The Accidental Necromancer
It’s a Plane, It’s a Bird, It’s …

It would have been tempting to look at the “big picture,” the way Churchill supposedly did with Coventry. In the big picture, the gate was more important than a troll village, and leaving the gate in Kathy’s hands, long term, wasn’t a good plan. I could easily argue that prioritizing my safety over that of a few hundred trolls was in fact the best, most moral option.

Could I live with that decision? I had my doubts.

The orcs advanced across the grassy plains, a huge number of them, although I suppose still small by the standards of Earth warfare. We moved to follow them, always making sure we could retreat to the forest if we had to and keeping the zombies out of sight. If they sent people after us, we would run toward the zombies, and then past them to the forest where Xyla waited to spring a trap.

They weren’t falling for that. They just kept moving onward, while keeping twenty archers in the rear to make sure we couldn’t get too close. The archers had shields, too, and while Gren tried to pick them off, they usually managed to block her arrows.

So we tried something else. I ran forward, and some of them decided they better shoot at me, which meant putting down the shields. Gren took advantage of that to put an arrow in an orc’s neck, and I teleported out of the way of the volley that followed.

The archers kept walking backward, but the main horde was moving faster, so they were slowly getting separated.

I ran forward again, this time with Valeria, and this time they were slower to get their bows. All they needed, after all, was one shot at us, and I was waving a sword and trying my best to look like a melee fighter.

Then we stopped, I revealed that I had a wand in my other hand, and used Life Drain. Once they realized I could attack them at range, they switched to bows again. Gren had crept forward. One of them went down. I picked up Val and teleported to the side, rather than straight back, when they sent a volley of arrows our way. There was always a chance that they’d learned a lesson from last time and would aim long. Then we ran while they nocked more arrows.

They kept moving away, and we kept following, but I was able to raise the corpses they left behind.

We found a good size hill from which we could see the battlefield. Lesseth popped out of the bag to look them over, too. The trolls were arranged in thin line in front of their village, armed and ready, men and women alike. The orcs were advancing in a big group, and there had to be three to five times as many orcs as trolls. To assemble as many trolls out there as they did, Gavabar had to include a lot of people with little experience fighting.

This is awesome! Do you know how many bodies a battle like this is going to leave behind? I used to try to engineer this sort of thing back in the day.

My guess is when the two armies collided, a lot of the trolls would break and run, and I really couldn’t blame them. Going on as we were, we could take out a couple more orcs before the big clash, and that was assuming the orcs didn’t make some sort of adjustment to their tactics. A few more out of hundreds wouldn’t matter.

I brought the zombies closer to us, hidden by the reverse slope of the hill. If we could get the archers to chase us, we could ambush them, even without Xyla. So far, they’d been way too disciplined for that.

“I could charge them,” Lesseth suggested. “Their arrows can’t hurt me.”

But the orcs had known to get out torches with her before, and she couldn’t run away fast. It took her several seconds to get in or out of my bag of holding, too, so it wasn’t easy to teleport her away quickly. Still, we had to try something.

I told the zombies to charge. Gren took their flank, and moved with them, ready to fire the moment the orcs dropped their shields and took out their bows. Lesseth, Valeria and I were right behind the zombies, using them as our shields.

The archers fired at the zombies, which they quickly realized wasn’t very effective. Then they just ran, leaving one of them behind for me to raise that Gren killed.

Experience for next level: 190

On the one hand, we could now fall in force on the main army. Well, more force, anyway. On the other, if it turned toward us, the troll village would gain a short respite, all we’d be able to do is run like hell. So I slowed the zombies down, and let Gren harass the retreating orcs.

“What’s that?” Valeria asked suddenly, pointing.

I looked up where she was pointing. It was more than a speck in the sky, more like a blob.

“I have no idea,” I said.

The blob got bigger, and it was heading towards the trolls, the orcs, and us.

“L’shan preserve us!” Valeria said.

The blob had wings. The orc army stopped, and looked up at it. It was huge, and as it got closer we could see that it shimmered with silver scales, had long, sinuous body, and a large horned head.

Bwahahahaha! Too funny!

I didn’t see the humor, but Enash had strange ideas.

Gren ran toward where I stood with the zombies. “Get out of its path!” she yelled.

Dragons were sort of like tornados, I supposed. We ran for the hill we had used before, so that we could see what was going on. I didn’t know what it would do, but I didn’t have a plan worth a damn and maybe the dragon passing over would create an opportunity.

We got to the hill and watched as it flew over the line of trolls, straight toward the orc army. Green-skinned archers raised bows to fire at it.

It dived and breathed a great gout of yellow and orange flame. We could hear the screams from where we were. A few arrows stuck in the thing, but it would take more than that to truly bother it. Now that it was closer, and we had the orcs for scale, I realized that it had to be a hundred feet long, at least.

The orcs fired again, but the dragon was in the middle of them now, tearing them apart with sharp claws and seizing them with its great, sharp-toothed maw.

All the orcs turned to deal with the dragon, and the trolls charged at orcs who had turned their backs on them.

It seemed the right moment had arrived. I told the zombies to charge, and we followed them cautiously.

The dragon breathed again, killing a score or more of orcs in one burst of flame. Some of the orcs started running, and in the course of a few seconds others faltered and fled. Nearly a hundred of them were now headed straight toward us, while others ran in other directions. I made the zombies line up to slow them down.

The dragon could have chased any of several such groups, but it chose ours. A leap, and a glide took it into their midst. They scattered, only a few of them hitting the line of zombies. The rest flowed around us, running in all directions to get away from the huge, scaly monster that was wreaking carnage.

Running was beginning to look like a pretty good idea to me, too. But then the dragon took off in another direction, chasing orcs.

It was no longer a battle, just a slaughter, and I had no stomach for it. I was using Life Drain on a running orc, and let the spell drop. Gren was still picking them off as they ran, but I was done. The dragon kept killing, and I was glad it seemed, so far at least, to be on our side.

“Let’s go join up with Gavabar’s people,” I said.

“Yes, captain,” Val said, with a trace of amusement in her voice.

“What? It wasn’t an order, just a suggestion.”

“Uh-huh,” Gren said.

I raised one more zombie on the way, but I wanted to keep my mana close to topped out. It was great that the dragon had scattered the zombie army, but if that great beast turned on us, we’d need every edge we could get, and there was going to be no lack of corpses to raise later. The plains were full of them – shot with arrows, knocked down by trolls, rent with tooth and claw, and of course, charred.

By heading toward the trolls, we were getting farther from the zombies, too.

Talos walked out to greet us. “We live!” he said.

“L’shan has blessed us,” Valeria said, embracing Talos. And then she turned to look at me. “Unless this is another one of your schemes. Although I suppose you, too, are a blessing from L’shan.”

I had come a long way from evil necromancer, but I shook my head. “I had nothing to do with this.”

“Uh-oh,” said Gren, pointing.

The big silvery shape had taken to the air again, and this time it was headed toward us. Some of the trolls ran, and we could have scattered, too. But it was faster than us. My heart beat faster as it descended, but I realized it was gliding, not using the power dive it had used when it attacked the orcs.

We had more than twenty zombies, two paladins, Gren, myself, Lesseth, and thirty or so trolls around Gavabar if it came to a fight. I thought the odds might be with the dragon, but we’d defend ourselves if we had to. It landed softly on the grass instead.

And then the air around it shimmered, and it seemed to get smaller and smaller, until what remained was a woman. She was nearly naked, with a silver bikini bottom covering the minimum that would need to be covered on a very liberal beach, and two silver claw-like things cupping her breasts and shielding her nipples. Silver filigree bracers and greaves covered her forearms and lower leg. Her long honey-blonde hair was braided with silver threads, and her eyes blazed bright red, like jewels.

On her head she wore a crown I had seen last on the coffee table in the crypt.

“Kathy?” I asked.

She spoke in a deeper voice than Kathy ever had. “I am the dragon Queen! Bow down and serve me, all of you!”

The trolls didn’t hesitate. Gren, after a moment, followed suit, taking her queue from Gavabar, not me.

“C’mon, Abby,” she said to me. “We’ll figure this out later.”

It made sense. I looked at Valeria and Talos. Valeria slowly shook her head.

“I bow down to no one except L’shan,” she said.

Kathy lifted her hand. Flames sparkled around it.

Charm Person.

She glanced over at me, and smiled. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then she laughed. “You seek to influence the woman I once was, but I am a dragon now, and you will all bow down or suffer the fate of those who oppose the dragon Queen.”

See, the plan was to poison someone, and then have them put the crown on. Then, when the dragon died, I would raise it, creating a dracolich. Get it, draco from dragon, and a lich, dracolich? Isn’t that clever? Anyway, just kill the dragon and now you can do it! Sure, most of you will die in the process, but there’s a bright side to that, too.

Valeria moved in front of me.

“Val, maybe we should…” I said.

“You, perhaps, should. I can’t,” she replied.

“Well. I’m with you. We’re practically married.”

“Perhaps it’s good we aren’t yet. Save yourself, Abby.”

I had the rather incongruous thought that I couldn’t let her die a virgin. I had to do something.

Kathy, or the dragon Queen, pointed her finger at Valeria once more. A silver flame crackled around her hand. “Last chance. Bow down!”

“Don’t go this road, Kathy,” Talos said. “It doesn’t end well.”

“You could give me a hundred chances and my answer would be the same,” Valeria said.

I think I fell a little more in love with her in that moment.

Dimension Step.

I teleported behind Kathy, and whirled.

Flame shot from her finger. I was too late as I reached to grab her and throw off her aim, but Talos jumped in front of Valeria at the last minute, The flame struck him in the chest and then wrapped around him, engulfing him.

I grabbed Kathy and tried to pull her down.

She tossed me aside, and I flew twenty feet and landed on my ass. “Nooooo! Talos!” Kathy screamed.

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