Book of The Dead

“Is your man going to make it?”

Rell stiffened and Banner glared at him sourly.

“If I said he wasn’t, what would you say?”

Tyron shrugged.

“Waste not, want not. I wouldn’t take his spirit or anything, but the remains would be useless to everyone except me, right?”

The scout looked as though he wanted to get angry, but was simply too exhausted. Ultimately, he settled on a disgruntled “fuck” and spat to the side.

“I suppose I can’t judge a Necromancer the same way I would anyone else. Sylan is going to make it, probably.”

Considering how he’d been wounded, it was a minor miracle and a testament to just how durable a slayer could become as they gained levels. When he’d seen the man skewered straight through the gut, he was sure he was finished.

“He’s a lucky man,” Tyron observed. “I wish him all the best with his recovery.”

Banner turned away from the remains of the rift-killer to stare towards the rift itself, not that far distant.“We’ll have to take him through for healing as soon as we can. Are you able to hold things here for a little while?”

Tyron gestured toward the skeletons still hard at work digging into the remains of the giant kin. Forget about butchering, it looked more like mining. They’d dug so deep into the monster with their blades, cutting away huge chunks of flesh, it looked more like they were tunnelling than anything else.

“I won’t be going anywhere until I secure the core, so I may as well hold this side of the rift for you as well.”

It had been a difficult battle, with several members of Burning Blade suffering wounds, though only one was dire. The longer the fight had drawn out, the more unstable the kin had become, almost pulling itself apart in its frantic thrashing.

This was the weakness of such massive kin, apparently. They couldn’t properly hold up under their own immense strength for long periods of time. Eventually, the slayers had worn it down, driven it to desperation, and it had begun to injure itself faster than they could with their blades.

It wasn’t pretty, but it was a reliable method for silver slayers to take on something they probably shouldn’t.

In its panic and desperation, the monster had gone into a frenzy, moving faster and more recklessly. At that point, it had managed to knock down one slayer, turn to face him and then skewer him with its forward-facing prongs.

His armour had crumpled like paper, the spike punching straight through it, and his body, coming clean out the other side.

Rell stepped forward and extended his hand, which Tyron took.

“Thanks for helping the team,” the young man said. “We might not have been able to make it if not for you.”

“Have a good rest at Woodsedge, and get back into the field. You’ve got a lot of levelling to do.”

Of course, he wasn’t referring to his slayer skills, which Rell immediately picked up on, and nodded.

“I won’t forget,” he said, reluctance clear on his face, but he wouldn’t go back on his word.

Team Burning Blade departed a few minutes later, waving their goodbyes and moving warily toward the rift. Tyron held up his end of the bargain, spreading his undead wide to cover their approach while a small group of undead continued to hunt for the core.

It took two hours to finally find it, buried deep in the centre of the creature. His undead were covered in gore and absolutely reeked, emerging from inside the kin like some sort of horrific undead-birth, one carrying a gem gripped tight in both its skeletal hands.

When he saw it, Tyron was taken aback. The core itself was massive, almost the size of his head, but it was also surprisingly well formed. With great care, he turned it over in his hands, inspecting it from all angles. It would need to be properly cleaned before he could ascertain its true value, but he may have just gotten extremely lucky.

Not wanting to be drawn in while still exposed in the open air, Tyron carefully stowed the gem in his pack and began to organise his undead. It took hours to fight his way back to camp, hounded by kin every step of the way. It was difficult, and he lost more skeletons in the battle. By the time he finally managed to safely cross his wards, he left a pile of almost two dozen dead kin at the entrance to the ravine.

“Fucking fuck,” he cursed, collapsing outside his tent.

Doing everything himself was proving to be immensely draining. With a swift gesture, he allowed his bone armour to detach from his clothing. The hardened and reinforced plates of bone fell to the ground before being collected by a nearby skeleton and placed in storage.

Seated on the ground, Tyron reached a hand for his pack, pulling out some food and his canteen. As he ate and drank, he turned his mind to the events of the day. Fighting so many kin, holding his own in the rift, without support things had gone as well as expected. The fight against the rift-killer had been unexpected, but not unwelcome, as things had gone. The fight had given him valuable experience, a rare core, and greater insight into what he was lacking.

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The larger his horde grew, the more attention Tyron needed to spend managing his individual skeletons. He’d made many modifications to their simple, artificial consciousness, and his minions were leagues ahead of what the generic Raise Dead ritual would produce in terms of the actions they would take, but it still wasn’t enough.

No matter how well he polished their responses, they lacked the critical thinking skills only a fully developed consciousness possessed. Creating something with that level of complexity from scratch… was probably impossible, even for him.

Oh, with years of research, he could probably get somewhere close, but didn’t have time for that. Things were rapidly coming to a head, and he needed to progress in so many areas. Conducting all of this research from scratch was simply taking too much time, he couldn’t hope to advance in every area, developing entirely new branches of magick on the fly, and grow fast enough to take part in the coming conflict.

That meant… it was time to start taking some shortcuts.

After all, there was no need to create a human consciousness from scratch when he could take ready-made souls. All he needed to do was give that soul the ability to command his skeletons the same way he did, then he could create his own ready-made skeleton commanders.

Of course, the method to performing that particular trick would have to be spun from whole cloth, just like everything else he’d had to do. Then there was the question of wights. The next step in skeleton evolution, so to speak, even stronger than a revenant, capable of more.

He refused to sit and wait until the Unseen saw fit to give him access to the method. He would seek it out himself, and create something even greater than what it was willing to give.

The longer the project was delayed, the more he could feel the burning hunger inside him grow. His mind and spirit craved that moment of breakthrough, that instant in which he felt the magick fall into place all around him and the Unseen itself was forced to bow.

In the back of his mind, he had been teasing at the problem for weeks, but there was still a long way to go.

His simple meal completed, Tyron looked to the left and right. It was dark here, within the ravine. The sun was weak overhead, obscured by near-permanent clouds, but here, with tall ridges looming on both sides, it was almost like a perpetual nighttime. To his left stood the majority of his skeletons, defending the entrance through which the kin entered.

Their reserves of magick had nearly been exhausted by the time they’d managed to return, but now they would be recharging, absorbing ambient energy and converting it into the death-aligned magick they needed. The proximity of so many undead only accelerated the recovery as they passed Death Magick between each other. The cauldrons had also been expended in the fighting. They too would need time to recharge before the well of power stored within had been fully restored.

Perhaps in a day, everything would be back to full capacity.

In the meantime…

Tyron stood and tried to shake off his lethargy. He wasn’t that physically tired, and his mental fatigue hadn’t nearly approached his limit. Considering he was here beyond the rift, he may as well get to work. Even if he couldn’t fight, this was a valuable opportunity. There were no distractions here to take away his focus. No students, or priestesses, or vampires, or gods, or abyssals, or even store attendants to distract him from his work.

The more he pondered it, the more he realised what a rare opportunity this was. The magick was so thick here he could practically taste it, howling down the middle of the ravine in a silent and invisible torrent. What might he be able to learn working in such an environment?

Suddenly he felt rejuvenated, a tingling excitement building in the back of his head. He eagerly shook his hands out, as if preparing to cast a spell, but having no idea what it was going to be.

Slow down. Focus.

That’s right. It wouldn’t do to waste such an opportunity. This moment had great potential, potential that would be wasted if he didn’t go about things in a logical manner.

The first thing…

Tyron returned to his leather travel satchel and withdrew the core he’d retrieved. It rested heavily in the palm of his hand, glittering with a dark light that seemed to be reflected from deep within.

With a little water and a cloth, he was able to remove most of the grime and take a good look at it.

Cores came in many grades, each considering two factors: the size, and shape of the core. Generally speaking, the larger the better, though density could also play a factor. Some cores were more concentrated than others, which meant more power with a smaller physical size, a very desirable trait.

This core probably wasn’t that dense, but on size alone, it would channel a great deal of power. These were the kinds of cores Master Willhem would pay bags of gold to possess. Due to their unwieldy size, such things were generally used in large-scale enchantments that remained in place. Doubtlessly, there were several such cores powering the myriad of defences woven into the Magisters’ tower, for example.

The other key factor was shape. The closer the core came to forming a perfect sphere, the better it would function. This also had the side benefit of being easier to work with, thanks to their uniform surface, but Tyron had long ceased to care about such things. He often engraved chips, slivers of core formed in the weakest monsters to possess a core at all. The theory went that cores could expand when a kin was created, as well as during its lifetime, but whatever might cause such a change was unknown. As a core grew, it did not do so in a uniform manner, but unevenly. In such a case, a core like the one in his hands would be created. It had been a perfect sphere at some point, but begun to expand. Smooth in some places, jagged in others, it would need a significant amount of work to bring out its full capacity, but done properly, it would channel a powerful amount of magick.

And he had several ideas.

As he considered his next steps, Tyron’s eyes slowly began to lose focus as his thoughts began to accelerate.

Yes… yes he could do a great deal with such a thing. And perhaps he could get more? He knew the method now, and it wasn’t inconceivable that he could pull it off himself. He would need more minions, of course he would, but he had a good number of bones stored away for just such an occasion.

And of course, if he was going to create new minions, they would have to be the best.. The soldiers and marshalls he had killed at the Ortan estate were still preserved within the Ossuary, along with their captured souls. They would make fine revenants and skeletons. Exceptional ones.

Not to forget, Filetta still waited. With more undead, he would need more coordination. More control. She would become the first of his awakened undead, a willing commander of his troops.

All he had to do was figure out how…. It was a puzzle, but not one without an answer.

Tyron was excellent at puzzles.