Book of The Dead

It took a day of finger breaking work for Tyron to complete the musculature on all ten skeletons. He worked straight through the night under the illumination of summoned globes, despite Dove warning him it was a bad idea. In typical fashion, he refused to cut any corners in the tedious process, instead investing more time than was necessary to complete what he felt to be his finest work to date.

Ideally, he would have liked more time to prepare the remains before he raised them. He wanted to examine the amount and nature of the death magick that had accumulated in them over the past week, especially since they had been in such close proximity. Unfortunately, time pressed him still. Perhaps he would have time for study once this next batch of minions had secured the area and he recovered more remains. He didn’t much want to consider it, but he knew close to a city’s worth of dead would be found at Woodsedge.

Tyron pushed those thoughts away and studied his work once more. He would never be satisfied if he didn’t master all of the skills he deemed important to his craft, and that meant more than rote practice and repetition. The Unseen rewarded those who pushed themselves, experimented, and didn’t rest on their laurels. If he wanted Bone Stitching to reach level ten, then he had to try new things, create more intricate weaves and see what worked. Then, continuously refine until he had reached as close to perfection as he could visualise.

His current work was far from perfect, but it represented another step forward in his methods, and he was pleased with that. The more he progressed, the more certain he was that a well-functioning and efficient musculature was the cornerstone of a good skeleton. The less energy his minions needed to move their bones, the more skeletons he could support. As well as being able to hit harder, move faster and trip over themselves less.

When he thought back to the stilted movements of his first two proper minions (the zombie didn’t count), he was frankly embarrassed.

”Right,” he muttered to himself, ”I’ll take these back to the cellar and start raising them.”

He leaned forward to pick up the first of the bones only to be interrupted by a cough. Confused, he spun to find the skull of Dove sitting on a rock nearby and realised he’d forgotten the Summoner was there at all.

”Maybe take a break, kid. You’ve been at this for a long time now.”

”I’m fine,” Tyron frowned, ”I can work a lot longer than this.”

”Not saying you can’t, but should you? Raise Dead is complicated shit, I know, we took the damn spell apart over the last week. It’s hard to stop working in the middle, I get it, but trust me, you need some sleep.”

Frustration and a hint of anger bubbled up in the Necromancer’s chest. Dove was right, he didn’t want to stop, he was ready, eager to continue, to work on his magick and ply his craft. A few days without sleep was nothing, not when he was on such a tight timeframe.

To a mage, your mind is a weapon. Keep it sharp, son, and it will never fail you.

The words of his mother, spoken years ago, echoed in his head. He paused for a moment before he took hold of his impatience and forced it down.

”You’re right,” he conceded to the skull. ”I need a fresh head on my shoulders for spellwork like this. I’ll turn in.”

”Good,” Dove was pleased his advice was heeded. ”You haven’t blown yourself up yet, but let’s not tempt fate.”

Tyron gathered his skeletons with a thought and retired back to the cellar, carefully closing it off behind him before he placed Dove on his favourite crate and prepared to sleep. He undressed, washed himself quickly before he rolled into his blankets and closed his eyes.

Only, his mind wouldn’t stop buzzing. His thoughts flicked from one sigil to the next, constantly trying to slot together in new ways, gradually taking shape into the complex spell forms needed to create Undead. He tried to ignore it for a while, tried to force his mind to stop, but eventually gave up and used a spell to put himself to sleep. Eight hours later, he awoke and leapt out of his bedroll.

Time for magick, he thought gleefully to himself.

”Whoa, kid? What the fuck? I know that look in your eye. Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The light bloomed within the empty sockets of Dove’s skull and the former Summoner’s voice echoed out just as Tyron was shoving himself back into his clothes.

”Uh, what?” Tyron asked. ”I was going to get the bones and prepare to raise the skeletons. What’s the problem now? I slept plenty, just like you suggested.”

A disgusted sigh erupted from the skull.

”Are you fucking kidding me? Eat something. Drink some water. You’re like a toddler who can’t resist a shiny toy. Take care of yourself, you moron. I’ve seen slayers three times your level, slayers who could go a month without a glass of water, sleeping and eating more than you do. You know why? Because they knew they should when they had the chance. And they weren’t complete idiots. That second part is important.”

”Alright!” Tyron blushed. ”I get the point. I’m stupid. I’ll eat.”

As irritated as he was, he knew it was good advice. He hadn’t eaten a thing yesterday, and when he stopped to think about it, he was actually starving. He sent his skeletons out to check the outside of the cellar and rummaged around in his packs for something to eat. Under the watchful eyes of a glowing skull, he patiently ate a sparse breakfast and drank a few cups of water before turning to his mentor.

”Happy?”

”No, you idiot, I’m a skull. I’ll never feel love, happiness or joy ever again. Am I satisfied that you won’t murder yourself when casting now? Reasonably. Now hurry up, we haven’t got all day. I boiled my non-corporeal brain trying to improve that fucking spell and I want to see the payoff.”

Tyron grinned and jumped up the stairs, returning later with an armful of bones.

”I’ll get the rest,” he told the skull after he placed them on the ground.

Several trips later, he had ten small piles of bones on the floor and a space cleared in which he could work. He moved to the closest skeleton and began to lay the bones out once again with care. He was quite practised at recognising which went where and it didn’t take him long to get them all together. He double checked to be sure he was done before he stood and stretched out his hands.

”Alright,” he said, ”let’s see how this goes.”

He didn’t need to check his notes, he’d gone over the spell so many times over the last few days he could reproduce three different versions of it perfectly from memory. With confidence, he stepped forward, raised his hands, and began to speak.

The moment he began, he could feel something was different.

The magick leapt to his command as the words of power rolled from his lips. Tyron had never been someone who struggled to command the language of magick, but now he felt it flow as it never had before. Each syllable crackled with arcane power, ethereal energy that flowed from one word to the next with effortless grace.

He felt as if he was no longer speaking these words like a second language, but as a native speaker. He didn’t need to think at all as he spoke, the words came so naturally.

It was the Mystery, the extra hand of the Unseen holding him up, granting him a gift that he hadn’t possessed before.

This is only the initial stage, he thought in wonder, I can’t imagine what it’s like if it advances.

Despite his surprise, he forced it from his head. He couldn’t afford to be distracted in the middle of a complex ritual, not even for something like this. He buckled down and focused on the process, ensuring he constructed each part of the ritual exactly as he wanted. His words and hands worked together to shape the spell with almost inhuman precision. These were the feats only those with high levels or powerful classes could achieve, their abilities being lifted up to another realm by the power they cultivated.

It was a long ritual. Though the two had concocted numerous ways to shave the ritual down, remove certain portions by finding efficiencies in others, Tyron had decided that wasn’t the way he wanted to proceed. Sure, they could take out certain phrases, find better uses for certain sigils, but rather than take those gains to reduce the casting time, he chose to add more elements and keep the ritual duration the same. Dove had given him a lot to think about when it came to constructed intelligence and he was eager to experiment. They had a lot of thoughts on ways to strengthen the connection his minions used to draw energy from him, adding layers that may help prevent magick being lost in the transition. These changes added complexity, which translated to increasing the length of the ritual whilst also making it more difficult to cast.

Tyron embraced the challenge. When the final words finally rolled from his tongue and his hands fell back to his side, he felt a deep glow of satisfaction. The cast had been perfect. Better than perfect. He now possessed two Mysteries related to spellwork, and though they remained weak, he sensed the two had worked together, one pushing up the other to send the spell to a height greater than he thought he could achieve. As the magick coalesced and settled within the bones before him, he basked in the sensation that filled him.

Only when the faint click of bones reached his ears did he open his eyes and behold the fruits of his labour.

The skeleton rose to greet its master, the purple fire igniting in its eyes. Tyron smiled as he felt the connection between them solidify, the risen Undead becoming a tiny knot in the corner of his awareness.

”You just might be the first of a new generation,” he said. ”Good to have you.”

”Don’t talk to the minions, idiot,” Dove remarked snidely. ”And holy shit, that cast was something else. I could practically feel the energy snapping in the air.”

”Yep,” the young Necromancer grinned, ”and now for the rest.”

”Slow your roll, kid. Quick break, iron out the kinks, rest your voice, then proceed.”

Tyron resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the old Mage’s caution, but understood the wisdom of it. He proceeded from cast to cast, resting between each ritual until another day was done and the sun had set. Six brand new skeletons, freshly armed with the crude weapons he could salvage from the farm, stood to attention in the cellar. With ten minions at his call once more, he felt confident in his own safety once again. With the addition of his support magick, these ten would be able to fight decently against even a mid-sized pack of rift-kin. If Dove was right and the majority were out rampaging across the province, then he shouldn’t have to worry too much. Ironically, being this close to the rift kept him relatively safe. To reach him, any marshals or slayers would have to fight their way through the horde released by the break.

It wouldn’t hinder his parents at all. But at least they were the only thing he had to worry about.

Another night of rest, sleeping in the cellar, then Tyron gathered Dove and his minions before they left for a wider sweep around the farm. Wanting both hands free, he fashioned a sling he could throw over his shoulder to keep Dove at chest height, if on an angle, his purple eyes facing outwards to take in the world around them. The forest appeared to have suffered much as the farm had, many trees being uprooted by the shaking that had followed the break, or knocked down since by the monsters as they rampaged through the area.

They found more rift-kin that day, small packs still hunting, looking for something to kill. Tyron didn’t hold back, unleashing his full repertoire of spells on the frenzied kin. Against groups, he would enhance the weapons of his skeletons with Death Blades before either picking out a target to suppress, or against more powerful foes, applying the Shivering Curse. A few times he tried to apply Fear to the kin, but they seemed oddly resistant; the unthinking rage they possessed was difficult for his spell to overcome. With more practice and levels, he would likely be able to get it to stick, but for now, he would stick to his more reliable options.

Thankfully, nothing he couldn’t handle appeared and he returned to the farm after an extended period out fighting. If he performed the status ritual now, he might earn a couple of levels after the work he’d done. At least one, surely. But he wasn’t quite ready yet. Before anything else happened, he had one more ritual he wanted to try.

”Kid, I’m really not sure about this.”

”We talked about it, remember? It’ll be fine.”

”Yeah, I know, but now that we come to it, I just can’t see anything good coming from a ritual that requires so much blood.”

After resting, Tyron had decided to commit to his instincts and spent that night and the next day preparing to cast Appeal to the Court. Partly because the ritual was an undeniably powerful piece of dimensional magick that he was eager to learn more about, and partly because he felt that the ’patrons’ who had gifted him the Anathema sub-class were genuinely trying to be helpful. Perhaps their help was twisted and likely to drive him insane, but nevertheless they had an interest in seeing him, if not succeed, then progress. He now knew, for example, that the Abyss had in fact been trying to supply him with information, the only issue being their method was incompatible with his sanity.

No doubt there would be similar… challenges, when it came to the Court, but he was determined to make the attempt. He needed all the help he could get.

After a day spent preparing the ritual circle, arguing spellforms back and forth with Dove and making copious notes, Tyron felt he was prepared. There were many elements of overlap between this ritual and Pierce the Veil and much of his knowledge for the latter carried to the former. Both spells were centred around forming a dimensional gateway, a planar-door, so to speak. Where Pierce the Veil differed was the destination it connected to. Dove had no experience with anything related to the Abyss, and was quick to tell him to leave them the fuck alone.

In fact, the skull had given him a lengthy and detailed lecture as to the many and varied dangers of the Abyss, with a great deal of focus given to the horrific and grisly ends met by those who messed with forces they could not hope to control. Tyron resolved not to tell the Summoner that he’d cast the ritual a second time.

Thankfully he didn’t need to explain where he’d managed to come across a second ritual that communicated with strange powers beyond mortal reckoning that he had no business knowing. Dove had flatly told him he didn’t want to know and they’d moved on from there.

”Alright then, here goes,” he muttered.

”This is going to be gross, but don’t turn me away. I kind of want to see what happens.”

Tyron flicked a disgusted look at the skull before he returned his gaze to the knife he held in his left hand. Dove had been right about one thing, this ritual required a large amount of blood, and unfortunately, he didn’t have many places he could get it. He judged that his robust constitution would sustain him, though it was closer than he would have liked. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

He placed himself in the centre of the elaborate ritual circle, knife in one hand, focus in the other, and began to speak.

Again, his words crackled into the air as the magick in the room began to flow. A great deal of power was required for this spell to function, and Tyron drew on all he could, pulling the energy out from within himself as sigil after sigil took shape, building on those that preceded. Space began to bend, even time seemed to twist in on itself as he continued to give voice to the arcane.

The light in the cellar dimmed as time passed. From the corner of his eye, Tyron swore he could see the room begin to dye with a red tint, or perhaps that was a trick of his mind, knowing what was coming. He held his nerve, and continued to perform the ritual, his voice never wavering.

For an hour he spoke, giving form to the spell as the room grew darker and his vision more and more scarlet, until the time came.

With a slow deliberate motion, he drew the blade across his forearm in a long and deep cut. He wanted to hiss from the pain, but continued to enunciate perfectly as the ritual continued. Hot, red blood began to flow down his arm and drip onto the floor. Almost unnaturally, it flowed too freely, as if pulled out of him by the spell itself. The substance of life pooled by his feet before it began to slide across the ground, like oil across the surface of water.

He continued to bleed, continued to speak as his vision grew darker and darker. He felt cold. The blood poured from the cut and onto the ground where it shifted and writhed until it found the lines of the ritual circle which were gradually becoming fully covered in the red liquid.

His voice boomed powerfully despite the energy in his body fading. Tyron held on, even after his eyes were completely black and he could no longer see a thing. When the last word left his lips, he swayed heavily on his feet before he caught himself. Careful not to leave the centre of the circle, he quickly snatched a bandage from his pocket and wrapped it around his arm, desperate to stop the bleeding as he shivered and waited.

”D-Dove?” he rasped. ”I… I can’t see. What’s happening?”

The first bubbles of panic and disquiet had begun to rise in him. The ritual had succeeded, he knew it had, but he couldn’t see. What was going on?

”Kid,” the voice of the mage rang out gravely. ”You remember, a couple of days ago when I told you I would never feel again?”

”What?”

”I lied. I think I’m in love.”