Book of The Dead

Tyron watched through his minions’ eyes as they swept through the borderlands and encircled Baristaya, closing ranks around the walls as the final trickle of citizens out of the eastward-facing gate slowed to nothing. He’d half expected a trap or some form of deception, but after the gates were knocked down, his skeletons advanced to find the streets were empty, the garrisons abandoned and the houses eerily silent.

Waves of miasma flowed through the cracked gate, drifting over the ground like black mist, rolling down the streets like a rising tide of darkness. Through it, the skeletons marched, silent ranks under the direction of the revenants and wights sweeping into every building, checking every cupboard and basement, ensuring that nothing had been left behind to threaten the horde or its master.

And they did find stragglers, aged and infirm citizens trembling in their beds, wide-eyed with fear as the undead prowled through their homes. As promised, they were left alone. Tyron’s minions searched their residences, then exited, leaving them be. Once enough of the city had been confirmed as safe, Tyron himself, along with his closest guard, moved inside the walls.

Uninterested in picking through the houses for the crumbs left behind, Tyron waited for his minions to clear the palace and walked inside.

“Looks like it’s already been looted,” Filetta sniffed, surveying the scattered detritus on the floor and overturned furniture the Nobles had left on their way out. “Surely they left something of value behind.”

“I don’t really care if they left gold behind,” Tyron said, rolling his eyes, “or some other trinket. I’m here for their crypt.”

“Then you don’t mind if I see what I can find,” Filetta said, a gleam in her undead eye.

“What would you even spend it on?” Tyron said, confused. “I don’t mind, but it seems like a waste of time.”

“Let’s say that some habits die hard.”

The Necromancer could only shrug. It wasn’t like he couldn’t sympathise, he himself felt impatient to loot the palace. Only, in his case, he was after something very different from gold. It was clear from the inside of the palace that the Sathin family had been quietly prosperous, which was surprising for a frontier house. Pillars of enchanted marble, with liquid fire running in streaks through the stone, had been used to flank the entrance to the family mausoleum, while the grand door was heavily enchanted to repel any inquisitive people trying to gain entrance.Doubtless there was a passphrase or key used to gain access, known only to the highest members of the family. Looking closely, trying to sense the magick on the other side of the entrance, Tyron felt that there were likely further traps within. Perhaps a null-magick zone, or a death field, maybe both.

However, these defenses had been designed in order to prevent thieves from gaining access to the remains of the dead within, not to bar entry to an army of skeletons. Rather than trying to do anything fancy, he simply ordered his skeletal giants to smash in the door by punching it over and over again.

It took some time, but eventually the reinforced, enchanted stone crumbled. Once they’d knocked in a hole, the giants were able to reach inside with their large skeletal hands and pull the rest of the rubble out of the way. With a thought, Tyron sent a ghost inside, using it to examine the interior.

Despite the dust and shards of stone that were now scattered over the floor, it appeared as though the Sathin family truly valued their honoured dead. The mausoleum was spacious and exceptionally well made, the decorative details and enchanted light sconces along the wall creating a sombre and reverent air. Down a short flight of steps, there were two wings, one for the main family and one for the branches.

Each of the dead had been interred in a stone sarcophagus with a description of their deeds engraved on a stone tablet at their base. It appeared as though a death field had indeed been activated upon the door being opened, a potent enchantment that would rapidly sap the life from any living creature within the building. Obviously the ghost didn’t care and suffered no harm from the effect, drifting through the dim light to explore the depths of the structure.

It was clear that branch family members certainly needed to earn their way in; each description lauded the service and contributions they had made in order to earn their way into the family crypt, whereas the main family members were generally less praised. However, the main family wing accompanied each sarcophagus with a portrait of the deceased, preserving a memory of their appearance in life.

The inner politics of the houses couldn’t have been less interesting to Tyron. Once he was certain there were no further traps laid within, he withdrew his awareness from the ghost.

“Take everything,” he said to the wight, Brigette, waiting nearby. “Every set of bones inside and everything they were buried with.”

“Of course,” she replied.

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He could sense she wasn’t enthused about the order, but her reluctance had been worn down after the campaign through what remained of the Western Province. If Brigette and the other Slayers he had turned into undead had hated the Empire before, now, it disgusted them.

Although he didn’t have the souls to go along with these remains, as they would have dispersed or been claimed by their ancestors long ago, Tyron still prized them. Nobles were allowed to ascend to gold, so their bones would be of a high quality, making for excellent base material, but more than that, he wanted the living Nobles to fear allowing their family crypts to fall into his hands. He wanted them to twist and seethe knowing that the bones of their family had been claimed by the horde.

If they were angry enough, irrational enough, then one family might decide to make a stand, to try and defend their ancestral home. Then he would not only claim the old bones, but the new ones as well. His army hungered for new wights and demi-liches, and he would be more than happy to bind those souls to his service.

Something to think about for the future. At present, he needed to move quickly and continue to press his advantage before the Golden Legion arrived.

Raising his hands, Tyron conjured the entrance to the Ossuary, the archway of bones manifesting in the courtyard of the palace. From there, his minions went to work, along with his students from Granin.

He’d managed to get his hands on over two dozen promising individuals using the wyvern pack before the harrying parties had gotten wise and retreated to a safer distance. So long as they were beneath the cloud cover that raced before the horde, they had no way of knowing if the undead were going to swoop down at them. Although it had made their attempts to thin the horde much weaker, Tyron almost wished they’d remained closer and more effective, allowing him to grab more of them.

There had been two Magisters in that group, who he had been more than happy to kill, but there had also been a few Slayers, who he had not. Signs that the red-robed Mages were enacting a similar strategy to what had transpired in the west were obvious to see in the condition of the remains. Emaciated and broken by soul-afflicted pain, the Slayers had been shadows of their former selves before they’d been sent to fight and die on the frontier, an infuriating waste.

At least their spirits burned with the need for revenge, making them more than willing to voluntarily enter his service. Even so, he would much rather have captured them alive. He wanted to liberate the Slayers, not kill them. If there was evidence of torture and enslavement, however, he might use it to ignite a rebellion amongst the rest of the Slayers. If they rose up against the Magisters, then the war for the South would end in a matter of days.

With half of the horde stationed inside the city and the other half spread out in the surrounding terrain, Tyron bunkered down for a day. He switched off the Grave Moons and allowed his constructs to begin storing power once more, ensuring they would be ready for the next offensive. Likewise, the miasma foundries were powered down, the thick plumes of darkness no longer rose into the sky and the cloud slowly began to shrink.

Under Tyron’s direction, the remains were broken down and quickly repaired, made ready to be converted into new minions, or used for crafting. Those promising souls he had captured were assessed, with some being judged worthy of the transition to wights and demi-liches, while most were raised as revenants.

In a study within the palace, Tyron studied a map along with some of his more capable undead. Spread out over a round table, the map displayed the Southern Province, with every major road, rift, keep, town and city clearly marked. Quite a find from the ruins of Kenmor.

On the western side, facing the desert, were the frontier territories, much of it taken from the Dust Folk since the founding of the Empire, forcing them back into the deep sands. By far the largest city out here was Baristaya, but there were still reasonable population centres to the north and south that could be seized.

“There is no point fussing over these minor territories,” his Unliving Vizier grated. “It only makes sense to strike at the heart of the province and bring down the Red Tower. Once the Magisters have fallen, the Slayers will rebel and control of the rifts will fall into your hands overnight.”

“Topple the Magisters and everything flows from that,” Tyron mused. “It sounds simple, and familiar. Doesn’t it, Lady Recillia?”

The soul of the former Noble still burned and writhed in its prison, desperate to find a way out, still railing against its fate. Of all the Nobles he had raised as minions, Recillia Erryn still fought the hardest against his control.

Tyron dragged a finger along the map from their current position to the capital of the Southern Province, Mirasmas.

“It would take weeks of marching to get to the capital, and we would get surrounded on all sides. The Golden Legion would arrive before we got there and assault us along with the forces of the Noble houses. There’s a chance we could win, settling the conflict here in one fell swoop, but there’s also a chance that we fail.”

He eyed the undead sideways.

“Are you neglecting to consider that possibility, or is this your sincere advice?”

Filetta pounced.

“This bitch,” she growled, stalking toward the former Noble but halting when Tyron raised a hand.

“It doesn’t matter, I’m not so generous as to give them a chance to win. We don’t need to march on the capital, we only need to march on something that they will refuse to give up.”

From the capital, he drew his hand to the north and west. Unlike the Western Province, the capital didn’t sit on the border to the Central Province, but was further south, in the most fertile land. Separating the South from Central was the wide Fislo river. Apparently it had been named Lofislove river, after the goddess, but had contracted over thousands of years. Over a kilometre wide for most of its distance, the river was fast-flowing and treacherous, but there were two main crossing points. One, far to the east, would take too long for Tyron to reach, but the other, the border city of Kallas, was close enough that they would arrive well before the Golden Legion.

One of the largest and most prized cities in the Southern Province thanks to the abundance of trade over the border, Kallas was a jewel and a highly coveted territory. The border Nobles had been willing to surrender their lands, but he wondered if every house would be as generous.

“We go here,” he said, tapping his finger on the map, “and we feast.”