Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbing July 3)

It was hours later, after Carlos had left, taking Heimar and Raybeck with him following a brief discussion.

They had all finished eating, and the children had been put to bed in the mostly-finished hut the undead had been constructing for them, but the adult group was mostly still awake, gathered around the fire and chatting amicably about nothing. Everyone except Kistana, who was curled up in a little ball on the opposite side of the fire from the others, sleeping.

“I’d rather deal with the ogres any day of the week,” Dero said.

“I don’t know, they don’t sound disciplined, but the Empire has been in disarray for a while, beyond what Carlos brought up,” Mariella said doubtfully. “There’s a reason there’s a slice of territory the Kingdom claimed from them before I was born, on the wrong side of the border river, that they’ve never retaken.”

They were discussing which potential enemy they would rather fight, assuming that Tybalt and the beastfolk seized control over the Kingdom: the Bloodlady and a horde of ogres and assorted other groups, or the Walian Empire under whoever won the succession struggle.

“Well, my experience with the Walians is fifty years out of date now,” the dark elf replied, smirking. “But the difference between a well trained, well equipped army and a rabble armed with stone hammers and sharp sticks is starker than night and day.”

“I need to spend some time alone with Vidalia,” Tybalt said quietly. It immediately jolted the discussion to a stop.

“Is there something wrong?” Victoria asked, looking back and forth between her twin and the necromancer a little nervously.

“There isn’t,” Vidalia said before Tybalt could answer. “But I must make myself useful to our future husband… in whatever ways he desires. If I scream, don’t come check on me. I’ll probably tell you all about it in the morning, Vicky. Don’t worry.” She winked, and Victoria turned crimson.

“I didn’t say I wanted to hear… about… that!”

“Have fun, you two,” said Dero, smiling - but she looked to Tybalt as if she knew this was not truly going to be the erotic encounter that Vidalia was pretending it was.

Mariella, for her part, watched the interaction with a neutral expression, then simply rose, kissed Tybalt on the cheek, and returned to her place by the fire quietly.

The necromancer and the foxgirl went into the room that Vidalia had claimed for herself, and she sat down. Tybalt slipped in behind her and wrapped her in an embrace. She rested her head on his chest and looked up at him with warmth - and something else, a more difficult feeling to identify. Something sad.

“You looked tired back there,” Vidalia said quietly in a subdued voice.

“I was tired - am tired,” Tybalt replied. “The stuff I got up to earlier, with the spirits, was pretty intense.”

But you seem tired in your own way, he added silently.

“How can I help, darling? Dreams? Sex? Dream sex?” She wiggled her ass playfully against his crotch and bent forward slightly, as if he was about to rip off the layers of clothes that separated them and enter her from behind. But he could tell from her tone that the sultry words and actions were forced.

“I’m hoping you can help me out in the dream world,” he said, “and I don’t have the feeling you’re actually in the mood for sex stuff.”

When you’re aroused, you give off that smell that arouses me, too. But all I smell now is sadness. Nervousness. Fear?

“I could be in the mood if you wanted me to be. I would never say no to you unless I physically couldn’t do what you needed.” She fiddled with her hair as she spoke, but it felt less sultry, more anxious.

“I’d only be up for sexual stuff tonight if it would make you feel better. I can tell you’re having a hard time.”

She turned and looked up at him again, her expression wilting slightly. “You’re good at reading me, huh?”

“Would you want it any other way?”

“I don’t know, maybe sometimes…”

“You seem rattled. You’re a seer, you observe the future, and you have me. So why are you afraid?”

“It’s not fear, exactly,” she said slowly. Tybalt had the feeling she wasn’t being entirely honest. “You know, I want to be useful to you. If you stopped trying to empathize with me and just used me a little in the bedroom, I’d feel a bit better about not being useful outside of it. It’s all right for you to be selfish with me.”

The necromancer locked onto the point that mattered most to the foxgirl.

“Who said you’re not useful?” he asked.

“The voice inside my head, maybe,” she said, biting her lip and forcing a very unconvincing laugh. “I just… feel bad about failing our family. I’m supposed to warn you about foreseeable danger. I almost lost you the other day. And it was my fault. I should have seen- ”

“Did you really fail? Or was this just outside the scope of what you focused on?”

“Same thing, right?”

“No. Were you trying to foresee threats to people around us? Or only things that could kill off members of our little family unit?”

“I guess just the second one, but it’s a fucking awful thing to miss. Two children…”

“Yeah. It’s awful. And you missed it. But you were focused on the bigger picture. Someone has to be. That’s your strong suit. As much as we both hate that two children permanently died, and your Eldest was crippled, it’s not as big, objectively, as the thousands of lives we’re responsible for or the millions we might end up affecting. You only have so much time to look into the future, only so much that you can see. You keep your eyes on the prize. Let me be responsible for the things you can’t afford to look at.”

“Then… you’re not mad at me?”

That’s what this was about. The nervousness. The desperation to make herself useful…

“You were afraid I was mad at you?”

“... a little. I was mostly angry at myself. But I was also a little bit afraid you would think your fox is useless - flat chested, stupid, misses critical aspects of the future with her predictions - worse than useless, even, dangerous with my blind spots, and then…”

“And discard you. Right?” She had leaned back against him, and he wrapped his arms around her tightly as he said those words.

“Yeah,” she breathed, shuddering.

He reached into her sleeve and under her undershirt with his right hand, grabbing the small handful of her left breast.

She continued talking while leaning into his touch.

“I… guess I was trying, or thinking of trying, um, trying to show you I’m not useless. Even if I make mistakes, I can still be… useful to you.”

“Well, for the record, I like your little tits,” he growled into her ear. “They don’t all have to be big.” He rolled the hard skin of his thumb over the tip of her nipple, and she let out a little purr-like noise of pleased surprise. He leaned in and bit her neck, and she shuddered and leaned back into him.

“That’s not… I… I was supposed to be the one seducing you here…”

If you wanted to, showing me this vulnerable side of you would be a good way to do it. He couldn’t completely put aside the idea that this was somewhat intentional, that Vidalia could be affecting vulnerability as a seduction technique. She was clever enough, understood him well enough, to manipulate him in that way if she wanted to.

“You’re one of my future wives,” Tybalt said. “Not a tool. I know you’re doing what you can. And I don’t want you to think of yourself as a failure just because you’re not omniscient. You’re already helping me a lot, and you know it.”

“I don’t mind you using me as a tool anyway. What I mind is not being useful to you. If you could use my body, at least then you’re putting me to use some way.”

“That’s the fear talking, isn’t it? You don’t need to placate me. I’m not even angry. It didn’t even occur to me to be mad at you or blame you. But if you do want me to feel more confident in your powers being useful, all you need to do is show me what you’ve actually been doing with yourself. How you’re actually using your dreams. Have faith in me to understand.”

“Do you want me to try and give you the identity of the people who planned the attack?” she asked.

Tybalt hesitated, then shook his head.

“You see possible futures, and I have a strong sense of how valuable that is, but…”

“But what?”

He cleared his throat. “Is there any possibility you’d get the culprit wrong? Or secondary culprits? Accuse people who weren’t guilty? Fail to catch some people who are?”

“Maybe… I don’t know. Like you just said, I only see possible futures.”

“Then I don’t want to use your powers for this. I have a plan already. I’m placing every suspect under observation, and what you and I are doing with the councils will hopefully push them to make a mistake. One way or another, someone will crack sometime soon, and then we’ll know who’s responsible for the tragedy. Until then, we make our plans to deal with other threats. I need your help for that. Time for you to show me what we need to worry about from the Kingdom. I assume that’s what you’ve actually been spending your nights thinking about.”

“You’re right, as usual, my future king,” the foxgirl practically purred. “That is what I’ve been focused on. And we’re a bit closer now, so the dream predictions will be more accurate than they would have been a couple of weeks ago. I… hope they’ll be useful.” A cute little frown appeared on her face.

“Let’s sleep, then, my little vixen,” Tybalt said, caressing her hair. “Show me your power.”

Make yourself feel better, he thought.

She turned around, forcing Tybalt to remove his hand from inside her clothing, and she lifted her legs slightly and wrapped them around him, straddling the necromancer. She leaned her head into the crook of his neck.

“Sleep,” the foxgirl said quietly.

The world suddenly faded, without Tybalt having even made the conscious decision to close his eyes.

***

Vidalia found herself in the midst of battle.

It troubled her, again, how little control she had over where this particular vision started. It was only a phenomenon recently, for these specific events, and she could only imagine that some decision she had made - or worse, had influenced Tybalt to make - had altered the delicate course of events in some way to produce this outcome.

As she floated over the scene, she tried to push her feelings of trepidation to the back of her mind and focus on what was actually happening below.

A mass of relatively basic undead creatures fought back and forth with a large group of Kingdom soldiers. A battalion? Was that what it was called? There were over a thousand men.

These were mostly common, class-less soldiers sparring against a menagerie of zombies, skeletons, ghouls, and Tybalt’s weaker mummies, the ones who had been ordinary beastfolk in life.

The quality of the fighters on each side seemed to be almost even. The undead fought less skillfully than the living, but the soldiers clearly had little experience with fighting this type of opponent. They kept stabbing through the stomach or heart regions and then getting killed when the undead didn’t stop attacking despite having received seemingly fatal wounds. As a result, the undead initially killed two for each specimen Tybalt’s side lost.

Though that difference diminished as the surviving soldiers learned their lesson, the numerical disparity in favor of the undead continued to slowly grow as the fighting wore on.

The difference in skill was slowly being swamped by the much greater differences in morale, survivability - and subsequently numbers.

Beastfolk participated in the battle to a limited degree, mostly archers and slingers standing back from the close quarters fighting and shooting at the enemy. The Royal Army had its own archers, who were unfortunately both better trained and better equipped than the beastfolk troops.

For now, though, the ranged fighters were having about an equal impact on both sides. The beastfolk archers helpfully outnumbered the Nietians.

On each side, the elites stood back, waiting for their moment - the enemy general surrounded by a hundred cavalrymen and a score of people Vidalia knew were mages, and Tybalt with his strongest mummies, a small group of horseback undead, and whatever other assets he had hidden away.

Tybalt inhabited his own body within the vision, though Vidalia didn’t know if present Tybalt was actually making the decisions or letting his future self steer. Probably the latter, to make the experience more informative.

As her eyes ran over her man, the foxgirl’s expression broke into a silly grin.

He looks so tough and strong…

Tybalt’s physique had changed little in the time between the present and the battle the vision depicted, but he wore a set of condensed bone armor that covered him head to toe and shifted slightly with every minor movement he made - as if it was a part of his body, like a second skin. His eyes continuously glowed green, smouldering emeralds that burned brightly from within his bony helm.

None dared meet his gaze.

Or, perhaps more accurately, the soldiers were all doing their jobs, trying not to die, while the enemy general’s elites either looked at Tybalt with loathing or avoided looking his way at all. The enemy general in particular paid the necromancer no direct attention. His eyes watched the battle unfold coolly, as if recording every detail for posterity.

Slowly, the struggle began to move decisively in one direction. The undead force chewed through most of the humans, a commander with the cavalry called a charge - and then the air blurred.

The scene dissolved.

Vidalia swore to herself.

Fuck… Not again!