Book of The Dead

Rurin Wilkin wanted nothing more than to bury her face in her hands and scream. Failing that, a stiff drink would likely do the job. Or perhaps ten. Twenty if she was still conscious by then.

“Fuck you, Brom,” she growled, thinking of the absent slayer as her eyes roamed over the myriad of pages in front of her. “You knew to piss off the second it got hard!”

Advancing to gold in secret? No problem. Racing to gain levels out in the rift before she returned? Easy. Working with her old friends to overthrow the slayer keep and murder the magisters? That was harder, but still relatively simple. Managing all this paperwork? She wasn’t cut out for it in the slightest. There were only so many people in the city, and still they managed to find ways to piss and shit all over each other (metaphorically), then sprint toward the person in charge.

Which, unfortunately, was her.

A knock on the door was followed by Tim sticking his head through a narrow gap.

“Looking for a distraction?” he asked with a slight smile.

“By the godess’ tits, yes,” Rurin said emphatically. “Tell me there’s something I can kill.”

Tim frowned a little, considering the issue.

“Well, I suppose that comes down to how you feel about Beory Steelarm.”

“She was a friend of mine for two decades. I loved that woman to death.”

Hearing that Beory and her husband had passed had ripped the heart out of her chest, plunging her into mourning, just as it had hundreds, if not thousands of other slayers across the province. They’d been too bright, too exceptional for anyone to be in their presence and not wish to be even a little bit like them. The Steelarms had been the light, and every slayer they met was an insect, hopelessly drawn closer, almost against their will.

She’d first met Beory closer to the capital, when she was working in Blackrift Keep. Things had gotten out of hand there, the slayers pushed to breaking point, until those two had strolled into town and smashed the kin back inside in a week. At that point, she and Magnin had still been gold ranked, though it was never officially known if and when they’d gone higher.

Becoming friends with Beory was more luck than anything Rurin had done. It seemed the dark-haired battlemage had seen her one day and decided they should spend time in each other’s company, not that Rurin was ungrateful. It was impossible not to want to be around them.

With her opinion on the matter stated clearly, Tim was able to continue.

“In that case, I doubt there is any killing involved. I wouldn’t expect you to cut down the child of your deceased friend.”

“What?” Rurin squawked, springing up from her chair so quickly it toppled over loudly behind her. “Tyron is here?”

Tim raised his brows.

“At least, someone claiming to be him is here. Apparently, he produced a status sheet for the guards, but ate it on the spot rather than let them take it to show us. You’ll have to go to him, I’m afraid.”

As if Tyron Steelarm would be so foolish as to let someone wander off with a copy of his status. He’d be an idiot if he did, and Beory had not raised an idiot.

“I’ll be there immediately,” she declared, walking around the table as she snatched up her coat from the hanger, pulling it on in a hurry.

“I suppose I’ll tag along,” Tim mused, “it would be interesting to meet the child those two created.”

“Don’t say anything weird. I’ve met Tyron before, he’s a good kid.” She fell silent as she pushed out the door and her fellow gold ranked slayer fell in behind her. “Well, he was a good kid.”

Who knew what toll everything that happened five years ago had taken on him. When she’d last seen him, he’d been probably… fifteen? A quiet and serious young man who’d struggled to conceal the envy in his eyes as she had left the house with his parents, off to the rifts.

She ruminated on that last meeting as she made her way out of the keep and down through the town. What had become of that child? Beory had come to see her after he’d run away, not that there had been anything Rurin could do for him.

“Just look out for my boy,” Beory had said with a faint smile. “Help him, if you get a chance.”

“Tell me what’s going on, Bee,” Rurin had begged. “This isn’t like you. What can I do for Tyron that you can’t do yourself?”

The battlemage had given her a wan smile. On reflection, she had likely already been suffering from the brand.

“I won’t say, so don’t ask. You’ll understand why when it’s done.”

But that wasn’t the case. Even now, with her friend in the ground for years, she had no idea why.

At the gate, she walked straight up the guard house and found Prich waiting for her.

“I didn’t think you’d come down yourself,” the guard said, as expressionless as always. “Not this fast.”

“She needed an excuse to get away from the paperwork,” Timothy offered before she could say anything.

“Shut the fuck up, Tim. If you want to throw stones, go and take care of it yourself.”

“I’ve finished my work for the day,” the mage said, as calm as ever. “You’re the only one who’s fallen behind.”

“Why are we doing filing after rebelling against the fucking empire anyway?” Rurin threw up her hands, exasperated.

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“You’re deflecting, but I’ll bite. Because we need to keep the people here fed, and we need to ensure the laws are still observed. Besides, I think an unorganised rebellion is even more doomed to fail than a well-run one.”

“But we’re still doomed to fail either way?”

“Naturally.”

“You’re a depressing fucker sometimes, you know that?”

“I do.”

Throughout the exchange, Prich remained blank-faced. If he had any thoughts about the two gold slayers in front of him, the supposed leaders of the rebellion, he kept them to himself.

“Where’s Tyron?” Rurin demanded, turning away from her contemporary. “Is he outside?”

“I encouraged him to settle in somewhere nearby, since I thought you’d be too busy to come down here for some time,” Prich informed her.

“Alright, I’ll go out. Thanks for your work today, Prich. We appreciate what you do for us.”

“Happy to do my part,” the guard replied, no change in his expression.

Through the door, Rurin and Tim found the other two guards on duty confronted with a pack of red-faced, shouting men and women gesticulating wildly as they demanded to be let inside.

“What in the realm is going on?” Rurin asked.

Tim leaned close to her ear to whisper.

“These are the people waiting for you to finish their applications before they can enter the city.”

The gold slayer felt a headache building in her temples. With an explosive exhalation, she pushed her tension away. Then she stomped on the ground. The impact was fierce, enough to make the non-guardsmen standing close stumble as the ground shook beneath their feet. As the crowd gathered themselves, shocked at the sudden shake, she cleared her throat.

“Come back tomorrow morning and I’ll have your papers for you. If any of you are at the gate when I come back, your application will be instantly denied.”

Looking around the clearing, she spotted a small group of people arranging their luggage and laying out bedding. Assuming that was who she was looking for, she strode away, Tim walking alongside her.

“Ho, the camp!” she called as she approached.

Several figures turned towards her, a few raising a hand in greeting, but she only had eyes for one. Something about the way he stood, the slight hunch to his shoulders, the way his hair fell down to his shoulders. She recognised that boy.

“Well, if it isn’t Tyron,” she grinned as she approached.

The young man seemed a little taken aback, but he recognised her a moment later.

“Rurin Wilkin. I should have known you’d be part of this.”

She stepped forward and grabbed him up in a bear hug, which he weakly returned with one arm, though not nearly as weakly as she’d expected.

“Holy shit, boy! You’ve gotten stronger. Aren’t you a Necromancer?”

“A silver Necromancer, thank you very much,” he grumbled as she set him back on his feet.

“Silver, eh? How in the realm did you manage that? Don’t answer, let me get a good look at you.”

She pushed him out to arm’s length and inspected him, only then did she begin to detect just what had changed about the lad. He was older, obviously, eight years had passed since she’d last seen him. He was taller than her now, more mature, more fleshed out and no longer as skin and bones as he’d been before. But that wasn’t the change that most caught her attention. His eyes were different. Where once they were curious, and intense, now his gaze burned with purpose. It was so clear it may as well have been written on his face for the world to see.

“Oh, Tyron,” she said sadly, “they wouldn’t want this for you. Vengeance was never something your parents cared about.”

The young Necromancer raised his brows in surprise, just a fraction, before his eyes hardened.

“They can’t push me from the path I’ve set,” he said, “because they’re dead. I won’t rest until those responsible have been crushed.”

His voice was so flat, so unemotional. All he did was state a fact. Rurin shook her head.

“You’re as stubborn as your mother,” she sighed. “You look more like her now than you used to, I think. Get a haircut and maybe you’d favour your Da a little more.”

She placed a hand on his shoulder and met his haunted gaze.

“I’m sorry about what happened to your folks. I was honoured to call Beory a friend. She asked me to help you, not long before it ended. Things are difficult right now, but I’m willing to give whatever aid I can, you just have to ask.”

Tyron nodded, grateful.

“I’m also here,” Tim said, waving just from behind Rurin’s shoulder, dragging everyone’s attention to him.

“Shut the fuck up, Tim,” Rurin said, not turning around. “That’s Tim,” she said by way of explanation, “Timothy Falns. A fellow gold rank, like myself. I suppose you could say that the two of us are leading this tumbler’s show, now that Brom has flown the coop.”

“We met him. Brom, I mean. He stopped by Cragwhistle, which is where I was training, on his way down to Skyice,” Tyron said. “I came here for two reasons, to fight the kin beyond the rift, and to help in whatever way I can.”

“Oh, you were going to help? Are you sure about that? We could use all the help we can get,” Rurin sighed. “Organising the town is a nightmare, along with keeping word from spreading about what we're doing here. Every day, I expect to drop dead on the spot, except the magisters haven’t bothered to get around to it yet. In the meantime, we’ve been doing our best to grow the rebellion and get some sort of structure in place.”

“Slayers are terrible at running anything other than a bar-fight,” Tim added helpfully. “We’re drowning in paperwork.”

“Not to mention the cleanup and construction of the town isn’t finished, so we don’t have much space to work with,” Rurin said, gesturing back towards the walls. “Unless you’ve brought a few dozen labourers, I don’t suppose you’d be much help with that.”

Tyron allowed himself a slight smile.

“I think I can have the cleanup taken care of rather quickly. The construction may prove more difficult, but if all you need is things moved from one place to another, I can certainly do that. You know my Class.”

Rurin raised a brow.

“I don’t see any undead around, though. Are you keeping a horde of zombies up your ass?”

“No. I have a pocket dimension.”

“Ah, handy.”

“As for your organisational troubles, I think I can help with that too. I’m a mean hand at paperwork; I can spare some time to help deal with that. As for leadership, I can assist you there too. More accurately, I can introduce you to others who can help. This is Munhilde and Elsbeth, priestesses of the three.”

Rurin’s eyes widened, and she offered a short bow to the two women as Tyron introduced them.

“It’s a pleasure to welcome any representative of the old gods,” she said carefully.

Getting on the shitlist of their clergy was even scarier than crossing the five in her books.

Munhilde shot Tyron a dirty look before she stepped forward to address the two gold slayers.

“I had hoped to speak to my contemporaries within the city before we made ourselves known, but it is true, the gods themselves are putting their weight behind the growing rebellion, and my fellow priests and priestesses have been tasked to assist. Our people are spreading themselves across the far flung reaches of the province, creating a network by which we can coordinate our actions.”

“Fuck me,” Rurin breathed, and even the unflappable Tim seemed shocked. “With that sort of firepower behind us, we might just get something done.”

“You were expecting to fail?” Tyron asked, surprised.

“Oh, yes,” Tim replied immediately. “Utterly.”

“We didn’t rebel because we thought we would win,” Rurin answered him, stomping on Tim’s foot, “we did it because it’s the right thing to do. What happened to your parents was wrong, and the divines have allowed the realm to rot for far too long. If we don’t try and do something, then what’s the point of fighting the kin at all?”

Tyron’s eyes glittered.

“You aren’t going to fail,” he said, certain. “We are going to kill them all.”

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