Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbed)

Days passed, days in which Tybalt’s plans proceeded and his wives prepared for war in parallel with him.

Time seemed to race, and then finally, far too soon for his liking, Tybalt’s nearest creatures reported the Army under General Caracalla was just days away from reaching his fortress.

That also fit with Tybalt’s personal knowledge of how long it took a military force to reach the Salt Waste. He had been tracking it in his own mind since he first became aware of the Army’s departure.

The undead kept their distance as they observed, as there were holy men and women among the body of people, who might sense their presence or destroy them if they drew too close.

But Tybalt knew well enough that the game had finally begun in earnest.

He warned his military, ordered that Whadesgart be fortified, redoubled his efforts at crafting and improving his undead, and finally, he visited the Charnel Fortress one last time.

Despite his suspicion of the intelligence that inhabited the Fortress - or perhaps because he was suspicious and wanted to exert some control - Tybalt had decided to give it some final words of advice. Hopefully the necromancer and the spirit would weather this situation together.

Originally, when he had tried to turn Fort Hadrian into a haunted site, Tybalt had been interested in gaining complete control of the fortress and either garrisoning it himself or weakening its foundations so that while the Army was dealing with the haunting, he could sink the physical structure underground and kill almost all of those inside, potentially destroying most of the building to achieve victory.

With the Charnel Fortress created, however, he had something too malevolent to garrison with living troops and too valuable to lightly cast aside.

And the spirit of the Fortress might not allow its body to sink or be severely damaged anyway, even assuming that strategy would have worked.

So the necromancer spoke frankly to the intelligence that inhabited the place.

“We have a great and terrible enemy coming to wage war on your doorstep,” the necromancer said.

“As you have mentioned before repeatedly, master,” the voice of the Fortress intoned confidently. “These enemies will die on my doorstep. You have seen to that by leaving me so many loyal defenders.”

“That may be,” Tybalt replied. “Or you might fail. As I’ve told you before, the General of this army is too powerful for you to deal with on your own.”

“Still?”

The necromancer knew instantly what the Fortress was talking about. He could feel the power resonate through him as the Fortress spoke. Dark energies that had built with every day the Charnel Fortress stood and grew more stable. A power that grew more quickly when Tybalt performed his own dark rituals at the site. It had compounded as the necromancer created new horrors and experimented on prisoners within the walls.

The necromancer felt a slight unease under the roof where the power was concentrated. The spirit that ruled here was obedient, but he could sense its desire for autonomy - and its abundant supply of the same chthonic energies that he used.

“I know you can sense my strength,” the Fortress said confidently. “Why should I not simply crush them with all my power… master?”

“You’re still not strong enough to guarantee victory, that’s why,” Tybalt said. “And there are those whose powers mean they’re not amenable to destruction by the crude methods you have at your disposal. It will be a difficult enough task even for me, and I will be using whatever means I can to get around their powers.”

“I see…”

“All of which is to say, I need you to play the situation carefully when they come. I will have people I’ll wish to point out to you for special treatment…”

After explaining much of his planning, confirming with the Fortress once more that it had removed any anti-Teleport runes, and teleporting outside and back in to verify that personally, Tybalt performed one last preparatory effort.

It was time to try and gather a final bit of intelligence. He had been cut off from Samara these last weeks. His creatures could only tell him so much, and the things they had been reporting lately were very interesting. But he needed more than the undead vermin could safely gather. They had no choice but to keep their distance, lest their surveillance be discovered by the Divine Trust.

He needed something more substantive.

So Tybalt would ask the spirits.

Nekya Divination.

The necromancer invoked perhaps the most fundamental skill of necromancy for the first time: the power to consult with the dead. A power that predated the existence of his class and represented the role of Lord Mudo’s High Priest more than it did the perversion of death.

Words flowed into his mind, and he began chanting them aloud.

The ethereal power of the Death God flowed into him and mingled with his necromantic energy as he called upon the spirits in this place where so many had died to form the Charnel Fortress. There was much death to feed the skill, far more than he needed.

It only occurred to Tybalt belatedly, as he was already deep into casting his divination spell, to think about how much of that suffering he personally had caused.

Hopefully they don’t resent that.

A minute later, the first flickering, glowing form appeared before his eyes, a translucent figure. A flying wonder of magic.

It screamed wordlessly and began rotating around Tybalt.

Four more spirits appeared in the next thirty seconds, and three of them did the same.

The fourth screamed coherent words, but nothing useful.

“A curse upon you! Butcher of men! Traitor to the Kingdom!”

The being seemed to be powerless to harm him, but its voice was certainly unpleasant.

More spirits joined the ceremony, but they all seemed either to be incapable of speech or to hate Tybalt deeply - in some cases, to hate all life deeply.

“Skin-thing, give us your flesh!”

“No, blood! Give us some blood!”

“Begone, foul necromancer! This land is not yours!”

“We fought for the Kingdom! We will not yield to you!”

“We drove the elves from this place! Your beastmen will not take it!”

Against Tybalt’s underlying intentions, he had actually returned some agency and identity to some of the formless entities that already inhabited this place. They had found a purpose to cling to: hating him and calling for his blood.

“What is the Army—” Tybalt began but was cut off.

“Blood! The blood!”

“When General Caracalla arrives—”

“Give us death!”

“Free us!”

Whenever the necromancer raised his voice to try to ask a question, they shouted over him until he could not hear himself think.

“Fuck!” Tybalt swore finally, on the verge of canceling the skill. “I need information. Fucking useless spirits.”

“I can try to make them behave, master,” the Charnel Fortress offered.

The necromancer frowned, then nodded. It was a little embarrassing to get help from his creation in this area - necromancy, where he ought to remain supreme - but he was inside the Charnel Fortress, where its word had great power in its own right.

“Tell the mighty necromancer what he needs to know,” the Fortress ordered, voice ringing with booming authority.

“Fine!” howled one of the spirits.

“We greet the one who has despoiled our resting place!” screeched another.

“The mighty necromancer who has broken us and yoked us to serve his purposes!” screamed a third mockingly.

“In this Fortress, a great General is lost to the sands of time!” howled all the voices combined.  “We embrace him as one of our own!”

“What else?” Tybalt shouted. “What else can I expect after that?”

“Beyond the Salt Waste, our vision is clouded, mighty one!” they shrieked in a shrill but triumphant tone. “Having bound us here, you cannot blame us for being unable to see beyond!”

“But we sense another army!” crowed one.

“Coming soon to destroy those who defeated the first!” cried another.

“The victor will have mere weeks to defend or counter attack!” shrieked the third, almost cackling.

The voices combined once again into a single, horrendous howl. “More blood! More blood! More blood! Enjoy your time among the living!”

“Enough!” Tybalt shouted back. But the repeated words, “More blood!” and the horrible laughter continued a short while longer.

The piercing sounds pounded inside his head until Tybalt consciously canceled the divination skill. Then the spirits scattered, flying off through the walls, still cackling, as Tybalt took deep breaths, trying to collect his thoughts.

Their words were useless as prophecies, he thought. They’re just telling me that I win against - wait, they didn’t even say which side loses a “great” general! The Beastkings function as generals for me; I could easily lose one. Fuck! What kind of ridiculous garbage was that?

“I hope there was some value in that, master,” the Charnel Fortress intoned, voice ringing from all directions as usual - irritating now.

Tybalt forced himself to nod.

“Thank you for your efforts,” he said.

Let the Charnel Fortress think the necromancer was much wiser than itself and had derived some real information from the rantings of the angry spirits.

Too many prophecies, he thought as he left the Fortress again.

A prophecy that he needed to kill both the General and his son in order to truly win the battle. And that they would be victorious “in any field battle.”

All of Vidalia’s overlapping visions, which weren’t quite prophecies but constituted a near equivalent.

A prediction that he would lose some of his most powerful troops that accompanied him into battle. No, that was a prophecy about attacking Enh… right? Or was that just what he had read into it based on his plans in the moment he heard that one?

The tangled web was the sort of thing that might have made Tybalt slow his plans and try to figure out some way of avoiding a siege of the capital.

Only now, he had a prophecy that said he would have to fight another battle almost immediately after this one, regardless of what he did. His only choice was whether to be on the offense or defense.

It was exhausting, and he had already been frayed thin these last weeks.

His mind was tired but still moving back and forth between a thousand different game pieces when he walked into his bedroom and found Vidalia waiting for him.

That woke him up a little bit.

He raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t supposed to be her night.

“Nice to see you, little vixen,” he said. “Where’s Mariella?”

The two of them often shared nights, though it had become a bit awkward lately for them to actually go to sleep in the same bed with Tybalt, unless they made sure to occupy the largest one in the house. Their bellies had grown noticeably round with the children they carried.

“I told her we needed the bed,” she said proudly. “Tonight’s the night.”

“For?” Something wasn’t quite connecting for him.

“Tonight’s the night we connect with the paladin again, of course! It’s the most important thing we could do before the battle.”