Book of The Dead

Tyron had noticed, on those occasions when he had worked with others, that they seemed to think that since he was, in their words, a ‘genius’, that he would be more stubbornly attached to his own ideas. This came up often when he was studying under Master Willhem. There were more senior apprentices than him, and Tyron had been only too happy to take their advice and suggestions on board. Why wouldn’t he? It seemed foolish to be overly attached to an idea just because it came from his own thoughts, especially when there were others with more knowledge readily to hand.

Of course, he had rapidly surpassed his fellow apprentices, even those who had been there for years before him, but that wasn’t because of some inherent brilliance on his part. Rather, it was his manic, self-destructive focus that pushed him far harder than they could ever hope to drive themselves and put him ahead.

Regardless, Tyron was not one to stubbornly cling to his own ideas, he was only interested in what was correct. It wasn’t his fault that he was almost always correct.

Working with Arihan the Black’s notes was proving to be an extremely frustrating experience for exactly this reason.

“It doesn’t make sense!” Tyron ground out, glaring at the unmoving book open on the table in front of him as if it had spat in his stew. “Why would you even do it this way? The structure of the joint almost works against itself.”

On the page, written in the long-dead Necromancer’s own hand, was a detailed description, complete with accompanying diagram, of the method he had used to weave his undead wyverns’ shoulder joints.

This was, obviously, the most critical part of the entire project. The creature couldn’t hope to fly if this was done poorly, unable to exert the strength necessary to keep it aloft. Naturally, as an undead creature, the minion would weigh less than it had in life, even as a zombie, making it easier to keep it aloft.

Even so… this configuration just seemed… wrong.

Tyron’s eyes flicked to the left, where, beside the ancient notebook, his own roughly sketched design could be found. To his eye, it seemed as if it made much more sense, the ligaments and musculature arranged in a cleaner, less tangled layout that would allow the undead to have a greater range of motions and exert more power through its wings. Yet… just because he thought that was the case, didn’t mean he was correct. After all, Arihnan had most likely had the aid of the Unseen, using an ability selection or feat to enable him to turn these particular kin into undead. Tyron lacked that guidance completely, only working with what had been left by his predecessor.

This was the most frustrating part of working from someone else’s records without them being around to consult! He didn’t want to dismiss Arihnan’s design out of hand, yet felt confident his own was better. If there were someone he could turn to, they could either explain the reason behind some of the more interesting choices shown in the old text, or concede they were mistakes.The biggest problem Tyron was facing was that he simply didn’t know how wings worked. He’d dissected a number of horses to study the way they were put together before being able to complete his own equine undead, but getting ahold of birds out in the wasteland had proven to be difficult. There weren’t any trees here, so it stood to reason the bird population was somewhat lacking.

He wasn’t sure if birds would even be a good reference. A wyvern was a very different creature, not a natural one, but a kin spawned of magick and mutation. Who’s to say that a bird would be at all similar?

Dragging a hand through his hair in frustration, Tyron heard a loud knock on the door. The force of the thumping suggested it hadn’t been the first knock, probably not the fifth either.

“Yes?” he called, still glaring at the old notes, wanting to reach into the past and strangle some answers out of the man who had brought down an Empire. Why were your wings so weird?! WHY?!

“It’s Georg. Can I come in?”

“Sure,” Tyron said, still scowling. He spread his arms wide and tried to flap them up and down, imagining how the muscles and tendons would move, where the push and pull would come from.

“Uh, are you alright?” George asked as soon as he entered the room, staring.

The Necromancer wondered just how bad he looked for his normally stoic apprentice to actually comment. He turned toward his student.

“Why? How long have I been in here?”

“A few days,” Georg replied, fully entering and shutting the door behind him. “Do you… have a moment?”

Lowering his arms finally, Tyron sighed.

“Yes, I suppose I do. How can I help you, Georg?”

“It’s not so much a matter of if you can help me, but if I can help you,” the apprentice replied, scratching at the back of his head as he held a scroll in one hand. “Well… I can’t help you with flying lessons, but I could have something you might be interested in, at least.”

“Flying lessons would be greatly appreciated right now,” Tyron muttered, causing Georg’s brows to rise. “Did you find something in the old notes?”

“I did,” the former farmhand affirmed, holding up the scroll. “According to this, it wasn’t actually Arihnan the Black who gained the ability to create the winged undead creatures. It was one of his apprentices, Melic.”

“Melic?” Tyron wondered aloud, searching his memory for any reference to the name. Yes, he did recall a few mentions of him. “He was the one who gained the ability?”

“Yes, according to this scroll, which is a record of Melic’s thoughts in the service to his ‘Master’. A diary, I suppose.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Georg wandered over and placed the scroll down in front of his teacher.

“He claims his teacher forced him to take it against his own wishes.”

That… wasn’t good. Interfering in others’ Class choices was more than poor form, it was despised. Forcing people into certain selections, especially those under your authority, was a literal crime, even in the Empire. Quickly, he scanned the relevant section of the scroll. It appeared Georg was right. The paper was filled with complaints and vitriol directed toward his teacher, couched in vague enough terms that he could likely claim he was talking about someone else if he were caught.

“Is that what you’re doing with us?” Georg asked him.

“What?” Tyron frowned and turned towards his student.

Georg was a larger man than he was, but it didn’t matter a bit. Despite being almost a head shorter, Tyron loomed over his students. He could reach out and crush him with a single hand if he wanted to. The sturdy apprentice met his gaze evenly.

“Is that why you keep the three of us around, so you can experiment with the Class and make us take the choices you don’t want to take? Why else are we still here?”

Tyron had not been blind to the growing tension in Georg, but he had always assumed the young man would work it out on his own. After all, he’d been the most levelheaded of the three apprentices since the beginning. Georg had an excellent mindset for a Necromancer, willing to get his hands dirty, able to endure things a more squeamish individual would struggle with. Living on a farm had taught him that death was merely a part of life. Although his natural talent for magick was lacking, he made up for it with his dogged stubbornness and pragmatic attitude. All in all, Tyron quite liked him as a student.

So why this hostility?

“You’re here so I can teach you,” Tyron replied with a raised brow. “I haven’t made any secret of my ambition to have other Necromancers to learn from. My ideas aren’t always correct.”

“They are, though, aren’t they?” Georg insisted, folding his arms across his chest. “Do you really think Richard, Briss or I are going to be able to come up with something that you won’t? That we can innovate something you didn’t think of first? Richard won’t stop banging on about what a genius you are. You seriously expect me to believe you keep us here for that?”

“Haven’t you already helped me with the rope-weaving technique?” Tyron shrugged. “I hadn’t thought of that, and there’s no guarantee I would have. Thoughts like that come from your experience in life and things you learned growing up. I can’t know everything. I’m good at magick, not some intuitive, all-knowing savant.”

Not to mention he couldn’t investigate every avenue of the Necromantic discipline at the same time. He had avoided zombies entirely after raising his very first one, and passing out in the process. Georg and others had embraced that… rather pungent aspect of Necromancy instead, breaking ground that Tyron had not investigated in the slightest. So far, nothing had come of it that was relevant to him, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t.

Unconvinced by this, Georg hadn’t budged, his jaw tightening as he clenched his teeth. When he spoke, it was quietly, as if he were talking to a dangerous bull.

“You’re a monster who’s responsible for the deaths of millions. I don’t believe you keep us here for study purposes. There must be more to it, and I want to know what it is.”

Tyron didn’t bat an eye at being called a monster. Georg may be the first person to say it to his face, but he knew there were many among the refugees who laid the blame for the destruction of the Western Province at his feet. Death and displacement on an almost industrial scale, the Empire had wiped the slate clean with such brutal efficiency that he suspected it wasn’t the first time they’d done the deed. Five thousand years since The Five Divines had ascended to their heavenly seats, who knew just what atrocities had been committed in that time?

“Georg, are you going to get in the way of my revenge?” Tyron asked, his eyes hardening.

In an instant, it felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Georg felt he had been captured by that glare. As if he were staring into the wintry depths of the afterlife itself, he felt chilled to the bone. He didn’t even realise he was shaking.

Yet he stood his ground.

“It’s got nothing to do with me,” he ground out. “I just don’t want to be a tool, to be used and discarded. I want to make my own future.”

Reaching up with a single hand, Tyron grasped him by the front of his shirt and pulled his head down. It was easy for him, like he was playing with a child. Despite his appearance, thin, almost emaciated when he went too long without eating, Tyron was brimming with the power of a gold ranked Slayer. Once they were level and looking eye to eye, he continued.

“What if you are a tool, Georg? What if the only reason you are still here, still able to pursue the future you desire, is because you are useful to me? What then? You run away? To where? To the Empire? If you sell me out, perhaps they’ll welcome you. Or, they may say they will. My hands have innocent blood on them, I know that, but it wasn’t my blades who cut down the people as they fled screaming from their homes. It wasn’t my minions that massacred village after village, town after town as if they were burning rats out of a barn. Is that who you’ll turn to, in the end?”

Tyron’s eyes bored into those of his apprentice.

“I can find out. I could crush your mind with a thought and have the truth. I could scrape it out of you like the last bit of soup on the inside of the pot.”

Then, he let him go. In an instant, the tension was gone, the piercing cold, the vicious aura of menace that had filled the room only a moment ago. Georg blinked, unable to react to the change. His entire body was tense, he was sweating, his teeth were starting to ache.

Tyron reached up and straightened his shirt.

“I’m not going to do any of that, Georg. I won’t invade your thoughts, I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to, I won’t interfere with your Class, and if you wish to leave, I will help you. I don’t have any wish for you, Briss or Richard, other than helping to make up for the lack of Necromantic knowledge that I have struggled with.”

He finished straightening Georg’s shirt and stepped back, clapping him gently on the shoulder.

“As long as you don’t get in my way, you have nothing to fear from me, Georg. You’ve come a long way. A little longer, hit silver rank, then you’ll be strong enough to make it on your own, if that’s what you want.”

Unsure what to say, Georg nodded stiffly and left the room. In the heavy silence that lingered once the door had closed, Tyron reflected on the conversation. He hadn’t handled it well, he knew that much, but he wasn’t sure how to deal with things like this. Magick was his speciality, not people. All he could do was try to show Georg that he was valued just as he was, and that he was taken seriously, while also letting him know that interference, for whatever reason, would not be tolerated.

He should get Elsbeth to talk to him. She was exceptionally busy these days, but she was a much better talker than he’d ever been.

Turning back to the desk with the notes on it, and now the scroll that Georg had uncovered, Tyron chuckled to himself. His student had once again proven his worth, uncovering this little nugget.

He brushed the scroll aside and looked at the ancient diagram beneath, still smiling.

“So that’s why your wings were so poor, Arihnan,” he said, “they weren’t yours at all!”