Tybalt choked and gasped for air as Baldwin’s grip around his throat tightened.

  “Fucking bastard!” Baldwin snarled. “Trying to—to kill me. How dare you try to kill me?” He sounded at once furious and disoriented.

  “Bal—sto—” Tybalt’s choked out words made no sense to either him or Baldwin.

  Stop! The single word in Tybalt’s mind, transmitted into Baldwin’s, instantly halted the tightening of Baldwin’s grip. But he didn’t release his hands. It was almost as though the big man did not understand what was going on. Actually, he probably didn’t. Tybalt barely understood, and these were his powers.

  Baldwin still stared hatefully down at Tybalt, hands around the necromancer’s neck. Then the undead man’s eyes darted to his hands as if confused by why they weren’t tightening anymore.

  “Why…?” Baldwin began.

  Release me! Tybalt sent this command with more vehemence than the last, almost outraged. He was the master here. How dare Baldwin attack his new master?

  Baldwin’s hands instantly lost their grip on Tybalt’s throat, and he backed slightly away from the defiant necromancer’s body.

  Tybalt pushed himself up slowly with one hand and rubbed at his throat with the other.

  “What—what’s going on?” Baldwin asked with a bewildered expression. He seemed almost frightened, staring down at his body and hands as if they were unfamiliar to him. Tybalt felt certain Baldwin’s body had never rebelled against Baldwin in the middle of an act of murder before.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Tybalt replied, giving Baldwin a dirty look.

  Why can you talk? How did you attack me?

  Tybalt had expected Baldwin to become a zombie, the lowest tier of undead alongside skeletons. At best, Tybalt had imagined he might have created the next tier up, the more intelligent but still bestial ghoul.

  If Baldwin had revived as any of the aforementioned creatures, the most Tybalt would have had to do was order him to not make too much noise and try not to drool. If Baldwin had become one of those undead who sometimes had trouble controlling certain basic bodily functions, then Tybalt might have been forced to send him off by himself, hunting whatever creatures lived in the wild here to level up while Tybalt reported him missing and presumed dead due to enemy action.

  Instead, Baldwin was talking and speaking as normal—even attacking Tybalt as he had been just before he died.

  Something was screwy here.

  He mentally flipped through the descriptions of different intelligent, free willed undead that he had only skimmed, since they were typically harder to create until one became a more experienced and skillful necromancer.

  One of the descriptions he remembered seemed to cover the sort of behavior that Tybalt had just observed.

  Fuck me, Tybalt thought. He was getting a headache now that the shock of almost being murdered had faded, and it wasn’t only due to mana exhaustion.

  He reached into his pants and plucked out the storage ring tied into his pocket. Without bothering to untie it, he pushed a tiny spark of mana into the ring and brought his book, Unholy Forces, out. The use of even a sliver of mana smacked him in the temple with a fresh jolt of headache pain, and Tybalt winced.

  “What in Kur is that?” Baldwin asked. “When did you get a magic ring?”

  “Baldwin, shut up for a minute, all right?” Tybalt said, rubbing his temples. “I have a headache from reviving you already, and you’re not helping right now.”

  To his quiet delight, Baldwin clammed up completely, a look of horror spreading mutely across the undead man’s face.

  That was a pleasant sight, and a reminder that regardless of what type of undead Tybalt had just created, Baldwin had to obey him now. Tybalt was his owner.

  Tybalt’s understanding was that only a couple of types of more willful undead could disobey their creators, and even then, that typically only occurred under very specific circumstances.

  Mostly, the undead were just slaves. In Baldwin’s case, a somewhat intelligent slave. But still a slave—and he would be locked in bondage for the rest of his life. Unlife.

  Tybalt flipped through the book until he found the description of the type of undead he was thinking of. The creature known as the revenant. He read silently to himself, unwilling to give Baldwin any information just yet.

  “The revenant is a form of free willed undead almost unique in that its personality changes little from death to undeath. It typically results from raising a mortal whose actions and thoughts in life were aligned with darkness, frequently an individual who died bearing a grudge or full of hatred. When it rises again, its survival instinct is partially replaced by a desire for vengeance against all those who wronged it in life. The revenant’s physical powers are initially identical to those of the mortal it originated from, but the progression of its power is linked to its destructive and negative emotions. The more the revenant indulges its vicious hatred, loathing for humanity and itself, and its will to destroy, the more powerful it can become.”

  There was more, but this was the most salient portion.

  That’s very interesting. So I have to exploit his negative emotions.

  “You’re a lucky bastard, Baldwin,” Tybalt said, shaking his head. “To think, you got raised as one of the types of undead that keeps almost its entire pre-mortem personality.”

  Baldwin looked like he wanted to say something, but his mouth remained sealed shut. His eyes looked disturbed as he stared Tybalt in the face.

  Tybalt tried not to laugh.

  “All right, my head is starting to feel better,” he said, though it was still painful. “You can talk again, Baldwin, just keep your voice down.”

  “What the fuck happened to me, bastard?” Baldwin asked furiously—while keeping his voice to a reasonable level.

  “Oh, no, you’re not going to call me ‘bastard’ ever again,” Tybalt said, frowning. “I think the word ‘master’ will do nicely. When we’re not around other people, you will call me ‘master.’”

  “Like Kur I will, b—uh, master,” Baldwin said, the last words coming out in a choked out grunt. He looked horrified again.

  “Now you’re getting it,” Tybalt said, grinning cheekily. “You have to do what I say. I entered the Tower—” He pointed at the building and stopped to stare for a moment, as it now seemed to be fading from existence, its shape growing more translucent with each moment—“I impressed the God of Death, and I acquired the defiant necromancer class. I did all that after I killed you. Then I brought you back.” He patted Baldwin’s shoulder. “You’re an undead abomination now, Baldwin. A monster. The Army’s policy, as you probably remember, is to kill you on contact. And I’m your master, your creator, so I’m in the same boat. We’re in this together.”

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “Damn you!” Baldwin swore. “Twice damn you! I was nice to you, b—master.” He gritted his teeth as the word “bastard” turned to “master” involuntarily again.

  “You were nice enough, thinking it might get you something you wanted,” Tybalt agreed, “and I was nice enough to raise you from the dead after you had fallen. You really got lucky, like I said.”

  “You fucking killed me.” Baldwin sighed and added, “Master.”

  “I defended myself,” Tybalt corrected. “You remember that, right? You attacked me, because you were losing the race to the Tower?”

  “I just wanted to have something that would make me stand out, some chance to rise above my station in this world,” Baldwin whined. “I’ve never been given anything. I always had to earn it all. I have a wife and a daughter out there, you know.” He gestured at the sky as if his family were hanging out in the atmosphere. “Part of it was for them—so they could have a husband, a father, who was somebody important, not a low-level grunt in the army.”

  “Yes, I know,” Tybalt said. He didn’t believe Baldwin was motivated by anything more than greedy opportunism, but he wanted to be careful in how he managed the revenant’s feelings, considering how important they were—and the fact that Baldwin had already tried to kill him once. “That didn’t give you any kind of just reason to murder me to get it, though, and you know that. You should be grateful I brought you back. You’ll get to see your wife and daughter again one day, if we keep our heads about us.”

  “I guess,” Baldwin muttered grumpily. “I just can’t believe the result of my attempt to make something of myself is that I have to obey you now.” He sighed. “So, what happens next?”

  “Next we’re going to murder a lot more people,” Tybalt said in a low voice, smiling cheerily. “Very slowly at first, probably, and then very quickly.”

  Baldwin’s facial expression did not change much—just a slight twitch at the corners of his lips and a twinkle in his eye—but Tybalt knew he had the revenant’s interest.

  That moment reminded Tybalt that Baldwin was not the man he had once known, even if the revenant looked the same. Now that Baldwin had risen, he was a monster who wanted revenge against anyone he perceived as having wronged him—and enjoyed generalized human suffering. He still had almost all the personality he’d had in life, but more twisted and violent.

  This would make Baldwin powerful and useful, in part because the person who should have been the main target of his revenge, Tybalt, was completely out of Baldwin’s reach. That would undoubtedly give rise to powerful frustration.

  “All my life, I’ve been done wrong by, Baldwin,” Tybalt added. “I know a little of how you feel about the world.”

  “So now you’re going to make things right?” Baldwin asked.

  “You know me better than that. Now I’m going to do some wrong of my own.”

  That elicited a small chuckle from Baldwin, the first real display of positive emotion Tybalt had seen since he revived the other man. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  This can work, Tybalt thought excitedly. I can manage him, and with him…

  An intelligent undead would be far more useful than a zombie or skeleton.

  Tybalt tried to call up Baldwin’s status—which he was delighted to see actually worked! Baldwin really was his possession. It was like Tybalt had one of those beast tamer type classes he’d heard about.

  Interesting. Baldwin really had been stronger than Tybalt, as Tybalt had suspected during their fight. It was surprising that the revenant had returned from death with full health, despite the fatal injuries Tybalt had inflicted on him prior to death.

  His Agility was low for his level. I guess that’s from being a little older, starting to slow down and get a bit out of shape. Baldwin had a little bit of a beer belly, though nothing out of control.

  Most interesting of all was the fact that Baldwin had retained his old stats even though his level had reset to zero as a revenant. It was impressive.

  Tybalt had obtained something much more valuable than he had expected when he raised Baldwin.

  The necromancer’s mind raced as he considered how his creation’s relative intelligence should change his plans—and realized this settled something he had gone back and forth about. He did not need to disappear from the Army without explanation. Tybalt and Baldwin could reintegrate into the squad seamlessly, as if nothing had happened.

  Then he frowned. He saw where his spear had left its mark on Baldwin’s body. Damage from the injury didn’t seem to be a problem for Baldwin—at least not based on Baldwin’s full health—but it would be a complication if members of the squad looked at the man’s chest and saw a gaping wound in his abdomen.

  At least he isn’t still actively bleeding…

  “We need to switch shirts,” Tybalt said.

  “What?” Baldwin looked down and saw the holes in his gambeson and body. “Oh.”

  “Yes, we can’t have people looking too closely at your body. At some point, I might gain a skill to close those visible wounds up, but for right now, we should let them think that I was the one who got injured, but you gave me a health elixir and saved me. That would also explain why both our elixirs are gone now. Really, it was because of all the fighting I did in the Tower.” Tybalt’s mind moved quickly, laying out his plan as he thought of it. “Even if Commander Volusia orders someone to examine me, my body doesn’t have any secrets.” He looked down at the ring. “Except this.” He turned to gaze back at Baldwin.

  “Your new magic ring,” Baldwin said.

  “Yes,” Tybalt said. “Storage ring.” He brushed it over the book, and it sucked Unholy Forces back up.

  Then he untied the ring from the pocket it was fixed to and handed it to Baldwin.

  “You’re really giving this to me?” Baldwin asked.

  “You will keep it safe,” Tybalt ordered. “Don’t do anything with it that is intended to displease me or deprive me of its use. Don’t allow anyone else to see it. Don’t tell anyone about it. Don’t tell anyone about our situation or give anyone information about our situation, as necromancer and creation, that might cause them to look at us more closely. If you violate any of these commands, we will probably both die.”

  “I get it, Tybalt,” Baldwin said. “I know you look down on me, but I’m not actually a moron.”

  “I’m just verbalizing these ground rules so there’s no funny business,” Tybalt said. “I think you and I could do a lot of interesting things together, have a lot of fun, but that all starts with us not getting caught. If I’m screwed, you’re screwed, remember.”

  “I get it,” Baldwin repeated.

  “And I think that you might die if something happens to me,” Tybalt added, off-handedly lying. He thought it was probable that most undead could outlive their creators, and he knew revenants could, but it would only help his cause if Baldwin and any undead who came after him believed the reverse.

  “Good to know,” Baldwin said, eyes narrowing.

  “Just in case you were tempted to test that, though, I forbid you from attempting to harm my body or soul in any way.” He worded the command carefully. He had been tempted to forbid any harm of any kind, but forbidding emotional harm might mean preventing Baldwin from giving him truthful information at some point in the future, and that had to be avoided at any cost. They were about to be engaged in information warfare, with both their survival on the line.

  “Fuck, fine, master,” Baldwin said. “Any other commands before we change clothes and get back to the group?”

  Tybalt looked back at the Tower and saw it had almost completely vanished.

  More distressingly, the fog seemed to be thinning out too. There would go a lot of their protection if they, for some reason, needed to hide.

  “No,” Tybalt said, shaking his head. “We just need to move quickly and keep people from getting suspicious of us. Those are the priorities. But remember, we were out here on a scouting mission. We have to take the lay of the land before we go back to the squad.”