We didn’t go straight into lessons on Necromancy. Ehn said we’d build our way into that. For the moment, he just wanted to see what sort of condition I was in. And how well my stamina power worked. Which, in this case, apparently meant having me run, a lot. He jogged with me, as did Persephone and Cerberus, as we made our way through the wilderness, avoiding the buildings I had seen in the distance. We headed for a forest and ran through that, the man simply telling me which way to turn now and then as we went on and on.


    Cerberus definitely enjoyed the run. He barked repeatedly with all three of his heads while bounding all around us. He kept switching back-and-forth between his normal large size and his gigantic size, seeming to really enjoy the opportunity to stretch his legs. Even Percy was having a good time, if the grin on her face as she chased Cerberus around was any indication.


    Between my stamina, Ehn’s own power, the dog being a robot, and Percy a Revenant, it took a lot of running to leave any of us winded. We carried on for hours, and must have run over a hundred miles. I didn’t go at top speed, but still, we crossed some good distance. Or we would have, if we hadn’t essentially run in a circle to end up back where we started. We had run a full loop all the way around, which made me wonder how much of that was him testing my stamina and how much was him getting the lay of the land we were in. Was that even necessary? Honestly, I was pretty sure he could have flown straight up in the air and looked down to get a good view of everything within about ten seconds.


    Either way, I had to stop and drink again, accepting the canteen the man offered. Looking toward the same buildings from before, I asked, “So now that we’ve gone all the way around, do we get to go over there? You said some mix of Alters and humans lived there, right?”


    He nodded, taking a bite of jerky before tossing me a piece. “Eat, build your energy back up. Then we’ll go introduce ourselves.”


    Raising an eyebrow at that, I replied, “I take it we won’t be telling them who we really are and where we’re from. Unless you’re just planning on killing everyone to maintain the timeline.”


    Snorting at me, he shook his head. “I assure you, Felicity, I have no intention of indiscriminately murdering everyone we encounter. You may have justified issues with some of my methods, but I am not a complete monster. Believe it or not, I truly do wish what is best for this universe. I want to ensure every living being is safe and prosperous.”


    “That doesn’t include the Fomorians,” I pointed out after taking a bite of jerky. I really was hungry by that point. It had been a while since breakfast, and I had been pretty nervous while that was going on. Hell, I was still nervous, but here we were.


    “If the Fomorians had a good time, everyone else would be dead.” That was Persephone, cheerfully pointing that out while she sat on Cerberus’s back. “Their idea of a good time isn’t good for anybody else.”


    Nodding to that, I agreed, “Yeah, believe me, no one except those guys would be happy for them to have everything they want. I’m just saying, they’re the ones you want to destroy, right?” I was focused on him again. “That’s the whole reason why I’m here. Because you think you can help me get strong enough to help stop them for good. But that also means that you don’t think you can stop them all by yourself, which is kind of scary considering how strong you’re supposed to be. I would’ve thought you could just offer your services to the Seosten to help end the threat. They’ve got some pretty strong people on their side too.”


    Taking another bite of jerky, Ehn smiled humorlessly at me. “When the time comes, we will indeed offer our alliance to the Seosten. But it will be under our own terms, not theirs. They have had hundreds of thousands of years to handle this threat, and have not been able to do so. And their reaction to first learning of our existence was to immediately attempt to control and enslave us just as they have done so many others. Whether they have begun to learn the folly of that or not, we will negotiate from a position of strength. We will not allow ourselves to be subservient to them. I will not allow it. This will be a partnership in every way.”


    There was a lot I wanted to say to that, but honestly I wasn’t sure where to start or how to phrase it. The man certainly had deeply held convictions, and they weren’t completely wrong on the surface. I wasn’t sure he was the best one to be in charge of that sort of thing, but having an alliance with the Seosten really was the right way to go. Hell, it was what we were trying to do already, even if somewhat different than how he seemed to be envisioning it.


    So, instead of pursuing that at the moment, I simply asked, “What are we going to do when we go over there? I mean, you had a reason for coming to this place besides this just being a good open spot with free time for training, right? We’re hundreds of years before I was born, so we could’ve gone anywhere on Earth. It’s not like we’re going to run into anyone who knows me.”


    His head bowed in acknowledgment. “Yes, there is a man in that village I would like to speak to. He has a piece of information I’m willing to trade for. Something I’ve been searching out across many decades at this point. It’s taking me quite some time to narrow things down this far to find him. Consider this killing two birds with one stone. We are in a good time for your training to begin, and we can speak with this man.”


    “When you say speak with him,” I hesitantly asked, “do you mean hurt him?” Yeah, I had no idea what I was going to say or do if the answer was yes. It wasn’t like I could actually stop this guy. I wasn’t that arrogant. Still, I felt the need to at least ask so I could try to figure out how I was going to react.


    From the look on the man’s face and his voice, he was somewhat curious of how I would react in such a case as well. He paused like that for just a moment before shaking his head. “You have my word, Felicity, I mean the man no harm unless he pushes me toward such ends. My intention is to pay the man quite handsomely for what I want from him. How it goes from there is up to him. But I do not anticipate too much trouble. The difficulty in acquiring this information was in locating the man in both time and space, not in ensuring his cooperation once we’re face to face.”


    I thought about that for a moment, but I probably wasn’t going to get any better answer than that. And even if he was lying and intended to destroy that entire city with a flick of his hand, again, there was very little I could do about it.


    But I would still try, no matter how completely irrelevant my efforts would have been.


    Percy piped up then. “Well, if you’ve been chasing down this man for so long, we better go find him. You wouldn’t want to get over there and find out he just choked on a peanut and died, or tripped and fell off a cliff, or…” She paused, face twisting a little bit. “People are very fragile when you stop and think about it.”


    Unlikely as it was that the person we were apparently looking for would accidentally die just like that, she did have a point about getting this over with. So, praying this wasn’t about to turn into a huge problem, I started walking with the man as we headed for the buildings in the distance. Persephone and Cerberus brought up the rear. As we walked, I asked, “So how are the humans over here going to react when they look at our giant robot dog with three heads?”


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    Ehn gave a soft chuckle before responding. “Speaking quite truthfully, I’m not entirely certain myself. They live amongst as many Alters as there are humans, so it should be interesting to see.” He smiled thinly before continuing in just as casual of a voice. “Oh, and if you wouldn’t mind, please stop that creature.”


    Wait, stop what– just as that thought entered my head, I sensed it. Something undead was coming toward us from the side. My head turned that way in time to see some sort of bare-chested Native American charging our way. He had several wounds over his chest and throat, his face pallid. Some Necromantic energy was piloting him and directing the man our way while he waved two small axes or tomahawks in the air and screamed at the top of his lungs, the sound just now reaching us. Or me, anyway. I had no doubt that Ehn had been hearing him for a while.


    I wasn’t sure who or what had animated this guy to begin with, but it wasn’t hard to take control of him. I did it immediately, first making him stop short. Then I realized we still needed to get a good look at the guy, so I made him keep walking closer. Meanwhile, I glanced toward Percy and asked, “I don’t suppose you recognize that specific energy?” My voice was a little tense at both thoughts that had entered my head.


    To my infinite relief, she immediately replied, “The creature wasn’t animated by Manakel or Fossor. That’s a strange taste. I don’t think I like it.”


    Yeah, Necromantic energy tasting like something even she didn’t like? That probably wasn’t the best sign in the world. Still, I simply filed away the information while turning back to our guide on this little trip. “What about you? This from one of your old friends? Or enemies?” By that point, the zombie had reached us, and I made him stand still, giving the guy a quick once-over visually as well as with my necromancy from this close distance. “If it helps, I think he died about two months ago, and he wasn’t buried or anything. He’s had Necromancy keeping his corpse intact the whole time, that’s why there’s so little decomposition.”


    Immediately after saying that, I paused to blink a couple times and tilted my head curiously. “Huh, I guess I am getting a little better at this.” I hadn’t even needed to summon up Doctor Manakel to ask his advice as a Necromancer and, well, medical professional. And yes, I was still differentiating him in my head from the old– or rather, the version of him I had met last year by referring to this one as Doctor Manakel. Maybe it was weird and unnecessary, but it helped.


    Ehn, meanwhile, just touched the dead man’s forehead curiously. “Hm, while I was aware that this area would likely be infested with these creatures, I am not entirely certain where they originate from, or who would be sending them. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. At the very least, it should be a fun test of your abilities. I look forward to seeing how you handle all of them.”


    I was about to ask what he meant by all of them, when my senses jumped in to tell me. There were more coming, a lot more. My eyes snapped the same direction this guy had come from, only to see what had to be a hundred and fifty or so more zombie warriors charging toward us. This one had just been a scout or something. And now we had a small army coming our way. An army which, judging from what the Dragon-Heretic beside me had just said, he expected me to deal with by myself.


    Holding up my hands in a quick time-out motion, I looked at my guide through all this. “Uh, how much is this gonna change the timeline? We’re being attacked by an army of zombies right now, and if I do anything about that–”


    “This army is only active due to our presence here in the first place,” Ehn informed me. “You will change nothing by halting them now.”


    Right, I wasn’t sure how much I believed that, but on the other hand it wasn’t like I could just allow those zombies to kill us. So, I’d just have to go with it.


    Cerberus was practically dancing with excitement, all three of his heads laser-focused on the incoming zombies. I started to tell him to wait a moment, then felt something else. Another rush of the creatures coming from the other side. This one was just as large. Whoever was behind this was trying to catch us in a pincer movement or something. Looking back that way, I patted the anxiously whining Cerberus on his nearest head. He desperately wanted to go charging that way to deal with the monsters he had been created to destroy. “It’s okay, buddy. I’ll handle the other ones. You go have fun.”


    That was all it took. With a near-deafening bark from all three heads at once, Cerberus charged that way, ready and eager to tear through everything in his path.


    Looking at me until I nodded to show it was fine, Percy chased after him to help. I watched them go, then turned to face the second oncoming horde. I didn’t bother asking Ehn if he was going to help at all. It would’ve been a very stupid question. He could wipe every opponent in this entire area off the mountain with a flick of his finger. This wasn’t about him. It was about me and what I could do. He was testing me again. I had a feeling I was going to be going through a lot of these tests over however long this took.


    This was also, I realized, why he made us run so much before we even approached the village. It was all part of the test. He wanted to wear me out as much as possible before we set off this trap or whatever it was. He wanted me to be tired when I had to start dealing with these zombies. Of course it was all intentional. I doubted very much happened by accident when it came to this guy.


    Hearing Cerberus excitedly barking in the background as he and Persephone dealt with that group, I took a few steps forward to meet the other. They were all screaming and waving those weapons. These weren’t the slow, lumbering type of zombies. They were fast, racing our way at top speed. For whoever had done this to be able to fill them without much energy, and affect this many at once, they have to be a very strong necromancer. Strong enough, come to think of it, to have killed all these people. They were all just like the first one, having died several months earlier in a single battle. Unless the person controlling them was someone from their own side. What if he was one of these people, a last survivor or something, resurrecting his own to create a new army?


    Shaking those thoughts out of my head, I focused on the task at hand. Ehn wanted to see how strong I was even after he made me run for hours? Fine, I would show him.


    To that end, I first focused on my own ghosts. I had brought a couple dozen with me, including Doctor Manakel, Seth, Grover, Jason, Kaleigh, Emily, and Chas. With a thought, I made all of them appear directly in the middle of the oncoming horde, solidifying them so the zombies who were still charging forward would slam into them. It effectively cut the group in half, as the zombies who had been in front continued to charge forward, and those behind bounced off my ghosts and started to mindlessly swipe at them.


    Alright, now I had a smaller group to focus on. Which I did by visualizing my own necromantic power as tendrils twisting through the air. Basically, I was focusing my power into those tendril forms as I shoved them through as many of the still-charging zombies as I could. My power overrode that of whoever had created these things, allowing me to take control and force them to turn on their companions. Soon, that group was cut in half as well, as the quarter I had completely taken over jumped on a bunch of the others and both sides began to tear each other apart.


    Meanwhile, the half that had run into my ghosts was being efficiently destroyed as well. I had given the ghost battalion enough energy to shift back-and-forth between solid and intangible essentially as they wished. Every time one of the zombies swiped at them, their attack went right through before the ghost they were attacking would hit them in retaliation. There might’ve been fewer of my people, but they were stronger and better.


    All of which meant only about thirty of the creatures were still coming my way. Taking a breath, I focused on another lesson I had been through and reached out. I felt the energy that was maintaining them, keeping the creatures moving. I carefully work my own power up into them, visualizing it twisting around the power that was already there. With a grunt of effort, I yanked down both with my hand in the air and with that power. I tore the energy that was reanimating them out of their bodies, pulling it in to take for myself. Instantly, those zombies fell to the ground, completely lifeless corpses once more.


    Using the energy I had just stolen, I did the same to the other groups I had scattered apart, or what was left of them. Soon, that whole part of the incoming army was done.


    A glance back to the other side revealed that Cerberus and Percy had finished dealing with theirs as well. Giving them a thumbs up, I focused on Ehn. “Is that good enough, or do you want to wait for another attack?”


    “That will do for now,” he assured me before gesturing. “At the moment, I believe we should go to the village. With that attack, the man I’m looking for might just decide to flee. I’d like to find him before that happens.


    “After all the effort I’ve gone through to locate him, that would be rather annoying indeed.”