Book of The Dead

Woodsedge had seen better days, of that Tyron was sure. He stood on the edge of the clearing, his ten skeletons formed in a loose ring around him as he gazed on what had once been a proud frontier town. The walls had sustained enormous damage during the break, large sections looked to have come down due to shaking rather than being knocked inwards by an impact. Not to say the rift-kin hadn’t done their work, large holes had been punched into the wall in two places that he could see from this side. The size and strength of the monster required to deal such damage to the structure was entirely outside of his experience.

”Fuck me,” Dove said. ”They really went to town on the place. Let’s get inside and see what we can see.”

”You’re sure there won’t be any of those powerful kin around?”

”Yes, I’m sure. They don’t hang around and poke at ruins. Rift-kin are insane, berserk creatures, driven to madness by the wild mana in their realms. They want to hunt and kill, then hunt and kill some more. Once there was nothing here to fight, they would have fucked off to find something else. That’s why they’re so destructive. They don’t hold ground, or bunker down, or tire out. Once they’ve found and destroyed everything they can, they rush off to find something else they kick the shit out of.”

”Fine,” Tyron’s hand gripped the hilt of his sword a little tighter. ”Let’s head on in.”

The grass had grown longer around the outside of the city without anyone to clear it, though it remained low. Normally it would be cut every week to prevent even the smallest kin sneaking up to the gates through the brush. As they drew nearer the wall, Tyron continually flexed his fingers and held his mind at the ready. If anything jumped out, he wanted to be prepared. With ten of his skeletons around him, he was as safe as he could possibly be.

Walking towards the ruins of what had one short week ago been a thriving keep town, he didn’t feel like it was enough.

Knowing that the rift-kin were capable of this scale of destruction was one thing, but it so rarely happened that seeing it in person was shocking. Woodsedge was considered a lower risk area, primarily for bronze ranked slayers, with a sprinkling of silvers. It wasn’t even the most dangerous rift in the Western Province, yet here he stood looking out on a level of devastation he never expected to see.

When they reached the wall Tyron decided to walk around it until he found what remained of the gates on the south side. Whenever he found a gap in the wall, he carefully peeked through to see if he could spot any movement. He played his eyes across the broken down buildings and rubble that littered the once clean streets with care.

”What are you doing? Get in there you gods cursed coward.”

”Shut up,” Tyron hissed.

”There’s nothing here you dickhead. Get in there, I want to see.”

Tyron took hold of the skull and ripped open his pack before shoving Dove deep inside and closing the top. He threw it back over his shoulder and tried to ignore the muffled protests of the once-summoner. No matter what Dove said, he wanted to be cautious. He was done taking unreasonable risks.

When he eventually found the gate, it was surprisingly intact, though still ajar. Some splintering could be seen around the edges where the monsters had clawed at the wood, and it was here that he found his first remains. He stepped carefully around the bodies that littered the ground and tried not to look too carefully at each individual, passing over the smaller shapes amidst the carnage.

The flies were thick in the air, as was the stench. Tyron took a little distance as he pieced together what had happened here. It was sadly predictable. When the residents had fled from Woodsedge, they would obviously leave through the south gate, being the furthest from the rift. It appeared as if the marshals and remaining slayers had made their stand here, trying to protect the townsfolk to the last moment as they fled the disaster.

They’d already been dead, of course. There was no chance for these people to outrun the break, yet of course they had tried. Seeing the pointless death and loss of innocent lives stirred the old guilt in Tyron’s gut, but along with it came a new emotion: anger.

It didn’t have to be this way. His parents could have prevented this from happening. That was what they did. They were the fixers, the heroes. When there was a problem nobody else could fix, a disaster that could not be prevented, they were the ones who galloped off into the sunset, broad grins on their faces as they rushed into danger and left him at home alone.

Despite the rot and maggots, he could still make out the expressions of horror and fear that twisted the faces of these desperate people. Some were laden down with packs or belongings, the little that they had tried to bring with them as they fled their homes. Others had fallen by carts and wagons, many of which were now marked with the blood of the children who had huddled inside.

Wordlessly, he extracted the cursing skull from his pack and pointed him at the tragic scene of the south road. Dove took it in for a long moment before he spoke.

”Those fucking pricks. It’s hard to think I could hate them more, but here we are.”

”You really think they just let this happen? A break? They don’t care an entire town is just wiped off the map?”

”… They wouldn’t have anticipated the break. It’s not like they can know in advance when a rift is about to go nuts. But they could have done something about it, they could have saved these people, but to do that, they’d have to let your parents off the hook and call them off the hunt for you. I can’t be sure why they refused to do it, but they did. The end result was avoidable, but you have to face reality. They care more about their power and authority than they do the people they are supposed to protect. Tens of thousands will die from this break, or be displaced and have to flee their homes only to come back to smoking ruins and have to rebuild from scratch. But it will be rebuilt. It’ll take a few months, but there’ll be a new keep here soon enough, fresh slayer graduates will fill it up and go back on patrol, probably a few gold teams sent out of the capital to hold it down for the next few years. The town will return, the businesses will come back, the merchants will return. The farmland is still sitting there, people will snap it up cheap and try and start a new life out of the cities. Ten years’ time, you might never notice that this had even happened.”

”Except the rift has grown wider.”

”Except the rift has grown wider. More powerful kin will come through, the risk of another break is higher, and eventually someone will drop the ball and it’ll happen again, allowing the whole world to slide a little further into disaster.”

As he moved a little closer, Tyron was forced to step over the remains, one hand held to his nose to try and block the stench. The fighting here had been intense, that much was clear. The number of fallen rift-kin was astounding, piles of them left to rot under the sun. The carnage spread down the road in patches. Isolated pockets of resistance that had collapsed under the overwhelming number of monsters all the way to the tree-line.

Tyron turned his back on the scene without another word and began to pick his way into the town. It shocked him. The once neat streets were littered with the dead and rubble from collapsed or destroyed buildings. He carried Dove through the ruined streets wordlessly, observers to the ruin that had come to Woodsedge. There were signs of fighting in the streets. Buildings had been ripped open by the ravening kin so they could destroy the living beings inside.

It took a while, but he eventually made his way to the Butcher’s shop where he’d had his brief apprenticeship. Surprisingly, it was, for the most part, intact. With the help of his skeletons and a well-placed magick bolt, he broke the door down and stepped inside. From the looks of things, there hadn’t been anyone inside so the kin had mostly left it alone. Even the meat in the back of the shop, which appeared to have been left in a hurry, hadn’t been touched. A shame it was likely starting to spoil, perhaps some had been stored cool enough to be edible.

He noticed Hak’s prized knives were nowhere to be seen. Hopefully that meant he’d gotten out early to stay ahead of the break. The odds were slim, but if he’d sensed the danger in the air and left when the slayers were still planning to hold the line, he might have gotten out, along with Madeleine and his wife Penelope.

”Any reason we’re looking at all this meat?” Dove asked.

”This was where I learned the butchery skill,” Tyron replied as he ran his hands over the benches. ”I wasn’t here long, but the owner, Hakoth, was a good man.”

”I see. I also mastered the handling of my meat not far from here. Over in the red light district, we should check it out.”

”You want to visit the brothels? Now?”

”I don’t suppose there would be much point, now that you mention it. Any chance we could find a shapely lady skull you could stuff a spirit into? I wouldn’t mind a little company. And when I say company…”

”Didn’t you get enough of an eyeful with Yor around?” Tyron rolled his eyes. Despite being dead, the Summoner appeared to be largely irrepressible in his attitude and humour.

”Yor is certainly nice to look at, if a bit pale. You know, now that she’s not around I think I can be honest. She’s too pale. Not as in, too pale for my taste, I mean too pale to be real. Bedsheets look at her with envy. If she were any whiter, she’d be see through. I feel like I should be able to see every vein in her body.”

”There’s no blood in her, why would you see the veins?” Tyron wondered, bemused.

”The veins themselves have colour don’t they?”

”I … guess? I’m not sure actually.”

”How many people do you have to carve up before you can answer even the simple questions? Come on, Tyron, get it together.”

”Can we… not… talk about it like that?” he winced.

”There’s no shame in it, kid. When life deals you Necromancy, you find human remains and carve the shit out of them. No harm, no foul.”

”Fine. Let’s just… keep looking around.”

Dove didn’t reply, which Tyron took for silent assent, and the two continued to roam about what was left of the town, going in and out of buildings and eventually making their way up to the keep. The stone fort, built to house the slayers who risked their lives to keep the kin at bay, was also largely intact. There was little structural damage, most of the walls hadn’t been caved in, despite some stone being lost to the shaking.

”There wouldn’t have been many slayers around when the kin came through, so I don’t suppose the keep itself got much attention. There would have been some support staff still here, but not many others. The bulk of the monsters would have ripped through the town and then spread out along the south road. On the plus side, that means there’s probably a ton of good salvage in here. Too bad you’re so scrawny.”

”The skeletons can handle some of it.”

”True.”

As the sun beat down on the keep, the two, along with the ten undead minions, picked through the keep, and indeed there was quite a bit to find. Slayers were often cash rich and many had died in the rift, leaving their belongings behind. Not wanting to be weighed down, Tyron took a generous amount of higher value coins, replacing the bronze in his pouch with gold and silver where he could.

The real wealth they found was in the armoury. It had largely been emptied in the defence of Woodsedge, but even so plenty of arms remained. By the time they were done, Tyron had been able to outfit each of his ten skeletons with a new one-handed weapon and shield.

If he had enough magick, he might have been able to put armour on a few of them, but the added weight would drain his energy too quickly.

As the hours passed, Dove eventually spoke up.

”This would be an incredible place to set up. There’s a fair bit of food lying around. Decent hunting nearby. Equipment and resources for your skeletons and a metric shit ton of fresh human remains. There must be hundreds of them lying about. Think of the research. Think of the levels!”

”Of course, it isn’t that easy,” Tyron grunted.

”Nope. The nobles will want this place up and running once they roll back the rift-kin. Bury the dead, back to business as usual, the slimy fuckers. That means the Magisters are already hard at work making someone else clean up their mess. Depending on who’s on the case, we can’t know how quickly they’ll reach this place and you can’t be here when they do. To be honest, we should get out of here as quickly as possible.”

”Right,” Tyron said. ”If possible I want to take a day or two to get as much as we can before we leave.”

”Cutting it close. If you need to work overnight, do that and we can get the fuck out in the morning. You need to leave this place behind and find somewhere else to set up shop.”

”Okay. First things first though. I want a shower.”

Inside the keep he was able to find rooms equipped with all the enchantments required to wash himself and for the first time in a while Tyron indulged himself in a full body scrub, peeling weeks of filth off his skin. After pillaging a chest for some fresh clothes that were a close enough fit, he felt like a new man.

With that done, he rolled up his fresh sleeves and got to work. With the help of his skeletons he was able to unearth an intact cart from the merchant district and begin to load it with supplies. Preserved food, water, a small stash of coin, spare weapons and armour took up space in the cart, but not much. The rest was reserved for the most important cargo.

From the middle of that day and through the night, Tyron grit his teeth and set himself to butchering corpses. Along with his minions, he scoured the town, but found most of the best prospects at the south gate. With so many remains on hand, he could afford to be picky, and despite the damage that many had received, he was still able to piece together full skeletons with relative ease.

Once the bones had been stripped of flesh and washed, he set them out to dry in full sets, having the skeletons place them separately. By the time morning came, he’d managed to arrange twenty complete skeletons in neat piles on the ground. Once dry, each went into its own sack which was then placed carefully onto the cart.

He was tempted to take another shower after the grisly work, but knew he couldn’t afford the time. It took a bit longer for him and Dove to find an efficient way for his skeletons to be harnessed to the cart. If he could raise a horse, he wouldn’t have any issues, but unfortunately he didn’t have that ability as of yet.

So it was that his skeletons were forced to act as mules, six of them arranged in two lines of three to pull the heavy load. It was murder on his magick, and only left four of his minions available for defence, but necessary. With this he would have everything he needed for the short term future.

With their slow place, it was already dusk by the time they made it back to the farm.