Book of The Dead

In many ways, Tyron was content. Here, in Foxbridge, there was no one to bother him with requests, demands or expectations. He was finally free of all the burdens that had clung to him for so long. Without distractions, without obligations, he was free to pour all of his energy and power into the magick that he loved.

And there was an absurd amount of power. Perhaps it was a good thing the rifts to the north and south were untended, as Foxbridge became the centre of a vortex sucking in arcane energy with a seemingly boundless appetite. As the demands of the horde and minion creation process grew, he was forced to send Master Willhem out with an escort to lay gathering arrays around the town, pulling in more power and directing it towards the market square.

Creating noctic bone, weaving the new threads, and the constant casts of Raise Greater Undead each required an absurd amount of power, making Tyron burn through magick as quickly as it could be gathered. Several times he was forced to rotate out his demi-liches to let their arcane marrow recharge, bringing in others to replace them.

When he had only just received his Class, Tyron couldn’t possibly imagine the torrent of power he now wielded, not only his own personal magick, but also that being pulled in by his undead mages as well.

All of that energy, all of that power, funnelled into the creation of undead. Hour by hour, his ranks continued to swell as he depleted the cemeteries of every village in the area, and visited several nearby mass graves his skeletons had found. Eventually, he had gone through every skeleton in the horde, converting them to ashflame skeletons and improving all of their weapons and armour as well. An exhaustive process, but well worth it.

Despite the herculean effort, Tyron was far from satisfied with his work. Confident he could improve not only the noctic bone, but his current weave significantly, everything he had accomplished would need to be redone once he had more time to experiment and further revise his designs. With the aid of Master Willhem, he was also confident that the enchantments placed on his undead could be further refined, allowing them to draw in and share their own magick more efficiently.

Despite not having refined these new techniques to his satisfaction, Tyron had no choice. With the number of available skeletons dwindling, he turned over the bulk of the work to his more capable undead mages and began to sketch out his rough ideas for what came next: the revenants and wights.

Of course, he would start with the revenants, better to make mistakes with the less crucial minions.

But who to work on first? There was really only one choice.

It had been some time since Tyron had paid any specific attention to Rufus. Once something of a friend, after everything that had transpired between them, turning him into a revenant and tormenting his soul had been… satisfying for Tyron.After so much time had passed, he now felt nothing but indifference towards his would-be killer, and the person who had once been Rufus, son of the abusive blacksmith and boy who had dreamed of being a swordsman like Magnin Steelarm, was now gone. After years as an undead, little remained of the person Rufus had been. All that was left was a dull reflection of his former personality.

Summoned by Tyron, the revenant stood before him silently, unable to speak, a shell housing a degraded soul.

In truth, Rufus was one of Tyron’s weakest revenants. Not even a bronze ranked Slayer at the time of his death, he had little in the way of skills and experience in battle. It was to the extent that the Necromancer had never needed to replace the original weave he had used, since Rufus wasn’t limited by it in any way.

Without the wights’ ability to grow stronger and gain levels, it was questionable whether it was even worth keeping Rufus as a revenant at all. Arcane energy was a precious resource within the horde, and it would be more efficiently spent dismissing Rufus’ soul and using the bones to make a regular skeleton. Another revenant would do much better in his place.

Yet Tyron did not do that.

“Been a while, Rufus,” he said, largely to himself, as he stared at the revenant. His eyes held no emotion as he looked at his old companion. He merely weighed the possibilities, considering his options and trying to ascertain the best path forward.

Let me die, Rufus said. Please… let me die.

No passion, or anger, or even hope could be felt from Rufus’ soul, only utter despair. Tyron considered him.

“No… no I don’t think I will,” Tyron replied, still thinking.

How much do I need to suffer?

“Until I’m satisfied.”

When will that be?

“Be silent. I’m trying to think.”

Forced to obey the command, the revenant drew still and quiet, the soul within no longer stirring as Tyron pondered the problem.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

It was possible for him to work on an undead without unmaking it first, and that was the method he would need to use with the more advanced undead. Unlike regular skeletons, creating revenants and wights wasn’t so simple he could stick them on the mass production line and hope for the best.

No, it would be much better to work on them without having to recreate them from scratch. That meant adjusting their bones and weaves one piece at a time. Tyron had over a hundred revenants at this point, so if he had to recreate them bone by bone and joint by joint, they would never be ready in time before the Golden Legion arrived.

Blood and bone… how was he supposed to get this done?

For revenants, it was even more important that the weave be carefully aligned to the proportions of their skeleton, which meant using the altar to weave multiple revenants at once was simply out of the question.

After a week without sleep, Tyron was once again starting to feel the effects of pushing himself too hard, but his inhuman resilience would allow him to persist much longer, if he wanted to. Facing the Empire without any rest at all sounded foolish in the extreme, yet he had to complete the improvement of his most powerful undead. He wouldn’t have a chance otherwise.

“Lie down,” Tyron commanded.

Without responding, the revenant that had been Rufus lay down at his feet. If he was going to do this, he would do it from his comfortable chair.

More and more, Tyron wondered why he had clung to his humanity for so long. Wouldn’t it be nice to never grow fatigued at all?

Staring down at the skeleton, he made a decision and raised his hands.

It took a few attempts to get the process to work as he’d pictured it in his mind, but he was eventually able to begin the conversion process in the femur. Starting with a nice, large and well-structured bone was an obvious choice. If he had to list his least favourite bones, the cuneiforms in the feet, particularly the lateral cuneiform, were a complete pain.

Working carefully, he restructured the magick within the bone, sinking in vastly more power and creating the lattice required to hold it all together. A revenant was created by fusing the soul, weave and bone together as a single unit, so Tyron wasn’t sure how well they would tolerate this conversion process. After all, he had no choice but to interfere with those elements one at a time. Judging by the movement of Rufus’ soul, he wasn’t having a good time, but that didn’t mean Tyron was going to stop. Once it was complete, he stepped back and examined the femur carefully..

Satisfied with his work, he moved on to the next, and then the next.

Once the entire skeleton had been transformed, he began to pick apart the weave, recreating it joint by joint, muscle by muscle, utilising his latest design and making the necessary alterations on the fly to adapt it to Rufus’ frame. When he was done, he commanded the revenant to stand and carefully inspected his handiwork.

“You’re probably stronger now than you were when you were alive, Rufus,” he muttered to himself, hand on his chin as he beheld his work.

The process had been difficult, but manageable. If it was only this much, he could probably do… five at a time if he pushed himself. Thankfully there wasn’t any need for him to cast an hours-long ritual, which would spare a lot of his focus.

Dismissing the revenant, he summoned five more.

Deciding he should probably do this himself, he stood from the chair with a groan, his muscles stiff from days on end of little movement. Following his silent commands, the revenants entered the Ossuary and interred themselves in separate recesses, while one stood beside the altar. Putting a stop to the weaving work he was currently engaged in via a demi-lich, Tyron had the regular skeletons withdrawn from the Ossuary and increased the number of skeletal mages working on other areas of minion preparation.

He may not be able to use the altar to speed up the weaving process, but he could use it for the noctic bone conversion, if he was careful.

Raising his hands, Tyron got to work.

As ever, the altar mimicked whatever modifications he made to the skeleton upon the altar. Power thundered through Tyron as he worked, an incredible expenditure of Death Magick that not even the Ossuary could support on its own.

Once the bones had been converted, it was still necessary for him to adjust the weave of each revenant separately, but there were other ways to accelerate this process. Four demi-liches were summoned and he worked through all of them, along with weaving himself, to weave all five revenants simultaneously.

Sweat dripped from his brow as he worked, the level of concentration required was immense, and he made far more mistakes than he would have liked. Forced to unpick sections of the weave and remake them slowed him further, but he pushed through. This was a learning process, and he would only improve by challenging himself.

When the five revenants were done, Tyron carefully inspected each, ensuring that he hadn’t missed anything. A few minor corrections here and there before they were dismissed, only for another five to march into the Ossuary, interring themselves as Tyron prepared to begin again.

In this way, he pushed through the revenants, five at a time, then once he was confident, six at a time, then seven.

Outside the Ossuary, regular skeletons continued to be processed. Bones were assembled, cleansed, infused and hardened as his horde brought in cartloads of dead from the outer villages and arranged them in the square. Soon, there were hundreds waiting to be taken into the Ossuary, but Tyron was resolute, the revenants would be completed before anything else could happen.

Not even sure how much time had passed, Tyron was swaying on his feet, sweat continuing to stream down his face as he clenched his teeth, warding off the headache that pounded in his temples. Maintaining his concentration was all that mattered to him as eight separate weaves danced in his mind’s eye. Every movement of eighty separate fingers had to be perfect, efficient, the flow of magick through eight separate entities, flawless. Only then would the weave be good enough to see combat.

When it was finally done, Tyron staggered away from the altar, blinking owlishly as he gathered his thoughts. Working on multiple weaves at the same time was so much more difficult than he’d thought. Though, he had been deeply fatigued when he’d started.

Once final adjustments were made, he stumbled out of the Ossuary and back into Foxbridge. Although the air was still suffused with a thick cloud of death, it was at least a little more comfortable.

His revenants were done, all of them. One final rest, then the wights. Hopefully the Golden Legion wouldn’t find him before he was done.

Collapsing into his blankets, Tyron didn’t even need a spell to knock him out. He was asleep in seconds.