“It’s been three weeks! Why make us wait any longer?” a large man complained in his usual manner.

“I don’t even know why you try? There is no way I’m going to leave my men to be slaughtered in that hell hole” the reply came out of the Rangers mouth almost instantly as if he had predicted the large man.

The predicament the party was in was far from reasonable; half of the companions were decapitated, butchered. Murdered. The few that remained were two rangers, two warriors and only one Monk of healing; none were in good shape to rescue the captives. Suddenly the ranger stood up bow clasped in one hand, everybody looked right at the figure as if waiting for him to save them all.

“That’s it! I can’t wait any longer. There is no way that I’m going to let you give up; we may have been reduced to a few. But are we still alive! We have done enough damage to….” The ranger was abrubtly interrupted.

“You can’t possibly be expecting us to go back and fight like we are? Most of us can’t even stand, let alone hold a sword. Face it SatraFei the morale of our party if you can still call it that, has dropped below satisfactory”

“Have it your way, I am only going to give everyone one day, and only one day to rest, after that i am ordering everyone here to prepare a search and rescue team immediately”

“Obviously you didn’t hear me! No matter how long we rest for, we are outmatched in everyway…” SatraFei cut the Monk off before any more flaws could be stated.

“No you didn’t hear me! I merely said a search and rescue, for what I have planned there will be minimal resistance. I don't want to hear anymore of this, now where’s the grog, I want to enjoy this night for it might be my last.” That night went without a hitch everyone successfully bottled up his or her pain and distaste for what needed to be done at sunrise, and drank themselves to sleep. At sunrise everyone was awake and rested, armor strapped around their bodies and appendages. As the party members got prepared more of them showed out the front ready to take flight.

“You. You will not be requiring such heavy armor. If anything you should rather wear rags so that you can flee as quickly as possible. As I mentioned before this is a search and rescue, we will be in and out too fast to have to fight”

“Yes sir! I’ll change immediately” The warrior left as quickly as he arrived.

“Now! Everybody, there are only few of us here to attend this feat, but this will only work to our advantage, it will be easier to hide our numbers, I have filled Asun in on the details and will appoint you to your jobs. Listen carefully I will be in my tent preparing” Asun was quite an intelligent Monk for his age, he was able to learn extremely fast, therefore he was the perfect assistant. After a short period of time, SatraFei came out cloaked in some sort of dark material. His shoulder revealed a rare symbol, the symbol of the necromancers. It was an unusual sight for at his side was a seemingly innocent Lynx.

“We must leave immediately SatraFei, if we wait too long the enemy will be in defense” On that note the party marched off in single file, every one of them unsure of what may await them.

The party was all in position, laid out in the grass outside the south wall of the Barbarian fortress. One of the warriors hand rose out from the grass signaling the area to be clear, suddenly everyone jumped up and jogged up against the wall. Backs sturdy against the stone, the aged fungus on the stone peeled off onto their clothes as they pressed hard against it. Again that same warrior pulled a strange device made from the swords of the fallen comrades, tied to it was a long rope. The warrior took a step back from the fortification, tossing the device high into the air until it became lodged on the top of the stonewall. Giving a thumbs up the man continued up the wall using the rope as guidance, in single file the others followed. From good planning and luck the guards were elsewhere, this allowed easy entrance.

“Damn! I was unprepared for this. They seem to have more people defending the prisoners, this shouldn’t pose much of a problem with my plan. We’ll just have to hope that none get to the alarm” His face seemed uncertain “Okay continue the plan, you three branch off that way and take them from the other side, Asun you go with them so that at least they can heal with ease.” With that the two groups jogged off in crouched positions.

Just ten meters ahead of SatraFei’s party was the west prison wall, it was set up almost the same as the fortress itself. One large wall spanning around the entire area, enclosing everything inside, two guards were appointed at the corners and one was patrolling the wall. “Okay this is what I have planned for starters. I’ll deal with the patrol, should be easy one arrow to the skull should do it. You two take care of the point guards one each, I’ll perform a simple task and be with you both at the same time”

As if their minds were one they went about their tasks instantaneously. Within seconds an arrow was sent flying through the air giving off a quiet whistle, without a sound from the guard, the arrow connected with is skull. “One down. Now for my simple task” As SatraFei spoke he closed his eyes, in seconds an immense power poured out from his skin"Done, now to deal with the other guard" Without Warning the Lynx and he charged towards one of the point guards.

Between SatraFei, the warrior and the Lynx the guard didn’t last long. Before the guard could decide to run to the alarm, he was forced into defense. An arrow set in SatraFei’s bow waiting for an opening to release it; the warrior laid up his shield to parry the guard’s first and final attack. The warrior was pushed back from the huge slash from the guards lance, opening a nice area to place an arrow. The guard fell to the ground lifelessly.

Meanwhile the battle between the ranger and the point guard was taking place. The battle raged out for minutes, but to the two fighters it seemed like hours. The guard would advance on the Ranger ready to make a killing blow, but before the guard could get an opening he would be forced into blocking a flying arrow. The battle continued in the same action for a few minutes, until without warning one of the guards which seemed to have a mindless look about it, struck the opposing guard in the stomach. almost instantly after felling the defender the deranged guard collapsed into a rotting corpse which seemed to have been dead for weeks.

“I see you’ve met my friend. So what did you think? A little overdone?” SatraFei gestured with a wink, then without orders he turned and faced the wall “I hope the other party is okay”

The warrior pulled out the same grappling hook that was used to climb the wall earlier, and continued to toss it up the prison wall. As simple as before the swords lodged into the stone on the wall allowing the troops to climb over the wall once more. “Now to find our captured members, there don’t seem to be any guards in here” the warrior whispered

“I guess they didn’t really expect anyone to get past the post guards with out the alarm going off…” SatraFei unexpectedly stopped talked; all his attention seemed to be on four people running towards them. “Reinforcements have just arrived, good timing as well”

The two parties met outside of a long line of cellblocks.

“Wonder which one is the right one” one of the men asked.

“Not sure we’d better get started, I don’t think it will be too much longer before the corpses are spotted.” The now-one group jogged down the cells to check where the captives may be.

“Here! Most of them are badly bashed up; I think it may be hard to escape now. Lets start helping them along” Asun ordered the remainder of the fit members to help the captives walk. The expanded party retreated up to the first wall, with the intention of climbing it.

“There is no way we’ll be able to climb this wall with the guys in this state, what are we going to do now?” The party seemed to have lost morale with the blatantly obvious statement.

“I think I can help out in that department” one of the captives had gained consciousness, and started over towards the wall making symbols with her hands and speaking unusual words. Fire started forming in her hands, the fire continued to expand until the sorceress was unable to spread her arms out any further. The fireball was ordered by some unknown force to fly through the air towards the wall, as soon as it connected with the stone it exploded flying all sorts of shrapnel into the air. Fortunately the hole that was created was a good size to fit many men through, unfortunately everyone else in the fortress was able to hear and even worse see exactly wear the party was.

“Run! Everyone has to know where we are by now, Sorceress what’s your name? We’ll need your services soon” Asun asked quickly whilst picking her up from the ground.

“My name’s Heanna, I’ll try to charge up another fireball as we go, I hope I have enough energy to perform it again”

The party hurried along trying to run at the same time as carry the injured, it was futile. At last the final stonewall was in view, probably one hundred meters away. “Just up ahead, I can see the wall. How close are you to having that charge ready Heanna?” Asun was anxious; nobody wants to die so close to freedom.

“A little bit longer, I should have it ready by the time we get to it”

“We can all hope so, if you miss with this chance we’ll surely be killed before we get to see the sun outside” As the party approached their way to freedom, an overwhelming force of guards was spotted trying to intersect the intruders.

“We’re not going to make it, there’s no way we’ll get there before them, they have an advantage over us” Before too much thought could be put into a better plan, Heanna released herself from Asun. She quickly held up the giant fireball in a ready to fire position, before anyone could stop her, the ball was hurled through the air towards the guards. The guards were caught unaware; the ball was going faster than the guards could run. with a loud scream the ball connected with the backs of the front line guards and continued through the rest of the soldiers. shreaded soldiers and Scorched corpses were all that remained of the troops.

“What did you do that for? How are we supposed to escape now?” Asun screaming in desperation at what Heanna did

“I calculated all the possible outcomes, I currently have enough energy to charge up a fireball big enough to create a hole but only enough to escape one person at a time. The only problem is another force seems to be coming and I need to charge a new fireball” Before anyone could get their swords and bows ready SatraFei used his famed skeletal skill again, this time at a higher level and therefore many more skeletons can be raised.

“Seems there are plenty of corpses for me to use” SatraFei muttered under his breath As soon as the enemy force had surrounded the corpses SatraFei once again brought forth a huge amount of energy summoning a huge army large enough to at least hold them off long enough. The battle of undead verses life was quite an extraordinary fight to witness. Fortunately the undead force seemed to have to advantage of numbers.

Before the battle was over Heanna was able to complete her spell and blow another hole in the fortress wall, as she had said it was a remarkably small size only enough for one person at a time. The party was able to squeeze each person through the hole, the task was harder than it would seem. The unconscious members became a bigger problem then expected they were time consuming.

Once the complete party was on the outside of the Fortress they took off down the hill and into the forest. The barbarians still occupied with there undead fight could not have taken their eyes off to even have seen the captives escape.

“I can’t believe we actually pulled off that rescue! I thought we were done for at the end. By the way Heanna good choice on blasting those guys” Asun apologized.

“No problem, I just thought that it was the best…” Heanna suddenly closed her eyes and slowly decended towards the ground. With quick reflexes Asun sturdied the worn out female “She must have worn herself out, I was surprised she was even able to cast that many spells in her current state. Good job, Heanna,” Satrafei walked over to the sorceress picking her up off Asun’s shoulder “I’ll take her from here, we have a long way to go to get back to the garrison. Who would have thought I’d rather be home in that disgusting Garrison than out in the open air. Come on then, let's head off”