Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbing July 3)

Acidic venom sprayed from all remaining zombie scorpions’ stingers at once. Tybalt could control the bodies of even the ones who had been partially dismembered, as long as the heads remained intact. He directed them like their tails were his own appendages.

The five Beastkings who had been Huntsmasters in life now let loose great crimson arrows like Kistana’s. Each Huntsmaster and each arrow was surrounded by a huge quantity of red aura - the strength of which Tybalt now recognized corresponded to the strength of the prey. A dragon was the strongest prey in the mortal realm, so every Huntsmaster was at their peak in this moment, stronger than any of them had ever been while alive.

The former Chthonic Mages brought forth great, sharp Pillars of Earth that rose out of the ground to jab at the weak spot Baldwin had created.

The scorched-bone and dragon-scorched undead all charged as a body at Eolas.

The dragon responded with a concentrated effort of will.

A giant Mystic Barrier manifested between himself and the attacks.

The wound Baldwin had inflicted was little more than destroying a layer of scales over a patch of the dragon’s chest perhaps ten or fifteen feet across. There was also a long, thin cut from the blade of the axe, a few feet long.

This all amounted to a flesh wound if ever there was one, given that the dragon was mountain-sized. But now Tybalt had witnessed the dragon using magic for defense for the first time. The necromancer had wondered for a split second if perhaps Baldwin’s attack had done barely more than cosmetic damage. Perhaps the dragon was magic-resistant even beneath the scales.

But now this. The barrier was concrete proof that the dragon’s injury was significant, that he could be harmed by continued hammering on that weak spot.

Not so invincible after all. For a moment, I had worried that my calculations were all wrong… that this dragon was effectively immortal. If he’s relying on magic for defense, though… I know just how to counter that.

He pointed at the Mystic Barrier.

Enervate.

The energy from it drained away almost immediately. It blocked the first dozen scorpions’ bursts of venom, but then it vanished. Everything else went through.

The venom shots from all the other scorpions hit first.

The dragon glared at Tybalt, teeth gritting, as the acidic substance struck its open wound and exposed flesh. The acrid liquid smoked and hissed wherever it touched, producing a smell of liquefying flesh.

What? I didn’t use any offensive magic. Just absorbing some energy.

Next came the arrows, tightly grouped.

The dragon managed to knock two away with his free claw, but two others sailed past and planted themselves into his chest, each around a foot deep. A final arrow struck a second after the others, in the center of the three.

The last was from Kistana, who had managed to shoot using her unbroken arm to aim, supporting her back against a building and the ground, and steadying the bow itself with her legs. She was wearing a big smile when the necromancer looked in her direction.

Three sharpened Pillars of Earth struck at the dragon’s body but they failed to penetrate. However, two of them hit the arrows directly and drove them deeper into the dragon’s massive body, like hammers striking nails. With the latter impacts, Eolas let out a pained grunt, and Tybalt saw a thin trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.

“Not bad.”

The words spoken were something like a hiss - and a whisper into Tybalt’s mind - both a reflection of some sort of lung injury and another skill that Tybalt had experienced from the dragon before.

Analyzing…

There was a note of regret in the dragon’s voice as he spoke again.

“But you were never in a position to challenge a dragon.”

His aura started to move to the injured spots, and Tybalt recognized what he was doing.

The necromancer reached out with the power he had reconstructed from observing the dragon over and over.

Please work…

He felt the energy swell up and then expand to fill the whole space around him - including the space around the dragon.

Eolas blinked slowly in surprise and then glared at Tybalt again.

The necromancer smiled. The dragon-scorched and scorched-bone undead reached Eolas’s body - around a hundred of them - as Eolas spoke again.

“You cannot overpower me. Fully heal.”

Tybalt had seen the dragon’s aura spike - and then substantially decrease without bouncing back - every time it used this Draconic Law power it had. This time, when it did so, Tybalt saw the tide of energy moving as the dragon spoke. He was ready.

He understood the nature of the power - more than magic, it was quasi-divine - but he was ready with a counter.

“Corruption.”

Eolas’s eyes went wide as the energy that swept through his body, intended to heal it, was touched directly by the power of the Death God.

It was a power, like Unholy Consecration, that no ordinary necromancer could bring to bear. Only the High Priest of Mudo. In all the world, only Tybalt and Stanislaw, who had once served as High Priest, could use it… and thereby bring the strength of Mudo to bear against the dragon.

Of course I can’t overpower you. But can you overpower a god?

Tybalt saw the dragon’s body writhe in pain as the full heal turned into profound harm. He didn’t fully understand what was happening to Eolas - the draconic scales prevented his senses from fully penetrating the dragon’s body - but it was clear enough that Eolas didn’t like it at all.

“You worm!” the dragon hissed both aloud and into Tybalt’s mind.

Analysis complete. Skill Telepathy copied!

Tybalt never saw the blow coming. One moment he was held between the dragon’s talons. The next he was looking at the scene from a different set of angles - inhabiting the bodies of all his undead as a spirit - watching as Eolas parted his claws, and the necromancer’s own mashed up body fell to the ground as a red paste.

The dragon had apparently fully lost his patience, perhaps for the first time since they began. That, or Eolas simply realized that the fight would be difficult for him if Tybalt remained there, repeatedly using his own powers against him.

The necromancer felt himself losing his grip on the Undying Transformation.

His perception of the world shook with the destruction of his physical body. The world became a haze as his consciousness was divided among many undead bodies.

No, no….

He had to focus everything he had on remaining present, grounded in the present moment.

It’s not over. Don’t let him win!

He still had his mana. It just clung to the ring now, rather than any physical organ. When Tybalt regenerated, he would regenerate with the ring. Assuming he didn’t run out of mana or break the transformation before he finished regenerating, which was entirely possible.

There are still two or three win conditions I could achieve, even without my body!

The necromancer had been hoping he could escape the dragon’s grip at some point. Dissolving a few feet of flesh would be easier for him than for any of his undead, now that the scales were gone.

The sheer quantity of the dragon’s mass remained a massive challenge. The undead barrage had probably punctured a lung, but that was nowhere near a battle-winning injury. It would require great teamwork to do more damage to Eolas’s body until his core was exposed. Only when it was close to the surface did Tybalt think he could achieve his optimal win condition, corrupting the dragon’s core - creating a pet dragon.

That seemed out of reach now, to say the least.

Tybalt saw, through his various undead, when Dero turned invisible and dashed away. The dragon was distracted in that moment. A few seconds later, the necromancer saw small footprints appear in the bloody remnants of his body, and he could tell the dark elf was sifting through the bloody remains for his ring. When she reappeared back at her starting position beside Vidalia and Kistana, he could sense that she had his ring somewhere on her person. And his blood was on her hands, boots, and knees. She had really gotten her hands dirty.

Thank you, Dero. That would hopefully avoid any chance of the ring being destroyed as the fighting continued.

The undead continued to attack Eolas everywhere they could, skeletons and zombies climbing up his legs and forming humanoid towers to reach the vulnerable unscaled section of his body. The dragon wobbled, not with the feeble scratches the claws of the undead could inflict, but with the pain still running through his body from the mistake of a few moments before. The zombies and skeletons were basically trying to dig a trench through a mountain right now with nothing but nails or bare phalanges.

On the bright side, Eolas’s unscaled patch wasn’t healing up - the acidic venom and the corrupted power had done a number on that.

And Tybalt could see, through the eyes of his undead mages, that Eolas’s aura had hit a low point for the fight. It was still ridiculously large compared with any other mortal’s he’d ever seen, but every time the dragon had used that Draconic Law power, it had shrunk substantially. The last, corrupted usage had dampened his aura more than any other, and the dragon looked visibly diminished both from the damage he had taken and from the use of energy.

Altering reality is costly, the necromancer thought. Having his alteration subverted seems to have been even more so. He’s still breathing hard.

As the mountain-sized creature swayed, Tybalt saw the elf on his neck was having to hang on with both hands to remain in the saddle, as it were.

Good…

By Dero’s side, Vidalia’s eyes gently glowed.

And then the elven girl dropped from the dragon’s back, eyes closed, tumbling through the air, growing more distant from her perch on Eolas with each second. Tybalt imagined he could hear her snoring.

In the split-second before the dragon noticed what was happening, a Dark Hole opened up beneath the elf and swallowed her away to another place.

It was exactly as Tybalt and Dero had discussed before they parted ways earlier.

“I think that elf on his back must be someone important to the dragon,” the necromancer had said. “If I really can’t win, maybe I could target her. There’s more than one kind of weak spot.”

Dero had nodded with approval. “Not just important to him. Important, period. I think I recognized her general look. She closely resembles the heads of the high elf royal family, from back when I met them. She might be a princess.”

“A good hostage, then… If I create an opening, do you think you could grab her?”

He had left the question - when the fuck did you meet the high elf royal family, and why? - unasked for the moment. It just wasn’t the time.

“Is water wet?” Dero had replied.

In the present, the necromancer rejoiced.

One of our win conditions has been achieved, Tybalt thought. No matter what happens now.

At just that moment, the dragon roared. His eyes sharpened. His aura spiked like the decrease had been a lie. He had noticed, a moment too late in the midst of his physical discomfort, that his passenger had disappeared.

“Undead, unravel.”

An aura with an unmistakable air of menace rolled off the dragon. He was entirely done with the fight and ready to simply erase every undead opponent around from existence.

Victoria’s prayers, Vidalia’s powers, Dero’s teleportation, none of them were a threat to this being. But the undead had proven enough of a nuisance that Dero could snatch Eolas’s young charge out from under his nose through their distraction.

The dragon would erase them and secure the return of his niece from the dark elf in the aftermath.

Tybalt still had one asset left he hadn’t used for much of anything, though.

Former High Priest Stanislaw had done nothing in the fight yet.

At his master’s order, the mummy called upon his own ancient connection to the Death God.

Corruption.