Book of The Dead

The city of Kenmor burned.

Exhausted, yet filled with a strange energy that wouldn’t let him rest, Tyron watched the destruction from within the tower. It had been a full week since the Gold ranks had been set free, and they had been on a rampage ever since.

From his window, he counted six separate fires. The docks had gone up yesterday, a conflagration that had spread remarkably quickly given the proximity of water. Smoke still rose from that quarter, a few buildings still aflame no doubt.

“It’s not as bad as you think,” Worthy said, walking up behind his nephew and placing a hand on his shoulder. “The docks are still on fire? You’d think with all the water…”

“Not as bad, how?” Tyron cut him off, expressionless.

This high up, it was possible to avoid the worst of the smell, but the scent of smoke, ash and blood still hung thick in the air. At street level, it must have been unbearable.

“Not as many dead as I’d thought,” Worthy replied, scratching at his cheek. “Some of the Slayers had enough sense to help evacuate the city, and some of the residents had enough sense to join the riots. Every guard post, Marshal office and Noble residence has been ripped to the ground, and it wasn’t just the Slayers who did it.”

Did it ease his conscience, to hear there had been fewer innocents caught up in his vengeance than expected? Not at all, since it hadn’t bothered him in the first place. At least he could say it was a good thing. He had no wish to see people suffer needlessly, it was simply impossible to achieve his goals any other way.

Worthy looked at his nephew with concern. Despite his best efforts to stuff food into the boy, he hadn’t eaten enough over the last week, had barely slept either. All he’d wanted to do was work, work, work.

Creating undead, a messy business.“How’s that thing on your chest holding up?” the hammerman said, tapping himself on the chest for emphasis. “Your ticker still ticking?”

Tyron glanced down at himself, feeling the device he’d attached to himself.

“The array is holding together,” he said, “as it should, but there are problems with it that I didn’t expect.”

“Oh?”

“It pulses at a regular beat, ventricles then chambers, same pace every time, but that isn’t how a person’s heart is supposed to work.”

“I see what you mean,” Worthy said, nodding, “when you exert yourself, your heart is supposed to speed up, or slow down when you sleep. Yours is always going at the same pace.”

“Exactly. I could modulate it myself, but how am I supposed to know how fast my heart should be beating? There are times I feel quite unwell, and I think it’s only due to my constitution that I haven’t collapsed already. Somehow, my body has been able to endure despite this… flaw.”

His mouth twisted on that final word, and Worthy chuckled. His nephew had always been a perfectionist. He stepped up and threw an arm over his shoulder.

“Doesn’t seem right that a Necromancer at your level would be fully alive anyways. If you aren’t at least partially dead, how are you supposed to empathise with your minions?”

“I’m supposed to empathise with them?” Tyron asked.

“That’s hurtful,” Filetta said from nearby.

“Shush.”

Uncle and nephew looked out the window together at the smoking remains of what had once been the province capital. Kenmor was an immense city, home to millions—at least, it had been. To see it so desolate and empty was… strange. To think that only a few hundred individuals had the power to bring a city like this to its knees. The Nobles had been right to fear the Slayers, but in binding them as tightly as they did, they made a violent outburst like this inevitable.

“How many Slayers have you seen break, Uncle?” Tyron asked.

Worthy grunted sourly.

“Too many,” he said. “Never the ones I thought, either. At some point, people just snap, can’t handle the brand, can’t handle the killing, can’t handle the pressure. Sometimes we’d find a Slayer huddled in their room, weeping and wailing, rocking back and forth on the floor. Sometimes they’d just leap at us with a knife in hand, or try to stick ice shards through our chests while we were sleeping.”

The hammerman shook his head sadly.

“Lost a lot of good people to the despair. Kind people. The thing about Slayers is that they’re always in pain, even if they don’t know it. Folk who are sensitive to others’ feelings are more likely to pick up on it, try to do something about it. Carrying that load is tough, even for the strongest.”

“Is that what’s happened out there?” Tyron wondered. “Have they snapped?”

“No. They haven’t snapped, not like the others. These are Gold ranked Slayers, holed up in the birdcage for decades, some of them. The resentment they feel goes all the way to the bone.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Tyron accepted this. Hopefully, the golds would come around and be allies when the city was finally finished. They wouldn’t be able to stay much longer, after all.

“The Nobles still packed into the castle?”

“Aye. Like rats in a trap.”

The Castle loomed large in the distance, an enormous fortress, the most secure location in the entire province. Within those massive walls, the Duke and remaining Noble families huddled. It was almost appalling, how quickly they’d been willing to sacrifice the city. After the first few hours of fighting, almost all signs of resistance had vanished as Raugrave had ordered his people to retreat to safety. Since then, the golds had made regular attempts to break through, but had failed every time.

Which was fortunate, in its own way. Tyron definitely wanted to be there when the walls finally came down; he wouldn’t be satisfied to let the Nobles die without his involvement.

“I’m ready, Uncle Worthy,” the Necromancer stated, pushing himself away from the window. “I’m heading to the castle today.”

“Finally. I’ll let a few people know,” Worthy said, turning away and striding towards the stairs.

Being a gold ranked Slayer himself, Worthy had been able to liaise with the less bloodthirsty of his peers in the city. Feeding regular updates back to the tower and helping coordinate the evacuation, it had been a busy week for him as well.

With a mental command, Tyron summoned his minions, directing them to assemble in the courtyard, then he began to make his own way down, Filetta shadowing at his heels.

“Do you really think you can bring down Kenmor castle?” Filetta asked softly.

“You still doubt me?” Tyron asked. “After everything that’s happened?”

“Everything that’s happened is the only reason I’m entertaining this at all,” she replied.

“If I was by myself, then I wouldn’t be able to get through,” Tyron stated evenly as he began to descend the stairs. “Even with the growth of the horde, I’m not enough on my own to bring down the castle. With hundreds of Slayers by my side? There’s a chance.”

“Isn’t the Emperor likely to kill the Duke and everyone else anyway? Shouldn’t we be running to the west?”

“I don’t trust the Emperor to kill families related to The Five,” Tyron sneered, “and even if I did, I would still go after the castle. There are things inside that I want, very dearly.”

As they descended the stairs, evidence of Tyron’s work was everywhere. Piles of meat and bones filled the corridors of the tower, turning what had once been the centre of power for the Magisters into a charnel house. The stench of blood was inescapable.

On the second floor, Tyron found the butchers and corpse weavers he’d been able to bring into the tower. It hadn’t been easy to track them down, but Worthy had managed to smuggle them inside before the city had been too damaged.

“Time to go,” he told them. “Thank you for your help.”

Five men and women watched him approach, visibly exhausted. They’d worked constantly over the past week, preparing dozens and dozens of corpses for Tyron. It was the only way he’d been able to get through the remains he’d gotten hold of.

“Take this as your compensation and get ready to leave the city,” he advised them all, handing a heavy pouch to each of them after a skeleton passed it to him. Judging by the looks on their faces, they were quite satisfied with the gold he’d handed them, not that he was sure just how useful it would prove to be in the months to come. “I will be leaving myself in a few days, and it will be a hard road to the mountains.”

Eager to be on their way, they ducked their heads, muttered farewells and headed to the stairs. There were still corpses, now bloated and rotting, waiting to be processed, but they would have to be left unfinished. The most important dead had been completed, that was the main thing.

Down the corridor, in what had once been a mess-hall, an arch of bone stood. Tyron approached and pulled the door open to reveal the interior.

Inside, a new form of undead hovered near the altar, feet dangling just above the ground. A smoking staff of forged bone in hand, the minion did not possess spirit flesh, as the wights did, but rather something else, a red crystalline structure that clung to its bones. Through its hollow eyes, it was clear to see the skull was filled with more crystal growths.

The demi-lich glowed with magick as words of power emanated from its undead form, fingers of bone flicking from one gesture to the next. Around the room, skeletons placed in the recesses writhed as the Raise Dead ritual continued, channelled to each of them through the altar.

When it was done, Tyron nodded in satisfaction, a little tension leaving his shoulders. It had taken some getting used to, casting the ritual through his minions, but he was growing increasingly comfortable with it.

“Well done, Grand Magister Tommat,” he said. “Your service is much appreciated.”

He could feel the spirit of the old man raging inside its new prison, but he was sure it wouldn’t last long. Tommat had been a broken thing in life, and he would soon be the same in death, resigned to his fate and pliant.

Besides, what did he have to complain about? Tyron had remade him, more powerful than he’d been while alive.

With a silent command, he emptied the Ossuary and walked out himself, closing the door and dismissing the entrance. With his final tasks done, Tyron descended to the ground floor, strode out of the tower and into the courtyard.

The full might of his undead legion was assembled, skeletons packed into neat ranks, revenants and wights spaced amongst them like officers in an army. His mounted skeletal knights formed up in the centre, heavily armed and armoured, ready to act as his personal vanguard.

Tommat floated out to join the other demi-liches Tyron had created, only four so far, alongside his new construct.

In the middle of the gathered undead stood a platform, held aloft by dozens of skeletons. As Tyron approached, they lowered it for him, and he alighted onto it, balancing himself as they raised it back up.

Uncaring of the horde around him, he turned his gaze down, to the intricate ritual circle he hand engraved on the bone surface. When everything appeared satisfactory, he nodded, reached out a hand and accepted the staff his parents had made for him from a nearby undead before slotting it into the prepared groove.

The Necromancer raised his hands, and began to speak, words of power rolling from his tongue and reverberating through the air, sending ripples through reality for dozens of metres around him.

Beneath his feet, the circle began to blaze with light as he poured more and more of his magick into it, shaped and given purpose by his words and hands.

When it was done, the light of the circle exploded, blindingly bright, before fading to almost nothing.

Then it returned, no longer bright, but a purple so deep as to be almost black, and each and every undead in the courtyard began to resonate with that same light.

The Undead Imperator ritual was complete.

Tyron lowered his hands and nodded with satisfaction. As long as the ritual was ongoing, he would need to remain in place to maintain it, so he stayed on the platform, reaching out to grasp his staff and take it back into his hands.

“Alright then. Let’s go,” he ordered.

As ever, the horde obeyed his command.