Chapter 121 - Defiance

  No shit, there I was…

  Always wanted to start a story like that. This feels like one where it works, right? The Forgotten King was on his horse, bearing down on me, sword in hand, ready to cut me apart. His wraiths were soaring around overhead, so it wasn’t like I could just escape into the air. He’d thought of that, cut me off from that avenue of escape.

  I briefly considered dashing back toward my troops, where they were digging in twenty meters behind me, but that would only prolong this mess. I’d be right back in the same boat again a few seconds later, and all my friends would be in terrible danger as well. At tier seven, I could maybe take a hit or two from this asshole. The highest any of my friends and allies ranked was tier five. I wasn’t so sure they’d live through a single hit from this enemy.

  But Lyonius had made one critical error. There was one thing he’d forgotten, one small factor he’d left open to chance. One route I could maybe eke out—not a victory, but at least it might keep me alive another minute or two, and that felt like a win, at that point.

  It was the split second where his white horse bared its teeth at me during the charge, revealing sharp fangs instead of ordinary horse teeth. I realized in that instant that like its rider, the horse was also undead. In fact, I could even sense its tier; it was only tier five.

  And I was a necromancer.

  I readied Control Undead, focusing my Will into a needle-like spear of power, and fired it off. This time I wasn’t aiming at the zombies, and I certainly had no illusions about being able to Control the Forgotten King himself. He was far stronger than I was, so that wasn’t on the table. His mount, on the other hand, just might be.

  The spell landed, and I could tell immediately that Lyonius hadn’t been prepared for this sort of attack. He should have been, since he’d just been doing the same thing to my Abominations a few minutes earlier. Maybe he was distracted by drawing his sword, too focused on cutting me down. Or perhaps it was just that he hadn’t expected me to have the temerity to Control his horse.

  Whichever the case, I grabbed Control almost immediately. I knew the Control wouldn’t last long. As soon as Lyonius realized what I was doing, he’d take it right back. But as soon as I had the horse under my power, I ordered it to stop moving. It followed my orders to the letter, freezing in place.

  Lyonius flew out of the saddle, sailing over the horse’s head to land face-down in the mud a few feet in front of me.

  I didn’t give him time to rest and recover. A quick cast of Drain Life nailed him with some basic damage, and I was moving forward again as soon as the spell went off, rushing in even before the healing magic flowed back to me. My sword slashed down, cutting deep into his flank as he struggled to rise again. I stabbed, the blade sinking deep into him, and this time the Forgotten King gave an anguished cry. I’d hurt him, and that gave me some grim satisfaction.

  But the moment of surprise was over. He lunged to his feet all at once, almost too fast for even my eyes to see the movement. His Agility was far higher than mine, clearly, because he moved so much faster than I could.

  His open palm slammed into my chest armor, and before I could react I sailed backward through the air a dozen feet. Now it was me struggling for breath, desperate to rise before my foe could get near enough to finish the job he’d started. I got up onto one knee before he closed with me. As I looked up I saw his sword slicing down toward my head. I barely got my own blade up in time to parry.

  My sword exploded under the impact of his weapon. Shards of steel went spinning off into the night, one embedding itself in my right shoulder. Hot blood poured down my chest and arm, but I held my lips together, fighting back a scream that I didn’t want to utter. The last thing I wanted was to give this asshole any satisfaction.

  Weaponless, I darted back, using my Flight power to briefly cruise through the air, fleeing his blade. As I dashed clear, I gave him another dose of Drain Life, the flood of health beginning the work of knitting my injured shoulder back together.

  “You like that spell,” Lyonius said, staggering just a little under the Drain’s impact. “Have you experienced it yourself?”

  Then he cast Drain Life on me—but his spell was tiers above mine. I wasn’t sure how high, but it was high enough. The spell hurt almost as much as when the wraith had stabbed me. This time, I did scream. The injury blew my concentration to pieces, knocking me out of the sky to crumple against the ground.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  I managed to recover enough to rise to my hands and knees, but I felt spent. There was very little left of me after that attack. Another blow would finish the job, and I couldn’t focus through the agony tearing through me. I looked up and saw Lyonius stalking his way ever closer, swinging the sword from side to side in a rythmic manner, almost like he was cutting the grass with an old scythe.

  “Such a shame,” he told me as he drew nearer. “You could have been so much more than this. But instead you’ll die, and the zombies will turn you into one of them.”

  He stopped moving just a few feet away from me, and I realized he intended to make good on his promise. Most of the horde remained motionless, like spectators to our fight, but now a score or so shambled forward, marching toward me, their arms outstretched and mouths open. They’d tear me apart, kill me and make me one of them. In some ways it was my worst nightmare made real. Back when all this started, that first day, I’d almost died to zombies more than once. The nightmares had been constant for days afterward, and I was willing to bet there was more than a little lingering trauma left over from that experience. Now I faced zombies again, coming to kill me, again.

  But I wasn’t helpless this time.

  I cast Drain Life on the nearest zombie, killing it outright. The health allowed me to recover a little bit. I wasn’t whole yet—not even close. But I was able to focus again.

  “Kill one, kill a dozen, little necromancer. It won’t save you. I have more,” Lyonius said. And then he ordered another score of zombies to joint he first batch. He was readying another spell, too. I braced myself for whatever it was, but there was no way to prepare for the amount of pain Lyonius’s Drain spells brought with them. I screamed again, collapsing to the dirty grass as I writhed in agony while the spell stripped my health away.

  Then I heard something strange—barking!

  I opened my eyes to see that Hope had taken up a position between me and my enemies. She stood there, holding her ground as forty zombies and a Forgotten King bore down on her, but she didn’t falter, didn’t waver, nor hesitate. She growled and barked at the enemy.

  Tendrils of Control Undead reached out to her from Lyonius. His power was strong, almost impossible to stop, but Hope was my dog—not his! A flash of anger poured through me as I felt some of my Control slipping, and that fury gave me enough energy to push back with my Will. Lyonius’s power snapped back, pushed entirely away from his target.

  “Interesting,” he said, stopping in his tracks to stare at the undead dog. “You have a close bond with this one, necromancer.”

  “Yeah, I do. Now leave my dog alone, asshole.”

  “I think not,” Lyonius said. “I will finish you, then examine her. This changes nothing.”

  He stalked closer. Was he right? I didn’t want to think so. There was only so much I could do, but fortunately there still were some things I could do. A Fireball spell came bursting through the night to smash into the King from behind. He was blasted forward a few feet, stumbling and smoking.

  “The dinosaur,” he said, pulling himself back upright. “Yes, it will be a prize as well. Shall I take Control of it away from you now?”

  I felt the tug on my Control over Sue immediately, and pushed back with my Will. I was exhausted, though, running low on mana, still bleeding from the sword shard, and half-dead from Drain spells. I gave it everything I had, but next to the massive surge of power Lyonius put into the effort, I knew I couldn’t hold him off forever.

  Maybe I could hold him off long enough though. The Fireball timer ran out and I had Sue shoot another one at the Forgotten King. He sidestepped, this time, but it was one more distraction, giving me just a little more ground on holding Sue’s Control. Two arrows sprouted from Lyonius’s back a moment later, followed by a third. The avians and Kara were joining the attack!

  “Eat steel, asshole,” Farnsworth said as he brought his axe down, the blade biting deep into Lyonius’s shoulder. Alfred was there as well, his axe cutting into the King’s ribs.

  “Enough!” Lyonius shouted. His sword flashed, too swift to follow, and both men staggered back, blood spouting from terrible wounds. There had been no time to block, no way to defend against that.

  But they’d bought me a precious handful of seconds. I yanked the shard of steel from my shoulder, then cast Drain on Lyonius, restoring myself somewhat. This time my Drain staggered him more than it had before. Maybe all of this damage was adding up? I had to hope it was, because otherwise we were screwed.

  “Your courage is to be congratulated,” Lyonius said, starting toward me again, sword in hand. I snapped my shield up from where it had fallen to the ground nearby and barely blocked his first swing. “I think I cannot let the zombies finish you. Your will to live is strong, and if you will not join me, then it’s best I kill you quickly instead.”

  Another pair of blows rained down on my shield, each one barely blocked. I was gasping for breath with the effort of blocking his blows, and running out of steam fast. So I did the only thing I could think of—I pushed out hard with the shield, slamming it into his face. I took a blow from his blade in return; it sliced deep into my bicep, shattering the bone and sending me sliding back to the ground.

  But as I looked up, I saw I’d broken the asshole’s nose. I grinned, tasting blood, as I collapsed to the ground.

  “Defiant to the last,” Lyonius said.

  “That’s me,” I replied, casting Drain Life one last time. It wouldn’t save me from his sword, and I’d lost the shield when I fell. There was nothing left for me but defiance, so I’d hit him with whatever I had left for as long as I was breathing.

  “And now, we end this,” Lyonius said, raising the sword above me for a final blow.

  But before he could swing, a black beam shot out of the fields to our north, smashing into the Forgotten King’s chest, sending him sailing back a dozen feet!