Book of The Dead

The cave barely deserved the name, only ten metres deep from the narrow entrance, but it provided the space he needed for his work sheltered from the environment. Luckily he’d caught a glimpse of the entrance behind a split boulder as he was walking past. The star wolf pointedly refused to enter first no matter how it was cajoled so he crept in, a magick bolt held at the ready just in case, but the inside was surprisingly roomy and blessedly free from rift-kin. A few light spells later and he had a dark, damp hole in the ground he could use for his work.

I suppose it’s fitting, in a way.

Necromancers were probably forced to operate in these sorts of conditions whenever they popped up. Even so, this was a still a downgrade from his first workspace.

Which was a tomb.

How is it even possible to downgrade from a tomb? Yet he’d managed it somehow. With a weary sigh he slung his pack off his shoulders and slumped onto the uneven floor. With a groan he tried to rub some life back into his legs without success before he drank what little remained of his water and chewed on some preserved meat. It’d taken the better part of the remaining sunlight to gather the materials that he needed and store them here. The tension from travelling under constant threat of attack, his fear of discovery by a slayer team, his existing fatigue from being on patrol, had all built up to the point his chest felt constricted from the stress. Even worse was the physical fatigue. Once again he thanked the Unseen for the constitution he gained from both the Necromancer and Anathema classes. Without it he’d have collapsed days ago.

No rest for the wicked, as father would say. Better get back to it.

Muscles creaked as he crawled over to his pack and removed the last few bones he needed. With great care, he carried them to the only flat section within this hollow, where two skeletons had been laid out side by side. The two sets of remains had been the closest to complete he could find while staying as far as possible from the rifts. It was frustrating that he still didn’t have an accurate picture of the exact bones and their placement in the human body, which was a glaring lapse that he had to correct as soon as possible. No matter how good he became at Bone Stitching or casting Raise Dead, his minions would still perform poorly if they were missing parts that they needed to move properly.

It grated on him immensely that he was still so poor at his craft. He had sacrificed everything for it, he had to be as close to perfect as it was humanly possible to be, otherwise he would fail. The standards that his parents had reached were impossibly high, but if he didn’t aim to climb that high, then he might as well surrender himself now and not go through all this pain.

In the dim light of the cave, Tyron grit his teeth and placed the bones as best he could before straightening and examining his work. As far as he could tell, the skeletons were complete, but he couldn’t be sure. No matter what he wanted, things weren’t going to get better than this, so he leaned forward once more, his fingers flexing as ghostly strings of magick began to dangle from his fingertips.

It was painstaking work and Tyron was forced to take regular breaks to massage his fingers and refocus his mind. It took him six hours to complete it and by the end he was filled with mixed emotions. The quality of the threads may have improved since last time, but his condition was so poor that he felt the work wasn’t up to standard. He had the skills and the levels now to produce a much finer result, but he was so pressed for time. He bit his lip hard before he was finally able to push his emotions down. This wasn’t the time, he needed a cool head if he was going to succeed. He had a golden opportunity in front of him and if he squandered it there likely wouldn’t be another.

It was close to the middle of the night by this time so he wrapped his cloak around himself and grabbed his pack for use as a pillow. The stone floor was uncomfortable to say the least and despite his shattering fatigue, he couldn’t sleep knowing the rift-kin roamed outside of the cave, even if he had the star wolf watching over him.

As usual, he was forced to cast magick on himself to rest, even if only for a few hours.

It was still before dawn when he woke and despite the protests of his muscles or the pounding in his head, he pushed himself to standing with an eager smile on his face.

”Time for magick. Time for minions,” he chuckled to himself before he stumbled and caught himself on the uneven floor.

He had a new series of aches and pains where stones had jabbed into his sides and hip as he slept but he did his best to ignore them as he rummaged in his pack for his notebook. He conjured a few fresh globes of light and began to flick through the diagrams, invocation patterns and various theories he’d scratched across the pages. His eyes took it all in before he snapped the volume shut and carefully returned it to his pack. It was time.

He strode forward with confidence and stood at the head of the first skeleton. He paused, took a breath and then raised his hands before he began to speak.

He wished he had more time. He wished he could have conducted more research on how to infuse the bones with magick, or investigated the strange resonance they exhibited, but he couldn’t. He only had another day before Dove’s summon would vanish and he would be left on his own. In order to protect himself from that point on, he had to have minions!

The words rolled sonorously from his mouth as hishands moved in broad gestures. He hadn’t been wasting his time as he waited on the side of Victory Road, he’d spent every quiet moment thinking of only one thing, Raise Dead. His signature magick, his golden ticket. He had to make every improvement he possibly could.

For an hour he cast without pause, straining every bit of arcane energy within himself and pouring all of it into the bones on the cave floor in front of him until finally the spell was complete. A dark purple light grew within the hollow eyes of the skull and once again he felt that tenuous connection form between himself and another entity, servant to his will.

”Finally,” he wearily sighed, a slight smile edging the corners of his mouth.

He paused to catch his breath and stretch before he pulled out a piece of mage candy and popped it in his mouth. He was running low of the precious stuff and couldn’t afford to replace what little he had, but he needed to squeeze as much work into the next day as he possibly could. He sat and rested for ten minutes before he began the second cast, utilising all of his focus and magick to perform Raise Dead once more, the glittering form of the star wolf watching with unblinking eyes from the side.

When the cast was complete, Tyron collapsed to his knees, drained of all his reserves. He drew ragged breaths into his dry and burning throat, allowing the now empty chunk of arcane crystal to fall from his mouth to the cave floor. He extended a shaking hand and gathered it up. No need to leave any evidence of his presence if he didn’t have to.

When he could, he pushed himself back to his feet, gathered his pack and slung it back over his shoulder, staggering under the weight of it.

I’m a mess.

His eyes were raw from lack of sleep, his hands trembled and he rasped with every breath. He really was scraping against his limits, but it would be worth it, after all.

”Rise,” he said.

There was no need to say it out loud, the minions would respond to mental commands through the link that they shared, but he felt compelled to speak. The light in the eyes of the undead ignited as they drew on his magick, the bones pulling themselves together and moving with eerie silence. With slow, deliberate movements, Tyron drew his sword and passed it to the closest skeleton, the skeletal fingers closed around the hilt and he felt the drain on his reserves increase as it exerted strength to hold the blade aloft.

”Time to head out minions. I need to level up.”

Don’t talk to the minions, idiot. I’m way too tired.

It was dangerous, but he needed to make the most of his time until the star wolf left him. By the end of the day, he hoped to have retrieved more remains and have fought enough rift-kin to level his Necromancer class to five. Perhaps his first class feat would give him a clearer path forward.

The skeletons staggered out of the cave first and Tyron followed behind, the wolf emerging last of all. The strange group gathered themselves together and made their way out into the woods.

Back in Woodsedge, Dove allowed the glow to fade from his eyes as he ceased to share the senses of his wolf. He let out his breath explosively as he slumped back in the bath. The kid was mad. Completely fucking mad. Or perhaps he possessed a set of balls so large he didn’t need a chair, he just folded those bad boys back and plonked his backside on them. Actually, that raised a question: at what point did recklessly large nads just become insanity? Casting such complex ritual magick in that condition… Dove could only shake his head. Even in his wild and carefree youth, when he’d felt invincible and nothing would ever harm him he wouldn’t have tried it, not for a million gold imperials.

Then again, his circumstances had never been as desperate as the kid’s.

For the hundredth time he wondered if he’d done the right thing not reporting Tyron. Turning over the child of two heroes just because he wanted to keep the class he was given seemed monstrous, but if Dove was honest with himself, it wasn’t anything strange. In fact, it happened all the time, every year a swath of poor helpless saps would try to hold onto their forbidden class and some would escape, but most wouldn’t. There were only two points that separated Tyron’s case from the masses, the class he received, and who his parents were. Realistically, what would happen if he turned him over?

Having a class burned out was supposed to be excruciatingly painful, not to mention leaving the individual crippled, unable to take a new main class except in rare cases. There wouldn’t be anything like that for the kid, though. The first thing Dove had done on returning to town was check the warrant posted for his capture. No second chances for the son of the Steelarms, he was for the chop as soon as he was brought in. And what would those two do once their precious bouncing baby boy was executed by the people they’d protected all their lives?

It wasn’t hard to guess.

Everyone had heard about what they’d done in Foxbridge. Finding someone not gossiping about it was fucking impossible at the moment. When they found out who had turned the kid in, they’d burn the place to a fucking cinder, he had no doubt. As the only two top ranked slayers in the entire province, there wasn’t a single soul who could stop them outside of the capital. By the time the brand brought them down they would have slaughtered an entire city. If someone wanted to turn the kid in, they better spend that reward money as fast as possible, they wouldn’t have long to enjoy it.

Which was probably the whole point of their display in Foxbridge. They wanted everyone to know what would happen if they went against their son. The thought of going against the brand to that extent made Dove shrivel to nothing. The pain it gave him was soul crushing when he brushed against the vows, if he outright violated them? He literally couldn’t imagine how bad it would be.

”Monsters,” he muttered to himself.

Swearing softly, then loudly to himself, he pulled himself out of the bath and started to dry himself. No matter how he twisted this, something just didn’t add up right. How the hell had Tyron ended up getting such a rare and dangerous class? There were rumours that the process of Awakening could be influenced through the crystals, but Dove had always considered that to be conspiracy theory bullshit, but now he had reason to pause. If it were true… the implications would be absolutely boggling.

It would almost make sense though, another lever of control the magisters could level against the population.

But if it were true, why would Tyron be targeted? Because of his parents? That didn’t make sense either, they’d done more in the war against the rifts than anyone. Dove paused for a second. Yes, literally fucking anyone, when he thought about it. Most slayers who reached their level of power retired to palaces and only came out in emergencies, living lives of luxury, unlike the Steelarms who just kept ripping through rifts with barely a day off. The number of slayers who owed their lives to a last second rescue from those two was in the thousands.

The skinny Summoner shook himself like a dog.

”I don’t fucking know!” he roared to nobody in particular before he started to get dressed with angry, jerking movements.

Rather than some ridiculous conspiracy, it was more likely the kid was just a natural Necromancer and the Unseen had given him the class best suited to him. The reborn god of fucking magick? After seeing the kid in action for himself, he had to admit he hadn’t been far off the mark. Considering his piss poor level and lack of stats, Dove couldn’t deny that Tyron was a natural mage. His pronunciation was perfect, his control of diction, volume and tempo, flawless. That stuff was such a bitch to get right. He could remember the endless days and nights he’d spent reading the words of power out loud, getting clobbered over the head every time he tripped over a syllable. And the kid was self-taught? Absolute bullshit.

Being born with that kind of talent was unfair.

Not to mention the focus and concentration required to cast in that condition. Absolute fucking bullshit.

”Monster,”’ he muttered to himself, then he laughed out loud.

He was just a little baby monster right now, but if he managed to raise his class over the level twenty threshold and advance it, then something truly incredible might be born. If that happened… who knows what the response would be from the higher ups? It’d be like dropping a fire stone into a pot of stew.

Dove loved stirring the pot.

Fully dressed, he rushed out of the bathroom and past a surprised looking maid before he barrelled into the common room and out into the street. He’d told the kid he’d give him a supply drop and so that was exactly what he was going to do. Food, water, mage candy, fresh paper, camping gear, outdoor gear, all at the finest quality available in town. He even yoinked a few supplies from the Slayer Keep, just for the irony. By the time he was done he’d amassed a small mountain of gear and spent half his savings, which frankly he didn’t give a shit about.

Saving was for the future and people with a future were fucking cowards.

He was immensely pleased with himself as he looked down on the neatly tied packages he’d stacked in a pile in the common room of his team’s suite.

”Dove,” Rogil asked from the doorway of his room, a resigned look on his face. ”What in the hell are you up to now?”

Dove grinned.

”Being a pain in someone’s ass,” he declared proudly.

Rogil grunted.

”Same as every other day then.”

”You fucking know it.”

Out near the rifts, Tyron dragged himself through the narrow cave entrance before he collapsed on the other side, panting. It was a miracle he hadn’t been seen and frankly, it had been the height of idiocy to go roaming around with a pair of skeletons on his heels. However, he’d succeeded, somehow. He shrugged off his pack and fell backwards as his two minions silently stalked in behind him, followed by the star wolf. The two skeletons were both somewhat banged up, bones cracked, some completely split, and there was nothing he could do for them. He’d managed to secure enough remains to produce another two skeletons, hopefully, as well as scavenge some rusted weapons that they could hopefully use to some effect.

He had almost six hours until he would need to leave and make his way back to meet up with Dove. Hopefully the Summoner would be true to his word, Tyron hadn’t managed to find anything to drink since he’d left the cave and his throat ached something fierce. He would need to drink and eat soon, but first, he had to sleep. When he woke, he could perform the status ritual and if the gods were kind, raising his current minions and the fighting they’d done would be enough to push him to level five.

Not that he could depend on the gods right now…

”Sleep,” Tyron muttered and immediately his eyes fluttered shut as the spell took hold and dragged his consciousness away.