The skeletal remains, put back together and given a semblance of life again by the pale red vapour were seemingly boiling with directionless, madness-fueled wrath, thrashing around at everything that wasn't themselves or another creature enshrouded with the vapour.
A sort of panther with the head of an anteater approached the edge of the oasis with measured steps, throwing its head around wildly as if trying to decipher something, yet, even as its nose was but a centimeter away from Ir'Houwl, the creature seemed to completely fail to even perceive her existence.
'Can't see through darkness… Or?' raising one foot up, she stomped down on the bone puppet, crushing its skull into fine dust as all over the vapour instantly surged out of it and faded away, as she did so, the next closest creature surged forth at her, lashing out with four, scissor-like claws.
The minor lord merely dodged and stepped further into the oasis, the creature swinging blindly and only hitting a tree, and like it had just found jackpot, it repeatedly attacked the trunk before realising that it wasn't what it thought that was.
'They definitely can't see in the dark' she reasoned, the sounds of her soldiers baiting and destroying the skeletal marionettes rang out across the desert, but the majority of the vapour-infused beings were refusing to approach, some were even leaving already, rushing into the horizon like rabid dogs.
The shiny-white bones of a few sand whales remained around the oases however, floating through the air without regards to the capabilities of their former selves, presumably to keep an eye on the undeads or perhaps prevent them from giving chase to those that were escaping.
In any case, Ir'Houwl and her troops weren't having it, a ball of mana resembling a sphere a boiling water was lobbed right at one of the hovering sand whales, lodging itself precisely into its socket overflowing with red vapour before detonating with a powerful magical blast, the great elephant-sized beast's every bones detached before it even hit the ground with a loud thud, rousing much black sand in its fall.
Another one of the whales fell victim to the combined efforts of multiple mages as they cast a tall slash of mana right at it, bisecting it down the center of its body, leading the vapour to dissipate then as well.
A third one was simply pelted with over fifty spells in a few moments, swiftly forcing it to the ground and defeating it as well.
Clearly, the pale red acts of necromancy were more akin to turning these skeletons into golems of some sorts, although, the fact that the undeads had felt something stir within them seemed to indicate that this event caused by the rising of the red sun, its form seeming stuck in the process of melting like the entire star was crying blood, this seemed to truly only target corpses specifically.
The animated remains of the desert could barely even fight back or see anything coming, they were like still targets for Ir'Houwl's soldiers to pick off one by one, no matter where they aimed, as long as the strike dealt significant damage to their body, the vapour would go away and leave them as nothing more than piles of mundane bones.
She wondered why they just didn't all charge in instead of just waiting around and getting thinned out without accomplishing anything, even if they couldn't see in the dark, surely they could manage to do something if they all worked together, the vapour didn't actually emit light, but it was definitely visible in the dark still, so they would be able to know one another's locations… Or would they?
Ir'Houwl felt like they were blind to the dark not simply because it was true darkness, but because the red light did not reach there, like how the undead could perceive darkness and what was within it, they could perceive light and what was within it, only that it was their only sense, or perhaps, that all of their senses were tied to the condition that the red light was around.
A light awareness if you will…
'Lightness awareness?' she shrugged, may the hurdle of finding a fitting name for stuff be left to others, Ir'Houwl was not cut out for that sort of activity, instead, she was much more suited for combat.
With a few simple slashes of her hand alone, she hurled forward was looked like slashes of red at the creatures, slicing them apart with terrific ease, naturally, these were nothing more than the bare minimum amount of red sand compressed into thin slashes that moved too quickly for one to discern what they were truly made off.
She would make all of the grains disappear into thin air the instant their mission was accomplished, in just under a minute all of the creatures within her reach were rendered to the state of a collection of bones on the ground.
No matter how long they remained in place, the bones were not absorbed into the sand, which either meant that this was something that only happened when the sand was normal, or that these somehow, were no longer eligible, which would make sense as the corpses had clearly emerged from below ground, these fellows must have been making a nice white carpet at the very bottom of the desert's underground just a little while ago.
And so, she supposed that once they were defeated, they were no longer available to be controlled and that their remains lost all value to whatever was in charge of dragging them into the depth, perhaps it was the desert itself, perhaps it was the pale red sun which will lingered even when it was physically present, allowing it to stock up on puppets for when the right time came.
Whatever it was, Ir'Houwl felt that even if this one didn't have an eye obviously indicating that it was aware to some extent, the red sun was definitely like the blue sun and had agency.
The latter had some sort of mercenaries serving it, whilst this one instead wielded necromantic powers of some sort to turn all the creatures that had passed and sunk into its servants.
'Even if they have different powers, shouldn't its minions be capable of using its energy similarly to how the living warriors had used the blue sun's energy?' as though listening in, a figure emerged from behind a nearby dune, standing proudly atop of it, looking down at the fields of sand covered in bones.
A creature that did not seem to be consumed by madness and agony made its apparition.