Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbed)

It was Mariella who answered.

“The dragon fought Kistana,” she said.

“Then I’ll make her answer for this,” the necromancer replied, his eyes going hard. He sucked in a breath. “If the monks can handle Kistana’s injuries. If not, I’ll stay here and help however I can.”

“Don’t kill her.”

Both Tybalt and Mariella were surprised. They looked down.

The catgirl’s eyes were wide open, and she was looking up at the two of them intently.

“Quit looking at me like you thought I was dead or something,” she complained after a moment. “Both of you know I’ve been hurt worse than this.”

“Arguably, once,” Tybalt said. “That time when you almost died.”

“Well, I’m all right this time. I’ll be fine. You don’t need to get revenge for me.”

The fire mage scowled.

“I’m glad you’ll recover,” Mariella said. “But I don’t like the thought that they’ve just disappeared to do this again at a moment of their choosing. I don’t think chasing them is optional or just a matter of revenge… assuming we’re capable of doing it.” She looked back at Tybalt. “Did you bring Dero?”

“No, I was under the impression that every second counted. I’ll do my own teleporting, just like I did to get here. Now where are they?”

He began scanning the sky, looking out toward the ocean.

“They flew the other way,” Mariella said. “You must have just missed them. And you mean our teleporting.”

“I wasn’t looking up on the way here,” Tybalt acknowledged. “I do not mean our teleporting. After getting here and seeing Kistana in this condition, you think I want to bring you for the next part of this fight? So I can get two pregnant fiancees almost killed for the price of one?”

“You are not facing the Hero and a dragon by yourself,” she replied firmly, gritting her teeth. “Don’t you remember the last time you tried to go one on one with a dragon? Did you learn nothing? If you had Dero with you, I wouldn’t be worried. Since you don’t, you’ll be taking me.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but she continued, “That’s if you want to go at all. Kistana apparently wants us to drop this.”

As Mariella spoke, the monks began their work, their hands glowing with pure white aura as they began to heal the catgirl’s ribs and the back of her head.

“No, I don’t want you to drop it,” Kistana said, wiping some sweat from her forehead as she seemed to get some fraction of her energy back. “I’m not stupid. I get that they’re a problem. I’m just saying, spare the dragon. She was sort of honorable. A nice dragon. I’d enjoy fighting her again. I could totally win.” She licked her lips a little nervously as both Tybalt and Mariella looked at her skeptically. “If you can manage to capture her alive, that is.”

Tybalt sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. I can’t promise I’ll be nice to someone who did all this to you.” He gestured at the injuries, though the catgirl’s body was already looking slightly less torn up.

Victoria began praying over Kistana’s hurt places alongside the monks.

“My child is still healthy,” the catgirl said quietly, looking steadily up at Tybalt. “I don’t even feel any stress in that area. I will recover. Nothing has been done of any lasting consequence. Some buildings were destroyed.”

“Hm.”

I sense the loss of one of my Beastkings, actually.

“If this was the best they could do ambushing a few of us,” Kistana went on, “just me and a few mummies, then they’ll need to think of a different plan if they want to actually win a fight against you and our whole army. This is the weakest we were ever going to be, without our husband - er, fiance - and Dero. Our coordination with the undead was weaker without you too. But we got through it. So you can afford to be nice.”

“If you two are done talking, we should get moving,” Mariella said, gesturing at the sky behind Tybalt. “They’re practically a speck in the distance.”

The necromancer raised an eyebrow at her.

“You are taking me,” she said again, steel in her eyes. “Just try and leave without me.”

He thought about arguing, but the enemies were still getting away. If they got out of sight range, he had no confidence in being able to Teleport far enough or accurately enough to catch up to them. Especially given that he’d be transporting himself and Mariella.

“Fine,” Tybalt said curtly. “If you get hurt, I don’t want you to ever complain about being left behind in the future. Don’t get hurt, and don’t slow me down.”

***

Aoife and Chad flew toward the desert, Whadesgart slowly growing smaller in the distance.

The dragon began to notice her wounds more now that her adrenaline had started to recede. The pain throughout her body confirmed what she had already begun to suspect: they would need to stop soon. She and the Hero could not fly far in her current condition.

“Shit!” Chad exclaimed, his body twisted as he looked toward their rear.

Then Aoife looked back, too. She felt her heart clench.

Behind them, the undead were boiling up over the walls of the distant town like an angry anthill someone had dowsed with boiling water. They were far enough away that the creatures really did look like an indistinct pile of ants, but it was still disconcerting.

“Shit!” Chad repeated. Then, in a different tone, “I think we woke the necromancer up after all…”

Aoife wanted to reply sarcastically, Oh, really? Mission accomplished, then, I suppose. You wanted to draw him out, right? Well done us!

“Why do you sound excited?” she said instead. “You were running away from half that number, or a quarter, maybe, and they didn’t have the necromancer leading them at the time.”

“Yeah, you do have a point, but there is the opportunity now to just kill the leader and end this once and for all!” She felt him excitedly fingering his sword and immediately needed to dampen his enthusiasm.

“That wouldn’t solve the problem, Chad. It would just free the creatures from his control.”

“How do you know that?” the Hero asked skeptically.

Gods, you know so little about the enemy we mean to deal with! How did you ever expect to win?

“I have already explained that I have some instinctual memories,” Aoife reminded him. “Left to me by ancestors who have dealt with certain problems before. The issue with the undead is not primarily addressing the leader. It is killing every single member of their group so that there is no seed from which the rotten fruit may spring again. Several types of undead can create more of their kind. They are notoriously persistent. It was always going to be a challenge to defeat an army of the creatures, and when we arrived, it was clear that this necromancer had far more under his command than we had anticipated.”

“Notoriously persistent. Wait, were you expecting this?” He gestured back at the undead now running through the sand - but still receding further behind them, since she could glide faster than they could dash.

“It was within the possibilities I considered when I realized what you were running from.”

“But if you knew this pursuit could be a problem, why didn’t you head for the ocean?”

“I need healing, Chad. I just wanted to get a little distance, so you could do your thing, and—”

“Well, we have to fly faster! We can’t afford to stop in the desert. They’re not exactly gaining on us, but just now, something appeared a lot closer! Two shapes—”

She looked back and saw two figures in the dunes perhaps a few hundred feet behind them.

Teleportation?

“Heal my wings, then! The catgirl shot a half-dozen spears through them. I just said - or implied - that I could not handle flying across the water again. You have been free riding for long enough. It is high time to earn your keep!”

She sensed the Hero’s slightly wounded glare on the back of her neck, but she did not speak a word of apology. What she was saying was true, and she could feel a lot of magical power coming off of the two figures behind them. After a moment, she felt the beginnings of recovery. He was concentrating his mana, starting to heal her wing injuries. It freed up her natural regeneration, which had been mainly helping her wings hold together, to begin working on her scales. Right now, from beneath, she knew she looked a bit like a giant plucked chicken. Soft, raw, and vulnerable.

She looked back and saw the figures were running toward them. But they were not gaining, since she was still flying, and even Aoife’s gliding speed was faster than even a fairly high leveled human’s ability to run.

Thank the gods. We might actually be able to—

As she was thinking, an invisible force outside of her own body suddenly grabbed her wings and folded them in on themselves.

No!

“What the fuck are you doing?” the Hero shouted as they plunged into a nosedive.

“Something has my wings!” she yelled back. “One of the two mages. Chad, we will need to fight together. Keep healing me for as long as you can, we will take out whichever one did this to my wings, and then we can flee.”

“No, we’re better off splitting up,” Chad quickly replied as they neared the ground. “These two are probably used to fighting as a unit! We barely know each other. We need them to split up and fight separately to boost our chances.”

Aoife wanted to argue. She wanted to point out that their goal needed to be running away as quickly as possible, because the real threat wasn’t these two on the ground. It was the undead army in the distance, trying to get closer.

But she didn’t have the chance. That was when they crashed.

The dragon was able to land fairly well. She had fallen out of the sky many times as a young dragon, and she had learned the best ways to land so as not to take any serious injuries. Her body was also durable. The only concern she had was her wings, but the enemy folding them close to her body had actually minimized the risk to them too.

She hit the sand and rolled. Chad threw himself clear, landed practically on his feet, and started running away immediately.

Aoife knew that was what he had just articulated he wanted to do, but she couldn’t help feeling slightly abandoned, especially since he was running in the opposite direction from their enemies, seemingly leaving her to face them on her own before they would be able to threaten him.

She quickly rose to her feet, as ready to fight as she could be.

The two figures she’d seen pursuing them before seemed to have multiplied, however. Now there were five of them.

More teleportation? That is a rare power, is it not?

Three of the figures dashed around her to the right - a woman and two mummies - and she did nothing to stop them.

Her eyes were focused on the larger mana signature that had paused in front of her and the single mummy that stood beside him.

She knew who the human was without even having to speak to him, just from how malevolent the aura around him was. Like it could corrode you with just a touch.

The necromancer.

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