Tybalt and Mariella stepped out of the cave.

  “These are some of my creatures,” he said quietly.

  The entire undead squad stood before the two of them and then, as one, knelt.

  Mariella’s grip around the necromancer’s waist tightened, and he felt her breathing shift. It bothered her, more than she would probably admit, seeing that his class indeed created exactly the products of necromancy that folktales and legends spoke of.

  “Well, you couldn’t choose your class, right?” she asked with a little nervous laugh.

  You weren’t that bothered about me stealing bones from corpses. Is reanimating skeletons really so different?

  “I could only choose whether to accept an unknown set of powers or not,” Tybalt agreed. “All I knew was which god was giving me the powers.”

  “I’ll try to get used to them,” she said in a small voice.

  Then they followed the path the squad had taken a few minutes before. Tybalt sent his zombies ahead of them, doing low-level scouting with the primary mission of remaining hidden. But he kept an honor guard of skeletons around him and Mariella. He wanted her to get used to them, as she had suggested.

  The necromancer and the fire mage walked through the trees slowly and cautiously, speaking in hushed voices barely above a whisper.

  At any moment, both of them knew they might step through a gap in the trees and see the squad, but Tybalt wanted to risk talking. He still had more that he wanted to confess.

  “So, you attacked them because they were… complicit in the squad’s murder of beastfolk?” Mariella asked slowly.

  The necromancer had decided to make a clean breast of things with her as much as he could. He had just admitted to attacking both the squad and, somewhat less understandably, the miners.

  “They voted in their little club to report the presence of the beastfolk to the squad,” Tybalt said, trying to keep defensiveness out of his tone. “They know well enough what happens to beastfolk villages when they pop up in the desert.”

  “I… guess I can see where you’re coming from,” she said nervously. “I wonder… why the beastfolk ever come down from the mountains at all.”

  “Mariella, you might not notice it, since you’re superhuman, but the air up here is already getting a little thin,” Tybalt said. The slowly ascending path they had followed the previous day had taken them a little over a mile above ground level. The Salt Waste itself was already roughly a mile above sea level on average. And as he and Mariella kept walking after the squad, they were still rising. The effects on Tybalt and Mariella were minimal, and the effects on the squad enjoying the Blessing of the War God were likely to be similarly minor, but how were the beastfolk enduring it constantly? “To be really safe and avoid humans, I’m guessing some of the beastfolk villages are at even higher elevations than the one we’re walking to. I’ve heard that kind of thing causes health effects for people who have constitutions in the normal range. Difficult pregnancies, mountain sickness, just feeling tired all the time. Wanting to live closer to ground level is natural for humans—for humanoids in general. Beastfolk might be worse off than us up here, for all I know. It’s not their native land.”

  “That’s… you’ve thought a lot about this.” She smiled, some of her nerves eased, and she squeezed his bicep gently. “You truly care a great deal about them.”

  Tybalt forced himself to smile back. I’m really just curious about a lot of things and read any book or listen to any story I come across. I’d better not tell her about how I used to collect beastfolk parchments from villages we destroyed, trying to learn their written language…

  “Wait, I see them up ahead!” the necromancer whispered. He grabbed Mariella’s waist, and the two of them ducked to the side of a tree. He peeked his head out after a moment and took a little time to get a better look.

  “What are they doing?” Mariella asked.

  “Give me just a minute,” Tybalt said.

  He reached out to his undead for information, and he sensed as they began creeping closer.

  “While we wait…” He pulled up his skill selection options again and quickly selected Fleshcraft.

  At least now, if one of us gets hurt in the middle of fighting, I have a way to patch up the wound. I wish I’d chosen it sooner and taken some time to practice.

  “While we wait?” Mariella asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I just chose a skill,” Tybalt said. He quickly explained.

  “I appreciate that you were thinking of our safety,” she said. “If you wanted to prepare for a fight, I think Mystic Blast would have been better, but then, from the way you described it, you don’t think your mana is very damaging…”

  He shook his head, opened his mouth to reply, then received the answer to Mariella’s question from before.

  “The squad just sent out their two scouts again, to make sure the village is undefended before they attack,” he said.

  He sent a quiet order to his monsters.

  “Take them out silently if possible. Jump them as a group, covering their mouths to keep them quiet.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “How close are we?” Mariella asked.

  “They’re about to find it,” Tybalt said. “I recognize this area. We have to make our final moves now. The fighting is going to start in just a few minutes.”

  “We have to try and talk to them, now that they’re stopped,” she said. “Try one last time to make them see the light.”

  “We have to kill them,” Tybalt said, unable to keep from sounding annoyed. “Preferably by ambush. This is a good chance to pick a few of them off from the edges, at least. Put some fear into them, make them second-guess how safe they are. Anything less puts the villagers’ safety at unnecessary risk.”

  “That’s very dishonorable. You and I are more than powerful enough to win a straight fight, anyway. But we should give them a chance to stand down. These men should face court martial, not a sudden death from people they thought were their comrades. They are Kingdom soldiers.”

  “That’s a beautiful sentiment, Mariella, but also very naive,” he said. “They would never extend the same courtesy to their enemies. A bunch of innocent people will die if we mess this up. And… there’s something else you need to know.”

  “Another secret?” Her voice had an edge to it, Tybalt couldn’t help but notice.

  “Not exactly. Just something Baldwin told me before you and I set out after them.” He left the time frame vague. “The squad received the Blessing of the War God. They’re under its effects right now. Don’t be so confident that we can win a straight fight.”

  “The Blessing of the War God?” Mariella asked, eyes widening in disbelief. “Lord Vika blessed… this?”

  “This is part of why I say things are more complicated than Vika good, Death God Mudo evil,” he said. “Not just because it serves my own interests to say that. The War God does things like this. Just because I want to protect the beastfolk, and he wants to destroy me, Vika decides to help the people who want to destroy them.”

  “It… it has to be more complicated than that. I—I still want to try and talk them out of it. Perhaps they’ve misinterpreted Vika’s will. I need to hurry, before those scouts come back.”

  “Oh, they’re not coming back,” Tybalt said. He had the visual feed directly from his zombies.

  She gave him a surprised look, and he shrugged.

  “Volusia sent two men. He should’ve sent more if they wanted them to return.”

  Two guys are barely a snack for that many of my creatures, even with the Blessing of the War God.

  Mariella’s eye twitched. She looked like she was somewhere between relief that they had more time, amusement at Tybalt’s remark, and being appalled at Tybalt’s casual murder of Kingdom soldiers. She shook her head, then peeked around the side of the tree at the squad.

  It took Tybalt a moment to realize what had drawn her attention. It was the sound of laughter.

  A few of the men were throwing around an object while bantering loudly among themselves.

  “Go long!”

  “I’m open!”

  “The ball’s too slick and greasy!”

  Of course, it wasn’t a ball. Tybalt sensed that immediately. He had a connection to the “ball.” The men were actually playing catch with Hieron’s severed head.

  “Those animals,” Mariella breathed. “A child’s head as a toy…”

  Then Hieron pulled a face at the men in midair, something between a scowl and a sneer. Mariella noticed it.

  “S-still alive,” she breathed. “Wait, Tybalt—”

  Tybalt realized there was something that was seemingly small but important that he had forgotten to mention. He had only been confessing his sins for a few minutes, but this was a big one. He quickly covered Mariella’s mouth. It had sounded like she was about to rise to a higher volume.

  “Keep your voice down,” he said in a low voice. “They don’t know we’re here, remember—”

  She lightly slapped at his hand until he pulled it away.

  “Why do they have the head of an undead child, Tybalt?” Mariella hissed. Her voice and her hands shook, and she looked at him with an air of suspicion, but she at least kept the volume low. “The boy can’t have been more than twelve or thirteen years old. At most. Why?”

  “I can explain,” he said. “It’s not an explanation that makes me look good, but—” he swallowed—“look, it wasn’t my decision to kill him, but it is my fault. I own this. I sent Baldwin to the mining camp. I told him to bring back bodies. I didn’t realize that in addition to all the adult men, there was also a single family with a child. The foreman’s family. When Baldwin brought Hieron to me, I reprimanded him and ordered him not to do it again. But the damage was done. I raised him from the dead, and I don’t regret that decision. Hieron is—”

  “What have you done to punish Baldwin besides a reprimand?” Mariella asked instantly. “For bringing you a dead child and expecting a pat on the head.”

  “I—that is—”

  “If the answer is nothing,” she said coldly, “how are you better than the system you criticize? Better than the Army killing children and not punishing the soldiers for crossing that line?”

  “I completely control him,” Tybalt said. “My word is like a law in his head. He cannot disobey me now that I’ve given him a direct order on this subject. I told him not to bring me more child soldiers. Additional punishment would serve no purpose, besides making me feel better.”

  Mariella gritted her teeth and looked as if she wanted to argue. Tybalt knew the first line of thought that must have popped into her head.

  Justice is its own purpose. Punishment is not just about deterring future bad behavior. It’s about giving evil its just desserts. Tybalt had been educated in basic ethics, too, even if he had been remedial in that subject. If only she wasn’t raised on that Kingdom propaganda, I’d have her completely on my side…

  There was a part of him that did feel this incident was eerily similar to the way the Kingdom operated, but that also couldn’t entirely be helped. There were growing pains to any new venture. That included a venture like building an army that had not existed before.

  A sound broke the silence that had settled between Tybalt and Mariella.

  It was a voice—Volusia’s voice—communicating loudly from too far away for them to make out the exact words.

  But the soldiers who had been playing quickly stashed Hieron’s head inside of a wooden box that Tybalt recognized had once contained health elixirs, and they started to move away from the necromancer and the fire mage’s vantage point.

  They’re going to go attack the village now. Volusia gave up on the scouts returning, or he decided they must be in trouble at least. Were we talking that long here?

  “We don’t have time for this right now, Mariella,” Tybalt said. “Will you help me fight them or not?”