Book of The Dead

Merigold bit her lip and tried to stop her hands from shaking, gripping the pommel of her saddle so tight her knuckles turned white. In the distance, obscured by swirling miasma and golden light, the two forces clashed over and over again, yet even mounted she couldn’t see well enough to tell how the battle was progressing.

I brought them here. They are dying because of me.

Moisture welled in her eyes and she shook her head, trying to dismiss the thought. No. She was not responsible for this. Members of the Golden Legion would have come regardless of what she had done. Were it not for her intervention, only a thousand would have come, two thousand at best, and all of them would have died.

And worse than died.

“H-how is it going?” she asked hesitantly, not for the first time.

Mounted on his own horse, which seemed as implacable and expressionless as its rider, Honoured Stennis peered into the distance, no doubt seeing all of the details that escaped her. Without any flicker of emotion in his eyes, he scanned the field for a moment before he replied.

“Something is wrong,” he said shortly.

Merigold waited, heart frozen in her chest, but nothing more was forthcoming. Stennis did not elaborate, only remained, seemingly unmoved, on his stallion.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded, her voice rising to the edge of being shrill.

“I don’t know,” he replied.Which was likely why he hadn’t said anything.

“How… how do you know something is wrong?” Merigold tried a different angle. Sometimes the Honoured Stennis was as forthcoming as a welded-shut clam. Most of the time. Heart thundering in her chest, she couldn’t help but curse the man for being so reticent.

“The undead are powerful, stronger than I would have expected them to be. A platinum rank Necromancer is just as frightening as the texts would lead us to believe. Even so, I do not believe the Golden Legion should be struggling as much as they are. Unless their standards have fallen, or the Empire’s Soldiers are weaker than I recall, they should have driven far deeper into Foxbridge than they have.”

At this time, the battle had been raging in the streets for over an hour. A significant amount of ground had been gained, driving the miasma and undead back, but it appeared as though the pace was much slower than what Stennis had expected.

“Can… can you go and… help them?” she asked, hesitating.

She knew she shouldn’t ask. Merigold was not in command of Stennis, not by a long shot! Should someone of her station even attempt to give him an order, they would have their head removed in an instant. Yet he was here, by her side, by order of the Emperor, protecting not only her, but the Imperial Seal that she carried.

“No,” he replied shortly, then seemed to consider a moment, one finger tapping on the reins. Once, twice, three times… then–“My orders are to remain by your side and ensure you are safe. With a battle in progress nearby, and ghosts in the vicinity, I may not leave your side, even for a moment.”

Merigold hadn’t realised there were ghosts nearby. A shiver ran down her spine as she glanced about fearfully. Being here was her responsibility, and was only right, but she hated it, hated the death and the destruction, the smell of smoke and the faint cries of the dead and dying. Smooth vellum under her hands, the soft glow of enchanted globes in the dark, the smell of fresh ink, organised columns and tables, these were the things she was familiar with, the things she loved.

She didn’t want to be here.

“Shouldn’t we at least tell them that there is something wrong?” she asked him. “I can go in with you to speak to General Crow. That way you don’t need to leave my side.”

Honoured Stennis shook his head.

Right now, they were at the rear of the formation, with archers and reserves around them, far from danger and well protected, but the General was only a few hundred metres away, right in the heart of the army.

“I’m sure they already know,” Stennis told her.

“But what if they don’t?”

“Then they will soon figure it out.”

Not for the first time, she was struck by how callous Stennis was towards the lives of the Golden Legion. At times it seemed as if there was a loose sort of respect between them, and at others he seemed to think of them as less than worthless.

Not wanting to push him any further, there was nothing Merigold could do but bite her lip, grip the pommel of her saddle, and hope that nobody else would die.

***

“Found it!” Elinon exclaimed, sweat dripping from his brow and running down his face. Battles were always so damned hot.

Before him, sat on the ground with their armour off, was a wounded Soldier, leaning forward while the Mage Captain pressed his hands into their back. Physical contact wasn’t necessary to try and search for internal magick, but it did make the process easier, and tracking down this particular infection had been more than difficult.

“What did you find? If you don’t mind me asking, Mage Captain?”

Understandably nervous, the Soldier he was examining, a Sergeant named Reynold, asked.

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How to even describe it? As the battle had dragged on, Elinon had only become more convinced that something was deeply, worryingly wrong. Yet, stretching his senses out over the battlefield had revealed nothing unusual. Of course, magick was flying everywhere, dragged up into the sky, raining back down again, being produced by the Mage Corps and pushed into the Golden Dome, along with hundreds of spells flung back and forth every minute.

Finding anything subtle amidst all of that chaos was difficult, but Elinon had confidence in his abilities, he was sensitive to the flow of magick, and no matter how much he had suspected foul play, he hadn’t been able to find anything.

When the General had pulled him from the battle and tasked him with searching, he had examined dozens of individuals, each of them weakened, with a strange lethargy in their limbs. Yet tracking down the source had been exceptionally difficult. Had they been afflicted with some sort of curse or spell, it should have been readily apparent.

Only now, on his twentieth attempt, had he finally managed to find the source of the problem.

It resided in their heart.

Coiled like a worm and formed of tendrils of magick so thin as to be almost invisible, Elinon honestly couldn’t fault himself for not finding it. Residing in the lower left ventricle, the spell was like a parasite formed of Death Magick, sucking on the life force carried by the blood and growing stronger.

“It’s a curse. Don’t worry, I’ve found it now.”

At least now he knew what he was looking for. After considering for a moment longer, Elinon hesitated. Placing his palms against Reynold’s back once more, he closed his eyes and extended his awareness once more.

Focusing directly on the heart, he found the curse again immediately. Absorbing vitality, fattening itself, weakening the host, yet… it didn’t make sense. If the curse had been active for hours, at the rate it was drawing life from Reynold, it should have been much larger than it was now.

Something wasn’t right.

Once more, he went searching, hunting through the vessels, tracking them through the Soldier’s flesh, following the blood wherever it went. After a few minutes, he found another parasite. Then, another. Then another.

He cursed.

Not only was the curse in the heart absorbing vitality to strengthen itself, it was casting off copies of itself, like an actual living parasite, sending them throughout the body of the host until they latched into a muscle or organ and started feeding. Each Soldier in the Golden Legion was level seventy nine, with absurdly high levels of endurance and toughness. Their vitality was incredibly high, which meant they hadn’t noticed the weakness in their flesh at first. As the battle ground on and the curse took greater hold on them, they would become increasingly exhausted and feeble as their very life was sucked away from within.

When had they been infected? At what point had the spell taken effect?

With a sinking feeling, Elinon felt as though the answer was obvious. When they had first begun firing their artillery magick on Foxbridge, the Necromancer had responded in kind, a Death’s Head of miasma and darkness falling upon the army from above. At the time, he hadn’t realised what was happening, thinking the spell was simply sapping life from them so long as the cloud remained in contact with them.

In truth, the cloud had merely been the medium through which this curse was delivered. Likely it took hold when inhaled, or perhaps it invaded through the skin and leaked into the bloodstream.

Almost everyone had been touched by that cloud, including Elinon himself. Which meant the longer this battle went on, the stronger the curse would become, and the weaker the Golden Legion would feel.

Never in all of his years had the Mage Captain encountered a spell so… insidious and corrupted. To his senses, it felt almost inherently evil, as if it had a dark intelligence of its own as it ate its victims from within. Taking his hands from Squire Reynold’s back, he couldn’t help but shake them off as though they were unclean.

“Don’t worry,” he tried to reassure the young man. “You’re fine for the moment. Lie down and rest. I’ll be back to see you shortly.”

Rising from his crouch, Elinon walked out of the medical tent, trying not to create panic by moving too quickly. For now, the curse had gone without detection, even by the medics, since the threads of magick were contained to the bloodstream and so impossibly thin. Despite this, it wouldn’t be long until the healing mages and Priests found them. Best he spoke to them himself.

Technically, the Healer in charge was under Elinon’s command as part of the Mage Corpse, yet in practice the woman was largely independent and didn’t take it well when he meddled in her affairs. She would have to tolerate it today, this was far too important to wait.

Mage Healer Ferrin’s hands were covered in blood and red was spattered across her uniform when he found her. It didn’t appear to bother her in the slightest, she only turned to glare at him as he approached. Groans and cries of pain and suffering filled the air around them and he could tell she didn’t want to be taken from treating the wounded even for a moment.

“I have to speak to you, outside,” he muttered when he reached her side.

Ferrin glared at him, but something about the expression in his face told her this was a serious matter. Once they were out of the tent and away from the others, he told her what he had found.

“Try and find a way to cure it. I’ll come back and find you after I’ve spoken to the General. Whatever help you need, you’ll get it.”

Ferrin frowned, worry creasing her forehead.

“It won’t be easy to remove, especially if it’s spread throughout their body. If we miss a single thread, it’ll only come back again, given time.”

“What about the Priests? Their blessings should be able to… burn it out.”

“It’s possible. I’ll go to them first. Get moving, Mage Captain, lives depend on this.”

She pushed him away and then rushed off, leaving Elinon with no choice but to do the same. With luck, they wouldn’t be too late.

***

General Crow listened to the Mage Captain’s explanation, never taking his eyes from the battle.

When Elinon was done, he nodded once.

“What are the odds the Death Magick being rained down on our heads is accelerating the spread of this curse?” he asked.

After hesitating for a moment, Elinon answered.

“I believe the odds of that are quite high, General. Not only would the Death Magick sap the vitality from us faster, it would likely also speed the growth of the curse.”

No wonder the Necromancer had been at such pains to protect the damned thing. It had been some time since the shields had been worn through, and now the Mages were at work tearing the cursed thing apart. Despite no longer being protected, it was incredibly durable, absorbing an inordinate amount of punishment without being destroyed.

Yet it was now on its last legs. As the General watched, more countermagick was launched into the orb, penetrating within the spell and detonating inside, scrambling the magick it contained and breaking it apart.

High overhead, the orb pulsed violently before it cracked, streams of darkness blasting out from within. Once it had begun, the process accelerated rapidly until the orb tore itself apart, scattering into nothing and at last bringing an end to the ceaseless rain of death.

“We need to push harder,” he ordered. “We can’t drag this out any longer. Commit the reserves and widen the front. Bring them in from the west.”

There was a chance his men could be healed and returned to the fight, but he couldn’t assume that would be the case. He needed that Necromancer in chains, now.