We made it to the outcrop and after circling around I found a cut out concealed enough to keep the light from a fire from escaping and with enough space to set up a tent. Every real mage had at least a superficial understanding of how to control every type of mana even if they could only do so poorly and I concentrated enough of the fire mana in the air to heat up the fat used in place of kindling coating the dried dung. Soon a serviceable if foul smelling flame danced merrily nearby. She lived in the desert her whole life so dung fires were nothing new.

I went into my tent and she fidgeted nervously under the watchful gaze of the skeletons until I grew tired of waiting.

"Kaylee. Tent. Now."

After a few moments, she slowly crept in and sat with her legs pulled up to her chest in the corner.

"Lay. Here." I pointed beside me.

After an even longer wait during which I began to grow VERY impatient she finally got if not quite where I'd pointed, close enough.

I rested my hand on the side of her tummy and felt her pull taut. She didn't say anything, I didn't move and after what was surely an eternity for her but really only a couple seconds, her body relaxed slightly. It was then that I traced my fingers over the sides of her hips and felt her tense all over again, this time holding her breath.

She might have laid there that night hoping that my conscience would kick in, that I avoid taking her because underneath it all I'm just misunderstood man longing for love. No such luck.

Oh, I did avoid taking her that night but it wasn't because of a conscience. I'd shed my conscience when I had to choose between it or my dick. Nope, I was just completely exhausted and didn't feel like fighting with her.

That didn't mean I couldn't have a little fun exploring though.

Pain isn't real, I'd had that drilled into me during my "training" sessions. But if pain had been real, the feeling of spending hours walking in the desert sun after having just barely recovered from your insides being your outsides and your organs being subjected to the tender mercies of a sharp thrust would have been enough to make a river of it and besides I was nearly certain my work wasn't finished, no rest for the wicked and all that.

After a few hours meditation to recover I felt it. A gentle breeze of air, the sound of barely perceptible movement followed by I assumed a sudden attack. I was nearly right, I opened my eyes to see her tears, she was sobbing now with the blade held against my throat. She was too soft for a world this hard. I don't know how she survived out here this long but she was worse than useless to me at the moment. She'd need to get stronger in more ways than one.

"Why the tears , baby girl need a hug?"

She glared over me "you fucking monsters deserve to die."

Hard to argue with actually.

"What's that you said about fucking a monster? You got a fetish or something?"

The blade cut skin.

She became enraged. " You filthy heretics have to be cleansed from the world! The Gods command it!"

Better but still not enough.

"Cleansed from the world? You mean like whot they let happen to your mom and dad?"

Yeah that did it.

The blade sunk into my throat and she started crying as she stabbed down multiple times until I nearly lost count. Damn, but she went from bedtime princess to psycho crazy bitch fast. And she was twisting the blade now! Clearly one of those girls a bit slow to get started but once you got her going she was if anything a bit too eager.

I'd have to keep an eye on her.

After she'd spent herself and finally calmed down she wiped her tears and looked around, clearly a bit distraught and confused as to what to do next.

"That's right," I said, "Didn't think about that did you?"

She screamed.

Aaaaannd that's another bout of countless stabbing, didn't we do this already? I couldn't have been this bad when I was taught how futile it was.

"You can't kill me you know? At least not with that."

She stared down at me in disbelief. "WHY WON'T YOU DIE!"

"Because you're not strong enough to actually hurt me silly".

The skeletons walked in and grabbed her by her wrists and ankles, too tired from "killing me" to really struggle she let them pin her back down beside me.

"Go to sleep and stay that way, if daddy needs a good night kiss from you you'll know it."

She sobbed into the pillow as I prided myself on a job well done. Thank god it took her a while to work up the courage to attack and she finally did manage to.

True necromancers could make their entire body incorporeal on a whim for periods and watch as blades and even doors passed harmlessly through them so long as they weren't enchanted to create a mirrored version in the shade realm.

My abilities though were much weaker, I could barely manage to shade part of myself and only after intense concentration. It also took every bit of concentration to keep it going. In this case, I'd not even shaded my entire body, I'd left the skin and enough blood underneath to fool any mad princess on her first real killing spree into thinking she'd just well and truly stabbed a man instead of just having done a real hack job at giving me a shave.

With any luck, she'd now focus on growing her necromancy to kill me and I'd only have to worry about managing that instead of the wrong side of a dull knife every time I got near her.

I focused a bit of the mana I'd gained during meditation into healing all the fresh new cuts she gave me, thanks to my affinity I didn't so much heal it though as a kind of killing it off and then raising it back to life

.

That's why most older necromancers were often so white. Cuts could be healed by taking the dead skin on each side and joining them together, so long as the necromancers core was strong the flow of necrotic mana would keep the now "dead" skin functioning as undead skin and stay patched together indefinitely at little cost.

I could feel her relaxing under the grip of the skeletons, quite the feat actually, few acolytes at my level could boast of being able to meld so well with minions under their command as to notice such a minor change. I ordered them to release her just before dozing off. It'd be fine! Maybe. Hopefully. Eh, whatever.