Evocation

"Are you ready to pay the price of death?" the shade spoke as it gazed at the three players.

"Not if my usher to death's door is you," Ricardo answered.

The dark winds of necromancy flowed across the entire forest. Leaves violently rustled when the waves of eldritch green echoed from the evoker's revival. Between our protagonists and the two powerful beings laid a carpet comprised of bodies.

Every warrior who once stood on this battlefield was brought to their knees from a powerful pressure emanating from the shade and the evoker. Even the humongous ravages were fear-stricken. Both friend and foe, they were mesmerized by the sight of a fiend shrouded in a green cloak of souls.

A scorched mark was left in the wake of the evoker with each step he took. During the stroll, his eyes were fixated on his killer: Leonardo Ricardo.

Separated by a distance of three meters, the demonic one ended its movement. Following his pause, he slowly lifted his left arm that twitched mechanically, emulating a scarecrow brought to life.

"Rub Somnak Ort Jes Slap" (Totem of Undying)

As he finished the incantation, the stones nearby magnetized together into an effigy resembling a pillager. Once the shaping completed, the evoker's veil of souls surged into the statue's open mouth which added lime tint to its eyes.

Afterward, he lowered his hand in the same mechanical way that he raised it. His dead eyes suddenly lit up and his broken neck rewound itself to a normal state.

"You have three minutes to try and kill me again. Rick-Car-Do" The fiend spoke with a broken scrambled dialect.

Ricardo immediately started rapidly hurling wooden spatulas at the evoker until three minutes have passed.

"Wut?" *looks at Ryan and Carl "It was worth a shot at least. Y'all got any brighter ideas??? I'm open to suggestions." Ricardo rhetorically spoke.

"It seems you've come to the end of your time." The standby shade announced.

Every villager part of the rebel whose soul was siphoned out of their body awakens and starts to evolve into the appearance of a pillager. Their pale skin turned grayer as the transformation progresses while their eyes turned lifeless and had lapis-colored irises.

This was necromancy, magic incorporating the usage of fallen victims.

Each newborn soldier turned towards Ryan, Carl, and Ricardo.

"The master's wishes are ours to realize. Seize the priest 'Nigel'" the undead army spoke in unison.

The horde of enemies began advancing forward and closing off any feasible exits for the three remaining players. The situation felt dire to the point where only a miracle would suffice if they were to get out of it alive. Even so, there would still be permanent damage if they did manage to escape.

"How much hunger and thirst do you both got left?" Ryan whispered his two allies.

"I've got about half" Carl responded.

"DAMN, I FORGOT WE HAD SURVIVAL NEEDS! Is zero a good number?" Ricardo added.

"Then we buy time" Ryan spoke.

"For what?" both Carl and Ricardo asked.

Without answering the two, Ryan shot a pink firework into the skies using a fallen pillager's crossbow.

As soon as the bright flash faded, the swarm charged towards the cornered players. Among the army, the fastest unit would be the Ravager beast which meant to quickly get to the players, they had to stomp through the resurrected army. Abusing this simple fact, Ricardo tried his absolute hardest to enrage the beasts with stupid ritual dances accompanied by random words shouted at the top of his lungs.

Annoyed at his failed attempt, he consulted another method used by video game players to draw the attention of priority targets: aggro switching.

Four spatulas were instantly flung at each Ravager's forehead, causing them to stampede into Ricardo.

"MAKE LIKE A TREE AND LEAVE!!!!" the maniac shouted.

Giving a confused stare at their audacious comrade, Ryan and Carl both asked: "HOW???!!!!!!!"

"Follow my lead. If we go out, at least we got out while riding." Ricardo joked.

When the Ravagers finally arrived, Ricardo leaped into the air and grabbed onto one of the beasts' nostrils. He then proceeds to climb onto its back and smacked its rump with another wooden spatula.

"HOW MUCH WOOD DO YOU HAVE?!" Ryan yelled as Ricardo passed his allies a spatula.

"You can never have too many consumables", Ricardo.

The two players left behind imitated the maniacal comrade. The three-player rodeo kicked off. Each rider had to steer their own Ravager in a separate direction in order to avoid clumping the enemies together. Their assumption was that the enemy undead were merely mindless vegetables.

Alas, they all went for the liveliest and clumped up at his place. Ryan and Carl tried their best to catch up but the beasts were giving them a lot of trouble. Ravagers were not wild creatures, they are a creation whose birth originates from using magics of unspeakable horror.

Upon closer inspection, the monstrosities had a titanic humanoid body. The enlarged head looked like a human's even if there were many scars stitched close on the skin. As for how they stand, they do not resemble a quadrupedal mob. Instead, the natural imbalance of how they charge and run mimicked a baby crawling.

The three knew that taming would be out of the question so smacking the rump like a horse would have to do for now.

Ryan and Carl were fighting against time as each second wasted meant the undead had more time to shamble on top of one another until the mound of corpses reaches the height of the Ravager.

Ricardo panicked and became flustered because his mount wasn't budging. It had realized the zombies were building a stair leading to its rider.

A hand suddenly clamped onto our protagonist's calf. The sensation of a cold grasp sent goosebumps spreading across Ricardo's whole body.

"come on come on come on..... RYAN WHEN IS HELP COMING!!!!!!!!!!" he shouted.

The battle seemed decided. The alive members of the pillager army found a place to sit down and enjoy a show of the rebels being ripped to shreds by their own undead comrades.