Book of The Dead

Gramble Tillis was running out of patience.

“You okay, boss?” his teammate Christoff asked him. “You’re looking… tense.”

The two were sat in the Split Granite, the newer of the two pubs in Cragwhistle. The tables were cleaner, the beer was… essentially the same watered down piss and the spirits were hard enough to scrape coal off a miner.

“What day is it, Christoff?” Gramble said, blinking into his cup.

“Hamarsday.”

“A drink to the God of Games!” Petri, the third team member slurred before he tossed back his drink and winced as it burned down his throat.

For a moment, Gramble looked as if he had something to say, then he shrugged and also emptied his cup. Christoff decided to join them.

“Anish! Another round for the table,” Gramble called, waving a hand vaguely over his head.

Soon after, a tan-skinned woman wandered over, a hand on her hip and a bottle gripped firmly in the other. She was smiling, yet her eyes were cautious as she approached.

“Have you boys not had enough yet? As my father, Dinesh, used to say, ‘a man must hold their water, not project it on their friend’.”

She pantomimed a sickly customer, staggering and leaning, hands flapping widely before vomiting hugely over the table. It was a skillful performance, the expression of revulsion on her face as she pretended to spit out the last of the sick was enough to turn Gramble’s stomach.

“Maybe just the one more round,” he muttered, a hand resting on his belly as if to discern its current level of integrity.

“Of course. You are here to drink, no?” Anish said as she leaned over and poured each of them a half-cup. “Although I am reluctant to speak of it, my mother, Shiswa, would curse me from the heavens if I left the table without asking you to settle your bill. An unbelievable miser, my mother. She would have shaved rats to weave our clothes if she hadn’t feared disease.”

After a moment of owlish blinking, Gramble figured out what she was saying and fumbled in his pocket until he felt some coins clinking together. He withdrew his fist, squinted at the currency until he figured out which coin was which, and passed a few over.

“I believe that will cover the tab,” he said, with some dignity.

“It will,” Anish replied, whisking away from the table so quickly Gramble looked back to his palm, wondering if he’d confused copper with gold.

Not that he had much gold. Not at the moment.

“Stupid Necromancer,” he grumbled and his two teammates whipped around and shushed him.

“Not in town,” Christoff hissed. “These people are crazy. They’ll beat us over the head with clubs if we disparage that prick.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Gramble groaned as he leaned back in his chair, eyes wandering up to the wooden slats in the ceiling above. “Stupid Necromantic prick,” he said.

“I think we should get out of here,” Christoff said rising from his seat.

Gramble stared at him vacantly for a second, then the light of understanding dawned in his eyes.

“Oh! Sorry.”

“It’s fine, let’s just get back to the barracks. I’ve got some wine from home left over in my room. If we want to keep drinking, we can finish that off.”

“Wine? You’ve still got some wine? That’s a hell of a lot better than this swill,” Gramble declared, perhaps a little too loudly.

Christoff managed to ignore the flinty stares he was getting from the other patrons of the pub long enough to gather up his two teammates and get them swaying back toward the barracks.

The next morning, as Gramble emerged from his room, his tongue as dry as the southern sands and head pounding like an anvil at harvest time, he found Samantha, of all people, reading in the common area. Under normal circumstances he felt like he got along fairly well with his fellow team leader. Better than he and Trenan did, anyway. However, he’d soured on all of the slayers on this gods forsaken mountain since that Necromancer had arrived. If any of them had courage, they’d have worked together to kill the bastard the day he’d arrived.

Doing his best to preserve his image, he straightened and walked straight for the water cask. With great focus, he gathered a cup, turned the spigot and watched as it filled. A moment before he could raise it to his lips and take a sip, a voice spoke out from behind him.

“A little worse for wear this morning?” Samantha asked with wry humour.

Gramble’s hands tremoured at the interruption, but he felt a surge of triumph that he didn’t spill. He savoured the victory, he took a long slow mouthful of water before he turned around and opened his mouth to speak.

“Holy shit, your eyes are red. How much did you drink last night?”

If he was honest, far too much.

“A bit,” he admitted, voice a touch on the raw side.

“Right,” she said, as she closed her book with a snap.

Samantha was older than the other slayers on the mountain. The only one who wasn’t fresh out of academy. A higher level, though not yet a silver, she was most definitely the strongest of them also. He suspected she’d been in a team before becoming the leader of Starfire. What happened to that previous group, he couldn’t guess.

“The walls here aren’t all that thin, Gramble.”

“What?” the sentence didn’t seem to make sense to his still underpowered mind.

“The walls. They’re thin.”

He looked at the exterior wall, which was formed out of thick cut stone. A moment later, it dawned on him. The walls between rooms were a lot thinner.

He groaned.

“What did I say?” he said, walking slowly forward and sinking into a chair.

“You spent almost the entire night pissing and moaning about Tyron.”

“Who?”

“The Necromancer,” she rolled her eyes.

No way was Gramble going to accept that… person was the son of Battle Mage Beory. Even the mention of it was enough to stoke his irritation.

“So? I can complain all I want here in the barracks, since the townsfolk have all decided to go insane,” he grumped, folding his arms across his chest. “Or have you gone off the deep end with them? You actually believe that’s his real name?”

She hesitated, and in that moment, he knew she was lost.

“I might,” she finally hedged. “He had a lot to say that was very convincing. Certainly, it doesn’t seem to benefit him to lie.”

Anger bubbled up in the mage’s chest.

“And you believe him about the Steelarms as well? That Magnin and Beory just killed themselves so their child could live? That they were tortured by the Magisters for refusing to kill their own kid?”

Samantha held his gaze coolly.

“It appears you don’t,” she said.

“Of course I don’t! I’m not an idiot!”

Rather than be offended, she simply raised a brow.

“You really believe the magisters wouldn’t do something like that?” she said, slightly incredulous.

“Absolutely they would. Just not to them.”

“You think the magisters cared about the Steelarms? Really?”

“Magnin and Beory were heroes, and probably far too strong for the brand to have any effect on them anyway. We’re talking about the two strongest slayers in the entire western province. They were above gold rank, for goodness’ sake. The last line of defence on the frontier, they prevented disaster how many times? We’re meant to believe they were thrown away like that?” he scoffed, then flinched at a spike of pain in his head.

She listened to his rant with an expression almost like pity coming over her face.

“Yes,” she said simply. “They absolutely would do that. There’s nothing they won’t throw away to maintain control, and you’re lucky to have not been put in a position where you’ve been made to understand that.”

Suddenly angry, she stood, glaring down at him.

“You’re the only team leader who hasn’t gone up there and spoken to him. Do that, at least, if you can muster the courage. Rather than stewing in ignorance, you may as well go and see for yourself.”

“I don’t need to meet a madman to know he’s mad,” Gramble sneered, waving her away. “Everything he’s said is all the proof I’ll ever need.”

Samantha leaned forward and flicked him, right between the eyes, and the mage’s headache exploded as if a fireball had gone off inside his skull. He lunged back in his chair, clutching at his head.

“Oh, you… bitch,” he groaned.

“Go up there, coward.”

He heard her leave, each step in rhythm with the pounding pain behind his eyes. When it finally began to subside, he opened his eyes and found himself alone inside the common area.

“I’m not a coward,” he muttered to himself. “I’m just the only sensible person on this preposterous mountain.”

Six hours later, he found himself climbing the steep path toward the rift.

How dare she call me a coward. I’ve been battling kin on this mountain just as much as she has. More even. I was here first!

Wrapped in his warmest robe, with a tight woollen hat pulled over his head and a scarf coiled around his neck, Gramble was as warm as he could be. A cold breeze blew down the slope, carrying the promise of ice and frostbite. He shivered and tucked his hands further up his sleeves.

It was difficult to cast magick with gloves on. In fact, Gramble found it impossible to cast magick with gloves on. The weight and range of movement felt completely off whenever he tried it. When even a miniscule shift in angle or position could throw a sigil off, wearing gloves was the same as strapping an anvil to each digit. They simply wouldn’t move properly.

Which meant, if he wanted to be able to cast magick, he had to keep his hands nimble. That meant, no gloves when trekking up the frigid mountain.

He hated this place.

Not for the first time, he wondered why he was even here. His pride wasn’t so tender that being called a coward was enough for him to foolishly stick his neck out. So why? Perhaps it was the ridiculous persistence of Samantha and others on believing that this madman was who he said he was. Gramble wasn’t sure how he was supposed to disprove it. The Necromancer could say he was the ghost of Tel’anan if he felt like it, what sort of proof could anyone offer to the contrary?

Picking a fight with the Necromancer certainly wasn’t on the agenda. There were some battles that simply weren’t worth losing. No, if there was to be a fight, then Gramble would much rather have the advantage of numbers on his side.

Perhaps he simply needed to prove it to himself. He would meet this imposter, go back down the mountain, and tell Samantha to her face she was wrong. That was all there was to it.

The fact that so many slayers and villagers had come up and made it back down alive certainly didn’t hurt his confidence either.

Step by step, he continued to climb the slope, making sure he didn’t slip on the rocks or frosted ground. Every now and again, he reached out to grasp a tree or take hold of a branch, using the ice-tinged timber to pull himself forward. Thunder rumbled in the distance, indicating a brewing storm higher up. He cursed. If he was caught in the rain, it would be hell getting back down the mountain.

Perhaps it would have been a better idea to wait until he was in better condition before charging up the mountain. Now that he was already here, he felt he was committed.

At the minimum, he should have brought the rest of his team along with him….

Feeling somewhat exposed, Gramble grit his teeth and powered onward, shivering inside his cloak. Eventually, he came across what he had been expecting to see. A line of five skeletons stood astride the path, unmoving and indifferent to the wind. Seeing the bones standing upright, weapons gripped tight in their skeletal fingers, sent a shiver running down his spine, totally independent of the temperature.

Eyes glowing with an unnatural purple light, the undead beheld him as Gramble nervously pulled himself up.

“I’m here to speak to your master,” he said, somewhat pompously.

They didn’t react. In fact, they didn’t move, not even a twitch. Unsure what to do, Gramble waited for some sort of response. He glanced between the skeletons, huddled with his arms wrapped around himself, growing increasingly impatient.

Supposedly, the Necromancer was able to see through the eyes of his minions, so what was the hold up? Was he being ignored? Before his ire could rise too high, he considered that there may be other possibilities. Perhaps the Necromancer was otherwise occupied. Or… weakened?

For a moment, Gramble considered his options, before he walked sidewise off the path. When he’d picked his way across the slope around ten metres, he turned back and saw there had been no reaction from the skeletons. They stood as before, staring straight down the path, unmoving.

Clearly, their creator was distracted. Moving cautiously, he began to ascend up the mountain, joining back up to the path once he passed the skeletal watchers. With renewed vigour, he began to ascend once more, eager to see what was happening further up. He wondered what might be happening to keep this illegal mage so occupied.

Once he felt he was close to where the Necromancer’s camp must be, he began to move quietly. If he was able to arrive unnoticed, he’d have a chance to assess what he saw before taking a course of action. After all, who knew what he might find? If the mage was engaged in a ritual, distracted, unable to utilise his magick in his own defence…

For a brief moment, Gramble allowed himself to imagine it. A moment of triumph, returning to the town a conquering hero, laughing in the faces of the people who’d spurned him after slaying their hero. Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy. He hadn’t graduated and fought as a slayer without gaining a healthy sense of self preservation. The fact he was even here, alone, on the mountain, was out of character.

If he hadn’t been provoked…

Not for the first time, he cursed Samantha in his mind. Still ranting about the cold-faced slayer in his mind, he stumbled past a tree and into a clearing.

The Necromancer stood in the centre of his ritual circle side-on to Gramble’s position, power blazing around him. Gramble’s eyes boggled as he saw the mage snapping out sigils with unbelievable speed and precision. When he opened his mouth and spoke, each syllable was like thunder, cracking into the air with incredible force.

This was the storm he’d heard? It wasn’t lightning, it was this man casting magick!

By the side of the Necromancer, a pitch black skeleton stood, looking on. Gramble had heard of this one, a freakish, foul-mouthed undead. Whoever’s soul was stuck inside it, it sounded like he’d earned his fate.

Almost against his will, Gramble felt his eyes drawn back to the Necromancer as he continued to enact his ritual. The movement, the flow of power, the flawless pronunciation. Everything was textbook, an extreme display of precision that put even his own instructors to shame.

It was… beautiful.

He shook his head. The Necromancer was vulnerable, just as he had hoped! No matter how excellent a mage he was, there was nothing he could do to defend himself in the middle of casting a ritual!

Gramble raised his hands and began to form his magick, a fireball, with as much power as he could pack into it. The moment it was prepared, a burning, roiling sphere of power in his hand, he flung it forward with a roar of triumph.

So what if he was silver rank? No mage could survive a direct hit from a spell like this!

What happened next, defied belief. No matter how many times he replayed the sequence of events in the future, he refused to accept it was real.

Without pausing the flow of words from his mouth, the Necromancer separated his hands and began to cast independently. The right hand picked up the slack, flicking out abbreviated ‘half’ sigils at double speed, while the other flicked out a series in less than a second.

Gramble’s fireball hadn’t covered half the ground between them before it was pierced through the middle by a bolt of pure darkness, unbalancing the magick and causing it to detonate early. Gramble fell back as a wave of heat washed over him, mind frozen in shock. It wasn’t… it wasn’t possible!

That simply… it wasn’t human.

“You piece of fucking shiiiiiit!”

It was the black skeleton, screeching at the top of its voice as it sprinted towards him. It pulled back a fist, then struck down, and Gramble knew no more.

Outside the gates of Cragwhistle, Trenan could only sigh as he looked down at what the skeletons had left behind. When the villagers had called, he hadn’t wanted to believe it, but here he was.

In front of him, staring up with tears in his eyes, Gramble lay, tied up with a series of elaborate knots, including one through his mouth, preventing him from speaking.

“Errrnph!!” he grunted.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get you out.”

Attached to the chest of the slayer, held in place with one strand of rope, was a bit of paper. Leaning down, Trenan pulled it loose, and read it, feeling a little confused. He looked down at Gramble.

“You are a fucking lucky idiot,” he said, turning the note around and showing it to the trussed up slayer.

I’m busy, was all it said.