The Kindred Spirits [AWAITING EDITS]

III

The sun started descending towards the western sky when No got pull out of his thoughts.

"Your lackeys keep buzzing about some zombies?" Rowana's voice tickled his ears and he snapped them back against his head.

"I have no idea if they are zombies. Sometimes they make up stories that they think sound cool. What is a zombie anyway? The word for walking dead?" No said from a sitting position on the rock facing the town.

"Something like that." She said before taking a sit on a rock next to him. "What is the holdup?"

No glanced at her and let out loud exhale of air.

"Have no idea. Something spooked folks at Iren's rebuke. Mentioned something about the dead attacking." He confessed with a shrug.

"You think it's real? I spent a few weeks here trying to convince Ian to come with me ..." She trailed off looking into the distance. "What I am trying to say is they didn't sound like a superstitious lot."

"It is possible but it's quite rare for Anadori to have an affinity for such dark arts. Some Morg shamans can perform magic that could raise dead but from what I heard they outlawed such magic." No said more for his own benefit than to explain it to Rowana. Sometimes hearing the facts is all you need to connect the dots.

"Could it be a human?" She asked leaning forward a bit.

"Hardly. I am the product of human magic and I could smell it from a very long distance." He stopped and scratched his nose. "But lately my nose been failing me. It's this dust everywhere. Finer than sand and it just makes me itchy. Even so, human mages haven't been reborn yet."

"Why are you so sure it will happen, ever?" Rowana's voice was pitched so low No wondered if the question was for him or just an errant thought.

"Master says it will happen very soon, he just doesn't know where."

Their conversation got interrupted by the arrival of a group of Kindred. Four men and two women dressed in white high-tech armor and armed with a variety of weapons. The bruisers as the rest of Kindred called them, ex-military and equipped with best weapons military technology produced. On the head of the bunch stood the man in his later thirties with a shadow of a stubble on his square jaw.

"You called, boss?" He said in a surprisingly gentle voice.

"Captain Fiat, good to see you. Rebuke is closed off for today because of some kind of attack. Possible supernatural in origin. We have to stay safe until tomorrow when they might let us in."

"Secure perimeter and get ready for possible unknown supernatural threat. Aye, aye." Fiat encapsulated slowly. "Any other info we should know about, sir?"

"They mentioned dead attacking. Not confirmed yet."

"Possible code Z. We got ya covered." One of the women yelled a bit too loudly.

"Quite Moria, you will wake up dead with your screeching." One of the other bruisers joked.

"Settle down you bunch of undisciplined apes. And someone bring Chief and Duke out." Fair said firmly without raising his voice.

After small commotion among the Bruisers two large dogs were brought out of the wagons. The canines had harnesses with glowing tubes grafted into their fur.