Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbing July 3)

The vision of battle formed itself anew, only this time, the two forces had changed.

Tybalt’s side had a few new undead, and those that fought at the forefront of the main force for him were slightly more evolved, from what Vidalia could see. But the changes to the other side were far more drastic.

“Vidalia, what’s happening?” came the necromancer’s confused voice in her ear. “We were just winning, right? Why did the enemy suddenly get more people?”

“More people” was an understatement. The Army’s force committed to this fight had somehow doubled in between visions.

“Darling, I… we just moved into another vision. A different version of the same event. It wasn’t within my control.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth.

“Is that normal?”

“No. It’s not. I… I’ve been having a lot of trouble making these particular visions make sense.” It felt like she was making a dramatic admission of failure on her part - not only was she failing at keeping Tybalt safe from short term threats, but she had also been unable to penetrate the truth about the battle they would face once the Army turned their attention to the Salt Waste again.

But the necromancer seemed to take it in stride.

“All right,” he said. “Well, what’s changed?”

“Um…”

Below them, an undead cavalry - living horses, nonliving riders - charged to rescue the rest of the undead, who were surrounded by an overwhelming mass of Kingdom soldiers. The Army’s mages - dozens of them now, when there had only been a relatively small contingent of them before - hurled scores of mystic blasts from their position beside the general. Fortunately, the undead cavalrymen had shields that seemed to carry some sort of magical protection, and they mostly blocked the bolts of magic rather than having to try and endure them.

“You used to project things as far out as this and further, right?” Tybalt said. “I assume you didn’t have this problem then.”

“That’s right. Yeah. Well, the big, obvious thing that’s different is the general. I’ve never seen his face before.”

Far below the two disembodied voices exchanging words, the general stood, serenely observing things for his side, silently calculating. Vidalia could not say she had observed him do anything beyond watch, or even say anything to those around him thus far.

“Do you think he might have the power to mess with your visions?” Tybalt asked.

The cavalry from around the general let out a fierce battle cry and charged down to join their side, which was starting to take serious damage from Tybalt’s undead cavalry. The humans mounted on horseback were all better equipped than those on their feet, Vidalia could tell immediately, and they quickly smashed their way through the non-mounted undead, hacking their way to the thickest part of the fighting.

“I’m not sure if he’s doing that, exactly, but he’s doing something…” Vidalia said. “He has to be. Either that, or this is the moment when I start losing control of my powers - and maybe losing my mind.”

She let out a little laugh of mingled helplessness and impotent frustration, and then she felt Tybalt’s presence alongside her, no longer just a voice. He put an arm around her, and suddenly, they were physical beings, not disembodied at all.

Just another example of me losing control of what’s happening, the foxgirl thought, even as she leaned into her darling’s embrace. She hadn’t willed the two of them to become solid; that was Tybalt, even though they were in her dream, using her powers to spend this time together.

Beneath them, the ground opened up beneath the thick center of the fighting just as the cavalry had massed there, dropping both horsemen and riders down into a deep pit. The vision dissolved once more.

“You’re all right,” Tybalt breathed into her ear as reality formed again around them. “You don’t feel mad to me. You feel stressed and upset. Calm down. Focus. You aren’t helpless here. Remember, this is your place. You pushed off a goddess’s agent trying to fuck with you here.”

Right. This… isn’t madness. Losing control of my power doesn’t necessarily mean that. There could be some other explanation. Mad people don’t think they’re mad. Right?

This time, as the vision formed, Vidalia saw that Tybalt’s side looked more prepared than before. Every undead was not only equipped with weapons, but they also had sharp bony spikes sticking out of various appendages, and they all carried shields, whether metal or bone. The cavalry was still small, and the mummies and other higher tier undead appeared to be unchanged, but the force felt stronger than before.

“I’ve consecrated the ground this time,” Tybalt observed. “But I’m not sure if this is winnable even for a slightly better prepared version of me.”

Vidalia turned and looked at the enemy side, and her eyes widened. Not only were there two thousand soldiers or more, including two hundred cavalry and dozens of mages, but now she saw men and women in religious garb, some of whom were armed with glowing swords. Including…

“The paladin bitch!” the foxgirl exclaimed.

Samara looked intimidated as she gazed at Tybalt’s elite force of undead, but she, alone out of all those on the Kingdom’s side, dared to stare the necromancer directly in the eyes, even if only for a moment.

“She’s stronger than I thought,” he murmured.

So, are you going to fuck her, or…?

“What does that mean?” the foxgirl asked after a moment.

He licked his lips. “I wonder what it would be like, watching her will break.”

“In bed?” Vidalia replied bluntly.

He burst out laughing. “Gods, your mind is always in the gutter. But maybe. Paladins of the Love Goddess do take a vow of celibacy, though.”

“So, you’ll render her powerless and make her beg for your dick, is that something like the plan going through your head?”

“I… what makes you think I had a plan? You keep inventing things.”

“Just figuring out what we’re doing later.” She winked.

He kissed her hard, and Vidalia instantly reciprocated.

They barely noticed as the ground beneath the elites of the enemy force burst open, and a giant monster made of hundreds of undead attached to each other sprang forth, each body like a segment in an enormous human centipede with a blade or jagged bones protruding from every limb.

The holy men and women fought with their glowing swords - holy swords, Vidalia realized - and struck off the heads of many individual components of the monster, but the creature kept moving, its partially deadened components still slashing with their blades and sharp bones but with less sophistication. The connection among the various undead seemed to create redundancies that somewhat mitigated the damage from the blessed weapons.

On the opposite end of the battlefield, Tybalt’s future self moved and joined the fight for the first time since Vidalia and present Tybalt had been watching these visions. He stepped into the midst of the infantry, and they turned to meet him.

Then every human within twenty feet of him crumpled, crushed to the ground in a broken lump of meat and bone as if a giant boot had stomped down on them.

“Whoa, did you see that?” Vidalia asked. “You splattered them like ants!”

“Looks like I got some kind of interesting new skill,” Tybalt said. “Or… I mean, I will. Maybe.”

The paladin hurled herself away from the elites and towards the version of Tybalt on the ground, her expression torn between fear and resolve. She swung her sword, vision Tybalt dodged, and then mummies seized her by the arms and legs.

Then the necromancer leaned down and touched her with a single finger, right in the center of her chest. An energy passed out of him and into her, and she writhed in pain. She visibly fought the power that invaded her - and her eyes and ears began to bleed.

“That’s a shame,” Tybalt said.

Yeah, you seem to be fucking killing her, I’m not sure if a shame really describes it. We were just talking about maybe doing… other stuff to her.

At the same time, the undead cavalry swept in around Tybalt and commenced slaughtering the normal soldiers, who had begun to turn tail at the sight of scores of their number being crushed in an instant and a paladin being horrifically attacked.

The vision faded and formed again before any resolution could happen. This time, it began almost the same way - except that when the ground burst from beneath the elites, they targeted the connections between the bodies rather than the heads of the component undead. The holy swords quickly turned one human centipede monster into a half dozen comparatively tiny worms, and the monsters seemed instantly less formidable.

“Well, shit,” Tybalt grumbled. “They figured out the weakness.”

“S-Seems that way.”

I guess the paladin bitch doesn’t survive the battle after all, but maybe Tybalt doesn’t care?

“Yeah, I don’t think that you’re going mad, little vixen. There’s a definite pattern here, and it’s not so much about you.”

Oh, he’s just thinking about me, she thought warmly. She hadn’t truly believed Tybalt would cast her aside. It wasn’t something that happened in any future she had ever seen. Her darling was loyal to a fault. Her real fear was that she would fail him - and he would die, or they would lose more of their family.

“I know. It’s like it switches whenever you start doing well. But that doesn’t explain anything. My powers aren’t supposed to work that way.”

“But maybe his do.” He pointed at the General. “There are rumors about an undefeated general who’s supposed to be the son of another undefeated general… who’s in turn the son of yet another undefeated general. An unbroken line of winners, going back generations.”

“If you guys have someone like that, why doesn’t he fight every battle for the Kingdom?”

“I don’t know for sure. There are a lot of rumors. It’s obviously related to some sort of skill, and every skill has its limits.”

Below, the Army seemed to be using more of the glowing holy swords than they’d had last time, and now, there were priests who stood chanting, all glowing in concert.

“One interesting thing about these visions is that both sides change their tactics every time,” Tybalt continued, pointing down. “Now the enemy is using holy magic to try and de-consecrate the ground, but I also brought more priests of my own, including a few undead ones, and they’re working to counteract that.”

“But… Tybalt, I’ve seen other visions like these. This is part of a series. There are ones where you lose, and I have to watch you die. I guess you’re doing better in these current ones, maybe because seeing them is helping you plan and altering the timeline. But it seems like the ones where you look like you’re going to win are the only ones that go unfinished…”

“We’ll figure it out. Together. This already plays into a plan I had in mind a little bit.”

He pointed at a large, walled structure in the background behind the Royal Army.

A fortress? Vidalia could guess where he was going next, but she still frowned, her mind remaining fixated on the problems with her visions. Back before I met you, I could see timelines where you were a conqueror without me, or at least before you ever met me. Now we’re struggling to figure out how you can win a single battle. Am I screwing up your future?

She didn’t say it, though. She didn’t want to make Tybalt deny it again. It wasn’t as if he really knew. He was just trying to make her feel better - which was the main thing she’d needed.

They watched silently for another twenty minutes as different permutations of the battle continued to play out, including several where the catfolk - whose absence Vidalia hadn’t even noticed before - began to participate for the first time as infantry.

Then Tybalt started talking again.

“So, my theory is that the General’s class is time-related, and that’s how it’s messing with your power to see the future. I’ve never heard of a class like that, but your class was a complete surprise to me too. Something that powerful could easily be a national secret. I’m guessing that either he can see the future, too, or he can shift the timeline. Something like that. Either way, that power is represented in your vision as him changing to a timeline that he thinks will be more favorable to him. We have to deal with that by making the battle unwinnable or avoiding it entirely. We could try to run, all of us, use the boats you’ve mentioned before and flee by sea, or… I was already thinking we might try to take that fortification there.” He pointed at the large, walled area again. “It’s called Fort Hadrian. If we have that, it changes the format of this battle completely. Instead of the General marching out to meet us on an equal playing field, or us besieging him, we force him to attack our entrenched position.”

“If you were already thinking about doing that, why do you think it isn’t reflected in any of these visions?” Vidalia quietly asked. The positioning of the battle, every time thus far, had made it seem as if the Army had marched from the fortress to meet the undead force.

“Well, I was originally planning on having our citizen militia slowly work its way up to attacking Fort Hadrian. They’d go after civilian-occupied towns that had been wiped out by my virus before I finally led them in our attack on Fort Hadrian. This base is also where the only other Army squad that’s generally active in the Salt Waste is typically stationed, so I anticipate a fight. I wasn’t in a big hurry to attack it, because… the truth is, I don’t think the living beastfolk are going to improve very quickly. They’re farmers, first and foremost, and until I give more of them personal undead servants to do their work, they won’t have time to train daily or even regularly enough to make a big difference. The best way to gain levels is through killing, so I need to get them acting the part of soldiers before they’ll be able to actually fight other soldiers even semi-effectively. But maybe I need to be in more of a hurry to take this fort.”

“Get started on that right away, then?” she said.

“Tomorrow,” the necromancer agreed. “We make the case to the Council of Elders for the harpies. War is coming to us, so it’s best if we take the initiative. Even if you don’t think you were helpful, you’ve already given me a good direction to take this.”

“Thanks, darling,” the foxgirl said, turning and giving him a kiss.

“As for tonight, how about we go and harass the paladin?” Tybalt suggested.

Vidalia grinned wickedly. “I knew it.”