Book of The Dead

It was the power of the Dimensional Conduits that had allowed Tyron to best the Golden Legion from within the null-magick field, but even he didn’t properly understand them. As someone who had dedicated years of his life to the study and mastery of conduit magick, Tyron considered himself as possibly the foremost expert within the Western Province at the time of its destruction.

He had never heard of dimensional conduits.

No lecture from Master Willhem, no hidden text, no scrap or hint or single line in any of the volumes he had pored over during the sleepless nights or isolated days. All of his efforts had been directed towards making his conduits as durable and lossless as possible, which extended their effective range considerably.

Upon his ascension to Platinum rank, he had been granted the knowledge of the Unseen. At first, he had focused on those techniques which allowed him to craft more powerful minions. A reasonable decision, given the battle he only just survived. Yet even then he had been drawn to this particular parcel of knowledge. Conduits were, after all, his speciality.

Now that he had a little room to breathe, he was finally able to devote all of his attention to them, and what he found was staggering.

His mind on fire, Tyron worked tirelessly, not even manipulating four different groups of demi-liches enough to keep pace with his thoughts. He burned with impatience, ignoring the demands of his body, the weather, the time of day, none of it mattered when compared to what he might learn next.

If not for Filetta ensuring that some wights were devoted to hunting and gathering food to shove in front of him, he wouldn’t have eaten at all. While the master of their souls conducted his research, the bulk of his minions continued to prepare remains and scour the battlefield for the dead. For days, the river ran red as the butchery continued, the ground stained with congealed blood so dark as to turn almost black.

Fires burned constantly, consuming the meat and offal and filling the air with the scent of roasted flesh.

Tyron paid no mind to any of it.

When at last he came out of his trance, he found himself trembling, shaking even, barely able to keep his feet as he leaned against a tree. Every part of him hurt, his head pounded, his eyes were crusted nearly shut and his fingers were raw and bloody. Despite his terrible condition, he had a broad smile on his face. It was done. A crude design. He could acknowledge that now he had completed the work. The next version would be far superior, but that would have to come later. For now, this was proof that his concept would work and the first fruit of his new knowledge.

Dimensional Conduits would change everything for the Necromancer. Now, he could be in two places at once. Even that didn’t really cover it. He could be everywhere.

Without the tension of his new project to keep him going, Tyron felt his consciousness fade as weeks of sleepless nights and endless work finally caught up with him.

“And there he goes,” Filetta said, catching the Necromancer before he fell to the ground.

She’d expected him to go several hours ago, but he managed to hold on long enough to work out the final kinks in his design. Despite much of the Golden Legion’s camp being a tattered ruin, they’d been able to salvage an intact tent and rather fancy bedding in preparation for this moment. With the help of some minions, she managed to get Tyron inside, stripped and washed before throwing his unconscious form into the bed.

Once he was tucked in and resting comfortably, she stepped outside, posting guards with several mental commands. Outside, she found Dove, hands on his hips, looking at his former student’s latest creation.

“What in the name of all that is holy has he made now?” he wondered, staring at the thing. “I… I have no words. It looks hideous. Is he trying to make his creations as patently evil as possible? First the skull cauldrons and now this?”

As much as she wanted to defend Tyron, particularly to Dove, Filetta couldn’t help but agree with him. She knew he didn’t care what his creations looked like, focusing on the function rather than the form. Yet something this horrific couldn’t be an accident, right?

“What does it even do?” Dove huffed. “It’s beyond complicated. Stuffed with cores and arrays, it had better be fucking spectacular.”

“Well… you’ll have to wait until Tyron wakes up to explain it,” Filetta said, “because he didn’t tell anyone. Maybe Willhem could tell you a little about it? He helped with certain parts.”

“No thanks,” Dove shivered. “That guy intimidates me.”

It was two days before Tyron emerged again, blinking and scratching at his face as he wandered out of the tent in his underclothes.

“How dare you walk around in such an indecent fashion!” Dove squawked, sounding scandalised.

Blearily, the Necromancer looked at him.

“But there’s nobody here,” he mumbled, clearly still half asleep.

“Excuse me?!”

Tyron blinked a few more times.

“No people here,” he clarified, unhelpfully.

“I think I’m genuinely offended. Filetta, aren’t you offended? He’s denying our fundamental personhood!”

At the mention of her name, Tyron’s head whipped around to see the wight standing nearby, watching him with an impassive expression on her ghostly face.

“I’ll uh… put some clothes on,” he said, stumbling back into the tent.

Once he was suitably attired, Dove finally managed to wrangle him into explaining the function of his latest creation.

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“You can’t tell?”

“No,” Dove ground out, “I can’t tell.”

“Huh.”

“Shut up, Tyron! I swear I will throttle you on the spot if you don’t explain this hideous contraption this instant!”

Shrugging, the Necromancer decided he may as well. Seeing Dove be this curious, even if it made him furious, was still a positive sign that should be indulged. Besides, he had a little time. As soon as he had dressed himself, Filetta had served him a plate of poorly cooked meat and wild vegetables which he continued to munch on while pointing out how the construct would function.

“It’s a conduit relay,” he began.

“Nononono. First you have to explain why it looks like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like something out of a child’s nightmare!”

Looking at his creation again, Tyron did have to admit it was a rather grisly sight. His primary materials were bones, so anything he made was going to have a macabre air about it, but this was rather intense. Fitted onto the back of a cart, the construct incorporated a cauldron positioned close to the front with what appeared to be two monstrous skeletal hands reaching towards it.

At the back of the cart, a platform on which a demi-lich could stand and operate the device had been carved, a focal point arching up to hang just above them. Perhaps he shouldn’t have used a skull as the focal point, but it did conveniently act as a housing for a large core with only a few modifications.

“I was mostly thinking about the lines of power and not how it would end up looking. Now that I see it in the cold light of day, it is rather terrifying.”

“Good. Now that it’s been acknowledged, explain.”

“Okay. It’s a conduit relay.”

One hand stroking his chin, Tyron looked at his work and nodded in satisfaction, but didn’t say anything else.

“You haven’t explained anything,” Dove said, poking him in the arm. “Do you want to get choked? Is that his thing, Filetta?”

“No, he likes knives.”

“You two freak me out. Talk.”

“Look, it’s not that complicated.” He paused for a moment. “Okay, it is quite complicated, but ultimately, it does what I said. With a demi-lich in place on the platform, they can power the array which will connect the construct to me via a dimensional conduit. I’ll need to maintain a similar device near me, but in essence, it will act as a relay for minions a wide distance from me. Well, theoretically, any distance from me. Dimensional Conduits don’t appear to be affected by distance except for the cost in magick to maintain them.

“Hence why the relay is necessary. It will allow up to a thousand minions to connect to me via what is essentially a single conduit. Otherwise the cost in magick would be far too intensive.”

“Why only a thousand?” Dove asked, pondering. “You’re going to have tens of thousands of minions soon enough if this thing works, right?”

“I’m effectively squeezing a thousand conduits into one dimensional conduit. The… amount of magick I can reasonably fit through while keeping the construct relatively cheap in terms of materials and effort to create requires that I make a compromise and settle on a number. A thousand seemed reasonable.”

“Why do I feel like you chose your wording carefully in order to simplify the concepts involved for me?”

Tyron looked a little uncomfortable.

“You’re not a conduit expert. Do you really want me to go into the minute details of how it works?”

“Not really.”

“Oh.”

That was a shame. Tyron was quite proud of the system he had designed. In reality, the relay would ‘pulse’ through each of the thousand minions many times a second, connecting and disconnecting each minion from him so rapidly it may as well have been a solid connection. So long as the relay was able to handle the volume of magick he needed to push through it, every minion would remain capable of accessing his reserves and he could control them just as he normally would. The true limitation was actually the capacity of the relay. With larger, more precious cores, he could attach more minions to it, but if he managed to get his hands on something that valuable, there were dozens of other things he could think of that would be more useful than doubling the capacity of a single relay. Just making another one was far more practical.

“Well, I need to make as many of these as I can for the rest of the day, then I can leave,” he said, stretching and cracking his fingers.

He’d probably need to send some of his horde north to hunt for rift kin and gather the necessary cores. Thankfully there was no shortage of monsters roaming the land, since the rift at Woodsedge was completely unguarded.

“Where are we going?” Filetta asked him.

“Probably back to Granin so I can meet with the rest of the rebels. If they want to, they can move back here to the Western Province now. Actually, I could head straight to Woodsedge myself and tame the rift there first, I suppose.”

He chuckled to himself.

“I don’t really suppose it matters, come to think of it. With the relay, I can do all of these things at once.”

As long as there was a relay at the rift at Woodsedge, he could tame the rift by casting through the demi-lich controlling it. There wasn’t any need for him to be there himself. Similarly, if he left, he wasn’t abandoning the resources and work here at the battlefield either. So long as there were relays here, he could raise minions and create more constructs by working through them.

He just needed more relays and more demi-liches.

At that thought, Tyron clicked his tongue in irritation. There had been hundreds of gold ranked Mages here with the Golden Legion, but they were stationed largely at the rear of the formation. Very few had died during the actual fighting, with a few more falling to the initial contagion by the Screaming Skull and the vast bulk having their souls consumed later back at the camp. If he was lucky, he could get his hands on possibly two dozen of their souls. A nice boost to his cast of demi-liches to be sure, but not nearly as many as he would have liked.

Especially now that his need for more capable mages was so much higher than before.

“Nothing for it, I suppose,” he muttered. “I need to get to work.”

Without wasting any more time, he folded his legs and sat down on the ground, reaching out through the bonds that connected him to his undead and began to take command.

He needed the battlefield area scoured and every soul he could get his hands on secured. Once that was done, they would have to be paired with their remains and prepared to be raised. At the same time, he would continue to work through other minions and construct more relays until his supply of suitable cores ran out. With Master Willhem helping with the finer work, they should be able to maintain a healthy pace.

His cavalry, along with a decently sized force, were sent to the north with the first of the relays. They could hunt kin for the time being. When he had more relays and minions to spare, he could reinforce them and push toward the rift itself.

“And he’s gone,” Dove said, throwing his hands up.

He wasn’t actually upset. Rather, he was elated. The thought of bringing down the Empire and freeing the Slayers from their servitude was intoxicating to him, and he clung to that possibility as if his soul depended on it. Tyron had proven he might be the first person in the history of the Five Divines to actually stand a chance at succeeding, and this new creation only pushed him closer to realising that potential. For the first time in a long while, Dove felt almost human again.

“I think I’ll head north and hunt for some kin,” he said. “A few more levels and I might be able to nab myself another summoning contract.”

Filetta turned to him, surprised.

“I’m a little shocked you’d be willing to go back to the Realm of the Dead, considering what happened there.”

Indeed, a return trip would not be pleasant for the Undead Summoner, given who had a hand on his leash.

“Well, some things are worth a little suffering,” he replied. “Levels, here I come.”