Defiant Necromancer (Book 2 stubbed)

William conjured a crimson polearm and swung it at Chad. Without breaking his death stare at Mariella, the Hero caught the polearm with one hand, yanked it from William’s grasp, and then hurled it at incredible speed back toward William.

The tip managed to pierce the mummy before he could catch it, and he staggered back, impaled through the chest.

Chad took a step forward, lips regenerating into a cruel grin as he pulled out the javelin that had been embedded in his neck, heedless of the blood that gushed from the wound.

“I’ll get that apology, even if I have to tear it from your flesh while you scream,” the Hero promised. “Remember, I tried to give you a chance. I tried to be nice. But you didn’t let me.”

As Chad spoke, William’s polearm, embedded in the mummy’s own torso, returned to aura and was reabsorbed by his body. The mummy pointed a palm at the Hero and closed his hand.

“Maybe you’ll wish you’d done things differently when you’re the one scream—argh!”

The Hero was midsentence when the javelins that remained embedded in his body glowed and turned into what Mariella could feel, even from a distance, was burning hot aura.

She pulled the flames from behind Chad and tried to envelop him again.

He lunged forward, his body no longer encumbered by the javelins through critical spaces, even as the physical impediments were replaced with sheer agony.

As Mariella tried to wreathe her existing flames around him, she saw him break past them - too quick to be contained again - then slow down markedly, his body slightly glowing all over. At the corner of her eye, a similar glow emanated from Stanislaw. Most of his abilities weren’t very combat-specific, but Bone Puppetry was one of the most useful of the skills he and Tybalt shared.

Manipulating the target’s skeleton with mana.

It should have turned the Hero’s body into a puppet, allowing Stanislaw to hold him still and Mariella to slow roast him until she burned through his regeneration.

But Chad was made of stronger stuff. Even as Stanislaw tried to control his skeleton, and Mariella continued to manipulate the flames that had engulfed Chad from behind when he slowed down, the Hero simply walked forward.

His impossibly strong muscles overpowered whatever effect Bone Puppetry was having, and he managed to keep walking despite being on fire.

Mariella found it terrifying. She had never seen someone power through being engulfed in flames to so little effect.

“Useless bitch,” she heard him mutter as he struggled forward. “Useless.”

She retreated slowly backward as she tried to maintain containment. She dropped her unbuttoned gambeson to the side as flames rose to surround her upper body. Part of her mind was on the next move, part of it on keeping him embroiled in the normal fire she had conjured thus far. The flames had to at least be slowing him down, and coupled with Bone Puppetry, he was only advancing toward her at a crawl. He had been far swifter at the beginning of the fight.

The Hero seemed to recognize the same thing. He surrounded his sword in a sudden, impossibly bright aura, swung it downward, and chopped through the flames.

Mariella swung her own sword now that he was suddenly fully visible - and even closer than she had realized with the thick wall of flame surrounding him. He didn’t block with his sword but with his non-dominant arm.

She felt the end of her blade cut deep into the flesh of his left arm and stop.

“Maybe I’ll just carve out the necromancer’s spawn,” Chad said, still grinning, close enough for her to feel the spittle as he spoke through his half-charred face. “Then you can do penance for your treachery and be a decent woman again. What do you say to that?”

A fury unlike any Mariella had ever felt before rose in her, replacing her fear in an instant. The anger boiled over into action almost before she exercised any conscious thought.

“Burn.”

Wrath of Flame.

She let go of the sword’s hilt, and the most powerful flames she could conjure burst forth from both hands in a single thick torrent, instantly incinerating her remaining clothing, rushing toward the Hero - and slamming into Chad’s suddenly raised holy sword.

The blade blocked the flames and cut through them, turning them into twin streams of fire on either side of him.

“I think that about does it for you,” the Hero growled over the roar of fire.

He advanced toward Mariella, pushing forward through the fire. She felt fear’s icy grip clench around her heart again.

Then a familiar voice from the side.

“You rely too much on that sword.”

The glow of Stanislaw’s mana from using Bone Puppetry gleamed brighter than before, and Mariella saw the sword drop from Chad’s hand. The mummy had seemingly released his hold on the rest of the Hero’s skeleton, focusing only on the hands.

Mariella’s flames rushed forward, unopposed, beginning to push Chad back and scouring his arms and his chest. The Hero’s eyes widened, and Mariella pushed even harder, blasting him backward off his feet before he could bend to recover the sword.

The Hero started trying to get to his feet, but as he pressed his knees against the ground, William stepped up from behind him and speared the backs of his legs with another crimson spear.

Chad groaned.

Mariella stepped forward, trying to take advantage of the Hero’s momentary weakness. She felt hate rise in her, hotter than she’d ever felt before, as she remembered Chad’s words.

Maybe I’ll just carve out the necromancer’s spawn.

Barely perceptible to her, her strongest flames grew even fiercer and surged out more forcefully.

They blasted Chad onto his back, and slammed him down into the sand.

Burn. I don’t even want there to be a memory left of you.

The ground parted, a crater beginning to form around the Hero as she pushed him downward with the roaring flames gushing from her hands.

Burn. Die and stay dead. You don’t deserve to come back even as a slave.

Mariella’s vision narrowed to a tunnel. She could no longer see anything except the Hero and the fate she wanted for him: full cremation.

She didn’t notice as her flames changed color, from red-orange to white, to finally blue.

The hole Chad lay in grew deeper. Around him, bits of sand began turning to glass under the sustained heat.

Need more, she thought angrily. She could feel his mana rushing all around, trying to repair him. Still not dead. Die! Why won’t you die?

William and Stanislaw had retreated away from the intense flames near the beginning, but the huntsmaster hurled javelins into the space that Chad occupied, buried under the most intense flames of Mariella’s life. The Hero uttered no screams or cries now, made no apparent upward motion even as he was continuously incinerated.

She could sense little flickers of movement from him, though. She could not relax for even a moment. Not until he was a few bits of blackened bone, small enough to bury in a teapot.

She gritted her teeth as she vented her fury.

Die! Die! Why won’t you die?

“Mariella. Stop.” A cautious voice from her side. Familiar. But not Tybalt’s.

The fire mage was so surprised she almost stopped burning the Hero. Almost.

“Almost there,” she managed through her locked jaw. “Have to kill him.”

“You’ve done enough, my love.” Tybalt’s voice joined Dero’s. “He’s nothing now. Stop.”

Nothing? Is he - could I miss him being dead? I don’t understand.

Mariella felt that Chad wasn’t moving at least. She finally let herself release her fiery hold on the Hero. The flames went from blue back to white, then red-orange, and then nothing.

She swallowed and looked down, realized her hands were sooty and shaking. Her breath came in slow and ragged. She felt moisture on her cheeks.

She forced herself to assess everything. She knew she had failed to control her flames entirely. It was always hard with her most aggressive offensive move. The wind on her bare skin told her she had destroyed her clothing again too. That possibility was why she’d dropped her gambeson on the ground before she started. She bent, picked it up, and covered herself, still self-conscious about her partial nakedness despite everything.

A wave of fatigue hit. She fought the urge to yawn. She shook her head.

I have to know my baby’s safe.

She looked down into the smoking hole. Tybalt and Dero were staring down at it already.

As the smoke began to thin, Mariella saw what remained of the Hero twitch. He wasn’t dead! She might have known he was still alive. She would have received a notification if she had killed the Hero - but seeing any movement was enough to set her off.

If he was still breathing, the fight wasn’t over.

She raised her hands, gathered what remained of her mana through her deep exhaustion - and then she felt Tybalt grasp her wrist.

“Are you trying to spare him?” she asked angrily, jerking her hand free.

“You’ve learned to take predictions and prophecy seriously,” Dero said quietly, the dark elf for once wearing a serious expression. “Vidalia reminded me when I teleported over, the lamia predicted significant losses if we kill the Hero. That was definitely meant to be more than just the single Beastking we’ve already lost.”

Mariella vaguely recalled she’d had some idea of capturing the Hero at the beginning of the fight. That had been long since forgotten.

“Do you know what he threatened to do to us?” Mariella asked, glaring at the dark elf, barely keeping herself from yelling. “To my child? He’s a fucking stain in the sand. Barely more than ash and bone. Kill him now, and be done with it!” She was barely aware she was swearing.

“He will never be near you again, Mariella,” Tybalt said quietly.

“We won’t kill him either, though,” Dero said, looking firmly at the necromancer.

Tybalt looked back at the dark elf. “He is right there, though. She’s right. I’m a believer in prophecy, too, but we could kill him in a heartbeat. Just fucking look at him. The great Hero.” The necromancer leaned over and spat. The saliva fell through the rapidly thinning smoke and then sizzled against the still hot, visible bone of one of Chad’s arms.

As the smoke diminished, Mariella finally saw more than Chad’s outline.

The man Mariella, William, and Stanislaw had been fighting was a blackened body at the bottom of a half glass crater. Most of his skeleton was visible. One of his eyes was gone. The other had been facing into the sand and was encrusted with dirt.

I just have to persuade Tybalt, Mariella thought. If he can keep Dero out of the way for a minute, I can end the threat.

“Please.” The Hero’s voice begged raspily. “Spare me.”

“I don’t think you’d like the way I’d spare you,” Tybalt said, eyes glittering with malice.

Mariella looked over at Tybalt, trying to catch his eye.

No, we can’t spare him, she thought. Even if you devote his every minute to torture, we can’t contain him in any prison. He’ll break loose, and what then? A necromancer’s child, our child…

“I’ll accept any punishment,” Chad pleaded, his voice a hollow rasp. “Just don’t kill me. I… I don’t want to die.” Tears streaked from below his remaining eye. “Please, I just got into this to be important. They told me I was important. Vika, Astara, help me…”

“We have to leave him alive,” Dero said firmly. “He’s clearly less of a threat than whatever consequences the spirits were contemplating when they spoke of the issue. We don’t know what will happen just from the Hero being absent in the world. There are multiple orders of consequences to a decision like this. Just like when you unleashed a plague and got smacked down by a dragon. Compared to what the gods might feel free to do if you slay their champion, the Hero is little threat to us. Mariella defeated him essentially alone.”

Only because I found… some strength inside me when he threatened my child. Mariella almost chimed in, but she knew she couldn’t be persuasive at that moment. She could see Tybalt wrestling with his own instincts and Dero’s words. Hopefully he would come to an answer that would keep their baby safe.

“I have a solution.” The voice of the former High Priest of Mudo, Stanislaw, broke the uncomfortable deadlock.

Tybalt and the mummy shared a look, and Mariella recognized that some silent communication was taking place. It was a little annoying when Tybalt and his creations communicated silently, now that all of the mummies had fully functioning vocal organs.

“All right,” Tybalt said out loud.

All right, what? Mariella wanted to know.

Her fiance looked down at Chad’s still smouldering body, bone still exposed, flesh still blackened.

“It’s your lucky day,” Tybalt said. “Don’t even think about resisting your punishment.”

He stepped back, and Stanislaw moved forward. He climbed down into the crater and shuffled toward Chad.

“Thank you,” the Hero mumbled. “Thank you.”

His eyes landed on Mariella and then deliberately moved away. But the fire mage wondered if that was because Chad was properly cowed at the presence of his enemies - or trying to hide the malice in his heart.

“Do not thank us yet,” Stanislaw rasped, crouching above him now. “And remember. Do not resist. It imperils your very soul to do so.”

Tybalt stepped forward again as Stanislaw began chanting. Her fiance held the Hero’s holy sword gingerly in both hands, eyes narrowed as he focused.

Mariella could feel both the necromancer and the mummy calling on powerful divine forces, though Tybalt did so silently while the mummy vocalized his efforts. The air hummed with power. The fire mage felt a little better. Perhaps they would genuinely be able to keep the Hero from harming their family. Maybe they had some measure in mind that would destroy his capacity for violence forever.

Both the current and the former High Priest concentrated their powers and those of the Death God. The barely-alive Hero writhed in pain, as Stanislaw repeatedly muttered, “Do not resist” and continued channeling power into him.

The first effect that Mariella felt take hold was over the sword. She could see Tybalt wincing slightly as he held it at first. Now she felt the sword’s energy change

The holy aura that surrounded it changed, grew somehow more comfortable and familiar to her.

More like Tybalt’s own mana, she realized. The holy sword now emanated an aura not unlike Tybalt’s.

“You corrupted it?” Mariella asked, recalling a little of what she knew about how Tybalt’s skills worked.

He nodded. “A chthonic sword now. Holy to Death God Mudo.”

She smiled slightly. “That’s still not enough.”

But it would make it an order of magnitude more difficult for Chad to get through an army of undead if he was armed with a sword that likely couldn’t harm them. She felt the life inside her was a bit safer.

“This will be yours now,” Tybalt said, extending the weapon to her, hilt first.

She raised an eyebrow. “I have a—” Her fingers felt for her sword, and she recalled where she had last seen it - embedded in the Hero’s shoulder. She looked down but couldn’t find the sword. Everything in the hole she had dug for the Hero had been liquefied.

She reached out, took the chthonic sword, and sheathed it where her old sword had been. It fit smoothly, as if it was meant for her.

The Hero was still writhing below them, and Mariella took an unexpected satisfaction in his suffering.

“What are you doing to him?” she asked quietly as Tybalt moved beside her.

“Punishment for making you afraid,” Tybalt replied, taking her hand and gently stroking the back of it.