Kadlin strolled through the brush in the forest, a small group of bodyguards around her, a thousand zombies encircling them, closing in.

“Undead surround me. I will bind them to my will. Your puppets are mine.” Kadlin chuckled at her own haiku as she gathered power, and then sent an orb of magic into the largest clump of zombies. Skeletons merged in with the group. There must have been a mass grave near here somewhere, with bodies laid down with the centuries. The machine was improving in power. Oh well.

As individual zombies closed with her guards, the soldiers attacked with ruthless efficiency. These were some of her elites, not the strongest, but the swiftest and most trained. She had mutated them to be tougher, and then given them the power of dark shadow energy. Their cloaked forms sucked in all nearby light except for glowing, red eyes, and even their scimitars didn’t reflect the little sunlight that made it through the trees.

Normally, making undead was tiring, and finding a supply of corpses was more difficult than it would seem. With this ready supply of zombies, already reanimated if poorly, a lot of the work was done for her. She just had to steal control of them. The way they were halfway resurrected, and poorly bound, it was hardly a challenge.

The nearest zombies charged mindlessly toward her position. They impaled themselves on the bamboo spikes her goblins had set in a circle around her. The next wave charged over the impaled bodies and her guards hacked them to pieces as Kadlin focused on binding the remaining undead, sending out spell after spell.

She was so focused on her work she almost missed the zombie reaching out to grab her. Slit hacked its arm off with crossed shortswords. How had it gotten so- Kadlin looked down at one of her fallen guards, being pummeled by undead. She blasted them all, sending their bodies flying beyond the barricade. “Close ranks!” she ordered. Idiots! She was taking care of undead by the dozen. Couldn‘t they each hold off two or three? At least the black paladin was holding his end without trouble.

A ball of dark energy flew toward the group and slammed against the wards Kadlin had prepared. Kadlin looked up to see a vampire hurling bolts at her, and she lifted up a magical shield to counter. “Slit,” she ordered. "Over there, finish him.” “Yeah,“ said Slit as he disappeared. The vampire was too intelligent for her to bind easily, too stupid for it to see she was the best choice to ally with. It’d have to go. Slit leapt from tree to tree, flew straight at the vampire, and when it brought up a spear to impale him, he teleported behind it, beheading it.

By now her converted hordes of undead were holding back those opposed to her, grappling with them. The opposing undead weren’t fighting her own, recognizing their own kind as allies. Suddenly, they all turned and charged her position. What in the name of… She extended her arcane senses. The machine! However it worked, it had just doubled in power, overriding the binding she’d placed on her undead. She didn’t have the energy to overpower that now. Kadlin motioned for the Black Paladin to mount up. “We’re moving out. Everyone head east and stick together.”

Kadlin gathered power, ready to unleash it in a straight line, enough to open a brief hole in the ranks of undead surrounding her. On her way out, she’d lose several good soldiers and at least a week of time spent improving them. And all for nothing. Kadlin hated waste. Her only consolation was that when she took that machine down, the undead she’d bound would revert to her control again.

Next up- Konall gets another solo piece!