Book of The Dead

He’d been foolish to come here, so close to the broken lands. Tyron blinked and rubbed his eyes as he breathed slowly to still his heart. Sweat dripped from his forehead and his skin felt caked in dirt. His clothes certainly were.

He could feel the warping effect of the broken lands beginning on the edge of his senses. If he moved a hundred metres further north, he’d cross the threshold and be in the midst of it, but he didn’t dare.

Despite the fact that an army of slayers had swept through the area and slaughtered everything they could, despite the fact that they’d crossed to the other side and were preventing new rift-kin from appearing, he was still under immense pressure.

He crunched down on the arcane crystal in his mouth and swallowed the flood of magick that it contained. His hands rose and flicked from sigil to sigil as he spoke the words of power, forming a spell with speed.

Death Blades.

The energy flooded from his body and twisted through the air in dark trails before it infused itself into the weapons his skeletons held. Thankfully, despite the name, it didn’t matter if his minions were not in fact armed with blades, the spell worked just as well on a mace or spear. His nine minions struck with renewed vigour, the additional bite provided by the spell helping to drive the surrounding monsters back and give his less nimble skeletons some breathing room.

Along with himself.

Tyron grimaced but didn’t hesitate to pull another shard of mage candy from his pocket and throw it into his mouth as he began yet another magick hungry spell. Combined with the constant drain maintaining his minions placed on him, repeated casts were driving him right to the brink, but he had little choice.

Trusting in his skeletons to protect him, he closed his eyes briefly and concentrated before he began to speak once again. Another unfamiliar magick, another situation in which he had little choice but to go for it. The words of the curse were unfamiliar to him, nothing like what he’d studied in the past. When he had the time…

You’ll never have free time again for the rest of your life at this rate!

No, he would! He was excited to map out and develop his understanding of this new field of magick. Curious enough that he was tempted to select the Bewildering curse just to expand his vocabulary.

His hands swept through the air and at the critical moment he crunched down on the crystal again as a flood of power rushed out of him, forming a dark, glittering miasma that hugged the ground around him. Black mist littered with flakes of ice expanded in a circle around him, passing around the ankles of his skeletons without effect, but clinging to the rift-kin it touched.

As he watched the curse take effect, the mist appeared to seep into every monster it touched, visibly slowing them, which further helped to decrease the gap between the kin and his minions. No longer outclassed in speed, and able to cut through the chitin exteriors of their foes, the skeletons began to make progress defeating the press of monsters around them.

Exhausted, his throat hoarse, Tyron once again rubbed his eyes as he surveyed the skirmish around him. Information constantly flowed into his mind from his minions but he left them to fight without his direction. As fatigued as he was, trying to direct them would likely make them perform worse. Was there anything more he could do to help?

He kept his eyes open as the melee continued to swirl around him, looking for a chance to hurl a magick bolt or apply Suppress Mind. He felt nausea rising, the sickly feeling of magick poisoning began to leech through his body and he decided to refrain. Unless one of his skeletons needed him to intervene in order to save it then he wouldn’t push. He needed to conserve his energy as much as possible.

As he watched his skeletons fight, cutting down smaller rift-kin and grouping up to tackle the larger ones, Tyron once again confronted the thought that it was a mistake for him to come here. There were too many rift-kin and they were too strong for his minions to deal with.

If he hadn’t chewed on the last of his mage candy and used his new spells, he may well have died here, unable to escape after his skeletons had fallen. As it was, they were winning the fight, but not without some cost. His minions were sustaining damage which he had no means to repair. He wanted to stay and help the slayers retreat, but if he had to keep fighting much longer, he would lose all his servants and exhaust his magick completely.

At that point, the slayers would need to rescue him, which they were unlikely to do during a fighting retreat.

Over the next few minutes, he watched anxiously as his minions continued the battle until at last the rift-kin were defeated. He hadn’t lost a single skeleton, though all of them bore cracked bones and other damage.

I’d better get a bone repair Skill soon. Can do whatever I want with flesh apparently, but no help for bones.

Clearly the Unseen was showing its bias. Or more likely, since skeletons were stronger minions, he needed to be a higher level before he would get more choices related to them.

Too tired to even bother trying to salvage cores from the fallen monsters, Tyron gathered his undead close around himself and tried to take stock of the situation. He was almost tapped out of energy. He was likely to suffer the aftereffects of over using crystal soon, and his skeletons were weakened.

It would take him an hour, possibly longer, to recover his magick, and that was if his skeletons remained still, minimising their draw on his reserves. Here, on the edges of the rift where the rift-kin still roamed in numbers, there was no chance he would get a quiet hour to himself.

He knew what he should do. He should retreat, return to the cabin, pack his things and do what Dove had told him. If he started now, there was a chance he could stay ahead of the danger. Southwest, he could hug the mountains and take refuge in the rural communities there. From what he knew, those were hardy, frontier folk, largely independent from the machinations of the province. With a little luck, they may not have heard about a rogue necromancer at all.

When the rift-kin swept through, they would torch thousands of square kilometres of land, but likely wouldn’t climb into the foothills. They’d follow the land to the east, into the soft underbelly where the farming communities of the province plied their trade. There were a dozen Foxbridges and hundreds of smaller villages, between Woodsedge and the capital, Kenmor.

Bile churned in his gut. Despite his best efforts, Tyron had failed to purge the guilt that had plagued him since his conversation with Dove. The Summoner told him that none of this was his fault, that he should run and hide until everything blew over. But could he really do that? Was he capable of turning his back on this unfolding tragedy, walking away and leaving people to their fate? No matter how he tried, he couldn’t shake the accusation he levelled at himself, that none of this would be happening without his involvement. If he hadn’t taken the actions that he had, if he hadn’t refused to turn himself in, all of those people, tens of thousands of them, would be safe.

The more he thought on it, the more twisted and confused his feelings became. His desire to do the right thing warred with his urge for self-preservation. Complicating things further, he had no real clue as to what the right thing might be. He was caught in a bind, where he desperately wished he could do something to help, but was incapable of accepting that he was too powerless to do so. The result left him frozen in place, wanting to step forward despite knowing he had to turn back.

As he stood, frozen with indecision, his eyes locked on the twisting, roiling sky over the broken lands, his decision was made for him.

A deep groan rumbled outwards from the rift, growing in volume until it felt as if the air around him had begun to vibrate. Shocked out of his thoughts, Tyron looked up to see something he had never imagined. Another world was descending.

This close to the broken lands, the trees of the forest grew thin, but even from further away he still could have seen it. The image was ghostly, an apparition, but beginning to overlay the storm above was a different horizon, one from a shattered world with a burning sky. As if the land itself were a bass drum struck by the hand of god, the ground beneath his feet had begun to shake. The trees around him shook, the whisper of shifting leaves rising to a deafening roar. He crouched instinctively as he looked up with horror at the apparition thickening before his eyes.

The break? Now? It can’t be! It’s much too soon!

Dove had told him there would be two days after the expedition failed. There should still be time. Then again, Tyron didn’t know what a break actually looked like, he hadn’t seen one before after all. Was this a sign it was happening right now, or that it soon would?

He was forced to crouch to maintain his balance as the world continued to shake around him and he ordered his servants to do the same. He could distantly hear the crack of wood as trees in the forest began to topple over but even that calamitous noise couldn’t compare with the sound of Nagrythyn approaching.

Run!

Confronted with this world shaking event there was nothing he could do. After all, who was he? A lone level ten slayer with no training and no experience. He couldn’t make a difference here and he was an idiot to think he could. He tried to turn and run, but quickly stumbled. The ground was shaking far too much for him to stay on his feet. Even his skeletons were having trouble, several having fallen and pushing themselves off the ground with their bony limbs as they attempted to rise.

If the shaking was this bad now, what would happen when the break itself occurred? Tyron had a growing fear that when that happened, being this close to the epicentre, the impact itself would kill him, let alone the kin that would flood from the rift afterwards.

”Dammit legs, move!” he growled to himself as he forced himself to rise.

One shaking step at a time he began to move back to the forest. He didn’t dare glance back for fear of what he might see. Two skies overlapping, two furious, unnatural storms occurring at once was a dizzying and terrifying sight. If it got any worse, he might just freeze in place. He might not get far, but he had to get any distance that he could.

I’m such an idiot. Why am I even here? he admonished himself.

There was nothing to gain from regret. He would make his way back to the cabin, gather his few supplies and escape. He would survive! He refused to fall here and now.

An ear-splitting crack exploded from behind along with a blinding flash of light that illuminated the trees all around despite the boiling clouds overhead. Tyron flinched as stabbing pain penetrated his ears, but he grit his teeth and kept walking without looking back, desperately trying to keep his feet. Then, he heard a roar, dimly, but it caused him to stop in his tracks. Was that a human? He halted his steps, stumbling as the ground continued to shift beneath him and waited. There, it came again, and that ringing sound, the clash of weapons?

Softly, but growing louder each moment, detonations, war cries, weapons colliding. The slayers had returned!

Wide eyed, Tyron turned. He couldn’t see anything at first, but then shapes began to appear in the distance, rushing out of the broken lands in small packs, weaving between the trees as they fought a running battle. There he stood, surrounded by skeletons, the ethereal light of undeath burning in their eyes as the slayers bore down on his position. He was to the south of the rift after all, they’d have to pass through where he stood to make it back to Woodsedge!

He’d come here determined to help, knowing it would reveal him, but now that the moment had come, he didn’t know how to react. Again he wondered just what he’d been thinking when he’d decided to do this, on how many levels could he fail to think logically?

The first slayer to notice him was a woman he didn’t recognise. Her armour, crafted from harvest chitin, was cracked in multiple places and she bled from numerous cuts in her arms. In her hands she wielded a two handed axe, the edge glowed bright, enchanted in some way. Her eyes were weary beyond belief, but in the instant their gaze met he felt her burning desire to survive shock through him like a lightning bolt. In an instant her eyes flickered from him to his minions, then she drew breath.

”Run for it, idiot!” she barked, not slowing for a moment. ”They’re coming!”

Despite the quaking earth, she ran with ease, blowing past him in just a few seconds as she continued to shout and rally the slayers around her. More of them came, rushing to safety as he began to see the vague outlines of rift-kin appearing from the mist.

”Get off your ass!”

”Run, moron!”

”Come on, get up!”

A mage stopped long enough to lend Tyron a hand, completely disregarding the skeletons around him as he pulled him around and helped to steady him as he got him moving.

”Head south and don’t stop, kid!” the mage barked before he turned, his hands alight with magick.

Seconds later he thrust forward his palm and launched a bolt of pure lightning that flashed through air.

”Run!” he called over his shoulder.

Afraid, confused, and utterly consumed with guilt, Tyron did his best to run. He stammered, stumbled as tears began to drip from his eyes, obscuring his vision and making escape even more difficult. He angrily scrubbed them away as he dragged himself forward, slayers rushing past him or turning to fight the monsters who drew too close. For several minutes he continued like that, though it felt like years, his progress glacially slow, though he wouldn’t stop, determined to make his escape.

Then he heard him.

”You fucking dickhead!” someone roared behind him. ”I’ll cut your damn balls off! WOLF!”

Disoriented and blinded, Tyron almost didn’t realise it when he felt something seize him in its jaws and lift him from the ground.

That’s it, he thought dumbly, I’m dead.

Except death didn’t come. Dazed, he turned to head to see the contempt burning in the eye of the Star Wolf, Dove riding on its back as the massive beast held him in its jaws. The mage looked like hell, hunched with one arm clutched to his gut and numerous scrapes and cuts on his face.

”You’re not supposed to be this dumb! Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

The wolf took off, the incredible creature able to bear the weight of two men and run, despite the ground still shaking. Tyron was dimly aware of his skeletons struggling to keep up and he ordered them to follow as best they could before the distance between them grew too great. With nothing else to do, he closed his eyes and left it to fate.