The whistling echoed loudly, but these lands were not that of Belliste, the many warriors of the undead vanguard were all gathered together, tightly in formation, grouped up according to their respective castes, the rank and file soldiers, rank and file mages, Loimoisian knights, paladins, priests, beasts, specialists, highly skilled and equipped to deal with all sorts of terrains and situations.
And amongst them, many headhunters garbed in black, only a handful diverting from this colour palette, this particular caste was hand-crafted by Loimos himself, and although not yet perfected, showed much promise for the future, at the moment however, those that had been dispatched in Belliste were not reaping much success, the heads they collected were mostly that of wild creatures, indeed, the strength of a regular warrior of Belliste was high.
So, although the headhunter's were proficient and resilient enough to not be dealt with, their performance was not stellar, especially that of the one garbed in white, the very first of the headless, but also a shaky success, the method employed by Loimos was one that he had come up with on his own, so of course, it was requiring refinements, and something was simply not correct about the rider in white.
Today however, as Loimos was no longer within the library, overlooking the troops of his vanguard, simply terrific numbers, he also looked over to those that set themselves apart from the rest, those that had received the title of champion from him in person, distinguished members of his forces.
The miasma had reached a near stop recently, progress was so slow it was barely noticeable, the initial calculations made to determine the time until Belliste was reached were much below reality, the more death progressed, the more life ignited with indignation, miasma generators alone would soon not be enough, even as they were upgraded, and even as the dominion of King Nitok grew, life was simply too resistant with the current methods.
With defiance, it spat in the face of death itself, unshaken by anything Loimos tried throwing at it, and as more time passed, Belliste only reinforced itself, any life barrier created would also be severely more powerful, nothing like that of Tamaris, which the current Loimos would be capable of shattering with ease.
No, something needed to be done to not be met with a roadblock, some sought to find a way to naturally grow more Lithitrees, or at least, minor versions of it.
Some others said to take the plunge and simply sail toward Belliste now, spreading death upon another continent was certain to work out.
The church of death experimented with the concept of divine entities, seeking to create divine beasts closely aligned with miasma to perhaps give the undead an edge.
All of those ideas would certainly bring something to the table without a doubt, but the champion sensed that something else may be at play.
Life had oppressed death for an untold length of time, it had permeated this world like a plague, and to many livings, death was naught but the conclusion of life, not something of its own, it was only obvious that life would still hold the advantage in a struggle.
However, Loimos knew very well that death held the most strength in comparison, life always ends with death, it is the logical conclusion, it was by corrupting the sacred realms of death and installing the concept of afterlife that the enemy had so deeply beaten undeath, to the point that the brunt of them all had found themselves on Viridis in particular.
King Nitok had lived and died here, and so had many of the gravelords, the rest, had been drawn to this continent, something that they could not explain logically.
Loimos himself, the pure undead, had formed here, his own existence called into question life's grip upon this world, or rather, it called into question Viridis itself, what was about this particular continent that drew death and the undead in?
Those that had arisen away from it would inevitably find their way there, or be destroyed trying, by all means, it was not just the sacred land because they had conquered it, it had always been.
The putrid skeleton's researches had yielded nothing however, having scoured every nook and cranny, looked through every archive, dug through ancient civilisation upon and around the continent, none even touched upon Viridis's special relation with death and its primordial aspects.
Something was escaping Loimos's attention.
"Show no worry concerning our slowing advance, eternity is on our side, life fatigues eventually, we will reach Belliste and begin our conquest in due time"
"However, a change of strategy is to be done, until now, we have been expanding King Nitok's dominion in the shape of a perfect sphere, but this approach is inefficient, to make any sort of substantial gains, we will have to focus on certain points"
Loimos's idea was simple, rather than spreading forces all along the edges of the miasma, make use of more strength and numbers to actually gain ground, and although he did not specify for it, many were already imagining specifical pushing in direction of Belliste, not abandoning the advantage of miasma, but also making haste toward the next continent, prime target on the list of all undeads.
Their general left the right and left hand to decide how to approach the new orders, obviously, making a corridor directly toward Belliste had inconvenients, the spherical shape was strong and prevented death from being pushed back, like a branch however, a line was more easily snapped, meaning that directly going for the continent was doomed to be a waste of time.
The path to their next destination needed to be solid, large enough to not be subject to life's push back.
Right next to Loimos, a winged undead landed already kneeling.
"Sir Loimos, a dragon wishes to speak"
"Did the dragon ask for anyone in particular?"
The bird-like undead responded negatively.
"He only asked for the person in charge of the spread of miasma, so-"
Loimos signed for the undead to stop there, it should be no surprise that the livings outside had no idea how the empire of death operated, so rather than asking for a specific rank or title without knowledge of whether or not it existed, they instead specified someone regarding the miasma itself.
"How did the dragon communicate with you?"
"There were two of them, general, one seemed to be casting spells to translate the words of the one speaking, do you accept to meet them?"
Sprouting black wings, Loimos saw no reason not to converse with the enemy, Dragonnerie was far, but the dragons were still very much involved already.