Edina wracked her brain over what Kanae had said before they split up. Why in three hells did she have to go and say something like that? 'Don't do anything stupid.' Edina licked her lips. The Necronomicon was in sight. All that power would belong to her and only her.

"Just so all of us are clear. We're destroying the Necronomicon after taking it from this Riben guy, right?" Arenade asked.

"Yeah…" Edina replied.

"Hey. That didn't sound very convincing. We are destroying it, riiiiiiight?" She got right up to her face.

"Listen, I can't hear you too good up here! It's so windy, and your hair is getting all up in my personal space! Uh, oh… we got some turbulence!" The squirreling compelled her undead dragon to bob and buck.

Arenade wasn't prepared for it nor held on to anything. She tumbled off the spine and plummeted screaming.

"JUST WAIT UNTIL I CATCH BACK UP, YOU GOOD FOR NOTHING NUT HOARDER!" Arenade shouted from all the way back at the tail, flying upon wings granted to her by Holy Armament.

"How the fuck did the Commonwealth manage to defeat me in the war…" Petyr sighed into her hand.

"Everyone, can we please calm down and focus? A crazed necromancer hellsbent on using the Necronomicon to its fullest extent is a real problem. If we don't take this seriously, he might destroy the world," Delayn groaned.

"Maybe. Maybe not. Riben's only doing all this because the Necronomicon promised to bring his family back to life. Obviously, that ain't happening. If it does, probably won't go the way he hopes. Anyway, better in my paws than his at this point," Edina said.

According to the map, they were nearing Atrell. The terrain had since given way to a basin. Archbishop Patrice briefed them on a bit of history before leaving. This used to be filled with water thousands of years ago, but when the ocean receded, it created this dried depression in the earth. Ever since, large beasts like gwarms and gorks that used to come here for a drink of water, instead chose this place as their final resting place.

Savir's blazing sun laid siege to the thick gray clouds which shrouded this part of the desert. Diffused and mottled sunlight casted a gloomy mood over the graveyard. Countless skeletons and bones protruded half-buried in the sand. Some gwarms, their massive ribcages served as shelter for small critters like snakes and voles.

The smell of rot permeated the air. A couple of recently-deceased beasts, festering flesh still clinging to the bones, were swarmed by twin-headed carrions, flies, and rats. In the distance, a pack of meek and elderly gorks mosied into the cemetery of bones to find a quiet place to lie down.

"I can raise an army of monsters here." Edina whistled sharply.

"Foul necromantic energies infect the air here… I feel it on my skin." Delayn shuddered.

"Atrell is enormous. I don't even see the end of the basin from up here. If there are any, we should ask the locals. Maybe they've seen Riben coming through here," Petyr suggested.

"Looks like the locals did find him, and I doubt we're gonna be able to ask them anything," she said.

The other three exchanged confused glances. They didn't see what Edina already saw. Through the eyes of two undead falcons sent ahead of their group to scout, she had a full view of the destroyed village below. Her minions swooped down to get a better look.

Homes crushed and dismantled. Broken weapons, a sign of a struggle. Still and unmoving bodies.

"What? What do you see?" Arenade dipped into her field of vision.

"A small village Riben must've walked his undead through. I'm taking us down!" Edina had her dragon descend into the basin.

They landed in the middle of the village. Arenade and Delayn fanned out to check for any survivors. Petyr kneeled down in front of an elderly dark elf seated against a wall and hunched over. She took off her gauntlets, then pressed two fingers to his wrist.

"This place has been touched by necrotic magic. Riben was definitely here," Petyr said.

"Lemme talk to 'em. Maybe the dead can tell us something." Edina brandished the Pillar of the Damned, letting the brazier's flames envelop the corpse.

Petyr hesitated. Of course, she did. She was a paladin. Thankfully, she relented and acquiesced.

As the necromantic energies took hold of the body, it slowly came back to life. Well, unlife. Somber eyes snapped open and glowed purple.

"What happened here?" Edina asked.

"Necro… mancer… wanted death… so much… death. Sought the location… of Asa Mareer… largest gwarm… ever recorded… Killed me, made me tell him… in death…" he said.

"Tell us where. We'll avenge this village." Petyr squeezed her warhammer.

The corpse pointed southwest.

"Before you go… I have one last wish," he said.

"Huh. Soul must be clinging real hard to the body to ask that." Edina shrugged.

"What is it?" Petyr asked.

"I want… to see some… titties…"

Edina stifled a laugh. Petyr, on the other hand, rested a hand on the corpse.

"Turn Undead!" Petyr casted.

"AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" The soul evacuated from the body, and Edina lost control of commanding it to speak.

Petyr dusted off her hands in a job well done just as Arenade and Delayn were returning in a hurry.

"We heard a scream! What happened?" Delayn asked.

"Riben isn't far. Let's get going. I'm going to finish what the high elves of old couldn't and destroy that living grimoire." Petyr hopped back onto the undead dragon.

Everyone did the same, but Edina was feeling uneasy. She looked back at the ruined village, and its poor inhabitants whose lives Riben had taken.

They flew southwest where the old man had pointed. The graveyard grew thicker and more crowded. Skeletons worn from age were more pronounced the farther they traveled. A sudden pulse of energy erupted outwards and nearly knocked them off the dragon.

Necromantic magic surged across Atrell. Petyr, Arenade, and Delayn winced in pain while Edina was perfectly fine. A gargantuan tornado formed, connecting the earth and clouds with dark purple miasma.

On the surface, thousands of undead chipped away at the ground. They were excavating a behemoth of a gwarmceros skeleton.

"Holy fuck. That thing is huge! Does he even have enough mana to raise it?" Edina cried.

"Well, let's not wait and find out. Take us down, Edina! Holy Armament: Full Suit of Armor, Wings, Sword and Shield!" Arenade donned a gilded suit like an angel of war.

"Kuh… It's not fair that high elves are the only ones who can use that skill." Delayn chewed on her thumb.

Edina steered her dragon down when it suddenly got dark real fast. Everyone looked up. A flock of twin-headed carrions, enough to blot out the sky, circled them like a plague of locusts. Their eye sockets were empty. Rotting flesh and feathers clung precariously to withered bodies.

"Get us to the ground! NOW!" Petyr boomed.

The swarm dove right for them.

Arenade aimed her Halo of Holy Radiance and casted from it a laser beam of divine energy. Scores of carrions went up in smoke. Anything that remained plummeted from the sky. A couple got close and latched onto the dragon's tail with their talons.

"Don't you dare shoot that beam at my dragon!" Edina warned.

"But they're getting closer!" Arenade cried.

"Focus on the swarm. Leave the stray ones to me." Delayn flourished her gnarled wooden staff and fired holy bolts that blew them away.

They landed in a clearing with as few undead as possible. What little there was tried to attack them, but Petyr made short work of the small horde. The sand and soil was compacted here, and the air was so dry it wicked moisture right off their skin.

"Riben Crow!" Edina picked up the skull of an undead Petyr had defeated. "I'm here for the Necronomicon. Hand it over, stop what you're doing, and you can walk away from this with your life."

"I can say the same for you! Do you really think bringing two priests and a paladin is enough to stop me? Ancient necromancers have defeated more with less. This war is exactly what the Necronomicon needed. I'll finally reunite with my family again, and your ragtag group will rot here!" Riben laughed.

The undead started moving. It was like witnessing an avalanche or landslide shift. They were all Riben's minions. Monsters, animals, people, ghosts, and more.

"This is a nightmare! The four of us are expected to defeat him alone?" Delayn gasped.

Petyr grabbed the skull and crushed it in her gauntlet.

"Riben is right, as much as I hate to admit it. Holy and divine magic will only take us so far. Our mana isn't an infinite pool. Edina, we need your undead army," Petyr said.

"I probably don't have as much as Riben does with the Necronomicon, but I'll make up for it with quality. Come forth, Legion of the Dead! My death knights, rise and serve your master! All of you that I've slain and subjugated, answer my call!" Edina brandished the Pillar of the Damned in one hand and Scythe of Soul Reaping in the other.

Both weapons came together and connected at the base to form one large scythe. Thousands of undead marched from summoned abyssal portals. The death knights emerged among them that made the ground shudder with every step. Edina flew up and carved a giant rift from which the undead berinath and second undead dragon crawled out of.

Both dragons and the gigantic subterranean aquatic eel-like monstrosity that turned Kanae into a pipsqueak soared over the graveyard. They swatted the hundreds of carrions that were giving chase to them, sending them flying across Atrell.

From the violent necrotic tornado, Riben Crow summoned forth his own undead army. Banshees and wraiths beelined right for them, only to meet rain of holy spellfire from Delayn. But more were coming.

This called for some bigger firepower. Edina casted Sacrifice Undead, one of her first Legacy Skills. A wave of lesser undead shattered, three of the six death knights fell apart, and the skeleton of a wyvern collapsed into a pile. Necromantic threads strung them together, pulling everything up to Edina's body like a suit of armor. The death knights formed the basis of her body and limbs, while the smaller undead filled in the empty gaps. Finally, the pair of skeletal wyvern wings sewed onto her back.

Edina stood at a hulking height of fifteen feet. She wielded her combined staff and scythe with ease. A mammoth's skull crowned her head, and a miasma of necrotic energy shrouded her monstrous form— an avatar of death clad in tattered robes of mist.

"Arenade, cut me a path!" Edina shouted.

"Don't mind if I do! Sacred Exorcism!" Arenade fired a holy ray that carved through both undead armies.

Normally, Edina would complain. This time, however, she was grateful and flew unimpeded through the opening. An undead dragon not of her making roared. Its large giants snapped open with every intention to chomp her in half. But not today. Her own behemoth crashed into it, and the impact left a crater in the earth where they continued to do battle.

"I'm coming for you, Riben!" Edina boomed, only to see too late a giant tail swat her out of the sky.

A fair-sized gwarm rose from the dead. Its long neck was rivalled only by its even longer and thicker skeletal tail. The giant thing was coming down for another attack. Edina rolled out of the way, swung her scythe, and severed it. Unable to keep balance, the gwarm collapsed.

"You're not the only one with death knights! Go forth, minions!" Riben summoned two that came charging out of portals.

"Divine Smite!" Petyr flung her warhammer, smashing into the first death knight's chestplate. An explosion of divine energy nearly destroyed the undead. The second swung a maul, but she sidestepped the blow, twisted the weapon from its grasp, and bludgeoned its knees out. "Asa Mareer! They're nearly done excavating its bones!"

"Behold, little necromancer. Your meager power pales to what we can accomplish!" Necronomicon's voice echoed across the battlefield like a raging storm.

The tornado of necrotic energy funneled into the Asa Mareer. An ancient beast long dead awakened from its slumber. The very earth shuddered to its waking yawn. Dust and sand shook loose from the bones. Undead minions still digging away slipped and fell to their destruction.

Asa Mareer was larger than any beast Edina had seen before. Every step made the ground quake. The bones cracked from age and weather, but Riben Crow and the Necronomicon's sheer necromantic magic kept it together. She couldn't help but marvel at it.

"Whooooaa… That's so cool! I want to raise a gigantic monstrosity like that!" Edina jumped for joy.

"That's not something to cheer about, you fool!" Petyr growled.

"Now the Harpy King's march towards Avanesse may commence." Riben climbed onto an adolescent undead dragon and took off.

Arenade and Delayn caught up. Both of them were covered in sweat. Cowtits struggled to keep Holy Armament active. It faded in and out, and she was only keeping it up through will. Their mana was running low. This war of attrition was never in their favor to begin with.

"I guess I got no choice. Cantu!" Edina shouted.

"Yes, master?" Death Knight Cantu in all his flesh abomination glory raced up to answer her call.

"There's a soul cairn in your chest. I want you to rip it out for Petyr to destroy the sucker," she said.

"There's a WHAT?!" He shoved a fist into his chest, then wrenched out a small pillar of skulls emanating with pure necrotic energy.

"Wait, what in three hells are you going to do?" Arenade asked.

"The soul cairns ain't just my key to ascending to lichdom. Everytime it gets destroyed, a surge of souls and mana erupt out. I'm going to absorb everything to give me a big boost. In other words, my trump card!" The squirreling grinned.

Destroying one was going to set her back a year or two, but that would be a small price to pay.

"I've never had the pleasure of destroying a soul cairn before. You're sure?" Petyr looked Edina dead in the eyes.

"Do it." Edina nodded.

Death Knight Cantu gingerly set the soul cairn on the ground. Petyr charged her felmetal warhammer with Divine Smite. She hoisted the weapon high above her head, then brought it crashing down on the cairn. An eruption of holy magic rippled outward, outright destroying lesser undead unlucky enough to be close by.

Edina doubled over. Not from the pain of searing holy energies that were her antithesis, but from being connected to the soul cairn. She had extracted a portion of her soul to fill part of it. Getting hit right in the soul hurt fiercely, like her very existence was about to be erased.

The second hit shattered the soul cairn. A similar tornado of necromantic energies exploded. Thousands of screaming souls sang a choir begging to be released. Edina gritted through the agonizing pain, lifted her combined Pillar of the Damned and Scythe of Soul Reaping, and carved into the wall of the wailing dead.

Everything, necrotic energy and souls alike, absorbed into the staff. The fire atop the brazier ignited into an inferno of incredible proportions. Arenade, Petyr, and Delayn backed away from the licking flames.

At that very moment, Edina felt unstoppable.

"It's not 'little necromancer'. It's the 'greatest' necromancer in the world to you!" Edina willed the fathomless pool of mana, converting it all into necrotic energy and guided the magic into Asa Mareer.

A brief battle waged inside the bones of the behemoth between two necromancers, Edina Hackett and Riben Crow. But the dark elf wasn't prepared, and neither was the Necronomicon. They witnessed the nigh infinite well of power surging towards them— and wavered.

That split second was all Edina needed to seize control of Asa Mareer as her own undead minion. Riben and Necronomicon were still riding on their dragon. The gigantic gwarm craned its neck in their direction, knocking them plummeting back to the earth.

Riben slowed down his descent, clinging onto the levitating Necronomicon. As soon as they touched ground, he flipped through the living grimoire's pages and summoned another army of undead.

"It's not over!" Riben roared. "Our armies are endless. Can you say the same for yourself?"

"Maybe not. But you wanna know something? I got a friend that's always nagging me to use other spells. I mean, what's the fun in that? A necromancer should use necromancy! I'm starting to see she's got a point though. Because I can do this more often— Creeping Frost!" Edina swung her scythe, sending a frigid sleet across the field that froze Riben's entire army solid.

What was once a torrid hellscape had turned into an arctic wasteland. The mist caught Riben, too. Ice entombed his lower body, and the frost continued to creep up his right arm which held the Necronomicon. Edina snapped her fingers, and his army shattered. Ice and snow showered the graveyard. Tranquil peace returned to the graveyard as it deserved.

Pieces of armor that made up Edina's suit of bones fell from her body. She shrugged off the final pieces and skipped up to the frozen Riben.

"I'll be taking that!" Edina plucked the book of the dead from his hand.

A single tear streaked down Riben's cheek. The light in his eyes vanished, leaving darkness behind. Edina knew for certain that wasn't her doing. It seemed what borrowed time he had gained from the Necronomicon ran out.

"Riben Crow was weak. You, I see now, are not. I know a great necromancer when I see one, and every page in my bindings is ready to lend their ancient power to you. I can even lend you my aid in completing your remaining soul cairns. We will be unstoppable," Necronomicon said.

"For the small price of countless deaths, am I right?" Edina dusted the frost off his cover.

"Everything has a price. Power more expensive than most. How about it? I'll help you ascend to lichdom. You truly will be the greatest necromancer in the world with me in your grasp." A dark miasma of necrotic energy oozed from the pages.

She thought long and hard before finally coming to answer, "Nah."

The black fumes sucked back into living grimoire.

"Wait, what did you say?" Necronomicon asked.

"That same friend who bitched at me to use other spells also told me not to do anything stupid. She was right, and look how that turned out. So I think I'll give her advice a try again. Besides, taking untold lives sounds like a lot of work for some borrowed power." Edina waved him dismissively in the air.

"B-Borrowed power?! I am an ancient power, you miserable acolyte! When your bones become dust, my bindings will yet remain pristine. I don't need you. I never needed you! Another necromancer shall come and—"

Edina casually summoned an undead warrior and had it hold Necronomicon tightly to its chest. She strolled away as he continued blathering, only for him to stop suddenly in puzzlement.

"What's going on? Unhand me!" Necronomicon demanded.

"Hey, I got a joke for ya. Two priests and a paladin runs into the dreaded book of the dead at a cemetery. What do they do?" Edina stepped out of the way, signalling to Arenade, Delayn, and Petyr as she cleared the path to him.

"Full power, Sacred Exorcism!" Arenade and Delayn fired a concentrated beam of holy energy.

"Divine Toll!" Petyr lifted her felmetal warhammer to the sky, calling down a giant church bell that rang with divinity.

"THAT'S NOT FUNNNNNYYYY…" The violent spells drowned out the living grimoire's cries.

Edina took a lot more than a couple of steps back, feeling the stray searing energies stinging her skin. When their spells subsided, her undead was bone dust on the ground. Necronomicon survived and was lying atop the mound, his leather-bound cover scorched badly. Some of his pages had shriveled up, too.

"Sheesh. It survived that? Am I losing my touch?" Arenade wondered aloud.

"Living grimoires aren't easily destroyed. Not by conventional means at least. They are long-lived and resilient, which is how they managed to acquire such an expansive list of necromancers," Petyr explained.

"Which ends today, I presume. Unless there was another reason you let us do that to Necronomicon?" Delayn folded her arms.

"I don't want 'em." Edina snatched the not-so-pristine living grimoire up and grinned. "I'll become the greatest necromancer in the world on my own terms, without the likes of the Necronomicon or Hax'gorah fucking with my head. When we get back to Radevic, I'm giving it to Esta and Silver Hall to throw in a bookshelf to collect dust. Maybe come by and make fun of it every now and then. Hehe!"