Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbing July 3)

Tybalt sensed something like the aura of a god roll off of the dragon as he spoke, and that was enough to make even his eyes widen.

Teleport!

He took himself and the bodies closest to him six thousand feet into the air before the power could properly reach him.

The air was thin up there, but Tybalt was an undead at the moment. He didn’t need to breathe.

That was close. If his aura touched me… I could tell something significant was about to happen. Those binding dragon words that Dero mentioned.

A part of his lich mind was analyzing the aura activity he had seen the dragon exhibit, but the necromancer needed another data point or two to understand it properly.

Being miles up hopefully buys me a little time. He either has to leave the elf behind, vulnerable, or take her up here where she could easily fall from his back to her death. He’ll be maneuvering to avoid that the whole time. It should give me an advantage. Stupid lizard shouldn’t bring someone he has to protect into a battle to the death. He still underestimates me… But it looks like my teleportation didn’t trigger the runes, because I’m technically still not outside the town walls. As I thought. Noted for future reference.

He performed a quick calculation.

I should have enough energy for all the tasks I want to perform, plus an additional ten minutes as a lich… if I can get him to hit me with Flame of Destruction again twice more.

Tybalt had stopped draining the undead of the town of their energy once he recognized that those that had survived the dragon’s flames for the moment had been exposed to them in a potentially beneficial way - allowing him to create undead that might have a bit of the dragon’s magic residue. There were only two hundred or so left out of the thousand he had started with, but it was still something valuable.

Now those undead were performing a service for Tybalt. Gathering more bodies in another part of the town, carving them with the same sealing rune Tybalt had used to create the dragon-scorched skeletons the dragon had seen, and preparing a magic circle. This circle would use the runes for Mass Generate Undead that Tybalt recalled from his book.

The necromancer began using Scrimshaw on the closest skeleton, carving an intricate pattern of runes onto the bones.

Either the dragon would give him enough time to craft a miniature magic circle up here, using bones as a surface instead of the ground, or the great beast would pursue Tybalt, and the dragon-scorched skeletons and dragon-scorched zombies below would complete the second magic circle Tybalt had been working on even as the dragon conversed with him.

Either way, once those runes were in place, then the dragon would see who he was messing with.

This second circle was the key.

Tybalt had carefully reverse engineered the runes for Undead Summoning. Adjusting a few of the symbols for Undead Storage, he should have what he needed to produce the desired effect. After all, Undead Storage included the rune for transportation in its composition. The necromancer would bring exactly the undead he needed to defeat the dragon, which his human mind had foolishly ordered to retreat with the rest of the Grand Beastfolk Army. If he could just finish…

The dragon appeared with the elf still on his back.

Fuck.

“No more- ”

Analyzing…

Tybalt teleported away before the dragon could finish the sentence, even as his lich mind continued trying to understand the mechanism of this language-based power.

He arrived at the magic circle for Mass Generate Undead, and without hesitation, he infused it with a massive surge of mana.

Three hundred-something dead bodies in various states of burnt and decomposed rose. Not all of them had the sealing rune, Tybalt noted, but that was fine. There were enough of the valuable ones. Eighty or so.

There, now I have a battalion of basic undead. Hundreds of hands I can employ, plus a store of power I can drain if I need to replenish my energy.

The secret value of Undeath Drain that he had discovered was that the energy he could pull from the undead was greater than the amount of energy required to raise them. It included not just the power he used to raise them but the power his servants had possessed in life. The downside was that once he drained them, they were gone forever, but still, this meant that he grew his reserves of power the more undead he raised.

The dragon appeared above him.

“There you- ”

Teleport.

This time, Tybalt only moved a few blocks, and the dragon caught up to him in a second without using Teleport itself.

Unholy Consecration! A great rush of divine power passed through Tybalt, taking a little of his mana with it and turning the whole area around himself and the dragon into ground holy to the Death God.

Every undead attack, every necromantic or chthonic power, would be enhanced. Healing and other light-aligned powers were weakened.

At the same time, the dragon spoke.

“No more running,” pronounced the great, terrible voice from just over Tybalt’s head. This time, the aura flowing off the dragon’s body struck him before he could fully get his bearings.

Teleport.

The dragon opened his jaws and let loose a great torrent of flames.

Tybalt raised his hand and shook his head.

Enervate.Again, he underestimates me. It will be his undoing, if all goes well. He may be more powerful, but raw power isn’t everything.

He pointed down with his other arm, which had almost fully regenerated now. Below his feet, there was the magic circle for Undead Summoning, made of twisted and contorted corpses and bones.

He pushed a huge quantity of mana into it and thought of all the specific undead he wanted by his side right now.

All of the Beastking mummies, the scorched-bone skeletons, all of the giant scorpion zombies, and of course, most importantly, Baldwin.

The necromancer glanced to the side at just the moment that Dero appeared there, panting, with Vidalia, Victoria, and Kistana by her side. Victoria immediately began praying, while Vidalia’s eyes glowed with her power.

Tybalt felt nervous and conflicted at the twins’ presence. Unlike Kistana, who appeared to have suffered a broken arm and probably a few fractured ribs from being struck by a dragon, the foxgirls could not survive even a single glancing blow. That emotion penetrated even through the layers of resolve and coolness that lichification had placed between the necromancer and his feelings.

Still, he made himself smile at them.

Vidalia and Victoria deserved that much for their insane courage at even being here, Kistana for continuing to fight on despite everything, and Dero for being the single most unexpectedly willing to risk her life out of everyone around Tybalt. She owed him nothing and sometimes seemed not to even like him, but at the critical moment, she had proven the most valuable ally.

At least Mariella isn’t here. She was probably tapped out from throwing fireballs to distract him. But I fear what would happen to her if the rest of us die here.

The dark elf pointed meaningfully at the dragon’s neck, and Tybalt nodded.

Yes, the plan is still on. Wait just a moment.

The dragon’s flames dissipated, and in the same moment, Tybalt’s undead force appeared, pulled to the location Tybalt had selected by his magic circle.

And everyone got to see for the first time what the anti-Teleport rune could do.

Half of the scorpions were dismembered upon arrival, Stanislaw appeared in two pieces, and three other mummies were similarly disabled - though all remained functional. Most of the scorched-bone skeletons were scattered everywhere, and Baldwin was ripped into three. His head remained attached to his body, along with his right arm clutching an axe in a death grip, but he had lost his legs and his left arm, lying in a pile of undead parts nearby him.

Not so bad, the necromancer assessed. I can easily fix all of that for Baldwin, the skeletons, and the mummies.

Around twenty of the scorpions had seen their heads severely damaged or destroyed, so those might be irreparable.

As Tybalt assessed, and far quicker than he could react, a giant claw came down and caught him in its grip. The talons tightened so hard on impact that he felt his entire lower body come away. There was a horrendous splattering noise as everything below the waist was crushed to pulp.

Several ladies would be pissed at you for that… if it wasn’t all going to grow back later.

Then the dragon picked Tybalt up between two talons and lifted him up to make eye contact. The glowing yellow orbs stared into Tybalt’s green ones.

“So, this was your plan? Summoning more minions? I seem to have overestimated you, necromancer. Though I also assumed you were human until just now. Humans have a survival instinct that you seem to lack. Look at this ridiculous mess. This is what comes of thoughtless casting.” He turned Tybalt to face the gory aftermath of the necromancer’s summoning. “I cannot believe I somehow expected you could give me a challenge.”

“Now,” Tybalt ordered silently.

“Stupid lizard,” he said aloud. “You’ve made mistake after mistake. Underestimating me wasn’t even your first. You brought a potential hostage into a combat zone. You might be hard to kill, but her… She’s a different story.”

The elf spoke for the first time, brandishing her bow as she did. “Uncle Eolas knew I could defend myself!”

Uncle? So they are close, as we suspected. Does he know what she is?

“No offensive magic.” The dragon’s powerful rumble cut through the air. Though Eolas tried to sound casual, Tybalt noted the slight nervousness in his voice. Despite saying that he thought he’d overestimated the necromancer, Eolas had taken the implied threat to the girl seriously.

Analyzing…

Tybalt’s lich mind had been attempting to break down what the dragon was doing each time it observed this power, but this time, he thought he grasped how the power seemed to work. He had seen the dragon’s magic words used more than once, but what he had not noticed until now was that every time Eolas used it, the dragon’s aura sharply decreased and did not immediately bounce back. This was clearly by far his most costly power.

The necromancer was close to cracking this.

With the various uses and the current monstrous quantity of power he still retains, his regeneration must be quite impressive, but it’s not immediate. Dero was correct to compare it to divine magic. But I am a high priest… This is not necessarily out of reach. I might need a little… divine assistance.

“What other mistakes, necromancer?” the dragon asked. He sounded amused now. Self-assured. Tybalt’s offensive magic and Teleport were sealed - it was interesting how limited those restrictions were, considering how earlier, the dragon had been more liberal with his usages. And, of course, the undead servants could never be any threat. So what did Eolas have to worry about?

Showing me so much of what you could do, Tybalt thought with the conscious, semi-human mind. That was one of your biggest mistakes. But the greatest was…

The lich mind also spoke up.

Analysis complete. Skill Anti-Magic field copied. Skill Draconic Law copied. Skill Draconic Law is unusable for non-dragons other than entities below divine tier… adapting. Divine energy is a suitable substitute for draconic power…

“Underestimating my allies. For instance, the undead can still function even when they’re torn apart.”

As he spoke, Baldwin made contact with Eolas’s chest with his axe. William, one of the fully intact mummies, had thrown him at full strength as soon as the dragon turned his attention completely to Tybalt.

From below, the necromancer felt it as Baldwin’s swing made contact with Eolas’s chest. The physical power wasn’t going to be much there. The strength of Baldwin’s arms, the agility from William’s throw, were nothing compared to the dragon’s own. Even with William’s red aura burning brightly around the mummy’s body and enhancing his throw with extra strength, that wasn’t enough to penetrate dragon scales.

But that wasn’t where the power was meant to come from.

This battle was never about the physical. It was magic… trying to get around anti-magic.

Being teleported past the town walls with Undead Summoning had torn Baldwin apart. His health had been reduced to the point that a sharp kick to the head from Tybalt would end his existence. And the more injured he was, the more powerful his sole skill, Payback, became. Tybalt didn’t need to look down to see the dark aura that had surrounded Baldwin’s axe in the moment just before impact.

It had turned so towering in the moment of impact that even Eolas’s eyes widened slightly, his head beginning to look down when it was already too late.

And as Tybalt’s ever-active lich mind had calculated, based on Baldwin’s performance in the attack on the last town, the damage from Payback seemed to fully ignore armor.

There was a terrible cracking sound, then an explosion from below Tybalt that shook Eolas’s entire body. The dragon bared his fangs in what Tybalt guessed qualified as an expression of pain. But he didn’t let go of the necromancer.

That is unfortunate. But he would still make the most of this.

“The rest of you, go. Now!”

Tybalt could see through Baldwin’s eyes as the revenant fell away from Eolas. Both the axe Baldwin had used and a large patch of Eolas’s chest scales had been destroyed by the impact.

As the purple scales turned to so much purple ash drifting downward, every undead Tybalt had summoned unleashed their attacks at once.