Tybalt dragged Graven over to where the four surviving miners were.

  He silently ordered the skeletons and zombies to loosen their grips on the humans. The miners weren’t going anywhere, and they almost certainly all knew that by now.

  He wanted them to feel at least the illusion of choice for the next few minutes.

  What he was about to do might be a strategic error, but he wanted to do it. He was feeling magnanimous, and he felt that this risk could pay dividends.

  And he’d just remembered what it was to feel vulnerable again. That helped him empathize with these others. They must be scared out of their wits. He could use that.

  “You all came looking for a necromancer,” Tybalt said.

  The miners started shaking their heads, and one opened his mouth to speak. Tybalt raised a palm, signaling for silence, and the body language of disagreement stilled.

  “I’m not angry,” he said. “I’m just telling you that you found a necromancer. I’m more than that, though. I have advanced my art over the last hour. You are the first, lucky group to bear witness. I have created a method of turning the living into the undead, without them going through the middle step of dying first.”

  That might not be exactly true, Tybalt thought. Perhaps my victims will go through a little death in the middle, in between falling sick and rising again. I don’t know what the full mechanics will look like in practice, only what my intent was and that I’m certain the virus does… something. But you won’t be laying there as a corpse.

  He had expected looks of horror or astonishment, but mostly, the miners’ reaction looked confused.

  Right, they don’t really know much about magic. Neither did I, a month ago. Fine. I won’t wait for applause.

  “I saw how bravely you all fought and defended yourselves against my creatures in our little skirmish earlier,” he continued. “I have decided to give you a choice. My powers over life and death were given to me by the God of Death. Graven here—” He tapped the Private’s arm with his foot—“already had his choice made for him by me. His body contains my power, which will transform him into one of my undead over time. As for the rest of you, I want you to consider carefully. I can inject my power into you as well, and you will experience the same transformation, becoming my monsters, or I can simply kill you and turn your corpse into a zombie.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the zombie Christos.

  “If you choose to accept the gift of my power, you might be able to hold onto your identity and have a greater chance of becoming an intelligent undead. There is no certainty, but a better chance than if I just forcefully use my power on your corpse the way I did with him.” He gestured to Christos again. “However, accepting my power means you are also agreeing to serve me. You’re agreeing to do everything in your power to spread my gift of undeath to others and to obey my every command. I will listen to your views when I can, but I will always have the final say, like I am your personal monarch. You will fight against the Kingdom you’ve grown up in. You will fight against the religion you’ve grown up believing in. They’re both corrupt, and they have both lied to you. And my god, Lord Mudo, will take care of your souls in the afterlife.

  “But many of you will not believe me about all of that. Some of you won’t want to betray the Kingdom—or more importantly, Vika and Astara—by agreeing to serve someone who follows a different god. Even if it means you might live longer and retain your identity. I get it. So I’m going to give all of you a few minutes to decide. Those who wish to receive my gift while living will be permitted to volunteer for that. And those who wish to die will be given the gift of death, although I will also turn their corpses into my puppets. Those are the only two options you have before you, though. Service and possibly retaining some of who you are, or death and service as a likely brainless puppet.”

  “No one will agree to serve you, bast—”

  Tybalt kicked Graven hard in the ribs and took the air out of him.

  “You’ve said more than enough,” the necromancer said sternly. “I’m not sure why they’d want to listen to the man who led them to their deaths, anyway. But you and I are both going to shut up and let them make their choice.” He looked back over at the miners. “Each man, raise your hand when you’ve made a final decision.”

  The miners nodded. Queasy looks had settled over their faces. Tybalt knew that feeling. He had placed them between a rock and a hard place. The fear that had receded into the backs of their minds would have surged up again. They would all be on the path to becoming undead shortly. That had to feel surreal.

  He gave them some space to think.

  Surprisingly, they didn’t need long. Gradually, over the next two minutes, every man raised his hand.

  “All are decided, then,” Tybalt said. “Everyone who’s choosing to die rather than live to see the future I’m going to create, please put your hands down.”

  Two hands dropped, leaving two remaining up.

  Interesting. It was the two who’d resisted. The man Tybalt had promised to spare from his experiments if possible and the graybeard. They’re perfect.

  “Why do the two of you volunteer?” the necromancer asked.

  The younger of the two men spoke first, eyes downcast. “I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but I just want to live. It’s as simple as that. You don’t seem as terrible as I had imagined. Maybe it’s foolish optimism, but well, you’re giving me a chance at life, and I’m not—I’m not done with it yet. I’m not as young as I once was, but I’m not old, either. There’s still so much more I wanted to do, more of the world I want to see. If there’s even a chance that I could live to do some of that, as myself…” His voice trailed off.

  “As for me, sometimes I think I’ve seen everything and then some,” the old man said, picking up before the silence could settle too heavily. “But I won’t say I’m tired of life… and the truth is, I lost my trust in Vika and Astara long ago.” There was a quiet gasp from the other miners, which felt ridiculous to Tybalt. But perhaps the necromancer would have been that way, too, if he hadn’t led the life that he had. “Maybe your Lord Mudo will value his servants more than the War God and the Love Goddess do.”

  Tybalt sensed there was a story there—perhaps a wealth of stories—but he felt that they were short on time. Though the darkness was still deep, he did not want to spend more time out in the valley than he needed to. That only increased the chances that some enemy would come upon them.

  “Excellent,” he said, nodding. “Tell me your nam—”

  “Fucking traitors!” Graven exclaimed from his place on the ground. He began pushing himself up with his hands. “How can any of you volunteer for thi—”

  Tybalt drew his spinal cord dirk and quickly stabbed it into one of the spaces between Graven’s ribs. The necromancer felt the tip pierce Graven’s heart. The man stopped in the middle of his sentence, his body jerked, and then he slumped to the ground and lay still.

  “As I was saying, your names?”

  “Raybeck,” said the first man instantly.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Heimar,” said the graybeard.

  Both men’s eyes remained fixed on Graven’s body, as if they thought the necromancer might suddenly snap and do the same to them that he had to the soldier. Tybalt felt a slight annoyance.

  Upstaged by a corpse. Graven is a nuisance to the end… but it’s fine, really. It brings home the seriousness of the situation, if they had been entertaining any doubts. Graven had outlived his usefulness as anything other than a demonstration. He would have undermined my plans with every breath in his body, and the increased odds of intelligence would only be wasted on a contemptible little man like him. My new tools will hopefully act on my behalf more willingly, since their interests will be more aligned with mine. They’re mostly concerned about their own survival, and the longer they survive, the more they become my puppets. And they already showed they’re fighters. That’s rare enough to be valuable.

  Tybalt stepped in front of the other two men and asked them if they were certain they wished to die. Both said “Yes.”

  And he stabbed them in their hearts, the same as he had done to Graven. Let the surviving two miners see that Tybalt was not a cruel person. Not when he didn’t need to be.

  Finally, he turned back to those two future undead.

  “Bare your necks,” Tybalt ordered.

  Both men swallowed. Both did as instructed, lifting their chins so that Tybalt could easily access their throats.

  Tybalt made a small incision in each man’s neck with the tip of his spinal cord dirk. Then he pressed his fingertips against the openings.

  Generate Ailment.

  The task felt slightly easier with the upgraded version of the skill.

  He made a few more small cuts and injected more virus into each man’s body, in the arms, legs, and torsos. The goal was to cause them to get sick more quickly and with greater certainty. Tybalt knew that adding more virions would help with that.

  These little cuts should heal within a few hours, and then there would be no tangible trace of what the necromancer had done to them.

  Then Tybalt began converting the other six bodies into undead. It was a simple, routine process, and he didn’t get any special results while he did so.

  He only half thought about what his hands were doing. He was talking to the two infected as he worked.

  “You will want to keep secret from everyone around you that you’re infected, or someone will inevitably tell someone else who will want to kill you,” Tybalt said. “Any religious authority would certainly have that reaction, especially. But I don’t want you to even trust friends or family.”

  “We don’t have family with us at the mine, Sir Necromancer,” said Heimar in a respectful tone. “As for friends—” he looked over at Raybeck—“we’re friends with each other. We will keep the circle close.”

  “Sir, I have to tell you, the Army is conscripting more of us to come after you,” Raybeck said. “They’ll probably be at the abandoned beastfolk village the soldiers have made their base by dawn. That’s in addition to the forty of us that had already arrived for the promise of vengeance on the beastfolk and, um, a reward.”

  I know that already, Tybalt thought. But those reinforcements are a challenge I have yet to find an answer to. Especially if Vika’s blessing applies to them, too. His mind started working on that problem.

  “Is there anything the two of you can do about that?” he asked after a moment. “I would rather not have to deal with more enemies all at once than whatever the squad already has.”

  “If we returned to the mine, we could certainly slow them down,” Heimar said. “My friend and I are trusted, senior men. They would probably listen to us if we told them some story to delay them.”

  “We will do so,” agreed Raybeck. “If it would further your plans.”

  Tybalt nodded, a slow smile spreading across his face. “You two are going to be valuable to me, I can tell already.”

  Raybeck forced a smile, while Heimar seemed more genuinely pleased or perhaps amused. Tybalt wondered how the old man really felt about this whole situation. It wouldn’t have been strange if a man of his age no longer feared death, and he had seemed less afraid than the others. Yet here he was, prepared to take orders from a man at most a third of his age.

  “I am beginning to trust the two of you a bit,” the necromancer said, stretching the truth a little. It was more that there were some ways in which he needed to trust them. “Let me tell you about how you can spread my power to others…”

  Twenty minutes later, Tybalt and the two miners parted ways. They needed to get back to the mining outpost as quickly as possible to be of aid as they had proposed, and the necromancer wanted to return to Mariella before sunrise.

  He was on the verge of another new level in his defiant necromancer class, and he had a skill selection to make for pestilence mage, but he found he felt worn down after all that had happened. He would think about that a little later.

  And there was one last decision he needed to make.

  He agonized over it as he gave his undead their marching orders and climbed the cliffside back up to the cave where he’d left Mariella.

  Baldwin was right. That felt more obvious, having just barely—hopefully—dodged the problem of dealing with hundreds of enemies. Given her fire magic, Mariella was a threat on par with the entire squad, minus those reinforcements.

  Yes, Tybalt had somewhat prepared for a fight with her. He had created his scorched-bone skeletons, which should be somewhat resistant to her flames.

  But that was hardly adequate.

  As he pulled himself up into the mouth of the cave and saw Mariella still sleeping there peacefully, Tybalt pulled his hood down and gave her a hard look.

  Realistically, I can’t expect she would be on my side if I tell her who and what I am right now. So I should kill her. No, I’m going to kill her.

  With how skillful he had become at using Scrimshaw, he could squeeze the back of her neck while she was sleeping, severing her spine and killing her instantly. There wouldn’t be any pain at all. Or so he told himself.

  Tybalt lowered himself down beside her, so close that he inhaled the fresh rosemary smell of her hair. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to steady himself.

  Just like she was anyone else. Kill her… just like she was anyone else in your way.

  He opened his eyes and reached for the back of her neck, mana wrapped around his fingers. He knew what he needed to do.

  His hand hovered there for a long few seconds. He was a hardened killer, he had murdered somewhere in the low hundreds of people on the Army’s orders, and now he was a free agent. She was his greatest threat, and he knew exactly what he needed to do, so that he could survive.

  But his hand only hovered. It didn’t close the distance, didn’t touch the spine, didn’t even brush the tiny hairs on the back of her neck.

  He let his mana slip away, snap back from his fingertips to his core, so all he was left doing was reaching out his hand as if to caress her hair.

  “Why can’t I do it?” he whispered.

  Am I… too weak? I don’t have the resolve?

  The Lieutenant stirred in her sleep and let out a quiet little groan. Then she raised one arm, and finally, she turned her head to look back at him drowsily.

  “Tybalt, you couldn’t sleep?” Mariella mumbled.

  He shook his head wordlessly.

  “You’re probably cold,” she said, sounding just slightly more awake. “Is that it?”

  “Uh huh,” he managed.

  “All right.” She turned to face away from him again, but a telltale pink tint to her neck told him that she was blushing. “Just, uh, lie close to me, and I’ll keep you warm.”

  Tybalt laid down behind her. He found that her body, when he got close to it, was much hotter than he’d expected. Then he realized she was using one of her skills. He could see a gentle orange glow radiating off her body, as her mana circulated from one part of her to another, keeping her warm.

  He put an arm around her waist and buried his face in the back of her neck.

  She smells great. He wished she didn’t. That would have been much more convenient.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” she whispered, in a tone that lacked any conviction. She relaxed into his embrace, the same way she had earlier.

  Tybalt just inhaled her hair and ground his teeth, trying not to be too loud right beside her ears. He would have normally been intensely aroused by this situation, but there were too many strong feelings competing for the top of his mind just then. Arousal, yes, but also frustration, anxiety, and another feeling he chose not to name that made his chest ache.

  Yeah. Fuck, I can’t do it. I… I want to kiss her when I need to be killing her. I’m so fucked…

  long chapter today, which only got even longer while I was editing it.