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

  Two Necromancers, a Dragon, and a Vampire

  Two necromancers, a dragon, and a vampire – it sounds like a shortcut to disaster, and for Timmy, it’s certainly looking that way.

  To earn his pardon and avoid becoming yet another necromancer statistic, Timmy has to work for the Council. From bandit uprisings to giant sea serpents and ogre invasions, Timmy and the others are there to save the day – sort of.

  And despite relying on overly intelligent ninja rats, an elf who believes that fire is the answer to everything, a bureaucrat who struggles to stay conscious through an entire fight, and a precocious apprentice who has designs on his castle, property damage per mission is down, they haven’t blown up another mountain, and they’ve gone several missions without ripping a hole in reality.

  Naturally, it won’t last.

  When the dragon egg their resident pyromaniac stole hatches to reveal the world’s cuddliest harbinger of death, Timmy and the others are dragged into a pair of diabolically dangerous missions. Breaking out of one of the world’s most secure prisons was hard enough. Now, they have to break back in to rescue a vampire.

  And then there’s the Eye of the Abyss. Does your country have a problem with a divine artefact capable of singlehandedly winning a war? Don’t worry. Just send Timmy and the gang. They’ll handle it, and Timmy might even get to live every necromancer’s dream with… zombie pirates.

  Timmy and the others want their pardons, and they’re not going to let anyone stop them, not armies, not fleets, not even the most powerful empire the world has ever seen that just so happens to hold a centuries-old grudge against Everton.

  The world is going to learn a very important lesson: never, ever underestimate a necromancer with a shovel and time to plan.

  Two Necromancers, a Dragon, and a Vampire

  L. G. Estrella

  The Unconventional Heroes Series Part Three

  Kindle First Edition

  Copyright © August 2016 L. G. Estrella

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  More From L. G. Estrella

  Copyright and Disclaimer

  Two Necromancers, a Dragon, and a Vampire

  Chapter One

  Once upon a time, Gerald had been a regular bureaucrat. He had woken up at the same time each morning in a small apartment not far from where the Council met. He’d worked on a variety of different projects, but each of them had been as pleasingly mundane and safe as the last. In those tranquil, idyllic days, the only workplace issues he’d encountered were the occasional stubbed toe and the occasional spilled coffee. On a particularly dangerous day, he might even have gotten a paper cut.

  Ah, how wonderful those days had been.

  Things had changed a bit since then – just a little.

  Black Tower Castle was home to entities that could only be politely described as the stuff of humanity’s worst nightmares. Some of the things that lived underneath the castle could not be described in words. No, they could only be adequately described through the mind-breaking madness that their mere presence inspired in anyone who wasn’t a shovel-wielding necromancer or the aforementioned shovel-wielding necromancer’s precocious apprentice.

  Gerald’s new workplace safety issues included – but were not at all limited to – primordial entities from another dimension that would gladly devour his soul and destroy the world, escaped zombie… things that defied easy description on account of being made up of the parts of several creatures, and giant, carnivorous plants that occasionally wandered the corridors of the castle in search of a meal. It could have been worse. Stubbing his toe wasn’t that different from being chased by a plant that wanted to eat him, and dodging an acid-spewing zombie hydra-goat-boar was kind of similar to dodging spilled coffee – if that coffee could dissolve solid rock and had five heads filled with teeth the size of daggers.

  Needless to say, Gerald, despite never being all that fond of rats, had absolutely no problems letting some of the castle’s resident ninja rats set up an outpost in his chambers. He most likely had Timmy to thank for that. The necromancer had been quite apologetic after Gerald’s unfortunate run in with the zombie hydra-goat-boar. Gerald could now relax in his chambers and sleep, safe in the knowledge that there were no less than a dozen expertly trained rodent assassins nearby that were ready to kill or maim anything that tried to sneak into his room.

  To make sure that he stayed in the good graces of his rodent protectors, he took careful note of what each rat preferred to eat and then left out some of the appropriate food each night. The majority of them favoured chicken although there were also a few who enjoyed beef. There was even one rat – a tough fellow with a mace and a slightly insane smile – that enjoyed quail lightly seasoned with a mixture of twelve different herbs and spices. Apart from fighting off the occasional carnivorous plant or rampaging zombie, the rats were also surprisingly helpful in other ways. One of them was a scholar of no small skill, and he was only too happy to proofread Gerald’s work and point out any mistakes. Another rat took issue with Gerald’s travel-worn clothing and footwear and set about repairing everything from his ripped tunic to his old shoes.

  Thanks to the rats, Gerald went to sleep each night with a small smile on his face. He was confident that he had finally managed to get everything under control. Timmy and the others had begun to carry out their missions without causing massive, stroke-inducing amounts of property damage, his paperwork was all up to date, and he no longer had to worry about being eaten in his sleep. Life was good.

  Oh, what a naïve man he was.

  Gerald was in the middle of a peaceful dream in which he filed paperwork and sorted forms when the wall of his bedroom exploded. Flame lit up the room, and bits of half-melted stone flew everywhere.

  Like a demon emerging from the depths of the abyss, Avraniel stepped through the burning hole in Gerald’s wall. “You’re coming with me, idiot.”

  Gerald was not the bravest of men, not even close, and even a brave man would have been terrified. Indeed, no less than three quarters of the bandits they encountered on missions were reduced to cowering wrecks within moments of running afoul of Avraniel’s temper. Gerald didn’t have time to think of an escape plan. He didn’t even have time to stumble out of bed. All he had time to do was scream.

  It didn’t help – at all – that the ninja rats were having no success whatsoever in driving the elf out of the room. It was over. He was going to die, and it would probably be exceedingly horrible and involve far too much fire. Oh, whom was he kidding? It would definitely be exceedingly horrible and involve far too much fire.

  Avraniel melted her way through an electrified net made of metal wire and batted aside an assortment of arrows, knives, axes, and other rodent-propelled projectiles. The elf took a moment to glare at the assembled ninja rats before she grabbed Gerald, threw him over her shou
lder like a sack of screaming, bureaucratic potatoes, and bounded out of the room with the ninja rats in hot pursuit.

  For the ninja rats it was a matter of pride. They had yet to let someone under their protection get mangled while they were at the castle, and they had no intention of letting Gerald be the first. He kept them well fed, and Katie would be very upset if something happened to him since she and Gerald spent at least a few hours each week discussing books and the most efficient ways to complete paperwork. Gerald had even managed to convince Katie to take a correspondence course in accounting although he had a feeling that the only reason she’d agreed was so she could learn how to minimise her taxes after she overthrew Timmy and took over the castle.

  Despite not being a particularly fit person – although all of the running he’d been forced to do since meeting Timmy had certainly improved his cardiovascular fitness – Gerald was still capable of screaming for a long time. By the time he’d stopped panicking long enough to stop screaming and take a look around, he was no longer in his part of the castle. In fact, he appeared to be somewhere underneath the castle near one of the furnaces. He was also not alone. Timmy and the others were there too, and they were all in their sleeping clothes as well.

  “Did she blow a hole in your bedroom wall and drag you out of bed too?” Timmy asked. The necromancer had a shovel slung over his shoulder, and he seemed to be giving a great deal of thought to hitting Avraniel over the head with it while her back was turned.

  Gerald shuddered. “I really thought that she was going to kill me.”

  “Oh, stop whining, you idiots. If I wanted either of you dead, you would be.” Avraniel walked into the massive furnace nearby and returned with something held high over her head. “I brought all of you here because it’s almost time for this to hatch.”

  Gerald blinked and then rubbed his eyes. Perhaps terror had scrambled his brain because the object in Avraniel’s hands looked a lot like a dragon egg, and the thought of her having a dragon egg was beyond terrifying. Oh, wait. That was right. She’d found one after they’d killed Black Scales. So here they were with the only elf pyromaniac in the world, and her dragon egg was about to hatch. It sounded like the beginning of one of the many legends in which a dragon went on a rampage and ate everybody.

  “This is not going to end well,” Timmy murmured.

  Gerald could only nod in agreement. His latest report had assured the Council that everything was under control. Property damage per mission was trending down. Sure, the major missions they’d been on had resulted in a few small problems, like levelling towns, caving in a mountain, and the less he thought about the weird inter-dimensional portal they’d left behind after defeating the gigantic… thing that Lord Taylor had summoned, the better. However, their most recent missions had resulted in wonderfully little property damage. True, those missions had been fairly minor, like crushing a bandit uprising and killing a giant sea serpent, but he’d thought things were going well. Timmy and the others had finally turned a corner and realised that saving a town was good, but saving a town without accidentally blowing it up was even better.

  Well, that wasn’t going to last much longer, not if Avraniel had a dragon, especially a dragon that was descended from Black Scales, one of the premier terrors of their age.

  The part of Gerald’s mind that specialised in calculating potential insurance liabilities considered the possibilities for all of three seconds before it rolled over and died. The numbers were simply too large to contemplate. He wasn’t even sure if there was enough money in the entire world to pay for all of the damage that was likely to occur in the near future.

  And that, of course, was when the dragon egg began to hatch.

  * * *

  Dragons were creatures of fire and ruin. Countless myths had spoken of them being born from the wrath of the gods. They were living engines of destruction, winged leviathans whose might and power was the stuff of nightmares. A single full-grown dragon at the peak of its powers could topple a kingdom and devour legendary heroes in the same way that a pack of starving wolves could devour a flock of unattended and particularly tasty sheep.

  This dragon, descended from Black Scales, was no different. He was born of fire, shaped by fury, and fuelled by wrath. The world would cower at the mere mention of his awesome name. His flame would burn the greatest of empires to the ground. No creature in the world would be safe from his teeth and his claws. His wings would blot out the sun and stir up hurricanes. Where he went, death would follow, and all who looked upon him would fall to their knees and weep in absolute terror, awe, and despair. And anyone foolish enough to face him in battle would die.

  Slowly.

  Painfully.

  Horribly.

  But first he had to get out of his egg, which was proving to be much harder than he had anticipated. The stupid thing was much tougher than he’d expected.

  After what felt like a lifetime of struggle, the dragon finally managed to crack his egg open and stick his head out. He roared his rage to the heavens, striking terror into the hearts of all who had the misfortune of witnessing his birth before he spewed fiery death at everything he could reach with his flame. As the black fire subsided leaving nothing but total death and devastation in its wake, his silver eyes drifted to the one thing that had neither fled nor been burned. He bared his teeth and smiled.

  That must be his mother.

  * * *

  Timmy had never seen a dragon hatch before, very few people had. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. Plenty of people had seen dragons hatch before, but not many of them had survived the experience since dragons were territorial at the best of times, and they tended to be even worse when there were eggs involved. The last person he knew who’d tried to watch a dragon hatch had ended up on the menu, but the adult dragons hadn’t been the ones to eat him. No, they’d mangled him enough to make sure he wouldn’t put up a fight, and the hatchlings had been the ones to finish the job. Based on all of the bloodstains and the scorch marks that Timmy had found afterward, it had not been a pleasant way to die.

  Setting aside the depressingly short life expectancy of the average dragon researcher, Timmy had no real interest in watching a dragon hatch. His interest in dragons was primarily in turning large dead dragons into large zombie dragons. Trying to take a hatchling was not only extremely likely to result in his death but also extremely unlikely to result in a suitably menacing zombie. If he wanted something small that spewed fire everywhere, he’d simply use a zombie salamander instead.

  Because he’d never seen a dragon hatch before, he hadn’t known what to expect, so he’d made sure to stand as far back as possible. It turned out to be a wise choice even though the hatchling had turned out to be astonishingly adorable. The poor, little thing had struggled mightily before breaking through its egg and promptly setting everything around it on fire. It had then looked straight at Avraniel and trilled in a way that was almost musical before climbing into the elf’s arms. On the whole, the baby dragon was much smaller than Timmy had expected and a good deal cuter too.

  “I thought it would be bigger,” Katie said. The girl tilted her head to one side. “I know the egg wasn’t that big, but still…”

  “I know. It’s… underwhelming.”

  Timmy was still trying to wrap his head around how small the hatchling was. It was hard to associate this puny, skinny creature with the winged behemoth they had fought. Black Scales had been hundreds of feet long, and he’d been a terrifying bane upon the world that had devastated countless armies and eaten only the gods knew how many dignitaries over the years. The hatchling was all skin and bones and barely two feet long. Its head and teeth seemed too big for its body, its claws were definitely oversized, and it had a stubby tail and a pair of overly large wings. The dragon’s scales were jet black, save for a patch of white on its snout.

  “On the upside,” Timmy said. “At least we don’t have to worry about it going on a murderous rampage and eating all of us. I mean look at
it. Gerald could probably beat that little guy in a fight.”

  The bureaucrat paled. “Please, tell me I don’t have to fight it. It’s not that big, but it’s still a dragon.”

  “Yes.” Old Man studied the hatchling intently. “Gerald is right. A small dragon is still a dragon, and its fire was hot enough. We’d have been badly burned, most likely killed, if we’d been too close.”

  “You do have a point. Size isn’t everything.” Timmy snickered. “Look at Katie. She’s not very big, but she’s moderately dangerous.”

  “Hey!” Katie swiped at his head with one of her shadows. “I am more than moderately dangerous!”

  Timmy ducked under her attack and slapped another shadow away with his shovel. “Not to me, you’re not.”

  Although Old Man was right to be cautious, Timmy and Katie were both less than impressed. Gerald, naturally, was keeping his distance. But there was someone who was more than happy. Ecstatic didn’t even begin to describe how they felt. That someone was Avraniel.

  “Aw, who’s a little engine of death who will help me slaughter my enemies and burn their houses down,” the elf cooed as she rubbed the dragon’s belly and scratched between its wings. “You are, aren’t you? Yes, you are.” She paused when she noticed Gerald gaping at her. “And by my enemies, I don’t mean the Council. I mean the enemies of the Council. Yes, we won’t set those stupid jerks on fire or torch their dumb houses, will we?” The elf lowered her voice to a whisper. “Well, not until you’re bigger and scarier and I’ve got my pardon.”

  Gerald’s eye twitched. Timmy sincerely hoped it wasn’t the prelude to a stroke since healing magic wasn’t exactly his forte. “You do realise that I can still hear you, right?”

  “Okay.” Timmy raised his hands and gestured for calm. “Not to burst anyone’s bubble here, but do any of you actually know how to raise a dragon?”