Obviously, I wanted to charge right out there immediately and leap head first into whatever was going on. But I stopped myself. Time passed differently in here, going faster than it did out in the real world. Whatever Fathom was seeing, it had to have just barely started. The attack had begun just as I came in here. Which meant there was still time to help everyone, but first I needed to find out everything I could. I needed to go into this with my eyes open and not just rush in blind.

Taking the offered spyglass, I raised it to my own eye to look up. It showed me the view from where I had been sitting when I meditated my way into this place. Off in the distance, I could see the town in question. Despite the fact that it was still the middle of the day, some sort of magical darkness had settled over the place. And sure enough, one of the walls was on fire. I could see people running away. Or at least, starting to. They were moving in extreme slow motion. A group of shadowy figures moved through the front gates, some on foot while others rode horses. They spread out to chase after the fleeing townspeople. Between their strides, the weapons they held, and the terror and panic I could see in the body language of the people I cared about, they weren’t there for anything good. Worse, I could see flashes of what looked like gunfire, or even bigger weapons, off in the distance.

“Be ready,” I snapped to Fathom, “we’re gonna put a stop to this, right now.” I didn’t care about changing the timeline, or anything like that. These were my people, my friends. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to them. Whoever these assholes were, I was gonna make them sorry they had ever even heard of this town, let alone set foot in it.

This was going to end really fucking badly for them.

With that thought, I shifted myself back out of my Archive and into the real world. I was already on my feet, grabbing my staff with one hand while using the other to produce a small coin that would send an alert to Percy. At the same time, I was pivoting to face the town nearby. I could already see the flames from that burning wall as the fire began to spread, the sound of it crackling intermixed with screaming from the innocent people suddenly being hunted through what should have been their safe haven. No, I wasn’t going to allow this. Not this place, not now. These bastards chose the wrong fucking target.

With that thought rushing through my mind, I gripped my stuff tightly before vanishing from where I stood. It was only a short teleport, as I sent myself directly in front of the gates. Or what was left of them. First things first, a thought shifted me back into my Jacob identity. I didn’t know exactly what was going on here or who these people were, but this was obviously something big enough that I couldn’t have stories about a blonde Necromancer girl spreading.

Now, I needed to stop this fire. It was already doing too much damage to this place, and could burn down the homes these people had put so much work into. I couldn’t let it keep spreading. Especially since it had clearly been started in the first place to spread terror and make everyone panic. I had to deal with it.

Well, maybe not me, exactly.

Fathom, I sent inwardly to the girl who had accompanied me back out here, deal with that.

Even as I was turning to face the rest of the town, my left hand stretched out the other way as Fathom summoned a cold amber stone from our supply bag. This one had a water-summoning spell drawn on it. It didn’t actually create water out of nothing, instead pulling the liquid from that lake back in the tower where we had an identical stone set up. Somehow, it had seemed like a good idea to have a way to call water wherever I went. Maybe we were just psychic like that. Or had functioning pattern recognition. Either way, the stone acted like a powerful hose. A geyser of water shot out, soaking down the burning wall. Unlike a regular fire hose, I didn’t stagger under the force. There was no force at all. It just went spraying out of the rock, quickly dousing the flames. Which was one problem down. The most minor one, really. But one step at a time.

Speaking of steps, I was walking forward even as the flames were put out. To one side, a series of shouts went up, along with a scream. My eyes snapped that way, just in time to see a little Alter boy I recognized from all the time I’d spent here. He was a young crocodilian humanoid. Well, crocodilian aside from the fact that his body was deep blue with a sort of silver underside. He was basically a blue-silver humanoid crocodile standing on two legs. His name was Hekahkl, or Hekky, and I wasn’t sure how quickly his species matured, but he was basically the equivalent of a twelve-year-old. Those twelve-year-old crocodilian muscles were straining in that moment to drag the… the body of a girl, his best friend, Charlotte. She was a human girl, a small blonde figure who already had blood liberally staining the front of her pretty little dress. Hekky was sobbing as he pulled his already-dead friend around the corner of the building.

Before I could move, or do anything, several arrows came shooting out from beyond that building. They all pierced the boy, taking him to the ground even as a dozen men on horseback came charging into view, the sound of their hoofbeats like thunder. They whooped and cheered, taunting the boy about how they’d stopped him from ‘eating’ his prey. Even as he fell atop his best friend, both of their bodies lying together with their blood staining the ground, these men bragged about what defenders of humanity they were.

I saw it. I saw that blood, saw those two children on the ground, lifeless and broken. I felt their deaths, I literally tasted the way they died. I tasted the bitter pointlessness of it. Their terror, helplessness, all of it filled me in that moment. I felt how afraid they had been here, here in their fucking home, where they played. They had been playing together before the invasion started, and then there had been nothing but terror, confusion, and… and death.

Then I saw the cheering men, heard their callous words as they congratulated themselves on their heroic victory and called out boasts of what they were going to do to any of the other filth that came crawling out once they burned every structure in this abomination of a town. It wasn’t enough that they had killed children and felt absolutely no guilt about that. They wanted more. They were not only willing but eager to destroy this village and kill everyone in it, all because they thought some of the people who lived here were monsters. Irony may not have been the most innocent victim of these murderers, but it was as thoroughly dead as the children whose blood stained their arrows.

They were so lost in their imagined glory that they completely missed me standing there about a hundred feet away, partially shrouded in smoke from the fire.

Well, they weren’t going to miss me for much longer. Even as the sound of their celebrations became meaningless background noise against a soundless roar echoing through my mind, I found myself reaching out in every direction. I felt the remains of those who had died in this area over the past several decades. It was a remote area, but there were still those who had fallen while passing through, or camping. There were still animals who had been eaten. And in that moment, I stretched my power around all of them and pushed.

It was time for them to be afraid.

The men on horseback saw me then. Or maybe they heard the inarticulate scream that erupted from me. The Necromantic energy surrounding me was so potent, so concentrated in that moment, that it literally glowed like fire around my form. And as my scream echoed across the village, I thrust one hand forward. In that motion, something tore its way up out of the ground. It was a bear carcass, almost entirely rotted away after being buried there years earlier. The thing erupted from the Earth, sending a spray of dirt and rocks in every direction. By that point, there was almost nothing left aside from a skeleton. But my energy filled it, giving it form and creating a sort of ghost-like bear image around those bones. It towered over the men even on their horses, a giant, monstrous figure whose roar drowned out even my scream. Or maybe it came from my scream.

In that same moment, even as the bear was rising, I lifted one hand with that gemstone Ehn had given me held between two fingers. I took a one second glance at the first two men I could see through that glass-like stone before audibly snapping, “Them.”

The bear-zombie reacted instantly, lashing out to literally tear the first of those two men’s heads clean off his neck with a single blow before any of them had even begun to cope with its sudden appearance. At the same time, its other paw stabbed forward, plunging ghost-like claws into the chest of the other man I’d targeted. The entire front of his torso was ripped open, not only creating a hole through the skin and muscle, but actually tearing apart his rib cage, sending pieces of bone and organs flying across the faces of the rest of his companions.

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Needless to say, the horses reared backward and tried to escape. But there was nowhere to go. Because in that same moment, an army of my own descended on those men from all sides. They were ghosts. Some were those I had brought with me, while others were the remains of those who had died here before. With banshee-like shrieks that surely pierced these men’s souls, the ghosts fell on them. The arrows went flying, but most did nothing. One man managed to ignite his own arrow with ghost-fire, causing a bit of damage to one of the ghosts. One. Another three tore him from his mount and sent him into the air, where a backward swipe from the bear-zombie thing took him to the ground.

Every man was knocked from their horse, and the ghosts allowed those animals to flee. It wasn’t the horses’ fault that these pieces of shit had used them to attack this village. They could leave. But as for these men… As they were trying to pick themselves up, before the assembled men had even begun to cope with its appearance, I raised that stone again. For just a moment, I scanned the stone over the jumble of men, squinting at them through it. Nothing happened. Just like when I had scanned those first two guys, looking at the rest of them with it was just like looking through colored glass. Which was really bad for these guys.

I wasn’t sure how the thing worked. All I knew was that according to Ehn, if someone glowed when I looked at them through the glass-like stone, they needed to live to keep the timeline intact. If they didn’t, they… well, didn’t. They were inconsequential to the timeline. And these guys? They were about to find out what being inconsequential meant.

With a thought, I made my zombie bear come down hard, one of his massive paws popping the nearest man’s head like Gallagher hitting a watermelon. At the same time, Grover appeared behind another man and drove a knife into his throat repeatedly, sending the man’s blood spraying under the face of a third. That man, eyes covered in the blood of his companion, raised a sword and went to shove it through Grover while igniting the ghostfire on it. But before he could manage it, two more ghosts grabbed his arms and dragged him away from that spot. They held him down, a couple more grabbing his legs and keeping him pinned while Seth came into view directly over him. The vampire ghost glared down at the trapped man, raised his foot, and brought it slamming down into his face several times in rapid succession. Soon, his features were completely unrecognizable. He gurgled for a moment, then stopped even doing that. Still, Seth kicked him a couple more times just to be sure. And took a fair bit of pleasure in doing so.

Every man in that murderous little group ended up the same way, pinned down and killed. They didn’t get a real fight. They didn’t get some sort of glorious battle. They were put down like the rabid dogs they were. No chance, no honor, just death. Their weapons were stripped away, they were held down, and my ghosts or the zombie bear put them where they belonged.

Even as they were finishing up with that, the dozen men who had been stealthily approaching and getting into position behind me decided they couldn’t wait any longer. Four raised bows, another three took aim with guns, and the remaining six charged forward with swords and axes raised high.

I didn’t bother turning around. Hands rose from the dirt and grabbed the ankles of three of the charging men as the corpses of several dead figures clawed their way up from the ground. They hadn’t died here specifically, but near enough for my power to latch onto. Fathom had spent the past few moments using a power I’d given her (one inherited from that giant scorpion monster I’d told the kids back in Desoto about) to allow the zombies to essentially ‘swim’ incredibly quickly through dirt and rock as though it was water. They were able to position themselves there, before popping upward to grab those men, yanking them off their feet to trip up the others rushing up behind them. Before they could recover and regroup, those few zombies who had come up out of the ground were joined by several more ghosts to help disarm the men and pin them down. At the same time, a flock of dead crows, ravens, hawks, owls, and other birds descended upon the ones who were trying to use bows and guns on me. They were merciless, pecking at the eyes and fingers of the men while ripping the weapons away from them. They couldn’t escape no matter which way they turned.

Finally, once the situation was in hand, I cast a glance over my shoulder at these ‘reinforcements.’ While the last of the death gurgles from that first group drifted off into the empty air, I raised that stone between my fingers and looked that way. I watched five glowing images resolve themselves, before raising my other hand to point. “Him, him, her, him, her. They live.”

I didn’t bother to say the other half of that out loud. They would get the point, as soon as that zombie bear threw itself at the ones I hadn’t pointed out. Between that and the rest of my little undead army, it was over quickly. The ones who mattered to the timeline were choked and smothered into unconsciousness before being left there for the time being. Either way, none of them were a problem anymore. It also meant several of my ghosts and zombies were full of death energy for me to consume and gain both memories (possibly) and any powers they might have had. I needed to do that, but I didn’t want to risk being sent reeling from the process. Not when the village was still full of these bastards. Between the screams, clanging metal, and dull booms I could still hear coming from every direction, there was a lot left to deal with.

Speaking of those booms, that was next on my list. Striding forward, I focused on the source of those sounds. Then I saw them. Just outside the village, on the edge of a hill with a big tree the kids around here liked to climb on, were a handful of cannons. Distinctly not there? The tree. They had knocked it down to make room for their artillery. Fucking artillery to attack a village. I honestly wasn’t sure which angered me more, that or the fact that they knocked down the damn tree the kids liked. Was it weird that the whole tree thing even registered to me with everything else I already had to be angry about? It was just another thing, another simple, carefree thing that these pieces of shit had ripped away from the people here. They were rampaging through the village, killing everyone they found, burning their homes, using cannons to attack their walls or demolish every structure they tried to form a defense behind. And in the process, they had knocked over an old tree that was in their way.

Send them a present? Fathom asked curiously while using my item-moving power to summon what would appear to be a small silver metal ball about the size of a Christmas bauble.

Gripping the ball, I gave a short nod before rearing back to throw it. At the same time, my other hand summoned a portal just in front of the ball’s arc, while the other end appeared above the assembled cannons and their operators. They noticed me in that moment, and had just started to turn the cannons my way when the ball popped out of the portal and fell into the grass and weeds at their feet. As soon as they heard and saw it appear, several of the murderers up there tried to grab the ball, but they were too late. The flashbang spell attached to it had already triggered, instantly sending all four men up there reeling. I could hear the boom from here, so they had probably lost all their hearing for a good long time. To say nothing of how blind they were from the lightning-like flash.

While they were still staggering and crying out, I shoved my staff through the same portal, so the end was sticking out just above the cannon-wielding cowards. At the last second, I thought to use the gemstone in my other hand to check, finding one man that needed to survive. Still, I didn’t hesitate before using that new trick my staff had with the spell-storing metal band that was now attached to the end. In this case, I used a single word to summon a prepared gust of wind spell, and another quick word to activate it. The blast of air instantly spread out like a tornado before slamming into the already-reeling men with even more force than my normal kinetic charge could have. They were all lifted off their feet and sent hurtling off the hill they had been standing on, screaming and flailing. The cannons themselves were knocked over and scattered in the process.

With my focus on the one man who needed to survive, I slowed his fall by increasing his clothes’ resistance to motion. Not too much, just enough that he was hurt but not killed as he landed amongst the bushes outside town. His companions weren’t so lucky, as the sick crunching sounds of them splattering against the ground filled the air.

Unlike every death that had happened before, these ones I had caused directly. So the death energy wasn’t temporarily held by a ghost, it came directly to me. Three dead guys, and I took in all of it.

Not… much happened, to be honest. These guys were all human–well, Adjacents I supposed. They didn’t have powers, exactly. And I didn’t pick up their memories either, in this case. I could have, but it wasn’t a one hundred percent thing. I felt the energy from their deaths rejuvenate me a bit, like having a cold glass of water after a run.

Wait, no, that wasn’t all. I didn’t get their memories exactly, but I did get some of their skills. I felt the knowledge of how to properly saddle and ride a horse, how to track various types of wild animals, identify safe berries, and other survival skills pop into my head. There was other stuff too, like wood carving and a specific recipe for some sort of pumpkin pie. And more assorted bits.

Setting all that out of my mind, I turned back to the rest of the village. I’d done a good bit of damage, but the attack wasn’t over yet. But that was okay, because between my own fury and the death energy I had just absorbed, I was ready to do a lot more..

This was a decent start, but now I was really going to show these fuckers just what a terrible mistake they’d made in coming here.