I stood up and finished considering what to do. I was still critically wounded and a simple risk assessment told me it could be very dangerous to try to avenge myself on the neophyte right now.

So I grabbed just behind the spear tip, pulling it completely through my former Commander's neck and hefting it up in one hand. I turned back towards the line of undead skeletons, took one look at the little bastard and loosed the spear anyway.

It might be dangerous to fight wounded, but it would be suicidal to show weakness to him by letting a challenge like that go unanswered.

The impact knocked him to the ground and he howled in anger. The already blood-soaked shaft began dripping fresh ichor onto the desert sand.

He made to rise and I regained control of the skeletons. Guess I wasn't the only one who had trouble fighting for command while worrying about impaling spears. I growled at the girl "Hold him down" and then watched three skeletons turn to him, she hesitated for a just a second, no doubt wondering whose bed would be worse to warm, before finally going for a leg.

After the neophyte had his second leg pinned I settled down on the ground near his feet and watched. It took nearly an hour for enough blood to leak out of him. I basked in the dense concentration of mana infused air. My own bleeding began to staunch and the wounds stitched themselves together. His howls of anger turned to pain as the time ticked by. He'd finally tried begging in the end. I'd hoped he would. I bared my teeth and smiled as he executed a few last ragged breaths and then watched as the core of mana that was him decohered and flowed out suffusing the air.

I'd been staring at the neophyte the whole time and finally took a moment to glance at the alluring curves of the girl beside me. My enjoyment turned to shock when I saw the myriad of different mana types entering her lungs and coming out corrupted and twisted. My respect for the neophyte went up a notch. Apparently, he'd had more plans for her than a simple way to pass the night.

She clearly had the capacity to learn necromancy. In fact, now would be an excellent time to teach her.

"What's your name?" I asked.

She looked up at me, a saw a glint of steel for a moment then it passed. A little more dangerous than her pale skin and short frame would suggest perhaps.

"I'm Kaylee" she replied. Immediately looking away.

"I'm going to teach you something Kaylee," I told her.

She immediately tensed up. "Nothing like that," I said. "I'm going to teach you how to use mana".

I could actually see the conflicting emotions she had as they crossed her face. She finally settled on one. "Why?" she asked.

"We've limited time for questions now, we'll go over why later, for now, you'll do as a say because knowing is better than not knowing if you want it to be less likely you'll wind up dead."

"Didn't seem to help him much" she quipped.

"I said more likely" I replied.

She sighed lightly in response "fine" she said.

"Breath deep...Deeper...Deeper!" wow it was getting hard to tell which of us was the girl in the conversation. "Don't slouch forward, chest out like your trying to get a cute boys attention" she scowled but complied. "Now hold it in, close your eyes and think about the air in lungs getting thicker, feel it compressing together until it's like like a thick fog." She did that pretty well actually. I watched carefully with my mage sight, trying to focus on the mana flowing inside her and not the curves resting lightly above them, now was not the time for that, later, perhaps later would be...

She spent some time like that focusing on breathing, compressing and releasing until the level of residual mana in the air from the recent deaths started to taper off and she was losing more than she gained with every breath. Exhaustion finally hit her and she could do no more. A good start though.