Book of The Dead

Worthy looked down on his nephew, asleep in a cot, and brushed the boys’ hair back from his forehead. Not that he was just a lad anymore. A grown man now, Tyron had proven to be every bit as special as his mother and father had believed.

At rest, his features softened to the point he looked much like he had in the last few years he’d lived in Foxbridge. Straight, raven-black hair, cut short and orderly and too-pale skin from a life lived indoors with books. His brow, normally furrowed in concentration as his eyes flickered from side to side while thoughts bounced around inside his head, was now smooth and still.

“I wish your parents could see you now, lad,” he sighed.

Beory’s face, beaming with pride, eyes sparkling with unnatural brightness flashed into his mind. The woman would have been insufferable if she’d seen what her son had become.

Worthy pushed himself up with a groan. The stunt he’d pulled with that big beast had taken a fair bit out of him, and his joints were letting him know it. Despite his superhuman physique, there were things even his body was unwilling to tolerate, and it appeared he’d brushed up against those limits.

With a final glance back at his resting nephew, he pushed aside the tent flap and stepped out into the Broken Lands.

Despite their best efforts, the rift was still a constant battlefield as kin continued to pour through the tears in reality. Slayers and undead fought across the Broken Lands, doing their best to ensure none of the monsters escaped. A small camp had been established to tend to the wounded and let the most exhausted among them rest. Worthy picked his way through, not wanting to disturb anyone while they were sleeping.

Not far away, he could see the blazing light emitting from Tyron’s ritual. He claimed it would suck away magick from the rift, weakening it over time, but Worthy wasn’t quite sure he could believe it. All his life, he’d been told it was impossible, the rifts were simply a fact of life, and had been for thousands of years. Even thinking of them being weakened just didn’t make sense to him, as if he were being told up was down.

He could tell he wasn’t the only one feeling this way. The Slayers were keeping a respectful distance from the whirling energies, only closing when they saw something coming through, but he could see the looks on their faces. They looked almost… confused, as if they were watching something impossible take place right in front of their eyes.

Whenever it was safe, the… demi-liches floated over the ground, working on the blazing sigils, sprinkling handfuls of powder over the sigils, or using their staves to make careful corrections and keep the ritual flowing.They were creepy in a way that was hard to describe. Parts of it were overt, obviously. They floated just above the ground, skeletal frames largely concealed by the robes they wore, bony feet dangling down to just barely avoid touching the earth. Through the glowing light in their eye sockets, it was possible to see the iridescent red crystal that was… apparently… their source of magickal power.

More than that, they just seemed so… soulless. He knew they’d been human at one point, each of them, but even the wights seemed to retain more of their previous nature than the liches.

While watching, he spotted one that he was able to recognise and decided to approach. As uncomfortable as they made him, this was one he was willing to talk to, and he wanted answers.

“Ah… excuse me, Master Willhem,” he said, respectfully. “Do you have a moment?”

The demi-lich turned slowly towards him, slightly hunched spine placing his face uncomfortably close to Worthy’s own. He tried not to flinch back.

“I am no one’s master,” the lich replied, voice echoing out from within the skull like a soft breeze.

“That might be true,” Worthy replied, scratching his cheek, “but old habits die hard. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll keep addressing you that way, if it’s all the same.”

The undead stared at him for a long moment.

“Very well, Worthy Steelarm.”

“Aye, thanks.”

The Hammerman turned his attention back to the nearby ritual, still blazing with light, the five posts ignited with a near-blinding amount of magick.

“Not that I doubt my nephew, but… is this thing actually working, Master Willhem?”

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The demi-lich didn’t answer for a time, simply watching the flow of power with eyes that saw differently to any mortals’.

“It is,” the former Arcanist replied. “It is working as he said it would.”

Worthy unleashed an explosive breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding.

“It… it is?” he said, unable to quite bring himself to believe it.

“I was just as surprised as you,” Willhem stated. “Your nephew has achieved the impossible here today. Look,” he pointed to the nearest of the engraved posts which had been planted around the rift. “Each of these is absorbing the power being funnelled through the sigils on the ground. I don’t fully understand the process, but they are destroying the magick. Normally, whenever arcane energy is used, no matter how it might appear, it isn’t lost, but merely dissipated. Magick will always return to its base form, ready to be used again.”

“Which makes sense,” Worthy noted. “No matter how many spells we cast over the years, it’s not like the amount of magick in the realm has ever gone down.”

“Yes. Your nephew has, somehow, discovered a way to absorb and manipulate the magick so that it turns against itself. You are watching arcane energy being destroyed for the first time in your life.”

“And that will really shrink the rift? Destroying magick is one thing, but is it connected to the rifts at all?”

“It is, more than you think,” Master Willhem replied. He raised a skeletal hand and pointed to the other demi-liches working in and around the elaborate network of sigils engraved on the ground. “Magick is pouring out of the rift in a vast torrent of power. These sigils are only absorbing a portion of that, a mere fraction, but the destruction of the magick is having a… thinning effect on the rift. I can’t explain it, I know nothing of this dimensional magick, but it is working. I can see it.”

Worthy shook his head, unsure of what to make of it. Master Willhem nodded.

“The world is a fundamentally different place than it was yesterday,” he breathed in his ethereal, undead voice. “What was thought impossible is possible. There may be a future for this realm after all.”

The lich fell silent for a moment, tapping his staff on the ground almost absent-mindedly.

“Your nephew is special,” he said.

“I know that,” Worthy said. At this point, anyone could see it.

“No… you don’t understand. Not the extent of it. When I… When I was still alive, I wanted to make him my successor, were you aware of that?”

“I… I wasn’t,” Worthy muttered, taken aback.

He’d had dealings with Master Willhem before, every high-level Slayer had wanted to use a piece of enchanted gear crafted by the best of the best. If it weren’t for Magnin and Beory, he’d never have been able to set foot in the presence of the esteemed master, as even silver ranked Slayers struggled to afford his prices. Willhem was regarded as the preeminent Arcanist of the entire Western Province and the best they’d seen in centuries. He was planning on handing that legacy to the boy?!

“He isn’t even interested in enchanting, not as a profession,” the lich scoffed, “yet his grasp of runes, of magick, is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. His mind moves so fast, he can calculate a dozen lines and throw out half of them before most mages have started on one. I always thought that if he were to broaden his studies, he would’ve rivalled me in knowledge eventually. Little did I realise the purpose behind his obsession with conduits.”

The lich made a half-gesture towards his own head, and Worthy nodded, saddened. Despite everything, it was a shame to see a great master reduced to an undead.

“And he’s still so young,” Willhem sighed. “If he survives long enough, he will achieve a level of mastery in magick that I’m not sure anyone in the Empire has reached since… since Tel’Anan himself.”

The Hammerman stilled and looked into the eyes of the undead mage. They were impossible to read, hollow sockets filled with pulsing red crystal and purple light. What he was saying was… disturbing. Tyron was talented, more than talented, he was a damned genius, just like Beory had said when he was a lad.

But this? What the former master was saying… this was dangerous talk.

“Maybe keep that opinion to yourself, as much as you can,” Worthy suggested slowly. “Talk about The Five… in any sense… can set people off right now.”

“I only mention it because I hope you will keep an eye on the boy,” Master Willhem stated. “When he wakes… things will start to move very quickly for him. He will need people like you.”

“You can do that as well, can’t you?” Worthy asked. “Despite what he’s done, Tyron respects you, deeply. When you speak, he will listen. And you sure as hell know a lot more about this,” the Hammerman waved a hand at the blazing sigils around them, “than I ever will.”

“It’s not his connection with magick that concerns me,” Willhem replied, “but his connection with his humanity.”

Having said his piece, the demi-lich turned away, returning to his silent communion with the rest of his kind, working in unison on the grand sigil array Tyron had created.

More disturbed than he was willing to admit, Worthy turned his back on the rift and walked back to the small camp. He’d barely reached the first tent before a familiar face found him.

“What did he say?” Rurin asked, her face unusually serious. She jutted her chin towards the ritual site. “Is it working?”

“It is,” he confirmed, and she whistled.

“That means Beory’s little boy is the first person in the history of the realm to actually shrink a rift. Did he say how quickly it was working?”

“I didn’t ask him.”

“Doesn’t really matter, we can ask the boy when he wakes up.”

The two stood silently and watched as the magick burned around the rift. Both were unsure of exactly what it meant, but they were both confident they no longer lived in the same world as before.