Ultimately, escaping the Undead’s encirclement wasn’t a significant problem. By noticing it early enough, we had managed to avoid the original encirclement and once we were on the move, the Undead simply couldn’t keep up.

That didn’t mean we had been able to simply traipse off into the night, whistling and skipping all the way, but it meant that we could slip away quietly, once we got enough distance. Though, the ‘enough’ was quite the stretch, one that was far longer than I had expected. Not because the Undead themselves were a problem but due to the chittering I had picked up, it wasn’t just one racoon that chittered and, from what I could hypothesise, direct the Undead. There were dozens of them, or at least enough to coordinate pursuit and attack from multiple directions, even as we ran away.

A part of me suspected Alex, by virtue of the shared race between her and the guiding racoons but I had never heard her use that strange not-sound chittering, so I wasn’t truly confident in my suspicion. More to the point, I had noticed that the chittering racoons all had those dimly glowing eyes, a glow eerily similar to the one that had been eroding Alex when Lia had turned her into a vampire, pushing that magic back. Either way, I would keep an eye on Alex and their behaviour. It might be that they were some sort of spy, plant or other danger, maybe even an entirely unwitting one, but I doubted it. It simply didn’t fit with the manner in which we had encountered the racoon, for that encounter to be anything but a coincidence would require an incredible amount of foresight to set up. It felt far more likely that it had been just that, happenstance and the other racoons had been hunting us for their own reasons.

Or they had been hunting us because Alex was with us, in an effort to hunt down a traitor to their kind, or something along those lines. I certainly could see a group of humans trying to hunt down one of their numbers if they were turned into a vampire and would possibly give away important secrets of theirs. Or even just turn into an obstacle, Alex’s behaviour had indicated that they were just as capable as I was in regards to perceiving the chittering, which I considered important. I wasn’t sure yet what that not-noise actually was but when I asked Lia about it, she had no idea and similarly, Silva hadn’t indicated she noticed anything either. That almost confirmed my conjunction, with only the token sliver of paranoid doubt remaining.

Sadly, that didn’t tell me what the chittering actually was. It might simply be a method to communicate amongst themselves, one that would normally remain undetected, or it might be something else.

Possibly a method to control and coordinate the Undead, which was a rather scary idea, one that was indicated by the magical glow that was shared between the Undead and the racoons. In addition, the chittering had kept up with us for quite some time as we fled, only ceasing once we truly escaped. Or we had managed to escape the chittering, which caused the Undead to abandon their pursuit.

In addition, I had noticed that by the time the chittering ceased to follow us, the Undead were once again led by Shattered, not the other type of Undead, with their dimly green glowing eyes.

There certainly was a pattern there, the only problem was, I had no idea what the pattern indicated. There were quite a few possible connections but which were coincidence, which were linked by causation and which were correlation, I had no idea. And even if I began to assume causation, I wasn’t sure of the link’s direction. Did the green glow of the racoons cause the green glow in the Undead or did the green glow of the Undead cause the racoons to develop it? Or was it caused by a different source we had yet to encounter, one that controlled both sides? It was an interesting conundrum, one that I wanted to solve at some point.

Either way, we had continued onwards throughout most of the night, only looking for shelter on the outskirts of town when it became clear that we wouldn’t be able to get to our lair before the sun rose. With each passing day, the nights were getting shorter, something that annoyed me greatly but, sadly, there was nothing I could do about that just yet. Maybe one day, maybe I would be able to perform something similar to the conjuration of a frozen storm the Nidhögg had performed on Mundus, an attempt to shroud the world in eternal night, bringing about an endless winter. Or maybe that was a rather bad idea, it might be easier to just get a very wide and sturdy parasol or something along those lines. Would certainly be easier to market to my fellow survivors, even if their opinions wouldn’t really matter during an eternal night. They would be far too busy dying to register their displeasure with me.

Our new shelter was just as comfortable as one would expect. It had all the amenities of home, dirty floors, rubble, broken glass, destroyed appliances, everything one would never wish for. However, it had the one thing that truly mattered, namely, it had shelter from the sun.

Once we were all situated and reasonably comfortable, I realised something, something that made me gag just a little.

“You know, I think we need to wash our new companion. No disrespect for racoons, but I have no idea where Alex has been, what they did there or through what sort of garbage they crawled to meet us,” I told Lia, looking at the trash panda that had curled up on her lap. A trash panda she was happily petting, that had ridden on her acting like a scarf around her neck and that she had cuddled for some time after turning them into a vampire. All without washing their fur.

Lia had the grace to look disgusted at the realisation, even if Alex didn’t look overly interested in the idea of a bath.

“Alex, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll not make a mess, nor will you struggle or act in any way opposed to getting bathed. If you do, I’ll channel enough Cold into the water I conjure to turn you into a frozen ferret. If you act appropriately, allow Lia to scrub you, wash your pelt and make sure you are clean, I’ll make the water comfortably warm and will dry your pelt afterwards.” I had to hide a grin when Alex visibly wilted from my words, cementing the fact that they understood English well enough.

Their understanding started to make me wonder how it came about. I doubted that normal racoons had been able to understand people on an intellectual level before the change, but now, that obviously had, well, changed. But to truly understand the language, not just the concept of a language but to learn English? It was rather weird and gave rise to quite a few questions. If the racoons here had learned English, did that mean that other critters had done so, too? And why English? Was it based on location at the time of the change, with the location somehow being saturated in the voices of the English-speaking people all around the area? Or had the racoons simply heard English the most before the change and somehow learned it due to that? It was an incredibly interesting question when considering the mechanics of the system but sadly, it was also one that I doubted was answerable. At least not without a great deal of study, studying that would most likely be impossible.

Impossible questions aside, with Alex suitably subdued, we all ventured into the laundry area of the cellar we were squatting in. There, it was decided that we shouldn’t just wash Alex, but that we should also wash ourselves, our clothes and everything else that had been in contact with the Undead. There was no question that those things were disgusting, after over thirty days of decomposition that was an undeniable fact, and every remnant of their presence should be cleansed, either with fire or with flowing water.

Given that bathing in fire was out, we had to make do with streams of conjured water, heated to the best of my ability. There was a bit of irony in the fact that it took me almost as much magic to wash the four of us, our clothes and everything in warm water as it had taken me the night before, to conjure up a good-sized cloud that rained down destruction on our foes. Just another demonstration of the difference made by affinity, and just how little of it I had in regard to Fire, and to a lesser degree Water, Magic. Maybe I should put a large amount of effort into those lesser affinities in an attempt to push them beyond certain unknown thresholds before reaching the first divide. It might give me traits or titles that improved my lacking affinity, greatly enhancing my abilities.

Something to consider, especially with the time I was forced to take in advancing my level due to the lack of suitable enemies.