Book of The Dead

Tyron and his uncle sat in silence for several long moments, breathing deeply, eyes closed, each enjoying being in the presence of the other. All of a sudden, it was hard for the Necromancer to understand how he’d been able to keep his family at arm’s length for so long. Despite everything that had happened, everything he had done, and all the ways he had changed, Worthy didn’t see him any differently than he had before.

“I wouldn’t mind some of Aunt Meg’s soup,” Tyron muttered to himself, thinking of the rich flavour of the broth he’d enjoyed since childhood, glistening with fat and chunks of meat fallen straight off the bone.

“You look as thin as a fence post,” Worthy chuckled. “When your aunt gets ahold of you, she’ll put more than soup in you before you can leave the table.”

“I’ve been eating,” Tyron said, defensively.

“What? Paper and air? There’s no meat on your bones!”

Tyron looked down at himself.

“It’s not that bad.”

“Bullshit, lad. Respectfully, bullshit.”

Maybe he had neglected to eat more than he should have, especially over the last few weeks. Well, he definitely had, but so what? He had an entire province to bring to its knees.

Speaking of which…With difficulty, Tyron levered himself back to his feet, one hand clutching the wall, the other held close to his chest.

“What’s with your hand?” Worthy asked.

“Heart stopped beating,” Tyron replied as he steadied himself.

“Is that right?” Worthy blinked, then laughed. “You’re as hard to kill as your uncle,” he declared, pounding himself on the chest, then started coughing.

“Are you alright? Do you need help?”

“I’ll be fine, boy,” Worthy waved him off. “I’ve got some trinkets and foul brews the others foisted on me before I left. They’ll fix me up. Now…” the hammerman stood with a groan, hands fumbling for his pockets, “... let’s see what the Red Tower was built for.”

It took them a while to open the door, but soon they stood within the room at the very heart of the tower. Tyron could feel the power thrumming through the walls and beneath his feet; the central array the Magisters had constructed through the centre of the entire structure focused its energy right here, on this very room.

The walls, floor and ceiling were covered in runic script, intricate enchanting work that controlled and moderated that vast flow of magick, warping and shaping it before funneling it down into the hundreds of talismans set into the walls.

Shaped like discs, the cursed markers shone like gold, and each contained its own densely detailed sigils, along with a name carved into the centre. Each one represented an active Gold Ranked Slayer, one who had undergone the branding and retired to the city, ready to escape the slaughter and desperation of the rifts.

In the middle of the floor, a receptacle rose up, reminiscent of a hand basin in shape, but with a circular slot in the deepest recess of the bowl.

In a single glance, Tyron knew that this was the tool that had been used to torture Magnin and Beory. Through this device, the Magisters had poured their own magick, along with energy siphoned from the tower itself, to visit unimaginable suffering on his parents over the vast distance between them.

He grit his teeth, a hot flash of anger burning through him, but it quickly subsided. There was no need for the rage, not right now. In this moment, his thirst for vengeance was like a beast inside his chest, feasting on a wealth of bones. Soon he would feed it the grandest prize of all, but in the long run, it wouldn’t be sated. Not for long.

“So… we just pull them off the wall?” Worthy wondered, naked anger burning in his eyes as he looked around the room with disgust.

“That won’t be enough by itself. We have to destroy them completely,” Tyron said.

He reached up and grasped the closest disc with his free hand, pressing his fingers to the edges. The metal was hot to touch, almost burning his absurdly durable skin, a testament to the energy flowing through it. He pulled it free from the wall and tossed it into the basin, moving onto the next.

“Throw them all in there,” he told his uncle. “I know how to break them.”

Worthy raised his brows.

“That’s quite a secret, lad. How did you figure that out when you’ve never seen these before?”

“I had some help.”

He ripped what he’d needed from the souls of dead Magisters, but he didn’t feel the need to explain that to his uncle. The two men moved through the circular chamber, pulling discs from the wall and dumping them into the basin. With two hands available, Worthy was much more efficient than Tyron, but in ten minutes, they’d managed to pry all of them down. The basin was near overflowing at this point, filled to the brim with the physical talismans that enforced the Gold ranked Slayers’ curse.

When these were destroyed, the brand by itself would no longer be strong enough to restrain their actions. There would be pain, of course, but not enough to drive them to their knees or take away their consciousness. With so many of the Duke’s Soldiers committed outside the city, there wouldn’t be anything to stop their rampage.

Tyron looked down at the basin, knowing exactly what he was about to unleash.

Worthy watched his nephew, but found his expression inscrutable, no hint of emotion in his eyes.

“What are you thinking, lad?” he asked.

Perhaps he was feeling hesitant now, on the brink of unleashing chaos on the city?

“I was thinking… it would be better if Magnin and Beory were still alive,” Tyron said quietly.

The hammerman looked down at the basin once more.

“Aye, lad. It would.”

~~~

“What in the name of the North is going on up there?” MacReilly swore.

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“It doesn’t matter,” Berod snapped, “we are going in.”

“Going in, how?” Feolin retorted. Her neck was also craned up to stare at the tower, but even she could see the entrance at the base was stuffed full of undead. “The two of us can’t force our way in.”

The Magister scowled, but even he could see that throwing his only two Slayers into the tower was likely to get them killed. The great doors of the tower had completely fallen away, revealing a corridor filled with darkness, ominous mist and glowing purple eyes.

“There must be another way in,” he spat, desperation clear on his face, “find one, now!”

The Magister was despairing, panic in his eyes as he looked at the Red Tower, now under heavy assault at the very least. MacRielly and Feolin had… different emotions.

As they’d run into the courtyard, it was clear there had been heavy fighting. Bones lay scattered across the paving stones, shattered skulls and ribs where undead had fallen, but although there was blood and other gore scattered around, suspiciously few bodies could be seen.

Clearly, the Necromancer responsible for the disturbance in the city was here, and had been shockingly successful in penetrating the Magisters’ sanctum. Neither Feolin nor MacRielly were feeling particularly charitable toward the red-robes in this moment, if they ever had. The northman in particular was struggling to mask his glee, a wicked smile threatening to spread from the corners of his mouth.

“Maybe we should wait for others to arrive,” Feolin suggested. “Other gold Slayers are sure to come shortly.”

Indeed, some were already here. It was difficult to pick them out, but some were climbing the tower, trying to find a way in. At least, she thought those were Slayers.

“Yes… yes we will wait, but not for long!” Berod declared, eyes fixated on the tower.

Above them, strange lights emanated from deep within the building, the air overhead felt… odd… charged with magick and almost alive. Feolin had no idea what might be happening, but she knew she didn’t want to be anywhere near that tower, certainly not the upper levels. Whatever might be going on, it was taking a lot of energy.

It didn’t take long for more to arrive, Slayers, Magisters, Soldiers and Marshals alike. When more red-robed mages appeared, Berod ran over to converse with them, heads together and gesturing towards the tower furiously.

Feolin eyed the Slayers nearby. Some, she recognised, some she didn’t. All of them looked as though they’d been through the ringer, jaws still clenched against remembered pain, just like hers. MacRielly met her gaze.

“Lot of pissed off Slayers here, Fee,” he muttered quietly. “Lot more to come.”

There was something in his voice that sounded the alarm in her head.

“What are you thinking, MacRielly? In fact, don’t say anything, I don’t want to know.”

“The tower isn’t looking so good, Fee. Something might be fucking happening here,” he said, insistent.

“What do you think is happening?” Berod snapped, a moment before the northman screamed and collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain. Soon, the pain was so intense he could no longer make a sound, and merely twisted, eyes bulging out of his head.

“We were just talking about the tower,” Feolin cried desperately.

Berod stared at the Slayer on the ground, face filled with contempt.

“I know what you were talking about. I’ll give MacRielly a few moments to collect himself, and then you will charge the tower along with the others who have gathered. We must get inside the building.”

Except the northman was no longer writhing in pain, he was breathing heavily, curled up on the ground, with a strange look in his eyes.

Feolin rushed to his side and crouched alongside him.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

MacRielly was pale and shaking in the aftermath of the souldeep pain, a feeling she knew well, but there was something in his face…

“It stopped,” he whispered.

“Thank the goddess the prick didn’t keep it going,” she cursed.

“No… you don’t understand. He didn’t stop it, it just… stopped.”

“But… how could you tell?”

She whipped her head around to look at Berod, who stared back with consternation in his gaze, then up at the tower.

A figure had appeared in the window, left hand clutched against his chest, strange armour made of what appeared to be black bones moulded into plates over his body.

“I think we found our Necromancer,” Feolin muttered as she helped pull MacRielly to his feet.

From far overhead, the figure looked down on them, then began to speak.

“My name is Tyron Steelarm!” he roared, voice echoing off the courtyard walls. “Son of Magnin and Beory Steelarm, nephew of Worthy and Meg Steelarm.”

Feolin scrunched her brow. Wasn’t he supposed to be… dead? The man speaking didn’t necessarily look completely alive, but he certainly wasn’t dead.

“Kill him,” Berod hissed. “Kill him now!”

Feolin looked at the Magister, then to the others who were making similar demands of the Slayers they had brought, then at MacRielly.

Could it be?

More and more people, Slayers among them, were filtering into the courtyard with each passing moment, all of them looking up at the man in the window, listening to what he had to say.

Yet none of the Slayers collapsed to the ground in pain.

“My mother and father, loyal Slayers their whole lives, were ordered to hunt me down and kill me in cold blood,” Tyron bellowed, rage and pain plain in his voice. “They refused! Refused to submit to the will of the Magisters, refused to be turned against their only child! For that refusal, they were tortured to the limits of their tolerance! Ultimately, they held out as long as they could before finally they came and found me.”

He stabbed an accusatory finger down at the Magisters gathered below.

“They told you they murdered me, as if they could! In truth, they killed themselves, sacrificing their lives for mine.”

An angry ripple ran through the gathered Slayers, muttering to themselves. Nobody had believed the story they’d been told about the Steelarms, yet what could they do about it? Turning them against their child had been a high profile example of the brutality the Magisters engaged in regularly, but it had stung all of them, since Magnin and Beory had served so long, and so well, that they should have been above it.

To hear that the two people many of those present had met in the rifts, many owed their lives to, had been forced to such an action, was infuriating.

“They set up everything for me,” Tyron continued, “a new identity, a way to hide, to live a whole new life without them.” He paused as his face twisted with grief. “I refused! I would have vengeance against the Magisters, against the Nobles, against the Duke, against the damned Emperor himself! I made a choice!”

He stepped away from the window for a moment, and an object came sailing through the gap, tracing an arc as it plummeted down to the stones below. Whatever it was crashed down not far from Feolin, scattering shards of what appeared to be gold in every direction.

“Now you choose!” Tyron roared. “Slayers of Kenmor, of the Western Province, you are free!”

He turned his burning gaze to the red-robed figures who had begun to huddle together, stinking of fear.

“Kill them all!” he cried.

MacRielly leapt forward, blade tracing a glittering arc through the air that swept Berod’s head from his shoulders. As the Magister’s body slumped to the ground, the head landing a dozen feet away, MacRielly grit his teeth against the pain, eyes tightening, as he endured. Then he laughed, hoarse and tight, but filled with real joy.

“He’s fucking right!” the northman roared for all in the courtyard to hear. “We’re free!”

His laugh turned savage as he stomped on Berod’s remains and turned his eyes, now filled with bloodlust, on the remaining Magisters.

Soldiers ripped their blades from their sheaths and moved to position themselves around the red-robed mages, but there was uncertainty in their every move. All around the courtyard, Feolin could see her fellow Slayers starting to realise what was happening, what had happened.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

MacRielly howled like a demon as he charged forward, blade singing as he swept it through the air.