Jaethal remained alone in the battlefield, to her greatest pleasure and relief.

  Her painstaking efforts to stay out of sight of Guelder's most recent acquisition, the red-haired Varnhold paladin, had proved successful. So far the baroness had refrained from officially introducing them to each other, kicking the empty potion vial down the road. That wench was trouble incarnate, but Guelder rarely asked for Jaethal's input when appointing new officials. Anyway, the paladin had galloped off into the thickest of the battle, so there was a flicker of hope that she'd get herself killed before the inevitable clash with the lone missionary of Urgathoa would happen. In that case, Jaethal wondered if she could get her hands on the body and prepare something mouth-watering from it. She hadn't tasted aasimar meat in ages, and although her enjoyment of culinary delicacies was woefully impaired by undeath, this time her deep-rooted disdain for the redhead would help her withered taste buds appreciate the experience properly. She would only take the juiciest part, and reanimate the leftovers, out of pure spite.

  The rest of the team had dispersed, going after their own business. On the redhead's orders, the goblin had unpacked the iron golem from the Bag of Holding (leaving the bag behind for Jaethal to nick), climbed on its shoulder, and set out to meet the hill giants fighting by Armag's side. The little green pest was allegedly fluent in the giants' tongue. The pint-sized bard had occupied the construct's other shoulder, just in case the goblin needed help in convincing the giants to abandon the battle, one way or another. Either that, or she was eager to study a rare and primitive language from close up. The halfling's thirst for knowledge was commendable, even though she had a penchant for choosing utterly useless fields of research – which was unwise, considering her ridiculously short lifespan.

  It was anyone's guess where the two clerics had wandered off. Obviously, Hazel was where Guelder was, or close enough. And as to the baroness, she was busy getting herself upbraided by Lady Jamandi while she and Hazel were half leading, half carrying the injured Swordlord to safety. Jaethal had little tolerance for ungrateful allies, and she wondered why Guelder didn't simply dump Jamandi on top of a random pile of corpses and let her fend for herself. Despite Jaethal's best efforts, the girl was still too soft and emotional for her position, a far cry from being worthy of the noble name she stubbornly refused to bear. If only there was a way to infuse a little more Summer Breeze blood into her veins...

  Yet, this time Jaethal left the baroness to her own devices, allowing her to be a doormat to her heart's content. She had better things to do. By Urgathoa's grace, the battle provided ample resources for a fledgling necromancer to put her newfound abilities to the test. Since the encounter with Falaris Summer Breeze's fugitive slaves, Jaethal had barely had any meaningful opportunity to practise. She'd missed out on the entire Vordakai campaign and the wealth of knowledge amassed by the late cyclopean empire (for which she harboured a little resentment against Guelder), and her teammates somehow always returned from the threshold of death before she could bring them back in her own special way. The fabulous onyx bracelets clattering around her wrist were practically itching to be used.

  Jaethal prowled around the field, careful to stay out of the fight, poking at corpses with her scythe. Alas, the Tiger Lords did a thorough job when it came to killing. There were plenty of crumpled helmets, spilt brain material, severed limbs, even torsos sliced in two, but it was hard to find an intact skull. Finally, when Jaethal was about to give up and settle for a hand, she got lucky. The head's original owner had been a poorly groomed Tiger Lord, probably a most unpleasant fellow in his life, with long, tangled tresses of hair and beard stuck together by blood and muck. Jaethal removed two beads from her bracelet, placed them on the curled-up eyelids, and invoked Urgathoa's dark power.

  With a crack, the beads burst to pieces, their shards falling to the ground as the head lifted itself into the air, twirling around until it found its bearings at eye level with Jaethal.

  "Kragg... serve..." Its cracked lips formed the words with a visible effort.

  Jaethal raised an eyebrow. This had been easier than she'd expected.

  "All right, Kragg. Apparently, you got yourself killed by those Brevan weaklings and disappointed your ancestors. You are lucky to have met me."

  "Huh?"

  Jaethal sighed. Kragg had probably been a daft piece of work in his life, and undeath made it even worse. Still, he would have his uses.

  "I want you to perform a task for me. Go find your chieftain, the one named Armag the Twice-Born, and smash his nose in."

  "With what? No hands."

  "With yourself. Your head. The head that is you. Surely this will not be the first time you do that? Good luck!"

  "Kragg... smash..." muttered the head, and floated away in the supposed direction of the Tiger Lord camp.

  Phew. Good riddance.

  This small but significant success energised Jaethal. She didn't expect Kragg to be able to cause much harm to the chieftain (its mission was more of a prank than a stratagem), but perhaps, if she spent enough onyx gems, she could reanimate a sufficient number of corpses to turn the tide of the battle. Or was that objective too ambitious for her current level of expertise?

  Anyway, one had to start somewhere. For instance, by flushing two scared Brevan soldiers from behind a rock, where they had been pretending to be dead. As if they could deceive an inquisitor of Urgathoa. It wasn't exactly easy to convince them that Jaethal was not the Grim Reaper, despite her scythe and black outfit, and then to enlist their help. However, the offer of one flask of nightmoss-based healing potion for each of them was just too irresistible. Jaethal made them select two more or less whole corpses, for starters, and lay them out neatly on the ground for her. She removed two medium-sized onyx gems from her bracelet, and put one on each corpse's chest. Her two helpers departed to find a couple more bodies, giving her some much-needed privacy.

  O Pallid Princess, mighty Urgathoa, heed Your humble –

  "THTOP!"

  Jaethal flinched as a surge of positive energy crashed into her. She'd already learnt to shut it out whenever her teammates used it for healing the living, but this time it caught her unawares, like a thousand needles in every inch of her flesh, wherever her nerves used to be. She grabbed the shaft of her scythe, ready to strike, her eyes seeking out the attacker.

  A small figure stood wobbling in front of her, wearing a hooded cloak drenched in blood and gore. He reached out towards her with two bloody stumps that had once been his arms, holding a holy symbol between his teeth.

  "Begone, monthter, and leave my fellow tholdierth in peathe!"

  It took some imagination to interpret the little guy's words, sputtered through a set of teeth clenched around a pendant, but the context helped a lot. And Jaethal didn't need to see the bloodsoaked garb's original colours to recognise a Pharasmin.

  It would have been nice to toy with him for a while, or even draw him into a debate and watch him bleed to death while defending his faith. However, Jaethal didn't have the patience. This moron was too short to be Enneo, but that didn't stop her mind from projecting all the half-blood's evil deeds onto him, before and after he'd buried a dagger in Jaethal's heart. What she was about to do would not satisfy her thirst for revenge, but it would certainly make her feel giddy. The fewer zealots of Pharasma running around, the better.

  Her mind reached out, rummaging around in the mess of the battlefield, hoping she could find the guy's hands, reanimate them, and make them strangle their owner. Then she settled for a less fancy solution. She swung her scythe, and the tiny person's head rolled off his shoulders, along with the hood.

  Only then did Jaethal take a closer look at him. It was a gnome, his pale complexion suggesting an advanced stage of Bleaching, but his canary yellow hair still preserving the original colour. Perhaps it was just the blood loss. And indeed, the symbol held between his teeth was Pharasma's spiral-shaped comet. Jaethal flashed a cruel smile. She needed two more small gems.

  "Curthe you!" growled the angry little head as it rose up to face its new mistress. Jaethal helpfully removed the holy symbol from between its teeth, and waved it theatrically in front of its eyes before crushing it under the heel of her boot.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  "Do not be so ungrateful," she purred. "I bet you have never seen the world from this high up before. Your name?"

  However the head balked against her will, it had no chance to resist.

  "D-Dallirun Myrnas."

  "Dallie."

  "No. I hate that nickname."

  "Dallie it is, then." Jaethal opened the canteen she carried on her person for hygiene purposes, grabbed the head by its mop of yellow hair, and gave it a good rinse. "There. Now you look much more presentable. Your first task is to pop into this bag and stay there until I call for you."

  The head stared at Jaethal with its cloudy eyes.

  "Will you open it, or what?"

  Jaethal rolled her eyes. Did every beheaded have to come up with the same excuse?

  "I am not here for your comfort," she snapped. "Make do."

  At long last, the head lowered itself to the ground, whimpering, and started a long struggle to nuzzle the bag's mouth open before burrowing in. From the outside, only a hump was visible, wiggling about until it disappeared in the bag's very own pocket dimension and let the fabric fall back flat against the ground.

  And now back to the two corpses.

  Before long, Jaethal joined the fray with five zombies and two curious living Brevans in tow. Perhaps she could have made more, but this being her first time, she didn't want to overexert herself, lest she would lose control of some of them. An isolated pocket of fighting, with a Brevan unit surrounded by barbarians and slowly being ground down, seemed perfect for a test run. However her scythe (and her palate) hungered for fresh blood, she chose to stay behind and let her minions do the heavy lifting.

  With unnatural, tremulous motions, as if moved by a puppeteer, the zombies lurched towards the fight, some of them brandishing their original weapons, others relying on tooth and nail, and tore into the enemy from behind. Jaethal watched with a proud smile across her face as two brawny Tiger Lords were brought down, mangled, disemboweled, while a third one (probably a survivor of Varnhold) stared in shock, petrified. Indeed, this was a power worth dying for. She only had to make sure that the zombies moved on to the next enemy instead of gorging themselves on brains.

  All of a sudden, the memory of her nerves flared up with phantom pain, sending a shudder across her body. What? Did Dallie crawl out of the bag while I was not looking?Another splash of agony, and her undead minions dropped prone to the ground, motionless, never to be used again.

  "Stop right there! Put down your weapon, and raise your hands!"

  Oh, bones and bloody ashes...

  Apparently, the surrounded Brevans were getting more aid from the other side. A group of soldiers arrived under the dual banner of Nightvale and Varnhold (another sign of Guelder's weakness), led by none else than the redhead. The paladin definitely had her priorities wrong, letting her soldiers deal with the barbarians on their own and focusing on a lonely elf instead, with her standardbearer and another retainer in tow. (As the quickly departing footsteps behind her back suggested, the two Brevans were eager to make themselves scarce, abandoning the prospect of getting their hands on the best healing potions available in the River Kingdoms.)

  Jaethal took her time to give the haughty angelspawn a once-over. She couldn't be more than fifteen, with the bloated ego of a teenager, hiding deep insecurities behind the oh-so-righteous fa?ade. Her face and gear was splattered with blood, and all in all, she smelled appetising.

  "I am not putting down anything. In fact, you would do well to stay away from this scythe, lest it carves out some horse meat for a stew. Also, you might not want to obstruct my work of saving lives at the cost of reusing lifeless bodies."

  The kid narrowed her glowing eyes but didn't venture closer.

  "Do not bring your dark magic here, stranger," she hissed. "Go back to Ustalav or wherever you crawled out from, and leave our dead alone."

  Cheeky little brat. How I wish to marinate her in honey and pomegranate juice.

  "Stranger, hah! I have been serving Baroness Guelder from the very start, mayfly. In fact, I am closer to her than you can ever hope to be."

  "You attribute way too much significance to your race, undead filth."

  "Not long ago, I was what you are, and you might yet become what I am." Jaethal watched in amusement how the little cogs turned in her opponent's head, creaking, sometimes getting jammed. "Why do you not turn your holy wrath against the enemy, instead of interfering with my work? You are wasting your men's precious lives, again. Hypocrite."

  The aasimar walked her horse closer, seething with fury, her hand on the pommel of her sword. However, Jaethal noticed something else in her gaze. Uncertainty. It must be hard to grapple with the fact the goody-two-shoes baroness actually has a court necromancer. Still, the kid did a decent job of feigning confidence.

  "I am Felicia Darlac, paladin of the Inheritor, Acting Vice-General of the joint armies of Nightvale and Varnhold. By this power bestowed upon me by Baroness Guelder of Nightvale, I hereby forbid you from animating dead bodies and practising necromancy during the Glenebon campaign. Any violation may lead to execution on the spot."

  "Is that so?" sneered Jaethal.

  "I do not tolerate such activity in my army, necromancer. My people has suffered enough from your ilk. This was your warning. Next time, not even Baroness Guelder's name will save you."

  Your army, indeed.

  Jaethal held the redhead's gaze, deploying her best inquisitor stare. The kid set her jaw and didn't squirm or look away. Of course, she couldn't afford to budge. Not if she had any intention to hold this position permanently – which Jaethal hoped she didn't.

  "So be it," said Jaethal, getting tired of this tug-of-war. "I have all the time in the world, but that might not be the case for our Brevan allies over there. As for you, child, perhaps one day you will learn to value life. Pray to your goddess that it will not come too late."

  She grabbed her scythe and strode past the girl to enter the fight personally. That did the trick: the angelspawn finally joined the fray herself. Her men were doing a decent job of surrounding the surrounders and pressing them against those inside the circle. Time and again, Jaethal spotted her in the turmoil of combat, and established that her fighting skills were acceptable. As the last barbarians surrendered, their eyes met again, and the girl nodded in appreciation. Jaethal cringed inwardly. The last thing she craved for was a compliment from a stupid teenager. She recited a blessing, giving thanks to Urgathoa for the feast ahead, and licked a mouthful of blood off the blade of her scythe. It didn't taste as invigorating as it used to, but the look on the paladin's face was all the more delicious to behold.

  "Nothing compares to fresh, steaming blood," explained Jaethal with her best unsettling smile. "Want some?"

  The girl gave her a flat stare and turned away. Jaethal had an inexplicable urge to cackle. She found herself looking forward to their next encounter and compiling a list of other ways to freak her out. She would make sure that the pesky redhead would leave Guelder's service as quickly as she'd entered it.