The Hamlet of Seascann -- Now Blighted Lands

It's a particularly quiet night in the hamlet of Seascann. The omnipresent cries, chirps, buzzes and whistles of various wildlife still fill the air, of course, but it seems muted. Tentative, even. As if the entire land stands still in anticipation of something dire. The hanging yellow pitch lanterns that line the picketed wooden walkway leading to the village flicker and hiss, their light dim against the oppressive darkness of the Sallowlands night. Two guards stand without on either side of the town's rotting gate, leaning against its palisades, clad in simple rawhide leather studded with light pig iron plates, gripping long battle scythes, ever alert.

One of the guards, a mousey, ginger-headed freckled boy no older than seventeen summers fidgets uncomfortably. It's his first night on watch, and his heart pounds away with anxiety.
"Oi, Gerry," he hisses to the man beside him, a tall, lanky old fellow, aged several decades older than the boy with a dusting of white hair and a scarred face.
"It always this bleedin' quiet?"
"It's feckin' night, boy. D'ya think critters never sleep or sommat?" replies the man, irritated, "'N wha' t'feck're you whisperin' fer?"
"Iunno, just felt...appropriate, I s'pose," replies the ginger, scratching his nose and fidgeting self-consciously. "You sure it ain't feel no different than yer norm nightwatch?"
"Aye I'm feckin' sure, now shut yer flappin' gums and keep your eyes open," growls the white-hair.

Despite the old man's reassurances, the boy continues to grip his scythe tight enough to turn his knuckles white, jumping at every little sound. One such sound nearly sends him flying from his thick leather boots, as the sloshing of water moved by something much larger than a pond-lizard emanates from nearby. The kid levels his scythe in the direction of the sound, waiting. The sloshing is replaced by the clicking of a staff upon the wodden planks, followed by the slap of wet bare feet. Suddenly, a figure emerges from the gloom, illuminated by the light of the walkway's lanterns. A slim, feminine figure encapsulated by tattered crimson robes, hood raised and cloaking her face. She holds a twisted oak staff in her right hand, leaning upon it, seemingly having difficulty standing upright. At the sight of a woman, the naïve boy withdraws his weapon, although he still peers at the woman with suspicion. The old man, however, is at full attention now.
"Oi! Who're you?" he calls to the woman. She offers no response, instead hobbling closer and closer to the gate. Something about her seems...off, although it's hard for the guards to tell from this distance what exactly that could be.

Finally, she comes into the light of the two bright shuttered lamps that sit beside the gate on either side, and she stops. Her head raises, and her eyes peer out from under her hood, alight with a sickly dark violet glow. Black and purple twisted thorny vines creep up her figure and wrap about her staff, weaving in and out of her tattered robes, piercing her skin in some places. Her skin is similarly afflicted, splotches of a constantly moving black and violet blighted substance dotting her exposed flesh.
"Are ye a'right, lass?" asks the ginger kid, morbidly curious. The woman's eyes dart to meet his own, and suddenly a black tendril leaps out from the darkness and grasps the child by the throat, lifting him up into the air. The tendril is ethereal, and glows with the same violet light reflected in her eyes. The other man yells and dashes toward the woman, sinking his scythe into her right shoulder.

The blade should have severed her arm with the strength of his blow, but instead it clangs against something stiff. Suddenly, it's wrenched from his grasp, and the dark sorceress gives him a twisted smile as black thorned vines pour from the wound, wrapping about the man and detaching from her figure. Those that cannot find their way into him through his mouth, nose, or ears burrow into his flesh, tearing through the gaps in his armour like butter. His cries of agony are muffled by a cascade of blighted vines wrapped about his throat, and his eyes roll into the back of his head as his entire body is parasitized by the sickly growths. A gout of flame licks out from the onyx topping the woman's staff and encapsulates the other guard in a searing blaze. His screams are enough to wake the entire village, but by that time it's too late. The moans of things not quite dead but not quite living begin to fill the air, and a pair of massive black-and-purple smoky wings that aren't quite solid explode from the sorceress' back, carrying her over the wall in one powerful flap.

The cries of villagers fills the air that night as the sorceress terrorizes the town. None can stand against her magics, her already extraordinarily powerful spells altered by a dark primal force coursing through her veins as she levels building after building, burning the swamp folk alive until none remain. What were once men stand as a legion behind the sorceress, their flesh pallid and sickly, their bodies sustained by dark primal magics, twisting thorny black vines exploding from each one, the army surrounded by a black and violet smog. This corruption worms its way over the fresh corpses of the swamp folk, and they begin to rise, one by one, their movements more fluid than one might expect from undead, though still somewhat clumsy and ponderous. These new ghouls turn upon their kin, scouring the town and executing anyone they find hidden away.

The sorceress stands within the centre of this distruction, panting heavily. She seems lighter on her feet than before, as if all the bloodshed around her has revitalized her, and she stands to her full height, pulling her hood back over her face. A cascading mane of scarlet hair falls from the hood and her face is revealed, uncorrupted and pristine but for the glow of her eyes. The black wings dissipate, the smoky substance wafting up into the air as the woman looks about herself with a grim, uncaring expression.
"The Wyld will reclaim it all," she hisses to herself, in tandem with the voices that plague her every thought, twisting her mind.
"The stones of civilization will crumble, they will fall, the land will be taken by rebirth. Yes. Yes, it is so. I have seen it."
She departs into the night, her newly bolstered legion in tow, disappearing as quickly as she came into the wall of cypress. As the dim glow of daylight rises over the hamlet, it illuminates naught but a ghost town, full of blackened and collapsed houses. Strangely, not a single corpse litters the street, and black, thorny vines crawl over every surface. The land, it seems, has reclaimed what always belonged to it. A large crow perches upon a piece of charred wood protruding from a smoking ruin and surveys the area. It caws approvingly before fluttering off, leaving the ghost town to its fate.