"We don't have to fight Brother." I hate when people assume I'm on their side because we share magical ability. I mean I don't do that, I don't use some rational that because we were born in the same place, or like the same kind of food that we can avoid conflict! Why others do it I think is purely to annoy me (yes even people I've just met, such is their desire to bother me!).
"Sure just kill yourself and your men and bam we don't have to fight." Note I said that out of order, because I well I just don't think before I speak, there you got me.
"Trezlan please, do you understand what its like down there in Ronerawth? Do you understand what the empire has become? You don't, I'm trying to save them." He wasn't trying to appeal to me for my rebel leadership, I doubt he even knew I'd gone against the empire several times over my overly long life, I believe he was just lying to set up another flank.
"I'd trust you more beardy if the two guys you sent from your force down there weren't trying to sneak up on me." It's sad the one thing I'm good at after all these years of doing things is still murder. I mean you would hope, hope that I would have at least learned a musical instrument or something? You'd be wrong (I tried what I produced was not music so much as horrible, to give it a name would be to give it life as something else). Beardy's attempted flankers were dealt with easily (gunshot one, burning tree falling on the other, I'd like to take credit for the burning tree thing but it was completely accidental).
Frustrated by my refusal to simply die Beardy and the rest of his group came charging up the hill. I didn't have too many bullets, but I made up for what I didn't have with magic. I shot Beardy four times in the chest, he didn't die, he just used his weird blood magic to kill his own followers and replenish himself. I burned his ugly ass and he did the same thing. It was weird, I didn't have to kill the people he was with, he did that for me. Eventually it was just the Beard and myself, the rest of his followers lay stripped of flesh and blood in the nearby forest. He only had that kitchen knife from before, I had no bullets and I could feel corruption surging in my veins, too much magical power expended, but as always I had my trump card.
"Neat trick with the blood magic." We were standing apart from each other, I figured he couldn't blood magic me if I wasn't within touching distance of him, even though I know that's not a limitation on necromancy.
"I can show you if you'd listen to me Trezlan."
"Nah why mess with an inferior version of something I already have." He looked at me with an amused glance.
"Oh so you have blood magic of your own?"
"In a manner of speaking yes," I made a fist as a showy gesture, and pulled my hand backward, Beardy tried to stab me but fell to his knees instead blood already leaking out of his eyes, "You see when you took some of my blood earlier I wasn't really happy with it, I kind of want it back." I pulled on the strings of magic that he had woven to keep himself alive and he came apart like a bad scarecrow, I'll save you the details I'm sure you can imagine it. I made sure he was the last of his cult, and then I burned the local forest to the ground, better for no one to see the horrors I did (unfortunately as always this fire spread further than I wanted because I am not some kind of fire master!)
So something else to remember kids, never take the blood of a necromancer into yourself unless you want that blood used as a way of ripping your body apart. Its a very specific lesson with a horrible example let me tell you!
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