Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbing July 3)

The chaplain had become something the necromancer had never seen before, the product of the ritual, corruption, and Victoria’s prayers mixed with the strong-willed and pious man who had existed before. It was grotesque.

There was nothing that resembled a face, but Tybalt felt as if the entire upper body resembled nothing so much as a great mouth. The organs now extended like long tentacles out of the body. The creature hovered, its feet not touching the ground, before Tybalt.

The sight of it finally broke his focus on the ritual that he had just completed. The notifications began streaming in as his mental state changed.

“Greetings, creator,” the monster intoned, its voice a growl. “Have you… achieved what you desired?”

“You are exactly as I wish you to be,” Tybalt replied, not giving away the fact that he wasn’t entirely certain what he had created.

He quickly transmitted his usual instructions to all the new creations. They were not to harm him, they were to obey him in all things and always seek to advance his interests, and their first instruction was to store up all the malice of their deaths to use on the next mortals to venture near this place without the necromancer’s permission.

I had thought I might garrison the fortress myself, but to do that now would be madness, Tybalt reflected.

He could feel the malice of the place. He could feel the wrongness that others would perceive. Even followers of the Death God might be more likely to meet an early end here. It would be a great place for him to perform powerful magic, but making it a chthonic temple wouldn’t feel right.

Tybalt’s powers had always been a balance between observing the natural order - which was Lord Mudo’s nature as the Death God - and deliberately perverting it, which was necessary for necromancy.

This place shifted the dial all the way toward perversion.

None of the dead here were resting. Their souls had been bound to the fortress, and now they were all very active. He sensed the energy in the air subtly warping physical structures. Making walls appear slightly longer than they should be, doors slightly higher or lower to make people bump their heads or duck when they didn’t need to. They weren’t harassing Tybalt, their master, nor the others present, who were undead themselves.

But the necromancer would not bring any of his fiancees to this place. Not until and unless he had to.

It was a space that would never be long term habitable for any mortal again, a place of condensed madness.

He focused on the creature that had once been chaplain. It was noticeably a focal point for the dark energy of this space.

Somehow that came as a relief to the necromancer.

“What is the Charnel Fortress?” Tybalt said aloud.

He didn’t know for certain what that name meant, even though it was clearly the new name of Fort Hadrian post-ritual, and he was curious whether any of his creations would be able to answer.

Stanislaw opened his mouth to speak, but Leonardo beat him to it.

“It is in my essence, master,” the charnel lord replied. “It is the place of my rebirth. A fortress of death. Where the dead roam free, and the living come only to die.”

“You’re bound to it,” Tybalt observed.

“I am. Any who enter may be so bound, if the Charnel Fortress wills it so.”

The place has a will of its own, the necromancer thought. An intelligence.

He looked at Stanislaw, and the mummy simply nodded in affirmation.

Now I’ve definitely changed the future.

“Where did you get your skills from?” Tybalt asked.

“From the materials with which you made me,” Leonardo said. He gestured with his tentacle organs at the surrounding space, at the mummies and the crypt.

I could perform this ritual again, or one like it, under a more controlled set of circumstances, to create a center of power, Tybalt thought. Perhaps a mage’s tower, for my long term defense. Perhaps an entire city. I will need Stanislaw to practice it with me again, so I can acquire the skill.

“Let’s inspect your brethren,” he said aloud.

The necromancer willed the rest of the newly created undead to come and stand out in the courtyard where he could examine them, and then he went out of the crypt to see them.

In the open air, the contrast between the before and after of Fort Hadrian was even more drastic than it had felt inside the crypt. The air was murky, full of miasma that Tybalt suspected would make anyone other than himself sick from prolonged exposure.

The areas that had been floor with wood and stone felt mushy under his feet. The grass and weeds that grew where there was no floor looked an ugly yellow-brownish tinge that Tybalt had only seen before on spoiled vegetation.

As he stepped out into the courtyard, he smiled.

His creatures frolicked.

Ghouls and a half dozen of a new form of creature - examination told him they were ghasts, an evolution of ghouls - climbed the walls, performed pull-ups with the stone archways, and gleefully scampered around the grounds.

Dark shadowy faceless humanoid spirit creatures - disembodied shades, he knew from Unholy Forces - stood in rows, waiting passively for commands. Wraiths, like the shades but angrier, quietly muttered and moaned to themselves about injustice and robbery, about what had been robbed from them: their lives, their flesh, their memories - without understanding that the robber stood before them, assessing their usefulness.

Other spirits ground their intangible teeth hungrily. Wendigos, he knew. That endless hunger was a dead giveaway.

A set of creatures related to draugrs, the haugbui, looked from side to side, continually jealously guarding their territory from any potential invader. It struck Tybalt that the haugbui specifically were known for defending a particular place, usually their burial mound, from intruders. He had less information about some of these others, and the specifics of the ritual he had conducted left him uncertain about the elements at play.

“How many of you are able to leave this place?” the necromancer asked.

The creatures didn’t answer, either verbally or in sentiment, and he frowned. They weren’t even looking in his direction as he spoke.

Then all the undead in the courtyard stiffened in place.

A voice filled the air around and seemed to rattle his bones.

“What do you need, master?” asked the deep voice. “How many of my protectors would you separate from your loyal creation?”

Tybalt swallowed. The timbre of the voice sent a shiver down his spine. It sounded like a predator, and the way it deliberately projected the words all around him and into his body seemed like a power move. Even more so given that it seemed to have disrupted his connection to the undead that were under the charnel fortress’s direct control. There was an implicit assertion of independence here, despite the presence of the servile language that Tybalt had instructed all his creations to use.

“That’s not how this works,” the necromancer said slowly. “You will tell me which creatures are bound to this location, and then I will determine how many I take and how many you keep.”

“Of course, master. The charnel lord and haugbui are bound to the location, and while the shades and wraiths are not quite bound, you may find them difficult to manipulate once you take them out of here. My influence over them is particularly strong. Outside my walls, they would likely wish to go and harass the living, and some of them would become ungovernable. The ghouls and ghasts are indifferent to location. The wendigos are… hungry. They would probably prefer to be taken by you, especially if you can give them bodies to inhabit and food to eat. The skeletons and zombies you created before you made me are, of course, still under your direct control.”

“Very good,” Tybalt said, nodding.

Was that difficult? I have to be careful how much slack I give this fortress. It feels itself sovereign in its own territory. I can’t encourage that attitude.

“I live to serve, master,” the charnel fortress replied, as if addressing Tybalt’s unspoken thoughts.

“Another thing,” the necromancer said, waving his hands at the walls and arches all around. “I want you to destroy any anti-Teleport runes on any of your surfaces. One of my companions is the only mage we know of in the entire world who can Teleport freely from one place to another. We need to be able to enter your walls secretly at any time we wish for strategic reasons. An army will come to occupy you in future, and we must be prepared to attack them. The General of that army is too powerful for you to deal with on your own.”

“I understand, master. It will be done. Thank you for your protection.” The voice sounded more docile now, more submissive to his will.

It’s not just blindly angling for independence. It’s intelligent. It knows how to flatter and dissimulate. I think I know how I’ll ultimately deal with it, but I have to be careful until I’m done using it. I can’t let myself fall into thinking I’m fully in control when I’m clearly not.

“Do you need me to show you the mystic rune I mean?” Tybalt asked.

“No, master.” A note of pride - arrogance? - mixed with slight amusement seemed noticeable in the voice now. “I have absorbed much of your knowledge and that of your companions due to the circumstances of my creation. I know the symbol you mean.”

The charnel fortress gave the necromancer a real sense of foreboding.

“Which creatures will you be taking, master?”

“I’ll take the ghouls and ghasts, since there’s no restriction on them and they would only be destroyed by the humans who are going to come and occupy you. You recommended the wendigos, so I’ll take all of them with me as well, as soon as I can acquire some more bodies - enough for them to inhabit and eat.”

“Understood, master.”

Tybalt ordered Edgard to remove the Pillars of Earth, he took control of the ghouls and ghasts - the charnel fortress stopped its apparent interference - and then he, the mummies, the ghouls and the ghasts walked out the front gate.

He put the undead back into his seal and teleported back to Humun before he brought Stanislaw back out for a brief, private conversation.

“This was your ritual,” Tybalt said. “You know it better than I do. What do you think the odds are that the fortress tries to rebel against me?”

“Based on its demonstrated character, high odds that it will rebel eventually, master. It is a gamble, creating a place with dense, deadly mana and divine chthonic energy. We could try it again under better conditions and work to shape the construct’s nature in a more beneficent direction.”

“I’m interested in that, but in the short term, how likely do you think the charnel fortress is to cause problems?”

“How short term do you mean?”

“This year, when the attack is going to happen.”

“I am only guessing, master, but I expect that it is unlikely to rebel right now. Its continued existence and devouring the souls of those who stray inside it will strengthen it. The fortress could sense your authority to some degree, and that undoubtedly dissuaded it from any disobedience this time. It can wait. The fortress might not even rebel in your lifetime. Eventually, it will want its independence, but not before it can ensure it wins any accompanying struggle.”

The necromancer nodded. “Thank you.”

The mummy simply bowed his head.

“I wonder how the others are doing,” Tybalt said to himself, the matter of the charnel fortress for the moment pushed to the back of his mind.