Necro

Ch02
***
“Wake up.”

“Fuck off,” Marshal grunted. Coughing violently, he leaned back into the truck seat and groaned as he clutched his chest. While not in absolute agony, he still felt tender. “What the hell did you do to me?”

Eva snorted softly, “I told you it would hurt.”

“You said you’d knock me out.” A glimpse of motion in the corner of his vision drew his eye to a translucent shade of a person sitting in his passenger seat.

Long, straight black hair framed a delicate looking face and stood in stark contrast to her milky pale skin. Her frame, topping out at no more than 5'2” was tiny compared to Marsh's six feet. She was curvy, though not particularly blessed as far as assets went. She wore a black shirt or top that seemed to pull double duty as a skirt, coming down to her upper thighs and slit down the sides, in addition to a pair of tight brown pants of some sort. Her feet, however, were completely bare.

The most striking feature about her was her eyes—a shade of red-orange he hadn't seen outside of colored contacts before.

“I did,” came the short reply, before she added, “I don’t really have access to most of my spells at the moment, so I can’t do anything about the residual bruising.”

“Fine,” Marshal grunted. “So, what next? Who are we taking revenge against?”

“I want to track down the people who put me in this situation and make them suffer.” Tilting her head to one side, Eva added, “We should leave this warren and go south.”

Pulling his glasses off, Marshal rubbed at his eyes and the headache beginning to build behind them. “Do you actually know who it is you’re looking for? And what’s to the south? In fact, where the hell are we? Earth doesn’t have kobolds, last I checked.”

“We’re not on Earth,” Eva answered, before amending that statement with, “At least, not entirely. An alternate Earth, perhaps. Definitely not the Earth you know. The planet is called Terra Majora—creative, I know. Blame the Elves. We're on a little island corresponding roughly in location and terrain to Ireland on Earth. I say roughly because, last time I checked a map, the landmasses were similar but not identical.”

“Uh huh,” Marsh deadpanned. “And when was the last time you checked a map?”

The lich shrugged. “A few hundred years ago. I lost track of time. As to your other question—to the south should be my castle.”

“Your castle?” Shaking his head, he waved her off. “Later. So, why bring me here? Never mind how, I assume it's some magic bullshit.”

“The arrangement was mutually beneficial. You wanted to avoid prison for murder, I want to murder people for leaving me in a prison. We can help each other. Now, if you've no more questions—”

“I have several,” he countered, glaring at the lich.

Eva returned the glare with equal force. “We have to go. Now. The longer we sit here, the more danger we're in. They'll have felt me breach the gap to bring you over using your power and they won't be pleased about it.”

“'They?'” Marshal repeated, then blinked. “Wait, no, first: my power?”

The lich rolled her eyes. “Of course that's what you'd focus on,” she grumbled. “Yes. Your power. I've spent the last few hundred years trying to escape my self-made prison by using what little power I had available to try to recreate and perfect my old master's spells. Master Magnus was a madman, but madness and brilliance tend to go hand in hand—especially where wizards are concerned.

“I managed to find a way to view other places outside of this realm, but I could never interact or communicate with anything in the target realm. At least, not until I came across your world. As soon as I did, your power drew my spell in and the two connected in a way I wasn't expecting. It allowed me to hear and see things at a level that I hadn't been able to previously—and to speak to you. Your power, Marshal, creates bridges. It's the culmination of Master Magnus’ life's work—in a form that doesn't require spells or calculations.'

Marsh frowned. “'Bridges?'”

“You can connect two points in space, skipping the space in the middle.” Eva paused, thinking it over before adding, “Your science fiction media calls the phenomena a wormhole.”

“Wormholes,” Marsh deadpanned. “You're saying I make wormholes.”

“Yes,” Eva agreed. “Well, you've only made one successful wormhole—but you held it open for nearly thirty years and I was able to expand it to fit your truck to get you here.”

Shaking his head, Marsh asked, “What about the rest of that? Who is this 'they' you're worried about?”

“Elves. Gods—well, most Elves may as well be gods. Other wizards. Any one of a hundred other interested parties. Master Magnus. Mostly though, we're worried about the first two.” Marshal opened his mouth and Eva growled, “Yes, Elves. Yes, Gods. No, probably not friendly. There’s only one I’d even remotely trust and that’s only to trust her to use us to her own ends and maybe, if we’re lucky, make sure we don’t die in her little schemes.” She pointed back behind the truck, towards the source of the rushing water sound. “The exit is over there.”

Marshal started to shift off the seat again as he began making plans for a hike, then changed his mind. “You can do magic.”

“Yes...” Eva agreed. “I'm surprised you were so quick to believe me.”

“Seeing is believing,” Marsh countered.

The translucent girl sighed. “Unfortunately, I am limited right now in both scope and power. I have more power now than I had yesterday, thanks to you—but it's still not what I'm used to working with. My primary field of study was in Soul Magic and Necromancy, though Master Magnus made sure I was well grounded in the basics and I studied pretty much anything that caught my interest. It's how I got us here, actually—residual necromantic energy left over in that cemetery along with the two fresh kills you made used to fuel your own power and make a big enough hole under us to fall through. Why?”

Grinning, Marsh sat back in his seat. “I'm not leaving my truck. Or my gear. We need to cross ground fast, right? Are there roads? Fields? Fairly open terrain to move across?”

“Last I checked,” Eva nodded.

“Then we'd do it a hell of a lot faster on wheels than on foot. You know damn well what I put into this thing and the sorts of terrain she can cross. Problem is, she won't fit through that tiny little gap in the wall back there,” Marshal pointed to the gap in question.

A smirk stretched across Eva's lips as she imagined it. “Yes. Yes, this is a good idea. Do you have something to write with?” Popping open his glove box, Marshal produced a black magic marker and waved it at the lich. “Excellent. You'll need a surface to permanently affix a pattern to and... I'll need to borrow your body.”

“Explain,” Marsh demanded, even as he reached down and pulled the release lever for his hood.

Eva followed along beside him as Marshal made his way to the front of the truck and popped the hood open, before climbing up onto the brush guard over the grille to inspect the metal underside of the hood. “We're sharing the same body. I'm already borrowing your senses—and I must say, it's very nice to be able to truly feel again. If you allowed me to, I could move your limbs as well. It would be much quicker than trying to describe what you need to draw. Quicker and less likely to violently explode when—not if—you get something wrong.”

Regarding the lich for a long moment, Marshal finally shrugged. “Fine. Go for it. I'd prefer not to see my stuff go up in a blaze of glory.”

The woman's shade smiled, then disappeared. An instant later, his right hand twitched before his head shifted up to regard the hood. The marker came up and he watched as a passenger as his body moved outside of his direction to draw some sort of pattern on the underside of the hood—a circle with some symbols he recognized and many more he did not. After a few minutes of work, his head nodded and he capped the marker, before Marshal abruptly felt like he was in control of his own body again.

“Now what?”

The shade reappeared, this time leaning against the side of the truck, her head tilted to peer up at the pattern she had used him to draw. “Put your hand on it and I'll do the rest.” Turning those burning eyes on him, she added, “Try to follow along. This is your first lesson in using magic: channeling mana. Having me guide you should be enough of a shortcut to cut months, if not years, off your study in the subject. I know you’re not stupid, but mana manipulation is something of an art form and takes years of practice to master.”

Raising an eyebrow at that, Marshal shrugged before placing his fingers on the circle. A tingling, cool feeling pushed outwards from his chest, traveling down his arm and out of his fingers. The squiggles Eva had drawn in black magic marker lit up with a blue light reminding him of a certain kind of radiation. The truck shifted under him and he shoved off it, dropping to the ground as it shrank down before his eyes, finally stopping when it was roughly the size of a child's pocket car.

“Okay,” Marshal turned a grin on the shade of the woman beside him, “that was kind of cool.”

“I'm glad you think so.”

Picking up the miniature truck and gently closing the still-open hood and door with a couple of soft clicks, he asked, “How long will it last?”

“Normal shrinking and stasis runes tend to last about a week on an average charge. Master never liked to settle for ‘normal’ or ‘average’ though, so he drilled it into my head to always add an array to absorb ambient mana to everything I plan to make permanent. It’ll last until you reverse it,” Eva answered. “And before you ask, even turning it upside down and shaking it won't affect anything inside of it—even the liquids will remain exactly as they were before it was shrunken.” She gestured towards the kobold corpses Marshal had left behind. “One last thing, before we leave…”

“Yeah?” Marsh asked, pocketing the truck and following the see-through lich as she moved.

“I may as well start rebuilding my army here and now.”

Blinking, Marsh asked, “Undead army?” Eva nodded. “Those?”

“In life, they were stupid, rat-faced little shits. In death? They are small, tireless, semi-autonomous borrowers. The things I can do with a group of kobold zombies…” The lich took on a far off look, a smirk spreading across her face as she giggled quietly to herself. She came back to herself after a moment and waved Marshal over. “I can’t do this by myself yet. For now, I’ll need your body to cast for me. So, pay attention while I work and you may just pick something up.”

“Fun,” Marsh drawled, his tone laced with sarcasm.

On the inside, however, he felt like a kid in a candy store as he and Eva worked together to raise the fallen kobolds. When the first reanimated it moved away under some silent mental command from Eva, beginning to round up the ones furthest away and drag them closer. The next to be raised followed suit, and Marsh realized Eva was an old hand at this as she already had an efficient system in place to get corpses to her as quickly as possible.

“Not all of these are viable,” Eva explained, gesturing to one in particular that was missing the top of its head above the jaw—a victim of Marsh’s shotgun at close range. “In the future, try to keep in mind that the less damage you do to their bodies, the more useful they are initially and the less work we’ll have to put in to make them useful again. Try to leave heads, brains, and spines intact as a first priority. Secondary priority goes to skeletal muscles and bones—if it doesn’t have a frame to hold itself up or muscles to move, it’s useless. I detest having to sew parts from multiple corpses together to make a working one, and since I don’t have hands, guess who gets to do it in my place.”

“Fuck that shit,” Marsh shook his head. “So, aim for heart shots if possible.” As the last of the usable kobolds was revived, Marsh asked, “Now what do we do with them?”

“We… uh.. Shit!” Eva cursed, stomping one bare foot soundlessly on the floor. “I had a bottomless bag specifically for corpses and zombies at one point, but I imagine that was looted when those do-gooders killed my body.” Turning to Marshal, she hummed and asked, “I don’t suppose—”

“No,” he denied. Eva shot him a flat look. After a minute of staring between the two, he finally rolled his eyes. “How long would it take to make one of my bags bottomless?”

“Longer than we have,” Eva admitted. “But I can do it to all of them when we get a chance to stop, so while you would be losing one bag, you would gain more than enough space from the others to make up for it. Until then, we can unshrink the truck and load them into the back, then shrink the lot down.”

“Works for me,” Marsh agreed, turning and making his way back to the relatively flat area where the truck had initially appeared and pulling the matchbox sized vehicle out of his pocket before placing it on the ground. The resurrected kobolds followed, climbing into the back of the truck as soon as it had been expanded and the tailgate let down. The truck full of corpses found its way back into his pocket and Marsh headed for the exit.

The entrance to the cave was barely wide enough for him to slip through sideways and curved in the middle, which he was almost certain was intentional. “Did you find this cave?”

Ahead of him as she lead, Eva shook her head. “No. I created it.”

“I thought you said you studied Soul Magic and Necromancy,” Marshal pointed out.

Eva turned a wicked smirk on him, almost a leer really. “I did.” When he gestured for her to go on as he shuffled along, she explained.

“Most necromancers waste their talent raising shitty undead of some sort. Most undead are little better than flesh golems and completely incapable of following any order more complex than 'stand here,' 'move this,' or 'kill anyone who isn't me' without direct guidance. Utterly worthless, except as either a demoralization tool in a war or as cheap manual labor. I've used them for both, to great effect, but it's still a waste of talent. The only reason I even bothered to rez the kobolds was because they’re useful as infiltration units, and as soon as I find something to replace them with I will.”

She gestured for him to duck and Marshal narrowly missed cracking the side of his head against a rock. “Some necromancers venture into Soul Magic and figure out how to capture a soul and bind it to a body—turning it into an undead, skilled, and intelligent corpse golem. Those are only truly useful if you come up with a way to make the body indestructible. Usually those also wind up yanking their own soul out and sticking it in something more permanent than a frail mortal body, so liches aren't exactly new or rare. It's a poor method of immortality, however, and is best used as an additional safeguard on top of whatever other measures a wizard takes to stave off death. I believe I am the first to do what I did.”

“Which was?” Marshal asked over the roar of water. Around them, the tunnel finally ended and he found himself stepping out into fresh, cold air—heavy with the scent of a nearby river. The mouth of the cave was set into the side of a mountain and obscured by green shrub in a way that would be all but invisible until one was pretty much right on top of it. Breathing deeply, Marsh grinned. “Fresh air.”

Turning in a circle, he took in his surroundings. Everything was so very green—covered in moss, grass, scrub plants, or huge trees growing up the side of the mountain. Where it wasn’t green, dark gray rocks jutted from the mountain creating boulders, overhangs, and other obstacles. “Yeah, I’m not getting the truck through here,” he muttered and started walking towards the stream he could hear. “Keep going. What did you do different?”

Eva's eyes had gone half lidded as he inhaled, clearly enjoying the sensation herself. “I captured souls. And while it's been done before to increase a lich's strength, no one had done it quite the way I did. Most just eat the souls they capture, directly empowering themselves and sometimes gaining a little knowledge, but otherwise wasting it. I made phylacteries for the souls I took and I chose my targets carefully. A corrupt magistrate, but renowned for his skill over fire spells. An assassin gifted in stealth and manipulation of shadow. Anyone who attacked me and showed any sort of exceptional skill was added to my collection, along with the prey I sought out directly. By the time of my demise, I had amassed quite a collection of souls, each with unique knowledge and skills, or an abundance of power. The last, my crown jewel, was an Elf. The fool said my art was an affront to the gods and he did his best to shuffle me off the mortal coil. In the end, I won, and his soul was mine. Oh, you have no idea what sort of things the Elves are hiding—and this was a young one! Imagine taking a hundred years to learn everything you could about sword work. Then taking a hundred years to do the same with the bow. Another hundred each for every other weapon under the sun and countless other skills besides—and constantly practicing all the other skills you’ve amassed so that none of them get rusty. It was almost overwhelming. It was... humbling.'

Marshal turned a frown on the necromancer beside him, before asking, “So how did you win in the first place?”

“Overwhelming brute force,” Eva answered with a snort. “He didn't expect me to have eaten a dragon. And even with that sort of power backing me up, it was still entirely too close to a fair fight for comfort. If I’d had the time, I would have set traps. Unfortunately, he ambushed me—not the other way around.”

“I see,” Marsh nodded. “So, elves are nasty.”

“Elves, with a capital 'E.' And yes, they're nasty. Elves rule the world, or did the last time I checked. I doubt much has changed in that regard since I was killed.”

Nodding at that as he came to the stream, Marshal asked, “Which way?”

The shade beside him looked around with a frown on her pretty face. “Downhill.”

“Helpful as always,” Marshal snarked, but turned to follow the stream down the hill, which would probably lead them out of the mountains. The terrain was not particularly hard to traverse on foot, despite the impossibility of getting his truck through it, leaving him wishing he’d thought to load up his dirt bike or ATV into the back of the truck before he left home.

If Eva had told me she planned to spirit me away to another world, I’d have packed a whole lot more—all the guns and ammo instead of just what I brought, the bike and the four-wheeler, maybe the boat. Hell, I could have loaded up my trailer with all of that and brought it.

To pass the time, he asked, “So, these 'Elves.' What kind of elves are we talking about and why do they rule your world?”

Eva turned an amused look on him. “There are more races of Elves than there are races of humans. ‘High’ Elves—probably the ones you think of when you think ‘elf.’ Hair colors ranging in every human shade you’re used to and a few you aren’t, fair skin, slim build. They’re the most dangerous. They have a name for their race, but it’s in High Elvish—which they don’t teach to anyone but the very few High Elf children born—and it’s pretty much unpronounceable by anyone but them since it’s one part vocal, one part magic tonal so don’t bother. Dark Elves, Winged Elves, and so on. The Elves have been interbreeding with every sentient on the planet for long enough that their offspring have formed individual races. You could technically call them all ‘half-elves,’ but there is no such thing as a ‘half-elf.’ Elves breed true, for the most part, and simply assimilate the best parts of whatever it was they bred with.”

“‘For the most part?’” Marshal asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Humans are the one exception. No one is sure why. Well, no—I’m certain the Elves are sure why and are keeping it to themselves. However, I can tell you the effects of such pairings. If no new Elven blood is introduced, within four generations most of the Elvish features are washed out, leaving a fairly normal-looking human. They’ll always be prettier than other humans, but that’s the only real outward sign. Internally? Every single one of them is capable of using magic, in every generation afterwards, to varying degrees.”

Stepping over a downed limb, Marsh hummed as he turned a thoughtful look on his companion. “So all human magic users are descendants of Elf/Human pairings?”

“Not all, but most,” Eva agreed. “As to your other question, why do you think they rule?” Moving around to walk in front of him, she kicked off the ground and floated in midair. When Marsh simply looked at her expectantly, she sighed. “Spoil my fun. Fine. They're immortal.” She tilted her head to one side for a moment before clarifying, “Or perhaps I should say they don't age like most other races, they're extremely powerful and skilled, and they are very, very difficult to kill. They are not truly unkillable, just ageless.”

“So, overwhelming force is required,” Marsh lead, and Eva nodded.

“If you're lucky, it'll work and they'll die for a while. And then the little shits go right back to their little Well of Souls and are reborn into a new body within the year—memories and skills intact, so all they have really lost is the time spent training their bodies.”

It was impossible to miss the bitter tone in her voice, but Marsh chose not to comment on it. A race that was agelessly immortal, had the weight of millenia worth of experience and skill on their side, and even if you managed to kill one they just respawned? Sounded like bullshit to him.

Instead of commenting on it, he asked, “How old are we talking, here? A few thousand years?”

Eva's red-orange eyes were flat as she answered, “Eighty million years, last time I checked. Elves were the first hominid species to walk this planet, and they were around when dinosaurs were still a valid threat. There are still Elves alive who walked Terra Majora in those days—in the same bodies that stood toe to toe with things like the T-Rex—and those are the ones you do not cross.”

“So, very long-lived,” Marsh surmised. “I take it they've ruled since then?”

Eva nodded. “Elves have directed the evolution of every sapient species on the planet—uplifting many into sapience and creating even more.” She frowned as she said, “Imagine a race who feel like it is their duty to shepherd every other race along in its growth. Who engaged in selective breeding and experimentation in order to create better examples of those races—to bring out the best in each of them. Who ruthlessly culled every failed evolutionary branch to prevent it from spreading its genes.”

Marshal hummed, pushing aside a branch the lich had simply floated through. “You know, I can't tell if that's good or bad from a moral standpoint. And I don't think I care. So, I'm guessing these guys are kind of dicks who look down on everyone.”

“Pretty much,” she agreed with a nod. “I've got no complaints about them turning the world into their own personal experiment, considering the benefits outweigh the downsides. My problem is that most of them are, as you said, dicks.”

“I see,” he muttered, mentally making plans to avoid the Elves if at all possible. He didn’t particularly feel like dealing with something that could kill him with a thought.

 The pair fell silent as Marsh walked, both of them keeping an eye out for trouble as they moved. Marshal was excited to experiment with magic, but rezzing those kobolds had been draining—leaving him tired in a way he had never been before. Some careful self-examination with that new power gave him a rough idea that it was slowly recharging or refilling—but he had no real way to gauge how long that would take, as he was new to this whole ‘mana’ thing.

On the other hand, there was a restless energy building in him, entirely different from the cool feeling of the mana he could faintly feel in his body. It felt like electricity—like a static charge building up, waiting to be used. He realized that it had replaced the constant feeling of strain he’d had so long that he had simply stopped noticing it, and without that strain he felt like he could do anything.

Everything I read online said powers are supposed to be instinctive. So, let’s instinct this thing, he mused, focusing on that static feeling and trying to will something to happen. Something in his head just clicked and he realized what he needed to do.

Focusing on a spot several yards ahead and fixing that in his mind, he concentrated and a moment later, reality distorted in front of his face. A faint blue light and distortion—like looking at the world through swirling water—formed, a few inches across. Ahead of them, an identical distortion formed in the space he had been aiming at. Looking at the distortion in front of him, he could clearly see the scenery on the other side of the wormhole. “That is… very cool.”

“It really is,” Eva agreed. “I kind of thought you’d ask me to start teaching you magic.”

Marsh shook his head. “I still feel tired from helping you rez those damn kobolds.”

Eva smirked. “If you had asked, I’d have told you to wait an hour or two to recharge anyway. This is better. I can feel the energy inside of you when you use it. It’s close enough to spirit energy that one can fuel the other, but it’s distinct.”

“Thought you said you used necromantic energy to fuel it,” Marsh pointed out and the shorter woman shrugged.

“Lesson time, it seems. All energy is separated into spectrums.”

“No shit, Sherlock.” Marsh rolled his eyes, focusing on the two portals and willing them to move while they walked—the first moving further away while the closer one kept pace with him, allowing him to see out of his new vantage point. A thought had the further portal zipping upwards and reorienting itself, giving him a bird’s eye view of the area.

The lich flipped him off before continuing. “All energy, including magic. Every wizard knows this. What most of them don’t know is that it’s not a straight line—it’s more of a sphere. Pretty sure the Elves know, but I think that old lech Magnus was the first human to figure it out on his own, and he taught me.”

Tilting the upper portal, Marsh spotted the edge of the forest—and beyond it, rolling green hills and valleys for miles. “How’s that relate? Also, is this safe? Can the Elves detect it?” he asked, gesturing at the portal.

Eva shrugged. “It’s safe. They’d have only picked up crossing over due to the influx of Necromantic energy.”

“Great,” Marsh nodded.

Focusing his sight through the two portals, he willed a third into being outside the tree line while allowing the portal in the air to dissipate. With a flex of will power and that static buzz in his body, he forced the portal to open up wide enough to walk through. Between one step and the next, he moved from the forest onto the top of a grassy hill. He frowned as he closed both portals and shot a look at the floating lich. “I didn’t even feel that. It took more effort to walk through than it took to open the hole.”

“Of course. You’ve been holding open a pinhole between universes for thirty years, Marsh. Local portals don’t require nearly the sort of energy it takes to cross the space between. The powers of your Earth are like muscles—the more you train them, the more you get out of them. You’ve been training—albeit unknowingly—all that time.”

Smirking, she added, “Now, be a good boy and put some more miles between us and that cave before you break out the truck.”

“South?” Marsh asked, and Eva nodded. Creating another set of portals, Marsh repeated the process, stepping across them to a point several miles ahead.

“Now, as I was saying,” Eva continued. “The soul is a real thing and composed of energy. There are about a hundred names for it, but for simplicity sake, call it ‘spirit.’ Spirit can change states into many different other forms of energy—mana, ‘life’ energy or chi as you know it from those silly cartoons, and others; in addition to a pretty much limitless variety of combinations of them.

“People on your Earth with powers process Spirit into fuel for their abilities. But that’s all internal energy. There is also energy outside the body just as there are cosmic rays, things floating around the EM spectrum, and so forth. Necromantic energy is Spirit that’s left behind in corpses. The soul is usually gone, but it’s left behind traces—think magical radiation. Most energy floating around outside the body can’t be reconstituted into Spirit, but Necromantic energy can—because it pretty much is spirit, just on a slightly different wavelength.”

Marsh sighed, shaking his head. “Okay, enough. I get it. Note to self: if I ever want a cheap power boost, stop by a cemetery.”

Eva smirked and nodded. “Exactly. The dead are dead—they aren’t using it and they’re not going to complain. And if some lingering ghost does complain, you can eat it too. Now, why aren’t you doing the smart thing and just moving us across the island?”

Turning an annoyed look on the lich, Marsh gestured around them. “I was enjoying the scenery, thank you.”

“Ugh. Sightsee later, get us moving now.”

“Fine,” Marsh grunted. Looking straight up, he took a rough estimate of distance, shrugged, and opened a portal. Wind rushed around them, roaring into the closer portal and causing Marshal to have to grab his hat to keep it from being swept off his head.

“You idiot! Don’t open portals into space!”

“It’s not space,” Marsh denied, eyeballing the island the portal had appeared over and aiming for the southern coast. The wind stopped as the new portal formed and the higher of the three closed behind it. The portals widened and he stepped through onto rocky shore, the sound of waves rolling over the coast and the scent of sea spray filling his senses as the portals closed behind him. “There, see?”

“Asshole!” the lich growled, glaring at him before her eyes shifted to the side and went wide. “Duck!”

Marsh ducked, shifting backwards. The slick, smooth rocks shifted under his boots and he lost his footing. Hitting the ground, he rolled as something shiny swished through the air where his head had been. Coming up into a crouch, Marsh’s mouth fell open as he spotted the threat.

Blue scales, fangs, long serpentine lower body and the upper body of a particularly well-built man greeted him wielding a golden colored bident. The naga—his years of video games and D&D sessions refused to allow him to classify it as anything else—reared back and stabbed forward again. Two things happened then: Marshal got serious and the snake-man died.

A portal opened in front of the naga’s bident while a second opened over the beast’s sternum, just beneath where Marsh guessed the ribs to end. The bident slammed into the naga’s chest cavity, the force of its own momentum sending it falling backwards, bright red blood leaking from its new wound. Pain and confusion crossed its mostly-human face before it slumped over, dead.

Marsh stood to his feet, brushing off his pants and coat as he looked around. His long distance portaling had put them right on the edge of a little village on the shoreline, composed of piles of those smooth rocks and timber taken from the nearby forest. Marshal considered running as he took in the village, which had quickly raised an alarm. A squad of six new nagas, each as large as the last were quickly slithering his way up the beach.

“Are they sentient?” he asked, casting a sidelong glance at Eva.

The lich frowned. “Yes. Also highly territorial and aggressive. Some of them can even use magic.”

“They attacked me first,” Marsh pointed out, and Eva shrugged.

“They attack all other races on sight. Time to decide: run or fight.”

A spear flew through the air, forcing Marshal to sidestep or get impaled. Reaching under his jacket, he drew the 1911. “Fuck them.”

Beside him, a smile entirely too full of teeth stretched across Eva’s face as she watched. Gods, I can’t believe that cunt almost undid my work. I haven’t had this much fun since I launched my first campaign across the mainland. This is going to be great.

Two portals, each barely two inches across, formed—the first in front of Marshal and the second in the face of the lead naga. Bringing the 1911 up, Marsh pointed it at the portal and squeezed the trigger. Once more, the locals of this world froze as they experienced gunfire—and its results—for the first time. With the portals, Marshal hadn’t even had to aim—he may as well have just stuck the gun in the naga’s face.

As it turns out, while naga hide is tough, a .45 caliber jacketed hollow point round is tougher. The bullet left a hole in the creature’s face while back of the its head exploded in a small fountain of gore. The spent brass casing tinkled quietly against the rocky shore as the portal shifted and the second shot rang out and another naga went down. “Want to rez any of these?”

“Absolutely not,” Eva denied. “Too big, too slow, with nothing to show for it.” Glancing down at the first naga’s bident, she hummed. “They’ve got a source of orichalcum around here somewhere though, so you’ll want to see if they’ve got processed bars of it. If not, the weapons and armor could be useful.”

“Commentary later,” Marsh grunted, shifting to the side and line-of-sight portaling himself away from a naga that had closed in on him. Unlike the kobolds, the gunfire only spurred the nagas into attacking all the harder and they were quick to figure out his portal-in-the-face trick.

Unfortunately for the first naga to duck as soon as a portal appeared in its face, they were not quite as fast to figure out portals appearing behind their heads. Shouts in whatever passed for their language sounded across the village and Marsh portaled to the top of a bluff overlooking the village.

“Should have done this to begin with,” he muttered, quickly eliminating the rest of the guards before turning his attention on the other nagas. A large group of them had fled into the water—women and children from the look of things, assuming those were breasts he saw, accompanied by a group of three of the big male nagas. “Let them go?”
 
 Eva snorted softly. “I’d like to say exterminate them all and mount their corpses on pikes along the shoreline as an example to others, but no. Let them go.”

Marsh raised an eyebrow at that, stepping off the bluff and into the middle of the village as he began engaging in the time honored tradition of adventurers everywhere—looting the dead and stealing their things for himself. His newly working power put an interesting twist on that process. And all the while, mist rose off the corpses and trailed its way to him, easing the fatigue he’d felt after animating the kobolds.

Knowing he’d have to load it all up into the truck anyway, he unshrank the vehicle in what passed for the naga town square and then went building to building portaling everything of interest into the back of the truck with the kobolds. A second pair of portals off to the side allowed him to keep a watch over the village to make sure the nagas wouldn’t return before he was finished and, if they did, he could deal with them. “Why the desire to display them?”
 
Eva frowned from where she sat cross-legged in midair. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to tell you,” she muttered. Sunset eyes met Marshal’s green for a moment before she looked away. “This was my home. Years before I was killed, I lived in a little town on the eastern coast. It was mostly farmers and fishermen, but my family could use magic. I was something of a prodigy when I was born, but my parents couldn’t afford to send me to any school beyond the simple one in the village—and definitely not a school for magic.

“My mother was never interested in magic, but my grandmother knew a great deal about spirits, along with some herbalism. So, I spent my time studying under my grandmother and, when I could, engaging in self-study. Then, one day, Master Magnus passed through our village. He had come for me, as a favor to his goddess. I spent a decade or so studying under the lecher, being dragged across the islands and the continent on whatever harebrained scheme he had concocted that month. It was fun.”

As she talked, Marsh watched her face shift through emotions—nostalgia, bitterness, annoyance, even longing. While he was an ass by nature, Marsh knew the lich well enough to know when and how to pull her out of a funk. Moving into the largest house in the village, he set about ransacking the place. “This trip down memory lane come to a point any time soon?”
 
“Asshole,” the woman grunted, turning a glare on her companion. “Yes, it has a fucking point. The point is, eventually I ‘graduated.’ Master Magnus acknowledged me as a master myself—a Master of Necromancy and Spirit Magic. I made my phylactery and came home to visit my parents. When I got home, though, I found out that my parents, my grandmother, and nearly everyone I had known had died in my absence. A plague swept the island, eradicating every person living on it. My first death was spent puking and shitting my guts out in absolute agony for three days straight before I died of dehydration. Then I rezzed my corpse and went to see the rest of the island.”

Balling her fists up and crossing her arms under her breasts, she glared—and though she was looking at him, Marsh got the feeling he wasn't the target of her ire. “Everywhere I went, it was the same story—every town, every city, wiped out. I was the last living soul on the entire island. So began my first campaign. I animated the bodies of my family and friends and had them bring me more bodies.

“More and more, spreading across the island until I had everyone under my control—over ten thousand soulless husks, waiting for orders. I razed every settlement—burned them all to ash. Plague control at its finest. Then I rebuilt. I had thousands of laborers build a grand city to honor the dead—my Mausoleum. When I was done, I laid my family to rest and we cut down half the trees on the island to make ships to get us across the water, where I began tracking down the source of the plague and killing everyone who raised a sword to me. I tracked them all the way to the continent and I killed them all to a man, then I brought my army back and laid them to rest beside my family.

“When I left again to seek out Master Magnus, this was an island of the undead—my island. My home. So to see inhuman filth stain its shores is an affront I cannot stand… but I have been dead a long time and I do not know the state of things here. Until we take a lay of the land, it would not be wise to start killing everything we come across and raising another army. Before that, though, we need to recover my other phylacteries.”

Exiting the last house, Marshal nodded and portaled back to where he had first faced off against the nagas, where he began collecting his spent brass for later reloading. “What will those do for us?”

“Access to more schools of magic,” Eva answered, watching Marshal work. “I’d hoped there would be a store of orichalcum bars, but the weapons will have to do. You can melt those down into more ammunition and casings. They’re magically conductive, so we can enchant whatever you make.”

“Magic bullets?” Marsh asked, pocketing the last spent shell before moving to the next site. When Eva nodded, he asked, “What about enchanting the weapons themselves?”

Eva wagged a hand back and forth. “We can try, but results will vary. If you could find someone to build copies out of more magically conductive material? Absolutely.”

“If it doesn’t stand up to chamber pressure, then it’s worthless to me even if it is magically blue and glowy,” Marsh pointed out.

The lich shook her head. “You’d be making it out of better material than orichalcum. This stuff is the equivalent of magical pig iron. It’s crap, but it’ll carry a charge and I can do things like make bullets that explode when they hit, or pierce more than they should.”

“Fair enough,” Marshal agreed, pocketing the last of his brass and portaling to the truck. In the back was an assortment of spears, bidents, the odd trident, and several short swords—all made from the same gold-tinted metal. Rolled up to the side were two of the large fishing nets the nagas had been using, along with several smaller nets. Marsh had taken one look at the big nets, muttered something about a ghille suit, and portaled them to the truck with a smirk on his face.

In addition to that, there were a pair of small wooden chests. The first was filled with silver and gold coins—older looking and round, this time, compared to the bar style coins he had found with the kobolds. The second box was filled with pearls in shades of white, red, blue, and black in sizes ranging from peas to one black pearl as large as a baseball. There had been no books or anything else of interest, really.

If it weren’t for the chests of coins and pearls, Marsh would have thought they were the equivalent of a small fishing village with nothing of any real value. This seems more like a case of their society not valuing things the same way ours does. That is, spartan living conditions and little in the way of personal possessions with a community coffer of funds. Shit, they’re scaly commies.

“You seemed excited about the pearls,” Marsh pointed out, closing the two boxes and sliding into the truck. The engine roared to life and he maneuvered around what passed for houses here before pointing the front of the truck at an incline leading back up onto higher ground. He had decided that he’d had enough of randomly opening portals into trouble and he wanted to take in the scenery for a while.

Besides, with it getting dark, he would want to find somewhere to hunker down for the night soon. Apparently, Terra Majora and Earth were in roughly the same position in space in their respective universes—seasons were the same and the time was accurate for a jump eastward across six time zones.

From the passenger seat, Eva nodded. “Pearls are highly magically conductive. More importantly, they can be used as what amounts to mana batteries. They can be used to store ambient mana and then discharged later. Think of them like rechargeable batteries that never go bad. They’d fetch a fortune pretty much anywhere.”

“Anything else I should be on the lookout for? Jewels?”

“They aren’t as valuable as pearls,” Eva shrugged. “On the other hand, they’re more versatile. You can enchant—essentially program—a jewel with a specific spell and so long as it has power it can do that spell until it runs out. They suck at holding mana by themselves, but they’re excellent at storing raw spirit—don’t ask me why. They make great phylacteries.”

“Uh huh,” Marsh nodded. “So these phylacteries of yours that we’re going to be tracking down…”

“All made from precious gems, yes,” Eva nodded at the unspoken question. “Speaking of, turn eastward. The reason I was having you come down here was to retrieve one of the two easiest. The closest is a few miles away.”

Marshal hummed before shaking his head. “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s set up camp and do some recon first. I don’t want a repeat of the incident with the nagas. It’d be even worse if I drove into something that could fuck up the truck.”

“We should be outside the nagas’ patrol area shortly, but I would like to put a few more miles between us and them, just in case they do decide to pursue. Your truck won’t exactly be difficult to follow.”

Marshal shrugged, reaching over and turning on the radio, only to be met with static. Frowning, he hit the button to connect to his phone. A moment later, classic rock began pouring from the speakers as the pair fell into silence.