Kaylee stepped outside looking like a large closet had ambushed her. She had various clothes draped over her arms shoulders and head along with more bags of more stuff held in her hands.

“And just how far does the princess imagine she will be able to carry all that?” I asked.

She walked a few more steps over to several of the kobold prisoners.

They snickered as they looked at her causing me to scowl.

“Oh, I imagine this is about far enough for me.”

She leaned over, exposing her ample bosom to a few kobolds who were trying desperately not to notice and said. “Would you mind carrying this for me? I’m sure I can repay you,” she winked before tossing them onto each one.

I walked over and grasping her long hair pulled her ear close to my mouth before whispering.

“And how might you be repaying them?”

She turned to look at me and replied loudly. “Well, since they’ll need their hands, I’ll won’t cut any off to use for practice tonight. That seems good payment right?”

I chuckled.

The Kobolds, however, must have understood something of what she said because they stopped chuckling. Instead, those not given anything to carry tried to grab something from those that were. All except one. Kaylee looked over at him but he was unmoved.

“He’s not fixed,” I said.

“Bend him, break him or discard him I don‘t care which but finish the job by tomorrow,” I told her.

Kaylee nodded.

With that, we made our way back towards the camp.

Our party consisted now of four skeletons, a zombie, the undead mage and ten kobolds and a worthless dog.

As we walked, I noticed a cloud of dust being kicked up in the distance. Why though? I spent a moment orienting myself and the dust cloud with what I knew of the area. It had to be a caravan. The trade route ran that way. With the threat of both kobolds and my former party absent, it’d been several days since one got hit. They had likely grown complacent.

We began a sloping curve to intercept them just after dusk if we kept a brisk pace. I’d planned on Kaylee lagging eventually allowing me to both chastise her for her failure and slow to a more realistic midnight arrival path.

The problem with that was she refused to cooperate. I’d expected the multiple forced marches I’d done with the raiders and necromancers to have built up my tolerance enough to have her collapsing after an hour. But in her continued commitment to annoying me, she marched along oblivious to the heat. Her years spent living here had apparently inured her to the worst effects of the desert sun.

The only way to keep the kobolds under heel was for them to fear me more than they despised me. It wouldn’t do to be seen as weaker than her.

So I kept up the ridiculous pace.

I could feel the sweat burning my cracked lips and taste the iron in the blood when I licked at them.

I consoled myself with the thought we’d be back in a tent tonight.

“I‘ll teach the bitch a lesson in begging me for a rest if it means she bounces up and down all night,” I muttered.

Though come to think of it that might make hurrying to get back worth it…

I smiled.

After a while, Kaylee came up alongside me and walked at my side. She said nothing for a while but kept glancing nervously at me out of the corner of her eye.

“You did well enough to rein them in but do not forget that what you do reflects on me,” I told her. “You will be rewarded… or punished accordingly.”

She nodded.

“Thank you Ryzen,” she said and reached down to pet the scraggly dog padding along beside her.

The thing looked like it suffered from mange and was already near death even before being killed by the former leader of the raiding party.

We arrived just after the sun came down. We weren’t lucky enough to have a moonless night, but it was a waning crescent with a new moon due tomorrow. The darkness concealed well enough especially with a campfire both silhouetting our target and robbing them of their night vision. We waited until the lone sentry had settled into position and everyone was in bed before creeping forward to begin the assault downwind of the enemy.

I’d sent the kobolds first not trusting them at my back and wanting the undead back far enough to not alert anyone with the smell of rotting flesh. One of the lizards nearly ruined my plans though when it tripped on a bit of rock and stumbled. The sentry turned to look at him and was about to raise an alarm when Kaylee sent a bone shard flying. His cry turned into a gurgle as blood filled his lungs. Several more died in their sleep before a chop intended to sever a neck hit the top of a rib cage and left an older woman alive long enough to scream. The guards slept with weapons in reach and a half dozen of them stood up to challenge us. The last was even smarter, he awakened but feigned a deep sleep allowing him to quickly run through a kobold that came to finish him. Then the seven of them formed a line with wagons anchoring each flank.

my undead finally moved up to help with the fight and horses tugged at their stakes in a desperate attempt at escape as the smell hit them.

With nine kobolds and six undead, we had numbers at least, if not skill.

“This looks like an easy victory,” Kaylee said.

“We haven’t won yet and we won’t if they don’t let us in. We need an opening.”

She seemed surprised.

“But we outnumber them nearly two to one?” she said questioningly.

“Yes,” I replied “but every one of them is worth two of ours. Right now they’ve got us forced to fight them one on one and fighting that way we lose. We have to split them up somehow.”

I could see her face lost in thought for several moments as she watched the kobolds trade blows with the caravan guards. Then she smiled as a cut sent a spray of blood into the air.

She ran behind the single kobold that had refused to carry anything and drew her dagger across his throat.

“I know I told you to keep the help in line but this isn’t the best time,” I shouted.

She looked back at me long enough to grin as she licked the blood from her dagger.

As the dark ichor sprayed from his neck, she sent it into the air in a fine mist towards the three closest guards. It was impossible to avoid and created a fog of necromantic energy. Then the pain started. Tiny bits of mota hit eyeballs and irritated them until eyes watered and they could barely see. Rubbing at them only moved it deeper behind the eyeball causing greater suffering.

The one in the center must have got some in his ear and tried shaking his head and dislodge the irritation. His pain didn’t last long though. He stabbed out distractedly but hit only an enemy already dead. Kaylee shoved the dead kobold forward trapping his blade and lashed out leaving a deep cut across his sword arm. His blade fell to the ground, and he was helpless to stop the follow-up strike that pierced his chest.

The guardsman beside him stabbed towards Kaylee in vengeance only to be blindsided by a matted ball of fur latching onto his thigh.

The dog’s black fur had made it seem as if it appeared out of thin air and left the soldier desperately trying to staunch a bleeding artery. After just a few moments he collapsed into the sand, his last sight a gaping black maw lined with razor-sharp teeth.

The necessary hole now made It was time to finish the deed. My four skeletons made their way into the gap to surround the enemy and the soldiers broke ranks to back up against the wagons instead.

The mangy mutt showed his worth once more, however, by going underneath the wagons and biting at exposed legs. Too preoccupied with skeletons to go after the thing they were repeatedly crippled.

Two more kobolds died but moments after death I had them walking mindlessly into the enemy before exploding into pieces and killing their assailants.

As we finished mopping up the last one I noticed Kaylee glancing at the dead bodies, including the older woman in a fine dress that had given the first shout and what had to have been her husband lying next to her.

“Something you want to say?” I asked her.

“Caravans like this would sometimes stop at our farm. The women would sneer down at you and make us sleep outside. The men were worse, they‘d leer down instead insisting you didn‘t sleep outside but instead in bed with them,” She replied.

“It’s nice to be looking down on them for a change,” she finished.

I took a moment to examine our haul. The caravan had been carrying several exotic artifacts. I’d ended up in The Veiled Desert when the necromancer came here hunting for relics so it wasn’t entirely surprising. Lots of creatures driven from the more inhabited parts of the world still exist in places like this.

“What were they transporting?” she asked.

“Griffon feathers as well as several of their eggshells. These are worth quite a bit to right mage. An air caster can use them as a focus.” I stated.

“What’s that!” Kaylee shouted.

She reached at a small yellow-orange stone.

“My loot!” She screamed. “It’s so pretty!”

The kobolds started openly laughing.

Rage flared, and I felt a calm detachment from myself as necromantic energy filled me.

My hand lunged at her neck. She tried to shield herself with an arm accidentally dropping the stone in the process but my hand went ethereal and passed through closing around her throat.

“INSOLENT AGAIN!” I shouted.

The kobolds stopped laughing.

I could hear her breathing shallow as my fingers closed lightly.

“You forget your place,” I growled.

I expected her to cower. But she stared back at me.

“Remind me,” she whispered.

I lowered my hand as I held her throat forcing her to her knees directly in front of me.

“Your place,” I uttered.

she continued to stare up at me saying nothing for several moments even as my fingers grew tighter.

Her voice was a raspy whisper when she finally replied.

“Yes, Ryzen.”

I could feel her body shudder as she spoke.

I released her and reached down to grab the stone from the sand.

“What are you looking at!” I screamed at the kobolds. “Get this shit packed up!”

After they’d dispersed, I looked back down at her.

My anger tended to dissipate as quickly as it formed, at least with her, having punished I moved on.

“Amber,” I said holding the stone in front of her. “And it’s more than just loot.”

“Push mana into it.” I directed.

She drew stray mota created by the dead woman’s corpse and flowed it into the amber.

It flowed in easily, bonds forming with little effort until it was so densely packed it seemed to pulse with energy.

“Amber is an arcane focus just as the shaman’s staff is. It forms from decaying life, in death pockets of released necromancy become trapped inside and eventually form stable bonds while the amber is still soft. Only after ages when the amber is long hardened does it finally turn back into pure mana and break its bonds to escape. It leaves behind a lattice of hollow spaces perfectly suited for binding the right mota together.” I told her.

“So it works to store the mana then!?” She asked excitedly.

“That is one purpose yes. Foci have several.” I replied.

She was still on her knees and looking up at me interested. She seemed to have forgotten completely her chastisement a few moments ago.

“Foci are of different quality, largely based on how densely packed the mana was when it formed. For new mages, foci denser packed than they can make it naturally can aid them in learning the form. If charged it can also allow them to continue practicing past the point at which they would normally run out of mana or blood in our case.” I continued.

She injected as I paused.

“But if you use it all at once you could do anything!”

I nodded my head.

“Alternately an experienced necromancer can release a vast amount of mana to use all at once. But you still need the ability to control it all. Otherwise, it goes off more like a bomb in all directions than a directed flow.”

I gave her a moment to think about that, not wanting a repeat of what happened at her house. She must have suspected my reason for pausing because she nodded sheepishly.

Seeing she understood I continued.

“The most important aspect of them is to allow you to create bonds with no need to focus. Direct the mana into the focal object and the bonds form themselves.”

“So with this I!-” She caught herself “You I mean, YOU could be much stronger!”

“And maybe I could too when you’re done!” she finished rapidly.

“While it would have been helpful when we first met, I can make bonds as dense as this with ease and it’s too small to store much mana,” I replied.

“Practice filling the Amber from the corpses and then drawing it into your core.” I finished casually tossing the stone to her.

With that, we both sat on the dead woman and trained. First individually condensing our cores and then competing with bone shards.

I also practiced shading my hand again. It was much more difficult than earlier. I hadn’t even meant to then, it’d just happened. Still, by the end, I could shade my arm in ten or twenty seconds of concentration instead of ten or twenty minutes. Though I’d only roughly doubled how much I could shade from around fifteen percent of my body to about a third. A marked improvement though.