V2Ch57-Rocks Fall
“Mariella, how are you feeling?” Tybalt whispered back cautiously, conscious of the presence of the children and Eldest Isak just a foot or two away.
“Um, feeling?” she asked, creasing her forehead. “Just kind of lovey-dovey, I guess.”
More than kind of, he thought. Your… allegiance just changed. Or it just finished changing. According to the quest, I converted you to the service of Lord Mudo. Somehow. I don’t want to say that. I mean, telling her about the quest at all is a long conversation I don’t think I want to bother having, considering it’s between me and our god, but… how the fuck did I convert her? There’s only one thing I can even think of.
He lowered his voice even more, to make it impossible even for the closest individuals besides her to hear. Mariella leaned in close to catch his words.
“This is going to be an odd question, but if I asked you to become a priestess of the Death God at some point in the future, would you be willing?”
She moved back slightly, frowned, but then, after a moment, she nodded.
“I guess… if it was what you wanted,” she said. She fidgeted a little. “I’ve discovered he can’t be that bad, over these last few weeks. Plus… he chose you as his High Priest.” She smiled and fiddled with her hair a little.
Yeah, that confirms my theory. It seems as if I converted her to the service of Tybalt, which is maybe indirectly the same as fulfilling the quest conditions. And what I needed to do to convert her to my side wasn’t lying and manipulating her, or even giving her intense sexual experiences… Mariella needed to see that I might make a good Dad. Imagining me as the father of her children won her loyalty. That’s… very fucking wholesome. She’s such a sweet girl. A warm feeling flooded his chest.
He gave her a kiss on the forehead, smiled at her slightly confused expression, and turned back to the children.
“So, who wants to go next?” he asked.
Tybalt spent the next fifteen minutes reanimating dead creatures for the amusement - and mild horror - of the children. Though he tried to explain what he was doing as best he could, he suspected the educational benefits might have been limited. In particular, he imagined that his technical explanations might be either too amateurish to be useful or too sophisticated for this audience.
I need to learn how to properly talk to children, he thought.
But they seemed to do well with him simply explaining things as best he could and not talking down to them. At least he didn’t see a lot of recognizable looks of confusion.
At one point during the demonstrations, his eyes were drawn up to the mountainside for some reason, and he casually looked it up and down while trying to figure out why it had called to him. But he couldn’t - not without stopping the lesson, at least.
It didn’t seem like anything noteworthy was up there, after all.
He glanced back and checked that Dero was still at ground level. She was indeed behind him. It was a minor puzzle.
Then he shook his head and resumed showing off the power of necromancy.
“The power flows through its body,” he said, pointing at the reanimated desert sparrow. “It only lightly touches the feathers, preventing decay, but it flows thicker in the other places, allowing for…”
Another hour passed as Tybalt put on his show for the children. Even the little girl who had been disgusted by his magic before had become enraptured by the sight of the small bird that flitted around as quickly as it had in life, a fleck of green in its eyes the only feature that distinguished it from its living self.
Like clay in my hands, the necromancer thought, smiling. I’ll turn these children into their people’s champions.
He could sense the approval of the former Beastkings under his command as they watched through his eyes. Though Tybalt hadn’t wanted the mummies present, he had allowed them the privilege of observing his leadership of their people.
“Soon these promising children will be prepared to enact the vengeance you promised, master,” sent Stanislaw. “Soon we will fight openly against the Kingdom and all of Lord Mudo’s enemies. Our people will have their revenge…”
Tybalt had never heard the former High Priest’s voice speak with such fervor. The necromancer’s lips curled as he imagined it: these children leading their own undead, multiplying the force that was at his disposal, overrunning cities…
As he was smiling, he heard the sound of a little boy’s stomach growling.
“Lord Necromancer, it’s about time for lunch,” said Eldest Isak, looking up at the sky. The sun was high.
“Right,” Tybalt said.
“Why don’t we go back up toward the hut,” Mariella suggested. “Let the kids see where they’ll be staying. Vicky and Vida’s place is on the way. Vida told me earlier that she was making extra food in case some of your students wound up wanting to come over after training.”
“Hopefully enough for these hungry young mouths,” said Vidalia, smiling a little nervously.
“If not, I’ll help you get something else ready,” said Victoria, hugging her twin from the side.
Tybalt looked back and noticed that it was just the twins, Dero, and Kistana there. Andric had left at some point while the necromancer wasn’t paying attention.
He didn’t seem very happy when he came back, and he didn’t stick around. I guess the outing didn’t go particularly well. But I’ll ask Vidalia about it later.
“All right, we’ll go back to the Twinleafs’ place,” said Eldest Isak, nodding. “Lord Necromancer, would you lead the way? Children, stay close together, please, no one getting lost.”
The group of young beastfolk gathered into a loose blob just in front of Eldest Isak, while Mariella and Tybalt took up positions on opposing sides of the group and just in front of them. Kistana got behind and to the right of Tybalt, while the foxgirls and Dero trailed slightly behind. The placement of the adults would ensure no child was left behind.
Tybalt led them through a valley that he and the others had passed through when they came down the mountainside that morning. They got twenty feet in, close to the place he was expecting to begin climbing, when there was a loud bang from somewhere overhead.
His eyes shot up, trying to find the source of the noise.
He heard and saw boulders falling from above.
A fucking rockslide!
He reacted quickly to the sudden threat. He was too far from any of his women to reach them, and they were also all adults. So he focused on the orphans.
“Grab the kids!” Tybalt yelled. He seized the two closest small bodies in his arms and quickly glanced side to side, trying to decide where it would be safe to throw himself.
Quicker than he could move, another figure - much stronger and faster than himself - tackled him.
He was almost angry that whoever it was had tackled him instead of pulling a child to safety. Then, a second or two later, a boulder struck where he’d been standing. He had to wonder if he’d hesitated a moment too long - if he’d been about to be crushed. The hint of anger vanished.
He looked up at the figure who had knocked him and the children into the cliff face.
“Don’t worry, my lord, I’ll keep you and the kids safe.” It was Kistana’s voice. Her frame was dark against the bright sky but also glowed red both with her energy and with the usual gentle white aura that Tybalt saw around every living person with his Life Sense.
The red aura occasionally rippled slightly, as if disturbed, but the catgirl stood with her back straight, apparently strong and steady despite the rain of heavy stones that fell all around them. A rock that looked like it weighed over a hundred pounds struck her in the shoulder blade and bounced off like a copper coin.
Hitting at that speed, that little one probably would have broken my arm, Tybalt thought. I guess I was right to think I needed a bodyguard after all.
“You all right?” he asked, slowly rising so he could press himself more tightly against the stone surface.
The two children had buried their faces into Tybalt’s sides, so it was just him and Kistana looking at each other as she defended his life with her body. Her arms were pressed against the wall, eyes gently glowing, her face inches from his own.
“Who, me?” the catgirl asked, smiling down at him through gritted teeth. “This is a breeze. Just stay down, please.”
He stopped rising and remained half-stooped.
“Of course I will, you think I want to die?” he said.
Kistana snickered even as more rocks capable of splattering Tybalt into smithereens bounced off of her, apparently harmlessly.
“Guess not,” she mouthed, watching the necromancer huddle, arms around the children, trying to be a layer of additional protection for them.
After a few more seconds, the rocks seemed to slow in their falling all around them. Perhaps the rockslide was just about over. The catgirl breathed a sigh of relief and straightened her posture slightly.
It was when she turned her head to check behind her.
Her aura flickered, as it had been doing more and more over the last week. This time it flickered almost completely off. Then a rock the size of Tybalt smacked into her back and settled on the ground beside her.
It was just a glancing blow, but the expression on her face visibly changed, and her side crumpled as if a few ribs had caved in.
“Shit- ” Kistana coughed and rasped, her expression turning to one of pain - and possible oxygen deprivation. She swayed on her feet for a few seconds. “S-Sorry, my - sorry, Tybalt.”
The catgirl collapsed.
***
When the sky fell in, Dero was standing the furthest back.
She was a little bored, frankly. She had been for the last hour. Once you had seen one display of necromancy, you’d seen them all, right?
So she happened to be looking up at the sky when it happened. She saw a little burst of flames and heard a bang. Then rocks started tumbling down.
“Shit!”
The dark elf instantly grabbed the two closest people, Victoria and Vidalia, by their clothes, and she threw them backward with all of her might. Then she lunged forward and seized four children in her grasp before teleporting back out of the way, into the sand, out of the valley that had become a corridor of death.
Vidalia and Victoria were sprinting toward Dero, aware of what was happening by now.
Dero let go of the children and prepared to teleport back. She just needed to see her target clearly, but the heavy rocks were falling everywhere now.
Mariella and two children were huddled against the rocks on one side of the valley, while Kistana seemed to be protecting Tybalt and another two children on the opposite side.
There were still four more children and the man the beastfolk kept calling “Eldest” right in the middle, eyes wide with panic, rocks falling all around them.
Dero teleported at just the moment when she saw a huge boulder about to fall into their midst. The last thing she heard before she disappeared was the old man’s scream.