"Undead. Undead lead mare...of the unicorns. You neglected to mention undead."

"Oh." She cocked a brow. "How could I have missed that?"

On the screen, the risen unicorn staggered towards the siren, who in return took a few steps back. The soulless image of a half rotten horse continued to make strangled noises, and every movement, every twitch appearing on its body - all of it looked horribly wrong. Someone or something was pulling the strings but was unaware of equestrian anatomy. But despite the uncoordinated behavior, it became faster and threatened to close to distance between itself and Lucind.

"I wondered what was the best way to bring it down...I had only read about undead creatures of this kind and every self-called expert has his own favorite method of extermination."

Maximos would see how, without further ado, pulled her gun Isebel, aimed for the unicorns head, fired. Right between the eyes. The unicorns head was pushed back with quite some force, causing the skin along throat and neck to rip some more. It stopped for a moment. But other than that, nothing happened. The undead unicorn continued to head for the siren.

"Noticed the teeth", Lu asked. Sometime between the initial transformation of the unicorn and the shot its teeth had changed their form. It was a miracle they where still embedded in the putrefied gum, but their new, sharp and pointy likeness did give the impression that the newborn horse zombie felt the need to feed on something fresh. In addition, whatever was controlling the risen, it had became much more confident: the unicorn gained in speed.

On the screen, the siren activated her staff. She wasn't going to use the forked end, however, but instead turned the weapon around and called forth the shadow blade Maximos had given her years ago. The same blade with which Lucind had beheaded a high rank siren from her former clan, after she had challenged Lucind to a death fight.

"The plan was to circle the thing to get a good swing at it...but...well, see for yourself."

Right when she jogged, half sideways, half backwards, in order to get into position, one of her feet got caught in a root - and Lucind fell, siren curses following right after. The zombie unicorn lowered its head: If it wanted to stab the siren with its horn or just get a mouthful of flesh was hard to say. But this situation pled for a way out.

"Call that instinct", Lu commented, and the image on the water screen got blurry for a moment when the siren released a sound blast, the strongest vocal attack female sirens can make use of.
In an instant, the unicorns head exploded, and Lucind shielded herself, the screen turned dark for a second. The siren hastened to get back up, realizing she had rotten unicorn all over her body.

"Bad instinct. I really worried that contact with this stuff would make me sick - or worse."

So, the head was gone. Mostly, that is. There were remains of the trachea, a few muscle strings and ligaments. But pieces of the skull including the horn were spread in a large radius.
One problem remained, though. The thing was still moving. Although with less orientation. But still.

"On top of this I felt a group of unicorns approaching. Or heard them, rather, because unicorns are one of the few races which can vanish from my radar almost completely."

The siren tried to have an eye on the risen unicorn while looking to her right from where she knew the other unicorns would soon appear. When they did - all showing hides in different shades of brown and with horns that were just as crooked as that of the now dead horse - they just seemed to skim the scene, then headed straight for Lucind, not stopping in their pace.

"They thought I did this...yeah, I know. But from what I got from their mental messages, this had not just been the lead mare of their herd, but also their grandmother. They simply ignored anything I tried to 'say' to them. But I still didn't want to seriously hurt them. At some point I managed to daze the weakest." She looked at him. "Unicorns can hide their soul signature from me, or most reach near perfection in it. It is something that we have never been able to find an answer to, but unicorns seem to be, well, immune to psionic interferences. I can communicate with them, but there are only legends of sirens who were able to get inside a unicorn's mind, let alone their soul. Amazing creatures."

What followed was a dance of the unusual kind: Lucind had to avoid three pointy horns, and three sets of hooves that could deliver fierce kicks. (And the headless zombie unicorn was also still wobbling around in the background.) But despite her being extremely agile, despite ducking, rolling, jumping, and blocking, the siren received many blows, mainly horn slashes, so now Max knew where his lover had gotten her wounds from. Using some of her last strength, she used a milder vocal attack, causing two of the horses to falter and halt their attacks. The third one, however, seemed unfazed.

Just when Lucind was almost unable to defend herself and her actions reached a level of despair, a high pitched voice sounded out from the other end of clearing where the siren had first found the dead mare. It was a girl with short black hair, olive tinted skin, and light clothes in the colors of the rainforest.
"Stop!! It wasn't her - leave her alone!"

Several necklaces of different colored beads shock around her neck when she ran over to where the siren was half propped against a tree: The last unicorn had just tried to pierce Lucind's throat. She had been able to avert the stab, but blood trickled from a wound nonetheless.

"Stop it right now", the girl cried out once more, now sounding angry. And it worked. Her voice made the unicorn step back. "It wasn't her, you know I would never lie to you. She found Almarra when she was almost dead...right before she transformed...into..." Tears welled up in the girl's eyes, and she looked back into the direction she had come from: The beheaded horse corpse was still stumbling along, much slower now.

"It turned out Shal had been in one of her people's tree houses about a mile away from where she had overseen the forest using a telescope", Lu commented.

The girl continued talking to the three horses, which finally calmed down. She also offered Lucind something to drink from her leather bottle. At some point, the siren dared asking: "How can we stop..." And she nodded towards the zombie unicorn. A second later, her head shot up and around: Another unicorn had appeared. It was of the same build as the others, but its hide had turned gray on various spots, the mane was thinner, and the hip bones stood out visibly. "This was the lead mare's husband, so to speak. Later on, Shal told me that he must be several hundred years old, but nobody knows for sure. - The reason why I perked up is that he spoke to me. He answered my question: 'We have to take her heart'."

"He explained that around half a year ago, a mysterious sickness had started spreading among the forest's animal inhabitants. Usually, unicorns are immune to basically everything, so you can imagine how scared they were when the first of them caught this horrible disease. Some believe it's a curse, that they somehow angered the spirits of their ancestors. However, Shal told me that the Gurusteo believe this plague was man made. They accuse certain people 'from the city', as they always do, because they connect 'the city' with people who want to buy their land for economic or industrial reasons."

Lucind fell silent when on the screen she could be seen wrapping a shawl around the lower half of her face, before approaching the undead mare together with the old unicorn. "He said we would have to take the heart. And that is what we did."

The male unicorn waited a moment, surrounded what used to be his beloved mare. Suddenly, he dashed forward, lowered his head - and rammed his horn through the risen's base of the neck, pinning it to a tree behind.
The siren had already loaded her staff with sound waves and now caused a massive slash along the lower part of the chest, using the shadow blade, which almost cut off the left leg. In this area, the flesh had turned dark, and the further Lucind cut her way into the risen's chest, the darker it became. Finally, she reached into a chunk of flesh and removed a grayish, wrinkly lump the size of a peach.

The moment Lucind took the mutated heart of the former mare, the zombie became limp. The stallion stepped back, pulling his horn out of tree and neck, and the heap of flesh and bones sank to the ground.

The last thing the water screen showed before going blank was Shal pouring water over Lucind's arms and the shrunken heart in her hands.

"Well, that was that. I took some samples of the rotten flesh and sent it to some friends, both on Azum and here. I hope they find something." Lucind frowned. "The unicorns think it's a curse. The Gurusteo believe it came out of a lab. If you ask me, they are both right...- oh, delivery arrived!"

This sudden change of topic probably confused Maximos, but Lu had sensed someone coming aboard. She got up, pulling the robe tighter around her, and left the library for a moment. When she returned, she was carrying at least three bags, all filled with different sized paper boxes. She also brought in the chilly evening wind, and she shivered ever so slightly but grinned all the more: "I hope your stomach has some room for real food!"

Neglecting her desk altogether, she settled back down on the floor and began to unpack what turned out to be a variation of dishes: sea food, pasta, baked goods, fruits, sausages, baked potatoes, stir-fried vegetables - and several rare steaks. Lucind's stomach growled. She only got up once to fetch water for them. But then she dug in, wondering where the meal she had had not two hours before had vanished to.

The siren mainly ate with her hands, only used fork and knife to taste a steak, but she liked the way most Azumerian's ate (although they washed their hands first, but Lucind was just too hungry) and was sure that Max wouldn't mind.

"Oh, you have to try these!" She had picked a square piece of pastry which had pieces of nuts in between the layers and was dripping with honey. Lu licked her lips and fingers and she glanced at the shadow from under her lashes, apparently quite comfortable despite the gruesome story she had just presented.