Two Necromancers, a Dragon, and a Vampire (The Unconventional Heroes Series Book 3)

by L. G. Estrella

  Avraniel swiped one of Katie’s marshmallows and ducked under a shadowy claw. “You sound like a book, twerp.” She reached over to the rabbit she’d caught earlier and flicked a piece of it into the air. Spot leapt up and snapped the piece out of mid-air before rumbling happily. He’d already eaten a cow, so the rabbit was more like dessert. “Have you ever fought an ogre before?”

  Katie shook her head.

  “Wait – then where do you get ogre corpses from?”

  Timmy waited until Katie’s attention was directed elsewhere before he helped himself to another one of her marshmallows. The girl made a frustrated sound and tried to whack him over the head with her shadows. He chuckled. She should think of this as situational awareness training. “You’d be surprised by how easy it is to order an ogre corpse from huntsmen or soldiers. It’s not like people eat ogres, and a relatively intact corpse can fetch a decent price.” He tried to grab another marshmallow, but Katie was ready for him this time. “I sometimes go out and get a few myself, you know, by killing them. It’s a side job. Villagers can be surprisingly nice once they realise you’re not there to kill all of them and turn them into zombies, you’re there to kill the ogres that have been eating them and their children.”

  “How practical.” Old Man politely asked Katie for a marshmallow, and the girl, glaring daggers at everyone else, thanked him for his politeness and gave him two. They might think they were clever stealing her marshmallows, but the joke was on them. She’d asked Gerald to store four more packs of marshmallows, and he was under strict instructions to only hand them over to her or Rembrandt. “In my homeland, ogres were a constant threat. My very first battle was against them when I was a boy.”

  “When you were a boy?” Avraniel put on an expression of exaggerated surprise. “That must have been ages ago.”

  Old Man grinned good-naturedly. “Not as long ago as when you were a girl, my elf friend.”

  Avraniel cackled. “Not bad, Old Man, not bad.” She ruffled Katie’s hair, earning herself another vicious glare. “Listen up, twerp. I’m going to offer you a few tips since your master over there would be utterly insufferable if you got killed or eaten on this mission.”

  “I’m so glad you care,” Katie drawled. “But any advice would be appreciated. Like I said, I haven’t fought an ogre before. Well, I’ve fought zombie ogres before when they’ve rebelled, but that’s different.”

  “But you have killed something before, right?” Avraniel looked at Timmy. “Please tell me that the twerp has killed something before because if she starts freaking out and puking everywhere in the middle of a fight –”

  Timmy rolled his eyes. “Did you not notice her cutting through all those mutated people we had to fight when we were up against Lord Taylor? She’s a necromancer. Of course, she’s killed something before. I’m not saying that she goes around murdering things left, right, and centre, but she’s not going to freak out about killing a few ogres although she might get a bit squeamish if they start eating people in front of her. We’re necromancers, not cannibals.” He wisely chose to not mention the few necromancers who were also cannibals. He had encouraged Katie to stay as far away from them as possible whenever they attended a convention for necromancers.

  “Killing things is a standard part of necromancer training,” Katie replied. “I think the first thing my master asked me to kill was a bunny. It was very fluffy.” She winced. “I felt kind of bad about it, but if you can’t kill something, then you shouldn’t be in the business of making zombies.”

  Timmy smiled reassuringly. “Just be glad that you weren’t trained by my master. The first thing I ever killed was a starving, rabid dog that he decided to let into my room when I was asleep.”

  Old Man stopped eating his stew. “Your master… was not a good man.”

  “Nope, he definitely wasn’t.”

  Timmy met Old Man’s gaze for a moment. Teaching Katie to kill things had not been the most pleasant part of her training, but it had been necessary. Necromancers were masters of death, at least in theory. They could bring things back as zombies and bend those zombies to their will. That kind of power could turn good men bad and drive bad men completely evil and insane. Timmy had seen it happen to more than one necromancer. They stopped seeing living things as living things and saw them only as spare zombie parts. Timmy’s master had been like that, especially toward the end, and he’d done all sorts of horrible things because of it.

  He didn’t want that for Katie. Having her kill things herself, even if it made her feel a bit bad, was important. It gave her a sense of perspective. The fact that she didn’t enjoy killing things unless those things were trying to kill her was, in his opinion, yet another sign he had a good apprentice on his hands. She wasn’t the kind of person who would go crazy and start murdering hapless villagers to get more corpses for zombies. Conversely, he was confident she wouldn’t hesitate to defend herself if someone attacked her. Necromancy could be a dangerous business, and he needed to know that she could take care of herself. Timmy didn’t revel in killing things, but he could do what had to be done. Besides, ogres weren’t the same as people. If he had to kill some of them to keep them from eating a bunch of villagers, he’d do it in a heartbeat. The fact that he got to keep the corpses afterward was simply another incentive to get the job done quickly and with a minimum of fuss.

  Avraniel held Spot off with one hand as the dragon nudged her with his head. “Enough. You’ve already eaten a cow today and part of the rabbit, not to mention some metal and rock.” She laughed when he pouted miserably. A dragon should not have been able to pout. It should have been more of a menacing snarl. “At least wait a few minutes. Anyway, twerp, the important thing to know about ogres is that they’re tough, which you should already know since you’ve made zombie ogres. Your average ogre is dumber than a box of dumb rocks, but they’re also pretty much insensitive to pain. You can cut off an arm or a leg, and all you’ll do is make them mad. Hell, sometimes they don’t even notice. You can bet that if they get close enough, they’ll try to rip you in half. I’ve seen ogres quit fighting in the middle of battle, so they could eat people.”

  “Really?” Gerald stuttered. He hadn’t been too enthusiastic about coming on this mission. He had a few… unpleasant experiences involving ogres and people getting eaten, but his orders from the councillors were clear. They wanted him to report on everything – absolutely everything – that involved Spot, which meant he had to face his fears and confront some ogres. On the upside, the others would be there, and Katie had asked some of the rats to stay close to him in case he somehow got separated and needed help. Ogres were scary, but he was confident the rats could handle them. One of those rats was sitting beside him with a small bowl of stew while another two were seeing to their equipment. “Is that true?”

  “Definitely.” Avraniel gave Gerald a toothy grin. Spot copied her, and his teeth looked wickedly sharp indeed with bits of cow and rabbit still on a few of them. “I’ve seen it happen. It’s damn messy. Ogres are tough, so your best bet is to either sever their heads or pierce their hearts.”

  “That’s right,” Katie murmured. “They have two hearts.”

  “Yep, and piercing only one of them might not be enough to kill them. Those dumb bastards can regenerate although not as fast as trolls – those jerks are something else. As for their heads, if you’re going to cut them off, try to get all of them at once. Only one of the heads is in charge at any time, but another one will take over if you cut off the main head. If an ogre has, say, three heads, cutting off two isn’t good enough. You need to get them all.”

  “You know a lot about fighting ogres,” Old Man said. “Have you encountered a lot of them in the past.” He was enjoying a cup of tea with his stew, but it was a different blend than usual.

  Avraniel sneered. “There might not be many of those losers left in Everton, but they were always finding ways to sneak across the border and into my forest.”

  Timmy felt morally ob
ligated to point out the extremely obvious. “Technically, the forest belongs to the elves, not to you.”

  “Yeah, well, if they wanted it, then they should have done a better job of dealing with all the crap that kept wandering into it instead of sending patrols after me. Those ogre losers were always showing up. I used to wake up sometimes and find them wandering around in my forest. I didn’t care about the mess they made tromping around – the forest never liked me anyway – but I couldn’t let them go around eating people since I knew those elf bastards would have blamed everything on me even though I’m not a cannibal.” Avraniel made a disgusted sound. “Seriously, just because I like setting stuff on fire doesn’t mean that I like eating people. I bet elves and humans don’t even taste good, and the forest is full of nice things to eat. Cannibalism? Don’t make me laugh. Give me a nice rabbit or boar any day. And don’t even get me started on the nest of giant spiders I came across one winter. I had to burn the lot of them – and there must have been hundreds of the creepy bastards – and all I got for my trouble was another warrant for my arrest because I burned a few acres of forest too.”

  Old Man lowered his voice and glanced at Katie. “I wonder if she realises how much good she’s done by accident.”

  Katie snickered. “Don’t tell her. It’ll be funny when she realises.”

  “And sometimes, I used to find the ogres skulking around the edges of some of the more remote villages,” Avraniel continued as Spot curled up by the fire. In fact, half of him was actually in the fire. Then again, he was a dragon. It wasn’t like he was going to get burned. To him it was probably only pleasantly warm although Timmy noticed that the fire had begun to ebb and flow in time with Spot’s breathing. It must be some instinctive form of magic. “I’d get sick of the ogres trying to avoid me because of how often I kicked their asses, so I’d go looking for them and wipe them out.” She laughed. “Every now and then, I’d even find all of this food left out near the edge of the villages too. I don’t know what those villagers were thinking leaving food out, but, hey, it was their loss. Once I was sure they weren’t poisoning it, I ate it. No point in letting it go to waste, right?”

  Timmy fought the urge to slap his forehead. Avraniel truly was oblivious to all of the good she accidentally did in between her bouts of property-destroying mayhem. Based on the shock on Gerald’s face, the bureaucrat hadn’t known about any of this. “Look into it,” Timmy whispered. “See if she’s done anything else good.” If the elf actually had done more good than he thought, it would make it easier for her – and by extension him and Katie – to get a pardon. The villagers had probably thought that a powerful forest spirit was wiping out the ogres and had left the food out as an offering. It wasn’t too far-fetched a belief since such spirits did exist in the ancient forests of the elves.

  “Cutting off their heads or piercing their hearts is the cleanest way to kill an ogre, but I actually prefer to either cut them in half or go for full body damage.” The elf flicked her wrist and a long jet of flame rippled up into the sky. Spot chortled happily and matched it with a blast of his own fire, earning himself a pat on the head and a scratch under his chin. “But I guess those aren’t much good if you’re going to turn them into zombies.”

  “Cutting them in half should be fine,” Timmy said to Katie. “We can always stitch them together again. However, piercing their hearts would be best. As for full body damage, your shadows should be able to pulverise them without much trouble unless they use magic to defend themselves, but you might want to avoid smashing them if they’re standing next to you.”

  “I know, master.” Katie shuddered. “I still remember what happened with the zombie shark-whale we made.”

  “A zombie shark-whale?” Old Man took another sip of his tea and offered to refill the little bowl Rembrandt was drinking from. “That sounds like an interesting story.” The rat accepted more tea and then took a quick look around to make sure that the rats that had been assigned to stand guard were not slacking off.

  “It is.” Timmy smiled faintly and helped himself to more stew. It had been a fun exercise even if it had ended in failure. “My master was interested in aquatic zombies, and so am I. One of my dreams is to have my own zombie kraken, but those don’t come along every day. Killing one is hard, but killing one without doing too much damage to is…”

  “Even harder,” Old Man said. “Even a young kraken is a deadly foe for a fleet of ships. An older one… well, there is a reason that countries pay so generously to have them dealt with.”

  “Wait!” Gerald blurted. “Are you talking about those giant octopus-like things that can be miles wide?”

  “Yep.” Timmy sighed wistfully. “Ah, if I had a zombie kraken… it would be so much fun. But, you know how it is. It’s always better to start with the small stuff. I’ve reanimated goldfish, tuna, and even sharks and whales. But the truest test of a necromancer’s skill is the ability to put together their own composite zombies.” Timmy grinned and punched the air. “Shark-whale!”

  Katie punched the air too. “Shark-whale!” Nearby, the rats exchanged a few looks before copying her.

  Avraniel scoffed. “Every now and then I start to think that you two aren’t complete idiots, and then you have to go and remind me that you are.”

  “As you’ve probably noticed,” Timmy said. “The castle doesn’t have its own lake – wait. That’s not true anymore. We now have a lake thanks to Avraniel and the demolition rats deciding to remodel the countryside.” The elf sneered and sketched a bow. The newly made lake was now bustling with fish and other animals, and it wasn’t unusual for the local villagers to show up to enjoy the new addition to the landscape. Timmy didn’t mind. He had experiments to run, and a proper lake would definitely come in handy. He’d also instructed the trans-dimensional horrors and zombies he’d added to the lake to avoid devouring the villagers although the occasional fright was still acceptable. He couldn’t have them thinking he’d gone soft. “Katie and I not only had to find a shark and a whale to stich together but also a place to run the experiment. We decided to go to the beach.”

  “The beach?” Gerald sagged. “I wish we could go to the beach.” He paused. “But not like on our mission with the sea serpent. I want to go to the beach without something trying to kill us.”

  “It’ll happened one day,” Timmy said. “And you must have a good retirement plan since you’ve been working for the Council for years, right? Once this is all over, you can get a nice cottage by the sea if you want.”

  Gerald brightened immediately. “Ah, yes. As a bureaucrat working under the direct authority of the Council, I do have a very admirable remuneration package. It comes with comprehensive health insurance – including complete dental and optical care – and a good pension. I’m hoping to retire somewhere nice.” He smiled. “I might even become a librarian.”

  “A librarian?” Timmy asked.

  “Yes, I enjoy reading, and becoming a librarian would allow me to be around as many books as I wished.” Gerald paused. “It would also give me the time to do some writing of my own. I’d like to become a regular contributor to several bureaucrat magazines. Being a librarian should also be quite peaceful. Nobody would try to kill me or eat me if I became a librarian.”

  “Idiot. You need to think big.” Avraniel cackled and stabbed at the air with her spoon. “I’m going to buy my own tropical island and live next to my own beach with a pile of money that’s bigger than the mansion I’ll be living in. I’ll have an army of minions at my beck and call, maybe even my own private army.” She patted Spot. “I’ll have Spot too, of course. I might even call the place Dragon Isle since there will be a dragon on it.”

  Spot must have approved because he trilled happily and licked Avraniel’s hand.

  Timmy chuckled. He could definitely picture Avraniel relaxing on a beach somewhere, and a tropical island would give her plenty of chances to rob any passing pirates. “What about you, Old Man?”

  “This is my retire
ment plan,” Old Man replied. “I’m hoping to live out the remainder of my days in interesting fashion before hopefully finding a warrior’s death at the hands of a worthy opponent.”

  “Okay…” Timmy couldn’t think of anything else to say. It was certainly an interesting way to view retirement. Personally, he was planning to die of old age in a comfortable cottage somewhere after achieving all of his many goals. “Anyway, back to the zombie shark-whale. Katie and I ran the experiment, but there was one problem. For reasons that we still don’t entirely understand, the zombie shark-whale went crazy. It beached itself trying to attack us. It lunged at Katie, and she, well, she dealt with it.” Timmy made an exploding motion with his hands. “It was right next to her, and it was messy. Very messy.”

  Katie made a gagging sound.

  “Imagine a giant fist made of shadows punching a zombie shark-whale with enough force to reduce it to a cloud of bloody pulp. Now, imagine Katie standing right next to it.” Timmy threw his head back and laughed. “It was so bad that she went flying from all the bits and pieces.”

  “It’s not funny!” Katie wailed as she shook her fist at him and tried to poke him with her shadows. Naturally, he was more than up to the task of dodging. “It took me ages to get the smell out of my hair, and some of it even got in my mouth. It was horrible! And how come none of it got on you?”

  “Because, my naïve, young apprentice, I always think ahead.” Timmy slung his shovel over his shoulder. “Always be ready to make a shield or a wall with your magic. You never know when blood and guts might start flying everywhere.”

  * * *