V2Ch60-People Die
“I’m glad you’re here, Stanislaw,” Tybalt replied, rising to his feet. “I’ll be right over there. What’s the situation?”
“Devastation,” Stanislaw replied. “A sight to turn the stomachs of most mortals… but there are a couple of them I might be able to save, if I get a source of significant life force.”
Right. That’s why he communicated with me instead of just getting to work.
Tybalt quickly rose and turned to maneuver around the closest boulders, to get to where the others were. But as he did, two little hands grabbed his sleeves.
“W-Where are you going?” asked Kalina.
On his other side, a little boy named Leopold nodded in agreement with Kalina.
“I have to help the other injured,” said Tybalt evenly. “There were others hurt worse than Kistana. But you two don’t want to see that- ”
“W-We can handle it,” the girl objected. “Just d-don’t leave us…”
Little girl, you were grossed out by necromancy earlier, and I’m sure what I’m about to see is far worse…
“I’m sure you can handle it, but I need you two to stay back here and protect my friend,” Tybalt said. “In case someone caused this rockslide on purpose, she can’t defend herself. She’s very important to me, so I need someone to watch and make sure no one hurts her. All right? If someone comes, you two can scream for me.”
“Yes, sir,” Leopold said.
The girl deflated a little and then nodded solemnly as well.
Tybalt left them, and he was immediately glad that he had convinced them to stay behind.
His first glimpse around the rocks revealed a gruesome horror show.
Seeping out from under a massive boulder was a liquid mixture of red and other, less identifiable colors that Tybalt could only vaguely identify had once been a living thing - or things, plural.
Gods…
Those that had been under that boulder would be impossible for Tybalt to revive in any form, either as full living beings with Stanislaw’s Last Gasp skill, or even as undead.
He shook his head and made himself approach. As he stepped fully around the rock closest to him, he saw Dero, teeth gritted, hands clenched into fists as she looked down at something on the opposite side of the massive boulder.
Tybalt sensed the presence there was Stanislaw. The necromancer approached.
“Dero, are you hurt at all?” he called.
She barely tore her eyes away from what was in front of her to look at him.
“I’m right as rain,” she said in a bitter tone. “I assume this undead is yours?” She gestured at the space behind the boulder where Tybalt sensed Stanislaw was.
He nodded.
“You’re already planning to turn them into undead?” she asked, frowning with disapproval. “Without talking to their families or telling anyone they died?”
“No. Look, Dero, can you find us a big animal?”
She just stared at him for a moment. “What?”
“The mummy you’re looking at suspiciously has a skill to transfer life force from one creature to another. If we move fast, we can bring them back. Not undead. Back for real. But I think we need to hurry! I sensed a life force up on the mountainside earlier, I remember…” He gestured vaguely up the cliff, where he thought Life Sense had pulled his attention back during the necromancy demonstration. Although now he thought that might have been him noticing whoever planted the explosives here.
The elf gave him a curt nod and then disappeared.
Tybalt walked over to where she’d been standing and immediately winced. The bodies in between him and Stanislaw had still been badly harmed by the falling rocks, but not splattered like the person - or people - under the larger boulder. These more recognizable bodies were Eldest Isak and Stefan, the boy Tybalt had spoken with the most.
He had died without ever getting to hear the screams of a single enemy in battle. Without tasting a drop of the vengeance he wanted. There was something sad about that.
There had been something a little too relatable about Stefan.
Poor kid.
Both the boy and the old man had head injuries that were almost certainly the cause of death, and Eldest Isak’s left leg had been crushed into an unsalvageable pulp, much like the bodies of the two children. From the way Isak’s body was positioned, Tybalt guessed he had been trying to throw himself over Stefan protectively in his final moments.
But it had only gotten them both killed.
“Stanislaw, you can save them, right?” Tybalt asked quietly.
“Almost certainly, master,” the mummy replied. “If I have sufficient life force to work with. Not even that much, since they are a child and an old man. But I must ask… are you sure you want me to do this? Although it was my own suggestion, I should remind you, it is possible they’ll each lead half-lives from now on.”
“Possible, but not certain?”
“It is different for everyone, master.”
“Better a half-life than no life at all,” Tybalt replied, going to telepathy rather than speaking those ethically dubious words aloud.
“Not always,” Stanislaw replied. “But you are the current Master of Death, the world’s only surviving necromancer. It is your right to choose. It can be no one else’s. The magic of life and death is always a gamble of one sort or another anyway.”
“Well, I choose life.”
Tybalt knelt and began doing his best to make repairs to the bodies. He didn’t know how much difference it would make, but he was fairly certain that stopping the Eldest’s bleeding would make restoring him to life easier. That shattered limb was still a spigot of red.
He also repaired both the fox beastfolks’ cracked skulls as best he could with Scrimshaw.
“Who is the older man?” Stanislaw asked while Tybalt was working. “He feels familiar.”
“He’s on the Council of Elders,” the necromancer replied.
“Perhaps he’s a descendant of a friend of mine who used to advise me…”
Stanislaw lost himself in recollections at that point, and Tybalt just let him. He still felt a little bit out of it. Four people had died in what felt like a random act of the gods - but probably wasn’t - including three children. Two of the children were definitely dead permanently.
Who would do this? Who would do something like this? Was it really just to get to me?
But he couldn’t think of anyone else who would justify this kind of aggressive, reckless move. To kill Eldest Isak would be as easy as pushing him from a high place and saying he had jumped. Kistana didn’t have enemies as far as Tybalt knew. No one here knew Dero or Mariella well enough to want to kill her.
The only other conceivable target for an assassination attempt was Vidalia, but it would be a strange coincidence that this attempt on her life had only come when she had allied herself with the necromancer.
No, this was about me, and the people I care about were caught in the crossfire, along with innocent fucking children. He had to stop trying to repair the bodies for thirty seconds while he reined in his rage. With a single clenched fist at the wrong moment, he could easily do irreparable damage to either Stefan or the Eldest.
That was when Dero appeared.
“Sorry I took so long,” she said. “It’s hard to find fresh beef this time of year.” She dropped an aurochs that was several times her size onto its side in front of Tybalt. It landed with a thud and a pained lowing noise from deep in its chest. One of its legs, the necromancer noted, was broken.
“Good job,” Tybalt said. “Stanislaw, you know what to do.”
The mummy nodded, gathered the familiar gray aura around one hand, and began draining away the great beast’s life force. It seemed to sicken and age before Tybalt’s eyes, as the previous specimens Stanislaw had used it on had done. But this was no practice session, of course.
This time, the mummy took everything the aurochs had to give, and he did so quickly and efficiently. It took perhaps two minutes, and afterward, he glowed with overflowing vitality. Then the mummy bent, put his mouth to Stefan’s, and transferred much of the energy into the boy.
This was much quicker than the drain had been. The body visibly reinflated and recovered in the wounded places, filling out as if Stanislaw was refilling a skin of water with liquid.
In thirty seconds, with the boy’s chest rising and falling regularly, Stanislaw rose and stepped over to Isak, the life force around the mummy heavily diminished. As Stanislaw performed his second use of Last Gasp for the old man, Stefan stirred. His eyes instantly focused on Tybalt.
“Y-You… th-thank…”
His eyes closed again, and his breathing changed to a shallower but still mostly regular rise and fall.
“So you really brought back the dead, huh?” Dero said. “Hope you don’t get a big head over this.”
She sounded like she was trying to hide the fact that she was impressed.
As Tybalt opened his mouth to respond, the Eldest woke up. Stanislaw had done the job with him too.
“Gods, what’s going on?” he asked, blinking rapidly with a pained expression. “I had the most terrible dream- ” He suddenly looked around, pushed himself to a sitting position - he winced at the pain of his missing leg but did not allow himself to lie back down because of it - and realized it had not been a dream. “Did I…?”
“You died, yes,” Tybalt said bluntly. “You and three others were killed by falling rocks, but former Beastking Stanislaw, who serves me now, transferred life force into you and raised you from the dead. Not as an undead. You’re truly alive again. It was only possible because you died so recently, and your body was mostly intact.”
“I-I don’t think I’m worthy - I don’t understand - is there some way you can take the life force you gave me, and save one of the others? The children- ”
“We already saved the one we could,” the necromancer said. “It’s… a great loss for our people, but the other two are with Lord Mudo now.”
The old man shed bitter tears, and all Tybalt could do was drop down beside him and let the old man weep on his shoulder.
“This is a disaster,” Isak said at last. “Thank you… Thank you for saving my life, Your Holiness. Or… I suppose I should say ‘Your Majesty.’” He looked at Tybalt curiously. “The catfolk wouldn’t let you raise the dead in their care, certainly not the Beastkings, unless you had proven you were more than just a priest.”
Tybalt nodded and quickly gave the Eldest an abbreviated version of the story.
“Praise Lord Mudo, that even in times when things like this happen, he sends us fresh hope,” Isak said.
I don’t think this rockslide just happened, Tybalt thought. But he chose not to say it aloud just now. He had no solid proof.
He turned to Dero.
“Would you do me a favor and take Eldest Isak back to the village? We need the alchemist to come and take a look at all those who were hurt in this incident, and especially at Kistana. I had reason to believe she was already sick before this, and I’m worried she might not be out of the woods even with me using my powers to fix her obvious injuries. Mariella and I will transport the others back to our hut so they can lie down and rest.”
“You knew she was sick, and you let her work as your bodyguard?” Dero asked coolly.
“She insisted she was fine, we argued about it - you know what, I don’t have to explain my decisions to you,” Tybalt said. “If you just want to fuck with me, I’m not in the mood right now. Either do what I asked, or get lost, please. I have enough shit on my plate.”
A few emotions flashed over the dark elf’s face, but too quickly for him to identify.
“I’ll teleport the Elder, but you should know something before I go.”
Dero approached him with an object clearly held in a tightly clenched fist.
As she opened it, Tybalt frowned.
What is that?