Book of The Dead

“Is that smoke?” Tyron squinted into the distance.

The early morning light seemed thin in the foothills, the fog that rolled off the mountains lasted until the sun was high overhead on cold days. Even so, the dirty streak that stained the sky seemed to trace its origin down to a point on the ground.

“I don’t fucking know, you fuck! Why do you insist on saying this shit out loud?”

“Shut up, Dove,” the Necromancer muttered absently as he continued to examine the sky.

The more he looked, the more the sense of disquiet in his chest grew. It was smoke, he was sure of it now. Perhaps a remote village was burning off rubbish? Or a hearthfire had gotten out of control?

Both scenarios were unlikely.

“We’ll go check it out,” he decided. “Someone might need help.”

Here on the edge of the empire, assistance was hard to come by, speaking mildly. Settlements were far apart, with almost nothing in between.

“You can’t be serious,” the skull exclaimed. When Tyron didn’t reply, preoccupied issuing mental commands to his minions, Dove continued. “You are serious. Fucking hero complex is going to get your balls lopped off, kid, and yours are massive, the blood loss will be insane. Probably make you more mobile, though. You could lose the wheelbarrow.”

“If a village is under attack all the way out here, the Slayers and marshals aren’t going to see it,” he defended his decision. “We’re probably the only ones who see the smoke, so we should go and help.”

“You see the smoke, I don’t see shit,” the skull refuted from his position on a corner post. “By the by, aren’t you supposed to be fleeing south in order to avoid getting your face murdered off by angry Slayers? If one of them does turn up to this little emergency, you’re completely fucked. You get that, right?”

There was merit to what his friend and mentor had to say. Even so….

“Everything I’ve done has been to grow strong enough to help others. What will have been the point of any of it if I don’t help defend these people? I haven’t mutilated and murdered my way through the Western Province for my own personal gratification!”

By the end, Tyron’s voice had grown quite heated, eyes filled with anger bore down on Dove, who held his ethereal tongue. He disagreed with the young Mage, but felt it would be wiser not to argue. A part of Tyron wanted to help others, to be sure. Dove knew he was a good kid at heart, but another part of him, a larger part, refused to accept life as an ordinary person. He would blaze a trail as his parents had, or die trying.

Eyes focused on the smoke in the distance, Tyron wordlessly directed his skeletons, ghosts and revenants over the terrain. Even with eight of his minions now hooked to the cart, traversing the uneven ground was still painfully slow.

The procession was a more impressive, or fearsome, sight than it had been before. A full forty skeletons were arrayed around it now, along with his four revenants, still burning with their inner fire. Less visible were the ghosts, who still drifted silently in a loose formation around the cart over a hundred metres out. They were a poor early warning system, but they were all he had.

It took over an hour for them to cover the distance, the smoke growing thicker in the air as they drew closer. Tyron’s heart clenched over the journey, worried that whatever had caused the blaze would have been over and done with by the time he arrived.

Shouts, screams and inhuman chittering of the rift-kin could be heard drifting through the air before he laid eyes on the village itself.

“They’re under attack!” he yelled, throwing himself off the side of the cart and scrabbling for his sword.

“Isn’t that what you thought was happening?” Dove yawned.

Ignoring his advisor, he urged his minions to drop the wagon, eliciting a squawk from the skull as he rattled on his perch.

“Careful, you bony fuckheads!”

Ordering the eight cart pullers to protect the supplies, Tyron rushed forward with the others. He demanded more speed from his minions, and they responded, drawing deeper on his magick to fuel their unliving forms.

Extra energy flowing from him to almost forty undead was an unpleasant sensation, to say the least. Fortunately, he’d advanced to the point he could sustain it, though not for long.

When the village finally came into sight, Tyron sucked in a breath. Crude barricades caught his eye, placed between buildings to create a defensive wall. One of them was burning, the flames having spread to the adjacent home, causing a plume of greasy black smoke to billow into the air.

Rift-kin raged, kept at bay by the simple barrier and the spears of determined villagers. The insect-like kin slashed and stabbed, trying to climb over again and again, only to be forced back, but they drew blood each time they charged.

This fight had been going on for a long time already. Heavy wounds and casualties could be seen on both sides. One side would soon break, and it wouldn’t be the kin. Monsters didn’t break. They won, or they died.

Tyron urged his minions to even greater speed, only remembering at the last minute that he was no longer without any ranged options. Belatedly, he instructed his small contingent of archers to begin firing. He had the spine wielding skeletons move to the right flank, opening up a straight shot rather than have them shoot high arcing arrows over his head.

The bone arrows weren’t the finest make. They weren’t perfectly straight, or balanced as well they should be. The hardened tips were no substitute for a proper steel arrowhead either, at least, not at his skill level, but still they did damage.

As the arrows began to fall, his archers firing as quickly as they could, the kin noticed almost immediately. Some shots bounced off the carapace and hardened shells of the monsters, but others penetrated, finding the right angle to puncture, or slipping through gaps in the armour.

There were almost a hundred of the creatures still alive, but most were smaller, more minor variants. What worried him were the handful of more threatening kin, the size of ponies, who stalked amongst their weaker brethren.

The crazed monsters at the rear of the crowd turned and hissed as one, a rattling, alien sound that filled the ear and drilled deep into Tyron’s ears. Then they charged.

His skeletons formed up in neat ranks at a thought. Three deep and ten wide, his phalanx of silent, eerie warriors stepped forward in unnatural unison. Tyron knew his place and his role, as a Necromancer. He placed himself in the back, with his four revenants positioned nearby for protection. The ghosts he allowed to range forward. Whatever disruption they could cause with their freezing effect amongst the kin would be useful.

Before battle was joined, his hands were already raised, words of power puncturing the air.

Death Blades.

The dark blessing ignited along the motley weapons his skeletons bore, covering the blades in dark magick. The Mage grunted as he felt his reserves dip. More minions meant more expenditure if he wanted them all to benefit from the spell. His need for Arcane energy remained as bottomless as ever.

Armed with their necrotic weapons, his skeletons were an intimidating sight. They stepped as a unit, fearless in the face of the monsters from beyond the rift.

As the two sides met, fangs and blades slashed and clanged as the kin drove themselves into his formation. The skeletons held as best they could, but they simply lacked mass, and were forced to drain yet more energy to hold their ground.

His minions were surprisingly fast when they wanted to be, and moved with a lightness that belied their dreadful appearance. Made from only bones and magick, they weighed little. Even the toughened and hardened bones of those with high constitution weighed significantly less than an average person.

Despite the buckling of their line, the skeletal soldiers made not a sound, their weapons rising and falling methodically as they hacked, slashed and stabbed at the creatures within their reach.

The archers advanced, firing at any kin that tried to wrap around the right flank. His skeletal bows could pack quite a bit of power as it turned out, at least at these short distances. Smaller kin were skewered as they undulated across the ground.

“Hold the line!” Tyron bellowed as he tried to track the battle in his mind. So many things were happening at once, it was difficult to see it all at any one moment.

He had to be careful. Something might try and rush his archers, in which case he would need to pull them back. Or a kin could swing around and attack him, in which case he needed to activate his revenants.

A stab of pain drove straight into his mind, causing him to flinch and slap a hand to his head.

Where did that come from?! He wondered.

Was he under attack? For a terrifying moment, he spun on the spot, tyring to locate his attacker, only to find himself staring at the revenant to his left. Burning purple eyes stared back at him, wreathed from beneath by the flame that burned within its rib cage.

“You,” Tyron growled.

Trying to kill me now we are engaged in a dangerous battle? Perhaps this slayer is too dangerous to keep.

His fingers flexed as he prepared to bear down on the minion with his will, then he paused. Not ten metres away, the fighting raged as more kin turned from the barricade and attacked his undead. What he felt from the revenant hadn’t been a desire to kill him. At least not entirely.

You want to fight….

Whoever he had been, this slayer had known his purpose. Even in death, it burned in his soul. His duty had been to kill rift-kin, and so it remained.

“Go,” Tyron flicked his jaw toward the monsters, along with a mental command.

The pressure on his mind, which he hadn’t been fully aware of, eased immediately. A skeleton couldn’t display emotion, but perhaps there was a tiny hint of gratitude in the posture of his minion?

He likely imagined it.

His best servant would do its job well. Tyron should make sure he performed his. He raised his hands once more and snapped through the complex incantations, bringing down the Shivering Curse.

Unaffected, his skeletons continued their work, but the rift-kin struggled in the piercing cold. The diameter of the curse wasn’t enormous, only ten metres across, but it was enough to impact the majority of the fighting.

With those two spells cast, it was time for Tyron to turn to other, less impactful magicks.

Briefly, the Mage considered his options. He could throw magick bolts, but he didn’t have a good angle from his current position at the rear of the formation. The other option was to try to dominate the mind of a stronger rift-kin, but he wasn’t keen to freeze himself during an ongoing melee. He would have to turn to his new spell.

Once again, the words rolled from his tongue and his hands flicked through Arcane sigils, summoning and shaping the magick with proficient ease. This was far from an economical spell, its cost exceeded Dominate Mind by a factor of two, but the effect would hopefully be worth it.

When the spell completed, Tyron stretched out a hand toward the largest monster he could see. Despite knowing vaguely how it would function, he was still surprised by what he saw next.

Flecks of black magick swarmed like locusts through the air, taking on the shape of a grasping, clawed hand. Ignored by his skeletons, the flecks buzzed through and around the undead, forming, scattering and reforming with dizzying speed until they were upon the intended target.

Without thinking, he snapped his hand closed, and the claw mirrored his action. Formed from thousands of small shards made of Death Magick, the hand snapped shut around the monster, who immediately froze, then began to writhe and bellow.

The spell wouldn’t last forever, and Tyron was keen to see how long it took the kin to break free, but he had to continue to assist his minions in the fight.

Since he didn’t need to maintain the spell, he began to cast it again, dipping further into his rapidly vanishing reserves to form it once more.

When complete, he reached out and the same thing happened, the claw formed of black shards flew through the air and surrounded the kin, snapping shut around it when he clenched his fist.

That’s about as much as I can do.

What energy he still possessed would be required to fuel his skeletons. With the revenant now active in the fight, he wouldn’t be able to maintain even that minimal output for long. Pushing his skeletal form to its limits, the once-slayer now undead was fast and deadly, his sword flashing with far greater accuracy and force than the other skeletons. The comparison wasn’t correct in the first place, the difference between the average minion and the former slayer was like night and day.

Of course, that performance came at a cost.

Tyron stood impassively, directing his minions as best he could until the fighting was over. It ended suddenly, the final rift-kin screeching as it was impaled by a dispassionate skeleton, and then silence reigned on the field.

Almost surprised, Tyron looked about, and only then did he notice that no villagers had emerged to assist him in disposing of the attackers. It shouldn’t be surprising.

They probably think they jumped from the frying pan and landed in the fire.

Should he just walk away? Some supplies and a hot meal wouldn’t go astray….

With a shrug, he advanced toward the barricade, bringing his undead with him.