Elan really hopes that means he should be expecting something more like earlier with Glumbert than like Azure City.

"Okay. I think I'm ready. Where are the people I should play for? Or are there a bunch in different places?"

"There are teams of Guardians at the south and east gates, but the biggest group is gathering at the west gate. That's where all the other adventurers are going, so I guess it must be where they think the most undead will attack! Just follow the main road straight back the way you came. Or I can come with you and show you the way, if you want!" 

"I can probably find it if you're busy… Is there a north gate too?"

Ash scratches his head. "I guess there is? But it's just the gate to the docks, so nobody really calls it that. Anyway, I really don't mind showing you the way to the gate! I don't exactly have anything better to do—I'm pretty sure Guardian Jenni just gave me this job to keep me out of the way." 

"Well, hopefully there aren't any underwater zombies attacking!"

Elan's gotten very familiar with the trouble posed by aquatic enemies.

"My friends would do that kinda stuff with me, too. Make stuff up to keep me out of the way."

"But you're a grown-up adventurer, not a kid like me! Why would they do that?" Ash protests as they start heading back towards the gate. He seems to have decided to accompany Elan. 

"Well, I am the youngest one in the party, even if you ignore the ones who grow up slower than humans. But that's only a difference of like three years, so I think it's probably more that I get into trouble a lot. Like, one time I blew up a castle, which was pretty awesome at the time, except then we all got arrested because of it. But then it turned out that the arrest was kinda fake in the first place, because the guy who sent his paladin to arrest us actually wanted us to work for him but didn't have any other way to ask us because of… I think a bunch of secret stuff and rules? I dunno, I wasn't there when he explained it to Roy and then Roy was still mad at him when he explained it to the rest of us. Because the whole getting arrested thing really sucked."

Pause.

"I forgot what we were talking about before this."

Ash is utterly fascinated. "Whoa! You've had such exciting adventures! ...I also forgot what we were talking about." 

Elan laughs.

"That's probably okay! Let's see…"

A lot of his stories from the past year are more scary-for-real or sad than exciting…

"A few months ago, my evil twin brother switched places with me so that I would be stuck in jail while he messed with my friends. I got his half-orc… uh, I think they're called ogres here… buddy who was in jail with me to break the bars. And then while I was trying to figure out how to catch up to my friends, I met a really cool famous pirate who gave me a ride to where my friends were staying on his airship and taught me a bunch of cool swordfighting tricks!"

"Ohmygosh your life is so cool!!!" Ash exclaims, voice breaking in excitement. He's not really looking where he's going anymore, but the gate is in view. The armoured guards seem to be gathering there along with a small group of recognisably adventurer-looking types. 

Elan beams.

"Thanks! I'm not even ten years older than you, so I bet that by the time you're my age your life will be just as cool, or even cooler!"

Elan tries to figure out what the other adventurer-types seem to be feeling about the upcoming attack, and also how much cool stuff they have on them. That first thing is pretty hard, though, so he'll probably have to ask when they get in talking range.

The adventurers are mostly either fighters in plate armour, magic-users in robes, or dagger-wielding rogue types in leather. They're a colourful bunch, most of the armoured types having apparently painted their armour and the mages wearing different coloured robes, although none of them have coordinated their accessories or weapons with their overall colour scheme. Some of them look excited to be here, some are playing it cooler, but nobody seems terrified.

It's hard to tell how cool their stuff is, given the unfamiliar magic system. A lot of it seems weirder than he's used to: a rogue has a pair of daggers made entirely of glowing crystal, a fighter has a green-bladed sword with thorns sticking out of it and roses growing from the hilt...just about everyone has a weird probably-magic weapon, and a solid half of them have belts that look far too unfashionable not to be magic. (He'll have to look closer to see if any are wearing rings.) The rest of their gear looks mostly normal, except that capes seem to be in fashion.

Elan tentatively concludes that the adventurers are expecting a challenge, but not a deadly one. He thinks their unfamiliar stuff looks pretty cool but can't draw any specific conclusions on what level they seem to be. The guys at the gate seemed to think he looked capable, though, so maybe Elan should also expect a nondeadly challenge.

"I'd ask if you wanna join in, but if something did happen to you then the Guardians might get mad at me. So… you should probably do whatever you were gonna do anyway."

Ash droops with disappointment. "Yeah, I'll just...see if the Guardians here have any messages they want me to take back. Good luck out there!" 

"You too! Hopefully the next time something like this happens won't be until you're allowed to participate!"

Saying it out loud he's pretty sure that the next time something like this happens will be in like six months. Which sucks for a number of reasons!

Okay, well, he should probably get a better sense of the people he'll be working with before it suddenly turns into a zombie emergency! He tries to find a group that seems interruptible, and then:

"Hi guys! I'm Elan."

"Hello there!" says a man with long green hair and purple robes. "I'm Garth, and this is Yuraz and Fuyic," he says, indicating his companions in turn. Yuraz is a woman in blue leather with cherry-red hair, and Fuyic is a blond man in red-and-gold armour whose sword bears an uncanny resemblance to a large fish. 

"What class are you?" Yuraz asks. "I don't recognise that style of armour." 

"I'm a bard, mostly! This is actually just regular clothing; I used to have a mail shirt but then my evil twin brother stole all my clothes and when I got them back I had already had a significant costume change. Anyways, bards play magical music that uplifts people's spirits! I'm gonna play a bravery song that gives a morale bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, and saving throws against fear."

"Awesome!" says Garth. 

"Yeah, but you'd better get your Bard armour on already," says Fuyic. "The undead are already gathering out there." 

"Oh crap!"

Elan's old stuff is in his backpack, but his mail shirt is almost definitely near the bottom. He can…try to get it out if it seems like undead are about to get close to him? For now, he decides to start playing, since that should help everyone around and not just him.

One of the city guards steps forward and clears her throat to get everyone's attention.

"Alright, adventurers, listen up! I'm Guardian Anna, and I'm in command on this front. For those of you who haven't heard the reports, we're looking at a large mixed group of skeletons, flying eyeballs, and deadwood trees. If you've got a Light weapon, get it out; if you can't use it, trade it to someone who can. We're going to move out as a group, taking the path to the north—that's on your right as you come out of the gates. Form up, let's get moving!" 

Elan quiets down while Anna talks. The flying eyeballs and evil trees are unfamiliar. It's too bad Durkon isn't around! He would probably be great at fighting undead trees.

He starts playing again when the group gets moving. He wonders if he should get a bunch of elemental swords…

Their group heads out of the gates and up the northern path to a large clearing. Night is drawing in now, and the shadows beneath the trees stretch out across the grass with grasping hands.

From those shadows, the monsters emerge in waves. 

First, a flurry of wings as a swarm of batlike shapes swoops down from the trees to harass the vanguard. Some merely slam full-body into the fighters, while others start blasting with their eye beams. In the flashes of red light, Elan can see that most of the body between the wings is taken up by a single giant eye, with only a little nub behind it to which the wings and tail connect. 

Behind the flying eyeballs come the ground troops. There are the skeletons, armed with a mishmash of melee weapons from warhammers to katanas. Unlike the undead Elan is familiar with from back home, there's no telltale pinprick of light in their empty eye sockets, just a blank darkness. In amongst the skeletons are a few of the green slime monsters Elan saw back in Oaklore, although he's now getting a much closer look at them. Each slime is a blob about half the height of a man, with a blobby mouth opening and closing as it extends pseudopods to strike out at nearby enemies.  

Alongside them shamble the deadwoods, walking trees with a few dying leaves clinging to their upper branches. In each trunk, the craggy bark forms the shape of a face, trapped in a leer, a grimace, or a scream of horror. The deadwoods pick their spots and root themselves into the ground with unnatural speed, sending their roots shooting back up in unpredictable locations to trip people up and grab at ankles. The heroes' advance slows and falters. 

Gross, flying eyeballs! Elan had been imagining, like, lawyer-friendly beholders, not literal eyeballs with wings and… tails. The skeletons are, of course, spooky and scary, but mostly in a normal way. The evil trees are probably the creepiest enemies of all, mostly because of the expressions locked into their bark-faces. Elan can't help but imagine that these trees have human souls trapped inside them, forced to do the twisted bidding of some insane necromancer. Or something like that.

He should really focus on his courage song instead. Come on, heroes, be brave! Elan believes in you! It sure looks like there are a lot of scary monsters, but there are also a lot of heroes. And the heroes are working hard to defend what they believe in.

(Bardic songs don't necessarily have to be about whatever their effect is, since technically the effect is magical in nature. But it's a lot easier to pour your whole self into something if you're singing about something appropriate!)

The courage song seems to be helping! The defenders rally! These undead might be be horrifying and gross and so on, but ultimately they're just monsters that go down when you hit them enough times, right? They get on that. 

A flying eyeball shoots up into the sky to get away from the fighter that had it cornered, and swoops down at Elan.