The old witch put forward her gnarled fingers toward the road ahead as she muttered the magic spell under her breath while the bird skulls in her hands rattled unnaturally.
Then a faint green light glowed from the little skulls in her hand before a magic circle materialized in front of the witch before the magic circle spewed out a green mist that swirled and transformed into a floating hazy oval-shaped mirror before her as the magic circle dematerialized.
The mercenaries watched with awe and curiosity as the hazy window showed an image of Zarba's carriage rolling steadily down the jungle path, escorted by knights in black armor on horseback.
"See, I fucking knew it…!" The mercenary leader feels smug as the possible target that they are waiting for has finally arrived.
"Can you see who is inside the carriage?!" But before the leader could get too excited, he quickly regained his senses and asked the witch urgently, as they can't be sure without actually seeing who is inside to confirm their target's identity.
It's going to be a disaster if they are attacking unrelated people, especially powerful people with this many escorts, by mistake, but the witch's good eye suddenly widened before she hissed at the mirror as the image started flickering wildly while she tried to look inside the carriage.
The image warped and glitched so unnaturally that they can't make any sense of the image no matter how much they try. Then the mirror cracked before breaking into tiny particles, likely from mana overload. The witch huffs as she sees that her clairvoyance spell has broken down from whatever it is, causing her magic spell to dispel.
"Tsk, can't see what's inside…" the witch said while she rolled the bird skulls in between her fingers. The mercenaries shifted uneasily as they were not sure what was happening with the magic mirror.
"What's wrong?!" The mercenary leader snapped and questioned the witch, who just turned around and was about to walk back towards where she was dozing off previously, but his loud, irritated voice stopped her. The witch's remaining eye immediately glanced at the mercenary leader with an unamused gaze before she turned her body towards him.
"Well, it's probably your target," the witch muttered while rolling the skulls in her hand as she considered something. Her single eye glanced toward the road briefly as she started telling the leader about her thought. "Since normal people don't usually have anything to block the scrying attempt, it is highly likely that whoever is inside that carriage is high profile individual and possibly the prince you seek, but he probably noticed the attempt to peek at him, and he will be on guard against ambush…"
The mercenary leader spat on the ground hearing that and pulled out his curved knife from its sheath.
"Doesn't matter. Whether he's prepared for ambush or not, he still has to go through this exact road." He then turned to his men, barking orders with the confidence of someone who'd never faced someone like Zarba and his infinite summoned units before. "Archers behind the trees! The rest cut down the trees and block the road! Kill the knights first—leave the prince alive until we confirm the bounty! We are going to be rich after this, hahaha!"
"Yeah!!" The mercenaries cried out as they scrambled into doing their roles, though their spirit was not quite as high as their voices as they nocked arrows or adjusted grips on their weapons while they got into position. Something about the jungle's unnatural silence and what the scouts told them earlier has unsettled even the most hardened among them.
The witch lingered as she watched the mercenaries become active with an unreadable expression on her face, her skeletal fingers clutching the bird skulls as they glow faintly with green light.
"Old bitch! What the fuck are you standing around for?! Get out of the damn way unless you want to be trampled by the knights you saw!" The scar-faced leader snarled as he stomped to the witch with his curved knife gleaming under the dappled light after seeing that she was still standing around in the middle of the road like a senile granny.
"Hahaha…" The witch merely chuckled, a dry, crackling sound that sent unease prickling down the leader's and the other mercenaries' spines. They all suddenly feel a bad premonition.
"I've suffered your loud mouth long enough, I suppose…" The witch muttered as her single good eye fixed on the leader with unnerving ill intent as she rolled the bird skulls between her fingers faster.
"What…? The fuck do you mean…?!" The leader snarled as he quickly stepped back; he suspected that the witch was about to betray them for some reason. "We have a deal, and you think you can fight all those knights alone…?!"
"Oh, you seem to misunderstand me," she rasped. "I never agreed, nor was I your people's ally in the first place, but most important of all, I don't need you, fools..."
"Damn, fuck you, you old bitch…!" The leader snapped as he charged at the witch, wanting to stab her remaining eye with his knife, while the other mercenaries also ran back to help their leader deal with the witch.
"You wish…" But before they could get close to her, the skulls in the witch's hand pulsed violently green—then suddenly exploded in a cloud of green smoke towards the mercenaries, who found themselves swallowed by the cloud of smoke before they could even reach her.
"Gah…?!" The leader who breathed in the green smoke gagged, stumbling back as the smoke burned inside his throat like boiling oil. His veins immediately bulged and turned black beneath his skin, his knife clattering to the dirt as he clawed at his own neck, eyes bulging in silent horror.
As for the other mercenaries, they fared no better than their leader, as they collapsed and stumbled around, their weapons slipping from their fingers as the smoke seemed to be alive and slither into their eyes, nostrils, and mouths even if they were desperately trying to close them to prevent the poisonous green smoke from entering their bodies.
It's a futile effort, though, as they eventually have to breathe or open their eyes to see where they are going while crawling on the ground. They all ended up being poisoned just like their leader and dying a slow, agonizing death under the indifferent eye of the old witch.
"Hmph, should have shut them up sooner…" The witch snorted as she walked past the twitching and wriggling mercenaries on the ground as they gushed a foul dark green blood from their orifices.
"Now you all will serve…" The witch muttered ominously as she started casting a spell, her one eye glowing green and her bird skulls floating up from her hand as they hovered around her with glowing green light shining from their eye sockets.
Then, like an invisible wave rippling from the old witch, the mercenaries suddenly go into violent seizures around her before they limp back with no visible sign of life left in them until, one by one, they rise again—but not as themselves.
The mercenaries' eyes now glowed the same green as the witch's magic, and their limbs jerked like marionettes with tangled strings. Their skin turned pale with a greenish hue, their faces expressionless and filled with dark green blood that came out of their eyes, nostrils, and mouth.
They have become undead or, specifically, zombies.
The jungle air temperature seems to drop a couple of degrees from the popping and cracking noises of tendons and bones from the zombies' movements and how their slack jaws keep snapping, which makes unsettling clicks that could be heard around the witch.
The witch smiles crookedly as she takes control of the zombies with her mind, while suddenly the sounds of children giggling that seem out of place could be heard coming from somewhere before two large shadows of something moving through the thick bushes and creeping behind the trees from the two sides of the road could be seen coming towards the witch.
"Well, let's see how well you will do against me and my creations, prince Zarba." The witch said as she put her hand out in front of her before the floating bird skulls came back in her hand.
Then the witch turned in the direction where Zarba's carriage would be coming from, as she mentally commanded the zombies around her to line up to block the road as they twitched and stumbled into loose formation with unnatural movement, their weapons held in stiff fingers—blades still slick with their own poisonous blood from ruptured veins.
Behind the zombies, the rustling noise intensified as something much larger than the undead mercenaries was coming closer, branches snapping under heavy weight.
And eventually the two hulking figures emerged from the tree line—stitch-work monstrosities of necrotic flesh that were made of men and beasts.
They are the undead chimeras of rotting, deformed carcasses, their big skull heads and gaping jaws dripping with blackened blood that sizzled where it hit the dirt. Their long, elongated arms pulled their undead bodies along the ground, and their serpentine tail on their lower half was slithering behind them. Both creatures bore crude surgical scars where limbs had been grafted. Their eye sockets were pulsating with the same green glow as the witch's magic.
"Ehehehe…" The chimeras giggle with their childish voices that are too mismatched from their appearance as they grab some zombies and shove them in their mouths as they eat the walking corpses.
"Hey, hey, stop, you imbeciles! Don't eat them!" The witch was quite panicked as she tried to tell her monsters to not destroy her minions before the fight had even begun…