Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf

Two necromancers, a bureaucrat, and an elf – it sounds like the start of a bad joke, only the joke is on Timmy.

Timothy Walter Bolton – better known as Timmy – has spent most of his life as a necromancer. When he isn’t terrorising his enemies, he’s plotting inside his castle, which is built on top of lightless chasms filled with nameless horrors and beings of a generally malevolent and megalomaniacal nature. But after one of his latest creations, a zombie hydra-dragon-bear, tries to eat him, he decides that maybe it’s time to find a new, less dangerous, career.

But that’s easier said than done. He’s a wanted criminal with no shortage of powerful (and crazy) enemies, and he has a bone or two to pick with the Everton Council of Mages.

Hope arrives in the form of a new law. War is coming to Everton, and the Council is desperate. In exchange for providing some help, Timmy might just earn that pardon he’s been looking for. Of course, just because it’s possible to earn a pardon doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy.

To earn his pardon, Timmy is going to have to take down some of Everton’s most dangerous enemies and put together a quirky group of unconventional heroes, most of whom want nothing more than to mangle him and/or the Council in as vicious a way as possible. It’s a good thing that he’s got some help: an obnoxious ten-year-old apprentice who thinks that pink glasses are appropriate for a budding necromancer and a bumbling bureaucrat who may or may not make it through their first real fight without puking his guts up.

Wonderful.

Still, Timmy’s never been one to back down from a challenge even if their first recruit is basically the elf version of the bogeyman.

Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf

The Unconventional Heroes Series Part One

L. G. Estrella

Kindle First Edition

Copyright © July 2014 L. G. Estrella

Table of Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf

About the Author

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Copyright and Disclaimer

Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf

There comes a time in every necromancer’s life when they begin to seriously consider a career change. The fact is that necromancers are not the most popular people. In fact, the average necromancer is forced to run from angry villagers at least seven times over the course of their life, which may explain why so few necromancers are overweight. Magic is all well and good, but there are times when a high level of cardiovascular fitness is better.

For Timothy Walter Bolton – better known as Timmy – the time to consider a career change came when he was forced to beat his latest creation to death with his magical shovel. And that, unfortunately for him, was no small task since the creature in question was a zombie hydra-dragon-bear roughly twice the size of a house.

A normal person might have called Timmy insane for putting together something so monstrous, but he liked to believe that he had a very good reason for creating yet another abomination. It was all because of the other necromancers. There was only room for so many necromancers in the world, and having access to the biggest, scariest, most horrific zombie imaginable was the easiest way to make sure that he was one of them. There was nothing quite as enjoyable as bursting into the lair of another necromancer while in command of the world’s most impressive zombie.

A normal person might also have questioned Timmy’s weapon of choice. Surely, there were better weapons than a shovel, even a magical one. But Timmy had been using shovels for a long time. His master – the gods rest his horrible, wicked soul – had always impressed upon him the importance of being able to kill whatever he brought back from the dead. It was good advice. Seven out of ten necromancers met their ends at the hands of their own creations. Timmy’s master had favoured a ridiculously large and impractical sword.

But a gigantic sword was far too ostentatious for Timmy’s tastes. There was no way that he could drop by one of the local villages to pick up groceries with a weapon like that. His master had also had a disturbing tendency to rant about his unmatched masculinity, which had led Timmy to wonder if maybe – just maybe – the giant sword had been less about killing disobedient zombies and more about compensating for something.

A shovel was much easier to carry around and far less likely to draw unwanted attention. As a necromancer, Timmy also had to do a lot of digging. A shovel that could carve through solid rock was incredibly useful. The fact that his shovel was also practically unbreakable made it especially good for bludgeoning recalcitrant zombies to death. He also didn’t feel the need to compensate for anything. He had it on good authority that he had absolutely nothing to prove in the masculinity department.

Now, to return to the matter at hand, things with the zombie hydra-dragon-bear had actually started off quite well. It had taken Timmy months of haggling with greedy merchants and even more months of threatening customs officers to acquire all of the necessary parts. Hydras were tough to come by this far north, and dragons were rare everywhere. Thankfully, the resulting monstrosity had been suitably terrifying. It was exactly the kind of thing to give children years of nightmares, not that he’d ever use it for something so petty. No, he had bigger fish to fry.

The creature had the wings of a dragon, the seven heads of a hydra, and the claws of a bear. Thanks to some creative reworking of the creature’s anatomy, he’d even managed to preserve its ability to shoot fire and spit acid. It was, he thought, giving himself a pat on the back so big that he almost dislocated his shoulder, a job well done. He couldn’t wait to show it off at the next meeting of the International Necromancers Association.

Bringing the creature to life had been no easy task. Creating a regular zombie took nothing more than a bit of his magic and a useable corpse. Creating a zombie that was made up of three separate animals that had been stitched together was a little more complicated. It had taken him days to carve all the necessary seals and runes onto the creature and the floor of his laboratory. Not only did he need copious amounts of blood but he also needed more magic than he was comfortable providing himself. To get that magic, he had to harvest power from the things that lived under his castle, things that would have driven most people insane in a matter of moments.

Nevertheless, he had managed to get everything together. The moment of truth arrived, and he activated all the seals and runes and used every iota of his skill to control the enormous surge of magic. There was a blinding flash of dark light, a lot of screaming from the countless souls of the damned that haunted his castle, and then a clap of thunder that shook the building to its foundations.

The creature came to life, and Timmy bit back a cackle. He did, however, pump his fists and dance a quick jig around his laboratory. Success – sweet, sweet success.

But Timmy’s joy – and his jig – came to an abrupt end about five seconds later when the creature lunged forward and tried to bite his face off. Damn it. He must have made a mistake somewhere since it definitely shouldn’t have acted on its own, never mind tried to bite his face off. Oh well, he could always order it to stop.

“Stop!” Timmy flared his magic and made a swift, sharp gesture with both hands. “Stop, zombie!”

The creature didn’t stop. Instead, it gave a terrible shriek and started to smash up his laboratory. The first major casualty was his limited edition copy of The Necromancer’s Compendium of Wickedness and Evil. Not content with merely ripping up his beloved tome, the creature shot him a glare before setting the book on fire and then melting the ashes with acid. That was the last straw. Timmy clapped his hands together and activated the emergency self-destruct seals that he’d inscribed onto the creature’s body.

Absolutely nothing happened. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. The seals had flashed a pretty pink colour.

“Crap.”

This whole thing was a failure – a big scary failure that breathed fire and spat acid. Wonderful.

A blast of flame sizzled through the air, and he dove behind one of the stone shelves that dotted the laboratory. Of course, the stone shelf was a lot less effective against the fountain of acid that the creature spewed his way a few seconds later. To make matters worse, the acid caught fire, releasing a cloud of toxic gas. Yes, Timmy was well on his way to becoming just another necromancer statistic.

But Timmy hadn’t lived to the ripe, old age of twenty-seven without learning a few tricks. As the creature rumbled toward him, he did the only thing he could think of: he waited for it to lunge forward, and then he jumped onto one of its heads. Another burst of his magic summoned a dozen zombie trolls into the laboratory. They weren’t particularly intelligent, even for zombies, but they were big and strong. The zombie trolls did their best to hold the creature still while he grabbed hold of its head and got to work with his shovel.

The creature might have had a skull harder than solid steel, but he’d designed his shovel to dig or bash through almost anything. Besides, he’d never hear the end of it from his apprentice if this thing actually managed to kill him. Heck, she’d probably summon his spirit back from the afterlife just so she could taunt him – and that was only after she’d spent at least half an hour laughing at his misfortune. She was vicious that way.

It was also a very good thing that Timmy firmly believed in dressing appropriately. Most necromancers preferred billowing black robes and clogs. True, billowing black robes and clogs did look wonderfully mysterious, but they weren’t very practical. Billowing robes could snag on things or catch fire, and clogs weren’t nearly as good as boots for running around. Timmy preferred a stout pair of boots, a tunic, and a pair of trousers, all of them black. Sure, he didn’t have the same aura of mystery and gloom as most of his colleagues, but that’s what his legions of zombies were for.

“Die, zombie!” Timmy brought his shovel down on the head that he was standing on. “Go back to the pits of hell!” Okay, that was excessive and melodramatic, but yelling helped keep him energised when he had to bash one of his errant creations to death. Besides, a good necromancer had to be able to sound threatening. He might as well multitask and get some practice in.

In the end, it took him thirty-five minutes of frantic skull bashing to finally kill the creature. Thank the gods that his shovel also had the extremely handy property of ensuring that whatever it killed stayed dead – completely, totally, irrevocably dead. It hadn’t always done that. But after his master had gotten eaten by a zombie python-goat that he’d thought was dead, Timmy had decided that it would be a good idea to add that particular feature. He’d inherited the castle upon his master’s death, and he wanted to stick around for at least another decade or two so that he could torment his own apprentice.

Thirty-five minutes was far longer than he would have liked, but the creature did have seven heads that shot fire and spewed acid. What really bothered him was how long it had taken for his apprentice to show up. The girl was only ten years old, but Timmy would have appreciated some help. She didn’t even have to use her magic. She could have thrown a frying pan or something at the creature to distract it. But Katie had made herself scarce during the whole debacle, and now he had a cramp in his shovel-swinging arm to go with the crick in his back.

Timmy had also begun to seriously question his chosen profession. To be more precise, he’d started questioning it somewhere between caving in the creature’s fourth skull and clubbing in its fifth. He’d been a necromancer ever since the day his mother had made him lunch – a cheese sandwich and a banana – and then dropped him off at the castle. He’d been seven years old, a scrappy, clumsy, ragamuffin of a child. Now, he was one of the world’s foremost necromancers, and he owned his own castle. Not too shabby.

His life wasn’t perfect. His castle happened to sit on top of a chasm that led down into lightless gulfs of unbounded horror that were populated by primordial entities from another dimension that wanted to devour humanity and wipe out the world. Well, that’s what some of them wanted. Others were actually pretty friendly, like Sam, a shape-shifting, protoplasmic horror that occasionally crept into the kitchens to steal cake. Apart from being a wonderful conversationalist, Sam could also do a mean impression of a cat or a dog, so long as Timmy ignored all the extra eyes and teeth.

It could also have been his age talking. There were days when he felt more like ninety-seven than twenty-seven. It didn’t help that the ache in his back had now grown to the point that he was hunched over on the floor. Whatever it was, he just couldn’t see himself doing this for another fifty years. But if he wasn’t going to be a necromancer, what was he going to be instead? Necromancy didn’t really come with a lot of transferable skills.

He was good with a shovel, and he wasn’t half bad with a needle since his more exotic zombies didn’t stitch themselves together. He was passable at carpentry too since all of his experiments, plus the things that lived under the castle, tended to involve a lot of property damage, and it was a hassle trying to get help from one of the villages. Villagers usually took one look at the castle and his zombies and then ran for their lives. He’d tried using zombies to do the repair work, but they couldn’t be trusted with anything more complicated than weeding. Zombies also tended to drip everywhere.

So maybe he wasn’t completely useless outside of his necromancy. Unfortunately, though, the name Timothy Walter Bolton was known and feared throughout the world. Who in their right mind would hire a retired necromancer who lived in a cursed castle with an army of zombies, a few servants, and one overly intelligent ten-year-old apprentice? No one.

And even if he managed to land another job, walking away from the whole necromancy thing would be risky. The moment his enemies found out that he’d given up necromancy, they’d come after him like a pack of hungry lions after a one-legged gazelle. Sure, his castle was filled with some of the best zombies in the world, but they wouldn’t last long unless he replaced them regularly.

His enemies also spent thousands of gold pieces each year trying to assassinate him, and he spent a similar amount to fend them off. Not all of their assassins were legendary swordsmen or greedy mages. No, one of the more recent attempts on his life had featured a clan of abnormally intelligent ninja rats that could turn invisible. The little blighters went around with miniature weapons coated in poison. And while a rat shooting a tiny bow might have sounded funny, the reality was decidedly less humorous. The rat in question had remarkable aim, and each of his arrows was dipped in a poison that would reduce even the strongest man to an agonised, screaming wreck.

Setting aside the issue of how the rats even used their weapons – they didn’t have opposable thumbs – they had proven to be surprisingly reasonable. He’d gotten them to change their allegiance in exchange for a lot of gold, a permanent home in his castle, and access to his kitchens. Since then, they’d wiped out all of the assassins that his enemies had sent. Nobody ever expected killer rats, especially killer ninja rats that could turn invisible. Now, he could sit down to enjoy a cup of tea without worrying about someone jumping through a window and trying to stab him or set him on fire.

He wanted to keep the rats, which meant that he needed a job that paid well. But there were very few jobs that paid as well as necromancy. People needed armies, and he could provide them at reasonable prices. He also kept his ears open for juicy gossip. If there was a wicked, tyrannical noble that needed overthrowing, then he was happy to get rid of them – for a price. Necromancy also involved the occasional tomb-raiding expedition, and tombs were often filled with all kinds of valuables. Lately, however, pickings had been slim. The tombs of most of the ancient kings had already been raided, and the current kings were either too young to be dying any time soon or too poor to have a tomb worth raiding.

“Damn it. I need to think.” Timmy paced around his laboratory and almost slipped in the entrails of the creature he’d killed. He winced. “But first, I need to find a mop.” He pursed his lips and looked around. The laboratory was a mess with scorch marks and acid stains everywhere. There was nary a mop in sight. It was back to thinking then. “There has to be something I can do, some job that fixes everything. If only there was a small, out-of-the-way kingdom I could conquer.”

“We could always turn ourselves in.”

The words came from the door of the laboratory, which had somehow managed to remain unscathed except for a few patches of soot. The same could not be said for the shelf of rare specimens nearby. It would take Timmy weeks to track down another unicorn spleen.

His mostly faithful apprentice had finally arrived. Katherine Juliet Morrow – better known as Katie – had, as usual, timed her arrival to perfection. Was it a coincidence that the girl had turned up only moments after he’d subdued his errant creation? Not likely. But if he asked her, she would undoubtedly have an ironclad excuse for her absence. The last time one of his creations had tried to kill him, she had, apparently, been in the midst of cleaning her room. The time before that, she’d been itemising their pantry. And the time before that, well, she’d been trimming the hedges in the garden with her magic.

It was at times like these that Timmy was sorely tempted to point out that as his apprentice, it was Katie’s solemn duty to help him stay alive. However, the grey-furred ninja rat on her shoulder convinced him otherwise. The little critter was eyeing him like a hawk, one small paw resting on the grip of its tiny sword. Despite the fact that he was the one who paid them and that it was his castle they lived in, the rats liked her more than they liked him. Sure, they might take the occasional order or two from him, but they practically fell over themselves to do whatever Katie wanted. It might have had something to do with the way she spoiled them. She’d even sewn them miniature jackets. It made the rats nauseatingly cute, which was a shame since there was something wonderfully menacing about the very idea of ninja rats.

“Would you mind explaining what you meant by that? What makes you think it would be a good idea for us to turn ourselves in?” Timmy abandoned his search for a mop and settled for trying to shove some of the entrails away with the broken remnants of a table.

Katie gave him one of those scowls that made her seem more like a stuffy schoolteacher forced to explain something to an especially dim-witted pupil than a child. It was yet another reminder that his apprentice was obnoxiously clever. No child should have been able to make it through his entire library, but she had. She’d even managed to avoid any bouts of temporary insanity while wading through the uncensored – and horrifically gruesome – edition of The Dark Powers of the Ancient Deeps.

“What’s the worst that the Council of Mages could do if we turned ourselves in?” Katie stepped neatly around a puddle of zombie troll guts. “They might rule Everton, but they are still bound by the law.”

Timmy made a face. “You’re forgetting that they write the law.” As powerful as he was – and he was no slouch – he wasn’t stupid enough to pick a fight with the Council. He could hold his own against one or two of them, but the whole lot? No, he happened to enjoy living. “Have you forgotten about that mountain they blew up last year? They didn’t blow up part of it. They blew up the whole thing.”

He shuddered. The rogue mage that had laid claim to the mountain had been a jerk, but blowing up the entire mountain was overkill. “For starters, they could execute us. They might not do it quickly either. They could go for something slow and public like drawing and quartering, or they could burn us at the stake. Heck, they might even do both. Apparently, that’s all the rage down south. Afterward, they’ll put our heads on pikes and fabricate some elaborate lie about how we completely deserved it.”

“Now, you’re being melodramatic.” Katie reached up to adjust her glasses, and her sleeve caught on a broken shelf. It was only thanks to some wild flailing of her arms that she managed to keep on her feet. Timmy sighed. He had given Katie several long and highly detailed lectures about the importance of dressing practically, but the girl continued to traipse about in dark, billowing robes and clogs. According to her, there was no point in being a necromancer unless she did things properly, and that meant following tradition. On the upside, Katie had an almost perfect memory, which made her incredibly handy to have around. He no longer needed an address book, and rather than digging through his notes for the results of previous experiments, he could simply ask her. “The Council hasn’t drawn and quartered anyone in more than a hundred years. They haven’t burnt anyone at the stake for more than two hundred. And they might have a policy that could help us.”

“Oh?” Perhaps it hadn’t been a mistake to make Katie read the weekly newsletter that the Council published. He wasn’t supposed to be able to buy it – they’d blacklisted him – but Timmy was a dark-haired man with brown eyes and nondescript features who happened to be slightly taller than average. It had been child’s play to waltz into one of the larger towns and pretend to be a mage from one of the nearby villages. After a quick look at his forged references and identity papers, the Council’s representatives had been more than happy to forward a copy of the newsletter to the village closest to the castle. “What policy are you talking about?” Naturally, he hadn’t bothered to read the thing. That’s what an apprentice was for.

Katie rifled through her robes. No amount of badgering on his part could convince her to abandon the garment, but she had at least chosen a fire-resistant fabric. Thankfully, she’d agreed to tie back her long, blonde hair. The other necromancers would never have let him live it down if his apprentice had died because she got hair in her eyes during a battle. She pulled out one of the Council’s newsletters.

“Ah, here it is.” Her green eyes narrowed as she flipped to the appropriate page. “Due to extenuating circumstances, the Council is considering offering pardons to criminals in exchange for the rendering of certain, suitably valuable, services.”

Timmy knew about those extenuating circumstances. War was coming. Everton was one of the most prosperous kingdoms in the world thanks to the power of its mages and the riches under its mountains. But even the most powerful mage could only do so much against rampaging hordes of barbarians. Had the situation truly become that bad? Still, it was worth a shot. He didn’t know exactly what kind of services the Council wanted, but zombies were handy to have around during a war.

If the Council decided to go after him, he could throw his zombies at them and make a run for it with Katie, Sam, and their clan of ninja rats. They could find somewhere else to live, perhaps a tropical island. The Council might even be dumb enough to search under the castle, in which case he wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore.

“Fetch some paper, Katie. I want to write a letter to the Council. I’ll dictate it to you.”

She gave him a distinctly unimpressed look, and there was that scowl of hers again. “You write faster than I do, master.”

“Yes, my young apprentice, I do. But your writing is much neater than mine.” Like most necromancers, Timmy didn’t usually write for the benefit of others. As long as he could read his own writing, it was fine. As a result, his writing had come to very closely resemble the scratch marks left by an inebriated chicken. “Now, hurry up. The sooner we get this letter done, the better.” He made a shooing motion with his hands and then jerked his head to the side as the rat perched on Katie’s shoulder lobbed a tiny knife at him. “Hey!”

The rat had the audacity to shake its fist at him. Clearly, it didn’t appreciate him bossing Katie around. Well, tough luck. This was his castle, and Katie was his apprentice.

“And can you send some of your zombies in here to get this mess cleaned up, Katie?” The zombie hydra-dragon-bear had started to decompose into a hideous and pungent mush now that the magic animating it had dissipated. Give it another hour or so, and it would probably explode due to all the noxious gases building up inside it. Throw in the remains of the zombie trolls smeared all over the laboratory, and the place was in dire need of a thorough cleaning.

“Fine.” Katie huffed and adjusted her glasses again. He’d tried to tell her that pink glasses were not appropriate for a necromancer-in-training, but all he’d gotten for his benevolent concern was a vicious glare and a small axe lobbed at his head courtesy of an overprotective ninja rat. “But why can’t you use your zombies?”

“Think of it as practice. If your zombies aren’t well made enough to clean up this mess, then you need to practice more.”

Katie’s eyes narrowed, and he ruffled her hair. One day, far into the future, she’d be quite menacing. Right now, however, she was merely cute. She clapped her hands together and made several sharp gestures. Unlike him, her necromancy hadn’t progressed far enough to let her command zombies with her mind alone. A wave of her magic rustled outward, and the broken table next to her shook. A dozen zombies shambled into the room. Timmy had never been big on outfitting his zombies, but Katie liked to colour coordinate the ones she used frequently. This lot were all wearing matching pink and purple jackets. It made his eyes bleed.

“Clean up this mess,” Katie ordered. “Now.”

The zombies got to work. To make cleaning the laboratory easier, Timmy had installed a massive trapdoor that led down to one of the bottomless pits under the castle. All the zombies had to do was push the dead creature and his dead zombie trolls through the trapdoor, and Sam and his friends would have a nice treat to brighten up their day. It wasn’t as if he could reuse the parts – bringing something back always did some damage, and bringing something back twice usually resulted in a misshapen, soggy mess.

“Remind me to get more mops.” Timmy frowned at the muck on the floor. Katie’s zombies had gotten most of the bigger pieces through the trapdoor, but it would take forever to clean up all the little bits of gunk. “What are you standing around for, Katie? You’ve already told them what to do. Go get that paper and ink.”

The girl rolled her eyes. It was something she did a lot, now that he thought about it. Hopefully, she wouldn’t give herself astigmatism. Katie lifted her arms, and tendrils of liquid darkness leapt up from the shadows cast by her robes. They solidified into shadowy mops and brooms that swept all of the muck off the floor and into the trapdoor. Katie was a necromancer-in-training, but that wasn’t the only kind of magic she could do. Her magic also let her solidify and control shadows. It was marvellously creepy, and he’d never been prouder than the day she’d driven off her first angry mob with a veritable storm of shadowy pitchforks and stakes.

“Do you want me to get the human paper?” Katie asked. She gave her shadows a good shake to dislodge the last of the muck before letting them vanish.

Timmy shook his head. “We’re trying to win them over, Katie, not freak them out. Yes, I know how awesome you think paper made out of human skin is, but not everybody thinks that way. Get the normal paper and the normal ink. We are not writing to them in human blood.” She scowled, and the shadows under her sleeves curved up to form an enormous set of vaguely lupine jaws. “Don’t wave your shadows at me, Katie. We both know that you’re at least ten years too young to try and kill me. I know that you like doing things the old-fashioned way, but we’re trying to make a good impression.”

“Fine. But I still think they’d be more impressed if we did things the traditional way.” Katie’s shadows receded, and a slim tendril went up to pat the rat on her shoulder. She could make shadows sharp enough to cut through rock and soft enough to cradle her favourite rodent companions. “Should I write to my mother and tell her that we’re planning on going straight?” She bit her lip. “She’d like that, I think.”

Oh, she most definitely would. Katie’s mother had never liked necromancy. In fact, she hated it with every fibre of her meddling, ultra-conservative being. She’d wanted Katie to become a healer or a seamstress, but everything had changed when Katie was four. A wagon had run over her dog, and Katie had done what so many mages throughout history had – reached deep inside herself for the power to do something, anything, to make it better.

Her pet dog had come back to life as a zombie, and two weeks later, Katie’s mother had dumped her on Timmy’s doorstep. Katie still remembered her mother, and there were times when Timmy knew that she wished things could have been different. But she’d eventually gotten used to life at the castle, and her dog, Patches, was still kind of alive and kicking. According to Katie, he hadn’t changed a bit since becoming a zombie. He was still overly affectionate, and he still spent most of his free time either with her or down in the kitchens trying to beg food off the cooks.

Personally, Timmy thought that Patches was one of the most loyal but least intelligent creatures he’d ever met. The dog wouldn’t hesitate to throw himself between a zombie bull-wyvern and his mistress, but it wasn’t at all unusual to find him splayed out on the floor as he chased his own tail. Sometimes, he even managed to catch his own tail, which meant a quick trip to Katie to have it sewn back on.

“Don’t write to your mother yet. Let’s see how it goes first.”

“Yes, master.” Katie flashed him a quick salute and then turned on her heel. He smiled. She was getting much better at the whole dramatic exit thing. She should be too since he’d caught her practicing in front of a mirror more than once.

Despite all the trouble she gave him, he’d gotten used to having her around. The only thing that worried him was what would happen when she got older. As her master and main parental figure, it would be up to him to ward off any potential suitors. His shovel should do the trick, and he did have an army of zombies. Then again, teenagers could be very ingenious.

Katie came back with some paper and ink. “I’m ready when you are.” There was a different rat on her shoulder this time. This one was brown, and it was armed with a pint-sized bow.

“Okay.” Timmy took a deep breath and gathered his thoughts. Damn, he should have spent more time thinking about what he wanted to say. He needed to phrase things in a way that wouldn’t get them imprisoned or killed. In other words, he needed to demonstrate generous amounts of poise and tact – two areas where his master had frequently found him wanting. Timmy liked to think of it as being practical. Why go through the hassle of an elaborate plan, complete with long, boring speeches, when he could just hit his enemies over the head with a shovel or send an army of ravenous zombies after them. No muss, no fuss. Ah, if only the Council was after money, then he could throw a pile of gold their way and move on with his life.

He cleared his throat and prepared to sound as regal and wise as possible. “Write this down, Katie. Dear… uh… people at the Council of Mages. I am Grand Necromancer Timothy Bolton, and I am writing to inquire about your new policy that offers a pardon in exchange for services rendered. I find myself wanting such a pardon, and I think I can help you with your impending war. Sincerely, uh, Timothy Bolton.”

Katie looked from him to the paper and back again. The rat on her shoulder shook its head. Then she scrunched up the paper and tossed it over her shoulder. In a rather terrifying display of skill, the rat shot the ball of paper out of the air. It then proceeded to explode. Wonderful. The rats had started attaching explosives to their cute, little arrows. He’d have to watch out for that. “With all due respect, master, that was crap.”

“Katie, we’ve spoken about this. Mind your language.” They might have been necromancers, but they didn’t have to be vulgar necromancers.

“It was a perfectly accurate description. Your letter was crap.”

“I doubt you could do any better.” Timmy scoffed and then tripped over a puddle of zombie hydra-dragon-bear guts. “Katie, you missed a spot.”

“You’re the one who’s always going on and on about the importance of situational awareness.” Katie giggled, but that soon gave way to full-blown cackling. It didn’t take long for the rat on her shoulder to join her either. After a solid minute of suitably maniacal cackling, Katie managed to get herself under control. “Master, you’re better than me with a shovel, but you’re forgetting something very important. I read a lot more than you, and I’ve been doing all of your paperwork and correspondence for a year.” It wasn’t particularly ethical to let a child do all of his paperwork, but necromancers were hardly known for their ethics. Besides, it was all part of his ingenious plan to teach her important life skills. It had absolutely nothing to do with his hatred of paperwork. “Let me write the letter. I’ll show you when I’m done. Trust me, it’ll be better than yours.”

“How long will you need?” Timmy studied his half-ruined laboratory. If they were serious about changing their ways, then he either had to hide everything here or destroy it all. Hopefully, hiding it would be enough. It had taken him years to build up his collection. Indeed, he was one of only three necromancers in the world with an authentic kraken beak.

“Give me an hour. I still have to finish our tax returns.”

“Ah.” The Everton Tax Enforcement Agency – ETEA – was even more terrifying than the Council. People often said that the only certainties in life were death and taxes. As a necromancer, Timmy knew better. Taxes were the only certainty in life, especially when they were collected by an agency that was remarkably bloodthirsty and well organised. “Fine.”

An hour should give him enough time to finish cleaning the laboratory and to devise a few back up plans. If the Council did come after them, they’d have to run. He’d need something bigger and scarier than a zombie hydra-dragon-bear to cover their tracks. Maybe he could put together a zombie dragon-basilisk-griffin. That ought to do it. But it might take him a while to find a sufficiently large basilisk, and griffins weren’t cheap. Oh well, he’d work it out somehow.

Katie returned in due course, the new letter written in graceful, flowing script. Timmy wasn’t sure whether to be proud or horrified that his apprentice’s handwriting was so much better than his. Perhaps he’d settle on feeling depressed.

“Let me have a look at it.”

To the Most Honourable Masters of the Everton Council of Mages,

Although we have long stood in opposition to one another, I now wish to set our differences aside. War is coming to our fair nation, and I intend to help defend it as best I can. Much has also happened in my life as of late, and I wish to make amends for any of my past wrongdoings. My intent is to seek out a pardon from this most esteemed Council through the provision of certain services that you may find useful.

Naturally, I understand that much work shall have to be done before you can issue such a pardon, but it is work that I am willing to do. I also understand that it may be difficult for you to trust me, given our history. Therefore, let us discuss the details of this further in person. I would be pleased to receive an emissary from the Council at Black Tower Castle. Rest assured that I shall treat your emissary with the utmost care and respect. Whatever quarrels lay between us, let us set them aside for the good of our nation.

Sincerely,

Grand Necromancer Timothy Bolton, Lord of Black Tower Castle

“What do you think?” Katie had a puppy-dog look on her face. The rat on her shoulder glared and readied an arrow. The message was clear: Timmy would approve of the letter, or he would receive an exploding arrow to the face. For a second, Timmy was sorely tempted to come up with a snide remark – Katie could be incredibly adorable when she pouted – but then he remembered the rat’s aim. There was also the small matter of how Katie would react after she was done pouting. She would probably try to lop off his head with her shadows. Ah, what a marvellously vicious apprentice he’d raised.

“It will do.” Katie pouted, the rat aimed an arrow, and Timmy reached for his shovel. “I mean it’s wonderful. Send it at once.”

“Can we send it the usual way?” Katie folded the letter and placed it in an envelope before stamping it with Timmy’s seal: a skull with a shovel imbedded in it. He frowned. Odd. He couldn’t remember giving her a copy of his seal. She must have made one on her own. Clever girl. It would also explain how she’d managed to order a cart-full of pink drapes without him signing anything.

“No.” Their usual messenger was a giant zombie falcon wreathed in malevolent energy. It was tireless, efficient, and terrifying. Timmy wished he had ten of them. “I think it would be better to send one of the servants. Yes, I’ll have one of the servants ride to the capital to deliver it. The Council has never been big on zombies. Sending one might be taken as an insult.”

“Aw.” Katie pouted, and the shadows around her stirred. “I wanted to send Julian.”

“Its name is not Julian.” This was another one of Katie’s many quirks. She had to name all of their zombies. And she didn’t give them scary names either. She gave them normal names.

“Well, that’s what I call him. It suits him.” Katie folded her arms over her chest and tapped one foot on the ground. The rat on her shoulder mimicked her pose. “Now that we’ve got the letter out of the way, you need to come help me with my latest batch of zombies. I’ve had them waiting in my laboratory since yesterday.” She levelled another scowl at him. “You are supposed to be teaching me, aren’t you?”

“Fine, fine, I’ll help you. We’ll get that zombie pig-lion of yours up and running in no time.”

They sent the letter off the next day. Two weeks passed before a reply came, and the Council delivered it in characteristic fashion. Never let it be said that the Council didn’t believe in the awe-inspiring power of bureaucracy.

“Please, don’t eat me!”

Timmy grimaced as he looked down at the grey-robed mage curled up into a ball on the drawbridge with a zombie bear looming over him. Please, Timmy thought, don’t let it be a Council bureaucrat. Like most mages with too much time and power, the Council had invented countless layers of utterly pointless bureaucracy. The mages in charge of that bureaucracy tended to fall into two camps: megalomaniacal whackos with a penchant for paperwork and snivelling cowards who had never ventured out from behind a desk.

He hurried down to the drawbridge. Regardless of what he thought of the Council’s bureaucrats, he couldn’t afford to let one of them get eaten on his premises. The man was still cowering on the ground when he arrived.

“Why don’t you get up now? Gary here wasn’t actually going to eat you.” Timmy gave the zombie bear a pat on the head. The zombie could thank Katie for its name. “He just likes to play around. We’ve been expecting you.” The man continued to cower, and Timmy sighed. “Please, get up. You can shake his hand. He’s completely harmless.”

The other man finally got to his feet. He appeared to be somewhere in his fifties with grey hair and blue eyes. He was unusually tall and unusually skinny. “Okay.” He reached out and gave the zombie bear’s hand a tentative shake. The creature made a sound that would have been playful coming from a living bear but which sounded horrific coming from a zombie. “Um…” The man fumbled around with one hand and then pulled a folder out of thin air. “Are you Lord Timothy Bolton?”

“I am.” Timmy smiled in what he hoped was a charming manner. “And you must be the emissary from the Council.”

“Yes, that’s me.” The man took a big step away from the zombie bear and drew himself up to his full height. He had to be at least six and a half feet tall, but the way his grey robes billowed around his lanky frame made him seem more like a scarecrow than a mage. “I am Inspector Gerald Willis, one of several inspectors that the Council has tasked with determining whether or not a pardon can be issued and what services will be required for it be issued. The Council has received your letter and has sent me to negotiate on their behalf.”

“Of course.” Timmy gestured at the gates of the castle. The colour had returned to Gerald’s face. Clearly, he was more comfortable falling back on protocol. “Please, come inside. You must be famished. There is a meal waiting for us. By the way, where is your horse? I hope you didn’t have to walk here.” The closest village was three hours away on foot.

“Your food, was it… cooked by zombies?” Gerald’s face turned an interesting shade of green.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard about necromancers, but I can assure you that all of my food is cooked by qualified chefs – living, qualified chefs. They make a mean apple pie.”

Gerald gaped. “Apple pie?”

“Yes, apple pie.” Timmy waved one hand at Gary, and the zombie bear returned to patrolling the area around the drawbridge. Some of the flesh had fallen off its left shoulder. He’d have to get that fixed, but he wasn’t sure if he had any bear shoulders that big laying around. He’d have to speak to some of the local huntsmen, maybe put in an order or two, or he could send out one of his zombie wyverns and hope it spotted a bear. “So, did you walk all the way here?”

“About that.” The inspector shuddered and made the sign against evil. “I did have a horse, but something… ate it. At least, I think it ate it. To be honest, I didn’t stay long enough to be sure.” He shuddered. “I threw a book at it and then ran.”

“The thing that ate your horse, was it all eyes and teeth?” Timmy felt a headache coming on. He’d gone over this with the things that lived under the castle. They were supposed to stay out of sight until the negotiations were done.

“As a matter of fact, it was.” Gerald blanched and hunched over. “It was all eyes and teeth and twisting flesh.”

“That sounds like one of Sam’s people. I asked them not to do anything, but you can’t reason with all of them.”

“Sam?”

“Trust me, it’s better that you don’t know what that thing was. It makes it easier to sleep at night.” Timmy paused and scratched the back of his head. “But if you do see something like that again, it might be a good idea to run really, really fast.”

* * *

Timmy led Gerald to the dining room. It was one of the few chambers in the castle that wouldn’t terrify a casual visitor. Zombies weren’t allowed in there, and experiments were expressly forbidden. It was a matter of hygiene. Zombies had this annoying habit of dripping everywhere, and experiments often resulted in things exploding – dead, squishy things.

The dining room was tastefully decorated with polished oak furniture, finely woven carpets, and sensible paintings on the walls. In the old days, Timmy’s master had insisted on paintings filled with blood and gore, but Timmy had replaced those with landscapes and nature scenes. He’d even added a few of Katie’s paintings. The girl was a dab hand with a paintbrush although she spent most of her time painting pictures of her latest creations. Her painting of the zombie pig-lion trying to bite off Timmy’s nose was shaping up nicely.

As Timmy expected, dinner was already waiting for them. Katie was there too, watching the food like a hawk. For someone who wasn’t particularly big, she ate quite a lot.

“Can we eat yet?” Katie asked.

Timmy rolled his eyes. Katie could get snippy when she was hungry. Thankfully, she hadn’t brought any of the rats to the table although they could have turned themselves invisible. “Inspector Gerald Willis, meet my apprentice, Katie. Katie, the inspector is here on behalf of the Council. He will be deciding if we get a pardon or not.”

“Nice to meet you, Katie.” Gerald settled into one of the chairs at the table. “According to my files, your master is famous for several things.” A flick of his wrist summoned another folder out of thin air. “He’s best known for his skill in necromancy, his use of a shovel, and his skill in hand-to-hand combat. However, I don’t know much about you.”

Katie glanced at Timmy. He nodded back. Telling the inspector about her abilities would make for a good show of faith. Besides, if they wanted to get their pardon, she’d have to show them sooner or later. “I can do the usual necromancy stuff, but I can do some other things too.”

Her brows furrowed, and the air grew thick and heavy. Every mage’s magic had a certain feel to it. His master had always told Timmy that his magic reminded him of someone setting fireworks off in the middle of a graveyard. Katie’s magic was different. It was exceptionally rare for a child to have magic that felt so ominous. It was like being in the path of a storm. The darkness beneath Katie’s robes lengthened and formed into shadowy hands. She grabbed two sandwiches and a glass of juice. “See?”

“Fascinating.” Gerald darted over to poke at the shadows with a fork. “How interesting. Your shadows are completely solid.” He poked them again. “I’m assuming that you use your magic to give existing shadows a physical form that you can control, or can you create them entirely out of magic alone?”

“You ask a lot of questions. Do you study magic?” Katie shot Timmy another glance. He shrugged. He’d let her decide how much she shared.

“I do, in my spare time.” Gerald pulled another folder out of nowhere, along with a quill and some ink. “Yes, yes. It does seem like you’re taking existing shadows and using your magic to turn them solid before you take control of them.” He held up a piece of bread. “How much control do you have over your shadows? Can you make them sharp?”

“I can.” Katie pointed one finger, and one of the shadowy hands turned into a dark blade that sliced the bread in two before becoming a hand again and catching the bread. “But how about we eat first? We can talk about this later.”

“Of course, of course.” Gerald watched closely as Katie let the shadows recede and return to normal.

As the servants – all of them very much alive – filed in to help serve the meal, Gerald gave the food on his plate a tentative poke. His hesitation vanished moments later after he took the first, hesitant bite. He grinned. “This is wonderful, my lord.”

“I’m glad you like it. But just call me Timmy, everyone else does.” He gave Katie a pointed stare.

Katie’s shadows gathered into a big hand that flashed him a rude gesture. “Give me a break, master. It’s been ages since I called you that.”

Gerald chuckled. “I must admit you’re not what I expected.”

“And what did you expect, inspector?”

“Please, call me Gerald.” The inspector took another bite of his chicken and then reached for more. Katie was kind enough to pass the gravy with her shadows. “Your master was one of the most notorious necromancers in history, and one of the Council’s most fearsome opponents. If I may speak frankly, I doubt that Everton has ever seen a more terrifying, cruel, and evil man.”

“I won’t argue with you about that. He was a colossal jerk.” Timmy took a sip of water. “But I learned a lot from him. I learned that I didn’t want to end up like him. Jerks don’t last long in my line of work unless they’re willing to do some truly horrible things – things that I’m not willing to do.” He sent the servants out of the dining room. “Now, why don’t we get down to business?”

“Ah, yes.” Gerald fumbled around and produced several more folders. It had to be magic, but he did it so quickly and easily that it was hard for Timmy to tell what kind of magic it was. “As I’ve said, you’re famous in your own right.”

Timmy certainly was. He still held the record for the most zombies simultaneously animated by a single necromancer without outside assistance – a solid forty thousand. It had happened when another necromancer had picked a fight with him on top of an ancient graveyard. Animating regular zombies didn’t take much of his magic, which was good since there were necromancers out there with more raw power than him. What he did have in spades were skill and control. His forty thousand zombies hadn’t shambled around in one big group. No, they’d moved with all the precision and coordination of a real army.

He also held the rather dubious record of being the only necromancer in Everton’s history to successfully file for a tax rebate on stationery. Katie had bet against him, and so he’d gone out and done it just to show her that he could still teach her a trick or two, even when it came to paperwork.

“To be fair,” Timmy said, reaching for an orange. “I haven’t killed that many people, and most of them were bad.” It was a policy of his: avoid making unnecessary enemies. Not every zombie came back mindless, and the vengeful dead were more than enough trouble without adding members of the living. “In fact, I have a feeling that most of the people I’ve killed are people the Council was glad to see dead.”

“That is one of the reasons that we’re considering your application.” Gerald flipped through one of the folders. “But, to be honest, you’re the most prominent person to ask for a pardon so far. The program was designed to deal with low- to mid-level offenders, so the Council has given me a great deal of freedom for these negotiations.”

“I’m guessing that not everyone on the Council approved. Tell me, how many of them wanted me dead?”

“One. But there were a few who voted in favour of having you imprisoned.”

“Was it James?” Timmy’s lips curled. That self-righteous jerked fancied himself the avatar of justice. When Timmy’s master had smuggled him into one of Everton’s most prestigious academies for a year to round out his education, Timmy had spent the majority of his free time clashing with James. The other man hated necromancers and anyone who defied tradition, two things that Timmy excelled at. Timmy had spent many a night at the academy dreaming of what his shovel would look like imbedded in James’s forehead. “It was James, wasn’t it?”

“Councillor James Fredrick Arthurs did indeed vote to have you killed. I believe he suggested that we draw and quarter you. However, he was outvoted. A clear majority of the Council were in favour of arranging some form of probation.”

“Probation?” That was better than execution. “Go on.”

Gerald gave them a sunny smile. It was so bright that Timmy had to fight the urge to cover his eyes. “It’s like this…”

An hour later, Timmy had begun to wonder if Gerald was insane. The inspector’s presentation had featured all of the usual terms and conditions – no betraying the Council, no turning representatives of the Council into zombies, and so on and so forth – but neither he nor the Council wanted Timmy to give up necromancy. If anything, Gerald and the Council wanted him to get better at it.

They wanted him to work for them, to handle all of the problems they couldn’t deal with the usual way. They also wanted him to recruit a bunch of equally interesting individuals. Naturally, most of those individuals were somewhat unenthusiastic about joining. It would be up to Timmy to convince them. Joy.

“Let me get this straight. I’m going to be some kind of mercenary for the Council, and you want me to recruit other people for this little… gang they’re putting together, is that right?”

“That’s about right.” Gerald had summoned a small mountain of paperwork over the course of his explanation. Now, it began to disappear. His smile faded, and for the first time that evening, there was something almost steely in his gaze. “The situation is worse than you think. War is coming, and we’re nowhere near ready. Despite everything you’ve done, Timmy, you’ve never acted against Everton itself. I even have several reports of you turning down lucrative job offers that would have forced you to aid Everton’s enemies. If Everton is going to make it through this war in one piece, we’re going to need every scrap of power we can lay our hands on. We can’t afford to waste someone as powerful as you. As for the others that the Council wants you to recruit, they’re reluctant, but the Council is confident that you will be able to bring them around. Once the war is done, all of you will receive a full pardon.”

“A full pardon?” Timmy leaned forward. “How full is this full pardon? You never did get to that part. What happens to my castle and other properties?”

“It is a full pardon.” Gerald emphasised the word ‘full’. “The Council is willing to wipe the slate clean. This castle and all of your other properties will be recognised as yours, to be done with as you see fit. If the Council’s information is right, then you’re also the only one who has a hope of controlling what’s under this castle.” Gerald took a deep breath and folded his hands together on top of the table. “The way the Council sees it, if we’re going to have a necromancer around, it’s better to have one that is reasonable and on our side. From what I’ve seen so far, that seems like the right decision.”

“Fair enough, but I need some time to think about this.” Timmy had two copies of the paperwork in front of him. He’d read one set himself and give the other to Katie. “I should have an answer for you by tomorrow morning.”

“That would be wonderful.” Gerald took a deep breath. Negotiations had gone about as well as he could have hoped. His horse might have met a rather grisly end, but he was still going strong. “About tonight, where will I be sleeping?”

“I’ll have one of the servants show you to your room.” Gerald paled, and Timmy bit back a chuckle. “Relax, I meant one of my living servants. And, yes, your room is completely normal. But try not to wander too far from it. The part of the castle where you’ll be staying is safe, but I can’t guarantee your safety if you wander around.”

Katie giggled. “We still haven’t found that zombie pig-lion I made. Based on some of the tracks we’ve found, I think it’s learned how to walk on the ceiling.”

Gerald immediately looked up at the ceiling. How exactly did a zombie pig-lion learn to walk on the ceiling? “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“If you do run into trouble, call for help. It won’t be long before one of the rats turns up to give you a hand.”

“Rats?” Gerald twitched. He was, Timmy thought, a very twitchy sort of person. “What kind of rats?”

“Not zombie rats, ninja rats. They live here, and they’ve been told to keep an eye on you. So if you see any rodents running around with swords, maces, bows, or any other weapons, relax. They’re here to keep you safe.”

“I see.” Gerald didn’t see. He really didn’t.

Katie cackled. “They can also turn invisible.”

* * *

Timmy read through all the paperwork again just to be sure, but he didn’t have to think very hard before coming to his decision. All he had to do was help crush anyone who attacked Everton in the upcoming war, recruit a bunch of miscreants with a whole heap of problems, and then he and Katie were home free. It would be hard, but it wasn’t impossible. The Council didn’t want him dead, but they did want him to work for his pardon. If they wanted him dead, then they would have sent James. For someone who prized tradition so much, the other man had revolutionised the art of blowing things up.

The next morning, Timmy took Katie aside. Ultimately, it was his decision to make, but he wanted to know what she thought. Plus, she’d definitely sic the ninja rats on him if she didn’t feel involved enough.

“What do you think of the offer?”

“We should take it.” Katie shrugged. There was a different rat on her shoulder today. This one sported a spear and a psychotic smile. “If we can get that pardon, then we won’t have to worry anymore. The last thing I need is for the Council to come and take the castle. I intend to inherit it when you finally kick the bucket, thank you very much.”

“Right.” He hoped she wasn’t planning on helping him along with that.

“Oh, don’t be so worried.” Katie smiled sunnily, which was far more terrifying than her scowl. “You still have lots to teach me.” She rubbed her hands together. “But after that…” The rat on her shoulder made several stabbing motions with its spear.

They met Gerald for breakfast in the dining room. Rather than beat around the bush, Timmy got right to it. The sooner he agreed, the sooner he could get it done.

“We’ll take the offer.”

“Oh, thank the gods.” Gerald sagged back into his chair and chugged on his cup of coffee. He had dark circles under his eyes. Perhaps he’d gone wandering around the castle despite Timmy’s warnings. “I was worried you might refuse.”

Timmy raised one eyebrow. “So you were desperate. You hid it well.”

“The Council is under a lot of pressure, which means that I’m under even more pressure.” A folder appeared in Gerald’s hands. “Have a look at this. This is the first person we’d like you to recruit.”

“Okay.” Timmy reached for the folder. “I know how the Council works. Before I read this, what isn’t in the file?”

“Quite a lot. Your target has become something of a legend. After getting rid of all the unconfirmed rumours and speculation, we don’t know a lot about her. I can tell you that she’s very… odd.”

“Odd?” Timmy opened the folder and almost sprayed his coffee across the table. It was a good thing that he’d managed to keep his coffee in his mouth. It would have been terribly unhygienic to spit it out, and Katie was very partial to pancakes. If he’d gotten his coffee all over them, he would have had days of Katie plotting his demise to look forward to, and her plotting had gotten much, much better over the past year or two. “Are you serious? You want us to find and recruit She Who Cannot Be Named Because Of Her Penchant For Fiery Violence And General Bloodthirstiness?”

“Yes, that’s what the Council wants.” Gerald shrugged and scratched the back of his head. “It is a rather long title, isn’t it?”

“It’s a very apt title.” A chill ran down Timmy’s spine. “Trust me, she more than lives up to the name.”

“Which is why you’ll be going after her.” Gerald pointed at the rat on Katie’s shoulder. “Is that one of the ninja rats?”

The girl patted the rat on the back. “Yes.”

“Fascinating. What can it do with that spear?”

“Show them.” Katie grabbed an apple and threw it into the air. The rat hurled its spear at the apple, and the fruit exploded. “See?”

“I can see why you keep them around.” Gerald bent down to grab a small piece of the apple. It was scorched and still smoking.

“Wait until you meet the one who walks around with a pickaxe.” Timmy reached for some bread. “Or the one who carries a scythe. Now, they’re scary.”

It was another two days before Timmy, Katie, and Gerald left the castle. The person they were after would not be easy prey. There were preparations to make, and there was still the matter of the zombie pig-lion to consider. They hadn’t been able to find it, but it was kind enough to ambush them on their way out. How convenient.

“Gerald!” Timmy grabbed the older man by the shoulder. “Do not move and do not look up.”

Of course, Gerald took that as his cue to look up. There was a very large and very toothy zombie pig-lion hanging from the ceiling above him, its shaggy mane covered in zombie goo. How the creature managed to stay on the ceiling, Timmy wasn’t sure. Neither pigs nor lions were renowned for their ceiling-climbing abilities. Oh well, it must be a zombie thing, like the time his zombie tiger-elephant had started breathing fire.

“Is that the zombie pig-lion?” Gerald gulped and grabbed a book out of thin air. Unfortunately for him, a copy of The Everton Encyclopaedia of Magic wasn’t likely to be of much help. Then again, he could always try to beat the creature to death with it.

“It is.” Timmy grabbed his shovel and then stopped. He could kill the creature himself, but the mess would be horrible. It would take hours to clean up, and they were already five minutes behind schedule. “Katie, deal with it. Keep it tidy.”

The girl huffed and spread her arms out to either side. The shadows cast by her robes trembled for a split-second and then solidified. The zombie pig-lion leapt off the ceiling at Gerald, but Katie’s shadows were there to meet it halfway. Her shadows transformed into an enormous black scythe, and there was a wet squelch as she cut off the creature’s arms and legs before severing its head. Blood and gore rained down, but her shadows changed again, turning into a large bowl to catch the mess before it could hit them or the ground.

“Good work, Katie.” Timmy snapped his fingers and several zombies appeared with buckets. The girl emptied the gore her shadows had caught into the buckets, and the zombies hauled the zombie pig-lion away. The things under the castle wouldn’t mind another treat. “Let’s go.”

Gerald fell into step beside Katie as Timmy marched down the corridor with his shovel slung over one shoulder. “That was quite a display, Katie. You didn’t even hesitate.”

Katie made a non-committal sound. “My master says that I need to be able to defend myself. A necromancer should always let their zombies do the fighting if they can, but that doesn’t always work. Sometimes, you have to fight yourself. My master has his shovel, and I have my shadows.”

A notepad appeared in Gerald’s hand, along with a quill and some ink. He jotted down a few things and then turned back to Katie. “Have you ever beaten your master in a fight?”

Timmy sniggered and then leaned to one side as Katie’s shadows formed into a sword and lunged at his head.

Katie made a face. “He might not look like much, but my master is pretty tough.” Timmy glanced over his shoulder. True, he wasn’t the most intimidating or handsome necromancer around, but that was cold, even for his apprentice. “We spar regularly, but I’ve never beaten him. It might be another three or four years before I can give him a run for his money.

“I see.” Gerald couldn’t help himself. Katie’s scowl was so adorable. He patted her on the head. “I’m sure you’ll be better than him one day.”

“Katie,” Timmy said as the girl’s shadows stirred. “Remember what we talked about. No trying to kill the inspector.” Gerald froze. “Calm down, Gerald. I’m joking – mostly. She doesn’t want people treating her like a kid even if she is one.” He dodged another one of Katie’s shadows and then leapt over another that sliced at his ankles. “See?”

“I’ll be sure to remember that.” Gerald flipped open his notebook again. Note to self: do not treat Katie like a kid.

They left the castle on horseback, accompanied by two dozen of Timmy and Katie’s finest zombie soldiers, three of Timmy’s zombie wyverns, and two of the ninja rats. They would have brought more zombies – they did have an entire army of them – but their journey would take them near several large towns. As a general rule, zombies were not something they took near large towns unless they wanted to conquer them. The forest up north where they were headed was even worse. The elves were beyond uptight about what was allowed in. At least Gerald had agreed to do all the paperwork necessary for their small contingent of zombies. Timmy wasn’t worried about rodents with bows, but elves with bows were another story.

Katie tightened her hold on the reins as her horse fidgeted. Her magic spooked normal horses, and they couldn’t bring one of their zombie horses since they needed every zombie they brought to be combat ready. Luckily, she’d been able to bring two of her favourite ninja rats, Rembrandt and Monet. Rembrandt was a black-furred rat that wore an eye-patch and used a sword. Monet was a grey-furred rat that was partial to grappling hooks and bolas. “Let me get this straight, we’re searching for an elf?”

“Yes.” Gerald summoned a folder. “You can read through the files if you want.”

“Or you can let me summarise.” Timmy caught the folder out of the air before Katie could try and snatch it. It was so heavy that she’d probably fall off her horse.

“Give me a break.” Katie rolled her eyes and smirked. “I’ve read everything in your library. I know who and what the elves are.” Her voice took on that lecturing tone she used whenever she wanted Timmy to do something for her. “Everton is one of the strongest and most prosperous kingdoms in the world. One of the reasons for that is the alliance between the Council of Mages and the Elves of Frostwood. These elves have been our allies for hundreds of years, ever since we broke off from the empire. They also protect our western border using magic that manipulates nature and ice.” She frowned, and Rembrandt scooted up onto her shoulder to pat her on the back. “But I have to admit, I don’t know a lot about the elf we’re looking for. But she can’t be that bad, can she?”

Timmy couldn’t resist leaning over to tweak Katie’s nose. His murderous apprentice could be so adorable. Rembrandt reached for his sword, and a shadow came a hair’s breadth from parting Timmy’s nose from his face.

“It must drive you crazy not knowing everything.” Timmy chuckled but then grew serious. “But believe me, she is that bad. My master and I ran into her once when we were trying to get our hands on a frost dragon corpse. We didn’t get the corpse, and we were lucky to escape with our lives.”

Katie winced, and her shadows rippled along the ground. “That is worrying.” Her master was no slouch, and his master had, by all accounts, been something of a monster. Her two rats gave a few comforting squeaks. “Yes, yes, I know you two will help.”

“According to Gerald’s reports, the elves are sick of trying to deal with her. She wiped out the last three groups of mercenaries they sent after her, and she’s sent several patrols worth of elves to the healers. If she’d wanted, they’d all be dead. The last time that they saw her, she was headed north. The elves want us to deal with her before she causes any more damage. It should take us about two weeks to get there.”

“So, she’s really powerful. You still haven’t told us exactly what it is she can do.” Katie made another grab for the folder, but Timmy tossed it back to Gerald. The bureaucrat flicked his wrist, and the folder vanished. “Come on, let me read that!”

“You don’t have to read it.” Timmy took a deep breath and shuddered. “What you can expect from her is fire – a lot of fire, the kind you don’t ever forget, no matter how much time passes.”

They set a good pace before stopping outside a small village for the night. The villagers took one look at them before reaching for their stakes and pitchforks. Gerald put a stop to that. The man had at least fifteen different letters from the Council explaining why they were there, along with ten folders worth of supporting documentation. By the end of his spiel – which went for the better part of an hour – the villagers were too tired and confused to even think of lynching anybody.

With the villagers pacified, it was time to cook dinner. Timmy would have loved to pick up something from the local tavern, but he didn’t want to push his luck. Some of those villagers had seemed awfully comfortable holding those stakes and pitchforks. So it was up to the three of them to make dinner.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Gerald, but how does your magic work?” Katie couldn’t cook to save her life, and Gerald wasn’t much better. That left Timmy and the rats in charge of dinner. He’d opted for stew, and the rats had offered up some surprisingly good seasoning suggestions. “I’ve seen you use it several times, and I still can’t figure out how it works.”

“I suppose there’s no harm in telling you.” Gerald sniffed the air. The stew smelled good. “They might call me an inspector, but I’m really a bureaucrat. I make a living doing paperwork. My magic lets me store things away and then get them back later. That’s how I carry around all my folders and books.”

“Where do all those things go?” Timmy stirred the stew. Rembrandt went to put more salt in before Monet pulled him away. The stew was salty enough. “Is your magic connected to a storeroom or something?”

Gerald poked the fire with a stick. “I don’t know. Things just… go somewhere.”

That sounded harmless, but Timmy knew better. There was no way that the Council would have sent someone completely helpless to negotiate. He didn’t think Gerald’s behaviour was an act, but there had to be more to him than timidity. As for his magic, it was very, very dangerous. If he could store books in there, he could store weapons in there too. Depending on how big an object he could store, Gerald might even have something like a golem tucked away. “That sounds handy.”

“It is.” A rabbit appeared in Gerald’s hand. “I don’t know if that stew will be enough for all three of us, so maybe you could cook this too. I’m not much good at cooking, I’m afraid.”

“I’m not even going to ask why you have a rabbit stored away with that magic of yours.” The rabbit was dead, but it was still fresh. Timmy nodded at Katie, and the girl took the rabbit with her shadows. “I’ll let Katie handle the whole gutting and skinning thing. It will be less messy that way.”

Gerald turned a most amusing shade of green as Katie’s shadows took the fluffy bunny rabbit apart. Timmy almost laughed. No, this couldn’t be an act. Gerald really was squeamish.

It wasn’t long before they had some stew and roast rabbit to eat. Timmy was feeling generous, so he shared some of his with Rembrandt and Monet. If the two rats were going to tag along, he wanted to be on their good side. He’d seen Rembrandt use a sword. The rodent was a heck of a swordsman. After dinner, they tried to bed down for the night. But Katie wasn’t happy about being told to go to bed.

“I am not some child that you can order around.” Katie’s yawn robbed the words of their sting. “It is not too late for me to be awake. I am perfectly capable of staying up late and using my time constructively.”

“You’re ten years old, and that means you’re still a child.” Timmy put his proverbial foot down. “So go to sleep, or you’ll end up short for the rest of your life.”

Katie’s eyes narrowed. The shadows around her trembled, and Timmy caught a vague impression of claws and teeth. But in the end, she backed down. It didn’t help her cause that her rats – those adorable, little traitors – agreed with him. “Fine, but I want a story first, something from when you were with your master, preferably something where you get mangled.”

Timmy refrained from pointing out that only children needed a story before going to bed. He couldn’t stay awake all the time, and Katie was bound to do something if he pushed her too far. “I suppose I could tell you about what happened when my master and I went up against the elf we’re looking for.”

“That would help.” Gerald had changed into a dressing gown. Timmy shook his head. A dressing gown, seriously? They were camping outside, not staying at some posh inn. “It would be nice to know more about what we’re up against. Saying that she uses fire doesn’t tell us a lot.”

“I thought you’d have all the details in those files of yours.” Gerald flushed, and Timmy snickered. It was nice to know that while the Council knew a lot, they didn’t know everything. “Okay, listen closely. The story I’m about to tell you is a tale of horror and woe.”

Katie tugged her blankets around herself. “You mean like most of the time you spent with your master?”

“Pretty much.” Timmy had plenty of respect for his dead master’s power, but the man had been a jerk. His idea of fun had involved trying to cut Timmy in half, and his favoured method of teaching had involved throwing some zombie parts at Timmy before calling in a monster, usually a hydra. Timmy could either come up with an appropriately powerful zombie or end up dead. “I was seventeen at the time, and my master got into his head that we were going to make a zombie frost dragon, but with a few additions. Naturally, he decided that we should go off and kill one. It would be fresher that way – and cheaper.” Timmy snorted. “He always was a stingy, old codger.”

“What kind of additions?” Katie perked up. Timmy’s master had been a truly unpleasant person, but some of his ideas had been brilliant. The ballista she’d added to her zombie elephant-griffin had been based on one of his designs.

“He wanted to add metal armour and a whole slew of magical enhancements. As you know, frost dragons aren’t very common. They only live in the far north or the far south. And as you can imagine, the elves were not pleased when we turned up in their forest. We were lucky not to become pincushions.” Timmy sighed. “My master was quite handy with a blade, but a blade only helps so much when you’ve got hundreds of elves shooting arrows at you. Somehow, we managed to get past them and head further north. It took us two weeks to find a frost dragon, but we weren’t the only ones after it.”

“I’m guessing the elf we’re after was there.”

“Oh, she was. We didn’t see her at first, but there was no missing what she’d done.” Timmy shook his head and stared into the campfire. “I’d never seen that much fire before. It was as if the whole forest was burning. She burnt that frost dragon to death, and I don’t think she even had to try. Being the sensible person that I am, I wanted to retreat. But my master decided to go and pick a fight.”

Katie hid a laugh behind one hand. “That’s when she kicked your asses, right?”

“Yes, Katie, but mind your language. My master was a brilliant swordsman, but she more than held her own against him with a pair of daggers. I didn’t have this shovel with me, but I did have one of my prototypes. I almost got her over the back of the head, but all that did was make her mad. And that’s when she started throwing fire everywhere – and I mean everywhere.”

“How did you get away?”

“My master used his magic to try and tear her soul out of her body. It didn’t work, but it did buy me enough time to destroy the hill we were fighting on. That gave us the distraction we needed to get away.”

“She sounds formidable.” Gerald was writing furiously in one of his notepads. “Can you tell me anything more about her magic? How hot was her fire?”

“It was hot, maybe even as hot as dragon fire. She knew how to control it too. I didn’t see her shape it the way that Katie can shape her shadows, but she was definitely able to guide it around.”

“She sounds very dangerous.” Katie’s brows furrowed, and she tapped her fingers on her leg.

“She was very dangerous.” Timmy patted Katie on the head. She was so cute when she was trying to work out how to beat someone. She responded by trying to bite his hand off. “Okay, that’s enough talking. You’ve got your story, now go to sleep.”

“Fine.” Katie huffed and settled into her bedroll. Monet took up a position on a nearby tree stump while Rembrandt went to patrol the perimeter. “But you better not fall asleep while you’re keeping watch, master. I don’t want any bandits or angry villagers sneaking up on us.”

“Relax, even if I fall asleep, our zombies are also keeping watch. We’ll be fine.” Besides, the villagers were too terrified of Gerald and his paperwork to do anything, and any bandits dumb enough to try robbing them deserved to be mauled by their zombies or stabbed by Rembrandt.

They continued their journey north, stopping briefly in another small village to pick up some extra supplies. The villagers took one look at their escort of zombies and all but threw the supplies at them before running for the hills. It was oddly gratifying.

“You know, they never gave us the chance to pay them.” Katie cackled and rubbed her hands together. “So maybe –”

“We’ll leave the money in the village square,” Gerald said. His voice took on a fatherly tone. “I know you’re a necromancer, Katie, but stealing is wrong.”

Katie gave Gerald the most unimpressed look imaginable. Timmy sniggered. Katie had helped him create some of the world’s most terrifying abominations. She was certainly not averse to some creative cost cutting when the situation called for it. “Fine, we’ll do it your way.”

And so they left the money in the village square before continuing north. Throughout their journey, Timmy kept a group of zombies ahead of them as his zombie wyverns kept watch from above. Finally, they reached the edge of the Frostwood.

“I guess it is impressive.” Katie eased her horse to a stop. “The pictures I’ve seen in books don’t quite do it justice.”

The Frostwood was one of the most ancient forests in the world. Its trees were enormous, living bulwarks of wood, their branches dappled with ice and snow. Even the smallest of them was as thick as Timmy was tall, and the largest rose hundreds of feet into the air. Unlike the younger forests of the south, there was something distinctly menacing about the Frostwood. It was there in the shadows cast by the titan trees, and it was there in the sibilant hiss of the wind through millennia-old branches. Inhuman eyes tracked their every move as they followed a rough trail deeper into the forest. Strange tracks littered the edges of the path, and something darted through the trees above them.

“Be careful.” Timmy kept one hand on the reins and the other on his shovel. “This forest doesn’t like necromancy.”

Katie shivered, but not from the cold. “I can tell. My zombies feel so weak and sluggish here.” She cast a furtive look at the trees on either side of her. Something was watching them, she was sure of it. “At least there are plenty of shadows here for me to use.”

The deeper they went into the forest, the worse it got. There wasn’t even a lick of wind, yet the trees around them rustled and shifted from side to side. Timmy thought he might have heard them speaking in low, rumbling tones, but he couldn’t be sure. The trail narrowed, and he caught a glimpse of amber eyes and jagged teeth. He frowned and ordered their zombies to fall into a tighter formation around them. The forest was not happy with them, and those eyes and teeth had belonged to a wolf almost as big as his horse.

It didn’t help that the forest was practically holy ground. Keeping his zombies active was taking much more of his magic than usual, and the beads of sweat on Katie’s brow showed that she was feeling the strain too. It would have been easier on them both if they let their zombies fall apart, but the elf they were searching for was too strong to beat in a fair fight. At the very least, their zombies could still serve as a distraction.

It took them another two days before they saw any sign of their target. And for those two days, the forest had made its displeasure known in ways that ranged from the truly disturbing to the downright petty. The giant wolves that lingered just beyond the light of their campfire were definitely disturbing. But making the trees bend their branches to dump snow on their heads was just petty. There might even have been an elf or two around when that happened since Timmy was certain that he’d heard someone laugh.

Ahead of them, the ground was blackened and charred. The trees were still standing, but their branches, leaves, and bark had all been burnt away. The smell of smoke and ash filled the air.

“Do you think this was her?” Katie poked at the ground with her shadows. In a few places, the earth had been melted into glass.

“I think so.” Steam rose from the ground. The elf couldn’t be far then. “This is what happens when someone picks a fight with her.”

“Right.” Katie sighed. “We’re all going to die horribly, aren’t we?”

“We’ll be fine.” Gerald puffed out his chest in what Timmy assumed was supposed to be a reassuring manner. However, the tremor in the other man’s voice painted a very different picture. He was scared out of his mind, and Timmy couldn’t blame him. “As long as the three of us work together, I’m sure we can manage.”

“What are you basing that on?” Katie jabbed one finger at Gerald. “My master and his master barely survived fighting this elf. I’m only a kid, and I doubt you’ve ever been in a fight.”

Gerald sagged in his saddle. “When you put it that way, it does sound depressing. But we are acting on behalf of the Council.” He brandished a copy of the Council’s newsletter. “I’m certain that we can negotiate with her. I was able to negotiate with you and your master, wasn’t I?”

“That’s because we’re reasonable. She isn’t.” Something tickled the very edges of Timmy’s awareness. One of his zombies wanted him to look through its eyes. “Ah, it seems like one of my zombies has spotted her – oh.”

They all stared as a bolt of flame raced up into the sky. The zombie wyvern above them dissolved in a cloud of fire. Little bits of ash rained down. Timmy gulped. His zombie wyverns were some of his finest creations, designed to shrug off arrows and withstand multiple hits from ballistae. The elf had reduced it to ash with one shot, and he’d barely even sensed any build up of magic. In other words, they were in big, big trouble.

“I guess she knows we’re here now.” Katie nodded sagely. “As my master, I think you should be the one to take the lead.”

“Yes.” Gerald joined Katie in throwing Timmy under the proverbial rampaging dragon. “You do have the most experience against her. Think of it as a show of loyalty to the Council.”

“You’re both jerks.” Timmy reached for his shovel. He always felt more confident with it in his hands. “We have to leave our horses here. I think her attack came from the ridge up ahead, and I don’t think they can manage this terrain. They’ll make us a bigger target too. Katie, have your zombies come up from the left, and I’ll have mine come up from the right. I’ll use my two remaining zombie wyverns to keep watch. We need to box her in and then attack while she’s occupied with the zombies.”

“We’re supposed to negotiate with her.” Gerald flipped through one of his folders.

“We can negotiate with her after she’s restrained and no longer capable of burning all of us alive.”

“We could wait until nightfall.” Gerald clutched at his grey robes. If he fiddled with them any harder, he’d tear the fabric.

Katie scowled. “That’s not a good idea. Everything I’ve read suggests that elves have exceptional night vision. We don’t have that luxury.”

“Our best chance is to strike now.” Timmy climbed off his horse. “The more time we give her to plan, the worse off we’ll be. Come on.”

They made their way toward the ridge. It was a good thing that the trees were still mostly intact, or they’d have been seen immediately. They needed to stay out of sight and walk as lightly as possible. If the elf spotted them, they were all dead.

It had been a while since Timmy had snuck around anything more dangerous than a graveyard, but he hadn’t forgotten his master’s lessons. Nearby, Katie stepped on a twig, and the three of them froze. When several seconds passed without fiery death, he breathed a sigh of relief. That was his fault as much as Katie’s. He’d been lax when it had come to her stealth training. The rats could probably have turned her invisible if they worked together, but he doubted their magic would last long enough to get her to the top of the ridge. No, it was better to save that trick for when they got close enough to do something.

The big surprise was Gerald. The bureaucrat was doing very well. Maybe there was more to paperwork than Timmy thought, or maybe Gerald was just really, really eager to not die.

“Keep in contact with your zombies, Katie. We need to keep the elf distracted.” Timmy’s own zombies were familiar presences in the back of his mind. With a bit more effort, he could even see through their eyes. It was something he excelled at, and not even his master had been able to link himself to his zombies as easily as Timmy could.

One of his zombie wyverns spotted the elf moving along the top of the ridge. She was searching for them. Her gazed drifted toward them, and he ordered the wyvern to attack in a bid to distract her. The creature drew her gaze away from them, but she killed it in spectacular fashion. A sweeping gesture of her arms called up ribbons of flame that sliced through the wyvern’s wings and then curved around to blast through its body. The remains of the creature crashed to the ground, burnt beyond any hope of repair.

“Well, there goes my second zombie wyvern.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” Gerald laughed nervously. He wasn’t a big fan of zombies, but he wished they’d brought more.

“Keep moving.” Timmy quickened his pace. “The elf was moving along the top of the ridge. If she disappears back into the forest, we’re in trouble. Nobody catches an elf in the forest.”

Katie split her attention between running and managing her zombies. Although they were weaker in the forest than usual, these zombies were some of her best. Each one had been painstakingly crafted out of freshly harvested corpses and reinforced with metal bones and magic. But guiding them was tricky. She wasn’t used to moving so much at the same time, and she had to keep them on a tight leash to make sure they weren’t seen by the elf.

“Watch where you’re going.” Katie yelped as Timmy yanked her away from the tree she’d almost run into. On her shoulder, Rembrandt made a few noises. He wanted her to be more careful. “Have you seen the elf yet?”

Katie’s eyes took on a faraway stare as she opened her mind to her zombies. A regular zombie was little more than a shambling corpse. Even in the forest, these zombies were stronger and faster than a normal person. They rushed toward the top of the ridge. The elf was right there. “I’ve found her. Now what?”

Timmy bit his lip. “I was hoping that our zombies would get there at the same time, but we can’t let her get away. Stop her.”

“I’ll try.”

The command echoed from Katie’s mind to her zombies: attack. The zombies sprang at the elf. A dozen zombies of this calibre would have been enough to stop almost anyone in their tracks. The elf needed only a few moments to dispatch them. She put an arrow through the head of the first zombie, which wasn’t that bad until the arrow exploded. She then repeated the feat three more times in quick succession, reducing four of Katie’s zombies to mangled lumps of burnt flesh. And the scariest part was that the elf had been smiling the whole time, a crazy, utterly deranged smile.

The remaining zombies closed in with their swords drawn, and the elf swapped her bow out for a pair of daggers. The zombies weren’t especially skilled – they didn’t have the brains or muscle control for true swordsmanship – but they were inhumanly strong and fast. The elf ghosted through a storm of blows, and all Katie saw was a flash of her daggers before her zombies started to fall. In less than a minute, the elf had sliced and diced her way through all eight remaining zombies. To add insult to injury, she even struck a pose at the end, sheathing her daggers with a flourish. It made Katie want to punch her in the face or sic Rembrandt and Monet on her. Those zombies had taken Katie ages to put together!

“What happened?” Timmy asked. His own zombies were almost there.

“She killed all of my zombies, and she made it look easy.” Katie winced and rubbed her temple. There was always some backlash when a zombie under her personal control died. “What do we do now?”

“Keep moving. We’re almost there. I’ll send my zombies in along with my last zombie wyvern. Whatever happens, make sure you make it to the top of the ridge.” Timmy glanced at Gerald. The bureaucrat was starting to struggle now. Apparently, large amounts of paperwork were not conducive to high levels of cardiovascular fitness. “And try to keep Gerald alive.”

The last of Timmy’s zombie wyverns wheeled about and dove at the elf. He used every ounce of his skill to guide the beast around the brilliant shafts of flame that the elf tossed up, but he had no answer for the wave of fire that she threw as the wyvern closed in. The zombie came apart at the seams, but he poured more of his magic into it, straining to keep it together for a few more seconds. It slammed into the ridge, and the elf was forced to scramble out of the way. That gave his other zombies the opening he’d been waiting for. They charged the elf together.

“Run!” Timmy pointed at the top of the ridge. “My zombies won’t keep her occupied for long. We need to get to the top of the ridge now.”

Timmy wasn’t a Grand Necromancer for nothing. His zombies were even better than Katie’s, and he had no problems micromanaging all twelve of them at once. He might have favoured the shovel, but his master had made sure he knew how to handle a sword. It was a testament to his swordsmanship and his control over his zombies that they lasted as long as they did.

The elf darted forward, a dagger in each hand, and immediately parried the strike of the first zombie with one dagger before she sliced its head off with the other. The zombie toppled back and then caught fire. The second zombie actually managed to block three of her strikes before a kick to the chest caved in its ribcage and set it alight. Timmy hissed. It seemed like she could project her magic through her entire body and her weapons.

The other zombies closed in from all sides, moving seamlessly to trap her, but the elf breezed around their attacks. Timmy bit back a curse. It was like trying to catch the wind. But the elf wasn’t content to merely dodge. The instant even the tiniest gap appeared, she struck back. A miniscule overextension left a zombie without first an arm and then a leg before it was turned into a bonfire. A slightly awkward parry let the elf jam a dagger up through a zombie’s chin. She wrenched the weapon out and shoved the zombie away, her fire already consuming it.

But the most worrying thing was what happened when one of the zombies actually managed to bring its blade down in a two-handed, overhead chop. The elf didn’t even blink. She raised one arm and blocked the blow with her dagger. That was ridiculous. Elves were, by nature, stronger than humans, but these zombies should still have been able to overpower her.

“Move faster.” Timmy continued his ascent toward the top of the ridge. “My zombies won’t last much longer. We need to hit her fast and hard. She’s great with a bow and daggers, and her magic is perfect for combat. We need to cheat because we’re not going to beat her in a fair fight.”

Timmy flinched as the elf killed the last of his zombies. She’d cut its legs out from under it and then stomped down on its chest. Smiling – and it was a terrifying smile – she’d lifted her booted foot one last time and then crushed its head. Oh, they were definitely in trouble. He caught a flash of light at the edges of his vision.

“Get down!” Timmy dove toward Gerald and shoved the other man out of the way. An arrow hurtled through the air where his head had been. The projectile thumped into a tree behind them and exploded. The blast tossed them through the air. Timmy landed in the dirt and scrambled to his feet. “Never mind stealth. She’s spotted us. Charge!”

Another arrow raced through the air, this one aimed at his head. He jerked his shovel up in time to block it. The explosion threw him back, but his shovel held firm. Good, he’d spent years improving the enchantments on it. He staggered back to his feet and waved Katie and Gerald over. He had a few tricks up his sleeve, and now was the time to start using them.

“Hold on and try not to land head first.”

Timmy had spent almost his entire life refining his magic. His necromancy was excellent – swift, powerful, and highly controlled. However, he’d reached a simple, but horrible, conclusion about his earth magic: he was too slow with it. He could blast apart solid rock, liquefy stone, and shatter granite, but his earth magic was so hard to control that it took him at least several minutes to do anything. That was why he’d come up with his shovel. It was covered in countless runes and seals that helped control and guide his magic. All he had to do was activate the correct runes and seals and then shove his magic into it.

His master had called him an idiot after the first shovel had blown up in his face. But Timmy had continued to tinker and test until finally, he’d wiped the smile off his master’s face by using his fourth shovel to dig a moat around the castle in the span of a few minutes. Of course, Timmy had ruined the whole thing by collapsing afterward, but he’d made his point. The shovel didn’t reduce the amount of power Timmy needed to do something, but it gave him the speed and finesse to use his earth magic effectively.

With a growl, Timmy gathered his magic and drove his shovel into the ground. The shovel lit up, dozens of runes and seals alight with power. The ground around him liquefied, but he wasn’t done yet. As Katie and Gerald struggled to pull their feet out of the growing pool of mud, he yanked his shovel up and forward.

“Brace yourselves!”

The mud rocketed uphill, carrying all three of them toward the top of the ridge. Gerald let out a most unmanly scream while Katie spewed a litany of very adult curses. On her shoulders, Rembrandt and Monet clung on for dear life. Timmy grinned and then turned his attention to steering. It would be beyond embarrassing if he ran them into a tree.

They reached the top of the ridge, but the mud’s momentum threw them up into the air. Below them, the elf’s eyes widened in disbelief. Clearly, she’d never seen three people ride a mudslide uphill before. Unfortunately for them, however, she recovered quickly. The elf raised one hand, and Timmy knew they would be in serious trouble if he’d didn’t do something. He thrust his shovel at the mud trailing in their way, and it changed direction, thundering toward the elf. Her gaze flicked from them to the approaching wall of mud. If she blasted them out of the air, she’d be buried under a tidal wave of mud.

The elf hissed and turned her magic on the wave of mud. The explosion blew the mud apart, and Timmy, Gerald, and Katie managed to land safely behind the elf. Or did they? Timmy frowned. Gerald was a few yards away, but he couldn’t see Katie anywhere. A shadow stirred on the ground nearby, and he smirked. The rats! They must have used their magic to turn Katie and themselves invisible while everyone was focused on the mud. That left him and Gerald facing one angry, powerful elf while Katie waited for an opening.

The elf had avoided all of the mud, save for a few drops that had managed to reach her boots. Her lips curled as she stalked forward, and the mud at her feet baked solid. She was tall and slender, as most elves were, but her eyes burned deep amber instead of the usual green or blue. Her long, blonde hair was tied back into a loose ponytail, and she wore a green cloak over a grey tunic and black trousers. She palmed both her daggers, and her eyes shone with something that was just shy of madness. Timmy gulped and tightened his hold on his shovel. It was at times like this that he missed his crazy, but formidable, master.

“Gerald, watch out!”

The elf covered the gap between them in less than a heartbeat. It was pure, dumb luck as much as skill that let Timmy get his shovel up in time to block her first strike. The force of it rattled up his arms and sent him stumbling away. The follow up kick would have broken every one of his ribs if he hadn’t wrenched his shovel around to take the brunt of it. He hurtled through the air but had the presence of mind to turn the ground beneath him into mud to break his fall. A flick of his shovel sent the mud streaking toward the elf. She didn’t even blink. She was done playing around. A lance of white-hot flame carved through the mud, and he threw himself out of the way.

Even though he knew the attack had missed, the heat of its passage had Timmy checking to see if he’d been burnt anyway. A tree toppled to the ground behind him. His gut clenched. That attack had cut right through one of the enormous trees that filled the forest. On the upside, Katie still hadn’t been spotted, and the elf seemed more amused than threatened by Gerald. The bureaucrat lifted both his fists into what might have – if Timmy was feeling exceptionally charitable – passed for a fighting stance. The elf responded by cracking her knuckles, and all the blood drained from Gerald’s face. By the gods, Gerald better not throw up in the middle of a fight, or there was no way they were going to win this.

Thankfully, the inspector managed to beat back his fear long enough to summon a large book. He threw it at the elf. She didn’t bother to dodge. She simply pointed one finger and cut it in half with a beam of fire, her smile growing more and more toothy with each step she took toward Gerald. But both Timmy and the elf had underestimated Gerald.

The book burst apart in a blinding flash of light as a cloud of black powder spilled outward. Timmy sneezed. Was that… pepper? He had no idea why the book had blown up or why it had pepper in it, but he wasn’t about to sit back and watch as the elf reeled away, clutching at her eyes and sneezing over and over again. He lunged forward, and Gerald ducked as the elf almost took his head off with another lance of heat. But before he could close the gap completely, the elf turned and pointed one finger at him. She was still scrubbing furiously at her eyes, so he was certain she hadn’t seen him. Was she tracking him by the sounds he made?

He flung himself to the side and avoided the elf’s attack by the skin of his teeth. But if the elf had started tracking them by sound – Katie! The rats could turn things invisible with their magic, but they couldn’t completely hide the sounds things made. And Katie had never been the quietest person around. Katie’s clogs cracked the baked mud, and that was enough for the elf to locate her.

“Katie!” Timmy screamed. “Watch out!”

The girl yelped, and her shadows raced out to form a wall between her and the oncoming jet of flame. The resulting explosion threw her backward as the rats abandoned their attempts to keep her invisible in favour of leaping at the elf. Most elves fought with an air of calm and control, but this elf was seething as her vision returned and she finally stopped sneezing. She gathered her magic for another attack, but the rats were there to intercept her.

For the majority of his life, Timmy had thought of rats as fairly innocuous creatures. Sure, the occasional rat had rabies or the plague, but to a necromancer, rats were hardly the scariest things in the world. Ninja rats, however, were different, very different. Rembrandt drew his sword in a single, fluid motion and slashed at the elf’s eyes. She leaned out of the way and tried to cut him out of the air, but the rat somehow managed to twist around the strike in mid-air before vaulting off her blade to swipe at her throat. She batted him aside with a swing of her dagger and raised one hand to incinerate him, but the rat hurled a handful of tiny needles at her. Timmy guessed they were poisoned, and the elf must have had similar thoughts because she used her magic to destroy them instead of the rat.

“Rembrandt!” Katie lifted her arms, and her shadows shot forward, only to be torn apart by the elf’s magic. Before the elf could strike again, Monet flung a bola at her ankles. The elf hopped over it, and Rembrandt seized the opportunity to attack again. Timmy bit back a smile. The rats might not like him a lot, but they were doing an excellent job of paying him back for all of the food they’d eaten since they’d moved into the castle.

The elf blocked another series of attacks from Rembrandt, but she was quickly growing tired of dealing with the two rats. Timmy sensed a brief spike in her magic, and then a sphere of power rippled out in all directions. It wasn’t nearly as hot as her previous attacks, but there was enough force behind it to toss both rats away like leaves in a storm.

“Rembrandt! Monet!” Katie flicked her wrist, and shadowy hands reached out to catch the rats. “Are you okay?” The rats nodded. It would take more than that to get rid of them.

“Stay back.” Timmy swung his shovel at the elf’s side, but she parried the blow and replied with a thrust that came within inches of skewering him. He stumbled, and she pressed her advantage. Her attacks were too strong for him to block, so he was forced to parry or dodge. But she was so fast that it took every ounce of his skill and experience to keep his head on his shoulders and his vital organs intact. The shadows of the battered trees around them lengthened into claws and reached for the elf’s limbs. That gave Timmy the chance to back off and turn the ground beneath her feet into mud. She floundered, nearly slipping, as she rounded on Katie.

Time slowed to a crawl as the elf pointed one hand at the girl. Timmy saw the flames gather, glowing first white-hot before dimming to a dull orange. Was the elf holding back? And then time sped up again as Timmy jabbed his shovel in Katie’s direction, his magic working frantically to try and create a wall of rock between the elf and his apprentice. But he wasn’t going to make it, not with the elf’s attack already halfway toward Katie. The girl was an instant too slow to react as well, relinquishing her control over the shadows near the elf as she tried to put up a barrier to ward off the attack. But there was someone who reacted in time – Gerald.

The older man moved next to Katie. The air in front of him shimmered like hot air over the desert, and a wall of ornate shields appeared. The elf’s magic smashed into the makeshift wall with a roar. Flame billowed outward, but the shields held firm. With a snarl, the elf threw another, much hotter, blast of fire. The ground in front of the shields began to melt, and cracking sounds filled the air. But the wall refused to break, and the elf’s flames dwindled and died out. Impressive.

The elf gathered her magic again, but Katie seized the shields with her shadows and flung them at her. As the elf dodged, the girl poured her magic into the shadows cast by the shields themselves. Spectral hands wrapped around the elf’s arms and legs. For a split-second, the elf was trapped, and Timmy ducked behind a tree as the two rats went on the attack again.

The elf growled and used her fire to burn away Katie’s shadows. Then she turned to deal with the rats. A swipe of her dagger sent Rembrandt flying, the rodent barely managing to hold onto his sword before he thumped into a tree. He stumbled to his feet, throwing another handful of poisoned needles before he faded from view, rendered invisible by his magic. Monet launched his grappling hook at the elf’s feet. The elf stepped back to avoid the attack, and Katie thrust both of her hands forward. Shadowy claws surged from every tree around them, and Katie’s eyes blazed with fury. Nobody hurt her rats. Nobody.

The elf gave a short, contemptuous laugh, and the air grew thick and heavy with her power. Rembrandt reappeared, his magic completely overwhelmed by the elf’s as she obliterated Katie’s shadows. The backlash from the attack shook the whole ridge, and Timmy darted forward to try and land a hit while the elf’s back was turned. She tossed a bolt of fire at Katie and Gerald and then turned to meet him. Gerald summoned a wall of polished stone, but the elf’s magic blew right through it, and he had no choice but to grab Katie and leap off the side of the ridge as searing flames consumed the area.

The sight of his apprentice and Gerald tumbling off the ridge was not pleasant, but they should be okay. Katie could use her shadows to grab something on their way down. But with Katie and Gerald out of the picture, it was up to him and the two rats to deal with the elf. And Rembrandt could barely stand.

Timmy took a deep breath to steady his nerves and raised his shovel. On the other side of the elf, Rembrandt readied his sword. Monet tried to move into the elf’s blind spot, his grappling hook at the ready. They’d have one chance – maybe – to land a decisive blow. If they missed, they were as good as dead. Rembrandt palmed more poisoned needles. Timmy needed to ask him where he hid those. A flick of the rat’s wrist sent the needles hurtling toward the elf’s back. She ducked into a crouch and then twisted away from Monet’s grappling hook. A pair of bolas followed, but she dodged those as well. Timmy surged forward and brought his shovel down with all his might. The weapon thudded into the ground as she rolled away, but he wasn’t finished. He turned the ground into mud and then hardened it again, trying to pin her down. She ripped free of the impromptu trap and swept his feet out from under him.

He hit the ground hard and yanked his shovel up to block one of her daggers. Heat licked at the edges of the shovel, and sweat broke out across his brow. He lashed out blindly with one foot. The blow didn’t hit cleanly, but it was enough to knock her off balance. He scrambled away, avoiding two blasts of flame and creating a wall of rock to block a third. In the meantime, Rembrandt and Monet continued to attack. In a straight up fight, she would have beaten him inside of five minutes, but this wasn’t a fair fight. A single touch of the rats’ poisoned weapons could paralyse, which meant the elf could not afford to ignore them. To make things even more complicated, Monet had added his own poisoned needles to the mix. Timmy shook his head in disbelief. The rats didn’t even have pockets, so how on earth could they hide all those needles?

But the elf had finally gotten sick of the whole affair. She gave Timmy a mocking grin. Her magic flared, and the air around her burned. Then she drove one fist into the ground. Timmy caught a glimpse of Rembrandt and Monet running before the whole world caught fire. The flames rushed toward him, higher than a house and hotter than anything she’d used so far. There wasn’t enough time to make a wall strong enough to weather the attack, and there was nowhere to go – except underground. He jammed his shovel into the ground and let the earth swallow him whole.

He held his breath until he thought his lungs would burst and then used his magic to send a spout of dirt up into the air a few feet away. If he was lucky – and he really, really hoped that he was – the elf would think he was coming up for air. Praying to every god he could think of, and he knew quite a few, he waited a split-second and then let the earth carry him back to the surface.

He had a moment to take in the scene. The elf had burned everything on top of the ridge. But more importantly, her back was to him. She’d taken the bait. He grit his teeth and swung his shovel. If anyone asked later, he could always lie and say that he’d defeated her in some kind of epic duel, shovel against dagger, as opposed to bashing her over the head while her back was turned. His shovel hit the elf’s head with a satisfying clang, and she slumped to the ground.

Timmy dragged in several deep breaths and then knelt down to make sure she was simply unconscious. They couldn’t negotiate with her if she was dead although hitting her with his shovel probably wouldn’t help any future negotiations either. Oh well. Still, the elf was alive, he was alive, and the others would hopefully be alive too.

He wandered over to the side of the ridge. “Katie, Gerald, you two better not be dead.”

Katie popped up over the side of the ridge. She must have managed to grab something with her shadows. Gerald clung to her back like some kind of oversized, extremely lanky monkey. Rembrandt and Monet were also there, both of them latched onto Katie’s robes.

“Yes, we’re alive.” Katie dropped to her knees, and Gerald slowly released the death grip he had around her neck. It was a miracle he hadn’t choked her. “Please tell me that she’s dead.” She scowled and poked Gerald with one of her shadows. “Next time, try putting your arms somewhere else. I can’t control my shadows if I’m unconscious.”

“Uh, sorry about that.” Gerald chuckled weakly and dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. “I thought we were going to die.”

“Just don’t do it again.”

Timmy waved one hand at the elf. “She’s not dead, but she is unconscious.”

Katie made a disgusted sound. “Isn’t that a pity?”

“Be nice, Katie. She did try and kill us all, but we can’t negotiate with her if she’s dead. That was our mission, remember?”

“And you handled it as well as could be expected.” Gerald walked over to the elf and produced several pairs of handcuffs along with a number of bracelets and anklets. “These are magic- and strength-suppressing restraints. We should put these on her before she wakes up.”

“Sounds good.” Timmy grabbed a pair of handcuffs and got to work. “I don’t think we’d win a second time.”

“By the way, master, how did you beat her?” Katie asked. She was eyeing his shovel a little too intently. She probably wanted to give the elf a whack or two over the head with it.

“Well, if you must know.” Timmy puffed out his chest and struck his most heroic pose, one that he didn’t have much occasion to use due to his chosen profession. “After Rembrandt and Monet jumped off the ridge, I was forced to face her in single combat. We engaged in a swift, gruelling, exchange of blows, and I finally managed to force an opening in her defences and knock her unconscious.” He rubbed his chin, grateful that he had enough stubble to keep the gesture from looking completely ridiculous. “Yes, she was one of the most skilled warriors that I’ve ever faced, but I’ve improved since the last time.”

Katie stared at him for a long moment, and then she reached down, took off one of her clogs, and threw it at his head. Timmy barely managed to dodge. “That is such a load of crap.”

“Language, Katie –”

“Don’t tell me to mind my language!” Katie used a shadow to drag her clog back and got ready to throw it again. “I’m not blind. That elf beat the crap out of all of us together, so there’s no way that you beat her on your own in a straight up fight. I bet you waited until her back was turned and then whacked her over the head or something lame like that.”

There was silence, absolute silence. Timmy swore he even saw some tumbleweed roll past.

Katie gaped and jabbed one finger at him. “That’s what you did, isn’t it? I knew it! I knew it!” She punctuated her exclamations by running over to him and trying to beat him over the head with her clog.

Timmy dodged her wild swings and pulled the clog out of her hands. “Katie, how I won isn’t the important thing. We’re necromancers, we don’t play fair. Standing around and making threatening speeches while flinging absurd amounts of magic everywhere is something people do in fairy tales and legends. In real life, if your opponent turns their back on you, then you kick them in the back – or whack them with a shovel.”

“I guess.” Katie covered her face with her hands. “But we are not telling the other necromancers about it. We’d never live it down. If they have another meeting, we’ll use your story. You beat her after an epic battle. I am not going to be the apprentice of someone who goes around bashing people over the head with a shovel when their backs are turned.” She glared at Gerald, and her shadows took on the shape of massive jaws filled with long teeth. “You won’t tell anyone what really happened, will you?”

Gerald held his hands up in surrender. “If anyone asks, the battle was truly spectacular.”

“Now that we’ve settled that, there’s one more thing I need to do.” Timmy pulled Katie into a headlock and poked her in the cheek. “Are you some kind of idiot? You almost got killed three or four times during the battle. I don’t have the time to train another apprentice!”

Katie squirmed away and shook her fist at him. “Are you trying to give me brain damage? If you do that again, you’ll have to file your own tax return next year!”

Timmy folded his arms over his chest. His voice hardened a fraction, and Katie snapped to attention. It wasn’t often that he lectured her, so she’d learned to listen when he did. “Katie, try to be more careful next time. If Gerald had been any slower with those shields of his, I would be looking for a new apprentice. And, as troublesome as you are, I’ve gotten used to having you around.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll be more careful.” The two rats on either side of her brandished their weapons. Normally, Timmy would have been annoyed at how they always took her side, but they’d proven their worth today. Katie clasped her hands behind her back and smirked. “Admit it, master, you’d be upset if I died.”

“Of course I’d be upset. I’d have to do my own paperwork, you brat.” Timmy glanced back at the elf. Gerald had finished putting on all the restraints. With that many magic and strength suppressors on, they should be able to handle the elf. “Good work, Gerald.”

The inspector nodded and then took a long look around. His eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. His right eye began to twitch furiously, and Timmy wondered if he was about to have a stroke. That was the last thing he needed. “The forest!”

“Are you okay?” Timmy went over to support Gerald in case he keeled over. Neither he nor Katie had healing magic, and the healing potions they carried were better suited for treating battlefield injuries than strokes. “If you’re having a stroke, do you think you could, I don’t know, hold it until we get back to civilisation?”

“The forest!” Gerald shook his head back and forth, and Timmy turned to follow his gaze. Well, wasn’t that interesting? The elf’s magic had set a good portion of the forest nearby alight. “The elves are going to write to the Council and then… then the Council is going to kill me!”

“It’s not that bad –”

“Not that bad?” Gerald’s laughter was tinged with hysteria. “The elves wanted us to get her out of here so that she didn’t burn more of the forest down. Now look at it! It could take days to put the fire out.” He summoned a bag and breathed out of it. “I think I’m going to pass out.”

“Calm down.” Timmy patted Gerald on the back. Admittedly, they were at least partially to blame for the whole burning forest thing. But what were they supposed to do, not dodge? No way, Timmy enjoyed living. “If anyone asks, the forest was already like this when we found her. We stopped her from making even more fire.”

Katie nodded. “They’ll believe that. And as long as all three of us say the same thing, it’ll be our word against hers. Besides, once we negotiate with her and get her on our side, it won’t matter too much. The elves will be happy to be rid of her.”

“We hit her with a shovel.” Gerald rounded on Timmy. “No, you hit her with a shovel. How can we negotiate with her after that?”

“You do realise that she was trying to kill us only a few minutes ago, right?”

“What if you’d killed her?” Gerald looked like he was about to puke. “She’d be dead, the forest would be on fire, and the Council would throw the lot of us into prison!”

“But she’s not dead, only a bit of the forest is on fire, and so we’re fine. We’re all fine.” Timmy shook Gerald by the shoulders. “Calm down. Everything is going to be okay.”

Katie wasn’t normally one to enjoy other people panicking – okay, perhaps she was, but only a little. But it was too funny watching the two adults make idiots of themselves. Her master was right. The elf hadn’t given them any other choice but to knock her unconscious. Nevertheless, she couldn’t resist throwing some wood onto the bonfire that was Gerald’s rapid descent into panic. She knelt beside the elf and pretended to check her breathing. “Wait… I’m not sure she’s breathing anymore. I think you hit her too hard, master.”

“What?” Gerald practically threw Katie out of the way as he bent down to check if the elf was breathing. “Wait – Katie! She is breathing.”

Katie sniggered. “I’m sorry.” She wasn’t. “But my master is right. What’s done is done. We’ve got all those restraints on her, so we can at least try to negotiate with her when she wakes up.” She shuddered as she remembered how close she’d come to death against the elf. “Do you have any more restraints? She is very powerful, and if she gets free…”

“You do have a point there.” Gerald summoned a book. It was a voluminous tome covering all of the Council’s many rules and regulations concerning the treatment and restraint of potentially hostile prisoners. Reading through all of the legal gobbledygook soothed him. He stretched out one hand and some rope appeared, along with more magic and strength suppressors. “You can use these.” Rembrandt and Monet grabbed hold of the rope. In no time at all, they had the elf trussed up, and it wasn’t much longer before they had all the suppressors in place too. “Right, uh, nice work you two.”

“Rembrandt and Monet are very good at what they do.” Katie picked up Rembrandt and rubbed his back. “I’m glad they weren’t badly hurt. Rembrandt should be fine with a day’s rest and some healing potion, and Monet got away with barely more than a scratch.” Her stomach rumbled, and she blushed. “Now that we’ve got her tied up, we should leave. We can’t stay out here all day, and I need to eat something. Using a lot of magic always makes me hungry.” Rembrandt nudged her cheek with his nose. “Yes, we’ll get you something to eat too.”

“That sounds like a fine idea.” Some of the panic returned to Gerald’s eyes. “I also need time to think about what I’m going to tell my superiors. My report is going to end up at least a hundred pages long.”

Timmy shuddered. “You have to write a report?”

“Of course I do.” Gerald looked absolutely scandalised at the very thought of not filling out reams of paperwork. “Although I will have to do some creative editing.”

“You mean lying?”

Gerald sighed. “Yes.”

“At least you get paid to do paperwork.” Katie’s shadows drifted toward Timmy. “My master makes me do his paperwork for free.”

* * *

The elf awakened shortly after dusk. They’d made camp several miles away from the ridge in a clearing close to a river. Timmy had carried the elf back to their horses since Gerald’s back had mysteriously begun to pain him and Katie had spent all of her time fussing over Rembrandt and Monet. Honestly, it wasn’t like they’d been seriously hurt. And they were ninja rats. Weren’t they supposed to be tough? Katie could have used her shadows to carry the elf part of the way instead of leaving Timmy to do it alone.

For dinner, Timmy and the rats had cooked some more stew and a pair of rabbits that had come courtesy of Gerald’s magic. All five of them dug into the food with gusto. Heavy use of magic always left a mage hungry. The smell of the food must have woken the elf. Her stomach gave an ominous and utterly inelegant rumble, and both rats reached for their weapons. They’d tied the elf to a tree, but Rembrandt hopped onto her shoulder with his sword held a hair’s breadth from her throat. They couldn’t be too careful, and the rat was good at holding a grudge.

The elf’s eyes opened, and Timmy found himself pinned by one of the most ferocious glares he’d ever seen. It was amazing how much rage the elf could convey with only her eyes. It was as if she was trying to set him alight with sheer willpower. Luckily for him, however, the magic suppressors were still in place. Otherwise, she probably could have set him on fire with a glare. Even so, the raw menace she managed to radiate was enough to make all of them take a big step back. Gerald even summoned a frying pan, which Katie was only too happy to grab with her shadows. On the elf’s shoulder, Rembrandt jabbed her with one paw and squeaked as threateningly as he could.

“Okay.” Timmy took a deep breath and put on his most serious expression. It was up to him to take charge. Gerald had buried his nose in another folder, and Katie had decided to use him as a human shield while she brandished the frying pan at the elf. “Here’s what we’re going to do elf: we’re going to negotiate.”

The elf said nothing, but her amber eyes took on a razor’s edge. Despite the fact that she was tied to a tree and bound with enough magic and strength suppressors to put down a magically talented elephant, her smile was distinctly predatory. Her voice, when she finally spoke, was silk and honey, smooth and sweet – at least, that’s how it would have sounded if it weren’t for all the danger and carefully leashed fury in every word. “I’m not in the habit of negotiating with people who hit me over the head with a shovel.”

“I told you.” Gerald waved the folder at Timmy. “We’re doomed!”

“Calm down.” Timmy scratched the back of his head. “To be fair, you were trying to kill us. You didn’t give us a chance to talk, so I didn’t have a choice when it came to the whole hitting you with a shovel thing.”

“You must be another one of those bounty hunters out to make a name for yourself.” The elf sneered and bared her teeth. Timmy leaned back. She acted more like a troll than an elf. “Although I’ve never a met a bounty hunter who brings rats and children to a fight.”

The child in question gave her most threatening growl, and the two rats made sounds of outrage. That did absolutely nothing to help their cause. Katie was too cute for her own good, and Rembrandt and Monet were hardly intimidating either.

“I didn’t have a choice about that either.” Timmy wasn’t getting anywhere. It was time for Gerald to try. He grabbed the older man and pushed him at the elf. “You see, we’re here on behalf of the Council, and Gerald is in charge.”

“What?” Gerald gaped. “I am not in charge –”

“The Council?” The elf made a disgusted sound and spat on the ground. “What do those limp-dicked bastards want with me? Or did those pansy-ass elves finally go crying to them for some help after I beat the crap out of their most recent search party? Bah! Cowards and fools, the lot of them.”

Timmy and Gerald stared, and even Rembrandt and Monet were taken aback. Elves, as a rule, did not swear. True, they often enjoyed insulting people, but they usually did it quite poetically, and they certainly didn’t refer to the esteemed members of the Council as –

“Limp-dicked?” Katie burst out laughing. “Gerald, can you summon a notepad for me? I need to write this down.” To Timmy’s horror, Gerald handed Katie a notepad. Now, there would be no stopping her. She’d be saying that for a week. Another round of giggles had Katie using her shadows to keep on her feet. “Pansy-ass?”

“Katie, language.” Timmy clamped one hand down on Gerald’s shoulder and squeezed. Hard. “Gerald, be a good man and tell the elf why we’re here.”

Gerald did. He also threw in maps, diagrams, puppets, and one talking parrot. Timmy wondered why he hadn’t gotten such a snazzy presentation. He also wondered if Gerald realised how bizarre his magic was. Storing books, shields, and dead rabbits was one thing, but a living parrot? That was weird – and scary. Could Gerald lock a person away with his magic?

To say that the elf was unimpressed would have been a massive understatement. It was like saying that Timmy’s shovel was pretty good. No, his shovel was completely awesome. The elf took a long, long look at them – the bureaucrat with a parrot perched on his shoulder and a stack of charts and puppets in his arms, the necromancer with a shovel, and the girl with two ninja rats – and almost passed out from laughing too much.

“Is this supposed to be some kind of joke? Or am I dead? This must be what hell is like, listening to you idiots prattle on.” The elf laughed until tears ran down her cheeks. “So, let me get this straight. You’re trying to make a team out of wanted criminals to help win a war that hasn’t started yet? And you really think that’s going to work, that we’re not going to kill each other the first chance we get?” She snorted. “Either you’re crazy, or you’ve eaten too many mushrooms. Some of the ones you can find in the forest are very trippy.” She bared her teeth. “I take back what I said earlier. The Council aren’t limp-dicked idiots – they’re senile, old bastards.”

“I was hoping you’d react more positively.” Gerald thumbed through a negotiating handbook that he’d summoned with his magic. There was nothing in it about dealing with ornery elves that were overly fond of fire. But as scared as he was of the elf, and he was very scared, he didn’t appreciate people making light of the Council or their decisions. Timmy had agreed to hear him out, and he’d thought the elf would do the same. The elves, after all, were supposed to be the most thoughtful and reasonable of Everton’s people.

“Hold on a second.” Timmy let his expression harden. They had a mission to complete, and Gerald hadn’t made any progress with the elf. “Let me handle this.” He caught the elf’s gaze and held it. “We were sent here to negotiate with you. The deal that Gerald is offering you is a good one. I suggest you take it. If you don’t, we can always give you to the other elves. I’m sure they’ll be happy to incarcerate you for the rest of your very, very long life. You could be in prison for centuries.”

The elf chuckled, and something dark and deadly flickered through her eyes. “I was wondering when you’d finally start acting like a proper necromancer instead of a bumbling fool. It’s nice to know you’ve got a spine to go with that shovel.” She nodded at Gerald. “Before I agree to anything, I have some questions for you. I want to know exactly what I’ll be getting in exchange for joining this team of yours.” Gerald opened his mouth to reply, but she talked right over him. “You included a lot in that speech, but it was still short on details. I want those details – all of them.”

The elf peppered Gerald with questions for an hour. She was worse than a cranky merchant with a shipload of perishable goods. When she was done, she still hadn’t agreed to a thing.

“But Everton is in danger!” Gerald flapped his arms about. Luckily, the parrot was already gone, sent back to wherever it was that Gerald sent things with his magic. “Surely, you care about your country?”

The elf shrugged as best she could. “Everton has never given a damn about me, and I’ve never given a damn about it.” She chuckled, and her lips curved up into a mocking smile. “You have all those files on me, but you don’t even know why the elves tossed me into the wilderness in the first place. Set a few buildings on fire – not on purpose, mind you – and suddenly you’re a homicidal maniac out for blood. You’d think I was the first person to ever struggle with their magic, and you’d think they’d have been more tolerant. They certainly spend a crap load of time praising their virtues to anyone stupid enough to listen. But, no, blow up a building or burn down a tree, and you’re the Evil One, destined to bring doom and calamity upon the world. Seriously, if an evil god had chosen me to strike down the elves, I’d have done it by now.”

“Are we supposed to feel sorry for you?” Timmy asked dryly. He leaned over the elf, careful to keep out of biting range. “Maybe they were wrong to throw you out, but you’ve done a lot of things since then to warrant the way they’ve treated you. Heck, my master, crazy, old codger that he was, admired your talent for destruction.”

The elf made a show of studying her bound hands. “Well, I had to keep occupied somehow.” She glared up. “And don’t you dare feel sorry for me. I don’t want or need your pity. I made my choices, and I stand by those choices. But I wanted you to know that the elves aren’t the saints they claim to be.”

“Are you refusing the deal?” Gerald hated playing hardball, and he wasn’t very good at it, but being reasonable hadn’t worked so far. “Like Timmy said, we could give you back to the elves, but I don’t think they’d imprison you. No, they’d execute you. And you’re right. They aren’t the saints they claim to be. They’ll probably say you were killed trying to escape.”

Timmy patted Gerald on the back. He hadn’t thought the inspector had it in him.

“I didn’t say I was refusing.” The elf growled. “But I want to make sure that I understand what I’m signing up for. I need to know that once this whole war thing is done, once Everton is safe, I get to walk away. No questions asked. No warrants out for my arrest. Nothing. I want to be completely free.”

“That’s the deal.” Gerald frowned. “But where will you go?”

Timmy was curious too. He’d never met an elf so fond of fire, and he’d met only a handful that wanted to leave the forest.

“I don’t know yet, and I don’t really care. I just want to go somewhere else.” The elf cast a baleful glare at the forest around them. “I’ve spent years living in this damn forest. I’m sick of the trees.” The trees around them gave a low, ominous rumble and shook their branches back and forth. “See? This place hates me, it always has. I’ll find somewhere else. Maybe I’ll go live in the desert. Who knows, I might spend a few years with the dwarves. Those short bastards are rough around the edges, but they do like fire. I could even catch a ship somewhere and find myself a nice beach. I don’t really care where I go, as long as it’s not here. But I’d prefer to go without a big target on my back.”

“Fair enough.” Timmy and Gerald shared a look. He doubted they’d get anything better than that out of her. Perhaps she’d warm up to them in time although he wasn’t going to bet any money on it. “So, what is your name? The elves call you by your title, but that’s a bit long for everyday conversation.”

“My name?” The elf laughed and then made a series of bizarre sounds: chirps, clicks, chicken noises, and some eagle-like screeching. They all had to cover their ears. “That is my name.”

“Seriously?” Timmy clutched at his head. His ears were still ringing. “I was under the impression that all of the languages of the elves were quite beautiful.”

“Most of them are. But a long, long, long time ago, elves were the ones who taught animals their speech. The very oldest forms of my language include the languages taught to beasts. All elves have magic, and we don’t usually get our real name until we show it. When my people saw my magic, they decided that our more modern – and pretty – speech was too soft for what I was. They gave me a name in that ancient tongue, the language of the wild. It means, roughly speaking, Crazy Woman Who Burns Things A Lot And Blows Up Trees.”

Katie made a face. “No wonder she doesn’t like the other elves.”

The elf chuckled. “Yes, they’re a big bunch of bastards.”

“Okay…” Timmy winced. They were not going to call her that. They needed something that was less likely to drive her into a homicidal rage. “Do you have another name that we could use, maybe something we can actually pronounce?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” The elf pursed her lips. “But it’s been a long time since I’ve used it. Call me… Avraniel.”

“That is much easier to say.” Katie fiddled with her glasses. “Does it mean something too? I’ve read a lot about elves, but I’ve never heard that name before.”

“Of course you read a lot. You seem just the type.” Avraniel sized up the girl. Katie wasn’t very large, but those shadows of hers were no joke. Those two rats of hers were also ridiculously skilled. She might even have found it funny – she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen actual ninja rats – if it had happened to someone else. “It doesn’t mean anything. I didn’t like the name my people gave me, so I made up one myself. I like the way it sounds.”

“Oh.” Katie shrugged and reached down to pet Rembrandt on the head. The rats didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. In their culture, people would have prized a fearsome name like the elf’s original one. “If it helps, I would’ve been happier if my parents named me Emily.”

“How wonderful.” Timmy sniggered at the outraged expression on Katie’s face. That was a lot of sarcasm. “Right,” the elf said. “Now that we’re all super friends and everything, why don’t you untie me and get these suppressors off?”

Timmy was in no hurry to get those off her. Elves were naturally stronger and faster than humans. “I’m not sure we can do that until you agree to our terms.”

“Yes, yes, I agree.” The elf fidgeted and pulled at her restraints. “And, yes, I do swear by all the gods of the elves and all the other gods that I don’t have the time to name, especially the vengeful ones. They can all strike me dead if I break my word. Now, untie me unless you want to see me piss myself.”

As creatures with a far closer bond to nature and the gods than humans, elves could not afford to make such oaths lightly. Timmy nodded at Gerald, but the other man shook his head and busied himself with some paperwork he’d procured with his magic. Coward. He was leaving the decision up to Timmy. Damn. He wasn’t normally a fan of tying people up. It was usually easier to have a dozen of his zombies watch over them. “Gerald, I don’t suppose that you can get us a chamber pot with your magic?”

“I think I can do that.” Gerald reached behind his back and came up with a chamber pot. It made Timmy even more curious to know what else he could dig up.

“Thanks.” Timmy put the chamber pot down in front of Avraniel. “Here. You can use this.”

Avraniel glared. Timmy could have sworn the temperature was rising. “In case you haven’t noticed, idiot, I’m still tied to a tree. How exactly do you expect me to use that? And before you ask, I am not going to contort myself into some stupid position so that I can squat over that thing like an animal.”

“Are you sure that you couldn’t maybe… possibly… I guess not.” The elf was trying to kill him with her eyes again, and she was doing a good job of it. “Come on, it’s a chamber pot. You’ve spent years on the run. I know how camping works. You probably dug a hole and went in that. How is this any worse?”

“I am not using that thing in front of you three.” Avraniel’s voice brooked no disagreement.

“We could turn around.” Timmy offered her his most charming smile. “I promise we won’t look.”

“Master!” Katie gaped. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

Timmy turned to look at his apprentice so fast that he almost broke his neck. Did she have to pick now, of all times, to develop a sense of feminine modesty?

“You hit me with a shovel when my back was turned, you jack ass.” Avraniel’s eyes narrowed. “That means you’re sneaky. I bet you’re a pervert too. I have no doubt that you’ll turn around while I’m using the chamber pot.” She shook her head and gave Katie a pitying look. “Maybe I should be worried about that girl over there. Who knows what kind of weird things you do in your spare time?”

“Stop calling me ‘girl’. My name is Katie.” Katie glared back at the elf. “And my master might have some weird hobbies, but he’s not that kind of weirdo. He’s a good weirdo.”

Timmy threw his hands up in the air. Oh, Katie, what a lacklustre defence of his character she’d made. “If you must know, Avraniel, she’s like a daughter to me – a really, really crazy daughter.” He leaned to the side as Rembrandt shot past him with his sword drawn.

“Hey!”

“It’s true. Now, tell your rats to stop trying to kill me.” Rembrandt and Monet were all but foaming at the mouth with the urge to unleash righteous vengeance upon him – either that, or they had rabies.

“Just untie her already.” Katie sighed. “She can go find some bushes or go down to the river. We can leave the magic and strength suppressors on. If she tries anything, the rats and I can handle her.” She jabbed one finger at Avraniel. “And don’t even think of tampering with those suppressors. I’m not afraid to grab my master’s shovel and whack you over the head with it again.”

“You’re a scary brat, you know that?” The elf huffed. “Fine. Do what the girl says. Let her watch me with those rats of hers. I’ll cooperate.”

* * *

Katie was completely convinced that the two men were idiots. True, her master had proven his worth in a fight, and his shovel was awesome. Gerald hadn’t even panicked like she’d feared he would. But really, they wanted an elf – an unfriendly, female elf who was also one of the most dangerous criminals in the world – to urinate in a chamber pot while they turned their backs. Were they insane? She was only ten years old, and even she knew that was a stupid idea. Honestly, there were times when she wondered if she should strike out and try to make it on her own. She was sure that she could establish her own thriving kingdom of darkness before she hit fifteen.

It hadn’t been pleasant fighting Avraniel. She’d almost been melted, blown up, and burned several times, but Katie had expected that. Anyone strong enough to kick the crap out of her master – even if he had been younger then – and his master was no slouch in the fighting department. Her master was a survivor, and his master was supposed to have been a monster. The fact that her master was relatively normal apart from the occasional bout of idiocy spoke volumes about what kind of man he was. It was what she liked most about Timmy, that and his tendency to indulge her hobbies. Provided that she wasn’t trying to assassinate him, he didn’t mind what she got up to in her free time.

“Here.” Katie pointed at some bushes a short distance from camp. Shadowy claws extended from a few of the trees to dig a hole. “You can use that hole.” She gestured at her two rats, which had taken up positions nearby. “If you try anything funny, we’ll stop you. It won’t be pleasant.”

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.” Avraniel moved behind the bushes and squatted over the hole. “I’m being bossed around by a little girl and her pet rats. So, how did a girl like you end up with a dumb ass like Timmy? And seriously, what kind of name is Timmy for a necromancer?”

“Call him what you like, he still got you with his shovel.”

“Yes, he is a tricky bastard. But who uses a shovel?” Avraniel went about her business. “I don’t care if it’s a magical shovel, it’s still embarrassing. I’m a living legend – the elf equivalent of the bogeyman – and he beat me with a shovel. Damn it.” The elf cursed a few more times in a language Katie couldn’t understand. “Anyway, you didn’t answer my question. How did you end up with him?”

“I’m a necromancer.” Katie didn’t think it would do any harm to share. If Avraniel were going to join their team, she’d find out sooner or later. Perhaps sharing might even help win the elf over. “There aren’t a lot of people willing to teach people like me.”

“Yes, you necromancers are even less popular than pyromaniac elves.” The elf waved, and Katie tossed her a gourd of water to wash with. “How did your magic awaken? It’s probably something horribly traumatic. It always is with necromancers. It’s why you’re such a cheerful bunch.”

Magic often awakened under pressure. Katie’s had. “A wagon ran over my dog, Patches. I loved him, so I tried to fix him. It worked, and my mom shipped me off to my master a few weeks later.”

“People are always afraid of what they don’t understand.” The elf continued to fiddle with her clothing. “How about your other magic, that thing you do with your shadows? Does your master know where it comes from?”

“My family was poor. We never had enough candles.” Katie thought back to her room at the castle, the one she always lit with more candles than she needed. “My shadows came in handy.”

The elf’s lips curled. “That’s nice, but you’re forgetting something, girl. Magic might awaken under pressure, but it also runs in families. Does your master know who the last person to have your magic was? It’s been a while, but I fought a man with magic like yours. He was very interesting.”

“I don’t know.” Katie fiddled with her robes. She was lying. Her master’s library was very large, and she knew all about her own legendarily unpleasant ancestor. Next to her, Rembrandt unsheathed his sword. He could feel her agitation, and it made him angry.

“Funny how that rodent sticks up for you. That man I fought, the man with magic like yours, he killed almost his entire family. His grandfather did the same thing too, and his grandfather before him. I do believe their magic drove them mad. Did your parents know when they sent you to your master? Were they afraid of what you’d do? Or have you already done it?”

A rustle came from another set of bushes as Timmy stepped out into the open. It wasn’t often that Katie saw him genuinely angry, but he was angry now. His brown eyes burned into Avraniel’s, and his hands were wrapped tightly around his shovel. He stomped over to the elf and grabbed her by the scruff of her tunic. “That’s enough. Katie is my apprentice, and I trust her.”

“That’s wonderful for the both of you.” The elf growled. “But would you mind letting go of me so that I can pull my trousers back up.”

Out of reflex, Timmy looked down. From his reaction, the elf wasn’t lying. His eyes widened, and he stumbled back, one hand over his face. “By all means, fix your trousers.”

Katie snickered. She could always count on her master to put a smile on her face, even if it was by accident. Still, she couldn’t help the warmth filling her chest. He trusted her.

“Hurry up,” Timmy said. “We need to get back to camp.” He moved his hands away from his face. “Watch what you say, Avraniel. I meant what I said. Katie is my apprentice. Her welfare is my personal responsibility.”

The elf waved one hand at them, and Katie and her rats directed their most terrifying glares in her direction. Naturally, she was completely unaffected. Still wary of the elf’s intentions as she walked back toward them, Katie found herself drifting over to Timmy’s side. She wasn’t going to do something as childish as hug him for comfort, but she did feel safer around him. However, she could ask Rembrandt and Monet to go easier on him. They could always prank the elf instead. That would show her.

When they bedded down for the night, the elf still had her magic and strength suppressors on. They left her untied, but they made sure to keep a watch on her at all times. Katie didn’t think she’d give them any trouble. She’d sworn on the gods, and the gods did not take oath breakers lightly. The gods of the elves, in particular, despised those who broke their word. Katie pretended to sleep and waited until the elf’s breathing evened out. It was the middle of the night, and she had two rats that could turn invisible. It was perfect.

It was child’s play for her rats – now very much invisible – to creep into the elf’s bedroll and nibble on her toes. The elf gave a wild shriek as the rats clambered up her legs and poked her with their claws. The others were up on their feet in an instant, and it was the easiest thing in the world for Katie to trip Avraniel over with one of her shadows. The rats reappeared next to Katie’s bedroll, doing their best to appear innocent.

“You!” Avraniel’s eyes glowed golden, and for a split-second, Katie was convinced that she was about to die a horrible, fiery death. Before the others could intervene, the elf pulled her into a headlock and… started to ruffle her hair. “That wasn’t half bad, girl. There might be hope for you yet.” She let Katie go and then smiled toothily. “But if you or your rats ever try something like that again, I’ll set you on fire and roast those rodents of yours. Understand?”

Katie, Rembrandt, and Monet gulped and nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. I don’t want to join a team of spineless cowards, but no one messes with me.”

* * *

“So, cretins, what’s our next mission?” Ever since Katie had pulled her prank, Avraniel had alternated between teasing the poor girl and offering what she considered to be sage advice, most of which was about how to kill or burn her enemies. Right now, the elf was leaping from tree to tree as the others rode below at a more sedate pace. The fact that she could do that with her strength suppressors on was a sobering reminder of how dangerous she was. It was also, according to the elf, the preferred mode of transport for elves in the forest. “I’m assuming that recruiting me was one of your missions, so what’s next for our legendary team?”

“Well.” Gerald fumbled and produced a scroll. He’d yet to get over the elf’s heavy use of sarcasm. “Ah, here it is. There’s a certain dragon that has made its home north of here. We need to deal with it.”

Avraniel jumped out of a tree, swung off a branch, and then landed behind Katie on the girl’s horse. Katie grumbled, but she didn’t have any way of getting rid of the elf without a fight. Rembrandt and Monet turned to keep a wary eye on Avraniel.

“Let me see that.” Avraniel grabbed the scroll. “Ah, they want us to take down old Black Scales.”

“Black Scales?” Any dragon old and powerful enough to earn a nickname was guaranteed to be trouble. Timmy shuddered. The last time he’d fought a dragon with a nickname, it had taken him an entire day to put it down and cost him thousands of his zombies after one of his rivals had unleashed it on his castle. Luckily, that had been before Katie had come to him. She would have done something horrible to him if her room had gotten damaged.

“They call him Black Scales because that’s what colour his scales are.” Avraniel laughed and ruffled Katie’s hair, a habit she’d developed expressly to annoy the girl. “He’s a big, old bastard, a real tough son of a bitch. He’s one of the few things in the world the elves hate more than me. He breathes fire like you wouldn’t believe – black fire that’s as much magical as it is hot.”

“Wouldn’t white fire be hotter?” Katie asked.

Avraniel ruffled Katie’s hair again and yanked her hand back just in time to avoid a bite from Monet. “It is magical fire, girl. It doesn’t have to make sense. But why are they after him now? Did he burn down another village, maybe eat another king?”

“He’s burnt down another two villages, actually.” Gerald’s face took on a rather grim look. Timmy wasn’t sure if it was the loss of life or all the associated paperwork that bothered him more. “He hasn’t eaten any kings lately, but he has eaten a count and one baron. Several centuries ago, he also ate one of the members of the Council who was on holiday here. Unfortunately, we don’t have much information about him. Almost no one survives meeting him. Is there anything you can tell us?”

“Wonderful.” Timmy took a deep breath. If only there was a wall nearby for him to bang his head on. They’d barely managed to beat Avraniel, and now Gerald wanted them to take on a dragon. “We don’t even know much about him, and you want us to fight him? Sure, he burns down villages, eats members of the nobility, and ate someone from the Council, but couldn’t we leave him alone? Why not move all of the villages out of his domain?”

“That might work.” Avraniel’s amber eyes gleamed, and magic rustled against the suppressors that she still wore. “Dragons are territorial monsters. He’s got a big range, but it’s his range. He won’t wander far unless it’s to find a mate or pick a fight.”

“The Council is worried that our enemies might use him against us.” Gerald summoned a book. “Dragons have been used against Everton on several occasions. In each case, the damage was considerable. The Council wants to rule out that possibility. If possible, they also want you, Timmy, to bring him back on our side after he’s dead.”

“That’s assuming we can kill him in the first place.” Timmy rolled his eyes. “It’s also clear that the Council doesn’t understand necromancy. Katie, why don’t you explain to Gerald here why his suggestion is a no go?”

“Of course.” Katie went into lecturing mode. “Dragons are extremely powerful magical creatures, and their souls are often tightly bound to their bodies. Bringing them back using necromancy is possible, but sometimes they come back with their wills intact. A dragon as old and powerful as Black Scales is almost certainly going to come back knowing who we are and what we did. That won’t end well. Our best bet is to split the body apart and sell off the remains. That will help break the bond between his spirit and his remains. It should also make us a very handy profit.” She paused. “And I’ve been meaning to redecorate the castle. It’s kind of gloomy.”

“I see.” Gerald made several notes in one of his notebooks. “The Council did give us leave to sell his remains if we couldn’t bring him back. We can share the profits.”

“You keep saying ‘we’.” Avraniel rubbed her hands together gleefully. Timmy studied her. Interesting, she was greedy and a pyromaniac. “Does that include me?”

“You get to keep 15% of the profits.”

“Make it 30%?” Avraniel growled.

“20%.”

“Give me 25%, hand another 25% to the necromancer, and give the other 50% to the Council, unless you want a share.” Avraniel folded her arms over her chest. “Agree to that, and I’ll help you kill your dragon.” She caught the disbelieving looks from Katie and Timmy. “What? I agreed to help you, but I need to have some more money in my retirement fund if I ever want to buy my own tropical island.” She paused. “Why not try and negotiate with Black Scales? If the Council is so worried about a war, he’d be a great help.”

“We’ve tried. We offered him a mountain of gold the last time. He ate our negotiators.”

“That does put a dampener on things.” Avraniel chuckled. “He always was an angry bastard. By the way, when are you going to take these suppressors off me? You do realise that I can’t fight a dragon like this.”

“When we’re closer.” Timmy was fairly sure that she wasn’t going to betray them, but she had tried to stab him with a spoon during breakfast when he’d laughed about her spilling her stew.

“Oh, what’s the matter?” Avraniel sneered. “Did the wooden spoon scare the big, bad necromancer?”

Timmy glanced at Gerald. “Do you think I can hit her with my shovel again? We could always wake her up when we get closer.”

“No. We’re trying to win her trust. I don’t think hitting her with a shovel will help.”

“I’m right here, you know.” Avraniel took to the trees again. “And if I wanted to kill you, I could still do it. The bureaucrat can’t fight his way out of a paper bag, and that shovel of yours isn’t so great if I know it’s coming. As for the girl and her rats… I have my ways.”

“Anyway,” Gerald said. “It would also be breaking the rules if I let you hit her.”

“I’ve read the rules –”

“No, you made me read them,” Katie said.

“There’s nothing against us practicing with each other.” Timmy nodded sagely. “I’d be practicing my shovel technique, and I’d only hit her a little bit.”

Katie muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like ‘idiots’. Avraniel laughed. Let Timmy do his worst. He wouldn’t get her with that shovel again. No way.

“If bludgeoning each other isn’t an option, what can you tell us about the dragon?” Timmy asked.

“Black Scales is old.” The elf dropped back into the saddle behind Katie. Monet tried to poke her in the eye with his grappling hook but missed. “As in very, very old. But that works in our favour. He’s well past his prime although he’s still incredibly dangerous. He’s big, sure, but he’s not as strong or as fast as he once was, and his vision isn’t nearly as good as it used to be. Think of him as a crotchety old man, only he’s giant, flies, has incredibly tough armour, and breathes fire.”

“So… we’ve got a chance?”

“Not much of one, but it is better than it would have been three or four centuries ago. We’ve still got another few days before we reach the edge of his domain. They call it the Forest of Woe. I can tell you more on the way.”

“The Forest of Woe?” Timmy hadn’t been this far north before. Few humans had. “Doesn’t that sound delightful? What can you tell us about that?”

“Ah, the Forest of Woe.” Avraniel grinned and reached over to ruffle Katie’s hair again. This time, however, Rembrandt was waiting with his sword drawn. She smirked at the rat and then pulled her hand back. “Imagine a forest of dark, towering trees, a place where the reign of a very angry dragon with corrupting magic has lasted so long that no one in their right mind lives or travels there anymore. Imagine a place where all the animals are a little too big and have a little too many teeth and claws, and all of them want nothing more than to rip you limb from limb in the most horrific way imaginable. Can you do that?” The others nodded, and she laughed. “Now multiply that by a million.”

“Woah…” Katie said.

“Yes, woe.” Avraniel patted Rembrandt on the head and leaned to the side to avoid a swipe of his sword. “So keep your guard up. You’ll know when we get there. Believe me, there’s no missing it.”

Avraniel was right.

When they finally reached the outskirts of the Forest of Woe, the reaction from the others was, as Avraniel had predicted, one of awe.

“Woah.”

“Yes, woe.”

Katie scowled at the elf. “No, I mean… woah.”

“Whatever.”

The trees here towered over even the other trees of the forest, most of them rising up hundreds of feet into the air. They were even thicker too, and their branches were heavy with large, misshapen leaves that were a sickly brown colour. Their trunks were dark, almost black, but they hadn’t been burnt. It was like the shadows themselves were clinging to the trees. Even the sun was different, weaker and a strange orange, and the constant scurrying of things in the shadows did not bode well for them. At their feet, the snow was a dirty grey, mottled with brown. An unpleasant smell filled the air, not unlike rotting flesh, and the few tufts of grass that poked out of the snow were grey, twisted stalks of brittle material.

Timmy was not the least bit happy about being here. The whole place felt more like a graveyard than a forest. He’d also caught a glimpse of something watching them from the shadows, something with a vaguely lupine head, but it was far too large and had far too many legs. Above them, something with wings fluttered past. It was about the size of an eagle, but instead of feathers, he saw the gleam of scales and an arachnid carapace.

“Okay, we’re here. Where is the dragon?” Timmy could make out the sky, a vast carpet of steel grey, through a massive gap in the tree line. Something big had come this way, tearing up trees and tossing them aside like matchsticks. The earth here was scorched, and the smell of rotting flesh was even stronger than before. That feeling of corruption, of something utterly and completely wrong, was also present. The sky above them darkened, and it began to rain. Wonderful.

“There is a mountain range north of here. Black Scales lives there. It’s several more days journey. But if we hurry –” Avraniel trailed off as a titanic, winged shape tore through one of the clouds. Her eyes narrowed, and then her face paled. Steam billowed across the horizon. “Oh crap.”

“Oh crap? What does that mean?” Timmy grabbed his shovel and tried to follow Avraniel’s gaze, but his eyes weren’t nearly as keen. “What does that mean?”

“It means that the old bastard we’re here to kill is on his way right now. I don’t know how he noticed us, but we’ve got a couple of minutes, tops, before he gets here.”

It took a moment for her words to sink in. Then Timmy said what everyone else was thinking. “Well… crap.”

Crap was indeed the best way to put it. Timmy had seen many dragons over the years, most of them dead. But none of them had approached the sheer size of the behemoth tearing toward them. Black Scales had to be at least five hundred feet long, all black scales, burning red eyes, and an aura of choking, mind-breaking malevolence that made it difficult to even breathe and rotted all the foliage nearby.

“Please tell me that you have a plan.” Katie’s shadows stirred restlessly, and the rats on her shoulders trembled. “Otherwise, we’re about to die horribly, and I really, really don’t want to die horribly.”

“Maybe he hasn’t actually seen us,” Timmy said. “We could be overreacting.” Naturally, the dragon chose that exact moment to bank toward them and roar. “Never mind. First things first – run!”

They didn’t need to be told twice. Black Scales hurtled overhead, and there was a sound like every hurricane in the world put together before everything caught fire. Flame the colour of pitch and hotter than the sun poured down from the sky. Timmy urged his horse into a wild gallop through the trees. A quick look behind him told him all he needed to know. The dragon’s fire was impossibly hot, simply obliterating everything it touched. The concussive force of it tore up the earth and sent up a shower of molten rock and stone.

Katie’s horse galloped at full speed as she did her best to hold on. Nearby, Gerald was also riding for his life as Avraniel bounded madly from tree to tree.

“Get these damn suppressors off me!”

“Katie,” Gerald shouted. “Cut them off.”

Katie’s shadows flicked out. She missed on her first few attempts before finally cutting off the strength and magic suppressors. In a flash of movement, the elf leapt off into the trees – in the opposite direction to the rest of them. Timmy spat a curse as the dragon banked over them again. The wind of his passage was enough to throw them off their horses, and the animals bolted for freedom.

“Damn it.” Timmy clutched at his shoulder. He’d definitely done something to it, but there was no time to worry about it now. “Run! Run!”

Gerald glanced over his shoulder, and the terrified expression on his face before he tripped and slid down a hill was all the warning Timmy needed. Black Scales was right there, his cavernous maw opened to swallow them whole as he dove low to the ground. There was no way he could dodge, and he wasn’t about to leave Katie to die. So he did the only thing he could think of. He grabbed Katie and drove his shovel into the ground. The earth lurched upward and hurled them up onto the dragon’s snout.

For a second, he could only stare into the gigantic eyes of the dragon, each one of them bigger than he was. Then he and Katie did what they did best against a stronger opponent – they fought dirty. Katie stabbed the dragon in the eyes with her shadows while Timmy tried to bash its skull in with his shovel.

“Die, dragon!” Timmy roared. “Taste shovel!” He’d killed a zombie dragon before. This was no different. Oh, whom was he kidding? This was very different. He’d be lucky if he managed to make it through the next ten minutes without getting eaten.

Alas, not even his mighty shovel could crack the dragon’s skull. Dragons were largely impervious to magic, and their scales and bones were extremely durable. He would have broken through solid granite by now, but he wasn’t sure if he’d done anything more than get the dragon angrier. Even the dragon’s eyes weren’t really weak spots since they were covered in a thick film that could stand up to most of Katie’s shadows, and the dragon’s eyelids were covered in the same scales that covered the rest of its body. But all the blinking Black Scales had to do had definitely begun to annoy him. He tossed his head from side to side, and Timmy would have fallen off were it not for one of Katie’s shadows and Monet’s grappling hook. He flashed the rat a smile. He was going to have to give him a raise when they got back, along with whatever he wanted out of the kitchens.

“What now?” Katie shouted. The dragon flicked its head to try and shake them loose, but they clung on for dear life. It was almost impossible to move with the wind and rain rushing past. Meanwhile, the forest beneath them had turned into a vast sea of black fire and steam.

His master would have loved the property damage. Heck, he’d have fanned the flames and then turned all the elves into zombies afterward. Timmy, however, had bigger concerns, like how to deal with the fact that they were several hundred feet off the ground on the snout of an angry dragon. It was tempting to jump, but they wouldn’t survive a fall from this height.

“I’m not sure. I was going to hit it with my shovel some more.”

“I don’t think that’s going to work.”

Katie screamed as her shadows lost their grip on the dragon. Timmy managed to grab her by the edge of her robes and throw her up onto a safer perch.

“Hold on.” Timmy clambered after her using Monet’s grappling hook. “Wait… what’s that?”

There was an enormous flare of magic from the ground below – more magic than Timmy had felt in years. It was also very familiar. It was Avraniel, and the elf was truly flexing her magical muscles. The elf wasn’t holding back anymore, and she’d clearly been holding back against them. A cloud of white flame formed on a hilltop, collapsing and condensing until it was too bright to look at. Then a blast of incredible, searing heat roared up into the sky. It was enough power to vaporise a large hill, enough, maybe, to hurt even a dragon if it was aimed right.

There was only one problem: it was aimed at the dragon’s head, and he and Katie were still on top of the dragon’s head.

“Jump!” Timmy shouted. “Jump now!”

“Are you crazy?” Katie grabbed onto him as both her rats bonked him over the head. Then she noticed the incoming attack. Her eyes widened. “Never mind! Jump, master! Jump!”

“That’s what I said.” Timmy grabbed Katie and jumped.

The attack hit the dragon squarely on the head, and the force of it rocked the sky. Flame billowed outward, white hot, and Timmy and Katie tumbled through the air.

“Wings, Katie.” Timmy wrapped his arms around his apprentice. “Make wings!”

The girl’s magic flared to life, and the darkness inside her sleeves rippled outward to form vast, shadowy wings. “Now what?”

“What do you mean? Flap your wings!”

Katie flapped her newly made wings frantically, but it soon became evident that gravity was, as usual, going to win. “It’s not working, master! We’re still falling.”

“But we are slowing down.” Timmy took a deep breath and gathered his magic. “Strengthen your wings as much as you can, Katie. Try to glide.”

“Right.” Katie poured more magic into her makeshift wings, and they grew larger and more solid. But they were still headed for the ground. “It’s still not working.”

“Brace yourself.” Timmy hurled his shovel toward the area where they were about to land. The hard earth liquefied, and a geyser of mud shot forward to catch them and slow their descent. They tumbled through it, and Katie gave a strangled squawk of outrage. She hated to get her robes dirty. But she still had the presence of mind to dispel her wings and use her shadows to try and grab hold of the trees nearby. It wasn’t enough. Timmy wrapped his arms around her and twisted to take the worst of it.

They hit the muddy ground hard and rolled, kicking up a spray of muck. Timmy hissed as his injured shoulder scraped off a rock, and a stray branch clipped his forehead. They came to a stop beside an old tree stump, and Timmy waited for the world to stop spinning. At least they were alive. He lifted one hand, and his shovel flew toward him.

“When we get back home,” Timmy said, stumbling back to his feet and helping Katie up. “You’re going to practice making wings and flying because I am not doing that again.”

Katie didn’t reply. Instead, she tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at the sky.

He looked up.

Uh oh.

Avraniel’s attack had stunned the dragon. It was falling out of the sky – right toward them.

“Seriously?” Timmy took a few valuable seconds to shake his fist at the sky. “Seriously?” Then it was time to run. “Come on, Katie.”

Katie turned and promptly tripped over her own feet. Timmy cursed. Katie might act like an adult, but she was still a child. She’d used up enough of her magic that she’d begun to feel the effects. She’d never been a fast runner, so there was no way she’d be fast enough now. Timmy muttered one last thing about troublesome apprentices and then grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder, and ran down the hill as fast as his feet could carry him. That still wasn’t fast enough, so he used his shovel to turn the ground ahead of them into a muddy trench. He could slide downhill faster than he could ever run.

Black Scales hit the ground with a tremendous crash as he cracked several hills, smashed dozens of trees, and sent up a plume of steam and ash. Timmy and Katie hit the bottom of the hill and immediately began climbing up the side of the next one to try to get a better view. The dragon was already recovering, shaking his great head back and forth. Avraniel appeared on another hill nearby, and Timmy saw her gather her power for another attack. He didn’t know how many more of those she could use, but he doubted it would be many. That last attack had taken an incredible amount of magic. It had even managed to crack and melt some of the scales on the dragon’s head. The dragon spotted her and swung his head around to unleash a blast of fire at close range.

The trees around the dragon withered and died, and black flame gathered in his jaws. There was a dark flash, and day turned to night. Black fire swept forward, a tidal wave of raw destructive power. He might have cried out – Katie did – but things did not go as he expected. At the heart of the blast, a sphere of white fire remained. Avraniel was still alive.

As the dragon’s flame grew hotter and darker, tendrils of white fire began to creep through the attack. It took Timmy a few moments to understand what he was seeing. Avraniel wasn’t trying to block the attack – she was trying to take control of it. There was a crack of thunder as all the fire suddenly switched from pitch black to blinding white, and then the elf hurled the attack back at the dragon. Black Scales reeled away, crushing everything around him, and Timmy saw Avraniel standing atop the hill, wreathed in white, her eyes pools of molten gold, as strong and solid as any mountain.

“We have to do something.” Timmy lifted his shovel. “I don’t know how much longer she can keep that up.”

Avraniel trembled and fell to one knee, but she continued her attack, narrowing it down, condensing it into a hammer of fire that she smashed into the same point in the dragon’s skull over and over. Yet as the attack faded, the dragon found his feet again. Black Scales gathered his fire once more, and Timmy knew somehow that Avraniel wouldn’t have the strength to seize control of the dragon’s fire a second time. He poured his magic into his shovel. Perhaps he could distract it and –

CRUNCH.

A gigantic stone tower crashed down onto the dragon’s head, pointy end first. It was easily more than a hundred feet long, and Timmy didn’t even want to guess how much it weighed. He could only gape. What was going on? Where had that come from? The answer to his questions came in the form of a massive tear in the space above the dragon, one that shone a million different colours at the same time. On the next hill over, Gerald wheezed and then fainted. He rolled down the slope.

“No way…” Katie tilted her head to one side. The tower had hit the exact spot that Avraniel had been attacking, and its weight had driven it right through the dragon’s skull. Black Scales twitched for a moment, molten blood pouring from the wound as his limbs and wings thrashed, and then he lay still. Was… was he dead?

“Yes… yes, way.” Timmy shook his head in disbelief. “Come on, we need to make sure that Gerald is still alive, and Avraniel isn’t looking too good either.”

“We should hurry.” Katie winced. “Gerald’s lying facedown in the mud.”

“Actually, you wait here. I’ll go check on Gerald and Avraniel. If that dragon so much as twitches, scream or something.”

* * *

It was well after sunset when Gerald finally regained consciousness. They’d made camp under one of the few trees to survive the dragon’s wrath. Avraniel was tired but happy. Apparently killing a dragon had given her a new lease on life. The thought of all the money she’d be getting probably didn’t hurt either. She’d also revised her opinion of them from completely useless to moderately helpful.

“I still can’t believe the bureaucrat killed him.” The elf cackled. “Why didn’t I think of that? All I had to do was drop a tower on his head.”

“We got very lucky.” Timmy glanced at Katie. The girl was stirring their dinner under the watchful eyes of Rembrandt and Monet. How she managed to understand their squeaks, he had no idea. It must have been a magical thing. After all, they could turn invisible. “If you and I hadn’t hit the same spot over and over with our magic, that tower might not have gone through the dragon’s skull. And if Black Scales had lived through that, well, we wouldn’t have lived much longer.”

“You’re right, we did get lucky.” Avraniel’s gaze drifted over to the massive corpse of the dragon. A vile black steam rose from the body. “He could have burned us all to death from long range, but he chose to come down and fight. He underestimated us, and I was able to take control of his fire and sucker punch him with it. That must be why he didn’t notice Gerald’s magic until that tower dropped on his head. You probably did some damage with your shovel too. As dragons move past their prime, their bones grow more and more brittle. In his prime, Black Scales would have murdered the lot of us and laughed off that tower.” She rubbed her hands together and smirked. “He has a lair in the mountains. I could get there in two days. I bet there are all kinds of things there.”

“You do realise that we’re going to have to give back the treasure he stole. Our reward comes from selling his remains to the highest bidder.”

“Well, there’s no guarantee that all the owners of that treasure are still alive. I’m sure they won’t mind if it goes to the people who avenged them.” Avraniel smiled toothily. “Besides, I’m not going to take all of it – someone would notice. I’m only going to take a little bit.”

“Fine.” Timmy sighed. “But if you’re going to steal some, steal some for us too. I don’t know what they’re paying Gerald, but the man deserves something for everything he’s done.”

Gerald groaned, and they crowded around him as he began to stir. His eyes were glazed, and he lurched forward, hands flying to his mouth. He was going to throw up, and Katie was kind enough to use her shadows to carry him behind a bush while he emptied his stomach. It was a common symptom of magical exhaustion.

“Please tell me it worked,” Gerald said.

Timmy threw one arm around Gerald’s shoulders and offered him a potion made of herbs that Avraniel had gathered. “It did work. We’re alive, and the dragon is dead. Now, drink this. It should help.”

“Thank the gods.” Gerald took a sip of the potion and gagged. “What is this?”

Avraniel listed the ingredients, and Timmy stifled the urge to hit her with his shovel. “You put the wrong herbs in this.” Timmy got up and rummaged through their packs. Their horses had come back once the dragon was dead. “Give me a second. I can fix this.”

“I thought the medicine of the elves was legendary.” Katie and the rats giggled and made faces at the elf.

“Don’t provoke her.” Timmy handed the potion back to Gerald. “Try this. It should help with the headache.”

Gerald was slow to drink, so Avraniel decided to help him by grabbing his head and cramming the potion down his throat. “How did you do that thing with the tower, bureaucrat?”

“You’ve seen my magic, right? I can store things and take them out later.”

“That wasn’t a notebook or a folder, bureaucrat. That was a tower – a giant tower.”

Gerald shrugged and scratched the back of his head. “It took me a week to store it away, and I’ve used up all of my magic taking it out.”

“I see.” Timmy covered his face with his hands. “Why do you even have a tower stored away?”

“The Council wasn’t sure if they’d need it again, so I said I’d hold onto it.” Gerald blanched. “I don’t think they can use it anymore though, what with all the, uh, gore on it now.”

“I’m sure they’ll overlook it this time. The dragon is dead, we’re going to be rich, and Avraniel will probably find something great to steal from his lair.”

“We’re going to his lair?” Gerald looked like he was about to pass out again.

“No, you’re staying right here. I’m going to his lair.” Avraniel went over to watch their dinner being made. “I can cover the ground faster than any of you. And if you come, Gerald, there’s no telling how much I’ll make you store away with your magic. It’s better for everyone if I go alone.”

“That’s okay. I can use the time to get started on all the paperwork.”

“You have paperwork for killing a dragon?” Timmy asked.

“More than you could possibly imagine.”

Avraniel was gone for four days. When she came back, she was smiling from ear to ear, which was enough to put all of them on edge. Either she’d set a lot of things on fire, or she’d managed to steal something incredibly valuable. Perhaps she’d even found the time to do both.

“Oh, I found a few things.” Avraniel set her backpack on the ground with a thump. “All of which I will be sharing. But what are we going to do now? Does our team have a secret base or something? Those bastards at the Council better have a place for us to stay.”

Gerald gave Timmy a hopeful look. It took the necromancer a second to understand why.

“No.” Timmy shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

“We do need to recruit more people, and your castle is well-defended and in a very convenient location. Now that the zombie pig-lion is gone, I don’t have to worry about getting eaten when I leave my room.”

“And I do have some projects that I want to keep working on,” Katie added. The two rats squeaked their agreement. The castle’s kitchens were full of their favourite foods.

“Fine, we can stay at my castle.”

“Excellent.” Avraniel folded her arms over her chest. “But listen, idiot, I expect my room to be up to my standards. I will not be the only elf to stay in some dank, dreary –”

“My castle is not dank or dreary. Well, some of it is, but not where you’ll be staying.” Timmy scowled back at her. “And you’d better not blow any of it up. I like it just the way it is.”

“Fine, fine, I won’t blow up your precious castle.” Avraniel knelt down and rummaged through her backpack. “By the way, do you have somewhere warm and safe in your castle?”

“Of course I do.”

“Good.”

Avraniel took something out of her backpack. It was a large, oval object about a foot tall. It was made out of what appeared to be black rock, but minute seams in the material shimmered with heat. Timmy gaped. That wasn’t a rock. It was far, far more troublesome than a rock.

Avraniel had come back with a dragon egg.

“Surprise!”

About the Author

I am a writer with an avid interest in psychology, physics, history, and economics. Writing has long been a passion of mine, and I hope to someday make a career of it. Apart from writing, I have worked in education as a lecturer in one of the aforementioned subjects.

I believe that writing is a wonderful thing and that good writing and the techniques required to develop it should be shared with as many people as possible. In that regard, I’m always open to hearing from anyone who was read my work. If you want to contact me (perhaps to praise or perhaps to put your proverbial stake and pitchfork to work), then by all means send me an email, or drop by my blog where I discuss issues related to books, writing, and my own work.

My email: lgestrella@outlook.com

My blog: http://lgestrella.wordpress.com

If you send an email or leave a comment, I’ll do my best to get back to you.

More From L. G. Estrella

If you’re interested in reading more of my stories, you can find them on Amazon.

There are also previews for each of my stories at my blog: lgestrella.wordpress.com

You can also read on to find out more about my stories.

The Last Huntress

The Last Huntress Series Part One

Scarlett is the last of her line – a huntress sworn to kill all monsters.

Rose is a girl searching for the power to take back her homeland.

In the icy forests of the north, on the trail of the only werewolf to escape her, Scarlett will teach Rose what it means to be a huntress. There can be no room for softness in a huntress’s heart, no room for weakness. And a huntress must be willing to kill anything – and anyone – that poses a threat to the innocent.

The Lord of Dark Waters

The Last Huntress Series Part Two

Scarlett is the last of her line – a huntress sworn to kill all monsters.

Rose is a girl searching for the power to take back her homeland.

In the frozen wastes of the north, Scarlett confronted the dark truth of her origins. Now, she journeys south with Rose, desperate to leave the horror of the north behind. But the shadows of the past are never far away, especially when they are drawn to the Swamp of Darkwater to hunt down a rogue vampire.

There, amidst the cursed, whispering waters filled with muck and memories, Scarlett and Rose will have no choice but to face an evil far greater than they expected. For the swamp is an old place, filled with old evils. It is a place where the churning waters hide the ruins of a cruel legacy centuries in the making.

The Lord of Dark Waters has awakened, and they are the only one who can stop him. If they fail then all of the south may fall, drowned beneath the dark, hungry tide of an ancient evil.

The Fire Upon the Mountain

The Last Huntress Series Part Three

Scarlett is the last of her line – a huntress sworn to kill all monsters.

Rose is a girl searching for the power to take back her homeland.

There are whispers of fire in the east, tales of titan wings and crimson scales. A dragon has come, a beast the likes of which the mountains have not seen since the days of Scarlett’s grandmother.

Drawn to the east by rumours of dragon fire, Scarlett and Rose witness the fury of the dragon firsthand. One city already lies in ashes, and another may not be far behind. They have two weeks to prepare. But how do you kill a dragon? How do you kill a living inferno? Scarlett and Rose must find a way. If they cannot, another city will fall – and they will fall with it.

The Gunslinger and the Necromancer

The Lizzy Stanton Series Part One

When the Church needs someone to send the denizens of Hell back to where they belong, they go looking for Lizzy Stanton.

As gunslingers go, Lizzy’s right up there with the best of them. No matter what kind of evil she’s up against, she knows exactly how to handle things – put a holy bullet right between the eyes. But when she takes a job to go after a necromancer over in Pine Creek, she might just have bitten off more than she can chew.

With zombies, demons, and one tricky necromancer to worry about, Lizzy’s going to have to be real quick on the trigger. In the gunfight between good and evil, she’s the gunslinger who always delivers.

The Burning Mountains

The Burning Mountains have belonged to dragons since the Old Days when gods still walked the earth. They are a place of fire and ruin where no man dares walk and no elf dares linger long. Only the strong can survive there and only the ruthless can prosper.

Amidst the smoke, the ash, and the flame, an exiled elven princess will meet an outcast dragon. Alone, they have little hope of survival. But together, they might do more than survive – they might conquer. For the dragon has a realm to claim and the princess has a kingdom to take back.

There are some lessons that only fire can teach and some wisdom that only a dragon can impart.

Durendal

Twelve-year-old Billy Winchester’s got a feeling that the war made Duren a monster, but maybe he and his sister can make him a man again.

Billy’s always dreamed of leaving Sahara VII, a backwater mining planet, for some adventure. But with the galaxy still reeling from decades of war, and an older sister desperate to hang onto the only family she’s got left, he’s not having much luck.

Then he meets Duren, and suddenly adventure’s right on his doorstep.

The rugged stranger from another planet is everything Billy wishes he could be. When his sister hires Duren to help at their diner, Billy does his best to make him a part of their family. Trouble is, Duren’s got a past, and it’s the worst sort of bloody. To Billy though, he’s just a man, and a good one at that.

But danger’s never far on a planet like Sahara VII.

A cruel mining magnate, Stratton sets his eyes on Billy’s sister, and he won’t take no for an answer. When Stratton kidnaps her, Billy’s going to need the man Duren used to be, the man he hoped Billy would never have to see.

But Stratton isn’t stupid, and he isn’t alone. He knows Duren is coming for him, and there are people who’ve been waiting a long time for Duren to show himself. Duren won’t have to beat just Stratton and his men – he’ll have to stand toe-to-toe with the vengeful ghosts of his past while keeping Billy clear of the crossfire. Billy’s finally got his adventure, but it might cost him the only family he’s ever known.

Copyright and Disclaimer

Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf

Copyright © July 2014 L. G. Estrella

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review (contact lgestrella@outlook.com).

Cover image from deedl/Bigstock.com. Alterations by L. G. Estrella.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and settings are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, names, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.