Asd brought up the rear while professor Mona led them past the collapsed form of massive pillars and rock outcroppings. This place, wherever it was, gave Asd a creepy feeling, one of desolation and loss and it shook him to the very depths of his bones. But the main thing that truly rankled him was the silence, it was eerie and unsettling, there was the occasional howl of the wind, but even that wasn't enough to offset the desolation the silence brought, if anything it actually enhanced it.
With the storm seemingly surrounding this piece of land in the sky, there was no sunlight or moonlight, so it was quite hard to tell what time of the day it was. There was a gloom to the location as it seemed like twilight or dusk. The sounds of their footfalls seems resound around their environment, and the soft howl of the wind seemed to lead them, except of course Asd couldn't tell which direction the wind was coming from and which direction it was heading to. It was just… 'everywhere' or at least that was what he thought until he picked up a scent.
He paused, his nose a little upturned in the air as he tried to make sense of what he was smelling. The scent was sickly sweet yet extremely rotting. It smelt a little bit like embalming fluid; the stuff they used to preserve dead bodies, yet at the same time it smelt like rot with a dash of rose. The smell had come out from nowhere, and in just mere seconds Asd could smell it all around them. his pause had caught the attention of his comrades as Professor Mona and the satyr children turned around to look at him.
"What's wrong Asd?" the professor asked, as she took a careful glance at their surroundings, hoping to discover what had caused Asd to pause. But for a moment Asd didn't answer as the scent seemed to start moving.
"There's something… or someone else here than just us. We just walked into its or their territory, I can smell them." his words got all of them alert as a flash of light went up and down the cane that was in Professor Mona's hands, runes lighting up from the tip to the base as she asked.
"Where are they?" Hansel asked, his small voice definite and strong in the silence as he moved closer to his friend, the only answer he got from Asd however, was.
"Everywhere." And that was all the warning they got as creatures standing at five to seven foot in height rushed out from corners of the rocks, above it, underneath it and even from within it. Shocking Asd by their sudden appearance as he noticed the flesh rotting of their scaled and furred body. Asd immediately noticed that the scent was similar amongst all of them but distinct to both the furred creatures and the scaled ones. But be that as it may, there was one thing they all had in common, and that was their rotting flesh, red eyes and lifeless heart. They were undead… and not the good kind like vampires.
Asd took a step back and swung the butt of the mana rifle in his hands at the head of the furred like zombies. It had a canine shaped head, but it was nothing like the werewolves, fox kin, and dog kin that he was used to. The butt resounded with a loud crack as it dislodged the head of the undead monster and the rest of its body subsequently turned to dust, leaving behind a red crystal within a pile of ashes.
*Scriririririririri!!*
Loud screeches came out of the mouth of the other undead as Asd killed the first, unsettling the young Werelion and his companions as all four of them had extremely sensitive hearing. One of the lizard undead twirled its body as a meter and a half long rotting reptilian tail came flying for Asd's direction. He jumped above it and swung the rifle again, but it seems this were not your average zombies as the lizard like monster took a step back and even leaned its head out of the way to avoid the strike, giving room for its comrade to pounce in next.
"Fire Ring!" professor Mona's voice resounded like a clap of thunder as a ring of fire surrounded them all, cutting them off from the undead creatures, with a few unlucky ones being caught in the blaze of the flames and dying in the process, leaving nothing but ash and different colored gemstones in the process.
"Asd! There are too many of these things for us to make a run for it, and not nearly enough firepower between the both of us for us to make a stand. We need to make a perimeter that they can't breach and then pick them off one by one!" Professor Mona said as she drew closer to Asd, every step she took causing the earth to vibrate and the ring of fire to flare up and lash out at the zombies that were still trying to find a way through the flames. Many of them walked right into their deaths, leaving nothing behind but ash and a gem.
"What are these things?" Asd asked as a particularly clever lizard like undead climbed one of the massive rock outcroppings and jumped, hoping to clear the height of the three-meter-tall flames and jump right into their middle to cause as much havoc as possible. Unfortunately for it, Asd had sharper senses than most Weres as he turned in one smooth motion and put a bullet into its head, and another through the heart of the comrade that had followed closely behind it.
"now's not the time for questions and answers Asd! I need you to learn how to make a Rune formation right now and apply it. You just need two runes, Fire and mana. We don't have much time!" Professor Mona said as she turned to move elsewhere, only for Asd to grab her by the arm and asked with his teeth gritted and anger in his eyes, asking again with steel in his voice.
"What are these fucking creatures Priestess Mohali of the Moon Elves!" professor Mona blanched at the way he had addressed her as her eyes took on an edged glint. But it was only there for a few seconds before she answered him.
"These are Kobolds and Dragon Kins. Two races of Beast people that went extinct when the incursion into the Beastmen continent began some thousand years ago. They are the only two races that share a similar ancestry as opposed to other Weres…. They're descended from Dragons!" Asd felt his heart skip a beat, but Mona did not stop there.
"And if these are Kobolds and Dragon-Kins then without a doubt, this place… all these rocks have to be…. The Lost Isles…. This is the Lorian Archipelago!"