All of Tybalt’s zombies but two—the mother and father zombies were left out—charged at the small group of professional soldiers gathered around Commander Volusia in front of Mariella’s flame barrier.

  As the zombies collided bodily with the shield wall from both sides, the creatures struck with a combined roughly two thousand pounds of weight. It was unevenly distributed, as Tybalt had most of the monsters on his side. The other side of the shield wall, with fewer zombies hitting it, barely budged.

  The extra weight there seemed to only make the soldiers take a step or two back.

  But the zombies that hit from Tybalt’s side managed to knock one of the men holding the shield line together down. As he tumbled onto his back, three beastfolk fell upon him with their blades and opened up a dozen wounds in less than ten seconds.

  The man still seemed to be fighting, but Tybalt did not pay that part of the struggle much mind. He struck a few seconds after his creatures, aiming a full-force punch infused with Bonebreaker at the shield of the man closest to him.

  Tybalt’s fist struck the shield just above the middle. The meat of his hand felt the impact, but his bones were strengthened by the skill, which limited his own suffering. There was a cry of pain from just in front of him.

  Before his eyes, the man he’d hit dropped the shield. The arm that had been braced behind it was bent improperly just below the elbow, the necromancer saw.

  Good. Bonebreaker worked.

  He noticed, at the same moment, that the shieldbearer, who he recognized as Private Deckard, gently glowed.

  In fact, each of the men Tybalt could now closely observe had a thin veneer of mana around him, so thin that it had not been visible from a distance.

  Is that the power of the blessing? Can other people see it? Other mages? Or only me because I was chosen by a god? His mind raced, but he was left little room to think.

  The Private snarled and swung at Tybalt with his unbroken arm.

  He’s quick!

  Tybalt ducked by reflex, then managed to swing upward with his right fist.

  Bonebreaker!

  The punch took the man in the rib cage with a horrible noise of snapping bones, and the soldier staggered backward and collapsed onto his back.

  “Tybalt!” Volusia’s voice snarled. The Commander’s face and body moved in front of the opening the fallen soldier had left. “Traitor! You joined the beastfolk?”

  “They made me a better offer!” Tybalt taunted.

  A spear thrust from Volusia almost impaled him, but the necromancer barely managed to raise his shield to defend. The blow still knocked him backward.

  What the fuck, is he faster than me?

  Tybalt had imagined that he might have actually surpassed Mariella in agility now, with the levels he had received from creating his undeath virus. Not in strength, because he could tell her class gave her a lopsided boost to strength versus agility. But he wasn’t too bothered by not being able to lift as much as her. Hitting hard wasn’t everything, especially for mages.

  If he’s quicker than me—Volusia charged out from behind the shield wall at Tybalt, eyes almost unfocused with rage, and he cut off the necromancer’s ability to think coherently.

  Bonebreaker!

  Tybalt threw a punch, which Volusia sidestepped.

  “All zombies, keep helping against the soldiers and defend the village until ordered otherwise,” Tybalt sent. “Skeletons, hurry up and help me out!”

  He had left them a little bit behind as they failed to keep up with him charging at the shield wall.

  “What’s with those punches?” the Commander asked as if he’d suddenly recalled seeing what had happened to the soldier beside him. Volusia swung his spear at almost the same moment that he spoke, as if attacking by sheer instinct, without needing to think. Tybalt raised his shield and blocked again.

  The force of the impact made him take a step backward.

  How much of a boost is this blessing?

  A beastfolk tried to tackle Volusia, but the Commander slashed the man’s throat with barely a look at the attacker.

  Shit.

  The skeletons that had been all around Tybalt caught up to him and Volusia, but the Commander barely spared a glance at them. He infused his entire spear haft with mana and swung it. With one swipe, he smashed through five skeletons’ spinal columns.

  Shit…

  The necromancer swallowed, tried to think of a good next move, and failed to think quickly enough. The other skeletons leaped on Volusia, but the Commander was able to quickly break through their spinal columns with just his arms, without having to let go of his spear. His eyes never left Tybalt.

  The necromancer took a step back and drew his spinal cord dirk from his side. There was no sense in fighting with just fist and shield when he had a proper weapon to use instead of bare hands. The initial trick of simply using Bonebreaker and a punch simply wouldn’t work if Volusia wasn’t willing to take a direct hit and could move more quickly than Tybalt.

  The Commander swung his spear at Tybalt again, and he blocked using the dirk this time, strengthening the blade at the last second with Bonebreaker. There was a loud ring of bone against steel with the contact, and both men took steps backward.

  If I hadn’t strengthened it, I wouldn’t have that weapon anymore.

  This time, as Volusia raised the spear, preparing to attack again, he paused. He seemed to have noticed something. The Commander frowned at the tip of his weapon, which Tybalt now saw was damaged from the clash.

  “How did you chip solid steel with… bone?” Something clicked behind the Commander’s eyes. His expression turned to one of shock. “It was you. All along, it was you. Of course. That’s why those skeletons rushed to defend you just now… You’re the necromancer.”

  Tybalt drew a couple of bone daggers from his pocket with his left hand, infused them with Bonebreaker, and hurled them.

  Despite the reinforcement, Volusia batted them away with one arm. It had no protection but the gambeson and that thin, glowing aura that surrounded him.

  Tybalt swallowed again. I’m in trouble.

  Volusia stabbed at him, and the necromancer was forced to give ground once more, almost running away from the spear. The Commander had more than twenty years of battle experience in excess of what Tybalt possessed, and he was much higher level. With the Blessing of the War God, he was markedly stronger, he was faster, and for some reason, he was now completely ignoring everything that was happening around them in favor of focusing completely on Tybalt.

  Well, I know why he’s focused on me. I’m the one he’s here to kill. I’m the real target.

  The necromancer was aware there were other fights happening, and he thought the tide was moving in the right direction, but he paid it almost no attention at all. Any moment when he lost focus on the man in front of him could be his last.

  I underestimated the Blessing of the War God, he thought numbly. After I wasted all that breath warning Mariella… I thought that I could more than handle it.

  “All nearby undead, defend me,” Tybalt commanded. “Now!”

  “I should have known it was you when it turned out Baldwin was one of these creatures,” Volusia said. “You fooled me with that undead child.” A smile crept over his features. “On the bright side, you won’t live to gloat about this.”

  He stabbed at Tybalt with the spear again. The necromancer tried to pivot back and to the side, but he half-collided with a tree and tripped over one of its roots. He stumbled backward, tried to catch himself, failed, and landed squarely on his ass.

  “Say goodbye, bastard,” the Commander said. He pointed his speartip at Tybalt’s chest and stabbed forward. Tybalt was barely quick enough to move in response. He managed to knock the spear’s trajectory away from his heart, but the tip pierced his gut. His abdomen burned with a white hot agony. Somehow the pain seemed to radiate from below his stomach to all the way up to his shoulder.

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  “Ah, fuck!”

  A fireball struck Volusia in the head.

  The Commander groaned and slapped at his face, clumsily trying to extinguish the fire with his bare hands. Another fireball struck him as he was in the middle of that, lighting his gambeson ablaze, and he had to try to put out both flames at once.

  Meanwhile, Tybalt felt a terrible pressure inside himself. He knew deep down that Volusia had cut into something important.

  He forced himself to push backward, pulling the speartip out of himself in the process. He shoved the point down and to the side to get it fully out of his way.

  Then, wielding the spinal cord dirk with Bonebreaker and holding it with both hands, he lunged and stabbed up into Volusia’s abdomen. The necromancer didn’t even take an extra second to aim, but he felt hot blood gush out over his hands.

  Now you know how it feels, he thought.

  Tybalt gritted his teeth. The pain inside him was only getting worse. He could feel himself growing weaker with every passing second.

  Fuck, this can’t happen to me. Not here. Now. I…

  The Commander let out a loud, pained growl.

  The necromancer tried to pull back on the dirk, but he felt hard muscle tighten around the weapon, holding it in place, resisting Tybalt’s efforts.

  What the fuck is he? Holding onto a weapon inside his guts with muscle? What kind of monster was the Commander all this time?

  A fist swung down at Tybalt’s head, and he was thrown to the side by the impact, losing his hold on the dirk and rolling away. The pain in his head wasn’t anything noteworthy, though. He shook himself slightly and quickly rose to his hands and knees.

  As Tybalt turned to look at the Commander, Volusia had dropped to the ground, grabbed two fistfuls of dirt, and begun smothering the two fires that had overtaken his face and clothing.

  That wasn’t just her regular fire, was it? Tybalt thought. Thanks, Mariella.

  At the same time, two zombies appeared behind Volusia. Confident they could distract the Commander for at least a few seconds, Tybalt reached inside himself.

  Fleshcraft.

  Hands touched hot, gushing blood and probed sensitive flesh. He almost fainted at his own fingertips touching his innards. He clenched his eyes shut, took slow, shaky breaths, and forced himself to continue.

  Heal. Find the hole, and heal…

  His fingers searched, but all he felt was the messy goo of internal organs and the rush of blood trying to escape.

  He felt the impulse to squeeze down on something and hope that was where the internal cut was, but he forced himself to stop. What he was doing might instantly kill him. He needed a mirror or something reflective, but no one was going to help him with that, of course.

  Gods… It hurt so much. And his hands shook. I should have thought about this. Can’t use this skill during a fight. At least not right now. Lost too much blood. Feels like I might accidentally rip my own organs apart.

  He opened his eyes and saw Volusia was just finishing putting out the fire.

  No more time.

  Tybalt looked around for something else he could use as a weapon, or some other dead thing he could raise to fight for him. He reached out, found the closest beastfolk corpse, and touched it with his power.

  “The fire mage is helping you,” Volusia managed to say, a note of surprise in his voice.

  Then the zombies grabbed him from behind. One sank its teeth into the side of his face, and the other bit through his gambeson, opening a shallow wound on his arm.

  Volusia roared with anger and ripped one of the zombie’s heads clean off with his bare hands. Then he infused mana into his fist and punched the zombie that was still latched onto his arm. The head splattered.

  My creatures are fucking useless against him. Barely a moment’s distraction. I… how can I win?

  Tybalt forced himself to resist the tug of despair. This was far from over.

  The dead beastfolk he had touched sprang to life.

  “Kill him,” Tybalt ordered.

  “The bitch will hang for this, you know that?” Volusia said, turning to face Tybalt again.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Tybalt replied, one hand clutched to his abdominal wound, trying to stanch the bleeding that he could feel had already soaked through his clothing.

  Is that part of the Blessing of the War God? Every stab lands somewhere important?

  “And who says you have anything to say?” Volusia said instantly. His eyes flickered up to the undead beastfolk staggering toward him, and his face lit up with a cocky smile. He snorted dismissively.

  The Commander drew back to throw a punch at the monster, and then a glowing dagger blade surrounded with gray-black aura seemed to grow out of his chest.

  Wrong side, Tybalt thought desperately. You needed to stab him in the heart…

  He didn’t know if a stab to the heart would be an instant death for Volusia—at a certain level of constitution, he’d heard one’s wounds could heal more quickly than a heart injury would kill—but going for the wrong spot certainly wasn’t helping matters.

  “Commander, I’m here to pay you back for everything you’ve done to my people over the years,” a familiar voice said from behind Volusia.

  Don’t give fucking speeches, kill him! Kill him now!

  A pair of big, fennec fox ears rose from over Volusia’s shoulder, and then the man’s head came into view.

  So that’s what Andric looks like.

  He was tall, though not as tall as Tybalt. Strongly built. Conventionally handsome, with sandy blonde hair and blue-gray eyes.

  I guess that’s the fox beastfolk look. It was not dissimilar from Vidalia’s appearance, except that where she was a delicate, feminine beauty, he was a rugged-looking, masculine male. But they could have been cousins.

  Some little part of Tybalt was annoyed that in some sense, Vidalia and Andric looked, in his mind at least, like an aesthetically matched set. Like they belonged together.

  Then his brain returned to what was important.

  The undead beastman Tybalt had raised threw itself at Volusia and sank its teeth into his neck, forcing the Commander to turn his attention back to the monster and Tybalt.

  “You’re the one who brought those creatures to the fight?” Andric said, looking to Tybalt as well.

  “Fucking finish him!” Tybalt snarled. He was running on adrenaline and hate now, most of his strength gone. “And yes!”

  Andric reached down and slowly pulled his glowing dagger from Volusia’s back, with an expression of great effort. Volusia’s face was also set in an effortful expression. He ripped out the undead beastman’s throat with his bare hands, and at the same time, Tybalt could tell he was using some amount of mana to control his chest muscles in an attempt to hold Andric’s dagger in place.

  Volusia turned to face Andric as the blade fully pulled from his chest, the zombie beastman still clinging to him despite its ruptured throat.

  Then the Commander reached up, and he crushed the beastfolk’s spine with one hand. The zombie finally stilled.

  “Is this the best you two can do?” Volusia asked brashly.

  As the words left his mouth, a large shadow moved overhead and then swiftly descended. Before Tybalt could get a handle on what was going on, he saw a set of giant bird claws rip through the back of Volusia’s gambeson and tear loose a chunk of flesh. Blood came gushing from the hole in a torrent.

  “Motherfucker!” Volusia exclaimed.

  Tybalt got a good look at the airborne attacker from the rear, as she was flapping her way back up out of reach. A harpy. She had claws on hands and feet, a pair of dark-colored wings that were connected to her arms, and a long flowing head of dark-colored hair. He didn’t get a good look at her face, but the necromancer imagined it might wear a look of triumph.

  Andric lunged forward in the moment when Volusia was reacting to taking the hit, but the Commander was somehow ready for him. He swung his spear at Andric, and the war chief was forced to block rather than attack.

  Spear and glowing dagger clashed, and Tybalt saw Andric grit his teeth with the force of the impact. But he did not step back. Both the beastfolk war chief and the Commander held their ground.

  What the fuck? That dagger has to be enchanted somehow. There was no way Andric could stand up to the sheer physical force of Volusia’s strikes otherwise. He was just an ordinary beastfolk, without a class, right?

  The necromancer cast his eyes about for another weapon to use. His dirk was still embedded in Volusia’s stomach, and he couldn’t imagine Andric beating Volusia alone.

  No, more importantly, Tybalt refused to let someone else have that pleasure.

  Seeing nothing bony that he could use on the ground, Tybalt’s hand found his dagger in its usual place on his waist instead.

  He rose to his feet.

  The shadow rushed by again, and the harpy dug another chunk out of Volusia’s back before again retreating to the air. They were wide but shallow wounds. Not the sort that could ever kill the Commander, but certainly an annoying distraction at a key moment.

  Volusia weakened for a moment as the blade-like claws slashed him, and Andric was able to parry the spear to the side. He got inside Volusia’s guard and aimed a stab at the Commander’s chest.

  Yes, get his heart! Tybalt thought despite himself.

  But he could not properly see what happened next, with Volusia’s body between himself and Andric.

  There were grunts of effort from both Commander and war chief, and Tybalt figured they were fighting over control of the dagger.

  Andric will never win a direct strength contest with Volusia right now.

  Tybalt lunged forward, dagger aimed at Volusia’s heart.

  The necromancer saw a fireball coming in his peripheral vision and slowed slightly, but Volusia surprised both him and Andric with his next move.

  The Commander tumbled backward, onto the ground, and with both hands, he threw Andric in Tybalt’s direction. The fireball missed as Volusia dropped under its trajectory.

  The necromancer managed to sidestep the flying beastman and closed in with his dagger.

  Tybalt raised it high as he got within a foot and stabbed down with all his force at his downed former Commander.

  Volusia caught his wrist and stopped the movement in mid-swing.

  “Not good enough,” Volusia breathed.

  The Commander threw a sudden uppercut, and before Tybalt could even muster the mana to defend himself, he felt his ribs crack under the impact of the punch.