V2Ch61-Aftermath
Tybalt was angry at himself.
Angry that trouble had found him unprepared, yet again. He had thought he was in the midst of safety, surrounded by people who adored him, but still, there was no excuse.
You’re never safe when you’re making a play for a throne, he thought.
He’d had his undead nearby, waiting for his commands, but not standing directly beside him as additional bodyguards. Tybalt had been too self-conscious about the beastfolk seeing him with the mummies in tow, since only the cat tribe knew he had awakened them. To the others, his actions in the Valley of Martyrs might seem blasphemous - awakening their most sacred dead, supposedly before their time.
Now that caution, that concealment, seemed foolish.
If the mummies had been there, if William had been there, Kistana wouldn’t have gotten hurt… Those two children wouldn’t be dead.
He shook his head. They were already back up the mountain, safe as could be. He and Mariella had carried the injured Kistana and Stefan. Elder Sybil, the alchemist, was already looking at them while Tybalt sat on a rock outside.
There was no sense in berating himself about the past.
“Are you… all right?”
He looked up to see Victoria approaching him.
“No, I’m not,” Tybalt admitted.
“Sorry, of course you wouldn’t be. It was a stupid question.” She took his hand gently in hers. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I had wanted to ask you how your outing with Andric went, but I’m not really in the mood to think about that right now…
“I don’t, unless you have updates for me about Kistana and Stefan,” he said. “I’m still… piecing everything together. Honestly, I’m a little surprised you came out here to see me.”
“You thought it would be Vidalia,” Victoria said knowingly. “She probably wants to be out here too, but she started cooking some partridge noodle soup, and she has to watch the pot until it boils.”
“I guess Vidalia’s always keeping herself on task,” he said. “I’m not sure I’ll be in the mood for eating after all this.”
“I’m not sure it’s really for you, anyway,” she replied, shrugging. “She specifically said she was thinking about Kistana.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know Vidalia cared so much about her.” The words came out harsher than he’d intended, but Victoria let out a quiet laugh in response.
“I don’t think she knew it either… until Kistana risked her life to protect you. Vida said it to herself, quietly, like she didn’t even know she was talking out loud: ‘She saved darling.’ It was sweet. Plus… Elder Sybil said Kistana’s in real trouble.” Her expression darkened. “It’s not mostly the impact from the boulder. She and Stefan are mostly healed, apparently, thanks to you and your mummy. And Sybil’s elixir fixed the rest. Stefan will be up and walking around the day after tomorrow. Kistana, though - her situation is a little different.”
“It’s that preexisting illness,” Tybalt said, shaking his head. “I told her…”
“Yeah, you did, but she’s a stubborn cat,” Victoria said. “So now she’s going to pay the price for that. Assuming she recovers properly, she’ll be bedridden for weeks, beating herself up for months. But at least Sybil recognized the illness. It’s apparently not uncommon, though people don’t usually let it get this bad. The Elder keeps medicine for it on hand all the time. She called it ‘Salt Fever.’”
Tybalt nodded. “Good to hear she knows what she’s dealing with.”
“Yeah… I can’t believe how unstable the mountain was. Feels like we walk through that valley all the time. Life in this place is so precarious.” She swallowed and looked Tybalt in the eye a little nervously. “But I guess your plans for our people would take us away from all this?”
He squeezed her hand. “Probably, yes. But don’t blame the mountain. I don’t think this was a natural event. That reminds me, I want Elder Sybil to stay here a little while after she finishes treating Kistana. Tell her that for me, please. I have questions that only she can answer.”
“You don’t think it was natural?” Victoria asked. “Then what- ?”
“Please, Vicky.” He shook his head and lowered his voice. “I shouldn’t have said even that much. And I don’t want to explain this more than once, in case others are trying to listen in on our conversation. I’ll tell you, Vidalia, and Mariella all at once, and we won’t talk about it again after that. Not until I’m sure it’s safe.”
She nodded and rose. “I’ll tell Vidalia to come out here once the ingredients are in the pot. Mariella too. See you in fifteen minutes or so.”
She turned away. Tybalt almost told her to stay, but then he sensed the approach of a pair of undead. He decided to take advantage of a little bit of privacy.
Heimar and Raybeck stepped into view at the edge of his peripheral vision a minute later.
“Master, we sensed there was trouble,” Heimar sent through their bond. “Is there some way we can help?”
“How is Raybeck doing?” the necromancer asked.
“About to evolve. I think he’ll fully regain his intelligence.”
“Good. Go complete his evolution. After that, I have a task for you. It will be time-consuming, and frankly, it would be more efficient for me to do it myself… but I have too many things to do. It should make me and the people I care about much safer once it’s done.”
“We live to serve, master.”
“Good. I need small animals. Small, dead animals whose bodies are still in working order. There are some situations where being small is an advantage…”
“We’ll complete the evolution and get on the task, then,” Heimar sent.
Tybalt nodded and felt it as the two presences receded.
A minute passed.
“So, what are you going to do?” Dero’s voice came from just behind Tybalt’s neck. He barely restrained himself from jumping at the startling sound and the way her voice tickled the little hairs on his back. It wasn’t a complete surprise that she was here. He knew she had returned with Elders Sybil and Isak. But he might never get completely used to the dark elf.
“That depends,” he said quietly. “I’m already setting some things in motion to ensure this won’t happen again. But… I could use some help.” He turned his head to look her in her violet eyes. He swallowed. He could see suspicion, calculation and distance in her expression - maybe anger, too - but he needed her. “Could really use some help from a more experienced mage… if you were willing to lend it.”
She seemed to swallow some words she was considering saying, and then her lips curled into a small smile.
“You must be a little desperate, asking me for help,” she said, a teasing edge to her voice. “Aren’t I the distrusted outsider?”
“Well, someone tried to kill me- ”
“Sad. Not everyone was equally grateful to their savior for all his noble deeds.” She shook her head with an expression of faux disbelief.
The corner of his mouth twitched against his will, and he almost smiled.
Back in full sarcasm mode already, huh? I guess being abrasive is how she deals with difficult emotions. At least she’s sort of funny.
“The attempt on my life bothers me, not mainly because of the ingratitude, but because they almost killed some people I care about,” Tybalt said after a moment, growing serious again. “Plus, two children actually died. I didn’t know them well, and… I’ve seen kids die before. But still, it was two innocent kids.”
“Not counting the one you resurrected.”
He nodded. “Right.”
Her face turned more serious. “That’s true. And it’s more than awful enough to trouble me, too. Even though I’ve seen more than my share of death. So what do you need from me right now?”
“There’s a book I’ve been studying that has guidance from other necromancers, steps to developing my magic. It also has mystic runes that other necromancers used. But some bits aren’t perfect. There will be a bunch of mystic runes intertwined in a certain configuration, but maybe there’s a bit that was smudged, so I can’t use the magic properly. Not without risking it going horribly wrong somehow.”
“How does this help you solve the mystery of who tried to kill us?”
“It doesn’t.” He swallowed and looked her in the eye. “But it could help me protect the others. You just met us, but I hope you can tell I genuinely care about them.”
She paused for a moment, then nodded slowly.
“There is much I could teach you, young necromancer.”
Tybalt smiled.
“You just have to speak to me with proper respect from now on.”
“When do I ever not speak to- ”
“And call me master.”
He raised an eyebrow and barely kept himself from laughing. She was probably joking, but if he actually laughed, she might treat it more seriously. Who could say what this whimsical elf would do? She had no real reason for being here right now other than her own curiosity and wanting to see what Tybalt would do next.
Really, it was kind of impressive that she was acting so lighthearted.
You’re joking already. I guess you’ve seen a lot more death than I have, after all… and this is your way of not getting hurt.
“I think you’re supposed to look up to masters, but you’re about a foot and a half too short for that,” the necromancer said after a few seconds.
“It’s not my fault that my body is a perfect example of nutrients being used for brain development rather than unimportant lesser priorities, while you’re a fucking beanstalk.” She waved a hand dismissively. “I bet if you could trade inches of height for cubic inches of brain volume, you’d actually be dangerous.”
“Every inch I have is exactly where it’s supposed to be.”
She rolled her eyes, but to Tybalt, she seemed like she was restraining herself from smiling. “Anyway, I might be willing to give you some tips. Tell me exactly what it is you want to know about.”
“I’ll show you.” He pushed mana into his ring and brought out Unholy Forces. Then he flipped to one of the sections he had been reading most recently. He pointed to an illustration a previous necromancer had left. “These runes here are for preservation and communication, I think, and there’s one to create a small space that doesn’t exist in the physical world… but the one that’s smudged, that I thought you might know, is for transportation.”
“Oh, I see…” Her eyes gleamed with interest now as she glanced at the drawing. “What is this supposed to do, exactly? No, wait, let me figure it out…”
She took a minute and then explained to Tybalt, in simple terms, exactly what the runes would do in combination.
“Yeah, that… is what I was hoping for,” he said, impressed somewhat against his will. Dero was clearly an encyclopedia of magic, and her advanced years were serving her well here.
“In that case, the specific symbol you’d want is this one,” she said, not pausing for even a moment. She traced a few interconnected shapes in the ground with the toe of her boot. “You’d combine it with the other symbols like so, I think…
I could kiss you. Even if you are a pain in the ass most of the time, you know when not to be.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “I’m certain this will help keep Mariella and Vidalia safe. Victoria, too, if she accepts it. I… really appreciate it.”
“Of course,” the dark elf said, serious for a change. “I don’t want any of them to get hurt either. And it was wise of you to acknowledge that you needed my help. I will definitely not hold this over your head and remind you of it in future when your head gets swollen with arrogance.”
Tybalt was about to reply when he heard the sound of footsteps from the hut. He turned, and there were Vidalia, Victoria, and Mariella, emerging from the hut.
“I heard there were some juicy secrets to be discussed?” Vidalia said, rubbing her palms together with a gleeful expression.
To the others, she must have seemed like she was in a good mood despite everything that had happened. But Tybalt - and almost certainly Victoria, to some degree - could easily tell that it was a facade.
He moved over to her quickly, wrapped an arm around her waist, and whispered into her ear, “It’s not your fault.”
She shook slightly in his embrace, then placed a hand gently on his chest before she leaned on tiptoe to whisper back, “You don’t know that. There’s probably some use of my powers where I would have seen this coming. My only comfort is that no one in our family died. Maybe, because of that, my ability didn’t perceive it as an important enough event to highlight. Or maybe we’re way off the beaten track, and I need to assume that the timeline has shifted enough to make a lot of my previous visions unreliable. Either way, though, I was blind and useless. My darling and my sister almost died today. We all almost got crushed by fucking rocks. A stupid way to die. So… let me blame myself a little. Maybe a bit of shame will help me perform better next time.”
The necromancer shook his head but didn’t argue with her.
He took a step back and cleared his throat.
“We need to talk about what happened earlier,” Tybalt said.