Chronos realized she was right.
By moving the ritual site around the souls of those they had harmed couldn't gather enough power to manifest in a short period of time, for them to manifest now meant the black robed priests had done something truly vile here.
"Should we attack with them?" Sten suggested.
"No, I have a bad feeling about this. For now, we wait and watch." Freydis turned him down.
As they watched, several of the black cloaked knights had life energy sucked out of them by the ghosts, but it wasn't enough to kill them. Unfortunately, the zombies weren't able to reach them, being too stupid to climb a wall made it difficult for them to take revenge.
Bells rang and roars resounded from inside as the fortress became active. The knights tried to cut down the ghosts, but their swords harmlessly passed through the ghost's bodies.
"I'm glad we don't have to fight them. A ghost's near immunity to non-elemental attacks makes them such a pain to fight, even aura only does a quarter of the damage to them." One of the werewolves chuckled as he watched the knights struggle.
The ghosts flew around the top of the fortress attacking weak points and causing knights to collapse in exhaustion one after another. Then a black mist pulsed from the central keep annihilating the ghosts that had flown too close while pushing others back.
The knights redoubled their efforts to kill them and had some success. While they were fighting the ghosts the zombies had found a gap that led inside of the fortress. Screaming started to echo from inside until a roar came from near the central keep.
Boom!
A fist had punched through the gap, wiping out the zombies, then a massive figure covered in black mist and looking like it was stitched together from many different corpses walked out to finish off any surviving zombies.
It was ten meters tall and had three arms that looked like overlapping limbs had been sewn together. Its lower body was made of two large four-legged beasts but the place where their heads should have been was just a bunch of torsos that supported the upper body.
Instead of having a head there were faces all over its body with smaller heads poking out at strange angles and from the way it was moving it could see out of all of them.
"An abomination!?" Freydis exclaimed. "So, they have an individual skilled in necromancy?"
Chronos frowned, feeling that something was wrong with that statement. The abomination wasn't moving like it was an undead, it moved like it was still alive and healthy.
"I don't think that's correct, Aunt Freydis. If there was a necromancer here, they wouldn't be having such a hard time trying to kill ghosts and zombies and I don't think undead can generate miasma." Chronos said.
Freydis got a confused look on her face. She didn't know whether undead could generate miasma, but her nephew was right about killing the undead; no self-respecting necromancer would allow undead to run wild in their presence.
As the battle continued a strange sight suddenly appeared. Several ghosts floated out of the ground, but they looked like multiple people were stitched together. They weren't as large as the abomination but the way they looked made something click in Freydis's mind.
"We're retreating." She growled in anger before falling back.
After everyone retreated Chronos approached Aunt Freydis.
"What made you so angry at the end?"
Taking a deep breath Freydis looked at the surrounding werewolves. They had all gathered to find out what made her angry.
"As all of you know, a ghost's appearance looks the same as the moment they died."
They nodded; it was common knowledge that ghosts looked exactly the same as the moment they died but they didn't understand why that had made her angry.
"Some of those ghosts looked like they had been stitched together. This means that they were sewn together before they died and if Chronos is right about undead being unable to generate miasma then that big abomination was still alive when they performed the ritual."
Their hearts fell as they heard her explanation.
This was unacceptable! Just how vile of a person did you have to be to perform such a horrid act on another person, even worse that large abomination was made from at least 20 people and animals!
Taking a deep breath to calm his raging blood Chronos asked, "When do we attack?"
Looking at the others, she could see the same rage simmering in all of their eyes.
They wanted blood!
"We wait for the others. There are too few of us gathered to attack now, some of them might escape."
Nodding everyone went to prepare, whether this was by sharpening their weapons or practicing the new abilities they had awakened, all of them trained to try and calm their rage.
Seeing their reactions and thinking about the clan's history, Freydis couldn't help but wonder if it was simply a part of who they were or if their very bloodline became enraged at such actions.
In the end she couldn't find an answer and, like all members of her clan, decided to just stop thinking about complicated things she didn't understand.
Taking out the whisper bird, she sent another message to Commander Stan explaining what they had seen while urging him to hurry and sending a request for the Black Fangs to be sent ahead of the army.
She was certain that all of the fangs would love to be included in this battle.
While they waited some of them were sent to spy on the fortress to gather as much information as they could, but they were forced to switch out watchers as some of them almost attacked the fortress. The rage was clearly getting to everyone, making it harder and harder to sit still.
An hour later the message bird returned with just one line.
"We'll be there within two hours."
Whisper birds carried vocal messages making it easy to hear the anger in Commander Stan's voice.
All of them gave a tooth filled grin as they just had to wait for a little longer, than they could attack.
Before long they heard growling coming from the west. Going to meet them they found the Black Fangs running at a breakneck pace while at least a two hundred Dragon paladins had sprouted dragon wings from their backs flying to keep up with them.
Gregory, Sariah, Lyla and a number of other elites were being carried on their backs and in some of their arms.
Landing in front of them Commander Stan asked, "How is it? Have they made any moves?"
"Not yet. They are still fighting the remnants of the haunting hour, but it doesn't look like they took much damage, nothing serious at least." Reported Freydis.
"Then I want some of your men to lead my troops to the eastern side. Your Fangs will attack from the north, south, and west with support from the elites we've brought with us. I expect most of them to flee while releasing the devil beasts once you attack. At that time my men will close in and kill any that leave the fortress while cutting off their path of escape. Any questions?" He ordered.
The fortress's northern, southern, and western walls were all collapsing which would make it easy for the highly mobile werewolves to attack them.
On the other hand, the eastern wall wasn't damaged at all or maybe they had repaired it, either way attacking the eastern wall would be the most difficult and result in heavy casualties if done by the Black Fangs But the dragon paladins wouldn't have any issue holding that position.
Finding no issues with the plan, Freydis agreed and began giving orders to the Black Fangs.
Chronos' friends approached him with Lyla glaring at him the entire time.
"Did I do something wrong?" He asked Gregory as Lyla wouldn't answer him.
"She's angry you got to beat up devil beasts without her." He said.
"Oh, Lyla, don't be too angry. I found an entire fortress to bash and there is an abomination inside too." Chronos made a peace offering.
He didn't want to be rudely woken up by a mace one day.
She looked at him for a moment then said, "I forgive you but take me with you the next time you're going to do something fun."
"Agreed."
Listening to the orders, Freydis had sent 400 werewolves to both the northern and southern walls while only 200 were going to attack the western wall. Half of the elites that Commander Stan had brought with him stayed in the west to assist the weaker side and the other half went with him to attack the east with his dragon paladins.
The lizardfolk and nagas that had managed to keep up with their breakneck pace were spread into the surroundings to catch anyone that tried to escape through hidden tunnels or deep waterways.
Deciding to join the western attack force they began following Freydis who was leading this side's attack.