Book of The Dead

B2C35 - So Many Bones

“I suppose watching that graveyard wasn’t a completely moronic decision. I might owe that marshal an apology if I ever see him again.”

“Wait. You were watching a graveyard? Why? For me?”

“Yes, it was because of you. I was forced into a stupid stakeout, freezing my balls off in the middle of the night waiting for a Necromancer to show up and start shovelling graves.”

“It was way too dangerous for me to go to such an obvious place for materials back then. The whole reason I was searching for bones in the forest was because I thought I wouldn’t get caught that way.”

“Turns out you were fucking bang on.”

“And I mean… why would I do the digging myself?”

Dove had to agree. Tyron had thirty skeletons now, including his four Revenants, and the bulk of them swarmed over the small graveyard, harvesting bones. The kid had the foresight to keep a half dozen shovels in the cart, and now those tools were being put to good use. There was something oddly creepy about skeletons digging up graves, creatures of bones hunting for bones, it felt worse than if it were a person doing it, but they were undeniably effective.

“It’s kind of nice how they don’t get tired,” Dove observed. “I’d be knackered after an hour of solid digging.”

“As long as I don’t run out of magick,” Tyron chuckled.

The Necromancer had kept himself busy while his minions did the dirty work, sorting bones, tossing any that weren’t suitable, sorting them into type, paying particular attention to those he could now turn into bows.

He also examined each set of remains carefully, checking the progress of Death Magick saturation in each. There was at least some accumulation in each of them, but it appeared that there wasn’t enough to spark the ‘sharing’ response he’d seen elsewhere. Or perhaps the graves were too spaced for the phenomenon to occur?

More puzzles to solve.

After removing what he needed to craft weapons, he would have to ensure what he brought with him were complete sets of remains so he could start the process. Saturate them with Magick and prepare to raise them.

With his rapid advancement, he could likely maintain close to forty skeletons right now, alongside his small contingents of ghosts and revenants. With his new archers added into the mix, he was beginning to command his own little army of Undead.

Which was exactly what he’d been aiming for.

“That’s enough, I think,” Tyron sighed as he stood and stretched out his back. “I think we can pack the rest into the cart and get moving. We’ve delayed enough already.”

The small gravesite they’d uncovered, several kilometres from a nearby village, was secluded and quite private, nestled amongst the hills and ravines. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t get found if he stayed long enough. The fact he’d been here was certain to be uncovered eventually, putting any hunters right on his trail.

“Who are you talking to, kid? Better not be the fucking minions.”

Tyron shrugged.

“I’m starting to think maybe it’s not so bad to speak my thoughts out loud to them sometimes. It feels strange just to order them around silently all the time.”

“Ah, you have embraced the madness, I see. Make sure you free me before you go fully loopy and start pissing in my head or something.”

“Fine, fine.”

With the skeletons gathered and the materials secured, there was no need to linger. Tyron took his position in the rear of the cart amongst the bags filled with rattling bones, setting Dove on the wooden planks next to him.

“All right, let’s get moving.”

“It’s still weird.”

“Shut up.”

At his mental command, the skeletons, ghosts and revenants that made up his entourage gathered around the cart, some to guard, others to pull, and off they went. It was a grim procession to look upon, but the Necromancer at its heart had no thought for that.

“Time to get to work,” he muttered as he reached for a nearby bag.

“You sure about that, kid? When was the last time you slept?”

“It’s been… a while. But I’m fine. There’s a lot I need to do.”

“That’s not smart, and you know it. Sleep is a weapon.”

“So is time, and I don’t have enough. Stop fussing about me, Dove. If you need to flap your metaphorical gums, then help me with these damn fingers. Do you have any idea how to make a bow?”

“How the fuck would I know -”

Bickering back and forth, the cart continued to roll into the deepening night.

Hours later.

Leaning back with a sigh, Tyron finally let his aching hands rest.

I need a feat that makes my hands more flexible or something. Between the bone-threading and bow-making, I’m working my hands harder than a lutist.

He massaged the digits with a groan as he surveyed the fruits of his labour.

If I’d had any idea how to make one of these, I wouldn’t have had to waste a Skill choice on it. My father has a brain made of swords and my mother isn’t interested in any weapon other than her staff. I don’t think we even have one in the house.

Had one.

He wasn’t likely to ever go back to that house now. With everything that had happened, with the lives he had taken, he would likely never be forgiven. That meant he and his parents would never live under the same roof again.

But I won’t stop pushing forward. That’s what they told me to do. I refuse to let it end.

The bows he’d crafted were fairly crude things, when he looked at them. That didn’t mean they weren’t complex and demanding to make. The Skill had granted him the basic knowledge, but as usual, it was up to him to put the pieces together, in this case literally.

He wasn’t sure what sort of bones would be required originally, something he could mould and bend into a normal curved, bow shape had been his guess. A femur or something similar.

That had been incorrect. There simply wasn’t enough flex in the material for that to work. Instead, he’d needed smaller bones that he could then thread together. He could get two bows from a single spine, as it turned out.

The technique was quite tricky, requiring some detailed work that he may never have worked out on his own. He now had the ability to shape the materials in a minor way, lengthening them and helping them slot together more neatly at the angles required. Of course, it wasn’t enough just to link together lengthened sections of spine; if that was all he did, he’d have nothing but a weird, segmented whip.

After joining them together, further threading was required to pull the joints tight and provide the resistance needed to fire a projectile.

That took him some time to work out. The string, of course, was relatively simple, a particularly dense thread of magick, linked to the bow at the tips, served this purpose just fine.

The result was a crude-looking implement lacking in artistry, but functional enough for his purposes, he hoped.

The arrows were even more straightforward. Lengthened finger bones, joined and moulded together to form a smooth exterior and hardened at the tip. A clumsy bit of shaping done at the end to create a facsimile of fletching.

The bows would work just fine with normal arrows, he suspected, but in the absence of a good fletcher, he would need to rely on what he could provide himself.

“Here you go,” he said tiredly as he handed the six bows he’d managed to make over the side of the cart to his waiting undead. The skeletons reached out and grasped the weapons in their bony fingers, seemingly instinctively knowing how to handle them.

Must be basic information placed into their mind construct. They’ve been able to swing swords and axes just fine, so I guess this isn’t surprising.

Just to test, he had two of them fire a few arrows into the night, feeling the drain on his magick as they were used.

Well, it’s me providing the energy for the bow and the string to function, I suppose.

Nothing major, but another thing he had to account for when considering his magick expenditure.

“Oh, they’re up and firing, are they? Holy shit, those arrows are nightmare fuel.”

“They do look pretty grim,” Tyron mused as he picked one up and spun it in his fingers.

Despite the work he’d done on them, it was somehow still easy to tell they’d once been human fingers. Something about the surface and the curves he hadn’t quite been able to eliminate.

“I don’t think they’ll perform well at long range, but for now, these are good enough,” Tyron yawned.

“This is something you really need to improve at. A poorly made bow is about ten percent as useful as a well made one. Ditto for the arrows.”

“Where was all this expertise before?”

“Look, I can tell you what anyone knows. If you give a rubbish sword to Magnin, he can still swing the damn thing. You give a master archer a shit bow and arrows bent at right angles, and they’ll fucking struggle. Some things are reliant on the quality of the tools.”

“Fair enough.”

Dammit. My eyes feel like sandpaper.

Rubbing at them didn’t seem to help either. He needed to sleep, but he also needed to work on preparing his next round of minions. With the materials he had, he could easily bring his current total to forty. Before that could happen, he needed to examine the remains, correct any imperfections and start the saturation process. Always so much to do. Working in the dark was even harder.

“Actually, that reminds me. Didn’t you know a technique to enhance your vision with magick, Dove? I remember you told me about that.”

“Of course I did. How do you expect a man to peer into the Astral sea with normal eyes? Just what do you expect to fucking see that way?”

“Does it help to see in low light conditions as well?”

“I mean. A bit. The primary purpose of the technique is to view shifts in magickal and astral energies, not that you see any of the latter down here. It can also be used to view magick residues, which can be handy in tracking down morons who don’t contain their energy when casting rituals.”

“Yeah, yeah. I suck. Come on, then.”

“Come on… what?”

“Teach me.”

“Teach you?! You want me to unveil the mysteries that I uncovered through my long career with hard practice and the whispers of the Unseen? You think I hand out that information so readily? You think you are worthy of it?”

“I mean… yes? It’s one little eye-spell, how hard can it be?”

The skull spluttered for a minute before he grew silent.

“You know what? For any normal person, I would have laughed in their face had they said something like that. ‘One little eye-spell’, such idiocy! Spells and methods that affect your eyes are fucking difficult! AND dangerous! You can permanently damage yourself if you fuck this stuff up, there are some things your brain simply isn’t meant to handle.”

He thought for a moment.

“But when I think about all the bullshit you’ve been able to do… I can’t help but think you’ll pick this up in a few hours, wondering what I was on about when I said it was difficult.”

Tyron shrugged.

“I’m good at magick. That’s nothing new.”

“Good at magick”, Dove mocked his tone. “You’re good at magick like your father is good at swords. It’s such a moronic, idiotic phrasing, I almost want to give up my ghost right here and now. I think your problem is that your only real metric for measuring magickal ability is your mother. That woman is a freak of nature, the strongest Battlemage in a hundred years. No wonder your sense is so far off.”

Tyron flushed with pride at being compared to his father, and appreciated the compliments to his mother. Even so….

“Try not to call my mother a freak of nature if you can help it, Dove. Since she’s been ordered to hunt me down, you’re likely to meet her at some point.”

“Oh?” the skull sneered. “And what is she going to do? Kill me?”

“If anyone can work out how to annihilate your soul, other than Yor, I think it would be her.”

“… You might be right about that. That would seriously suck. Married women aren’t my thing. Let’s get started then, might as well get this done. After I teach you, I want you to sleep, I fucking mean it, too.”

“... Fine.”

Nearby.

“Things are progressing faster than anticipated,” Yor said. “At this rate, things may spiral out of our control. If that happens, I may not be able to deliver what you asked of me, mistress.”

The vampire stood in the darkness, staring intently at a blood red gem cupped in her palm. Multifaceted, exquisitely cut, and filled with a strange, shifting darkness, the gem glowed with a soft pulsing light that illuminated her perfect features.

“You need not overly concern yourself, child,” a voice emanated from the stone. Refined, aristocratic, and impossibly cold, it was a voice no human could hope to speak with and one they would shudder to hear. “I am confident you have represented our interests well. Regardless of whether the boy comes to our side, he will be sympathetic, and remain in our debt. For now, that is enough.”

Despite the words of reassurance, Yor flinched, a shiver of fear running through her undead veins. The Mistress was consistent in all things, especially her treatment of failure. It was a fate she would do anything to avoid.

“I can still succeed, mistress,” she insisted, her voice firm as she masked her fear. “You requested I bring the boy before you of his own free will, and I will not disappoint you.”

She had wanted to refuse when handed this task. To travel to such a backward place, with barely a trace of her people’s power in order to recruit a nascent, barely qualified mage. It was a fool’s errand, so she had thought.

Once the order had come down from the Mistress herself, there was nothing she could do about it.

Since she had been here… her opinion had begun to change. There was something about this boy, about Tyron. It was his blood. As time passed and he accrued more strength, the scent grew stronger and stronger. He reeked of magick.

“Do not make me repeat myself.”

That voice, already as cool as a winter blizzard, froze even further. Yor bit her lip to still her trembling. Should her voice betray her terror, life in the court would be over.

“I apologise, Mistress.”

Still steady, there was pride in that.

“You will not be punished. Circumstances move outside of your awareness. Whether you succeed or not, the boy will be bound to me in other ways. For now, that is enough.”

“I hear and understand you, Mistress.”

“For now, you will continue to observe. Events are coming to a head on that side, and I expect that the fates will not be kind to the boy. Shield him from what you must, but only at the last. Tempered steel is far more valuable, after all.”

“It will be as you wish.”