Book of The Dead

”What do you think?” Dove grinned as he spread his arms wide over the mound of gear he’d piled onto a rickety sled.

The kid looked askance at him before he glanced back down at all the loot.

”It seems like… a lot?” Tyron said.

”Is that all the gratitude I get? You shit. I was all over town getting this stuff together! Come over here and let’s see if it fits.”

Tyron was hesitant to approach, mainly due to his surprise at what the Summoner had done than anything else. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from this meeting. Betrayal, most likely, instead he found Dove sitting atop a pile of camping gear and preserved food, waving enthusiastically the moment he’d drawn near.

As the Necromancer walked closer, the wiry mage paid his lack of gratitude no mind as he bustled from one pack to the next, whipping out the new boots he’d ordered, along with the cloak and a few changes of clothes.

”You want me to try those on, now?” the kid asked.

”Don’t be fucking daft, kid!” Dove exclaimed, ”I don’t want you to whip your balls out in the middle of the damned forest and get changed. The watch would see your nads through the trees for one thing. Just hold ’em up and we can eyeball the size. Doesn’t matter if it’s too big, but anything too small is going to chafe something awful, not an issue that you of all people can deal with right now.”

Still bemused, Tyron stood still as Dove passed him item after item and he held them against himself whilst the Summoner clucked about the fit.

”Good enough,” was the final judgement and Dove nodded, pleased with himself.

A soft whine came from behind him.

”Yes, yes, you’ve been a good boy,” he turned and embraced the head of the star wolf as the normally dignified creature revelled in its Summoner’s attention for a brief moment. ”Well done you big fluffy bastard,” he cooed, ”now go on home to the Astral and have a nap. I won’t make you hide in caves with stinky bones again, okay?”

Tyron sniffed. His skeletons did not stink. They were entirely fleshless! How could they stink?

With a simple wave of his hand and a few muttered words, Dove undid the binding that held his wolf onto the mundane plane, releasing it back to its home in the astral and turned back to the kid.

”Can’t do that with a heap of bones now can you?” he smirked.

”I wouldn’t know,” Tyron sighed, not rising to the petty bait, ”I have no idea what sort of Spells or Feats are available to this class, or how it will advance. For all I know, summoning skeletons from other planes of reality is more than possible.”

The Summoner raised a hand, paused, then thought for a moment before he replied.

”You know you might be onto something there. Given that the class is forbidden, there’s no such thing as documentation, but there are a few historical records that talk about powerful Necromancers.”

”Like Arihnan the Black?”

Dove snapped his fingers.

”That’s the prick. He had all sorts of shit going on. Razed a few cities, nasty stuff. You can thank him for your poor relationship with the law. You should see what you can dig up on him and use that as a reference. You can learn a ton from historical references if you put your head to it.”

”But aren’t there places where Necromancy isn’t forbidden?” Tyron asked, a little desperate, ”surely they have texts and guides for anyone with the class?”

”No shot,” Dove shook his head, ”the magisters are paranoid fuckers, they’ll ice any material that comes into the empire along with the people who brought it in.”

”Then maybe I can go to them? Travel outside the empire?”

”It’s not going to happen, kid, you’ve got to let it go. To leave the empire you’d have to travel beyond the broken lands and I’d give you a snowball’s chance in my undies that you’d make it through.”

”In your undies?” Tyron muttered.

”What? It gets hot in there.”

Tyron tried to shake the sudden despondency that fell upon him. He’d almost resigned himself to having to figure everything out on his own, but the reality of it hadn’t quite set in. With the older and more experienced mage all but confirming he was cut off from all sources of knowledge, he couldn’t help but feel a little defeated. The choices you made along your path would have huge consequences by the time you reached the end, to the point where most of the luminaries who reached their third advancement were the only ones to possess that particular class in the empire.

Dove noticed the hangdog expression on the lad’s face and quickly reassured him.

”Look, don’t worry about it. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders and for the time being, you have me for advice. Between the two of us we ought to be able to work out what to do. Now help me pack all of this shit and swap your boots over, I might be able to get a couple of coins for those in town.

Grumbling to himself that hadn’t actually asked for any of this stuff, Tyron was secretly very grateful that the scrawny mage had gone so far out of his way to secure much needed supplies for him. The new boots were stiff, but very well made, as was the cloak and other items of clothing. Even better, the preserved food and fresh canteen of water Dove gave him. It was all he could do not to rip the top off and start downing the sweet liquid there and then.

”There’s a purifying charm on the inside as well,” Dove boasted, ”great for when you’re out in the wild and can’t be sure if a water source is pure. In a pinch you can piss in it and the charm will clean out the salt.”

Tyron almost gagged before he turned a wide eyed stare at the slayer.

”Hey, I’ve never done it!” Dove defended himself. ”I’m just saying it’s possible!”

All of the stuff together must have cost a fortune and Tyron was staggered by the generosity on display, to the point he found it difficult to trust it.

”Why are you doing this?” he asked, ”really, why are you doing this? I’m a criminal, and so are you if anyone finds out what you’ve done.”

The mage stilled his hands and ceased stuffing a pack as he heard the seriousness in the lad’s tone. He stood tall and looked the young man in the eye as he answered him.

”Tyron, I told you last time we spoke that things aren’t really what they seem when it comes to the slayers and the work we do. To be honest, it isn’t that important you understand why I’m helping you, only that you trust me when I say I’m on your side. I could have turned you in any number of times. I could have been waiting here with marshals ready to grab you, collected my reward and gone whistling on my merry way. That didn’t happen and there’s only one reason why that could possibly ever be the case.”

He looked at Tyron expectantly.

”Because… you’re sincere?”

”Exactly! I knew you weren’t a total loss. Speaking of which, I’ve seen you cast magick kid, you’re a natural, if a bit stupid.”

Not expecting to be insulted, Tyron stared for a moment before the indignation kindled in his chest.

”Stupid?” he’d been called a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. ”You watched me cast Raise Dead, right? I put that spell together with no assistance and you think I’m dumb?”

He had a lot of pride in how well he’d been doing figuring out his new magick, to have his efforts looked down on didn’t sit well with him.

”Don’t get me wrong,” Dove grinned, ”you’ve got talent. A fucking boat-load of talent. I don’t know how much help your mother gave you, but your foundation is rock solid. What I’m talking about is the risks you take. Casting a spell that complex in the condition you were in? You’re lucky it didn’t collapse and burn the magick out of you.”

”I know the risks,” he snapped, ”in case you didn’t notice, my situation doesn’t really allow me to take my time.”

”Hey, there’s being in a hurry, then there’s drawing magick circles in dust. One is understandable, the other is begging to have your brain pop.”

Some of the fire in Tyron guttered out as he absorbed this very valid criticism.

”I was… on a bit of a clock at that time. I didn’t have access to the resources I wanted.”

Dove held up a hand.

”I get it, and I don’t want to know the how or why of you getting your hands on a spell like that or feeling compelled to actually cast it. If you want my advice, I would never perform that ritual again, but if you had to, I’d be taking much more rigorous preparation, right? At very least a basic ritual focus for fucks sake.”

A ritual focus would be very helpful, it could help him cast Raise Dead even.

”By any chance…” he started to ask.

The skinny Summoner wordlessly pulled a palm sized object wrapped in cloth from within his robe and held it out.

With hesitation, Tyron reached out and took it.

”Thank you,” he said softly. ”I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

”You better,” Dove scoffed, ”I’m the fucking best.”

After he promised to return in another two days, Tyron left, collected his two skeletal minion and made his careful way back to the cave, pulling the small sled covered in supplies with him. He had a lot of thoughts in his head and not enough time to process them all. Dove had proven to be everything he’d claimed he would be, an ally, a valuable source of materials from Woodsedge when he himself couldn’t access the town, and a source of advice. Considering his position, it was more than Tyron could possibly have hoped for. If he’d been discovered by someone else…

He shuddered.

The thought of being handed over to his own parents for execution was enough to have him shaking in disgust and fear whenever he tried to sleep. Right now it was only one scrawny, foul mouthed Summoner who has helping him to avoid that fate. It was hard to trust, given his circumstances, but Dove had earned at least some faith from him.

He thought back to the warning he’d received from the other mage before they parted ways.

”Be careful out there. The rifts are acting up and nobody is sure why. To make things worse, the keep is being restricted from sending out too many teams while they continue to lock down the town. It’s a shit show and it’s going to get a lot more dangerous out near the broken lands than it is right now.”

Moving his hiding place further away from the rifts over the next two days would probably be a good idea if things were going to be as bad as Dove had suggested. He knew from stories his mother and father had told him that activity within the rifts tended to fluctuate heavily as the magick waxed and waned in those worlds. In the worst case scenario the rifts would stabilise and hordes of powerful rift-kin would flood through, finally able to escape from their dying realms. When that happened, the slayers would deploy en-masse to try and prevent widespread destruction. If they failed, the monsters would ravage the land past Foxbridge and halfway to the capital by the time they were repelled.

Normally this would be the time his parents would receive a missive, a ro-claw landing in their yard with a summons attached to its leg and they would eagerly pack their bags and ride out of town to fight, leaving him behind.

Angrily, Tyron shoved all of these distracting thoughts from his head. He had shit to do, to borrow a phrase from Dove, and couldn’t afford to waste time worrying about anyone else. If the rifts were going to be more dangerous, then he had to be more careful, amass more, higher quality minions, and take steps to keep himself safe.

”Light.”

Once inside the cave he illuminated it and began to shift his new possessions inside by the armful, since the sled was too wide to fit through the narrow entrance. Once he’d finished unloading it, he picked up the sled and carried it sideways through the gap, leaning it against the wall when he was through.

He had a lot to do, categorising everything he had been given, examining the ritual focus and working out how he would incorporate it into his casting, working on his spell theory, and numerous other concerns, but he couldn’t be bothered with any of them. Instead, his eyes turned greedily to the two sets of bones laid out on the floor.

Time to study.

With a spring in his step that he didn’t consciously sense, he moved toward the remains and sat at the feet of his soon to be minions. He could get started on the threading right now if he wanted to, but there was so much he needed to learn before he began that step. His two primary class skills, Corpse Appraisal and Preparation remained painfully low and he knew he wouldn’t succeed if he didn’t find a way to fully utilise these two abilities. They were foundational after all, given to him at Level one along with Raise Dead. It stood to reason that they would be similarly important.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, once more extending the magick he held within his body toward the bones in a messy, uncontrolled mass of arcane power. Without words or gestures to control and shape it, the magick acted like an invisible cloud of gas, directed only by his will. In terms of spellwork, it was sloppy and wasteful, not really a spell at all, by a classic definition, but Tyron didn’t know a spell for sensing in the way he was hoping to, and the Necromancer class hadn’t seen fit to provide him with one.

Which led him to believe he wouldn’t need to construct a proper spellform for what was needed, so he didn’t try.

Instead, he began to feel his way across the bones using his formless power as his sensing implement, attempting to gain some insight into the remains in any way that he could. He was patient, despite the sweat that soon began to bead on his brow. It was slow going, the effort required to maintain and direct his ’cloud’ of arcane energy taxed his mind, but he persisted.

He was getting feedback, of a sort. It was fuzzy and unclear, but he was able to sense things about the bones, however faintly. There were imperfections, cracks, bumps and flaws riddled throughout just the exterior of the skeletons. He didn’t know if they would impact the quality of a minion or not, but they pained him nonetheless. What’s more, he had a vague sense of energy, of movement, but he wasn’t able to identify it.

With a frown, he expelled more raw, unformed magick and added it to his primitive sensor, the added strain wearing on him even faster. He hoped that a more dense cloud would allow him to ’see’ more clearly, and to his delight he was correct!

Not only was there death magick contained within the bones themselves, but outside them as well. As he shifted and pressed his apparatus against the remains again and again, he began to gain a crude understanding of what was happening. Small imperfections, both physical and magickal, were allowing the accumulated death energy to escape, tiny amounts of power seeping into the air and being dispersed. Despite the loss, the amount of death magick within the bones was slowly increasing, but the rate was pitiful. When he shifted his attention to the second set of bones, he found the same issue.

Another puzzle to solve.

Tyron sat back with a heavy sigh and relaxed his mind, allowing the gathered magick to fade into nothing as he no longer controlled it. That’d been hard, but at least he’d learned something. Exactly what he’d learned, or how it would apply to creating stronger minions, he wasn’t sure.

His current understanding was that remains with sufficient death magick infused in them would rise on their own as undead outside of the control of a Necromancer or any other individual. Such creatures were common enough to have their own entries in a bestiary of common monsters, and generally considered low threat. This posed Tyron with a question. If he were to find a way to seal these ’leaks’, for want of a better phrase, and then find a way to increase the amount of magick within the bones, would the result be a better, stronger minion?

Or would it be worse? Somehow independent of his control?

He had no idea. But he did have a way to find out.

First he would need to find a way to infuse arcane energy into the bones, then he would need to find a way to do it evenly throughout the entire skeleton, then he would need to find a way to somehow close over those miniscule gaps. It was going to be a challenge, to say the least.

He leaned forward, a broad smile on his face.

He’d best get started.