin near his silver bracelet. “What is that?” he asked, pointing at the mists. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    On’esquin followed his finger and then backed away a step. “That is why we first began following the prophecy’s suggestions. Your sister died to keep that from getting stronger than it is. We will need to avoid it at all costs.”
    Raeln eyed the cloud a little longer and realized it reminded him of something he had seen once before. During the fall of Lantonne, a massive hole in the air had lingered north of the town, created by the foolish use of magic. That hole had attacked and killed a dragon—once thought immortal—using black tendrils that sprang from within it. Ilarra had died with one of the dragons attempting to close it.
    What stood out to Raeln was the sparkling glow. He had seen that same thing on the edges of the black hole when it began scooping up magic from the world around it. It had glowed almost exactly the same when it had torn the first dragon apart and consumed it. This was somehow an extension of what he had seen there.
    “Why is that here?” he asked, trying to figure things out. The cloud was dangerous,