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  Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf

  Two necromancers, a bureaucrat, and an elf – it sounds like the start of a bad joke, only the joke is on Timmy.

  Timothy Walter Bolton – better known as Timmy – has spent most of his life as a necromancer. When he isn’t terrorising his enemies, he’s plotting inside his castle, which is built on top of lightless chasms filled with nameless horrors and beings of a generally malevolent and megalomaniacal nature. But after one of his latest creations, a zombie hydra-dragon-bear, tries to eat him, he decides that maybe it’s time to find a new, less dangerous, career.

  But that’s easier said than done. He’s a wanted criminal with no shortage of powerful (and crazy) enemies, and he has a bone or two to pick with the Everton Council of Mages.

  Hope arrives in the form of a new law. War is coming to Everton, and the Council is desperate. In exchange for providing some help, Timmy might just earn that pardon he’s been looking for. Of course, just because it’s possible to earn a pardon doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy.

  To earn his pardon, Timmy is going to have to take down some of Everton’s most dangerous enemies and put together a quirky group of unconventional heroes, most of whom want nothing more than to mangle him and/or the Council in as vicious a way as possible. It’s a good thing that he’s got some help: an obnoxious ten-year-old apprentice who thinks that pink glasses are appropriate for a budding necromancer and a bumbling bureaucrat who may or may not make it through their first real fight without puking his guts up.

  Wonderful.

  Still, Timmy’s never been one to back down from a challenge even if their first recruit is basically the elf version of the bogeyman.

  Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf

  The Unconventional Heroes Series Part One

  L. G. Estrella

  Kindle First Edition

  Copyright © July 2014 L. G. Estrella

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf

  About the Author

  More From L. G. Estrella

  Copyright and Disclaimer

  Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf

  There comes a time in every necromancer’s life when they begin to seriously consider a career change. The fact is that necromancers are not the most popular people. In fact, the average necromancer is forced to run from angry villagers at least seven times over the course of their life, which may explain why so few necromancers are overweight. Magic is all well and good, but there are times when a high level of cardiovascular fitness is better.

  For Timothy Walter Bolton – better known as Timmy – the time to consider a career change came when he was forced to beat his latest creation to death with his magical shovel. And that, unfortunately for him, was no small task since the creature in question was a zombie hydra-dragon-bear roughly twice the size of a house.

  A normal person might have called Timmy insane for putting together something so monstrous, but he liked to believe that he had a very good reason for creating yet another abomination. It was all because of the other necromancers. There was only room for so many necromancers in the world, and having access to the biggest, scariest, most horrific zombie imaginable was the easiest way to make sure that he was one of them. There was nothing quite as enjoyable as bursting into the lair of another necromancer while in command of the world’s most impressive zombie.

  A normal person might also have questioned Timmy’s weapon of choice. Surely, there were better weapons than a shovel, even a magical one. But Timmy had been using shovels for a long time. His master – the gods rest his horrible, wicked soul – had always impressed upon him the importance of being able to kill whatever he brought back from the dead. It was good advice. Seven out of ten necromancers met their ends at the hands of their own creations. Timmy’s master had favoured a ridiculously large and impractical sword.

  But a gigantic sword was far too ostentatious for Timmy’s tastes. There was no way that he could drop by one of the local villages to pick up groceries with a weapon like that. His master had also had a disturbing tendency to rant about his unmatched masculinity, which had led Timmy to wonder if maybe – just maybe – the giant sword had been less about killing disobedient zombies and more about compensating for something.

  A shovel was much easier to carry around and far less likely to draw unwanted attention. As a necromancer, Timmy also had to do a lot of digging. A shovel that could carve through solid rock was incredibly useful. The fact that his shovel was also practically unbreakable made it especially good for bludgeoning recalcitrant zombies to death. He also didn’t feel the need to compensate for anything. He had it on good authority that he had absolutely nothing to prove in the masculinity department.

  Now, to return to the matter at hand, things with the zombie hydra-dragon-bear had actually started off quite well. It had taken Timmy months of haggling with greedy merchants and even more months of threatening customs officers to acquire all of the necessary parts. Hydras were tough to come by this far north, and dragons were rare everywhere. Thankfully, the resulting monstrosity had been suitably terrifying. It was exactly the kind of thing to give children years of nightmares, not that he’d ever use it for something so petty. No, he had bigger fish to fry.

  The creature had the wings of a dragon, the seven heads of a hydra, and the claws of a bear. Thanks to some creative reworking of the creature’s anatomy, he’d even managed to preserve its ability to shoot fire and spit acid. It was, he thought, giving himself a pat on the back so big that he almost dislocated his shoulder, a job well done. He couldn’t wait to show it off at the next meeting of the International Necromancers Association.

  Bringing the creature to life had been no easy task. Creating a regular zombie took nothing more than a bit of his magic and a useable corpse. Creating a zombie that was made up of three separate animals that had been stitched together was a little more complicated. It had taken him days to carve all the necessary seals and runes onto the creature and the floor of his laboratory. Not only did he need copious amounts of blood but he also needed more magic than he was comfortable providing himself. To get that magic, he had to harvest power from the things that lived under his castle, things that would have driven most people insane in a matter of moments.

  Nevertheless, he had managed to get everything together. The moment of truth arrived, and he activated all the seals and runes and used every iota of his skill to control the enormous surge of magic. There was a blinding flash of dark light, a lot of screaming from the countless souls of the damned that haunted his castle, and then a clap of thunder that shook the building to its foundations.

  The creature came to life, and Timmy bit back a cackle. He did, however, pump his fists and dance a quick jig around his laboratory. Success – sweet, sweet success.

  But Timmy’s joy – and his jig – came to an abrupt end about five seconds later when the creature lunged forward and tried to bite his face off. Damn it. He must have made a mistake somewhere since it definitely shouldn’t have acted on its own, never mind tried to bite his face off. Oh well, he could always order it to stop.

  “Stop!” Timmy flared his magic and made a swift, sharp gesture with both hands. “Stop, zombie!”

  The creature didn’t stop. Instead, it gave a terrible shriek and started to smash up his laboratory. The first major casualty was his limited edition copy of The Necromancer’s Compendium of Wickedness and Evil. Not content with merely ripping up his beloved tome, the creature shot him a glare before setting the book on fire and then melting the
ashes with acid. That was the last straw. Timmy clapped his hands together and activated the emergency self-destruct seals that he’d inscribed onto the creature’s body.

  Absolutely nothing happened. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. The seals had flashed a pretty pink colour.

  “Crap.”

  This whole thing was a failure – a big scary failure that breathed fire and spat acid. Wonderful.

  A blast of flame sizzled through the air, and he dove behind one of the stone shelves that dotted the laboratory. Of course, the stone shelf was a lot less effective against the fountain of acid that the creature spewed his way a few seconds later. To make matters worse, the acid caught fire, releasing a cloud of toxic gas. Yes, Timmy was well on his way to becoming just another necromancer statistic.

  But Timmy hadn’t lived to the ripe, old age of twenty-seven without learning a few tricks. As the creature rumbled toward him, he did the only thing he could think of: he waited for it to lunge forward, and then he jumped onto one of its heads. Another burst of his magic summoned a dozen zombie trolls into the laboratory. They weren’t particularly intelligent, even for zombies, but they were big and strong. The zombie trolls did their best to hold the creature still while he grabbed hold of its head and got to work with his shovel.

  The creature might have had a skull harder than solid steel, but he’d designed his shovel to dig or bash through almost anything. Besides, he’d never hear the end of it from his apprentice if this thing actually managed to kill him. Heck, she’d probably summon his spirit back from the afterlife just so she could taunt him – and that was only after she’d spent at least half an hour laughing at his misfortune. She was vicious that way.

  It was also a very good thing that Timmy firmly believed in dressing appropriately. Most necromancers preferred billowing black robes and clogs. True, billowing black robes and clogs did look wonderfully mysterious, but they weren’t very practical. Billowing robes could snag on things or catch fire, and clogs weren’t nearly as good as boots for running around. Timmy preferred a stout pair of boots, a tunic, and a pair of trousers, all of them black. Sure, he didn’t have the same aura of mystery and gloom as most of his colleagues, but that’s what his legions of zombies were for.

  “Die, zombie!” Timmy brought his shovel down on the head that he was standing on. “Go back to the pits of hell!” Okay, that was excessive and melodramatic, but yelling helped keep him energised when he had to bash one of his errant creations to death. Besides, a good necromancer had to be able to sound threatening. He might as well multitask and get some practice in.

  In the end, it took him thirty-five minutes of frantic skull bashing to finally kill the creature. Thank the gods that his shovel also had the extremely handy property of ensuring that whatever it killed stayed dead – completely, totally, irrevocably dead. It hadn’t always done that. But after his master had gotten eaten by a zombie python-goat that he’d thought was dead, Timmy had decided that it would be a good idea to add that particular feature. He’d inherited the castle upon his master’s death, and he wanted to stick around for at least another decade or two so that he could torment his own apprentice.

  Thirty-five minutes was far longer than he would have liked, but the creature did have seven heads that shot fire and spewed acid. What really bothered him was how long it had taken for his apprentice to show up. The girl was only ten years old, but Timmy would have appreciated some help. She didn’t even have to use her magic. She could have thrown a frying pan or something at the creature to distract it. But Katie had made herself scarce during the whole debacle, and now he had a cramp in his shovel-swinging arm to go with the crick in his back.

  Timmy had also begun to seriously question his chosen profession. To be more precise, he’d started questioning it somewhere between caving in the creature’s fourth skull and clubbing in its fifth. He’d been a necromancer ever since the day his mother had made him lunch – a cheese sandwich and a banana – and then dropped him off at the castle. He’d been seven years old, a scrappy, clumsy, ragamuffin of a child. Now, he was one of the world’s foremost necromancers, and he owned his own castle. Not too shabby.

  His life wasn’t perfect. His castle happened to sit on top of a chasm that led down into lightless gulfs of unbounded horror that were populated by primordial entities from another dimension that wanted to devour humanity and wipe out the world. Well, that’s what some of them wanted. Others were actually pretty friendly, like Sam, a shape-shifting, protoplasmic horror that occasionally crept into the kitchens to steal cake. Apart from being a wonderful conversationalist, Sam could also do a mean impression of a cat or a dog, so long as Timmy ignored all the extra eyes and teeth.

  It could also have been his age talking. There were days when he felt more like ninety-seven than twenty-seven. It didn’t help that the ache in his back had now grown to the point that he was hunched over on the floor. Whatever it was, he just couldn’t see himself doing this for another fifty years. But if he wasn’t going to be a necromancer, what was he going to be instead? Necromancy didn’t really come with a lot of transferable skills.

  He was good with a shovel, and he wasn’t half bad with a needle since his more exotic zombies didn’t stitch themselves together. He was passable at carpentry too since all of his experiments, plus the things that lived under the castle, tended to involve a lot of property damage, and it was a hassle trying to get help from one of the villages. Villagers usually took one look at the castle and his zombies and then ran for their lives. He’d tried using zombies to do the repair work, but they couldn’t be trusted with anything more complicated than weeding. Zombies also tended to drip everywhere.

  So maybe he wasn’t completely useless outside of his necromancy. Unfortunately, though, the name Timothy Walter Bolton was known and feared throughout the world. Who in their right mind would hire a retired necromancer who lived in a cursed castle with an army of zombies, a few servants, and one overly intelligent ten-year-old apprentice? No one.

  And even if he managed to land another job, walking away from the whole necromancy thing would be risky. The moment his enemies found out that he’d given up necromancy, they’d come after him like a pack of hungry lions after a one-legged gazelle. Sure, his castle was filled with some of the best zombies in the world, but they wouldn’t last long unless he replaced them regularly.

  His enemies also spent thousands of gold pieces each year trying to assassinate him, and he spent a similar amount to fend them off. Not all of their assassins were legendary swordsmen or greedy mages. No, one of the more recent attempts on his life had featured a clan of abnormally intelligent ninja rats that could turn invisible. The little blighters went around with miniature weapons coated in poison. And while a rat shooting a tiny bow might have sounded funny, the reality was decidedly less humorous. The rat in question had remarkable aim, and each of his arrows was dipped in a poison that would reduce even the strongest man to an agonised, screaming wreck.

  Setting aside the issue of how the rats even used their weapons – they didn’t have opposable thumbs – they had proven to be surprisingly reasonable. He’d gotten them to change their allegiance in exchange for a lot of gold, a permanent home in his castle, and access to his kitchens. Since then, they’d wiped out all of the assassins that his enemies had sent. Nobody ever expected killer rats, especially killer ninja rats that could turn invisible. Now, he could sit down to enjoy a cup of tea without worrying about someone jumping through a window and trying to stab him or set him on fire.

  He wanted to keep the rats, which meant that he needed a job that paid well. But there were very few jobs that paid as well as necromancy. People needed armies, and he could provide them at reasonable prices. He also kept his ears open for juicy gossip. If there was a wicked, tyrannical noble that needed overthrowing, then he was happy to get rid of them – for a price. Necromancy also involved the occasional tomb-raiding expedition, and tombs were often filled with all kinds of valuables. Lately, howe
ver, pickings had been slim. The tombs of most of the ancient kings had already been raided, and the current kings were either too young to be dying any time soon or too poor to have a tomb worth raiding.

  “Damn it. I need to think.” Timmy paced around his laboratory and almost slipped in the entrails of the creature he’d killed. He winced. “But first, I need to find a mop.” He pursed his lips and looked around. The laboratory was a mess with scorch marks and acid stains everywhere. There was nary a mop in sight. It was back to thinking then. “There has to be something I can do, some job that fixes everything. If only there was a small, out-of-the-way kingdom I could conquer.”

  “We could always turn ourselves in.”

  The words came from the door of the laboratory, which had somehow managed to remain unscathed except for a few patches of soot. The same could not be said for the shelf of rare specimens nearby. It would take Timmy weeks to track down another unicorn spleen.

  His mostly faithful apprentice had finally arrived. Katherine Juliet Morrow – better known as Katie – had, as usual, timed her arrival to perfection. Was it a coincidence that the girl had turned up only moments after he’d subdued his errant creation? Not likely. But if he asked her, she would undoubtedly have an ironclad excuse for her absence. The last time one of his creations had tried to kill him, she had, apparently, been in the midst of cleaning her room. The time before that, she’d been itemising their pantry. And the time before that, well, she’d been trimming the hedges in the garden with her magic.

  It was at times like these that Timmy was sorely tempted to point out that as his apprentice, it was Katie’s solemn duty to help him stay alive. However, the grey-furred ninja rat on her shoulder convinced him otherwise. The little critter was eyeing him like a hawk, one small paw resting on the grip of its tiny sword. Despite the fact that he was the one who paid them and that it was his castle they lived in, the rats liked her more than they liked him. Sure, they might take the occasional order or two from him, but they practically fell over themselves to do whatever Katie wanted. It might have had something to do with the way she spoiled them. She’d even sewn them miniature jackets. It made the rats nauseatingly cute, which was a shame since there was something wonderfully menacing about the very idea of ninja rats.