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When Thindhul rode to Telarian's side, the Knight Commander asked, "Do you sense a threat?"

The diviner shrugged, "Perhaps we have stumbled upon the epicenter of some terrible genocidal ritual. However, that heap has the look of something assembled after the bodies were petrified."

"Either way, nothing to do with us, correct?"

The Keeper replied, "If that statue sitting on its pretty seat maintains any cognition whatsoever, perhaps it can provide us with directions."

Thindhul's mouth opened with a surprised gape. He said, "Is that wise?"

Telarian fixed the Commander with a wintry look, saying nothing.

Thindhul stuttered, shook his head, and finally declared, "I shall send someone to inquire."

The Knight Commander turned and gestured to one of the vanguard. "Knight Dilthari, ascend that heap and investigate."

An elf woman dismounted, gave the reins to a companion, and approached the heap.

She walked the periphery of the cone, looking for the best route to ascend the pile of rigid bodies.

The figure on the throne suddenly stood from its seat and looked down at Dilthari, just as the violet flame on the ceiling flared to three times its original luminosity. The figure, as naked and roughly preserved as all the other figures, absorbed that light across its hard surface in discrete patterns that resembled regalia and clothing. It was revealed as wearing a crown of light and a luminescent cape, and it brandished a long staff of streaming effulgence.

It coughed a plume of dust, then mumbled something to Dilthari in a language unknown to Telarian. The tone made it seem a question. The diviner quickly essayed a charm of language comprehension, as the figure spoke again.

This time, Telarian caught part of its question, "… more subjects whose salvaged essence can fuel my elaborate mechanisms?"

Dilthari continued to stare up, uncomprehending. Telarian shouted, "Stand away, Knight!"

The figure, despite its fossilized limbs, pointed down the slope with its intangible staff. Dilthari scrambled backward. The other Knights of the vanguard unlimbered crossbows and fumbled to fit bolts.

Dilthari gasped as if punched in the stomach and ceased moving. She half turned her gaze back to Telarian, surprise dawning across her features. To the diviner's eyes, it seemed as if the Knight exhaled a thin streamer of mist from her nose and mouth. The streamer flowed through the air toward the crowned one, who snared it with his blazing staff. Dilthari's flesh instantly cooled and paled to the color of salt. She toppled, becoming one more rigid carcass among the thousands of inert, fossilized bodies. As she struck the previously hardened corpses, her outstretched arm broke off at the shoulder with an unnerving report.

Even as Thindhul screamed, "Attack!" a volley of bolts battered the creature with such force it overbalanced and fell from sight off the back of the heap.

Telarian waited to hear the creature crash down, but several heartbeats of silence dashed his expectation. Instead, the dusty, dry voice mumbled from behind the heap. "Wake, wake, wake my sleepy ones! Open your dull eyes and stand-your prophet commands it! Dream no more in lonely exile!"

"By the Sign!" screamed Thindhul. The rubble on which the Knights rode began to shudder, heave, and crack. Every fossilized corpse scattered across the buried city's central hub, and all the way down the road along which the Knights were assembled began to twitch. Each became a terror of eon-hardened hunger.

A tsunami of screams scratched from a thousand rock throats. The noise slammed through the Knights, threatening to break even their renowned valor. The howls were of damned souls thrust suddenly back into bodies completely foreign to them. The hellish sound was one the survivors would hear echoing through their trances all the rest of their days.

Nis was in Telarian's hand a moment later, dashing his rising panic as water to a flame. Logic, cold and untethered to emotion, become his only companion. As Knights pulled their weapons and began to slash at the stoic undead that rose as