Tybalt sighed as the miner crumpled under his fist.

  At least there are compensations for being a bit heartless. The notification floated in front of his eyes.

  He nodded to himself. Finally. I earned that.

  Tybalt had been excited to go and confront the group of enemies led by Private Graven. Then he’d felt strange about it. Now, as he stuck his spinal cord dirk in his belt and walked back over to where he’d left Graven lying unconscious, he wasn’t sure what he felt.

  That was a bunch of innocent people. There it was. That was what gave him that sense of ambivalence. Even as he’d pursued that last man, Tybalt had almost wanted to let him go.

  The necromancer was able to turn off that part of his brain and force himself to do what was necessary in the moment, but afterward was another story.

  No, they’re not innocent, he reminded himself. They brought the Army’s wrath down on the beastfolk. Their hands are as bloody as mine. Just because we were the ones actually doing the dirty work, that doesn’t excuse them…

  Still, he shook his head. There was something unsatisfying in this victory. Perhaps it had just been too easy.

  I have you for my experiments, though, he thought, looking down at the unconscious Graven. You and a few others.

  He picked Private Graven up and smiled at him without warmth.

  It was important to Tybalt’s evening plans to have at least one person he could completely dehumanize. If Tybalt burned through Graven’s body with his necromantic power, only then would he move on to the miners.

  He had meant what he’d said to that last man. Tybalt would probably not need to subject all of the miners to his power. Not while they lived.

  There were three dead, but Tybalt had managed to capture the other five, including Graven himself, alive.

  Tybalt’s zombies and skeletons carried the living in their arms or dragged the dead along the ground, following the necromancer to a slightly more open area of the valley. There, he could conduct his experiments in a space that would allow him to keep an eye on all of the other prisoners he’d taken at once.

  He considered it a significant win, if he had the stomach to follow the night wherever it led.

  As Tybalt moved, Graven’s eyes fluttered. The primary victim was awakening.

  “Welcome back to Abadd,” Tybalt said, smiling down at Graven.

  “T-Tybalt? What’s going on?” The Private blinked his eyes open and shut slowly. “Wait, last thing I remember—” His jaw went slack for a moment, before he gathered himself. “You hit me! I’ll tell—wait, you knocked me out?”

  “Yeah, and you pissed yourself,” Tybalt said, wrinkling his nose. “That’s all right, though. This is dirty work we’re doing tonight anyway.”

  “Work? What work?” He started shifting in Tybalt’s arms, looking around and trying to prop himself up. “Um, hey, put me down! I’m not injur—”

  “Shut up, Graven,” Tybalt said. “I don’t want to hurt you right now, but I will if I have to. And I can’t pretend I won’t enjoy it a little.”

  That stilled the soldier.

  “Tybalt… you joined the enemy, didn’t you?” he asked. His head darted around, and he finally saw that they were flanked by Tybalt’s five skeletons—there were three more, but those were broken and had yet to be repaired—and five zombies. “You’re working with a gods-damned necromancer!”

  “I am the necromancer, you dolt,” Tybalt said darkly. “And my powers come directly from a god. Don’t worry about damning me. Worry about yourself.”

  They arrived at a clear enough place, and Tybalt stooped and dropped Graven on his rear.

  The Private sat up and put one foot on the ground as if he wanted to get up.

  In response, Tybalt quickly placed the heel of his boot on Graven’s chest.

  “No, none of that,” the necromancer said. “You had your chance to try and fight me off. You aren’t getting away. I’m more powerful than I’ve ever been now.” It was true. With his most recent levels, he finally matched his pre-class level of physical strength. With his mana and skills, he dramatically surpassed his pre-necromancy self. “You know you could never have beaten me in a fight before, if you’re honest with yourself. Not without a handful of better men ready to kick the crap out of me first. Even then, your only decent hit was probably the one you struck after the Sergeant said it was over. That kick to the head. Right?”

  The necromancer grinned down at Graven. The Private lowered his eyes in response. Tybalt pushed lightly with his heel, and the Private allowed himself to be placed in a supine position.

  “You’ll never get away with betraying the Kingdom,” Graven said with the desperate faith of the vanquished.

  “Graven, that’s not really your concern anymore,” Tybalt said quietly. “Despite what I said just now, I don’t even hate you or anything. Ever since I attained this power, you’ve been nothing more than a pebble in my path. The Kingdom is my real obstacle. Volusia is my big enemy for the moment. I don’t feel bitter toward you.”

  The Private’s face took on a look of hope for a moment, before Tybalt shook his head.

  “I’m still not letting you leave here,” the necromancer added. “At least not as yourself.”

  “One of your monsters,” Graven breathed.

  Tybalt nodded. “Focus on getting through the process with your sense of self intact, and maybe you’ll increase your odds of being one of the intelligent ones.”

  He had no reason to believe that was true, but he wanted Graven to try to be still for this. Otherwise Tybalt would have to start removing pieces of him to keep him in place, and he wanted to keep as much time as he could for actual experiments.

  Graven swallowed. “There’s nothing I can say, is there?” he asked.

  “To get out of this? Nothing at all.”

  “If you see my mother, her name is Ethelfleda—”

  “We weren’t friends, Graven. I’m not carrying your last request with me. And you should hope that your mother and I never meet. I sincerely hope that myself.”

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  I don’t really want to start punishing mothers for giving birth to idiots, so let’s remove the temptation.

  The Private nodded with an air of understanding. His eyes took on a look as if he had given up.

  “I’m starting,” Tybalt said.

  He pushed a tiny amount of mana into his palm, then lightly slapped Graven’s cheek. Both men heard the sound of bone fracturing, and Graven winced.

  During the fighting with the miners, as well as just now, Tybalt had used his mana the way he had figured out with Mariella earlier. He could strengthen or weaken bones almost at will now, with hardly a thought, and every surviving miner had at least one broken bone. Knocking out the last man, Tybalt’s fist had probably fractured his skull, even if only slightly.

  But this casual use of the power apparently pushed across some threshold only the system fully recognized.

  Nice! Tybalt thought.

  “What the fuck,” Graven grumbled. He raised one hand to rub at the area near the fracture, then pulled his palm away a second after touching the skin.

  “That was the first bit of experimenting,” Tybalt said. “It was a great success.”

  He placed his hand on Graven’s chest and drew more mana out, this time with a different intent in mind. At the same time, Tybalt sent a silent order to his undead to hold the others he’d captured very still. They would be waking up over the course of these experiments, and the miners might understandably get a bit anxious about what they were about to see.

  “You’ll want to grit your teeth or something,” the necromancer added. “If you bite through your tongue, I’m not going to take a break to put it back together right now.”

  The Private paled, then placed both feet on the ground and tried to quickly rise.

  He got as far as putting a little pressure on one foot and getting his rear an inch off the ground.

  Scrimshaw.

  Tybalt reached down and roughly squeezed Graven’s ankle, the bone like jelly in his hand. Then he pulled his palm away.

  Messing bones up is so much easier than fixing them, Tybalt thought.

  At least that was true when there was hardly any space between the skin and the bone, and the victim wasn’t moving around much.

  The Private cried out and dropped down again, his face contorted in pain. He looked down at his ankle. The foot was now twisted the wrong way.

  Tybalt didn’t bother confirming with Graven that he had learned the lesson. The necromancer could teach him as many times as required.

  He simply placed his hand on Graven’s chest, produced the same mana that he used for Generate Undead, and pushed it inside.

  Immediately, the Private stiffened, gritted his teeth, and looked uncomfortable. By some miracle, he managed not to cry out, even though Tybalt hadn’t told him he had to stay silent.

  Squad code, the necromancer remembered. Show how tough you are. Show you can remain silent.

  He could have taunted Graven, but he found that he didn’t want to. The Private was just pathetic. He really wasn’t worthy of hatred.

  Instead, Tybalt just watched and took mental notes. He could feel what his mana was doing inside of Graven’s body. It squeezed and probed the soldier’s internal organs, tried to press inside, and was repeatedly pushed back out.

  It occurred to Tybalt that whatever this mana did to Graven, it might be an indicator of what his personal version of Mystic Blast would do once he learned that skill. The thought would remain in the back of his mind throughout the experiments.

  Graven began to visibly sweat. The pattern continued for another thirty seconds, Tybalt’s mana looking for a home inside Graven. Then the energy within him petered out.

  That’s a little frustrating, but if at first you don’t succeed…

  He decided that perhaps he hadn’t used enough power.

  Tybalt pushed in a fresh surge of mana, twice as large this time, and this time, Graven cried out.

  “Stop! Stop!” he yelled.

  But the necromancer’s power was already inside of him.

  At the periphery of his vision, Tybalt saw a couple of the others shift, trying to escape. But the dead held them tightly. He kept his focus on Graven, and on what Tybalt’s mana was doing inside of him.

  The energy touched and attempted to invade various parts of Graven’s body, but at every corner, Tybalt felt the living tissue repel his power.

  Graven’s not even especially strong, he thought. I guess my idea of creating a semi-living undead isn’t going to work. Maybe if I flooded his body with all of my mana? But I don’t have any indication of success yet… Wait!

  Tybalt felt something about the way his power was being repelled. Then his mana seemed to vanish from Graven’s body.

  Time to try again.

  “What are you doing?” Graven rasped, almost breathless. “Trying to make me into one of your creatures?”

  Tybalt nodded.

  “Why don’t you just fucking kill me?” Graven demanded. “You’re a fucking necromancer, right? Doesn’t that mean you work with the dead?”

  “All of life and death are of interest to me,” Tybalt replied. “You’re right that I mostly raise the kinds of corpses and skeletons you see around you, but I also raised—” He caught himself before he said Baldwin’s name—“I’ve also raised an intelligent undead. A person who maintained his personality from before death. Intelligent undead are better at fighting and can be delegated complex tasks. They’re still under my power, but they can enjoy themselves, have preferences, have ideas, and more. You see where I’m going with this?”

  “You’re trying to create an undead who thinks?” Graven asked.

  “Yes. I think starting with a living body might increase my chances. My powers shouldn’t work on you, but you can surely feel they’re doing something. What they’re doing is the question. And why isn’t it working on you the way it would on a corpse?”

  “Why the fuck would a power meant for a corpse work on me?”

  “Much of the human body is dead on some level anyway,” Tybalt said, recalling information from Unholy Forces and Invisible Enemies. “Your outermost layer of skin. Your fingernails. Your hair. All of those areas are dead tissue, and I’m not sure why my power won’t recognize that your body is ripe for the taking. Even in an actual corpse, it takes days for all of the cells to die. Or longer. Maybe most of you needs to be dead?”

  “I don’t want to become one of your undead!” Graven yelled.

  “Think carefully about this, Graven. Turning from human to undead is the only way you’re going to escape from this situation. You aren’t getting rescued. But if you become an intelligent undead, you’d be the same person, just altered a bit. A soldier in my army instead of the King’s. Maybe you shouldn’t be fighting the process. Maybe you should just be focused on trying to keep your identity as your body turns.”

  Tybalt wondered if there was some active resistance that Graven was putting up that could be lowered if he was to try to relax. Or if he was unconscious for the process.

  “Fuck you! I don’t want it. I don’t—”

  “What you want doesn’t matter nearly as much as it used to. You’re going to help me. You can either do it willingly or unwillingly.”

  “Kill me,” Graven said instantly, glaring up at the necromancer. “Raise me as an undead if you want after that. Until you do, I’ll fight you with everything I’ve got, bastard.”

  “You just multiplied my respect for you, for what it’s worth,” Tybalt said, grinning.

  “How could the gods let me rest in peace if I willingly helped a monster like you?”

  The necromancer rolled his eyes. There he goes, ruining it instantly. He’s just resisting me because he’s worried about the afterlife?

  “You don’t know the first thing about the gods,” Tybalt said. “Since you’re unqualified to have this conversation, let’s just say I’ve met one firsthand and leave it at that.”

  “Some dark god who demanded human sacrifices, most likely, you heretic,” Graven said. He turned his head to the side and spat. A thick globule of his saliva landed on the necromancer’s boot.

  Tybalt felt a small impulse to strike Graven for slandering the god that had given Tybalt a chance, but he stayed his hand. It was a waste of energy, hitting a man whose fate had already been decided.

  “Tell me, as well as you can, how this affects you,” he said. He began pushing more of his mana into Graven’s chest, eager to get on with the experiment.

  As the Private groaned in pain, Tybalt thought he could finally feel what was really going on.

  Here is Patreon if you want to read the rest of the evening, plus quite a few more chapters (we're a total of 30 chapters ahead of Royal Road now).