Page 162 of Warlord's Plaything

Not yet.

Kaelith still has something left to play.

I can see it in the way his eyes scan the battlefield, calculating.

Looking for a weakness.

Looking for the perfect timing to take back control.

Looking for that one moment of chance to fuck us all over.

I see it.

The moment everything turns.

Kaelith raises his hand, his mouth moving, lips curling in a sharp incantation.

Magic erupts from his palm, dark and crackling.

Not a simple spell.

Not an act of desperation.

This was planned.

"Move!"

My voice cuts through the night, but it’s already too late.

The magic races across the battlefield, a wave of violet energy seeping into the air, into the ground, into the bodies lying still among the dead.

Corpses jerk, spasming, eyes burning with unnatural light.

Bodies that should have been dead start moving, shifting, standing.

The battlefield does not get quieter.

It gets worse.

Kaelith has just tipped the scales back in his favor.

"Necromancy."

The word is bitter on my tongue.

Forbidden.

Deadly.

It doesn’t just raise the fallen.

It bends them.

Twists them.

Turns them into weapons that do not stop, do not break, do not fucking feel.

And now?—

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