V2Ch75-An Unspoken Plan
The first foxman Tybalt turned became another zombie. The second foxman sloughed off his flesh like a reptile shedding its skin, until only chalky white bone remained.
“What’s that?” Victoria asked, still daring to hope.
“Just a skeleton,” Tybalt said, frowning. “It’s weird, though, that’s never happened to me before.”
“What?”
“Um, nothing, sorry, forget I mentioned it.”
She glared at him. “No, now you’ve got to tell me.”
“All right… Skeletons are the lowest form of undead. If a body turns into a walking skeleton, it’s weaker than every other type of undead until and unless it evolves. It’s never happened to me that I got a skeleton from a body that still had all the flesh on it. Not unless I didn’t raise it myself, just used a virus that makes undead. So, this is kind of a worse result than I usually get. Than I’ve ever gotten. I mean, statistically, it was bound to happen at some point.” He shrugged.
Did I make the body worse? She could tell he was trying not to say that, which just made her more anxious. She forced herself to take a couple of deep breaths. My class is not going to be detrimental. A god wouldn’t do that. Not Lord Mudo, at least.
“Keep going,” she said quietly.
“I will.” He reached over and squeezed her hand before he moved on to the next body. The third foxman rose to its feet. “Another zombie.”
Victoria felt herself give up as Tybalt approached the last body. All right, fine. This isn’t what my class is good for. I bet I can heal or something. That’s what priests and priestesses are known for doing.
“Whoa!”
The foxgirl jumped a little.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I think you’re going to be keeping me company when I do this from now on,” the necromancer replied, grinning.
The last body, which Tybalt had just touched with his power, sat up and cracked its neck. Muscles that had been modest in life seemed to swell up with power. Victoria’s eyes met the monster’s, and the green glint in them seemed to sparkle with a flicker of something… intelligent.
“What is it?” Victoria asked.
The creature rose to its feet and opened its mouth as Tybalt seemed to be thinking of what to say.
“This humble soldier greets his master,” the beastman intoned in a deep voice that seemed to ripple through the air.
“Greetings, wight knight,” Tybalt replied, answering Victoria’s question. “Would you like to keep your name from life or receive a new one?”
“I care not, master. Those days are mere fragmented remnants, a wasted time that fades dimmer in my memory by the moment. My true life begins now.”
It sounds a lot like he’s not keeping his old personality, Victoria thought. Is that how this usually works?
“Then I’ll give you a new name, one that fits your new life.” Tybalt turned to look at Victoria. “Any suggestions? I don’t think this would’ve been possible without you.”
“Me?” The foxgirl’s voice went high with surprise. She cleared her throat. “I mean, I’m glad I helped, but you make rare undead from time to time on your own. Even if I increased your chances…”
“A wight isn’t a particularly rare type,” Tybalt said, “But it’s not common either. He’s not only a wight, though. The modifier ‘knight’ indicates he got the monster version of a class, which would normally mean he’s been through monster evolution. I have a few skeleton knights that also went through monster evolution, but I’ve never created a monster that was already evolved using my normal methods. There was one guy who was halfway between being a normal ghoul and an enlightened ghoul, but he still wasn’t evolved to that next stage. This is your doing. You and the Death God. You improved him a full evolutionary grade. So give yourself some credit. Because I will definitely be using your services again.” He grinned. “You’ll probably need to be by my side a lot more than you were expecting. Hope you learn to like necromancy.
Victoria gave a short laugh and shook her head, but she was still smiling - and feeling good inside. Feeling important. Valued.
“All right, then how about…” She thought for a minute. “Harald?”
“Not something like Dwight or Kite?” Tybalt asked.
She looked at Tybalt for a moment, trying to decide if he was serious. She thought he probably was.
“Uh, if it’s up to me, no,” she said.
“Fine, Harald it is.”
Victoria could swear she saw an expression flicker across the wight’s face for a moment. It looked like relief.
There’s no way it cared about that, or it would have said something, though.
“You have a terrible naming sense, master,” came a voice through the trees.
Victoria turned and saw the revenant she had encountered a few times before.
What’s his name? Oswin?
“Baldwin, I know you’ve met Victoria, since you met my other fiancees, right?” Tybalt said.
“Oh, it’s that final, huh?” the revenant asked, stepping closer. “Fiancee. Nice. Yeah, I briefly encountered her.” He turned to Victoria and bowed slightly. “It’s a pleasure, my lady.” Then he turned back to Tybalt. “You didn’t say what you wanted me for, master.”
“No, because I’d have needed to repeat it. I’ll have to anyway, since it’s just you and Vicky here, but it doesn’t really matter. Go and strip a gambeson that’s more intact than yours from one of the dead soldiers.” The revenant started moving away as Tybalt continued speaking, loudly enough to be heard by both Baldwin and Victoria. “Baldwin is going to be acting as my bodyguard from now on, until Kistana is fully recovered. Our story will be that he’s another soldier who defected from the Kingdom and fought alongside me when I left to stop the attack on the village. He was wounded, and he’s been recovering for most of this time.”
“Why…?” Victoria began but trailed off. She didn’t know which words to use, but the idea of having another defected Kingdom soldier around sounded like it would rub people the wrong way.
“Why what?” the necromancer asked, furrowing his brow.
“I’m sure the young lady wants to know why you’re not telling them I’m one of your servants, master,” Baldwin said as he returned carrying another man’s shirt.
“That will barely fit you,” Tybalt remarked. “Is it the best you can do?”
“Probably. And I’m used to clothing being too tight at this point.”
“Fine.” He turned to Victoria. “I have a plan - well, pieces of a plan - that is more likely to succeed if Baldwin is my new bodyguard. I can’t use one of my mummies. And if people know that he’s undead, they’ll be more likely to kill him successfully. The methods for killing undead are more difficult than those for killing humans, but they’re well known enough. I don’t mind ruffling some feathers. Maybe I’ll reveal what Baldwin is, eventually, if no one takes a shot at me again.”
She suddenly realized exactly what he meant.
“You’re making yourself bait?” she asked, heart dropping.
I just agreed to marry you, and you’re trying to get yourself killed?
“The alternative is that someone else has to be bait,” the necromancer replied. “And the only targets that explosion was aimed at were innocent children, Eldest Isak, and people I care about. Probably mainly aimed at me, of course. So who’s better to use as bait than me?”
Victoria’s mouth opened. She wanted to say “Eldest,” but in her heart, she thought that Isak would not be likely to survive whatever secondary plot the conspirators cooked up. Tybalt, on the other hand, was nothing if not good at staying alive against all odds.
“I don’t want you to get yourself killed,” she said at last. “Pretty shitty to do that to us when Vidalia and I are about to marry you. Making Vidalia, Mariella, and me into young widows is a poor wedding gift.”
He chuckled for a moment, then stopped at the look on her face.
“All right, what can I say that would reassure you?” he asked.
“Tell me what your plan is.”
“That won’t make you feel better. You’ll obsess over everything that could go wrong. What I will say is that- ” He hesitated. “You can’t tell anyone about this, you understand?”
“Sure.”
“I mean it.”
She nodded emphatically. “So do I. You’re going to be my husband. I won’t go revealing your secrets.”
“All right. You remember that I said I was going to start spying on everyone who was potentially connected to the rockslide. Well, I’ve been doing it. That’s the basis for this plan. I have little mice, birds, bugs, whatever we could find and reanimate, scattered over this mountain and the surrounding ones, following all of the suspects.”
“Well, that’s something,” Victoria said. “So you’ll at least hopefully maybe know when they’re going to try and kill you again.”
“I finally got a lead earlier today, while you were praying,” Tybalt said. “I have an idea of at least one of the leaders. But I need to crush every part of the conspiracy. That’s the reasoning for this plan. I want to incite a direct attack, and I’m creating a controlled opportunity for it.”
“Fine… Wait, who’s the leader?”
He shook his head. “I’m keeping that information on a strict need to know basis. The less you know, the less you have to be ready to lie about.”
“You don’t think I need to know who almost killed me and my sister?” she asked hotly.
“I will tell you soon. Not now.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off.
“We’re going to a meeting with the fox tribe’s elders, Vicky. The day after tomorrow. Can you honestly tell me that you’ll be able to keep your reactions under control if you meet someone who I said was a traitor? Or are you going to give away what we know and throw away our advantage? Maybe increase their odds of successfully killing me?”
She swallowed. “Fine.”
“Thank you.” He grabbed her hand, pressed it to his lips, and kissed it gently. “I know we haven’t known each other long, but part of being my wife will be trusting me. I will try to consult you about such matters, certainly if I know I’m about to go risk my life, but there will also be limits.”
“Yes, I feel very consulted right now. Just trust you, don’t question your unspecified plan, don’t ask who tried to kill our family, you’ll tell me when I’m ready to know.” Victoria regretted the bitterly sarcastic response as soon as it left her lips - she wondered if she and Tybalt were about to have their first fight - but the reaction from the necromancer was delayed.
“I think I like this one!” Baldwin exclaimed, bursting with laughter. “You finally picked a girl with a little fire. The non-magical kind, I mean.”
Tybalt let out a sigh. “Baldwin, go take a walk before I start ordering you to do anatomically impossible things to yourself. Uh, Harald, you go ahead of Vicky and me downhill.”
“Yes, master.” The revenant gave the necromancer a gleeful mock salute and walked off, still chuckling to himself.
“Yes, master,” the wight knight said, giving a crisp salute. Then it turned and moved down the mountainside.
“He is right, though,” Tybalt said, watching the revenant as if to make sure he was leaving.
“About what?” Victoria asked.
“I like that… you’ve got some fight in you.” He looked at her with an ambivalent expression. “Even if it means you’re going to be a pain in the ass sometimes. That’s part of what marriage is.”
“You signed up for three pains in the ass,” Victoria said after a moment. “Will you be all right?”
He let out a short laugh. “I’m not like other men. I’m built a bit stronger, enough so that my heart shouldn’t give out from the constant stress. If it does, I’ll massage it back to life or raise myself as an undead. And if I do die from you and your sister and Ella’s attentions… well, I will consider that as worth it.”
He gave her a suggestive look that made her blush.
She clicked her tongue and opened her mouth to say something, but at that same moment, the necromancer closed in and pressed his lips against hers. She still wasn’t used to this, the sudden physical affection that she had never allowed herself to experience before today. Her body wasn’t sure whether to push him away or pull him closer. She fell into kissing him back, tongue licking his salty lips and the roof of his mouth, hands rubbing against his chest.
When he pulled back, she found herself breathless.
“That’s, um, quite a way to distract someone,” she managed.
“It worked better on your co-wives, honestly. Speaking of, let’s start heading back to them?”
Victoria’s own heart was pounding, but she could imagine what he meant about his kissing having “worked better” on Vidalia and Mariella. She nodded, quickly changed the subject, and allowed Tybalt to guide her gently downhill after his new creation.
“I’m glad that your spying worked on the conspirators, anyway,” she said. “Even if you won’t tell us who they are. Hopefully you can use the same strategy against the Army in the future.”
Tybalt nodded. “Absolutely. And eventually, I’ll make enough to observe everything that happens in our territory and report accidents and crimes, too. For now, since they’re only following suspicious people, they just wait to hear anything relevant to the anti-necromancer conspiracy.”
The more he told her, the more Victoria found herself curious about how this worked.
“So, you’re listening to all their conversations? How can you process all that? Can the animals remember what they say, or…?”
“I can’t process everything, and the animals aren’t intelligent, but they can recognize specific sounds. So I instruct them to listen out for certain words. If they hear a conversation that mentions any of them, they start sending it to me.”
“That’s… really amazing.”
It truly could keep our people safer.
“Thanks. If I get enough of these things and figure out how to get around my own cognitive limitations, we could live in the greatest paradise ever. No more physical drudgery, almost no deaths by accident or violent crime. The undead could build a new world for us, if we just live long enough to tear down the rotten structures that exist right now and set up our replacement.”
“There’s no way… for anyone to find out about these, right?”
“No. They break apart just like regular animals if someone steps on them or something. I have had a few get eaten, which was annoying. But the conspirators can’t discover me.”
“I wasn’t just worried about them. I suspect some people wouldn’t understand your intentions if they found out about this. No one has much privacy in the villages, they know there’s always some elder who can see what’s going on. Those of us who live outside the villages, though - we expect some measure of solitude, for good and bad.”
“Well, they’re not watching most people now anyway. It’s a problem for the future.”
“I don’t suppose you’re also watching the ibexfolk Council of Elders?” Victoria said after a moment.
“I get why you would ask. I hadn’t been, but I should start now. I did scare the shit out of them at our meeting. But as for the conspiracy that already exists, they’re not likely to be a part of it. They wouldn’t show such blatant disrespect at the meeting if they were planning to kill me off anyway. It’s a way of getting my negative attention when they could be cozying up. A power play, trying to show me that I’m not that important. They wouldn’t make such clumsy moves if they had a real plan to deal with me. No, I’m afraid this is going to be the fox tribe and maybe a member or two of the harpies. If there’s an ibexman involved, it won’t be directly connected to the Council.”
She nodded reluctantly. So it’s really people I know who want to kill Tybalt. Why? Why would anyone from the fox tribe do this? Can’t they see how it will affect all of us? Even if Vida and I had no feelings towards Tybalt, killing him puts all our lives, everyone’s lives, at more risk. Unless they have a separate deal with the Kingdom, but that seems almost impossible.
“It’s disappointing, but people just are that way, sometimes,” he said as if reading her thoughts. “There’s no accounting for them. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to.”
“I guess so.”
The selfishness of other people is nothing new. But somehow I thought our people were better.
They crossed the next stretch of distance in silence, the ongoing sunset dominating their attention.