The Vervanian scouts followed the Vikara trail for five days. While the scouts of Vervania were master trackers, capable of finding a mouse after a rainstorm. Vikara tracking was a simple matter. Like most goblinoid races, their floppy feet made for easy tracking. Through the thick woodlands toward the south, they followed the tracks to the edge of the border of Selatan.

The thick woodlands continued on for another ten miles before shifting to a rocky landscape. Caverns and tunnels both above and below ground spread out across the terrain for hundreds of miles before reaching the mountains. The scouts paused and took a long look at the trail.

"Mikhail?" A young scout called out to the leader.

Unlike the heavily armored guards within the kingdom. The scouts were dressed in dark black and green light weight armor. Made from the same fibers that the palace royals wore, their uniform colors shifted with their surroundings. With swords at the back, seated along their spine, they moved with grace snd stealth.

"Mikhail. What do you make of this?"

The young scout pointed out the Vikara footsteps that led to the border. The oldest of the group, a tall slender man with a speckled short beard and grey eyes inspected the tracks. He looked at them for a long moment before understanding what the younger scout was pointing out. His grey eyes narrowed warily.

"Where did the sixth one go?"

"You two!" Mikhail pointed at a pair of female scouts, the fastest amongst them. "Return to the palace. Be wary of your surroundings. Something is amiss."

The two scouts bowed and took off in a dead run.

Mikhail along with the other three scouts turned their attention to the trail crossing the border.

*****

Pluktu was not the tallest nor the strongest of the Vikara. His rounded body and long gangly arms made him an easy target for striking down. The only thing that gave him the edge over the rest of his kind, was the mage abilities he possessed. While leaders were one in a hundred, mages amongst Vikara were one in a thousand.

Few could harness the powers and few could survive the violent Vikara way of life. Pluktu had and to his bulbous figured luck, had become an asset to the Vikara horde and their general. With his staff made of fused vertebrae and a crystal shard upon the top. He had levitated off the ground, circling back toward the kingdom.

General Kuraya had known that getting into the kingdom through a frontal attack would be pointless. He knew that there was little chance of catching them off guard, unless they could be killed only to be brought back. The crafty mage had spent plenty of time practicing his necromancer abilities. Raising dead animals, then dead orcs and eventually dead Vikara.

Dozens at a time he could reanimated, bringing both their souls and their minds back to life. Pluktu hovered above the field of entombed Vikara. Their burnt and ashen bodies remained whole. Pluktu's robe, made completely of dried human flesh that had been stitched together using horse hair, flapped behind him in the wind.

His dark eyes flashed with the power of the undead. Like all the apparel he wore, it provided him connection to the realm beyond. Ears of races he had killed along many of the Vikara battles hung around his neck. Blue and grey orc ears. Green and pale vikara ears. Black, tan and white human ears. All threaded together making a fleshy necklace.

Speaking in an ancient goblin tongue he called out to the void of death summoning the carriers of souls. Reaching into the pocket of his flesh robe, he pulled free a beating heart. The removed organ pumped and pulsed as though it still circulated vital fluids.

The Vikara mage raised the beating heart up and with spoken words of guttural goblin, he plunged the heart onto the crystal shard. Thick blood trickled over the staff coating the ivory vertebrae, turning the staff a scarlet red. Sigils and symbols lit up along the staff, adding to the power of the growing spell.

The day light faded away as clouds rolled in from nowhere and everywhere. Darkness blotted out the orange sunlight until the sky resembled nightfall.

"Bangkit!" Pluktu shouted. "Bangkit!"

His dark eyes watched as the first drop of enchanted blood left the staff and fell fifty feet down. As the blood reached the soil, a swirling mist of scarlet vapors grew.

"Bangkit! Bangkit!" He screamed in a high pitched guttural snarl.

With each new droplet of blood, the mist grew and widened. From the scarlet mist, arose humanoid figures. Pale red beings that drifted above the ground on wings of bone and flesh. Their legless forms moved across the field of entombed ashen Vikara. As the pale red figures reached out to the dead and fallen, their bodies quickly returned.

The ash and death that consumed their bodies fell away revealing untouched Vikara warriors. Pluktu watched as a complete and whole pale spector walked out from the mist. In its arms it carried the soul of Kuraya. As large as he was in life, the Vikara General's soul in death was just as big.

The pale figure strode up to the ashen general and gently laid the soul within the entombed Vikara General. Moments slipped by before the ash and death eroded and the general broke free from his deathly prison.

"Berperang!" Kuraya screamed, raising his sword up high.

The Vikara warriors who had risen from their ashen graves answered their general's call to war. Pluktu hovered above the sea of Vikara, a God amongst his people. While the spell of resurrection could only work on a person once, that was all it needed to do. He smiled a jagged tooth smile and floated forward.

Raising his staff to the sky. He shouted out to the clouds above sending his willed intent to the gods of war and destruction.

"Hancur!" He screamed unleashing a scarlet beam of energy that dissolved into the clouds.

The sky erupted with thunder and after only a moment, a bolt of lightning crashed down and blew apart the gates of the city.