Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbed)

“That still doesn’t answer my question,” Mariella said. But her voice was gentle now. She felt safer. She trusted Tybalt to do what was right for their family. “Punishment? What punishment?”

“One he will feel the rest of his life.”

“I need a vessel, master,” Stanislaw said in a strained voice from beneath them. “Quickly!”

“Give me the sword back,” Tybalt said. “For just a moment.”

Mariella quickly handed it to him, and the necromancer threw it to Stanislaw.

With one hand, the mummy held a glowing orb that he seemed to have pulled from Chad. With the other he caught the sword and pressed them together. The orb and the sword resisted each other for a moment, then merged.

The blade glowed slightly now, an eerie gray color.

“What happened?” Mariella asked breathlessly.

Stanislaw held the sword out to her, and she took it without another word. She stared down at it, and she thought her reflection in the steel stared back at her with more than the usual intelligence of a reflection.

Is it alive?

“I’ll tell you in a few minutes,” Tybalt replied. He turned his head to the side. “Dero, can you send him away?”

“Where?” the dark elf asked, stepping forward, her hands already glowing.

The necromancer smiled thinly. “I think his friends will be in need of his help at this point. They were trying to fight a dangerous necromancer of their own until the Hero left them. I expect that situation remains perilous.”

Dero nodded and gave the Hero a hard smile of her own. “Good choice.”

The Hero rose to his knees. “I didn’t resist,” he said. “I feel hollow. What have you done to me?”

“Taken measures so you will remember this day,” Stanislaw said. “And never again raise a weapon against my master.”

“You will come to understand it in time,” Tybalt said. “Some of it will be obvious as soon as you check your status. It’s a cruel mercy we chose, but you deserved worse. If you try to fight me or mine again, you will be instantly destroyed. But you still have work to do in this world.”

The Hero visibly paled as he turned his attention away from the people around him and toward what must have been his status screen floating in the air in front of him.

His lips mouthed the words “Fallen Hero?” with a shocked expression.

They corrupted his class, Mariella realized. What will that do to him? He doesn’t seem crippled…

A hole in space appeared a few feet in front of the Hero. He staggered forward. His injuries were still in the process of healing. His flesh was blackened in many places, and his recovery had noticeably slowed since whatever else Stanislaw had done to him. There was a hollow look in his eyes now, like a dog who’d been whipped too much.

“Th-thank you for your mercy,” Chad said, looking at Tybalt and then lowering his eyes. His feet inched toward the portal even as he tried to keep his posture unassuming.

“Don’t thank us,” Tybalt said again. “Aren’t you going to try and negotiate for your companion’s liberty too?”

Chad glanced up at the necromancer’s cool expression and seemed to assess the situation in an instant. There was no way Tybalt was actually going to let him leave with a dragon. Not unless he permanently crippled her in some way too. At least that seemed obvious to Mariella.

“She and I… weren’t that close,” the Hero muttered.

Mariella heard a loud, contemptuous snort from somewhere far behind her.

Then Chad bolted. He lunged for the opening. No one moved to stop him, and he dove through to the other side.

The portal closed instantly behind him.

“Well, I’m glad that’s dealt with,” Tybalt said.

“Not permanently, but as definitively as you could possibly resolve it without courting disasters we can’t even guess at,” Dero said firmly, looking back and forth between Tybalt and Mariella. Her eyes seemed to soften on the fire mage. She stepped closer to Mariella and took her hand. “We are, um, sisters now, after a fashion.”

“Huh?”

Then Mariella looked down and saw the glowing tattoo peaking out from the hemline of Dero’s skirt.

“You finally did it!” she exclaimed, excited despite her fear of a few minutes before.

Dero allowed herself to be embraced and even gingerly hugged Mariella back after a moment. They clutched each other tightly for a minute, and Mariella felt a sense of kinship with the dark elf, despite their differing races and the other woman’s ancient age and prickly nature.

“Fine, fine, enough mushy stuff, I - hey, where did Tybalt go?”

Mariella opened her eyes and saw immediately.

“He’s over there,” she said, pointing.

***

“So, your friend is gone.”

“The Hero was never my friend,” the dragon replied instantly.

“You could’ve fooled me,” Tybalt said.

“Is that a difficult task, human? I had no particular sense of whether you were clever or foolish.”

“But you do know I’m strong?”

“I have been taught that lesson,” the dragon replied icily. “Boastful, apparently, too.”

“It’s not boasting if it’s true.”

“What do you want of me?” she asked.

“I want to know what to expect,” Tybalt replied. “What are your plans for the future? Why did you come after me and my family? I understand why the Hero would do it, but I don’t know anything about you.”

“I owed him a life debt,” the dragon said. “I agreed to accompany him after he spared my life after winning a fight with me.”

“Oh. Interesting. As I did?”

“I suppose. Do not expect me to beg and grovel for my life the way he did. If that is what you want—”

“You have an awful lot of attitude for someone who just lost a fight.”

She bared her teeth at him. “I sensed what your creature did to Chad. I would not endure such, merely to save my own life.”

Tybalt nodded. “You have a good sense of who you are and what truly matters. Some things are worth more than your life.”

“You took his soul from his body.”

“He felt the loss, but I guess it didn’t feel like it was something important we’d taken.”

“Souls in my day were another thing,” Stanislaw said through the bond that linked himself and Tybalt. “I have never worked with such an insubstantial soul. But it will serve our purposes.”

The necromancer nodded. “I could feel that it made the sword more powerful, at least.”

“His soul?” Tybalt turned. Mariella was standing there, eyes wide. She drew her still slightly glowing sword from her side. “Is that what I sensed…?”

“Yes, Stanislaw placed his soul inside your new chthonic sword,” Tybalt said. “It was the best way to be certain without killing him that he’d never try to harm us again. If he does, just break the sword. It will kill him instantly.”

“I should have known you wouldn’t let him go lightly after he threatened to carve our child out of my belly,” she said in a tone of relief. “Sorry I doubted you.”

Tybalt hadn’t heard the exact words the Hero had used, and he felt a sudden wish that he had his hands around the man’s throat.

“We definitely paid him back for his words,” he said finally. “Stanislaw corrupted his class, extracted his soul, and blighted his body.”

“Blighted his body?” Mariella asked.

Tybalt’s expression turned grim.

“Some of the injuries you gave him will never properly heal. Not unless he can talk to a high priest or priestess of one of the other gods to get them fixed.”

“He’ll hate us,” the fire mage said, clearly recalling the severity of the injuries all over the Hero’s body.

“But be powerless to do anything about it,” Tybalt said. “I expect he’ll find other places to direct his anger. Just smash the sword if you’re worried about him. No one can live without their soul, and his is bound up in that steel. I prefer that you not do it right now, but you can if you wish.”

“I sent him across the continent,” Dero said. She had followed close behind Mariella. “At least wait until a couple of months have passed since this encounter. It might make the lamia’s prophetic consequences less likely to materialize, and the Hero cannot cross that distance in two months. Not without help. There aren’t many people with the Teleport skill.” She looked at the dragon. “Can I assume that he is unlikely to obtain the aid of another dragon?”

The dragon snorted. “Why ask me? Your lord here clearly distrusts my answers. He did not even believe me when I said Chad was not my friend.”

“He’s our fiance,” Dero said, “and he is slow to trust. Whereas Mariella and I are very welcoming and happy to make new friends.”

“As is Kistana,” Mariella said. “She even asked Tybalt not to kill you.”

“Indeed,” Tybalt said.

“The huntress is one of your mates too?” the dragon asked, eyes wide. Somehow that seemed to have made almost as much of an impression on her as anything else Tybalt or the others had said.

“That’s right,” Tybalt said.

“Remove these chains from me, and I will become one of your companions,” the dragon offered.

“That… Well, all right.” Tybalt placed a hand on the Heaven-Binding Chains, and they turned back into aura that returned to his body. The effect was not unlike Kistana and the huntsmasters’ aura weapons, actually, which made him wonder if this was a skill that they could pick up.

He felt confident enough that the dragon at least wouldn’t instantly try to turn on himself and his fiancees, since she was surrounded, injured, outnumbered, and had already lost a fight to Tybalt with just one undead there to help him. She didn’t seem suicidal.

“My name is Aoife,” the dragon said. She looked slightly annoyed as she asked, “What should I call you, necromancer?”

“I am Tybalt Black,” he said. “Beastking, High Priest of Mudo, Ruler of the Beastfolk and of the Salt Waste, future emperor of all Abadd. You can just call me Tybalt, though.”

***

Chad stepped through the portal and found himself back in the Dread Swamp.

The whole area was shrouded in dank swamp mist.

The brackish water burned as it touched the places where the fire mage’s accursed flames had scorched him - he was still charred everywhere below the waist - but he tried not to let the pain penetrate too deeply into his mind. It was over. He was free. He would heal. Everything would fade into memory. He could always go back and try again if he felt confident in his victory. He looked behind him and confirmed the little rend in space had closed behind him.

“Fuck you!” Chad shouted. “Fuck you and your whores and your whole fucking army!”

There was no emotion in the words. They were spoken simply because Chad had made spite toward his enemies into a habit too ingrained to break now.

This is fine. I survived. I may have lost the holy sword, but Vika and Astara can have another made for me. I am their champion, after all. Even if my class did change to Fallen Hero… Aoife will be all right too. She’s honestly better off without me.

He felt strange. Nothing he said or thought seemed to mean anything. Usually he told himself lots of things, set goals, made promises, lusted after women, spoke things into existence with his simple, straightforward plans.

But he’d felt hollow inside ever since that mummy laid hands on him.

“I’m probably just hungry,” he muttered. Healing always left him with an appetite. But there seemed to be something more missing inside him than food.

There was a splash in the water, not too far off, and Chad immediately dropped into a fighting crouch. His hand went to where his sword should have been, on his belt, but of course, he had neither sword nor belt. He had fled, completely naked, through the portal, because instinct told him not to rely on the capricious mercy of a necromancer for his continued survival.

Maybe the noise is one of my friends, he thought, not really believing it. The necromancer did say something about sending me to my friends.

He heard a familiar tinkle of laughter from just beyond .

Chad smiled at the girlish giggle. He didn’t feel the sense of joy, but he smiled in anticipation that he soon would. He hoped.

I’d know that laughter anywhere.

“Astrid, are you looking for me?”

Then he saw the shape of her through the mist, the nature mage’s gentle curves and glowing green eyes confirming before she could say anything that she was exactly who he thought she was. He tried not to recall their last encounter, how she had glared at him and, along with the others, all but accused him of abandoning them.

That would all be water under the bridge now in any case.

“I am looking for you, Chad.”

His blood ran cold. That was Astrid’s voice, but it wasn’t truly Astrid. All the heart was gone. Chad could try to lie to himself that she was just in a bad mood, but that wasn’t it. He had seen and heard all manner of undead fighting both this lich emperor and the defiant one in the Salt Waste, and he could tell a human voice from an undead one by now.

He sensed movement at his feet, and he instinctively skipped backward through the swamp water, avoiding a trio of vines that rose up to grasp where his legs had been.

“Astrid, what happened to you?” Chad called, trying to get her to speak so he could pinpoint her location. If she was undead, the least he could do was put an end to her so her spirit could rest easier.

He looked around, but the swamp miasma seemed to have thickened around him. He could no longer see Astrid’s shape or even her glowing eyes.

Then a deep, cruel, cold, and distinctly male voice echoed through the air.

“She has joined my party now, Hero.”

The voice of the lich emperor shattered any illusion he might have had that he was mistaken.

“Let her go!” the Hero demanded loudly, affecting a bravado he did not feel. He didn’t know why he said the words. He didn’t feel any conviction as he spoke them. He didn’t feel the sense of loss he would have expected to feel at her death.

It was strange to be so nearly numb.

“She is beyond ‘letting go,’ Hero… or should I say Chad? She knew so much about you. After sifting through her memories, I almost feel as if I know you myself. The Rose of Sarda fought so hard before she died. She lasted a long time. She suffered and bled and spent her life force as mana, trying to fend me off. She died on her feet. If someone had been there to rescue her… it probably would have gone differently. Perhaps if her companions had been more stalwart, they would have vanquished me. Maybe they needed their leader to instill courage into their hearts. Either way, I can honestly say that this poor girl died, mainly because you were not there. That was one of her last thoughts. She died weeping, crying your name, begging for Chad to save her. But you never came.”

The words should have shattered Chad’s equilibrium and brought him to his knees. It was his Astrid the lich was talking about, after all. They had kissed under the moonlight during the Equinox Festival, and she had run away giggling.

Astrid and Elara were the only members of Chad’s party who he had thought might have genuine feelings for him.

Why don’t I feel anything? There should at least be some sense of loss at the thought that he would never be intimate with her. They would never again kiss. He would never run his hands over those curves again, never hear her giggle, never exchange a joke and a wink, never buy her a drink.

I should be devastated.

“Well, this has been a fun discussion, Hero.” The lich emperor’s voice sounded more distant now. “But since you no longer possess your fancy sword, I do not expect we will repeat this a third time. I hope you will at least give my creatures a good fight before you die…”

The distant sounds of splashing began to make themselves apparent to Chad’s ears.

The Hero turned and immediately began to run, without waiting to see what was coming. He had to at least figure out what was wrong with him before he died.