Book of The Dead

Tyron had never expected that choosing to specialise in skeletons would require him to become such an expert in physiology. It was entirely possible there were medical professionals out there who knew less about muscles and ligaments than he did. Bleary eyed, he stared at the diagram in front of him, covered in intersecting lines, each representing a thread of magick of a specific thickness and tension. For the extreme levels of force these magickal joints would need to bear, his measurements couldn’t be off by a hair. It had taken a great deal of iteration to arrive at this design, and his initial tests had been promising, but would they really stand up under the weight? He was still sceptical.

“Is it really necessary to go to these lengths?” Filetta said from over his shoulder. The wight leaned forward to inspect the sheet, shaking her head as she beheld the complexity of it. “Just looks like nonsense to me.”

The Necromancer frowned, irritated at the interruption.

“Yes, it’s necessary. Without all of the work I’d put into learning these things, you wouldn’t be able to move half as well as you do now. If I want to create something better, then I need to push the design further.”

“So why do you have all of this… meat?” she asked, gesturing with one skeletal hand toward the rest of his table.

On the stone surface was a scattered assortment of bloody remnants, chunks of meat and bone that wouldn’t look out of place in a butcher’s shop.

“They’re joints from various animals. Horse, cow, bull… I think that one was a tiger.”

“Where did you get that from?”

“Trader from the south.”

“What. They were selling tiger parts?”“No. They were selling a tiger.”

“Oh.”

Filetta absorbed that in silence for a moment.

“You’re a sick pup, Tyron. You know that?”

“I’m not out here cutting up animals for no purpose. I am attempting to learn.”

“About what? Bodies? Didn’t I teach you everything you need to know about those?”

It wasn’t possible for a skeleton to smirk, but her tone managed to convey everything it needed to.

“Taught me a lot of things I didn’t need to know,” Tyron muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Look, all of these animals put more force through their joints than a person does. I wanted to see what structural differences there might be in the hopes I could learn something that could be applied to my project.”

“And were there?” Filetta asked idly, poking about the various detritus on the table.

“Do you care what the answer is?” Tyron said, exasperated, finally leaning back. Clearly, Filetta wasn’t going to let him work until she’d said whatever she wanted to say. He may as well get through it quickly. “Yes. These might be four-legged creatures, unlike us who are bipedal, but their musculature in particular was an interesting study. None of it was directly applicable, but useful nonetheless.”

“Huh,” the wight grunted, and he couldn’t help rolling his eyes.

“Filetta. I need to work. What is the problem? Are you bored? Do you need something to do? A new purpose in life? If so, go find it on your own, I have things to do.”

“Very charming. Very helpful,” Filetta drawled. “That’s your solution to a possible existential crisis? Deal with it?”

“Filetta, you were a thief,” Tyron said, pinching his brow. “I am not trying to be offensive, but questioning the meaning of living, or unliving, and any sort of moral quandary involved therein would be profoundly out of character for you.”

“I may have grown a conscience with all this free time I have on my hands now.”

There it was.

“So you’re bored. What do you expect me to do about it?”

“I’m not bored, you ice-cold prick! I’m worried about you!”

Tyron blinked. Then blinked again. For a moment, he worried that he may have misheard. Perhaps he’d been working too hard.

“You’re wondering if you misheard me. Aren’t you?”

“Not at all,” Tyron deflected, brow creased. “I was… just thinking why in the world you would be worried about me.”

“Because you’re killing yourself! You’re working yourself to death. I understand you’re determined to annihilate your enemies, I guess, and achieve vengeance, but does it matter if you achieve all that if you die in the process?”

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She walked over and after an awkward pause, placed a hand on his shoulder. It was no comfort, given how cold and dead her bony fingers were. Tyron sat, feeling like a hostage in a moment he desperately didn’t want to be a part of. There were so many layers here that he didn’t understand that made it almost impossible for his head to get ahold of it. He felt as if he were grasping after a spell from a discipline he wasn’t familiar with. The structure of it was there, but the specifics were completely blank.

“By the Gods, you’re awful at being human,” Filetta said. “It’s almost a miracle that you reached human level twenty at all. I can see you running a bunch of nonsense through your head. Look, just stand up. Turn around and face me.”

Tyron considered resisting, but didn’t bother in the end, and was pulled to his feet and spun around. He found himself facing Filetta, the wight, in all her undead glory, spirit flesh and all, with one hand on either shoulder. There was no human emotion left to see in her face or eyes, there was nothing but the bone of skull, and nothing but the light of magick in her hollow sockets.

“This isn’t that complicated. I might be dead, but you aren’t, and even though you killed me, I kind of hope that you might have a happy ending. In a non-sexual way. That’s not too hard to grasp, is it?”

“It is a bit.”

“Shut up. I just want to know what’s going to happen when this is done. Let’s say you kill the Duke, you destroy the Magisters. The whole province falls into chaos and despair. What happens to you afterwards? Is that the end of your story?”

It was difficult to process this, but one thought struck Tyron immediately. He shook his head.

“Filetta. You are a lot nicer than I thought you were.”

“Fuck you.”

Was he some sort of failure of a Necromancer, being pitied by his own minions? What was he even supposed to say? That he planned to live a long, happy life after bringing the Empire to its knees and putting the entire realm on the brink of extinction? Or that his own survival was any sort of priority?

He had the option to pretend he intended to survive his vengeance on the Western Province, because he did, but only so he could continue to the rotten core of the Empire and bring down the seat of power of the Five Divines themselves.

Instead, he decided to be honest.

“I have no idea,” he replied, not bothering to conceal his bone-deep weariness. “How this will end, and whether or not I’ll survive, I have no idea. We’ll find out when we get there. At the very least, I know it’s not uncommon for people in my particular line of Magick to wind up as some sort of lich, but I have no plans in that direction.”

Filetta observed him through the burning orbs of purple light that were her eyes.

“That was a more honest answer than I expected.” She patted him on the shoulders with each hand. “Good job.”

She turned back to contemplate his handiwork.

“So… when are these things going to get moving?”

I really need to go to sleep.

The change of topic was too quick for his brain, it took him a moment to catch up.

“As soon as I figure out how to properly form their leg joints, they should be ready.”

“Aren’t you done?”

“I’m not sure… there are a few elements–”

“Bah. You’ve been scribbling away at those pages for days. Have some confidence! I thought you were good at this stuff.”

It was awfully tempting to point out that developing entirely new magick in just a few days was quite a remarkable feat, but there wouldn’t be any point. In a sense, she was right. He was ninety-five percent of the way there, but pushing to achieve that final little smidge of improvement would take him just as long as he’d spent on the project already.

“Fine, I’ll get started on it, then. If it stops you from nattering at me.”

“Nattering? How dare you? I didn’t live long enough to become old enough to properly natter. Thanks to you.”

“Yes, yes. I’m awful. Now be quiet.”

He’d been working on this particular construct for months, off and on. His darkness cauldrons had been the pinnacle of his achievements in the field of creating Death Magick constructs so far, but they were relatively simple in the grand scheme of things. What he was attempting to make now was immensely more complex, to the point he had probably been too ambitious for his second project in this field.

So far, his testing had consumed an unfathomable amount of bones, but thankfully only those which had performed poorly on quality testing.

It almost felt strange to be in a position where he had so many materials coming in he could afford to reject some. An incredible amount of wealth, from a Necromancer’s perspective.

All the pieces needed to assemble the construct had been built and lay about the study on the floor. Each was as refined as he could make them, and fully enchanted, the arrays and cores embedded on each. That had been the easy part, relatively speaking.

Throwing the last of his concerns away, Tyron grasped two components and brought them to his work area. He stared hard at the two pieces, constructing the image of what he needed to accomplish in his mind.

“What happens now?” Filetta asked in a hushed voice.

“What happens, is that you be quiet, so I can concentrate,” Tyron stated, his gaze unwavering.

A moment later, he brought up his hands, ghostly threads dangling from the tips of his fingers, and he began to weave.

The patterns required a wide variety of threads, some thicker, some thinner, each bound together in an intricate knot that would form a functional connection. His hands danced and spun for over an hour as Filetta watched from the side, occasionally offering a snide comment that he didn’t even hear.

When it was done, he cut off the threads, lowered his hands, and leaned forward to inspect his work.

“Is it… is it finished?”

“I think so,” Tyron replied, frowning as he tried to pick out as many details as he could. It looked as if he’d been successful in replicating his design, and there weren’t any obvious errors that he could detect. Hopefully it worked as well as his tests indicated it would.

“So, what does it do?”

The Necromancer turned to her, puzzled.

“What do you mean?”

“Well… you’ve been working on this for a long time, right? Now that it’s done… what does it do?”

He looked back down at the surface in front of him.

“It bends,” he said.

Filetta looked shocked.

“That’s it? It bends?”

“It’s a knee,” he said, exasperated, “what else is it going to do?”

The wight cocked her head to one side then looked down again.

“Isn’t that a bit big for a knee? If those are leg bones, then this thing would be…”

“Large,” Tyron confirmed. “Very, very large.”

He turned and took in the rest of the components scattered around the study, then sighed.

“It’s going to take a long time to put this thing together.”