Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbed)

In the days that they waited for Dero’s return, Tybalt and the others prepared, both for the wedding and for war.

Mariella, Kistana, and Aoife trained together - mainly Mariella and Kistana attacking Aoife and the dragon defending, since with her size and power, she was ideally situated for that.

Tybalt used Teleport selectively to bring over some of the older women of the beastfolk tribes, such as Elder Elswyth, who had formally adopted Tybalt into her family, Elder Milena - though she was technically still in mourning following the tragic death of her brother in law, Elder Vladmir - and the entire harpy Council of Elders, who were a bunch of sweet, well meaning old ladies.

There was no new vote on whether to acknowledge the necromancer as the Beastking, but he wore his crown upon his return, and the surviving Elders each stared with wide eyes when they saw him, then bowed and referred to him as “Your Majesty.”

All it took, it seemed, was results.

It was a little anticlimactic, but Tybalt already knew how he wanted to cement his authority publicly, so he didn’t press for any formal recognition yet.

The older women were versed in beastfolk wedding traditions, so they guided the younger people around Tybalt and his fiancees in preparing for a royal wedding.

The necromancer kept his distance from the preparations, working on his own projects, which everyone else seemed to prefer. Whenever he got too close, he heard quiet muttering about how men weren’t supposed to be involved.

He knew - because it was done under his authority - that they had commissioned massive long tables from the town’s carpenters, and he saw glimpses of elaborate decorations. The beastfolk had not been able to go all out on a wedding in a long time, not truly since they lost their homeland and became impoverished, but they had many traditions they were eager to resurrect now that they had space and resources with which to do so.

On the human side, the Mayor had seemingly begun to prepare the townsfolk for the royal wedding, as Tybalt received congratulations whenever he went out on the streets - and a not-insignificant share of those congratulating him also referred to him as “Your Majesty,” though he wasn’t wearing the crown on a daily basis.

People in town had eyes to see what was happening. It was obvious if you observed the deference shown to Tybalt and his beastfolk that the town was not truly hosting the beastfolk and undead as “guests,” but was de facto under their management. Even if the Mayor swore no oaths to Tybalt personally and did not bow to him publicly, he was transparently following the necromancer’s directions and would be unlikely to provide assistance to Tybalt’s opponents in any fighting to come.

The Mayor had good survival instincts.

People who had lived in Whadesgart for any length of time would also have noticed that the soldiers from Fort Hadrian who had periodically come into town to purchase supplies, collect taxes, or provide their dubious protection had simply disappeared. The food that had been consumed by Kingdom soldiers was now being consumed by beastmen, so it was neither a loss nor a gain in material terms, but the fact of the shift was hard to miss.

Tybalt spent most of these days with Hieron, Stefan, and Victoria, working on undead. Hieron and Stefan were becoming his apprentices at this point, it was fairly clear. Now that Hieron was a fext mage, while Stefan was still waiting for his class to manifest at thirteen, they would hopefully both benefit from spending as much time as possible assisting the necromancer.

If Tybalt needed a special boost in chthonic power, he left for the Charnel Fortress with just Hieron, and they performed the work there.

There was something else Tybalt did while he was in the mountains. He called all the undead birds and vermin he’d been using to spy on the beastfolk conspirators to himself, and he placed them in his Undead Storage seal.

When he returned to Whadesgart, hundreds of miles closer to Enh, he released the creatures with a simple instruction: migrate south until you reach the capital.

It might take them a month or more, even going at near full speed without rest - benefits of being undead - but Tybalt had seen their value as spies already. Hopefully he could gather some useful intelligence and advance notice of Nietian Royal Army movements from the creatures. Samara was another potential source of information, but Tybalt didn’t flatter himself that he had the sort of complete control over the paladin that he did over the undead.

While he was working out of the Charnel Fortress, trying to figure out if he could create a telepathic bond between Esmerelda and her horse, the nachzehrer and wight knight he’d sent with Andric, Tatiana, and Sabine reported in on the progress of their mission.

After finishing with Esmerelda, Tybalt shifted his efforts from preparing for war to preparing himself for the duel they had apparently agreed he would fight with the ogre horde’s Bloodlady.

Every time I think I’m done with personal combat as a concept, someone else wants a piece of me or one of my women, he thought. I should put heads on spikes outside of Whadesgart or something, just so people get the message that you don’t want to pick a fight with me. But at least this fight can serve a purpose…

He improved upon his existing bone armor, thickening it and covering more of his body. With his increased physical strength from leveling, it shouldn’t be too much of a burden. The protection was more than worth the degree to which it might slow him down. Tybalt wasn’t looking forward to taking hits from an ogre who had dominated her horde by winning duels like this.

He crafted a long, mean-looking spear from nothing but thick, condensed bone.

And he sought advice.

His Beastkings had some knowledge of fighting nonhuman, non-beastfolk opponents such as ogres from their people’s extensive travels, though for most of them, that was knowledge passed down from their ancestors rather than personal experience.

The consensus was that ogres were tough as nails and almost as magic resistant as mature dragons, and this would be a difficult fight.

But the lessons from fighting Eolas and Aoife should also come into play here.

That reflected Tybalt’s past experience with the ogre race, minus the magic resistance that he hadn’t had any way to be certain about before this.

The biggest issue was a cultural matter: Ragga would likely consider the use of the undead in combat as cheating or a violation of the concept of a one on one duel.

In order to truly gain her respect and allegiance, the best thing would be to beat her in a fight without relying on his minions.

There’s only one skill I’m confident would actually do what I need… at the risk of killing her, of course. But what’s life without risks?

***

Finally, after a little over a week of waiting, Dero returned.

She teleported to just outside the town gates, in a group hug with a bunch of her dark elves.

Then she went back and brought more dark elves. And more. And more.

For most of a day, Dero was either retrieving dark elves who had been living under King Colin’s rule or recovering from teleporting so often. The last person she brought was Princess Liora.

The high elf vampire looked at Tybalt shyly when she arrived and then looked away as if embarrassed, like they were meeting for the first time again. She let Dero be the one to explain how things had resolved between the High Elf King and Tybalt’s new kingdom.

“Princess Liora is to marry you, with the idea that you won’t, uh, seal the deal until after the first big part of the fighting is done,” Dero said, speaking vaguely. “He wants her future secure first.”

Tybalt nodded.

The dark elf lowered her voice. “Fucker doesn’t want his daughter ‘sullied’ until he’s pretty sure we’re going to win the war, but that promise - of marriage, but only conditional consummation - got the fence-sitter to agree to send a few thousands mages and some elite warriors to help us. So I figured you’d consider it worthwhile.”

“Yep, you figured that right,” he said. “I’m surprised you were able to get so much out of him, honestly. We’re just adding Liora to our family and waiting on the sex part - which will probably bother her more than anyone else - and he’s sending us thousands of troops and let you take away his skilled dark elf labor force.”

“Well, there was, uh, one more thing,” Dero said, rubbing the back of her neck. “I kind of agreed that we’d provide his descendants the same kind of support and understanding that he’s giving me - er, us - in the event that his descendants ever lose control over his Kingdom. It sounded like a good deal to me, and he’s not likely to ever put himself in a position where he’d be deposed, and your future children with Liora have a legal argument for being his heirs, but there is that. Right now, it’s a one-sided deal favoring us, but there’s another side to it that might come due in the future, with interest. I swore it as a binding magical oath when his contract mage finalized our agreement, so I will have to do my utmost to hold you to it - or suffer whatever consequences from violating my oath.”

“Sounds like a hypothetical problem that would be very far away in any case.”

“Probably,” Dero agreed, though she sounded uncertain.

“When are his elite troops showing up?” Tybalt asked.

“Oh.” Dero rubbed her forehead. “Well, I have to set up a circle of mystic runes to allow us to mass teleport from one place to another. I’ve already set up a bunch of mystic runes for Colin that he can move outside his country’s wards, and now I have to do the same thing here. See, it was one thing for me to take groups of dark elves, but even that was tiring. They were mostly low level. Transporting people and objects is more draining if they contain more mana, which makes me teleporting groups of centuries-old elite warriors and mages around less than practical. There are a few more powerful dark elves who stayed behind too.” She smiled more lightheartedly than Tybalt ever remembered seeing before. “Including my family’s old blacksmith, Beren. He’s a great craftsman, and you’ll love him.”

“That’s good news,” Tybalt said. “Because we have another group of prospective allies who will need teleporting to our location, and they’re also really keen on getting their hands on some higher quality weapons…”

Everything was coming together, slowly but surely even if not quite neatly.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!