Book of The Dead

So penetrating was the chill around Skyice that even Tyron found it difficult to keep his hands limber. Fingers grew stiff in a matter of seconds if he wasn’t careful to shield them from the constant sleet of ice. Fierce winds blew a constant gail, whipping the ice through the air fast enough to slash through leather and cut a regular person to ribbons. Facing the elements alone was enough to kill a weaker Slayer, let alone the monsters.

On fibrous wings that looked like pale ice, rift-kin swept down from above to harry and harass his horde, trying to use their claws and fangs to tear off their skulls and shatter their bones. Upon his platform, Tyron proved to be an irresistible target for most, and they descended on him in constant packs, desperate to rip him apart. Being surrounded by a protective guard of skeleton mages and demi-liches ensured he was safe, though the mantle was perhaps enough to fend off the monsters on its own.

Ahead, the last of the massive monsters finally fell, a shuddering roar escaping as it succumbed to the swarming skeletons around it. Enormous, ape-like beasts with arms as thick as a horse’s neck and covered in snow-white fur, they were incredibly dangerous, forcing Tyron to grind them down over time and utilise his magick to keep them from trampling his lines.

With that beast finally out of the way, he directed his horde forward, quickly seizing control of the broken lands that surrounded the rift.

He hopped down from the platform and found Filetta waiting for him, holding out a pair of gloves.

“Where did you get those from?” he asked, raising his voice against the wind.

“Looted them from the Golden Legion camp,” she replied, a ghostly grin on her features. “Felt good to be thieving again.”

She’d carried them since then? Just in case his hands got cold? Shaking his head, he accepted the gloves and pulled them on. They weren’t exactly the right size, but close enough that it didn’t really matter. Against the magickal and bitter cold of Skyice, he wasn’t sure it would make any difference at all, but he didn’t want to refuse the gesture.

That Filetta even remembered to think of his fleshy hands and the possibility they might freeze went to show how hard she had considered his possible needs. While most undead began to drift away from their memories of their living experience almost immediately, she clung to it with a tenacity that marked her as an anomaly among the dead.

“Thanks,” he muttered, flexing his fingers. “Can I get you to lead an expedition through the rift? Take whoever you need. I’ll let you know when I’m done out here.”“No problem.”

In a breath, she was gone, slithered off into the sleet with a speed and grace that set her apart from most of his wights. Truth be told, many of the wights were Soldiers, Swordsmen and women and other varieties of frontline warriors. Filetta had been an assassin-thief hybrid in life, and that agility and slipperiness had followed her in death.

A steady stream of kin continued to push through the rifts, but surrounded by a large army of undead, they were quickly brought down. Once Filetta advanced through the shimmering rift and into the other realm, the number of beasts who made it through was dramatically reduced.

Fighting would be fierce on the other side, but he didn’t need them to last for too long, and she had taken half of the horde. They would hold without issue.

Once he was certain Filetta had stabilised her position on the other side of the rift, he set to work. It was a difficult and complex ritual process, especially in conditions such as these, but Tyron was prepared. All the reagents he needed had been prepared long ago and stored within the Ossuary, brought out the moment he had arrived atop this mountain.

Truly, the rift couldn’t have opened at a worse place than this.

Snow piled so thick Tyron could barely see the cracked rock beneath, and he needed thousands of undead to brush it away so he had a surface he could work with. Slayers had carved away at the mountain for generations, trying to create a space that was easier to fight on and defend, but every step remained treacherous. Idly, Tyron wondered just how many Slayers had lost their lives slipping off the sheer edge of the cliff no more than twenty metres from the largest rift.

Skyice was an old keep, having been established at least eight hundred years ago. In that time, multiple-thousands must have died that way. Perhaps he should check to see if any remains had been preserved on the side of the mountain? No, it would be too difficult to retrieve them. Regretfully, he pushed the thought aside and focused on the ritual.

Despite his growing proficiency with the spell, the conditions at Skyice meant he was hard at work for over eighteen hours before the task was complete. Faint pain in his back and fingers, Tyron stretched and shook out his hands as he carefully inspected what he had done.

As before, magick was siphoned away from the rift, turned in on itself until it was unmade. The process was slow to start with, but would accelerate over time, eating more and more magick, eventually shrinking the rift itself.

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Since his first attempt at Granin, the design had significantly improved, more robust and effective than before. With the ritual circles properly sealed and protected from harm, there shouldn’t be any chance of the ritual being disrupted, so long as the rift was properly garrisoned and maintained.

Satisfied, he called Filetta back and stood by, watching as his horde emerged in orderly ranks back through the rift, the rearguard holding off the kin until the others were safely through.

Filetta herself emerged, her bone armour covered in rime and blood as she sheathed her twin daggers. Spotting him, she walked over, brushing the snow off her pauldrons.

“That place is awful,” she declared. “Can we leave? I don’t even feel the cold but I am sick of snow and ice.”

Tyron could feel the cold and he was entirely sick of it himself.

“We can. Once the garrison is in place and the horde is on the move, I’ll summon the Ossuary.”

It didn’t take long to sort out those details and soon he raised his hands once more. The sight of his diminished horde vanishing back down the mountain was slightly depressing to Tyron. He needed his army to grow larger, not smaller, and leaving behind forces large enough to properly maintain the rifts was costing him dearly. The skeletons, he wasn’t worried about, but the revenants, wights and most critically, the demi-liches were in critically short supply.

He would need to find a bounty of viable souls and remains and he would need to do it soon. No matter how he thought about it, the only way he would get what he needed was to invade another province. Northern and Southern would provide a bounteous harvest, filled with Magisters and Nobles he was yet to touch. Even thinking about it was enough to awaken a fiery hunger in him. His thirst for vengeance needed to be slaked, and he would rectify the deficiency in his horde at the same time.

For now, the army headed down the mountain would move on to Cluffton to meet up with the workshop group already operating in the city. From there they would move on to Dustwatch Keep after being reinforced, then Endless Sand.

Perhaps he should send an expedition towards the Southern Province? To get there, they would need to find a way to traverse the inland sea or go the long way around through the lands of the Dust Folk. A seemingly unending desert, the heat and lack of water and food wouldn’t pose a challenge for his undead, but they would never make it unless he secured permission from the people who lived there.

Something to think about another time.

With the Ossuary summoned, he stepped inside along with those who came with him, closing the door behind them. Another brief ritual, and he stepped out, once again in Granin. Dawn’s light was just beginning to poke over the horizon, but already people were out and about, getting busy while the wind was low and there wasn’t much crystal dust in the air.

Surprisingly, Elsbeth was there waiting for him, dressed in a simple robe, her golden hair pulled back behind her ears. She looked as though she hadn’t been awake for long. When she saw him step out of the Ossuary, she approached with a small wave as she hid a yawn behind her other hand.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning.”

She waited while he turned and dismissed the Ossuary before speaking again.

“I had a strange dream last night,” she told him.

“Old Gods have something to say?” Tyron asked.

She put her hands on her hips and scowled at him.

“I don’t know why they don’t just talk to you directly,” she said. “Perhaps they would if you ever went to sleep.”

“I was planning on talking to them soon,” Tyron replied, raising a brow. “Is there something they felt they needed to communicate so urgently that they needed to get you out of bed to do it?”

“You think they care if I’m sleeping?” Elsbeth asked, an edge of incredulity in her voice. “They barely care if I’m alive.”

Tyron doubted they cared even for that, but he kept the thought to himself. Elsbeth might not particularly like the gods she had chosen to serve, but she respected them. Insulting The Three in front of her face wouldn’t endear him to her and would likely spark a tedious sermon.

“What do they want me to know?”

His old friend scowled at him, as if sensing what he was thinking.

“They wanted to warn you against using your ‘gateway trick’ too often. Whatever that is?” she asked, hoping he would fill her in.

“Something I worked out recently,” he said with a slight smile. “Helps me get around a bit quicker.”

“Well apparently it threatens the dimensional weave. Poking holes in the fabric of the realm, which threatens to unravel it entirely.”

“They’re worried about that, are they?” Tyron grunted.

“Of course they are! They would die if that happened, along with the rest of us.”

“I’m aware of the danger,” he said with a sigh. “I’m being careful.”

He’d done the calculations. The dimensional weave was far from stable after thousands of years of rifts ripping into it. Under normal circumstances, Tyron poking about here and there using the Ossuary wouldn’t be a problem, but with the weave in such a tattered state, there was a real danger of the realm being destroyed entirely.

For a while, he had seriously considered using this method to bring down The Five Divines. If the realm were to be destroyed, they would die along with it as their existence was bound to it through The Three. Yet, if he tried, all of the gods would turn on him and he’d likely be annihilated in an instant. The only thing protecting him from the wrath of the Divines was the Old Gods, after all.

Besides, he would prefer his revenge to be carried out in a more… personal manner.

“I’ll speak to them tomorrow,” he said, starting to turn away. “They can yell at me in person. Go back to bed.”

“I’m up now,” she said with another yawn. “I may as well tag along. Where are you going?”

“I was going to summon a vampire.”

“Oh… maybe I’ll check on the kitchens.”

“Good call.”