Book of The Dead

“Come on.”

“I’m trying to work.”

“There’s no fucking way you don’t agree.”

“I’d really like to not be part of this conversation.”

“You don’t have a choice. I refuse to speak of anything else until this is done. You can either answer my question, or punt my soul into the great beyond, and I think we both know you still aren’t ready to do the second. So. Watching Yor suck the soul out of that fat fuck has got to be the hottest damn thing I’ve seen in my life and afterlife. Tell me you agree.”

Tyron rolled his head back and looked at the sky, as if hoping a way to escape this discussion might strike him like a bolt from above. He might even accept a lightning strike at this point.

Despite being bloody up to his elbows from carving through human remains, thinking back to the… disturbing sight of Yor feeding was enough to make him queasy.

“Look, if you’re going to force me to state an opinion, then I will. Rather than ‘arousing’, I would describe the experience as ‘disturbing’ and ‘horrific’. Dove, she ate his soul.”

“So fucking sexy,” the skull breathed..

“I knew you were a little disturbed when you were alive, but I didn’t realise you were this twisted,” Tyron observed, then grunted as he pulled a femur free from the meat of the leg with a wet pop.

He placed the bone to one side before picking up his cleaver. Shins were next.

“Do you think being trapped in a skull is warping you in some way? Or were you always this bad?”

“Honestly, I think being dead has slanted my views a little bit. It’s not like I have balls, or emotions, or a dick, or feelings anymore, so even I wouldn’t describe it as a physical arousal. It’s something deeper than that, more meaningful.”

“I don’t get it, the souls I recruited…”

The skull laughed.

“... to become ghosts are basically pissed off a hundred percent of the time. The only thing they like is murder, and even then, they only enjoy it in a pissed-off sort of way. How come you’re basically the same as you were when you were alive, with the possible exception of being even more of a pervert?”

“I’m just a far superior soul,” Dove said, sounding smug. “Comparing me with some chumps who pushed a wheelbarrow for a living? You’re being ridiculous.”

Tyron paused for a moment as he looked at his friend and mentor.

“Is that really a thing? You have a stronger soul based on your Class and levels?”

“I have no idea. Sounds like something a Necromancer should figure out. Souls and bones and shit, that’s your trade, not mine.”

The young mage grunted and brought down his cleaver heavily. Was there a difference between souls? Some qualitative distinction that allowed some to keep their personalities more or less intact, even beyond the grave?

Is resurrection possible?

A shiver ran down his spine. The thought was tantalising, and he couldn’t ignore it once it had wormed its way into his head. If a soul were sufficiently powerful, say a top-grade slayer, would they be strong enough that they retained their thoughts and memory perfectly after death?

A similar process must be used to create a Lich, he realised. A powerful mage capturing their own soul and then animating their remains with it.

There’s no way it’s that simple. If it were, it would be way more common. If I can realise this after a few months, then surely every mage in the empire has been able to realise the same thing. Where’s the catch?

“I really don’t understand why you find this so twisted, though,” Dove was saying. “Yor is smoking hot, that’s obvious, and the idea of ripping the soul out of a piece of shit like Monty, causing him unspeakable suffering in the process, is a pure justice boner on top of an already delectable cake. What’s not to love?”

“I think half the reason you want to have this conversation is because it’s nighttime and you know that she’s probably listening in. You just want to make her uncomfortable. I don’t understand why you’re so keen to sexualise a vampire, who by her own admission, is incapable of physically engaging in the act.”

“Which act?”

“Shut up.”

Time for the feet. Extracting all the bones from the dense sinews in there was a complete pain. If he could find a way to dissolve flesh without having to spend a feat or spell choice on it, he’d be a happy Necromancer. Even if he only used it for feet and hands, the process of extracting bones would be twice as quick.

“How can you say I’m the one sexualising her? She literally flesh-formed her own body to be an irresistible honeypot. I’m merely describing the reality that she created! A sexy fucking reality!”

“I think the reason it’s weird,” Tyron said as he got to work after checking the edges on his thinner knives, “is because the trap is only supposed to work on people who don’t know it’s a trap. In your case, it seems to have heightened your interest, not lessened it. That’s weird. By extension, you are weird. I’m trying hard not to judge you, in some ways I find the obsession fascinating. I’m pretty sure the only reason she hasn’t ripped out your soul and eaten it is because she thinks that might be what you want.”

“I dream about it every day,” Dove sighed.

“That’s what I’m talking about, that right there.”

For the next while, Dove remained blessedly quiet as Tyron continued to work. When he finally finished with the feet, he took a step back from the impromptu butchering table he’d set up in the centre of the village and had his skeletons collect the flesh to take to the midden. Another pair of skeletons then took the bones and he absently directed them to lay them out in the correct pattern, adding another full set to the others he had already completed drying around the fire pit.

So much work to do and only one night to get it done.

His fingers ached already, and he was barely halfway through the bandit corpses. The bones wouldn’t even be the end of it, he still had the spirits to deal with. He wouldn’t turn them all into ghosts, but that didn’t mean he would let them go to waste either. He had a few ideas he wanted to test.

It was a shame he didn’t have Monty’s soul, but he’d received a worse fate than anything Tyron could concoct. He was still being digested in the guts of a vampire, and from what he gathered, it wasn’t an overly pleasant experience. He wanted to ask Yor more about it, but seeing the animalistic gleam to her eyes, he’d decided now would be a… dangerous… time to talk.

“Bring over the next three,” he ordered out loud and mentally at the same time.

“Don’t talk to the minions. You asked me to remind you.”

“... Right.”

So easy to forget. Don’t talk to the minions, idiot.

In some ways, it felt more natural to speak to them out loud, even if it served no purpose. Taking any strides toward humanising his undead was a mistake.

If I didn’t have Dove around, I might have already gone mad. It’s not healthy being surrounded by undead slaves all the time. I need people to talk to as well.

Which reminded him of his ‘prisoner’. He stepped to one side and washed his hands in the bucket he’d fished up from the well. Before walking a few doors down to a small building being watched by four skeletons and knocking.

“Caelum? You in there?”

He waited for a moment, but no reply came.

“If you don’t answer me, I’m going to go in there….”

“Don’t come in!”

“So you are there.”

“I don’t want to talk to you, monster!”

“This again? These men were criminals. They did terrible, terrible things.”

“Says you. We spent a week with them, they worked like dogs to help support everyone in the village.”

“I bet they did, but think for a second. If I’m really a terrible Necromancer who murders everyone and turns them into undead, why are you alive? Why did I go to such lengths to keep you villagers alive? Doesn’t make much sense unless I’m telling the truth.”

“... It’s hard to take your words as truth when you’re outside cutting bodies apart….”

Everyone gets hung up on the butchery, even more than the Death Magick!

Tyron sighed. He wasn’t going to convince anyone he was a hero after running into their village and cutting down ‘refugees’. No point dwelling on it, he had work to do and he needed to get going.

“Open up the door, I’ve got another three for you to check.”

The skeletons had lain the bodies on the ground and the mage conjured a light for the young villager to see. He was confident that no unmarked person had been killed in the attack, but it didn’t hurt to have someone check the corpses.

“Stand back,” Caelum said, voice shaking.

Tyron took a few steps back and the door opened a crack, just wide enough for the ‘prisoner’ to see out. He eyeballed the bodies on the ground before a finger extended through the gap.

“That one. That’s Gully, he lived with us for six months.”

The Necromancer stared down at the corpse in shock.

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Gully came at harvest time and stuck around working on the Perkins farm. So much for only killing the ‘bandits’, murderer.”

“T-that doesn’t make sense,” he muttered. Everyone who’d died had been marked, he’d been so careful. His skeletons had not driven their weapons into anyone without him checking first. He hadn’t made any mistakes, he was sure of it!

He leaned forward to look at the body more carefully. It was intact, no puncture wounds or cuts. What had killed him? Realisation struck him. This one had died to the ghosts! One of the two in the stalls, among the first to be killed.

There was no chance he’d made a mistake; that hadn’t taken place in the chaos of the fighting, but in the dead quiet. He could remember the two figures, blazing in his awareness through the wooden doors.

Either the beast in the Abyss had made a mistake, or….

“This prick signed up with the bandits,” he sighed.

“You expect me to believe that?” Caelum retorted from behind the door.

Tyron shook his head.

“No. No, I don’t.”

Didn’t matter that it was the truth, if he tried to explain how he knew, he’d damn himself even further. He continued to look down at the body on the cold ground. Had this man even done anything wrong? Or was the intent enough?

How was he to know what measures the Abyss used to judge such matters? Ultimately, it was his responsibility, as he had trusted their decisions implicitly. A mistake it was too late to back down from.

“I’ll bury this man,” he said. “Thank you, Caelum.”

The villager slammed and locked the door once again, but not before shooting one final glare through the gap. A few skeletons approached and withdrew the villager corpse as Tyron frowned, frozen in thought. Ultimately, there was nothing he could do to change the situation, no matter how much he hated it. He returned to his workbench, had his minions drop a new body on it and got to work.

He lost himself in the butchery, his movements efficient and precise as he cut away the flesh, severed tendons and procured what he needed for his craft. The useless flesh was taken outside of town and dumped in a midden pit he had a pair of skeletons dig, while the bones were carefully sorted, washed and dried on the ground before being stored. He was at it for hours, his hands, arms and shoulders aching until he was interrupted.

One of the ghosts was the first tip off he received as it moved, drifting away from its post without being asked. The Necromancer stood to wipe his hands, mentally checking on the spirit before flicking his vision to it.

Positioned to watch the area between the village and the woods most had escaped to during the night in case anyone returned, the ghost had wandered away from its spot. With a thought, he ordered it back into place, demanding the ghost turn around so he could see around it.

Nothing… at least, nothing obvious. What was going on?

Moments before he would dismiss the disturbance and go back to work, he lost contact with a skeleton. He whipped around in time to see the bones crumbling to the ground, the light fading from the skull as it dropped.

A man was there, blade in hand, running towards him. Running fast. Running really fast.

“Oh, FUCK!” Tyron swore as he turned to snatch the only weapon he had to hand off the table: his cleaver.

“What?” Dove spluttered, coming awake in a rush. “Fucking balls! Run, kid!”

But there was nowhere to run. Skeletons came running, snatching up their weapons, but they couldn’t make it in time.

Steel flashed under the light of his globes, cutting straight for his neck. Sweat broke out of every pore in Tyron’s body as he ducked low and felt the wind of the blade pass over him.

First cut.

He lifted his head and brought his cleaver up at the same time. Through some miracle, he managed to catch the next clash straight on the edge of his knife.

Sparks flew as the sword bit deep into the cleaver and Tyron’s wrist bent back to the point of breaking as he absorbed the shocking force of the blow.

“I needed that knife,” he ground out.

His free hand flashed through several symbols as he formed a bolt, releasing it at point blank range the moment it was ready.

The body that had been overpowering him one second spun gracefully away the next, almost yanking the ruined cleaver from his hands in the process. He managed to hold onto it, but only barely. Unbalanced, he tried to reset his feet, but was too slow.

A vicious stab shot out of the shadows, the sword-tip headed straight for his heart.

Fucking-

Tyron threw himself into a spin, barely avoiding harm as he pulled back his left shoulder as the blade scraped passed the bone armour on his chest.

Where now?

He was off balance and vulnerable. Where would the next strike come?

Head or gut. Head or gut. Head!

Without seeing where the strike was coming from, he snapped his arms up on either side of his face, palms inward.

CRUNCH!

The sword smashed into the bones lashed with magick to his forearms, splitting them apart and biting into his flesh. Blood sprayed and Tyron grit his teeth to ward off the pain.

Purple eyes swarmed in the dark, blades flashing and the figure was gone, sliding backwards and away from the minions before stopping ten metres away.

“Ohhhh shit. Not good. NOT good!” Dove chattered.

“Shut up, Dove,” Tyron ground out, not taking his eyes from his opponent.

The fight to this point had taken mere seconds and already, he’d nearly had his heart cored like an apple and been forced into a fifty-fifty with his life on the line.

Slayer.

This was a Slayer. One of the villagers must have stumbled into a scout doing the rounds and they’d come running to kill the evil Necromancer. At least, he hoped it was a scout. If there was more than one, he was dead already.

The swordsman, or some variant, watched carefully as the skeletons gathered themselves, but didn’t wait long before making his move. He adjusted his grip on the blade, leaned to the side, then flickered and vanished.

Or at least it looked that way.

Two skeletons died before Tyron realised where the Slayer had gone, cursing as he turned.

Magick you idiot, you have to use magick.

He was a poor fighter at best, he had to use the strengths of his class to fight back. He raised his hands and began to chant, flashing through the sigils at record pace as he desperately sought to level the playing field.

From nowhere, knives flashed from the shadows, aimed straight for his head. Two shield skeletons stepped forward to catch them, leaving Tyron free to complete his cast.

Death Blades.

The moment he finished, he moved straight to the next.

I have to slow him down. I can barely keep up with my eyes, my skeletons could swing for a year and might never hit him.

With a defensive group of undead and more arriving, he had to get his support spells out now. If he lost more skeletons before they came into effect, there may be no point in having cast them at all.

Quicker than ever, the words rolled from his tongue, each enunciated perfectly, the timing and rhythm flawless. Unwilling to allow him to work his magick, the swordsman went on the attack.

Directing his minions at the same time as working complicated spells was taxing for Tyron and he almost fumbled his words as he tried to react. Steel flashed in a glittering arc and another two minions were lost. The swordsman rushed through and the skeletons swung at shadows and dust, too slow to respond.

Another charge, another glittering slash, another minion crumbling to the ground.

This isn’t good!

He finished the spell with a roar, his hands snapping down as his magick poured into the ground beneath his feet.

Shivering Curse.

Perhaps it was counterintuitive to cast it on himself, but the undead weren’t affected and now it was impossible for the swordsman to attack without being within the radius.

Hands free, Tyron quickly snapped together a pair of magick bolts and held them at the ready. The swordsman sized him up for a moment and Tyron did the same.

He was young, perhaps not even level twenty yet. If he was, then he wasn’t far past it.

Thank anyone who’ll listen for that. If he was level thirty, I’d be less one head.

“No chance of a conversation?” he said quietly.

The swordsman shifted then shook his head slightly.

As expected.

“Come on then.”

Weapon-based Classes, especially light weapons such as the sword, were highly mobile killing machines. The fight between them was never going to last long.

I can’t keep him off me, not for long. All I need to win is to hold him still for one second. One second and I win.

Tyron grit his teeth. This was going to suck.

He spread his minions slightly and had them lower their weapons, ready to stab. That should make it a little harder for the Slayer to run in, or risk being impaled on the magick infused blades.

Apparently, it didn’t matter. The swordsman flashed left and right, carving through two more skeletons in an instant before dashing through the formation and out the other side.

Two magick bolts flew through the air before thudding into the ground as the Slayer twisted out of the way. A skeleton stepped forward and thrust, only to receive a sword through the skull for its trouble.

Two more bolts formed and he fired them right away. The swordsman was constantly on the move, and the formation adjusted moment to moment as more skeletons were picked off.

Damn.

A wide swing with an axe, and suddenly there was an imbalance in the line, right in front of the Necromancer.

Like a hawk swooping on exposed prey, the Slayer darted in. Tyron felt the shadow of death reach out toward him as that sword closed in, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop it. He brought his arms up to cover his heart.

Pain exploded in his gut and the sword stabbed clean through, sliding between the gaps between the bone armour and out his back.

Quick as a snake, Tyron’s hands flashed down to grip the Slayer’s forearms.

“S-sorry about this,” he gurgled, blood already dripping from his lips.

The Slayer tried to yank the sword free, but he held on, then the ghosts were there.

Bone-piercing cold surrounded them as three spirits drifted into the swordsman. The man stiffened, then wrestled as he realised something was wrong, but Tryon held on.

Thunk, thunk thunk!

Muscles frozen, the Slayer couldn’t react as the skeletons closed in. The three closest plunged their weapons into his flesh, the Death Magick coating sizzling against his skin.

They stabbed over and over again as the ghosts locked up his body with their penetrating cold. Soon, the light faded from his eyes and he slumped to the ground. Tyron stood over the corpse, blade punctured straight through him and bleeding all over the ground.

“Ow.”

He spat a mouthful of blood on the ground next to him.

“This is going to be real bad.”