Tybalt’s mind drifted through a haze of blurred and broken images.

  Vidalia—his fox girl, as he had come to think of her—was omnipresent in them. She lay beside him on a straw bed in her underwear, spooning with him, rubbing his back, and occasionally getting up to bring him food or tea. In short, nursing him back to health.

  He knew it wasn’t real, because the injuries on his body were all wrong—he had burns instead of broken bones and bruises—but it felt good to be cared for, all the same.

  “Thank you,” he wanted to say. At first, he wasn’t sure if the words had made it through his lips.

  But they must have, because she said something back—something about protecting him, which made no sense. Her body was so slender and delicate that he couldn’t even imagine her defending herself against any physical threat. She sounded sweet and sincere, so he didn’t contradict her.

  Days passed, and he began walking around again. He felt he could have done so almost immediately after he had awakened in Vidalia’s room, but she wanted him to be careful. And he found himself more respectful of her wishes than he would have been of anyone else’s.

  No one had ever cared for him quite like this before, even in a dream. Not since he was a child.

  If he got up and managed to reinjure himself, it would disrespect all the effort Vidalia was putting in to help him get better.

  Quietly, he began to understand how she might have fallen for him despite only seeing him in dreams. They just felt right together.

  He woke up one morning, the fox girl tangled up with him. Her arms were wrapped around his chest and back, her bushy tail resting in between his legs. He tried to be still and just enjoy it, but Vidalia woke with him. He must have stirred without realizing it.

  She pressed her lips against Tybalt’s ear and whispered something into it.

  There was some combination of phrases with the word “remember” in it, but sadly it was then that Tybalt began to wake up.

  As the dying vestiges of the dream swirled around him, he forgot almost everything.

  There was a blur of images and sensations—soft, smooth skin pressed against his, a kiss on the lips, the slight smell of strawberries—and then he was blinking awake.

  “Remember,” Tybalt whispered. “Remem—”

  The pain struck him in a single rush. Every inch of him hurt.

  “Ah, fuck!” he exclaimed. His eyes began to focus, and he saw dark figures outlined against the night sky. Reflexively, he started to sit up, bloody fingers scrabbling at his sides for weapons that weren’t there, but a hand landed on his chest and slowed him. The mere touch made his ribs scream.

  “You probably want to slow down whatever it is you’re doing, master,” Baldwin’s voice pronounced. “You… look like shit.”

  Probably a good thing I didn’t get all the way up, Tybalt thought.

  Baldwin’s face swam up at Tybalt, and then the outline of the rest of Baldwin’s form. Despite the night’s grisly work, there was minimal blood on Baldwin’s gambeson. It was almost as if he had taken it off for the murders, though Tybalt doubted that was true.

  “I thought you might be them for a moment,” Tybalt said. He breathed out a quiet sigh of relief. Simply exhaling made his ribs throb.

  “Was that what that ‘remember’ was about? You were about to make some kind of threat, or…?”

  “Something like that,” Tybalt lied.

  Baldwin still didn’t know anything about Vidalia, and Tybalt did not feel this was the time to elaborate on his recent, intense dream life.

  “Well, I have a health elixir for you,” Baldwin said. “Did they already give you one?”

  “Half,” Tybalt said. He had been unconscious after that blow to the head, but he had a trace of health elixir taste in his mouth, and he remembered what the others had intended to do. His eyes quickly scanned the ground and confirmed the presence of the empty glass bottle from the health elixir the men who had beaten him had administered before they left him. “Thank you for getting here so quickly, Baldwin.”

  “Uh, think nothing of it, master,” Baldwin said. His face had a strange expression that floated somewhere between pleasure at Tybalt’s gratitude and mild discomfort.

  Tybalt took a moment to inspect the other figures around Baldwin, who were coming into Tybalt’s awareness as he became more fully awake.

  He saw the glowing eyes in the dark, and even before his eyes could fully adjust, he knew what he was looking at. These were his creatures. The horned skeletons were a little creepy, even to him, in the darkness—especially given how helpless Tybalt felt at the moment. It wouldn’t take much more than a stiff breeze to kill him

  Tybalt lowered his gaze and saw several corpses.

  “Aw, you even brought me get-well presents,” Tybalt said, grinning—then wincing when the grin exacerbated the pain in his face.

  “You told me to complete the mission and not stop to help you, so I did that,” Baldwin replied, saluting. Tybalt couldn’t tell if it was meant to be mocking or serious. He turned his attention back to the bodies rather than try to analyze Baldwin's intentions.

  “Six bodies,” he said. “You did pretty well.”

  “They’ll definitely notice them missing, but I’m glad you think it was worth it, master,” Baldwin replied.

  “Until we reveal ourselves completely, there should always be more unsuspecting people,” Tybalt replied, shrugging. He looked over the bodies again and froze for a moment, then made himself act like nothing was out of the ordinary. “I see you’ve brought me four men, a woman, and a boy.”

  “Yes, master,” Baldwin said. “I kept them as intact as possible. Maybe could have done a little better with that one.” He pointed to a headless corpse. “He confronted me when I came out of the cabin where the family lived. Since he saw me dragging the bodies out, he naturally had to die as quickly as possible. I slashed through his neck before he could scream.” The revenant sounded rather pleased with himself. “Ended up separating the head from the body, but I had to move fast. If I hadn’t silenced him, I might be answering some difficult questions right now—or more likely, dead.”

  Tybalt nodded. It was slightly unsettling how proud Baldwin was of the slaughter—it reminded Tybalt of his own sessions with his tutor, how eager the young Tybalt had been to show off his knowledge—but Tybalt was carefully modulating his reactions.

  It bothered him more than he wanted to admit, seeing the body of a child among his servant’s offerings. The reaction wasn’t in his gut, he told himself. It was inside his brain. Something he could alter by thinking differently.

  Tybalt knew he needed to address the subject carefully. He didn’t want to discourage initiative or make himself look soft.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  There was the additional factor that Tybalt did not know how much of this was truly his own perspective, and how much he had been influenced by his recent interactions with Vidalia and Lieutenant Sperry.

  You’re not this soft, he told himself. You can’t afford to be.

  He had destroyed families before, but they had rarely been human. The demihumans that the Kingdom persecuted were barely seen as people. The unanimous dehumanization that the squad engaged in had made it easier to pretend he wasn’t doing something monstrous.

  Tybalt looked up and realized Baldwin was waiting for something more from him.

  “Um, well done,” Tybalt acknowledged. “Keeping the dead guy from raising the alarm.”

  “Can you still use him?” Baldwin asked, smiling.

  “Did you bring his head?” Tybalt asked, gesturing at the body they were discussing. This was a more comfortable subject for him than the dead kid. A technical question.

  “Of course I did. I figured you could probably do something with the parts of the body, even if you didn’t have the whole thing.” Baldwin stepped to the side, and Tybalt saw a bloodstained sack sitting in the sand.

  “Honestly, I don’t think I can,” Tybalt said.

  Baldwin frowned.

  “At least not at my present level,” Tybalt continued. “I can create headless undead at a significantly higher level, but my abilities aren’t there yet. Maybe I could use the spare parts for something, but I don’t know. I don’t have methods to preserve them right now. The reason I asked if you had the head is that I might be able to do something with the body if the head is attached again. How are your sewing skills?”

  “Tolerable,” Baldwin replied. “I can patch holes in clothing decently.”

  “Well, how about reattaching the head to this body?” Tybalt asked. “Even poorly.”

  “That might be doable, and I do have my supplies in a bag I keep on me, along with my other important items,” Baldwin said, nodding. “It will probably take me the rest of the night if I do it now, though.”

  Tybalt smiled for the first time since he had been brought out into this isolated patch of desert. Even that little movement hurt his face, but it was worth it. It was good to be in charge.

  “Please and thank you. After you help me get back to camp.”

  Baldwin nodded. “What do you think of the other bodies?”

  The necromancer looked down at the other corpses—three men whose necks had been ventilated, a woman with her throat crushed, a pre-teen boy who had been given the same treatment as his mother.

  Well, now he’s asked…

  “What were the circumstances that led to you killing the boy?” Tybalt asked bluntly. “Not that I’m getting squeamish here, but—well, there are some things the Kingdom does that I’d rather not imitate.”

  “He was a witness,” Baldwin said in a very carefully neutral tone. “Did you want me to leave witnesses alive, master?”

  Tybalt sighed. After a moment, he said, “No.”

  “I had no choice, then. Give them ‘the desert’s peace,’ right?”

  “Yeah, I get it. But please try not to get into situations that will require us to kill children, Baldwin. If we can make ourselves look less brutal than the Kingdom, it will help us win allies.”

  “Master, could I speak freely?”

  Having an intelligent undead would be pretty fucking useless if you just told me what you thought I wanted to hear, Tybalt thought.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I don’t think being seen as ‘less brutal’ than your enemy has ever helped anyone make alliances. If anything, it might help you get a marriage alliance or something, but—man, you must know your history at least as well as I do. The early kings used to skin their enemies and rub salt into the wounds. You’re a revolutionary, I guess—which means we’re revolutionaries, since I’m stuck with you. But underdogs don’t succeed by being sweet and gentle. I thought you understood that. Still… it’s not like we need child soldiers. I’ll do my best, master. I just don’t want to die again because we’re trying to be the good guys. There are no clean hands in war.”

  You’re right. I do know my history better than you. There are some examples where the less brutal side wins in war… but I don’t know that I’d call it an advantage. It’s complicated. But this wasn’t a discussion he wanted to have at length with the revenant just then.

  So Tybalt just nodded. “You’re right, Baldwin. We can’t worry about being the good guys. And we don’t need child soldiers. Hopefully this will be the last one.” Even as he spoke, he didn’t think that was likely to be true. But as a leader, it was important to set the right goals.

  Baldwin looked skeptical but nodded. It was clear they wouldn’t truly agree. Tybalt decided to move past it.

  “As for the rest of the bodies, I love what great condition they’re in,” Tybalt said. In his mind, the adult corpses had ceased to be human beings. They were just meat and bones that he could reanimate into servants. They couldn’t be anything more.

  Baldwin beamed. “I worked hard on that. Didn’t want to mess them up too much for you.”

  Well, if praise gives him any kind of a charge, I’m happy to praise him for that…

  “You’re very good, Baldwin,” Tybalt said. “Did you get any levels out of this?”

  Baldwin nodded, and Tybalt opened Baldwin’s status with a thought.

  Just one level, but he’s close to getting another, Tybalt thought with approval.

  He raised his arm and tried to give Baldwin a thumb’s up, but just twitching his fingers set off a spasm of pain. His whole hand was a raw, red mess of torn and inflamed skin, and moving it at all just ground the sand in deeper.

  He tried to think of something else to say, then looked back at the status and did some quick mental math.

  “I think each level gives you two points in every category except fortitude,” Tybalt observed.

  “That’s not bad,” Baldwin said. “Er, what about fortitude?”

  “It’s the same as it was before you died. I think what you had in life might be a hard cap.”

  Baldwin shrugged. “I can’t complain. Doubling the amount of stats I get per level in every other category is quite a compensation.”

  Since humans without classes normally gained only one point per stat per level, this would cause Baldwin to gradually overtake other humans who had a similar level to Baldwin’s combined human and revenant levels—and this did not factor in the fact that Baldwin’s revenant levels would be easier to acquire than additional human levels, because he was starting at the bottom.

  Baldwin was still substantially weaker than a similarly leveled human with a class, but compared with the majority of the population who did not have classes…

  “Undead are better than humans,” Tybalt said quietly.

  Baldwin nodded, still smiling.

  “At least the intelligent, free willed undead like you,” Tybalt continued. He stared Baldwin in the eyes for a moment. “If I could be sure of creating a revenant every time I used my skills, we could easily overwhelm the squad with just a few days of targeted killings. But my book tells me I was extraordinarily lucky to get you.”

  Baldwin grunted in reluctant agreement, then seemed to think of something. “Say, master, how do your stats compare? How are those class levels treating you?”

  Tybalt narrowed his eyes instinctively. Unholy Forces had indicated that free willed undead could be rebellious, though it was vague on how. It seemed to be impossible for them to disobey direct orders, but with free will, there were always creative ways that one could find to undermine someone.

  Did Baldwin still resent Tybalt for killing him and then commanding him as his master? It would be foolish to assume the answer was “no.” Tybalt had been trying to be polite and slowly win the revenant over, but if he had to ask himself whether he fully trusted Baldwin, the answer would probably always be “no.”

  Tybalt decided not to be rude by ignoring the question, but he wouldn’t provide a satisfactory answer either. It wasn’t in his interests to give the revenant too much information.

  He opened up his own status.