Chapter 48: DD2 Chapter 042 – Once More

Gwen was hungry. 

It was hardly her first winter, and while she academically understood that food prices rose sharply during the colder months, that had never affected her before. She was rich, and rich people were supposed to be insulated from petty things like hunger. Her parents ran a thriving mercantile business that spanned the length and breadth of Terythia out of their headquarters in central Rhelea, the very same building which she now sheltered in. It was five storeys tall and cost a small fortune to run, let alone purchase, in part due to its location directly opposite the Bank of Tolis. 

Prime real-estate, her father had called it, and father was always right about everything. He’d been right when he said they'd be safe from the rioting which had swept through the city, and he’d been right when he said he’d be back shortly with food.

Even if that had been days ago now.

The central location of her family’s offices had shielded them from the initial violence as not even Lord Traylan was foolish enough to risk letting the Tolisian bankers across the street come to harm. The more recent violence however, well… Gwen missed gazing out of her window at the patrols that used to march below. Gods help her, she missed just being in a room with an actual window, almost as much as she missed the kiss of daylight on her skin, real food in her stomach, and of course, her parents who she missed more than anything. 

None of this made sense. Gwen was a wealthy heiress to a vast fortune, she wasn’t supposed to have to hide in a basement with only unwashed apprentices for company, and they certainly weren’t supposed to be mean to her.

Her parents had reached high-pewter in their respective classes. Which was a small detail that didn't mean much to people outside of Rhelea where classes were rare and knowledge about them rarer still. But the merchant skills they used liberally gave them an edge in all of their commercial dealings, especially when their competition were members of the unclassed. Her father had drummed that into her hard, that in business, a small advantage was often all you needed to reap big profits.

She supposed that was why her parents were so disappointed in her. They had attempted to hide their constant disapproval, but it was a poor effort and she was thirteen, which was old enough to know how Creation really worked. Levels were everything, and Gwen was late to her first. She was not a child-prodigy who had earned her class early, not even vaguely on time. Already, she was almost a full year behind her peers in taking her first steps onto the endless ladder of power. Her status—or lack thereof—was closer to that of a Rhelean orphan with no prospects, rather than that of a wealthy child of privilege who’d had every advantage bar nobility handed to her on a silver platter. 

What a colossal waste of money her father had spent preparing her greatness if she was to remain so unworthy.

No matter how hard she tried, or how many attempts she made, she still couldn’t qualify for the merchant class. Even the lesser choice of apprentice was barred to her by the stone, which only offered the unacceptably bad student, and more recently, artist. 

Gwen despised the silent lump of carved crystal that so frequently sat in judgement of her, where it would contemptuously declare her unfit of inheriting her family's legacy.

Even now as she sat in silence, slowly starving to death, Gwen could recall with perfect clarity the nervous anxiety that filled her everytime she sat in the Adventurers Guild’s waiting room. There she would spend the full hour allotted to her between her tutors' lessons trying to drum up the courage to use the class stone again, only to suffer through another rejection, another failure.

On some level she knew that the system didn’t actually hate her when it suggested she live a life as an artist. And while it was true that her dreams of sketching heroes and painting sweeping vistas made her heart race with joy, Gwen was old enough to know them for what they were, dreams, whereas this was a nightmare.

Ever since her parents had palmed her off onto a lowly secretary, and ventured out to see the dragon’s execution, things had gone from the boring to the insufferable. No longer could she roam her parents’ offices in her favourite dresses and shawls, no longer could she light a candle to better draw her sketches, she couldn’t even eat as there was nothing left! A frustration that caused both her and her stomach to let out incoherent yells of dissatisfaction. 

“Be quiet!”

Gwen turned her head towards the raised voice with a rebuke ready on her lips and anger in her heart—until she remembered where she was and who she was with. That stifled her rage quickly enough.

Her parents had yet to come back from the market square only two streets over, and in the torturously long days since their departure, the remaining staff she had been entrusted to, had one by one ventured out in search of help or food. So far, no one who’d left the safety of the basement had returned, which left her alone with just three surly apprentices for company. Something that would be scandalous if there was anyone left to be scandalised. They were older than her—although not by much—and all of them had their classes, a fact they were keen to point out when it came time to divide what little food had been left to them, once anyone with any kind of seniority had departed. 

“I’m telling you we should throw her out. We should’ve done so the moment the others left, at least that way we’d still have something to eat. The fat little brat’s gobbled up twice as much food as the rest of us have since we’ve been stuck down here,” Maelor suggested. 

“And what if they come back? You want to explain how we threw out the owner’s kid? Just leave her alone to her drawings,” Haralt replied, cementing his place as the only one of the three who still had a job when all of this was over. 

The handsome boy’s steadfast defence of her right to eat, draw, and shelter inside the basement were the very least of his redeeming qualities. While he came from a nothing family with no real assets or connections, they had gifted him with a strong chiselled jaw, and a broad set of shoulders that made it hard for Gwen to concentrate whenever she stared at him for too long.

“They’re not coming back Haralt. You know it, I know it, we all know it. The only question is, how much longer can we stay down here without any more food? Time’s coming when we're gonna have to make some tough decisions,” stated Fitz. 

“My parents are coming back! And I don’t eat too much! I’m blossoming into a woman and I need plenty of food to do that!” Gwen snapped, rising swiftly to her feet as she spoke in her own defence. 

The three boys looked up at her from their seats on the floor, and she could feel the authority she needed to cow them just out of reach. She had her family's name, and the years that the apprentices had collectively served under them, but all of that was undone by her age, unplaited hair, and the horrid stains on the dress she had been wearing for the past week without reprieve.

“You can’t yell. I’ve told you before Gwen, you need to be silent, they’re hunting for us,” Haralt warned.

“What was that?” Maelor hissed looking up at the ceiling.

“Why are they so scary? They’re just monsters! And these ones don’t even have levels! Rhelea has been besieged before, but I’ve never been told to hide in a basement for weeks on end with filthy, disgusting boys—”

“There it is again!” Maelor said, louder this time when he cut her off.

“There goes what?” Gwen asked, but before anyone could answer her, she heard it too. The sounds of hurried movement upstairs. Furniture being knocked over. Thoughts of her father returning home filled her with joy for the first time in as long as she could remember. She yelled “Papa!” at the top of her lungs and began to race up the creaking stairs that led out of the basement, bounding two or three steps at a time.

Her fingertips barely brushed the surface of the brass doorknob before she was pulled off her feet and dragged back down towards the depths of the dark basement.

“Let go of me I’ll scream! It’s my father! He’ll—” was all she could get out before a calloused hand was pressed firmly over her mouth—Haralt’s hand. It tasted of sweat and sawdust. Gwen felt her heart flutter even as her rage spiked. The strong youth effortlessly lifted her up and held her close against his muscular chest. He then carefully descended the stairs with her in his arms, the boy moving slowly so as not to make a single sound.

“Be quiet, Gwen. We don’t know who that is,” he whispered, and his voice in her ear gave her goosebumps, even if it was becoming apparent to Gwen, that like her, Haralt was long overdue a bath.

The door handle rattled, and she felt Haralt stiffen against her back. His descent paused, and his breath hitched. Together they looked up the stairs and at the shaking piece of polished metal. Something was scrabbling against it, like someone was trying to turn the handle but didn’t quite know how. 

Perhaps her father was injured and needed her help? 

Gwen struggled valiantly against Haralt’s grasp, and her muffled cries elicited fevered looks of panic from the two other boys in the basement. Fitz’s hand went to the flimsy knife at his belt, and he took a single step towards her on the stairs before the door burst apart into fragmented pieces of sharp wood. Large splinters flew through the air, stinging her skin where they penetrated the thin fabric of her dress. She cried out in pain while Haralt muffled a curse and began to race down the steps again, his caution abandoned in his urgent flight.

With the light from the doorway retreating as Haralt swiftly dragged her down into the basement, it was hard for Gwen to focus. When she looked to the top of the stairs, standing there amongst the tall shadows was something else—something decidedly not her father—something without a level. It blurred, moving too fast for Gwen’s eyes to follow, and suddenly she was falling backwards. A warm wetness flooded down her neck and she tumbled, head over heels, down the rest of the stairs.

She landed awkwardly, sprawled out in a heap. The pain from her fall immediately displaced the hunger in her stomach. From her side she watched on in confusion as the boys she had spent so much time with screamed for help in the fleeting few seconds of their flight. The lifeless body of Haralt lay to her side—half of it simply missing.

The thing that had killed him was all thick tentacles, studded with mismatched-eyes and irregular teeth. Its oily-black flesh blended in with the shadows of the basement, while one at a time, it chased the two apprentices through the rows of shelving and storage, ripping them apart with remarkable ease. 

Like them, Gwen screamed as loudly as she could, but unlike them, they died and she didn't.

Many minutes later when the monster was done eating, it looked at her with its too-many eyes… and left. Smoothly slithering its way over her, up the stairs, and out of the basement. 

Gwen didn’t know how long she lay there for, but when she finally moved from her spot on the floor, Haralt’s blood was cold and sticky, thoroughly ruining her dress. Feeling numb, hungry, and unsure of what else to do, she slowly climbed the creaking staircase, and made her way to her bedroom on the fifth floor.

Taking her time, she washed herself as best she could using cold water and some lavender scented soap. She picked out a new dress of Lintumian silks and a pair of fur-lined calfskin boots that were in fashion the previous winter. Suitably dressed and so numb she wasn’t sure she was even alive, Gwen left her home and walked out onto the corpse filled street. 

In the distance she could hear fighting, but much closer than that was an almost painfully loud chorus of discordant howls. The paved road vibrated beneath feet, and her eyes unfocused when hundreds, if not thousands, of tentacled horrors turned a corner and raced past her—so close that their presence whipped at the fabric of her long dress. As she was buffeted from side to side, she wondered if one of them would take the time to stop and kill her, like they did Haralt, Maelor, or Fitz, but their eyes just slipped off of her like her presence was uninteresting to them. 

When they had finally passed, Gwen was still hungry, and feeling the insistent urgings of her stomach, the heiress set off in the opposite direction. 

She knew a bakery she liked not too far from here that made the most delightful pies, and she wondered if they had any pastries left.

***

Caeber hadn’t fought like this in years. Looking back, he wasn’t sure exactly when he’d started to take it easy, but he’d known for some time that he was playing it safe. It made sense really, when old age wasn’t a threat. Patience was the most reliable way to reach steel rank, and he’d turned his slow march to 200 into a methodically planned out crawl as a result. Now as he fought in the streets of Rhelea against an endless tide of horrors, Caeber felt the almost forgotten rush of adrenaline empowering his strikes, and it was enough for him to know that he’d missed it. 

He could feel that long forgotten part of him slowly creaking back to life, while his class stirred in his chest for the first time in years. He’d hungered for levels once, risked his life on foolish chances at greatness, where amongst other stupid decisions, he’d once battled giants larger than him in both level and size, where a single mistake would have cost him everything. If he’d been a little less brilliant or lucky, Caeber the Shining Knight would never have been born, and instead he would have been just another dead adventurer without a name or a legend to fall back on.

Everything he’d achieved since those heady, glorious days, was built on the experience and reputation gained from those dangerous fights that should never have paid off. And while he had certainly achieved a lot since then, he couldn’t deny that his level gain had slowed considerably in recent years. Even the thrill of adventuring had faded somewhat. He’d attributed it to old age, but as he began to feel that hunger again, he had to wonder, if maybe being risk averse wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.

If he had had a choice, he would never have chosen this battle. Down half his party and relying on monsters for allies was simply too risky in more ways than he could count. Every instinct he’d honed over a century of violence told him to cut his losses and walk away, but to do so would be to walk away from Julian, and the life they had built together. Faced with that unacceptable alternative, Caeber had to do the one thing he swore he would never do, and fight when he wasn’t sure he could win.

With Mara and Myorik at his sides, the three adventurers tore a path of carnage through the mass of tentacled horrors that had swarmed them the moment they branched off from the main host of humans making their way through Rhelea. He would have killed to have Enora with them—her fire spells had cut through these aberrant monstrosities with ease, long before she carved new runes into her staff at the dragon’s behest. He’d even feel better with Riyoul flitting about. The rogue was hardly his favourite person, but the wiry man certainly excelled in killing things, although it was looking increasingly likely that the old wastrel had done the sensible thing and abandoned Rhelea in its time of need.

How Caeber wished he could do the same.

He’d found wealth, fame, and a party of almost-equals in Rhelea. He’d thought that made him content, until he met Julian, and suddenly life finally had a meaning to it beyond the shallow pursuit of endless power. The decades they had spent together in the unique city had been the best in his long life, and now, his only regrets were that he didn’t spend more time in his lover's arms. Caeber wasn’t ready for his time in Rhelea to end, but if he had to start anew somewhere else, he could, so long as he had his partner with him every step of the way.

Julian, I’m coming.

They had never gotten married, something which Caeber now deeply regretted. The thought of losing Julian was not something he was remotely prepared for. His initial dismay upon realising that the innkeeper had not made it out of the city had been palpable. It had taken Myorik of all people to peel him out of his pit of despair. The reliable warrior who could have led the Shining Swords, if not for his drinking problem, had offered surprisingly astute insights into the nature of heartbreak. A revelation that surprised Caeber, as he had always assumed Myorik’s drinking was how he coped with the horrors he had seen on the job, rather than a way to put up with unrequited love.

Caeber supposed he’d been letting a lot of things slip in recent years.

The Shining Knight interposed himself between Mara and a particularly large horror at the very last moment. His sword flashed and it, along with several others racing close behind, collapsed into a boiling puddle of goo. The Monster’s spawn had grown in both size and aggression in the days since he had fought them last. Which was a problem, as Caeber was unused to fighting without magical overwatch and a rogue to nip larger threats in the bud. Without his full party there were openings, and a single careless mistake would cost Mara her life.

Things would be much simpler if the healer had elected to stay behind with the other spellcasters. She certainly had enough mana to add to the ritual even without the goblins’ brew, and as much as he appreciated the healing, both he and Myorik could move a lot faster without her present. But he supposed it was too much to hope for that she would step out of his shadow just this once. He knew how she felt about him, and he supposed that he loved her too in a way, but only as a friend. He could never give her what she wanted, and it scared Caeber. The fear that she would waste her long life chasing after him, was almost as bad as the fear that one day she might stop. Mara was one of the few constants in his life, the perfect lieutenant, and if Julian really was gone then he’d need her now more than ever.

Caeber’s sword flickered, allowing moonlight to switch places with steel, and he went on to carve his way through a wave of onrushing monsters. Shorn apart by his shining sword the creatures’ flesh collapsed and bubbled before it even hit the ground. With a blade of solid moonlight in his hand, Caeber was a force of nature, pushing back the tide of black with the power of the moon.  Myorik guarded his right flank and Mara watched over the other, while the Shining Knight did what he did best.

The fighting was fierce, and with every step they took deeper into Rhelea it grew seemingly more intense. The numbers facing them swelled absurdly, so much so that they couldn’t even waste the time to wipe the ichor off their armour before they had to fend off new threats that swarmed them. But the three adventurers were iron-ranks all, and that granted them more than just powerful skills—it had given them time. 

They’d been working together for decades, and Caeber knew every grunt and foible that Mara and Myorik were prone to. He knew their statuses almost as well as he knew his own. They didn’t just fight together, they fought as one. A well-oiled machine of violence and system-granted fury that scoured the streets of their city clear of the monstrous filth that infested it.

Minutes later when it was over, Caeber’s chest heaved and his head swam from his stamina and mana expenditure, but it didn’t matter as they had earned themselves a temporary reprieve from the horrors’ onslaught.

“Are you sure you want to do this Caeber?” Myorik asked between gulping breaths.

“Do you even need to ask?” the Shining Knight responded.

“No. I guess not… It’s a heck of a lot of road to clear between here and the Huntsman's Rest though,” the shorter warrior sighed.

“It is. So we’d best get going then, shouldn’t we?” Mara declared, almost surprising Caeber with her enthusiasm for his amendment to the dragon’s plan.

“I just feel bad for them. They’re relying on us to ease the pressure on the host's southern flank…” Myorik said.

“We take care of our own first,” Caeber declared. “If the dragon’s plan works, then the other columns will make it survivable. No one forced them to volunteer, and any plan that can be undone by three iron-ranks going off mission is a terrible plan.”

“I just don’t want it to fail because of us,” Myorik explained.

“It won’t. Typh’s—the dragon’s reasoning is sound. Besides, we’re sure to attract plenty of attention on our little detour. The column isn’t what I’m worried about being overwhelmed,” Mara said with a wan half smile.

The three party members who were closer than friends shared easy grins at that. They all knew their odds of success. It was like Myorik said, there’s a heck of a lot of road between them and the Huntsman’s Rest, and just one street had taken a significant chunk out of their respective resources. If they were to do this safely they needed Enora and Riyoul at the very least, but for a family in every way but blood, to leave Julian behind was just as unacceptable to them as it was to Caeber.

“Come on then, let's go save the Shining Knight’s boyfriend,” Myorik chuckled, hefting his warhammer over his shoulder.

“Yes let’s…” Mara replied.

“You know I don’t like labels,” Caeber said.

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“We know!” his friends exclaimed in unison, just as a fresh wave of discordant howls could be heard coming from the next street over.

Gods, please let Julian be okay.

The Shining Swords readied their weapons, and together they raced forwards towards the sound of horrors. They had an innkeeper to save, and not much time to do it in. 

There was a ticking clock after all.

 

***

The Goblin was enjoying himself. As his kin poured down the tunnels leading deep below the humans’ nest, he couldn’t deny how right everything felt. It was a similar sensation to how it had been in the dungeon before they were subsumed into the dragon’s forces, but moreso. The cramped spaces, the darkness, the violence. He loved it, and when he looked around at the green faces that grinned back at him in the pitch-black, he knew that they loved it too.

“Gods help me. I must have been mad to go along with this,” the human whimpered, its pathetic voice wavering as even with over 50 levels on the Goblin and his kin, the human looked scared.

It was delicious.

What the Goblin wouldn’t give for some alone time with the nervous adventurer, far away from the dragon’s spies—what his kin wouldn’t give for the privilege. With the weapons and armour gifted to them by their new allies, the gap between them and their much hated foes had shrunk dramatically. Sure, the humans had champions with much higher levels than what the goblins could field, and yes, their size usually meant that they were at least twice as strong as their green-skinned counterparts. But for the first time in a long while the goblins had runic-steel and numbers, a delightful precedent that terrified the adventurers sent into the dark with them.

The tunnels were vast, interconnected, and almost entirely dead. Every step of their deep descent was met with signs of recent death. The multitude of different predators who had once called this underground warren their home, had all been cleared out by the tentacled horrors who now filled the lairs of the dead creatures in their stead.

Goblins stalked forwards in the dark. Green forms that crawled along walls and ceilings, careful not to let their new armour weigh them down too much. The humans who accompanied them flailed about in the black. Too many of them were reliant on the lanterns and magelights they carried, tied off at easy to steal belts. It let them fight well, the Goblin mused, but the night-blindness it created also allowed him and his kin to discreetly lead the humans to the very front of their ‘shared’ formation where the adventurers suffered the brunt of the horrors’ wrath. 

This was not to say that the goblins were slacking, they fought with a fervour unseen amongst their kind in millennia, but just because they were eager to do their duty, it didn’t mean they were in a hurry to die.

Fresh rivers of the Monster’s spawn poured through the narrow tunnels towards them, spilling out into the open cavern where they raced forwards to attack. The Monster in the square above that controlled them was stupid, but not so stupid that it didn’t know what they were after. The ambush was excellently done, although a bit over the top. They had a singular destination after all, and every soul knew that they would have to fight their way to it, one horror at a time.

“Try not to die, human,” the Goblin warned, rejoicing in how the blue-eyed warrior almost seemed to be more concerned from having been reassured by him. “Remember, if they kill him, I want his eyes,” he added, ignoring the dull ache in his jaw as he addressed his kin in the humans’ foul tongue. A necessary bit of theatre that improved morale and allowed the object of his affections to know what fate awaited him.

A chorus of warbling giggles sounded out, and just like that their time to prepare was all used up. [Kill Anything] came to the fore, his knives flushed with mana, and the Goblin like so many others, raced forwards to meet the horrors. Like the soldiers they were, goblins fought against the Monster’s spawn and died by the score. While his species were excellent tunnel fighters, so too were the horrors, and their many limbs often left nowhere to run for the more agile amongst his kind. Poorly matched as they were to fight this threat, they never gave an inch of ground to the tentacled monstrosities, for even stunted shadows of their former selves, goblins knew better than to shirk the duty they were born for. 

The outpouring of aberrations felt endless, but there was a limit to their numbers—just a high one. Fortunately for the battle—less so for his conscience—the goblins had a similar upper limit, and thousands of his kind had come down into the dark to die.

The handful of high-level humans who accompanied him were a sight to behold. Their high-tier skills let them tear through the horrors that would have otherwise required at least a dozen goblins to lay down their lives just so that one of his own could get in close for a killing strike. It was enough to make the Goblin doubt what he knew to be important. He had a second class—these days, few goblins didn’t—but as his species class approached the level cap that limited them all to perpetual infancy, he was increasingly tempted to let his other, more violent one, grow past it. To do so would let him one day compete with the humans, but it would make him measurably less goblin in the process, something which was deeply taboo, even in these trying times.

His kind’s blood was thick beneath his feet while he danced along the pitch black of the cavern. Ruined buildings and fragmented stonework all covered in ancient runes provided the backdrop to their fight as the horrors continued to pour in on one side, and his brothers and sisters the other. The Monster had chosen a good spot for its ambush as its spawn came in through at least five different tunnels, forcing the humans to split up while the goblins reinforced them. 

Denied the focused power of the adventurers, their losses were mounting. Unlike the horrors who collapsed into boiling ichor, goblin corpses littered the ground, fouling footing and generally getting in the way. The only upside to his species’s catastrophic losses was that there was ample enough meat for [Eat Anything] and its derivatives to restore the injured and fatigued to full working order.

There was room for improvement in the battles going forwards. Goblins and humans clearly didn’t trust each other enough, and it cost them both dearly. The Goblin could see it clear as night that the adventurers’ unwillingness to turn their backs on members of his species, and vice versa, meant that no one location was as well defended as it could have been. It was something the Goblin could have changed, at least on the goblins’ side, but he didn’t want to. And better a few hundred more of his kind die fighting the monster’s spawn, than a few thousand later when the humans finally unveiled their inevitable betrayal.

The Goblin may have been hopeful for the future, but he knew better than to trust a human.

Someone handed him a pair of beautiful blue eyes, and he absentmindedly popped one of them into his mouth. He enjoyed the feel of how it burst on his tongue while he watched the assault push the horrors back into their tunnels, before their flow came to a stop entirely. Riding high on their continued success he idly wondered if their new Lord Sovereign knew how many goblins she’d sent down in the dark to die. 

He wondered if she even cared. 

The Goblin hadn’t forgotten how she’d once hunted their kind for sport whilst playing at being human, and while his kin around him were content to follow her orders for now, tomorrow was another thing entirely.

He wiped the flakes of burnt ichor from his knives, and shoved a ragged handful of green flesh into his mouth to better speed along his recovery. Feeling the energy generated revitalise and empower him, he looked to his brothers and sisters who stared right back into his eyes, expectantly waiting for their elder’s guidance. 

The Goblin had once despaired at his specie’s lack of significance. He’d hated that Creation could have just gone on without them and no one would have noticed. Standing amidst the most important battle that had ever been fought, and seeing the mounds of goblin dead piled high all around him, whatever the dragon’s faults, he couldn’t deny that she had given his kind their first meaningful deaths in generations.

The Goblin smiled wide, and it was an ugly, vicious thing, too many teeth in too small a mouth. 

“Forward, humans!” he cackled, his brethren echoing out his manic cry as the surviving adventurers looked at him warily. The Goblin made eye contact with each one of them in turn and slowly raised another blue eye up past his lips. He bit down and savoured the delicious taste of human fear that burst along his tongue.

System help him, but he loved this.

***

Tamlin was not supposed to fight. Everyone he had spoken to had been explicitly clear that he was still a child, and as such he should be desperately trying to cling onto whatever last vestiges of normalcy he had left.

But it was far too late for that.

He was a necromancer. It was more than just a class to him, it was who he was. He could close his eyes and feel the pull of the dead in Rhelea calling out to him, urging him to use his power to grant them some semblance of life yet again. To return the unfinished souls back to Creation where they could feast on the living. 

Who was he to say no to that?

Tamlin had killed his father. It was a crime he tried not to think too much about, in part because it had been a truly messy affair—undead rats are rarely used as a murder weapon for a reason—but also because of how he didn’t feel guilty about it at all. Maybe it was because his father deserved to die, or maybe it was because Tamlin was a necromancer, and was damned to suffer an eternal torment for his crime of first manipulating the dead, and then accepting the class. 

What was a petty little thing like patricide to someone like him?

The law in Terythia—as it was in most countries—was clear, necromancers were to be killed on sight. Tamlin didn’t know how far Typh’s protection would extend, and Arilla gaining a noble title had somehow failed to reassure him. The idea that the dragon he had pledged himself to might some day end up trading him in for political favours was an unfortunately pervasive one. He had thought that he could buy his safety by proving his usefulness, first with his efforts in dragging Arilla out of the dark when her spine was severed, and then again by summoning Typh’s army to save them all. He had done everything asked of him, and volunteered for far more than that, and while their refusal to let him take part in the fighting could be construed as a last-ditch effort to protect his innocence, he saw it as an attempt to sideline him.

For Tamlin knew that he was not by any stretch of the imagination innocent.

He had flown on wings made of dead feathers, seen through the eyes of the men he had killed, slain monsters only to puppet their corpses in service to him, and never once had he felt remotely guilty about any of it.

If Tamlin was a good person he wouldn’t be a necromancer, and if he wasn’t brilliant then he’d feel doubts rather than confidence in his plan. He trusted Typh, liked her even, but he knew that he could never rely on her for safety. The law in Terythia was clear, and if Tamlin wanted to live to adulthood then he needed his own power to enforce his survival. 

Fortunately for him, all a necromancer needed for that was bodies, and the Monster had provided plenty of those.

Alone, the child walked in the distant wake of an army. He stepped through the wide open gates of Rhelea where thousands of footsteps had already cleared a wide path through the snow. His eyes lingered on the frozen corpses that filled the street, the first of many that called to him, each road teeming with souls that had died failing to escape the horror infested city. 

The necromancer smiled. It was time to bring them back. 

Energizing power thrummed through his veins, and Tamlin pushed it through his skills, working his power in concert with the system’s will to burn the ice from the fallen and twist cold dead flesh into a mockery of life.

His horde awoke slowly, finding their feet and looking down at their hands. He felt their confusion, their dread, and anticipation. The relief of living again no matter how pale the imitation was. Dozens of voices whispered in his ears, but he gave them no consideration and issued his first set of commands.

Tamlin had a lot of mana for his age, but his skills had always focused on quality over quantity, and despite his pewter rank, he ran out of power with his first batch of summons. His shades, level 20 one and all, marched quickly towards him, with green fires burning in their vacant eye sockets. It wasn’t much of a horde, numbering thirty-four in total, but it was a start. 

The boy unshouldered his heavy rucksack, opened the drawstring flap, and tugged the cork stopper out of his first wineskin which he drank deep on. The goblins' intoxicating alchemy tasted awful and it took every bit of willpower he had to gulp the rancid liquid down. It seared its way through his stomach, but as promised, the bottled power spread from there, filling his reserves yet again while his whole body was wracked with pain and his head swam with sudden nausea.

“Powerful stuff,” the youth muttered, feeling unsteady on Creation even as his mana was rapidly returned to him.

Tamlin smiled and thirty four corpses smiled back at him. His control was loose with so many, and it would only grow loser still with what he intended to do next. But practice would help with that; it would help with everything.

The boy outstretched his arms, and grasped a firm hold of the alchemical mana sitting inside of him. With his class urging him on, he pushed it out through the lines of power that ran through his body. Out into Creation the only way he knew how, where his mana found waiting corpses lying ready in the street, and with barely even a twist of will, he brought their eager souls back to reality.

Thirty five corpses stood up with green fires for eyes and the necromancer smiled even wider still.

“Practise makes perfest,” the boy slurred.

“Practise… perfest…” the shades answered in an unearthly whisper.

Grinning despite the pain, the Tamlin emptied the wine skin, forcing it down while his stomach rebelled. He used that foreign power again, and again corpses answered his call. With clumsy fingers and a grimace, the necromancer retrieved his second wineskin, and after fumbling for the stopper one too many times, he commanded a shade to do it for him, holding the spout to his mouth and pouring the liquid power down his throat.

It tasted foul.

It hurt. 

It made him dizzy.

It had to be dangerous.

Tamlin could think of a lot of reasons to stop, but he needed to do this, to prove to himself that he could, to some that he was worth keeping around, and to others that he was too powerful to stop.

Dead hands answered his subsequent commands and pressed down firmly over his mouth between swallows to stop him from vomiting up the potent alchemies he consumed. After his fifth skin, when he could no longer stand, a shade came forth to carry him. Each wine skin plundered from the dragon’s camp added dozens to his growing horde. Despite what each concoction did to his head and stomach, the shades came a little bit faster and in slightly greater numbers with each successive attempt.

When he was out of stolen potions, the necromancer looked through the eyes of his personal army of the dead, his own too heavy to open.

Let’s go. He thought, and as one, Tamlin’s army of the dead raced forwards into Rhelea.

He didn’t try to count them, but he could hear hundreds of voices whispering faintly in his ear. His control was loose with so many, looser still with the goblins’ alchemy bloating his stomach and addling his mind. 

But the dead hungered for the living, and who was he to deny them that.

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