Book of The Dead

Tyron should have spent the rest of the week grinding and polishing his enchanting skills, brushing up on his knowledge of conduits and ensuring he was in peak condition to work with Ammos Greyling. Ties to the noble houses were worth a great deal to him in ways that had nothing to do with finances.

Access to the corridors of power, a chance to interact with the Magisters, to plant seeds and extract information.

He was in no position to take advantage of anything he may learn right now, but later… later, he may well be capable of anything.

Instead, he had inevitably been drawn to his experiments, no matter how he had tried to resist.

“Fascinating,” he breathed as he continued to examine the contaminated silver-lining around one particular skeleton.

The discovery that some remains transmitted more death magick than others had been made with his first batch of dead, but already that kernel of new knowledge had been expanded. The variation between the skeletons on the cold stone slabs in the study was as much as twenty percent, but one particular set of remains was an outlier of extreme proportions.

Laid carefully around the skeleton, the strip of silver was charred black on both sides, a residual sign of the death aligned energy that had passed from this skeleton to those on either side. In fact, the silver was so degraded, the circuit no longer functioned!

For whatever reason, this one set of bones generated and transferred death energy at a rate ten times higher than his current working average.

“What could the reason be? Class? Working conditions? Something to do with the remains specifically?”

He had begged for more information about the corpses he was given, and Filetta had been able to provide him with… a little. It was better than nothing, but not by much. Likely the providers of his materials were unwilling to provide anything that might lead him to track down their sources, either because he could incriminate them, or make a deal directly with wherever they looted these corpses.

No matter the cause, this particular skeleton was valuable, and he intended to keep it.

He would need to separate the bones when he stored them to ensure they didn’t form a wild undead, something that was inevitable given the amount of energy accumulated within the remains. In fact, because of this one skeleton, all of the remains were approaching saturation far faster than they should.

It was a snowball effect. The skeletons beside this one received more energy, which meant they made more energy, and then passed it to those alongside them, and so on. The bones furthest from his outlier were the least saturated, but they were still well ahead of schedule.

“Perhaps some remains simply have an affinity for death energy,” he muttered to himself. “A predilection, and perhaps it isn’t determined by how they lived, or even how they died, but simply an… inborn trait?”

A theory, one he didn’t have evidence for. Tyron sighed and put his notes down. He had so many questions about the fundamental nature of Necromancy, and almost no answers. Someone, somewhere, had surely solved these riddles already, but he had no knowledge of them, and no capacity to ask around.

Once more, his thoughts turned to Arhinan the Black, reviled and feared Necromancer who had amassed an entire army of undead servants and led them against the empire. If some repository of that man’s knowledge still existed….

It was a pipe dream. If it existed at all, if he could locate it, if he could access it and if the work survived in any condition to remain useful, only then could he possibly learn something. Far too many “if’s”.

Were he to devote his energy to such an investigation, he would probably waste so much time his own research would have yielded results by the time he discovered anything.

It was frustrating, and slow, but pursuing his own avenues of inquiry was the best way. He had time on his side, years if need be, to master his craft.

There wasn’t much time until he was needed at the Greyling estate, however.

“Ah, shit!” he cursed when he realised just how little time was remaining.

He rushed to seal away his precious specimen in four separate containers, ensuring it couldn’t rise on its own before he ran upstairs, changed clothes and washed himself. After he fumbled and cursed with a second set of those accursed robes Yor had leant him, he managed to somewhat arrange them properly before he rushed out of the store and signalled a carriage to take him into the city.

In the privacy of the coach, he reinforced his glamour and took another of the vampire-made blood pills, grimacing as the substance within raced like fire through his veins.

An incredible creation, only possible through their mastery of blood, to manipulate whatever magick was contained within.

A mandatory status check was performed at the gate to the noble quarter, and again before he was allowed access to the Greyling estate.

Just as ostentatious and obscene as what he had seen at the ball, the Greylings had clearly spared no expense in the construction of their familial abode. Yet it wasn’t into any of the towering structures that Tyron was directed, instead his coach pulled up towards the rear of the estate, outside a much more humble, though still well-built, workshop pushed up against the rear boundary wall.

The sound of hammers ringing on steel, the smell of forge-fire and the tang of alchemical compounds filled the air.

Ammos said he had been working on ‘a little something’.

The man himself, along with four guards and an immaculately presented maidservant stood waiting for Tyron to alight from his coach, and he did so with what grace he could whilst battling his damnable robes.

“Master Almsfield,” the noble scion smiled and spread his hands wide, “welcome to the Greyling estate. Thank you for taking up my invitation.”

As decorum demanded, Tyron bowed at the waist before replying.

“I have to admit, Lord Greyling, I am most curious to see what you’ve been working on in this facility.”

“Nothing so grand as what you are imagining,” the young man chuckled, “most of the workers inside are busy with projects for the family, maintaining the equipment our guards use, that sort of thing. No, my little project is being worked on in that room there.”

He indicated a door on the far end of the workshop and indicated for Tyron to follow. They walked together, along with the entourage of guards as Ammos expounded upon his project.

“This is a little something I commissioned to celebrate reaching level forty, a suit of armour. The best of the best materials were used to forge it right here in the family workshop,” he declared proudly, then smiled a little wryly, “but when it comes to the quality of our Arcanists… we can’t quite match up, so naturally, I had to bring in some outside help.”

He pushed open the door and gestured for Tyron to step inside. Within the room, he found a short, rail-thin woman dressed in a loose-fitting shirt and pants scowling at him.

“This is bullshit, Ammos,” she growled.

The Necromancer froze for a moment before he put two and two together. He stepped forward and extended a hand.

“Master Halfshard, an honour to meet you.”

The diminutive Arcanist flicked her eyes up and down his manifold robes before dismissing him with a contemptuous wave of a hand, returning her gaze to the lord.

“You paid me to come and do the work, so I’ve been here working, for a fucking week. Now you want this… barely qualified upstart to check my work? I should throw down my tools and walk out this instant!”

“Now, now, esteemed Master. Nobody is here to check your work, that would be ridiculous! I simply thought this would be a wonderful opportunity for Master Willhem’s two most favoured apprentices to collaborate! You have final say on any decisions, of course.”

“I have final say? Fine. Get rid of him.”

She pointed at Tyron without looking at him. A stunningly rude gesture, yet he found it almost refreshing compared to the flowery phrases and circular discussions of the nobles.

“The man gets what he pays for,” he shrugged. “I’ll take a look and see if I have anything to offer. If not, I’ll leave without saying a word. That should satisfy your pride and your client, right?”

Master Halfshard turned a baleful glare on him for daring to speak, but he brushed past her and into the workshop, already inspecting the armour laid out in pieces on the table. Not unlike a skeleton, he noted.

“I’ll leave you two to get acquainted,” Ammos Greyling stated before he ducked out the door and closed it behind him. A tactical retreat, given he likely expected Halfshard to explode.

Tyron found a glass lying on a bench and picked it up before holding it before his eyes as he leaned down to inspect the armour. Incredibly fine, delicate sigils had been engraved on every piece. Each arcane circle would provide a different magickal effect, powered by the cores which were yet to be set in place.

Before his senior apprentice blew up at him, he cut her off.

“Obviously, you’re better than me,” he said as he continued to pour over the engravings. “You have Arcanist as a main Class, for starters, and you’ve been working for what, fifteen years longer than me? There’s no chance I’m better at enchanting than you.”

“Then why don’t you fuck off?”

“Because Lord Greyling is paying me to look at the conduit work on this suit of armour.”

Annita Halfshard paused for the first time, frowning.

“The conduits?”

“Exactly.”

Satisfied with the shinguard he’d been looking at, he moved to the twin piece for the other leg.

“Since I can never be as good as you or Master Willhem, level capped as I am, I chose to focus on certain aspects of enchanting, namely conduits and arrays. In this one area, our Master declared I was his equal.”

She snorted.

“Bullshit.”

“I’m inclined to agree, but when it comes to this one aspect of enchanting, I’m very good. Better than you, in fact.”

“What?” Annita squawked, outraged.

“Right here, see this? Your sigils aren’t aligned properly, this network is leaking three percent.”

“Bullshit!”

Despite her protestation, the esteemed Master snatched the glass from his hand and leaned down to inspect it herself. After a minute of careful examination and muttering, she threw the implement down.

“There’s nothing wrong with it, you charlatan!” she declared.

“Do you have a shifter? I’ll prove it to you here and now.”

“Like hell you will,” she growled, but nevertheless pointed him to the right side of the room where the implement he was looking for rested on the side table.

Tyron moved with confidence to the table and began to arrange sigils on the shifter. A handy piece of equipment, it let an Arcanist carve sigils into the surface and then power the array using a spare core. Since the slate was regenerative, one could carve in the surface over and over again. Was it as good as attempting to enchant a core directly? No, but as a teaching tool, or for demonstration and experimentation, it had its uses.

“Luckily, I don’t need to copy your enchantment runes,” he remarked as he worked, “because I have no idea how any of that works.”

Master Halfshard snorted.

“But the components you’ve used to form your networks are off. Look here, this is how you’ve done it.”

He took a step back and allowed his senior apprentice to inspect the slate, which she did, carefully. Then she compared it to her own work on the armour to ensure he’d copied it accurately.

“Now let’s power this circuit.”

He placed a nearby core into the shifter, completing the rune network and lighting it with magickal energy. The two of them could both sense the arcane power running through it clearly.

“If I rearrange the sigils like so,” he made some minute adjustments and powered it again.

The difference was slight, but it was there, as he knew it would be. Annita could feel it too.

The diminutive woman chewed her lip as she stared down at the network on the shifter.

“Well, fuck,” she said.

She turned to look at the armour splayed across the table, a look of irritation on her face.

“I’m going to have to adjust every network on the entire sodding suit?”

“Of course not,” Tyron said, “I’ll do that. You finish working on the big ticket items. As I said, I have absolutely no clue how most of that is working.”

He wasn’t lying. Hugely expensive enchantments to reinforce armour, project shields, add resistance to the elements and all the other insanely complex things going on inside this one armoured suit were way, way out of his wheelhouse.

The fact that Annita had been able to pack so many dense networks onto each and every piece of armour, and have them not interfere with each other, was almost miraculous. Without a doubt, she was the best Arcanist he had ever seen, with the possible exception of Willhem himself.

“Are you handy with a pliance? I don’t want you ruining any of my work.”

“Handy enough to satisfy our Master.”

“Good enough.”

Without any further discussion, the two grabbed separate sections of armour and moved to the workbenches. With a pliance in hand and a glass positioned in front of his face, Tyron set to work.