Chronicles of a Mage, Book One

Chapter 3: Fighting

We were just about to head into the forest when I heard the sound of groaning and slow, heavy footsteps and when I turned around I saw what once was a human. It's bloated body took on a sickly green hue and was covered in boils. The zombie was clumsily trying to make it's way towards me with a rusted meat cleaver in it's hand.
"Ew gross, what is that?" Eeuna said, disgusted
"It's a zombie, but now it's target practice" a lone zombie that just happened to climb out of it's tomb. Uncommon, but not odd around here. I drew my hand close to my chest to summon a ball of flame and shot it at the creature.
"Hit"
The ball of flame made a mess out of it's body but didn't kill it. I then spun on my foot and shot another flame which struck it's head and felled the zombie.
In the next 30 minutes we were well within the forest and killed a few more zombies
"Wow, there sure are quite a bit of zombies around here" Eeuna told me
"Well that's because there are so many tombs nearby"
"Tombs?"
"In ancient times, the dead were buried underneath tombs. That all stopped 100 years ago when an extremely powerful mage cast a ritual that turned every corpse in Thele into an undead. There are easily thousands of tombs all across The country and it's earned Thele the moniker of the undead kingdom from other countries."
"You sure know a lot. You'll have to tell me more when-"
"HYAAAH! Take some of this and this!" Eeuna was interrupted by the screaming of a boy fighting zombies with a wood cutting axe. Seeing him in trouble I decided to aid him.
"Here let me help" I said as I put out a couple flame shots and after a quick fight the zombies fell to the ground.
"Hey I had that sorted" He was wearing a a blue shirt and white shorts along with boots. He also held a wood splitting axe which was ill suited for battle.
"Who's this?" Eeuna asked
"I'm Grash and you're- wait I know you, you're that mage down the street." To say we knew each other was an overstatement. We'd seen each other in school a few times but that was the extent of it. Apparently his dad was also some soldier who had seen some fighting and my uncle did some business with him on occasion.
"That I am. I'm here to explore a tomb here. That one would do nicely in fact" I pointed to a round stone structure behind him
"Hey! I was gonna go in there. I gotta prove to my dad I can fight" 
Eeuna gave her thoughts. "Something tells me trying to dissuade him from coming would be trouble. You should team up with him " I was reluctant to go with that but it seemed like the only choice. I could've easily found some other tomb but I wanted to finish this quickly so I could ask uncle about Eeuna.
"Look I need to go in there too so why don't we just help each other out and go in together?" I asked
"No I can't do that. I have to this on my own"
"I can just sit back and watch you fight zombies if that's the case." Uncle never said I had to do this alone and he never said I couldn't let someone else do the fighting.
Grash paused for a moment "Alright, but I don't want to see you cast a single spell"
"Sure." Probably not very reassuring as far as assurances go, but Grash seemed to buy it. 
"Are you really going through with this? I know I suggested you team up but I didn't think it would lead to Grash doing all the work. This feels like cheating." I turned my head away from Grash and whispered
"Just bear with me."