Two Necromancers, a Dwarf Kingdom, and a Sky City

by L. G. Estrella

  “Yes, master.” Katie’s magic rippled outward, and several shadowy tendrils worked together to bat aside a shard of ice that would have sliced through the left wing of her zombie wyvern. A series of small explosions shook the ramparts, and the hail of attacks dwindled. “Look!” she cried. “It must be the rats!”

  One of the ballistae dissolved in a cloud of mangled wood, twisted metal, and flame before a trio of mages dropped to the ground, their throats neatly cut. Elsewhere, a carefully placed explosive destroyed a catapult and sent a group of mages scrambling for cover. The rats were clearly running low on explosives, but they were determined to put the ones they had left to good use.

  “Not bad, you little bastards.” Avraniel drew her bow. “Now, let’s see what else this thing can do.”

  “Try not to blow up the fortress,” Timmy warned. “We can’t rescue the princess if you immolate her.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll try not to blow the damn place up.” The elf smirked evilly. “They’ve had plenty of fun shooting at us. Let’s see how they like a dose of their own medicine.”

  Her first shot was aimed at a dwarf sky lance, a weapon that resembled a huge crossbow that was capable of launching large steel bolts across great distances while also coating them in magic to increase the damage they did on impact. The resulting blast annihilated the sky lance and reduced a section of the wall roughly ten yards across to a smoking crater.

  “Not bad. The blast isn’t as wide as one of my normal attacks, but the damage is more concentrated.” Avraniel grin was equal parts manic and terrifying. “This is going to be fun.”

  Timmy banked his zombie wyvern sharply to one side as the archers on the walls finally began to attack. Avraniel hissed a curse at him and loosed another arrow. A dozen archers went hurtling off the walls, their bodies burnt and broken as melting stone rained down on the courtyard below. He looked toward Katie. His apprentice was doing her best to ward off incoming projectiles with her shadows, but the sheer number of arrows was beginning to make things problematic. His lips curved up into a grin. It was a good thing he’d come prepared – and an even better thing that all of the defenders’ attention was now on their zombie wyverns.

  “Katie!” he shouted. “Now!”

  Zombie wyverns were not the only flying zombies Timmy had. In fact, his most numerous flying zombies were actually zombie pigeons. Not only were pigeons easy to get but also most people considered them relatively harmless. Nobody ever looked twice at pigeons, which made them ideal for surveillance. Sure, they weren’t as fast as zombie hawks or zombie falcons, but they could fly long distances without breaking down. With all of their attention focused on the two zombie wyverns swooping toward them, the defenders paid little attention to the flock of pigeons headed their way. They should have.

  Each of those pigeons was one of Timmy’s zombie pigeons, and each of them had a small explosive strapped onto its body, along with a small charm to amplify the explosion. The biggest problem with zombie pigeons was their inability to do damage, but a zombie pigeon with a small bomb and an amplification charm on it could do damage – lots of damage. He’d have to replace them afterward, but that was fine. There were plenty of pigeons, and he and the rats could always make more charms and explosives.

  To make sure the defenders had no chance to react until it was too late, Spot, who had been circling overhead since the barrier went down, dove into the fray. The young dragon spewed black fire all over the place. He wasn’t worried about accuracy. He was there to cause confusion and mayhem. His sudden appearance had people scrambling for cover before they hastily turned whatever weapons and magic they could spare against him. But Spot was far too fast and not nearly large enough to be an easy target. By the time most of them had even begun to retaliate, he was already soaring out of range, and the zombie pigeons had arrived.

  Timmy didn’t have the raw power of some other Grand Necromancers. Animating that zombie kraken when they had attacked the empire’s island had been extremely draining, even with the extra steps he’d taken to boost his power. There were Grand Necromancers who could have animated the kraken several times over before feeling any strain. What set him apart from the others – what truly made him dangerous even to other Grand Necromancers – was his control. There were very, very, very few people who could control as many zombies at the same time as he could, and perhaps none of them could control such large groups as precisely as he could. Any Grand Necromancer could command thousands of zombies at a time, but how many of them could control and monitor the exact movements of all those zombies at the same time? That was his advantage, and one he’d learned to fully leverage over the years. It was taxing, and he’d get an awful headache if he was forced to retain such fine control over so many zombies for too long, but he could do it.

  Compared to controlling thousands of zombies at once, handling his zombie wyvern and a flock of zombie pigeons was easy. As the first zombie pigeons landed amongst the defenders on the walls and in the courtyard, some of them finally realised the danger they were in.

  “Zombies!” someone screamed. “Stop the pigeons! Don’t let them close! They’re zombies –”

  BOOM.

  The ramparts and parts of the courtyards dissolved into roiling clouds of flame and debris. Zombie pigeon after zombie pigeon exploded, and any semblance of cohesion the defenders had vanished amidst the torrent of fire. Bodies went flying, and broken bits of siege weaponry were tossed through the air. The withering flood of projectiles headed their way dwindled to a trickle as he brought the last of his zombie pigeons around to clear a path for them to land. Some of the defenders had survived – there were mages with access to defensive magic – but there were far fewer of them.

  “Not bad.” Avraniel’s eyes gleamed gold in the firelight, and the smile on her face grew as she took in the devastation. “I’ve been wondering what you and the rats were working on.”

  Timmy peered down. There was no way they’d be lucky enough to wipe out all of the mages in the attack. Time constraints and the limitations on how much each zombie pigeon could carry meant that a powerful mage should be able to survive the attack. “Don’t celebrate yet. We’re not on the ground –”

  The flames consuming a section of the rampart cleared to reveal a pair of mages. The sudden gale suggested one of them was a wind mage, but the lightning crackling over the body of the other mage presented a more immediate threat. Wind was fast, but lightning was faster.

  “Gerald!” Timmy shouted. “Summon some metal shields now!”

  The bureaucrat gave a terrified wail and obeyed. A dozen shields appeared in front of them as the mage unleashed a crackling bolt of lightning. Every hair on Timmy’s head stood on end, but instead of hitting the zombie wyvern and blowing them out of the sky, the raging torrent of electricity struck the shields. The raw power of the attack knocked them out of the way and turned them into scrap metal, but he could live with that. They were still airborne.

  “Avraniel! Get that guy!”

  The elf didn’t need to be told twice. Even as the wind began to buffet them from side to side – it had to be the other mage – she set her bow aside and lifted one arm over her head. Aiming accurately with the bow while the zombie wyvern was lurching madly through the air would have been close to impossible. Instead, she was going to make aiming irrelevant. A sphere of flames formed above her head, and she hurled the attack down at the two mages. It expanded as it fell, a growing, seething star.

  The wind around them died down as the wind mage desperately called on his magic to defend them. He was only partially successful. The wall of wind he summoned managed to all but stop the sphere’s advance, but the heat Avraniel’s attack released when the sphere exploded was enough to melt a large chunk of the rampart. The wind mage roared in defiance, but both he and the lightning mage were swallowed up by the blast.

  “Okay. Problem solved. Prepare to land.” Timmy readied his shovel. “We’re going to swoop over the ramparts before landing i
n the courtyard. Gerald, I want you to summon my zombie warriors and zombie marksmen onto the walls.”

  The bureaucrat gave him a weak thumb’s up as he fumbled with the paper bag in his other hand. The turbulence and stress had proven too much for his stomach. They banked sharply to one side, and the bag slipped out of Gerald’s hand. Timmy grimaced. The bag was headed toward one of the few surviving soldiers on the wall. The poor guy’s day was about to get even worse.

  Spot paved the way with another punishing attack run. He dove, and his flames scattered the reinforcements pouring into the area and gave Gerald the space he needed to begin summoning Timmy’s zombie warriors and zombie marksmen. Dozens of the elite zombies appeared on the walls, and Timmy ordered them to hold the walls against any further reinforcements. They could not allow the soldiers to retake the walls while they were inside the fortress. Otherwise, they’d never be able to get airborne again.

  The hulking zombie warriors provided a sturdy bulwark as the reinforcements fought to dislodge them. Their massive shields could make them cumbersome to manoeuvre, but they also provided excellent protection against anything except powerful attack magic or siege weaponry. Their shields could also be used as weapons, and Timmy ordered them to focus on simply shoving or knocking their opponents off the walls. Gravity could do the rest.

  Behind the zombie warriors, his zombie marksmen took aim. They were similar to zombie archers – a staple of any large zombie army – only much more time-consuming to create since he needed them to retain their fine motor skills. Instead of simply blanketing an area in arrows like masses of zombie archers did, zombie marksmen could be counted on to attack with both speed and accuracy. Their task was to target officers and mages and to pick off soldiers in the courtyards below, so Timmy and the others could land safely and advance on the central building. Almost all of them had been elves in life, and Timmy considered himself lucky that Avraniel didn’t care. There were plenty of elves that would have gutted him for his audacity, but he was a practical man. Elves were the best archers in the world, so using elf corpses to make zombie marksmen made perfect sense. It was a shame Mike the corpse dealer charged such a high premium for them. It would have been nice to have more of them.

  “Here we go!” Timmy shouted. He brought his zombie wyvern in on its final approach as Amanda leapt off Katie’s zombie wyvern and landed in the midst of the troops gathered below them. The ancient vampire wasted no time in getting to work. A dozen illusions had the guards milling about in confusion as she drew her sword and attacked. Within moments, she’d dropped half a dozen guards and was using their blood to widen the scope of the carnage. “Get ready!”

  They landed with a thump that reverberated through the bones of the zombie wyvern. It wasn’t as gentle a landing as he would have liked, but they couldn’t afford to come in slowly. Katie’s zombie wyvern landed beside them a moment later, and she and Old Man were right behind him as he and Avraniel rushed forward. Gerald was a little more reluctant to run toward the large group of people that wanted to kill them.

  “Now, Gerald. Get the big one.”

  The bureaucrat tottered about drunkenly as he readjusted to being on the ground, but his magic was ready to obey. The air above them shimmered to reveal a zombie hydra-drake-basilisk. The towering creature would have been easy prey for the fortress’s anti-air defences since it was too large to miss and too ungainly in the air to dodge, but almost all of those defences had already been destroyed or seized by the rats. A group of the cunning rodents had even turned one of the fortress’s catapults toward one of the barracks, and they were busy hurling rocks at it.

  “Katie,” Timmy said. “You’ve got eyes on everything here. Take over the big one.”

  “Right, master.”

  He felt more than saw Katie’s magic expand to encompass the entire area. She might not be able to drown everyone here in a storm of shadows – and in a few years she might well be able to – but she could perceive everything the shadows touched, and there were shadows everywhere. The zombie hydra-drake-basilisk was in a perfect position to attack, and Katie’s almost perfect knowledge of the battlefield made hiding or taking cover all but impossible. With her knowledge of what the shadows touched, she didn’t have to rely on the light of the moon or the illumination cast by magic or flickering torches. The huge zombie unleashed several volleys of acid as half a dozen guards fell prey to its petrifying gaze. Despite the threat posed by Timmy and the others, the remaining mages were forced to direct most of their attention toward the winged nightmare, and that gave the group the opening they needed to begin their push toward the central building.

  “There’s the entrance.” Timmy pointed and then turned to whack a soldier over the head with his shovel. The man went down in a heap, and he yanked several cobblestones loose with his magic and hurled them into an oncoming group of reinforcements. “Don’t let them regroup. We’ve got a chance if we can fight them piecemeal instead of all at once.”

  A phalanx of pikemen had taken a defensive position in front of them. Avraniel hurled fire at the formation, but light blossomed to life to ward off the attack. Timmy peered through the eyes of one of his zombie marksmen. There were a handful of mages at the centre of the formation, and they were working in tandem to protect it and increase the strength of the pikemen.

  “Advance!” one of the mages bellowed. “Drive them back!”

  Timmy bit back a curse as the pikemen began to advance. Behind the phalanx, one of the mages had begun to heave blocks of stone while another had started to throw blobs of acid. Timmy brought his shovel up and swiped at the incoming projectiles. The blocks of stone veered away from them, but his attempt to wrestle control of the ground beneath the pikemen turned into stalemate. However, he was able to use the other earth mage’s momentary distraction to neutralise the acid with several well-placed cobblestones. Katie noticed the struggle and turn the zombie hydra-drake-basilisk on the phalanx, but the mages protecting the pikemen were just barely able to hold its attacks at bay. One of the few working ballistae managed to loose a bolt at the zombie. It struck the zombie in the side, and the huge creature struggled to stay aloft as it used its claws to jerk the projectile out of its body, so it could begin to mend its tattered flesh. Timmy smiled. That was the best thing about zombies that used hydras as the base. They were even harder to keep down than regular zombies.

  “This is stupid.” Avraniel was busy throwing fire at the troops pouring in from the other side of the courtyard. Spot had landed to fight alongside her, and the dragon had opted to belch bolts of flame that exploded upon impact. “How many men does this Lord Tarrick bastard have?”

  “This is his fortress,” Timmy pointed out. “And he has been the most powerful crime lord in this area for decades. He’s the closest thing this region has had to a proper ruler in in years. If we hadn’t taken down his compound, he’d have even more people, and I can only assume he called in reinforcements after what happened there.” He’d asked Gerald to bring out more of his regular zombies, but the shambling corpses were barely slowing the phalanx down. He didn’t want to call on too many of his exotic zombies yet in case there was still someone powerful who had yet to enter the battle. Against a skilled and powerful opponent, surprise was often the key to victory. “Old Man, can you do something about their defences?”

  The swordsman gutted an opponent with a precise strike and then turned to parry a spear aimed at his throat. A casual flick of his wrist sent his opponent stumbling back minus his head. “One moment.”

  “Master!” Katie shouted. “There are more people coming from over there!” She pointed as the zombie hydra-drake-basilisk was forced to dodge to avoid a volley of magically enhanced arrows that would have severely damaged even its impressively sturdy body. Unfortunately, the next volley of arrows wasn’t directed at the large zombie. It was directed at them.

  Timmy growled and yanked his shovel up. A thin layer of rock jerked up to block the rain of arrows, and he shoved as much of
his magic as he could spare into the rock to increase its durability. Dust filled the air as the arrows pulverised the makeshift wall, but despite being a little dusty, they were all still alive, so the wall had done its job. “Any time would be good, Old Man!”

  “Indeed.” Old Man stepped forward and brought his sword around in what seemed like a simple – but perfectly executed – two-handed slash. “Parting the Waves, Step One!”

  There was a sound like a distant bell being struck, and space itself split cleanly in the wake of the swordsman’s strike. The magical defences around the phalanx shattered, and the watchtower behind the pikemen began to list to one side, its foundations sliced in two. The shockwave that followed threw the pikemen off their feet and tossed the battered watchtower aside.

  “Step One?” Timmy asked. “What’s Step Two like?”

  “If we are lucky, you will never find out.”

  They charged into the tattered formation with Amanda leading the way. Timmy couldn’t help but laugh as several bolts of magic ripped her clothes and threatened her modesty. He was starting to wonder if Avraniel was right about her. A trio of pikes struck her, but only one of them managed to find purchase. The weapon was magically enhanced, and it dug into her shoulder. Amanda snapped the shaft of the weapon and snarled, blood swirling around her in great, jagged arcs. Crimson blades scythed through the air, and the formation all but disintegrated.

  “Hah!” Avraniel cackled. She and Spot were at the rear, unleashing a seemingly endless stream of fire as more soldiers converged on their location. Some of the ninja rats had joined them while others grabbed equipment from Gerald and then filtered through the compound, setting traps and ambushing reinforcements. “You really are a nudist.”