Book of The Dead

The cart rattled over the uneven road and Tyron groaned.

“Fucking, shut up already.”

The young mage grimaced as he tried to resist touching his side for the umpteenth time. It didn’t help. In fact, all it did was get blood on his hand and irritate the wound.

Another jostle, another groan.

“By the tits, shut your damn mouth! You had the chance to fix the wound and you passed it up, so fucking deal with it!”

Tyron sat up with difficulty, the pain from his wound a constant throbbing that reverberated through his entire body.

“You’d really eat someone’s soul to heal yourself?” he asked.

“Yes I fucking would! I can’t believe how stupid you are. I think your damn balls are too big for your own good, it’s making you stupid, or blind. Is that it? You can’t see past your own colossal fucking sack and notice the obvious solution right in front of your face?”

Ask a stupid question…. He chuckled.

“Maybe I am, stupid that is.” He gestured to his pants, stained red with drying blood. His own blood. “As you can see, my testicles are quite standard, but I can’t deny that I’m dumb enough to risk my life over pride.”

As tempting as it was to argue back at the skull, to defend his morals and point of view, there really wasn’t any point. Dove was worried about him, that was why he was so angry. The pragmatic Summoner wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice one of those bandit souls to heal him if he could. Before he’d died, he’d already shown he was willing to kill others to keep Tyron alive.

Stupidity and pride. He refused to rely on the patrons, refused to play their games. A dumb decision if ever there was one, and it was pride that got in his way. He would do it himself, and do it his own way, or not at all.

They won’t fucking control me. I refuse to be controlled.

A sigh emanated from the skull and Tyron turned his weary gaze back to his friend.

“You aren’t stupid, kid. We both know that. I think I’m starting to see your parents in you at last. Magnin and Beory are legendary for wanting to go their own way, and it seems like the apple didn’t drop far from the tree.”

Tyron felt a warm glow inside at being compared to his parents.

“You really think so?” he said.

“Oh goddess, don’t look so pleased. Oh that’s disgusting. You have the look of a loving child yearning for the approval of a parent all over your face. It’s too pure for me. Get it away before I manifest spirit spew. Turn me around or something, for fuck’s sake!”

A laugh bubbled up in his chest, which caused another spike of pain, which was followed with another groan.

“Serves you right,” Dove said acerbically as Tyron lay clutching at his side. “Don’t let me see your inner-self ever again. I’m here to help a badass, killer-crazed Necromancer get some revenge on the pricks who branded me, not babysit a vulnerable young man who didn’t get enough love as a child.”

“Can’t I be both of those things?”

“No, no you fucking cannot.”

The two lapsed into silence and Tyron reflected on the previous night. He’d killed a Slayer, but he shied away from examining that thought too closely.

It was what it was and he couldn’t do a thing about it. He refused to give up, so he had to keep going forward, that was all there was to it.

Killing bandits had proved to be a profitable endeavour in terms of experience and levels, as he’d hoped it would be. Everything had become a blur after he was wounded, but he must have collected bones from ten corpses, and at least five spirits before the light had begun to creep over the horizon.

To stay any longer than that would have been foolish in the extreme, so he’d gathered his work and left.

It was mid-morning now, the sun edging closer to its zenith.

I should have stolen a cart with a roof on it.

At least it wasn’t too hot out here in the western province, otherwise having the heat beating down on them all day would have been too much to bear.

Stop your whining and get to work, Tyron admonished himself.

He’d achieved his goal of securing more levels. He hadn’t been able to get all the bandits, much to his irritation, several of them still burned in his awareness, fading into the distance as the cart rolled forward. It was unlikely he’d get a chance to go back and get the rest, so they were in the clear, for now.

As a reward for the risks, hard work and stab wound, he’d been able to take a giant step forward in his Undead Weaver Class, gaining his first feat and a new ability to boot.

Upgrading his Bone Stitching skill excited him even further than the feat, to be honest. Taking such basic, fundamental skills and pushing them as far as possible was the hallmark of a true expert, so his Father had always said, and he knew this had the potential to be huge.

Empowered Bone Armour would be nice, and he would be extremely tempted to select it in the future. After receiving his first serious battle wound, he was eager to put further impediments between him and getting hurt, but for now, his minions took priority.

He’d spent the hours groaning in the back of the cart trying to digest the information granted to him by the Skill, and he felt he was approaching the point where he would need to test some things.

Moving slowly, he raised his hands and began to weave. Then stopped and shook his head. He tried again. After a few seconds, he paused once more and frowned.

Something wasn’t right.

Nearby, a bag of leg bones sat against a pile of others, still slightly damp at the bottom from having the washed femurs and tibia thrown in. He pulled it towards him and fished a few out, hoping that working on actual bones might help him concentrate.

His gut ached something fierce, but he tried to focus and push the pain away. He had to endure, or else he may as well roll over and give himself up.

Arranging the bones with care, he even grabbed a fibula for good measure, he brought to mind everything he’d learned about the knee joint.

It’d taken many iterations, but he’d eventually settled on a weave for the knee that he felt struck a good balance between power, efficiency and support. Could he make a better joint if he wanted to? Absolutely, but it would require significantly more work. There simply wasn’t the time to produce the absolute best.

As his Mother had always said, “an eighty percent result only requires fifty percent of the effort. Sometimes it’s worth it to push for the final twenty, and sometimes it isn’t.”

Tyron judged that in this instance, it wasn’t.

Again, he raised his hands and prepared to weave, but just as he started, curling those first few threads around each other, he realised it felt wrong.

Something he was doing didn’t mesh with the way the upgraded skill wanted him to work, but what was it? Thinking hard, he looked down at the bones arranged in his lap. Bone Stitching was a technique that involved using threads of magick to create a weave that mimicked the properties of muscle and tendons. Skeletons obviously lacked those things, so this was a requirement for them to be able to move. The upgraded Skill, Bone Animus, should work in a similar way, but be improved in some fashion.

With knowledge crammed into his skull by the Unseen, he felt that was the case, but he couldn’t quite figure out how it was meant to be done.

Letting his instinct take over, he brought his hands forward again, but this time he didn’t summon the threads from his fingertips immediately, but tried to listen to those fragments of instinct he had been granted.

His hands drifted closer to the bones, then closer still. He kept expecting that he would feel the right moment to bring out the threads and continue to work, but to his surprise, that didn’t happen. Instead, his hands continued to move forward until they were resting on the cold surface of the bone themselves.

Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?

Only now did he feel it was right to summon the threads, but not attached to his fingers, that wouldn’t work for what the Skill wanted him to do. He had to create them inside the bone.

What is the benefit of that? How would that help? Normally, the weave was created outside and then would tighten when he was done, bonding to the outside of the skeleton.

If it were inside….

Would that be more efficient? Soaked inside the Death Magick contained within the bones themselves, would that have an effect? Or perhaps just being protected would make the weave more resilient to damage and wear.

Curious, he began to try and manipulate the threads, and quickly grew frustrated.

This was ridiculous! Trying to weave inside the bones was like trying to stitch through a keyhole! Except even that tiny gap was blocked. What he was really doing was manipulating the threads through a thin wall using only his mind.

Slow down, concentrate. You can do this.

It wouldn’t do to be impatient. Tyron took a deep breath and focused. He’d mastered Bone Stitching, though it had tangled his fingers into a useless snarl at first, he would do the same with this.

So he began to work, letting everything else, even the throbbing pain of his wound, fade to the background as he devoted himself single-mindedly to moving the threads. He was sluggish. It was difficult to sense the threads, and difficult to move them. Doing both at the same time was almost impossible, so at first, he didn’t try.

He would shift the minute threads a little, then check them, then shift them again, over and over. After an hour, he’d made some progress toward completing the knee joint, and he was mentally exhausted.

Were he in his best condition, working inside on a steady table, it would have gone much better. For now, this was the best he could do.

This is… surprisingly difficult… but it’s interesting at the same time.

Despite not being able to complete the joint, he could tell there was something different about it. The weave felt… more flexible, especially when he connected one bone to another. Probably because the weave connected through the bone rather than around them. That also gave him a lot of flexibility in the way he went about shaping the weave. In fact, he had many more options now that he didn’t have to surround the joint.

A thought struck him.

“Hey, Dove, someone with a spear doesn’t have the same musculature as someone specialised in, say, a hammer, right?”

The skull scoffed.

“Of course, its completely fucking different. Even swordsmen are going to be built slightly differently based on the weight and length of the weapon they choose. I’ve never swung a sword in my life and I know that much.”

Tyron chuckled.

“I really am an idiot.”

“What now?”

“Well… all my skeletons have the exact same weave.”

“Right.”

“But they don’t all use the same weapons.”

“... Ah.”

A pause.

“... About time you realised it, dipshit!”

“Dove….”

“Yeah, I know. It’s obvious when you think about it, right?”

“It sure is.”

His new technique would allow for greater flexibility in the weave, which meant one skeleton could be differentiated further from another. It wasn’t too late that he’d only noticed this now.

Possibilities began to unfold in his mind.

The threads of magick used to form the weave essentially acted as an energy converter, taking arcane energy and changing it to movement, and also acted to bind the skeleton together. By changing the weave, he could do a ton of different things.

His shield bearing skeletons could be bulked up with a thicker weave, allowing them to convert more magick to movement, effectively making them physically stronger. When they got into pitched battles and pushing matches, they would hold the line more effectively.

He could add extra weave to a skeleton’s legs and hips, allowing them to walk faster, or bulk up the shoulders of those using heavier weapons like maces.

All he’d really cared about before was efficiency. His minions had to be as efficient as possible so he could support more, but as his expertise increased, he was making efficiency savings in other areas. When he took into account his vastly increased magick capacity, specialising his skeletons and allowing them to draw on more power wouldn’t be an issue until he had almost fifty.

“I’ve got so much to do,” he groaned.