Faustine.

  “Oh, stop squirming, would you!”

  “Please! Oh gods, somebody please help—Help me! Hel—urgh…”

  Faustine plunged the dagger deeply into the peasant boy's abdomen, her face twisting with a snarl of exasperation as the young man tried, in vain, to release himself from his bonds.

  Still, Faustine had tied the knots herself, ensuring they were nigh unbreakable. And though he had managed to slip his gag, the sudden shock of having seven inches of steel puncture his internals was enough to reduce the boy to a state of gasping for breath.

  He shuddered, shock fshing across his features, his eyes wide and filled with horror and confusion as to why this was the fate that had befallen him.

  The answer, of course, was quite simple.

  It was no grand scheme of the gods, no preordained mystery, no ‘beginning’ of a fantastical story or even a mundane one.

  No.

  He was here, simply because Faustine wanted him here.

  She’d plucked him from the vilge inn, courting his desire with both promises of the flesh, and a fleeting dream of budding romance.

  She’d put on airs to seduce him and lower his guard, pulling him away from friends and family, leading him by the nose and the deep valley of her sinful cleavage.

  And while she’d had to tiptoe around her father’s steward, who was ‘technically’ in charge of the estate while her sire was away at war, Faustine had given the grubby youth his first taste of a real woman, all as they’d rutted like barn animals in her sheets.

  The power of fertility was strong, strong enough to push things just a fraction further than she could on her own, and with any luck, it would prove well worth the effort she’d gone through.

  All in all, a rather enjoyable experience, she noted, licking her lips as her hand rested low, just over the slight discomfort she felt from having herself ‘properly’ savaged by the brute, his potent if not simple seed yet leaking copiously from her dripping womb.

  Smiling gently to herself, the young noble gave the bde still stuck in her lover’s body a ‘pyful’ little flick, eyes cold, even as the boy shivered with a miserable whimper of distress.

  “Shhhh…” She whispered, half crawling back onto the bed, one of her slender and pale arms stretching nguidly as it draped across the burly boy's broad chest, snuggling in for a moment of shared intimacy as her breath caused goosebumps to rise where it touched him. “If you scream again, I’ll take your testicles and gag you with those instead. That’s not how you desire your family to discover you, is it?”

  The d merely gnced her way, face ashen and absent color, the look of betrayal and denial that had thoroughly mixed into his despair being about as telling as his response.

  The poor thing! He didn't even think this was real anymore, did he?

  Oh well, that just made things easier for Faustine.

  Letting out a small huff of appreciation for his silence, she gently patted him on the breast, using her free hand to adroitly shove her frilly panties back into his mouth, making sure she got them nice and deep this time, pushing until he started gagging.

  Her prisoner nice and secure, Faustine curtly lifted herself off the bed, regarding her room, and the waiting ritual she’d meticulously prepared, all through the gaze of cloudy emerald eyes.

  This was it.

  The culmination of all her hard work!

  And though none of the preparation had been what she’d name ‘simple’, the payoff stood to be undeniably fruitful, all the same.

  Slowly, Faustine opened up her mother’s spellbook, one of the st mementos she’d left behind in the wake of her execution.

  ‘Traitor.’

  ‘Criminal.’

  ‘Spy…’

  These words and more had been among those that had preceded her mother's demise. All of which had been read aloud before the royal court, but minutes preceding the hangman's axe, which had descended from above in a single gleaming arc.

  Her eyes fogged over with the haze of introspection, the young woman gncing at her sacrifice as slow trickles of blood streamed from his wound, the knife itself, and her careful pcement of it, ensuring nothing vital had been struck.

  She still had time.

  She could still—mhm… do something… Go back? Maybe…

  But—No.

  Faustine was doing this.

  There was no going back…

  “My family's name had been trampled through the dirt!” The summoner hissed, voice taking on a sudden and malignant darkness as her eyes fred with calm fury, words flowing as though she were speaking to the boy still staring at her in abject misery.

  Their estates had been stolen, fortunes confiscated, bannermen given to the authority of others, and all under the very same guise of pretense used for her mother's murder…

  Her fists clenched as she peered sidelong at her captive and whimpering audience, teeth biting at her lower lip hard enough to draw blood—

  “Ha! And now? My father is lost at war… Fighting for the same ‘king’ that had murdered his wife and sons, destined to be the ‘vanguard’ against an encroaching foe that decided ‘this spring’, was when they would invade…”

  “Hmph, always with the poor timing… isn't it?”

  “Mmmhmrrrmmm!”

  “No doubt,” She agreed, idly picking at a long fingernail, and choosing to actively ignore her captive's muffled plea, “When the Lycian Marauders arrive, you’ll all be sin… family, friends, loved ones… a fairly agreeable end, all things considered.

  “Me? Why, I’ll be raped, tortured, thrown in a cage, if not outright murdered after being defiled several times over. Though, if I’m lucky, once they're done raising this—mudpit you all call home, I’ll be auctioned off as a high-price whore. Told to live out the rest of my days tending to unwashed cocks on fat sweaty bodies…”

  “Mmrrrhhmm!”

  “Pfft, two months in, and I don't even know where my father is… your lord, by the way. Not that the peasants would care…” She sighed, her entire body defting a fraction as tears threatened her eye, taking a seat on her bed, which caused the farmer’s son to let out a miserable mewl.

  Her fingers, once more, traced along the lines of his absurdly muscur body, appreciating the definition like she’d have appraised a horse at market.

  Yet, for everything she’d said, part of her knew that the hope she’d held in her heart, hoping her sire might soon come home, was foolish.

  Death.

  She was sure of it. Though she had no proof toward this fact, Faustine hadn't received a letter from her father for quite some time.

  Yet, what correspondence had made it their way could only paint a grim picture for the young woman who felt as though the world were mocking her with its ughter.

  She didn't deserve this…

  Her family hadn't deserved this.

  Her exhumed ancestors, her lineage's ancestral home, all the servants and loyal knights that had been butchered as the king's men had ridden in to assail them!

  They didn't deserve any of this!

  And yet, here she was. Continuing the cycle of hatred and violence, even as her gaze nded upon the shivering boy in her chambers.

  He didn't deserve this either.

  Like her, young Franklin had a family. He had a mother who loved him, old and leathery as the hag was, and his father was among those who at least managed to make most of their harvest quotas…

  Not all of it, never all of it, but that was simply to be expected given the lifeless rock of nd they all toiled over….

  Yet, Faustine was well beyond concepts of ‘morality.’

  They’d taken everything from her. Family, money, aspirations.

  “I’ve got nothing left!” She ughed, just the slightest hint of a deranged bitterness escaping her ruby red lips. “Nothing—but—desperation…” She mented, head hanging amidst the draping curls of her disheveled hair, her teeth chewing on the words, even as they were ground out from beneath her resolve.

  Her mother hadn't been a traitor. But, evidently, she’d also been a good deal more than she’d let on.

  And while her ‘crimes’ for which she’d been beheaded had been fabricated to the extreme, a ‘lesson’ for King Albert’s ‘rowdy nobles’ more than true justice, Lady Morgana Solizar, as she had learned from her mother's notes, was far from wholly innocent.

  In fact, the woman had been a necromancer.

  Slowly, Faustine smiled as she allowed her manicured fingers to softly trace along the dimpled ridges of her mother’s grimoire, the young woman taking in a deep breath through her nose to center herself before she began.

  How many times had she gone over this moment in her head?

  A dozen?

  A dozen more?

  Too many, perhaps, to even count.

  Yet, she’d not been idle since uncovering her mother’s secret, the only one in the family who had likely ever known.

  And while Faustine could hardly be called an apprentice while still a child, back before her mother and ‘tutor's’ death, she was well steeped in the realm of forbidden magic, seven years ter and a ‘girl’ no longer.

  Flipping the weighty book open to a page she’d memorized each night for months in preparation, Faustine quickly drew a second knife and dragged the gleaming bde across her own wrist without the slightest hesitation.

  Flexing her left arm as she held it above a crystal bowl, her expression indifferent to the inky and thick splotches of crimson that began squirting into the container, nor the dull pain that arrived with her actions.

  A muffled cry caught her momentary attention as Franklin, her short but sweet lover, stared at her like she were some horrific creature that had come to cim his soul.

  Oh, how right he was…

  Assuming, of course, she wasn't merely projecting her own thoughts onto him… N-no, she was fairly certain he was thoroughly terrified of her, of that, there could be little question.

  Still, the disturbingly serene smile she offered him seemed to do little to dissuade his renewed struggles, which was a shame as, despite her attempts to stifle him, he was beginning to make a good deal of noise again.

  Frustrated that he couldn't just lie there and accept his role to py, Faustine began mixing the alchemical solution she’d prepared, swirling the thickening concoction with her rapidly numbing fingers. The flesh of her wrist already starting to reknit itself and stifle the flow.

  Once it was the correct viscosity, she nodded to herself, gncing down at the open page as if to take a momentary snapshot of it, her resolve becoming as iron while she stared.

  “I give, unto you, the bones of my mother!” She abruptly announced, tearing her eyes away from the spellwork that she was already pouring her mana into. “Exhumed, cleaned and presented in finery, whetted by the blood of youth, her kin, and her st surviving heir.”

  Flipping open a chest, Faustine smeared the ungodly mixture onto the pristine and bleached bones of her own mother. All of which had been reverently cared for and carefully pced within an ornate chest, her touch lingering, then glowing as the magic took effect.

  “I give unto you, a life to be severed! A young man, in the prime of his youth, healthy, hale, potent with seed! Yours to reap, an offering of sacrifice!”

  A guttural but muffled shriek filled the thickening air as Faustine, brandishing her second knife, quickly sshed the throat of the terrified farmer, who began gurgling rather than screaming, bubbles of bloody air popping from around his opened throat as he thrashed and struggled, eyes nearly popping from their sockets with distress.

  “And st, a living servant.” She whispered, not sparing a gnce for the life she had taken, instead, dropping to her knees in reverence, bowing her head as the chant continued, the words burned into her very soul. “A familial bond, rejoined through blood. A soul to entice and ingratiate. A willing acolyte, the bearer of the deed, a humble supplicant asking for your aid! Death! I beseech thee! Grant me your boon so that I might revenge those unduly taken from me!”

  Slowly, the cold chill of magic far more powerful than her own began seeping through the cracks of reality.

  It pooled inward like a weighty mist, emerging from crevices and nooks, from between stones and through the window.

  The fmes riding high on her walls were snuffed one by one, their smoke whispering away to join the swirl of haze that flooded her bedroom, choking out the light until there was naught but Faustine.

  Sitting there, patient, expectant, and maybe just a touch afraid of what might come next.

  Okay, well, part of her certainly hadn't exactly expected this to work quite this quickly, nor garner such a potent response…

  And while she’d definitely talked a big game, this felt just a little more significant…

  What, pray to tell, had she been expecting?

  Well, Faustine hadn't really known… That said, her path along the road of necromancy was yet young. And while she’d certainly ‘arisen’ her first zombie, Faustine was, by no means, a cssically trained mage.

  More of a naturally amateur, were she honest… Skilled, strong in her own right, but nearly entirely self-taught.

  She had the foundations from youth, but her and her father’s exile had destroyed more than their political prospects and careers.

  Honestly, she’d sort of been thinking she’d be given, oh, she didn't know, maybe some sort of boon or other, a marking, if you will, perhaps an inkling of dark knowledge that might come to her in her dream?

  Something somewhat simple and small to prod her along the way toward her eventual designs on conquering the kingdom at the head of an undead invasion!

  This—well, this was just slightly unsettling.

  Yet, she braced for impact all the same.

  Ready, resolved, willing to do what was asked of her, no matter how unseemly, no matter how abhorrent, no matter how degrading, if only it meant her greatest wish was granted.

  Yes, this hadn't been a mistake!

  This had been what Faustine wanted—

  This had been what she’d, if not been precisely trying for, then certainly dreamed of, even if her mother's spell hadn't really expined ‘what’ she should expect.

  Death… The god of the afterlife himself, was coming…

  And Faustine, Faustine was ready to serve.

  The young woman forced her eyes to remain open so she could see her new lord in all his profane glory, even as the sound of rattling bones jostled through the mist, the ctter and ughing chatter of teeth sending chills up and down her spine.

  The ‘entity’ she had summoned manifested just beyond the haze of swirling shadow and the wailing twist of tormented souls as it rose from the ground with fming sapphire eyes, then, with a single bze of its orbs, it smiled at her…