“Why did you let him go?” Andarit scowled at Serenity. “He should have been killed for everyone’s safety.”

Serenity smiled as he shrugged. “He’ll stay in the swamp and he’s not going to attack people. That’s enough; the Dead Swamp is already unsafe. Look at what happened to Timmat.”

“Can you really trust that?” Andarit was clearly uncomfortable.

“Maybe, maybe not. Even if he comes out, he’s no more of a threat than anything else that’s in there. Chances are good he’ll simply be another revenant soon; I expect the others were once human as well.” Serenity was fairly confident that Timmat actually would follow his instructions. Talking to him had been very much like talking to a controlled undead being and unless another necromancer broke the control it didn’t really fade. Death magic was stable.

Not that he’d been using a proper Control Undead spell; he’d just used his Incarnate. It was enough on its own.

“There were two things in his story that seem important to me right now. First, we haven’t found whatever was calling the undead here to become giants. Second, something about the wagons specifically lured the undead out of the Dead Swamp.” Serenity added a third but only to himself: his Lure spell was still running. That meant that whatever was calling the undead and making them turn into giants and hide of all crazy things either had better control than Timmat or wasn’t undead.

Serenity discarded the possibility that whoever it was wasn’t present. It was very difficult to cast large spells remotely; the odds of someone who could do that choosing to control even a horde of low-tier undead were unlikely. They’d almost certainly been present when he arrived in the clearing and might well still be present.

Serenity wished either Rissa or her father Russ were present. Either of them would be able to tell if there was someone else present but hiding. Serenity could find them if he could see them, but something between him and them would block his view just like it would block anyone else’s. If he had to guess, the necromancer was probably hiding somewhere in the swamp. “Should we look?”

Andarit sighed. “It’s the Dead Swamp. If we don’t look, something worse is going to come out of it. It always does.” She bit her lip and looked at the watery landscape ahead of her, however much she could see in the near-darkness. “We have to look now, too. We’ll never find anything if we wait.”

“Do you have an easy way to find someone, or at least flush them out of hiding?” Serenity didn’t. Not if they hadn’t already responded.

Andarit nodded. “I do, I always carry some. Father wouldn’t let me leave home without it, but I’ve never had a reason to use it. Ah, you’ll want to stay well away when I throw this out.”

“What is it?” Serenity was curious what item Andarit was going to use that meant he should move away.

“Pain powder. That’s what father calls it…” Andarit’s voice was interrupted by a stranger’s.

“I’ll come out! I’ll come out! Just don’t throw that stuff at me!” The voice came from the edge of the swamp, behind a tree; a moment later, someone who was clearly living from his Vital Affinity stepped into view.

That made Serenity curious. What “pain powder” was so nasty that someone would immediately give himself up to avoid experiencing it?

Why did the necromancer know what it felt like enough to not want to feel it again?

Andarit directed the light spell she’d cast when it got too dark to easily see while Timmat was talking towards the figure. With the light, Serenity could see more than the vague man shape he’d made out before.

The man who walked out of the swamp was dressed in traveling clothes. There was a little mud splashed on his boots, but other than that he could have been on the road moments before and Serenity wouldn’t have taken any particular note of him. He seemed to be an older man, even older than Duke Lowpeak. He was probably in his sixties; possibly even older if he was relatively high Tier since that came with some additional longevity.

The only weapon he carried was a knife; Serenity suspected that it was more for skinning game than attacking people. Most necromancers weren’t skilled at fighting, though Serenity knew there were exceptions.

The assumption that he wasn’t good with weapons saved Vengeance’s life more than once, after all.

“Robert?” Andarit sounded utterly shocked. “But you’re not a necromancer! At least, you weren’t.”

“I’m not - wait, Andarit of Lowpeak? Eternal eat me, it is you!” The necromancer seemed just as surprised to see Andarit as she was to see him. “What are you doing here? It’s good to see you’ve finally found a powerful guard but you should know better than to come to the Dead Swamp at night!”

Serenity felt a headache coming on. This was as bad a coincidence as a sitcom.

“That’s not - when did you become a necromancer?” Andarit changed direction in the middle of her statement. Serenity assumed she was trying to deal with the surprise in her own way, because he could see her hands clench as she accused Robert.

Robert took a step backwards and put his hands up placatingly. “I’m not. Really, I’m not. I’m a monster tamer. I have a Skill that lets me temporarily dominate groups of monsters that are weaker than me. It works on undead. That’s all. Really!”

Serenity blinked. Robert sounded almost like he was panicking. Did he really think they were going to kill him without at least asking questions first?

On second thought, that was not an unreasonable fear. Serenity could remember some times where something similar had happened to him, and Robert had just been controlling undead. Serenity frowned; it still didn’t add up. The first thing to address was the claim of not being a necromancer; after that, he could ask some of the other burning questions. “How did you get them to merge into a giant undead?”

While they were surprisingly weak and slow giant undead, they were still worse than the individuals. On the other hand, they probably weren’t worse than the group used to form them. Serenity knew how to do it, of course; there were several Skills that could cause similar effects on controlled undead, but all of the ones he knew were necromantic in origin.

“Ah,” Robert temporized. “You’re not going to accept that it’s a Skill I keep hidden, are you?”

Serenity chuckled. “I’ll believe you, but that doesn’t mean I’ll accept it as an answer.”

Robert turned towards Andarit and looked at her beseechingly.

She shook her head then inclined it at Serenity. “Answer the question. I’m curious too. It sure looks like necromancy.”

“It’s not.” Robert shook his head to emphasize his words. “It’s a Skill from the same Path that lets me control lots of weak monsters. If they have a combination attack, I can force them to use it. For these undead, turning into a giant must be their combination attack.”

That was not entirely unlikely, strangely enough. It would be a reasonable capstone Skill for a hordemaster of some sort to get, and Serenity knew some monsters did do strange things when they were gathered in large enough groups, especially if they were challenged by something significant. That answered the how, but not the why.

Serenity shook his head. “Why did you have them hide?”

Robert looked at the ground and scuffed his foot. “Uh, that’s because the second one wouldn’t transform until I hid the first one. There must be some limit on them so there aren’t too many of the undead giants.”

A limit wasn’t unexpected, but Robert’s actions made Serenity wonder if he was telling the truth. Weren’t those supposed to be the tells of someone lying? Serenity glanced over at Andarit, only to find her looking at him. He shrugged; he had no idea if that was the truth or not.

Andarit nodded sharply then turned her attention back to Robert. “What are you leaving out? Why did you need more than one anyway? Why did you need any at all?”

Robert spoke towards the ground. “Five is more impressive than one, isn’t it? So why wouldn’t I go with more?”

Impressive? What did that have to do with anything?

They still hadn’t addressed the central issue so Serenity changed the topic slightly. “Why were you trying to kill the group at the wagon rest?”

Robert looked up at Serenity. He seemed upset at the question. “Kill? No, they have to live. There’s no point in terrifying them if they die. That won’t make people avoid the road.”

“Avoid the road?” Serenity was sure he sounded like an idiot as he repeated Robert’s words, but he thought he’d finally found the thread that might lead to the feeling of something out of place he’d had ever since he saw the lich that wasn’t controlling the undead. “What are you talking about? No, wait, that’s a bad question. Tell us why you’re here and what you were trying to do.”

Robert seemed to relax a little when Serenity asked for a longer explanation. He glanced over at Andarit, but she just made an impatient gesture, telling Robert to hurry up. He took a deep break before he started.

“Well, after your father kicked me out,” Robert paused there. He seemed to expect a response from Andarit, but Serenity could almost see the shutters fall between her emotions and her expression as her face stilled. “I didn’t have many options. Not many people want monster tamers. Especially not ones who are good at temporary control of weak hordes. Most people just kill the monsters.”

Serenity hadn’t asked for the man’s life story, but he kept quiet. Hopefully he was just setting the stage.

“I moved around a lot after that. Took whatever work I could get. You know how it goes.” Robert paused and seemed to wait for agreement.

Serenity did know how that went, but he also knew there were jobs that weren’t worth taking. Killing a random group of travelers sounded like one of those jobs, but he’d wait until he knew more to pass judgment.

After a moment, Robert continued even though neither of them had responded. “A couple months ago I was in Mountain’s Crest when I was approached by someone who needed my skills. He needed someone to scare people away from the direct route from Heavenfall to Mountain’s Crest. It seemed like a perfect fit; people are scared of undead and the route runs next to the Dead Swamp before it climbs Iron Mountain. So I watched for a caravan headed this way, tagged one of the wagons with a monster lure, and started pulling undead together. I waited until they were stopped at the wagon rest so they’d be behind old wards and not just depending on the roadward.”

Serenity hadn’t checked the road to see if it had a monster-deterring enchantment on it, but he was certain that was what Robert meant when he mentioned a roadward. They could be very strong, but like everything else on Zon, any roadward on that particular road must be heavily degraded by time.

“Then I came down to the swamp to make some golems. It’s always better to do that away from the people you’re trying to scare; sometimes they try to interfere if they see you doing that sort of thing, which makes it more likely they’ll realize it’s not just a random monster attack. It’s not like a combination attack will get through an old ward anyway; none of these monsters are even close to strong enough to do that.” Robert seemed positively proud of himself as he finished his explanation.

Serenity was far less impressed. He had the feeling that Robert had done this sort of thing more than once.