Book of The Dead

“I really thought you were over this….”

“What do you mean, ‘over this’? Are you talking about my aversion to murder? That’s a healthy thing to have!”

“For most people, sure. You aren’t most people. You’re a Necromancer on the run from the law who’s actively being hunted by superhuman killing machines. The same attitudes don’t really apply. When you wasted those two Marshals, I figured you understood that.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Tyron growled. “As you damn well know.”

“And you have a choice now? Look around you, moron! You're halfway up a mountain in the ass end of nowhere with goddess knows how many of these pricks trying to stab you in the face! Why do I feel like I’m the only one of us two who thinks that’s a bad idea?”

Tyron hunched his shoulders against the criticism and the creeping feeling that the skull was correct. He should have put this archer down the moment she was caught. Her remains were valuable to him, extremely so, now that he could create revenants. As a leader for his archers and as a deadly ranged option, she would give him tactical flexibility and another powerful minion.

Instead…. He looked down.

Tied hand and foot, carried between two skeletons, the archer looked back up at him. Or glared up at him, more accurately.

“I don’t suppose you have any advice?” he asked her.

She was gagged, obviously, but he could guess what she wanted to say. Most of it involved swearing, violence and his balls. She’d get along with Dove, most likely.

What were his options? There weren’t many, and basically none of them were palatable. He sighed. This was getting too complicated.

“I don’t want to kill slayers that I don’t have to,” he said firmly to the skull. “My parents are slayers, I’ve wanted to be one my entire life, I can’t just go around massacring them.”

“Nobody said anything about massacring. This is self defence, man! Look, I was a slayer myself once upon a time, I don’t really want you to murder them either. This is different. When they come at you, firing arrows at your noggin from the dark? Fuck the fucking fuckers! That aint a slayer, that’s prime skeleton material.”

The graveyard didn’t look much more appealing in the daytime than it had at night. It was gloomy and shaded, a fine mist rolling down from the mountains above. The skeletons had largely completed their work now, providing a wealth of bones for the Necromancer to work with. They were in the process of cleaning the place up, returning it to some semblance of the undisturbed, overgrown mess it had been before.

Well, not entirely.

In the daylight, it had been much easier to notice what had evaded him the previous night. He really needed to learn some sort of magick-enhanced vision. Most of the cemetery had indeed been overgrown, and it had been those old and forgotten graves the town had agreed he could unearth. There was, however, one area that was quite well maintained. A cursory examination had revealed that Cragwhistle had buried a few people recently. Quite a few. Considering they hadn’t had time to inter the deceased from the siege the day before, something else had clearly caused those deaths. What had appeared to him as a surprisingly large village for this far west, had in fact been significantly bigger not that long ago.

Must have been a rockfall or somesuch, he shrugged. It’s dangerous work cleaving stone from the mountain. Stop distracting yourself.

There was so much to do. He hadn’t conducted the status ritual since the siege, and he was sure to get something from killing such a number of rift-kin. Likely, that had to wait as well. Before anything else, he had to deal with this slayer.

“I can implant a suggestion in her mind, she’ll leave and not remember seeing me.”

“You sure about that? Mental manipulation is far from guaranteed to stick, even in the medium term. Even then, if you persuade her she didn’t find you, guess what happens? She fucking starts looking for you again! A little more patience, and she would have put an arrow between your eyes the first time around!”

Judging by the look on the archer’s face, she was regretting that right now. A chill ran down his spine as he remembered that first shot rushing over his head.

“I could give her to Yor?” he suggested weakly and Dove just scoffed.

“So you don’t want to kill her, but you’ll feed her to a bloodthirsty, in a literal sense, vampire? Wow, what a kind soul. Hey, ranger, you want your corpse butchered into a skeleton, or your eternal soul ripped out of your body and digested by an undead?”

The archer’s eyes widened and she thrashed against her bonds, yelling and cursing at them as best she could through the gag.

“Probably, ‘neither’, if I had to take my guess.”

The unfortunate captive looked a little wild around the eyes after hearing their discussion. Tyron wanted to slap a hand to his face in frustration. Now they were just torturing her mentally. So much for his ‘mercy’.

“I didn’t want to give her to Yor to kill her. I thought she might… want recruits.”

Judging the vigorous shaking of the captive, that wasn’t much better in her eyes.

“She would demand a price for a favour like that,” Dove observed, “and I think we all know what it would be.”

“Damn it, you’re probably right.”

It had been a vain hope. One with little chance of ever coming through.

“I guess I’ll just have to try the mental suggestion and hope for the best,” he sighed.

“What?! Just kill her already, you’re being daft.”

Before Tyron could retort that becoming a homicidal maniac was not what he intended when he began this journey, something caught his attention. A voice, distance at first, but drawing closer every moment.

“Oiiiiii!” Ortan called as he ran toward the cemetery. “Necromancer, are you there?”

The desperate note in his tone told Tyron this wasn’t a social call. He rushed toward the village and met the large man on the outside of the graveyard.

Ortan was panting and dripping sweat when they met, he must have run from Cragwhistle to end up in that state.

“What’s wrong?” Tyron asked, confused. “Is there a problem?”

I thought they’d avoid me as much as possible now our business has concluded.

The people certainly hadn’t indicated they wanted him to stick around. They’d been pissed off enough at his demand to access the cemetery that he figured he’d be lynched if he showed his face again. Skeletal army or no.

“At the village,” the big man wheezed. “Rift-kin…. Need help.”

Again?

“I’ll go as quickly as I can.”

It took less than a second to marshal his troops with mental commands, bringing the skeletons, ghosts and revenants to his side. As they gathered, he sprinted to his pack and pulled out one of his precious few remaining arcane crystals.

To cover that amount of ground quickly, he would need to push his minions hard, which meant draining his magick at an accelerated pace. If he wanted enough in the tank to fight with, he needed to supplement himself.

After a moment of hesitation, he peeled off four skeletons and a revenant to keep his captive archer hidden and secure. Who knows how Ortan would react if he found the slayer bound and secured in the graveyard? Better to be cautious.

With everything assembled, including Dove clutched in one hand, he set off at as fast a pace as he could sustain, which amounted to a jog, rather than a run.

“Can’t we… go faster?” Ortan wheezed.

The man looked like he would fall over if they moved any faster. Perhaps he thought Tyron was slowing down for his sake?

“Skeletons can move quickly over short bursts, but they drain my magick,” he explained. “If we go any faster than this, I’ll have nothing left when we get there.”

The villager frowned but nodded after a moment. Just as well, Tyron really couldn’t move faster than this. To go at even this pace caused his ghosts to suck power from him at an alarming rate.

When they arrived at Cragwhistle, Tyron already had the candy in his mouth, letting the magick contained within drain into him as he looked for the kin. When he didn’t see any, he turned to Ortan in surprise. Was this some sort of trap? The barricade was still in place, walling the village off, with a small gap to allow traffic through, but there were no visible people or kin.

Do I hear fighting in the distance?

“Not here,” Ortan gasped. “Other side.”

He pointed to the break in the barricade and Tyron hurried to order his minions to funnel through.

The other side? Did the monsters circle around through the mountain? That doesn’t make any sense….

Rift-kin were intelligent to a degree, but the magick that suffused them drove them to a berserk state. Most would rush straight toward the first living thing they found that wasn’t kin, and tear it to pieces, not even waiting to eat it before they rushed off to find something else.

Inside the boundary of Cragwhistle for the first time, Tyron didn’t have time to take in the sights as he rushed through, heading toward the mountain side of the village. The further he ran, the louder the sound of fighting got, until he saw the backs of the villagers ahead of him as they defended another barricade.

With a mental command, he urged his minions forward.

“Get back from the wall!” he bellowed, but some didn’t appear to hear him over the dim.

They certainly noticed when over forty skeletons joined them at the barricade, several screaming in fear as the undead appeared right next to them.

I need those spears.

His skeletons were armed with one handed weapons and farming tools for the most part. They didn’t have the reach to stab over the edge of the crude wooden barricade.

He ran forward to a small cluster of villagers.

“I’m here to help,” he assured them. “I need your spears so the skeletons can fight over the wall. Please.”

It took a little convincing, but they did hand them over and he had his revenants distribute them amongst his minions. He urged them to convince the others to hand over their arms before he ran to join his undead at the wall.

The ghosts had only just caught up and he forced them through the barricade and out the other side, hoping they could cause some disruption with their freezing touch. The archers took position atop small platforms the villagers had been using to fire over the wall and began to shoot at whatever they could see.

Although he didn’t want to expose himself to danger, Tyron wanted to get a look at whatever was on the other side before he made any further decisions.

Take a peek, then get back.

He poked his head over the edge of the wall for a brief moment before he pulled it back down, cursing.

What in the name of the Divines?!

Rift-kin, of that there was no doubt. Except… not from Nagrythyn. Instead of the insect-like monsters he’d fought since his time in Woodsedge, these were completely different.

The bulk of the kin closely resembled boars, albeit ones covered in a spiky layer of icicles. Knee high, the monsters rushed forward in mobs to smash themselves against the wood, which buckled and splintered after every charge. Roaming amongst the smaller kin were ice-formed monstrosities with stick-thin limbs and demonic faces, all harsh angles and pointed teeth the size of a man.

Where had they come from?!

If they were frost monsters, then his chilling curse and ghosts may not have any effect, or perhaps even empower them in some way. He pulled his immaterial undead back beyond the wall, swearing under his breath.

“What? What is it?” Dove demanded.

“They aren’t kin from Nagrythyn. Some kind of frost beasts and ice monsters.”

“Fucking what? Did these shits come all the way from Skyice keep?”

If his memory served, the rift guarded by the slayers at Skyice connected to Illica, a corrupted realm of ice giants.

“I don’t fucking know, I’ve never been there!”

“Fucking hell. Stick me up there, I’ll take a look.”

Tyron quickly hefted the skull up with one hand, held him there for a second, then pulled him down.

“Ohhhhh SHIT. I’ve got bad news, kid.”

“What?!”

“Those kin are not from Illica.”

All along the wall, the skeletons were engaged in battle now. Those armed with longer weapons were thrusting at the boars every time they charged, and a few had engaged an ice-creature as it drew close enough to attack.

“Okay? What does that mean?”

“There might be a new rift forming in the mountains….”

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