Book of The Dead

“It’s… disturbing to look at.”

“There exists a certain charm in the way he moves.”

“Charm? Charm!? You’re as twisted as I am, woman. He looks like a zombie fucking another zombie, except the second one is nothing but but an ass sewed onto a face.”

The young Necromancer had been in this state for almost an hour now, demanding that they stash the cart in a crevasse, hidden from view as he grew lost in his thoughts.

“You exaggerate. Look at him closely, he is so taken by thoughts in his mind that physical reality has faded almost completely from his consciousness. I have seen others like this, elders, when they fall into a trance contemplating the deeper magick and the mysteries of the blood. Sometimes, they don’t move for years at a time.”

“Still? He keeps jerking this way and that, I’m worried he’s having a heart attack! It’s like he gets halfway into a movement before he has another thought and tries to move in a new direction.”

“It’s fascinating.”

“It’s disgusting. I think he’s drooling.”

“I suspect this is what he looked like when he discovered how to preserve your spirit.”

An image flashed into Dove’s mind, of Tyron leaning over him, the light of madness burning in his eyes as he’d awakened within his own skull.

“I’d rather not remember that,” Dove muttered.

“I feel it’s a little hypocritical of you to complain so much. After all, this is your fault, at least partially.”

“My fault? What did I do?”

“Your discussion was enough to give him some insight, resulting in this state.”

“Honestly, I’m not even sure what he was talking about is possible. It’s an interesting theory… sure.”

“It’s possible.”

The vampire’s eyes gleamed in the dim light. It wasn’t every day one had the opportunity to witness a genius at work, a talent so bright even her mistress had reached out to this backwards realm to lay a claim. Would he blaze in glory here, or fall agonisingly short of a great leap forward?

“It is? Well, shit.”

Their words weren’t heard by Tyron. He felt as if he could barely feel his own body as thoughts raced through his mind, one chasing the other so quickly he could barely breathe.

Spell matrices came together, were adapted and then discarded over and over again as he tried to make the possibility he had glimpsed into a magickal reality.

Mind. Spirit. Channel. Bond or connection? Need a conduit. Or housing. But how do they connect? What material, or method?

His thoughts flickered from problem to solution so fast, he felt as if his thoughts were vibrating. This wasn’t helping, he needed to settle his mind, direct his energy more fruitfully.

The young mage snapped back to himself and blinked rapidly.

Fuck, my eyes are dry. Was I not blinking?

No sooner had the thought occurred to him then it was gone as he strode to his pack and pulled out his notebook. Fumbling with a shaking hand for his pencil, he ripped it out and began feverishly scribbling away on a fresh page.

Conceptually, it was simple. Skeletons were limited by the simplistic construct that acted as their ‘brain’. Improving the construct was one thing, but that dealt with mind magick, an entire branch of spellcraft of its own, and one that Tyron had no familiarity with. So, how to make his skeletons less stupid?

Replace their basic ‘minds’ with ghosts. Simple.

Except it wasn’t.

There were dozens of intricate components connecting the mind to the skeleton, none of which he fully understood. Spellforms ran through his head at a blistering pace, different combinations of sigils flicking into place before he dismissed them and started again.

What was a spirit? Whether or not it was really the soul of a living person didn’t matter; for his purposes, they were a magickal construct that could be bound to a semi-physical form.

Spirit Binding allowed him to create a ‘housing’ for the ghost, one that enabled it to interact in the physical world in a limited way. To take that, and overlay it to a skeleton….

As his pencil continued to fly over the page, he began to mutter to himself as he tried to resolve the issues that prevented him from making his vision reality. Not ten metres away, Yor and Dove watched him rack his brain.

“If he’s successful…” Dove muttered.

Yor nodded, the predatory gleam in her eyes brightening.

“Then he would have taught himself how to create a revenant.”

“But that’s… nuts.”

It was possible to learn Skills and Spells without the influence of the Unseen, but that didn’t mean it happened often. In fact, it was vanishingly rare, especially with more complex abilities. Yet the longer he watched, the more he became convinced that something remarkable was about to happen.

The three remained as they were for another hour until, finally, Tyron stood from his crouched position and turned to face them, the manic expression on his face eerily lit by the orbs he had conjured.

He rushed toward them, then blew straight past, rummaging for the bones he wanted in the cart before laying them down carefully on the ground. Without pause, the Necromancer began to thread the bones together, fingers dancing across the joints as he formed the threads of magick.

“Hey, tilt me down a little bit,” Dove asked the vampire beside him. “I can’t see.”

“There isn’t much to see,” she told him, “not yet.”

“I don’t want to miss it,” the skull hissed, “this could be something extraordinary right here.”

Yor smiled cruelly and adjusted the position of the skull until he was facing directly downward into the wooden planks of the cart.

“Very funny,” Dove said acidly. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” Yor said, but relented and repositioned him so he could watch Tyron work.

“I feel like he’s getting through that faster than before,” he observed with interest as Tyron continued to flutter over the bones, hands shifting from one section to the next as he wove with dizzying speed.

“He seems to have achieved a high level of focus. His control over the magick is much better than usual.”

In a relatively short time, Tyron sprang up and began to pace around the skeleton, as if examining something that normal eyes couldn’t see. Eventually, he nodded to himself before dashing back to the cart to collect one of the stones stored in the back.

Moving back to the bones on the ground, he carefully placed the rock inside the skull before he stood, stepped back and spread his hands.

Dove tensed. Was the kid really just going to go for it? A modified ritual?

“Hey, Ty-” he began to say.

He froze, his spirit gripped by something he couldn’t describe, no longer able to echo out the words as he could before.

“Be quiet,” Yor said from beside him. “If you distract him now, then who knows what might happen?”

“He might not kill himself!”

“Or the breakthrough he needs to survive will be lost.”

The once Summoner stumbled in his words as the reality of that situation struck home. It was true. The kid progressed so fast that it was difficult to remember at times that it still wasn’t fast enough. He’d come this far by pushing his limits as hard and as often as he could. If he stopped doing that now, at this critical moment, it may all have been for nothing.

Unheeding of anything outside of his own mind, Tyron took a deep breath and began to speak.

Create a body for the ghost out of magick, bind it to the skeleton, then raise it as an undead. Three separate processes, each requiring time, focus and meticulous attention to detail to perform correctly.

It may have seemed mad, but Tyron’s answer was not to perform these actions separately, but rather to do them all together.

Not three individual tasks, but one.

The instantiation of the ghost, binding it to the skeleton and binding it to him, he would do them all at once.

Words rolled from his mouth as his hands flicked from one sigil to the next in an unceasing series. Magick began to flow in such quantities it could almost be seen, almost be felt, whipping around the Necromancer’s cloak and ruffling Yor’s dress.

The secret is in the bones!

It had come to him in a flash of inspiration. There had to be a reason the improved Bone Threading technique placed the weave within the bones, there had to be. He may not understand what it was, but he was certain it was there. Extending that logic, he knew that the bones of the dead were themselves repositories of magick, after all, they became saturated with death magick if given the opportunity.

As the ritual continued, he infused the skeleton with his power, and at the same time, created a new form for the spirit to reside in, inside the bones.

The spirit-binding flowed through the marrow as if it were always meant to be there, enveloping and embracing the threads within, which seemed to come alive through some will of their own.

It was gruelling, difficult work, and Tyron felt as if his mind were being pulled in multiple directions as he tried to juggle so many complex spellforms at once, but he persevered. The frenetic urging of his own mind wouldn’t allow him to fail.

Ghostly flames began to spread across the bones as the ritual continued, an ethereal purple fire that flickered in the darkness like a sputtering torch.

“There’s no fucking way,” Dove breathed.

On and on it went, more and more magick being pulled out and infused in the undead, until finally it was done.

Tyron brought his hands together, the final syllable ringing in the damp night air as he stared down at his newest creation with feverish glee.

At first, nothing happened, then a light began to glow within the hollow eyes of the skull. Moving slowly, the skeleton began to rise, pulling itself up from the ground until it stood unmoving on its two feet.

Still, that fire burned, tiny tongues of flame that curled between the ribs and licked the darkness. Gradually, the flames began to gather, sliding along the skeletal frame to concentrate along the ribs until they seemed to ignite, creating a steadily burning fire that filled the undead’s chest.

“Yes!” Tyron cried, punching the air in triumph before he rushed up close to the minion and inspected it carefully.

“That’s not something he should have learned how to do for quite some time,” Yor smirked.

“Holy. Fucking. Balls,” Dove agreed.

He’d always known the kid was special. In the back of his skull, he began to wonder just what the future would actually hold. His best hopes for the Necromancer had been to thumb his nose at the authorities, kill a few marshals, piss off the Magisters a bit. At best, he’d hoped he would grow strong enough to threaten them, make a ruckus.

But now… now, something entirely more grand may be possible.

“Congratulations, kid,” he said, louder.

Tyron turned towards him, a broad grin on his face.

“I told you it was possible! I fucking told you!”

“Yes, yes you did. Quite the accomplishment. You can be proud of pulling this off, unlike the pulling you did when you were younger.”

“Proud?” Tyron sounded almost puzzled. “But I’m not done yet! There’s more work to do, much more. I need to make more, and I need to see what different bones and souls do. Or maybe the minion is stronger if I use the soul and bones of the same person? There’s so much to figure out….”

Already muttering to himself, Tyron leapt into the back of the cart and started rummaging around until he found what he was looking for. Dove didn’t see him until he’d jumped back down, but when he did, he felt more than a little concerned.

“Kid, isn’t that…?”

“Yes,” Tyron nodded absentmindedly, “these are the remains of the slayer I killed. And I’ve got his spirit right here.”

“Well… fuck.”