In the middle of the plain darkened by the night, Cristofer's body broke free from the ice that had restrained his muscles and lunged at Ebony, who defended herself with her enormous shield.
The small blonde clung to the heavy metal that stood between her and the teeth of her companion infected with the zombie curse.
But as she endured each impact from Cristofer's body, skeleton soldiers began emerging from the nearby forest, each carrying a small wooden shield in one hand and a rusted sword in the other.
Ebony didn't have many choices. She couldn't run, or the undead skeletons might end up killing her infected ally.
"This is bullshit!" Ebony shouted, then with a leap shoved Cristofer to the ground. Once there, she dropped the heavy shield onto his chest, the weight enough to keep the semi-zombie pinned.
"Now it's your turn, boneheads." Without wasting time, the blonde took off running to face the bones as they crossed the river separating the plain from the forest.
Using the terrain to her advantage, she managed to knock down the first one struggling through the water. Grabbing its armed arm with a hard pull, she tore it off completely, with only thin strands of flesh still clinging between the bones.
"(In the original game these bastards were a pain in haunted castles, most of the time you'd break their ribs or whatever, but their weakness is the fire burning inside their heads)" Ebony thought as she wiped the hilt.
By ripping off her enemy's arm, she managed to keep the rusted sword. Now armed, she began smashing the soldiers' skulls one by one as they tried to cross the river.
The skeleton soldiers had purple flames in their eyes. That magical fire was actually their soul, burning as fuel to move their joints.
With every strike from the blonde, skulls shattered and released bursts of purple fire. The higher a skeleton's level, the bigger the explosion, making high-level ones perfect living bombs.
But luckily for Ebony, despite being alone against twenty skeletons, none of them were particularly high-level.
After a few minutes of crushing skulls, the young woman wiped the sweat from her forehead and returned to her restrained companion.
"You'd better still be where I left you, you bastard, because—" Ebony stopped mid-sentence when she reached the spot and saw her shield on the ground and bloody footprints leading away. "…I'm not going to look for you… shit…"
With her shield on her back, she began following the trail. She tried to focus, using her passive ability to detect life like all Healers, hoping to find her nearly dead companion.
But she couldn't sense any presence. Cristofer's body had long since stopped emitting life to be detected, yet it also didn't emit that existential void typical of the undead.
He was practically undetectable, stuck in a limbo between life and un-death.
Ebony tried to sharpen her vision as she followed the trail, but with it being night she could barely make out the ground beneath her feet. She even tripped over a stone.
"Shit! Why aren't there flashlights when you need them!" Ebony yelled as she kept moving, despite the stumbles and the darkness that was steadily taking over.
Until, after several minutes of walking across the plain, she saw a light in the distance, small and far away.
The footprints led there, so she started running, thinking that the idiot zombie had surely gone toward the light like a moth. And just like a moth, he was heading toward a flame that could end up consuming him.
The closer she got, the clearer her view became. It was a lantern set atop a wooden sign, a sign that read "Midnight Inn."
A bad feeling ran down Ebony's spine. She didn't know what that pressure in her chest was, like being suffocated by a future that could mean her death.
But ignoring that fleeting fear of imminent death, she pressed on, quickening her pace until she finally saw Cristofer. He stood in front of the wooden door of that three-story building.
The zombie seemed hesitant, restless, yet also curious, as if something inside that place was drawing him in with such force that it made him slam the wood with brute strength.
With every blow, Ebony's heart felt like it stopped. With every blow, a presence drew closer, a dark presence that ruled that place.
"(You stupid piece of shit! Don't do that, don't knock on the door… please stop knocking on the door! Idiot!)" the blonde thought as she rushed closer.
Without losing a second to thought or shouting, Ebony leapt onto the zombie, grabbing his arms to keep him from knocking again. Her strength was enhanced, so she managed to restrain Cristofer.
But even so, the presence she feared arrived at the door and slowly moved the wood aside, revealing the interior.
Not even the eyes of a nocturnal animal could have seen anything in the darkness that lay within that inn. It was like staring at the absence of existence itself.
From within that darkness, a leg stepped onto the porch. It wore a black leather boot adorned with silver raven-shaped decorations.
A figure appeared before the blonde: a long cloak, a wide-brimmed hat, black hair and white eyes, skin pale as death, and the presence of a true monster, superior even to Richard.
"Well, well, who's knocking on the door of my inn…" the tall man asked in a calm voice, his tone polite, almost noble.
"No, no… I-I n-no…" Ebony tried to speak, tried to form a sentence, to organize even a single thought, but she couldn't. All she managed was to step backward, dragging her friend with her.
"No?" the man asked again, his expression dissatisfied.
At that moment, not even Cristofer, lacking full consciousness, could make a sound from the instinctive fear he felt before that presence.
Step by step, Ebony managed to pull both herself and her companion out of the inn's porch.
Then the man looked at the girl seriously. His white eyes were like clouds inside his sockets, clouds gently swirling.
"I'll let this annoyance slide, but I suggest you don't knock on the door of one of my establishments again if you don't wish to lose your soul, little girl," the man said as he adjusted his hat and turned away.
"And…" the man added before crossing the threshold, "remember that here we judge no one, not even Visitors, so don't hesitate to pay for a room if you so desire."
After those gentle, soft-spoken words, the man entered the building and carefully closed the door behind him, making sure not to slam it.
A few seconds later, the presence vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. At that moment, Ebony released Cristofer from her arms. He himself was trembling like an animal driven by instinct to flee.
After a moment, the young blonde ended up vomiting from the immense magical pressure she had barely escaped by sheer luck, because that man was a necromancer.