Book of The Dead

“I still think we should do this with cores,” Annita said.

Master Willhem, floating nearby, nodded in agreement.

“In this instance, I’m afraid I must respectfully disagree with the two masters,” Tyron said.

They’d been needling him about the power mechanism for the last hour. First with hinting, then with suggestions. When those hadn’t worked, the two had turned to asking more directly, asserting their shared opinion with supporting technical details in an attempt to persuade him. Despite being less experienced, and less skillful, Tyron remained unmoved.

“There is no need to make something more complicated and demand more resources than we need,” Tyron continued, undeterred. “The crystal will suffice for what we need.”

Annita rolled her eyes, and though he didn’t move, Tyron knew Master Willhem didn’t approve. The air around them was so similar that Tyron nearly laughed out loud. They were perfectionists, with extremely strong opinions on how their work should be done. In this instance, they wanted the gate to be completed ‘properly’, which meant creating a proper array of cores in order to power it.

There was an abundance of cores available after all the hunting the Slayers had done through the wasteland, though many were needed for equipment. Creating armour and weapons powerful enough to be fitting for gold-ranked Slayers wasn’t an easy task and demanded fine materials, workshops and, most importantly, cores.

Most of those weren’t available, but Tyron didn’t want to be any more of a drain on those resources than he had to be. As strong as he was, he couldn’t do everything himself. The Slayers would always be needed to fight the kin and protect the people. The Necromancer had other priorities.

Rather than do the work ‘properly’ with a truly enormous array of powerful cores, all linked to store the massive amount of magick required to power the gateway, Tyron was happy to simply use the abundant crystal instead.

It might be a ‘dirtier’ and ‘more crude’ solution, but that didn’t matter. He knew it would work exactly the same.The crystal, basically huge chunks of mage candy, was everywhere in the wasteland, after hundreds of years of magick storms. It would all be consumed when the gate was activated, making it a non-reusable power source, but it wasn’t like it would be hard to find more.

“There are ways these things are meant to be done,” Willhem rasped softly.

“We aren’t in the city, with a workshop full of Arcanists and a warehouse full of supplies,” Tyron said, not looking up from his work. “We have to make allowances where we can.”

He wasn’t frustrated, or even mildly annoyed at the two masters. They wanted everything they worked on to be perfect and without flaw, especially a large project such as this. He could tell the two of them already took a measure of pride in what they had created, as well they should. The gateway was an incredible example of the Arcanist’s craft. The sigils were carved into the stone with such rigid precision it shocked Tyron every time he ran his hand over the rock.

Putting his own marks into the stone, Tyron had felt an unusual pressure—pressure to make sure his own work lived up to their standard. It wasn’t a feeling he ran into all that often.

Once the sigils were completed, they were filled with a mixture of ground crystal and mortar, to help them hold their form under the strain of power running through the gate. At the moment, Tyron was working with his pliance, making tiny and precise indentations into the stone. Before every scrape, he had to calculate the positioning of the sigil he wanted to place, how it related to those around it, the angle, the flow of magick, even the unevenness in the surface of the stone itself.

It was demanding, tiring work, but he enjoyed it.

He continued to scrape away, careful to make sure his sigils were each of the same depth. Even the slightest lack of balance would have an impact on the function of each array, something that clearly wouldn’t be tolerated on a project like this.

With Annita and Master Willhem hovering over his shoulder, Tyron continued to work at a slow but steady pace, moving with confidence as he continued to make his calculations, then carve his sigils. After completing the array he was working on, he inspected the whole piece one final time before nodding to himself and turning, one brow raised.

“How is that? Satisfactory?”

Master Halfshard glared at him, and at his work, looking for even the slightest flaw. The demi-lich studied the sigils carefully, extending his skeletal hand to trace over the carving.

“Yes, it looks good,” Willhem said.

“It’s fine,” Annita conceded begrudgingly. “It shouldn’t have any negative impact on the overall function of the structure.”

Despite his confidence, Tyron was pleased to have his work approved by two such demanding masters. Even if Master Halfshard may not like him, she would never lie about enchanting. If it was good enough, she would say so, no matter how much she may disapprove of him. He may not hold a candle to these two in the broader craft, but when it came to his speciality, Tyron knew he was more than accomplished.

“It’s amazing how many small efficiencies you can find when you go looking for them,” Tyron said. “This transference array is a more robust version of my latest design. I’ve been experimenting with it on some of my constructs, but they won’t need to handle anything like the power throughput of this arch.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“It’s efficient and well balanced,” Master Willhem approved. “Your positioning of the ‘Solu’ sigil isn’t something I’ve seen before. Will it stabilise properly?”

“It will,” Tyron confirmed. “I’ve tested it extensively.”

Annita Halfshard leant closer to inspect the sigil in question.

“It’s a shame you were never a full Arcanist,” she observed, focused on the array. When she realised what she’d said, she grew red and glared at him again. “Well, it is a shame! You could have achieved a lot in the field.”

The Necromancer shrugged one shoulder.

“It wasn’t up to me,” he said simply.

His initial Class was determined by the gods, and his path in life had been chosen by them also. There was no need to say as much, both were well aware of his circumstances. Besides, as much as Tyron enjoyed enchanting, it wasn’t his real passion. Forming sigils into arrays, managing the flow of power, it was a complex and rewarding craft, but Tyron’s first love was spellcraft, the Words of Power, feeling the magick thunder through him as he bent the world to his will.

Without the same dedication to the craft as the two masters with him, he never would have been able to reach the same heights they had.

“I’ll keep working on these sections, then,” he said, breaking the awkward silence. “How many of these are needed?” he said, gesturing towards his array.

“Five,” Willhem replied instantly. “Two on each side and one in the gathering circle.”

“I’ll get to it.”

The three settled in and continued to work, with only short, muttered conversations between them. They each knew what they were about and set to it with the obsessive focus that only the truly dedicated could hope to possess.

Tyron let the task occupy his thoughts, driving out the myriad of other concerns and responsibilities he had, pushing away his other projects and half-formed theories as he concentrated on doing this simple thing as well as he possibly could. One sigil at a time, he formed the intricate arrays that would connect the others together, forming the bridges that would allow the magick to flow through the entire design. In places, he worked on the other arrays as well, hooking them into his own once they were completed, ensuring the arcane energy would flow smoothly and without flaw or friction.

It was, much like everything else on the arch, incredibly important that it function properly. The amount of magick required to create a path to the Realm of the Dead was absurd, and if he made any mistakes, that power would be turned into heat, light, or even kinetic energy that would tear the arch apart. Even a tenth of a percent of loss through any of his arrays would result in the destruction of the gateway and likely the death of anyone standing nearby. Probably a hundredth of a percent would do the same.

For three days straight, he worked on it, only breaking to eat and drink when his students or others came and reminded him to. On the dawn of the fourth day, he straightened, feeling his bones click and crack as he flexed his back and shoulders.

His face and hands were covered in dirt and powdered stone, clumps of it caught under his fingernails and caught in his hair. He felt grainy, as if he were coated in a layer of fine sand.

He blinked.

“Are we done?” he asked.

Master Willhem, who needed neither food nor rest, floated nearby, his staff clutched in his hand.

“It’s done,” he rasped. “Master Halfshard and I finished a few hours ago.”

“That worked out well, then. Has Master Halfshard gone to rest?”

“She has.”

That made sense.

Stepping back, Tyron admired the arch, taking in all the details of its construction. In form, it was relatively simple, an archway with nearly vertical sides large enough to fit a wagon through. Made of plain stone, it was almost totally unremarkable, except for the thousands of sigils carved into its surface.

Those… those were masterworks.

Every single one was part of a perfect whole, formed with expertise and precision that defied human limits. Tyron had no idea how the others had managed to resolve the many, many issues in his initial plans so elegantly, but they had done it. Every component flowed flawlessly into the next, and no matter how he looked, Tyron couldn’t find even the slightest flaw. It was, without a doubt, the finest example of the Arcanist’s craft he had ever seen.

“Not bad,” he said aloud, turning to Master Willhem.

The demi-lich turned his unblinking stare toward him.

“Barely passable. If it were up to me, I would line the sigils with crystal-dipped metals, bronze would be best, and reinforce the arch with magick-neutral materials. A lattice of onyx would hold it together and make it less likely to crumble. The ground crystal and mortar mix we used is…” he unleashed a grating, ethereal groan, “... adequate. Ground bones of a kin could have been added to the mix, along with topaz dust. Topaz would act as an amplifier for Dimensional Magick.”

He added the last as if he were still Tyron’s teacher, dropping little pearls of wisdom as he lectured the group about one subject or another. Tyron simply nodded.

“I didn’t know that about topaz,” he said, “but it makes no difference. I agree we could have done a lot to improve it, but we don’t have the time, or the resources. Or the tools, in most cases.”

Melting down arcane crystal, dipping the thinnest possible metal wire in it, then flash-hardening it to create a sort of insulated rod was difficult and expensive to do. Using the stuff to line each of the thousands of sigils on the arch was the sort of extravagant expense only Master Willhem would possibly have been able to consider.

In all his time as an apprentice and active Arcanist, Tyron had used the stuff once.

Not to mention, it would have taken weeks. Would it have made the gate more stable? Certainly. It just wasn’t feasible.

“It should hold together,” Willhem admitted, though he didn’t sound entirely happy about it. “When do you plan to test it?”

“No time like the present,” Tyron said.

His skeletons were already moving. He’d had them out collecting vast quantities of arcane crystal over the last few days and now there were carts of the stuff sitting in the street outside the temple. In minutes, there was a steady stream of skeletons walking in and out, carrying neat bundles of crystal bound together with leather straps and placing them on the gathering circle on the ground.

When activated, the circle would begin to extract the power contained in the crystal and feed it into the gateway, acting as the energy source for the enchantment to work.

The whole process would take hours once it had started, so Tyron was eager to get it under way.

“Shall you, or shall I?” he said, looking to his old master.