On the back of Shadowmane, Calvartem crested a hill and stopped on top of it. From there he could see the town of interest. The town itself was walled, with walls about 4 metres tall, with several guards watching the gates for the flow of traffic. Inside the walls houses were crowded together, which formed many tight alleyways. There was also an open section amidst the houses, which was likely a plaza where market was held. Roughly in the middle stood the castle, with more walls, this time 8 metres high, and parapets. Outside the town were numerous farm houses, complete with farms. Calvartem considered his strategy. The first walls would be a problem to get past. One option would be to dash through the gates before they can be closed and then summon walkers from with-in. This surprise attack may give him an advantage, but it ran the risk of trapping him in with an unknown enemy force. Another option would be to slaughter the people of the farms, raise their dead, then merge them into Breaker to get through the gates, but this would take time and they could arrange a defence. A third option would be to raise a smaller hoard outside, jump over the walls and open the gates from with-in himself.

He was still weighing up his options when the light changed. The pure white light, which Calvartem found sickly, which bathed the land suddenly became blood red. Looking to the sky, he saw that the sun had also turned red, tinting the sky that colour too. Keeper and human alike would recognise such an event as an apocalyptic omen, although only one group would be pleased with such a sign. Spurred on by this event, Calvartem brandished his staff and Shadowmane galloped towards the farmhouses. Circling around one house, Calvartem waved his staff over the ground, releasing tendrils of black fire which snaked their way over the ground until they found buried bodies. A couple of humans rose from two graves and a dead dog came to life as well. Calvartem left the walkers to do what they did to the inhabitants of the house as he quickly made his way to the next house, and the next one. Meanwhile the guards, who had also seen the sun turn red, saw a skeletal wizard riding on a horse of shadows raising corpses from the ground, so they rose the alarm and closed the gates. In just a couple of minutes Calvartem had visited four houses and gone back to each of them to raise the slain occupants as walkers and amass them towards the gate.

In this time the town guard had been alerted to the crisis and they too were amassing. Two musketeers stood on the wall above the gate, and a line of soldiers stood ready to defend behind the gate. As the hoard approached the musketeers fired, one shot striking a walker and one striking Shadowmane. Neither shot seemed to slow down either target, so the musketeers were left to quickly reload. Calvartem drew near to the gate well ahead of the hoard, and as he did he blasted one of the musketeers off the wall with a black fireball. Without breaking pace, Shadowmane then leaped up, landed with amazing precision on top of the wall and turned towards the other musketeer. This soldier, surprised and terrified at the tall horse and the skeleton riding on it which was now standing right in front of him, abandoned his attempt to reload and drew his sabre. He was not able to use it as Shadowmane trotted forwards and nudged him off the wall, causing him to tumble head-first into the cobbles below.

As Calvartem looked down at the ex-musketeer a crossbow bolt ricocheted off one of his ribs, shattering it inside his robe, and a fireball narrowly missed Shadowmane. This injury annoyed Calvartem more than it inconvenienced him, so he spurred Shadowmane to jump down in front of the gatehouse, which was a bit down an alley to the main road where the soldiers were waiting. Calvartem swiftly dismounted and entered through the door of the guardhouse. He laid a hand on a surprised guard with-in and cast his dark magic directly into the guard. The guard's skin rapidly wrinkled and greyed as he was rapidly aged to death. Two seconds later, once the guard had died, Calvartem converted him into a walker and withdrew his hand, in time to throw up a brief shield of shadow to block the second guard's sword. The first guard, who was still armed despite being a zombie, threw himself at the second guard and ran him through. At a wave of his staff, Calvartem possessed the second guard and sent both of them out the door to slow down the soldiers who were now closing in on his position.

Have bought himself a couple of spare moments, Calvartem approached the large wooden wheel which, by means of pulleys, opened and closed the gate. Calvartem grabbed hold of the wheel and turned it, and after several revolutions of the large wheel it jerked to a halt, indicating that the door was fully open. Outside he heard the soldiers stop as they heard the gate open and the uneven footsteps of his walker hoard enter the town.

Walking outside, Calvartem saw the soldiers assembled in the alleyway, with their rear end fighting back the newly arrived walkers and the front end advancing towards him and Shadowmane over the dismembered bodies of the two walker-guards. The nearest soldier, protected by a shield, raised his sword to strike Calvartem but was too slow as Calvartem fired a ball of black fire at the guard under his sword. The fireball exploded, knocking back and dazing the soldiers and giving Calvartem time to mount up upon Shadowmane. With a wave of his staff, tendrils of black fire threaded their way through the air to the two slain walkers on the ground. The black fire quickly knitted the limbs together and replaced missing muscle with magic, restoring the walkers to fighting condition in the middle of the group of soldiers. In the chaos that ensured, Shadowmane leaped over the soldiers on his front, landed behind the soldiers on the opposite front and charged through, pushing down the soldiers and parting the walkers. As soon as Shadowmane had passed the walkers dived upon the fallen soldiers. The alleyway was now a melee of blades, fire, hands and teeth, the red lighting making it seem even more bloody. After a quick glance, Calvartem cast his summoning magic again, restoring three walkers and raising two slain soldiers.

Calvartem looked up the main road. The civilians were nowhere to be seen- they must be either holed up inside their houses or evacuated deeper into the town- but another unit of soldiers was assembling at the far end. Calvartem would have laughed if his fleshless physiology had made that a natural action. There would be much more of this battle ahead, and a gloriously bloody battle it would be.