Book of The Dead

A thick aura of Death Magick permeated the Ossuary as Tyron continued his work. Words of power flowed from his lips and his hands weaved the arcane sigils required to give shape to the magick, each a necessary component of the intricate structure he was attempting to build.

On one side of the Ossuary, recesses filled with bones writhed with energy as they mirrored the ritual he cast upon the bones resting on the altar. Power flowed from Tyron, from the hidden reservoir within himself, and into the remains before him as he continued the ritual. On and on it went, his focus never wavering in the slightest, until at last it was done.

Faintly at first, then with growing strength, Tyron watched as the purple light within the eyes of the skull came alight. The ritual was a success; a new skeletal minion had been completed.

But not just one. From the recesses along the wall of the Ossuary, a full twenty more skeletons rose, all created to the same exacting standard as the anchor minion in front of him.

Taking a breath, Tyron stepped back from the altar and turned to the table he kept within this sanctum. Upon the rough wooden surface sat a large mug filled with water and a small plate of cheese and dried meat. He’d been working for hours, and having something to soothe his throat after a particularly exacting ritual had proven to be a godsend.

Feeling a little better, he turned and ordered his latest minions to assemble before him. Freshly crafted, the link that bound them to him was clear and fluid, a pathway of crystal and gossamer thread compared to what he used to make. Using his enchanted glass, he looked over every inch of each minion, making sure they met his exacting standards.

No errors were expected, but Tyron wouldn’t feel satisfied unless he ensured they were flawless. Well, as flawless as he could make them. For all the progress he had made and all the lessons he had learned, he knew there was still a lot of improvement left in this process.

Where it might be, he couldn’t say. He’d incorporated everything he knew about conduit magick. In fact, given his particular expertise and benefits regarding that branch of magick, he was confident nobody in the entire province could make them better. The bones were meticulously prepared, treated with expensive agents to cleanse, seal and harden the remains. Every corpse had been studied in depth to best determine its strengths and weaknesses, its conductivity with Death Magick assessed.

With their similarly proportioned frames, these twenty skeletons were all suited to the same purpose, and they had been linked together, sharing the magick that each generated with the rest. The enchantments he had bound into each, using an array socketed within its skull, functioned perfectly, gathering and storing energy, converting it to death-aligned magick.

Everything was perfect. With a thought, he directed the skeletons to gather their arms, already prepared from the wealth of bones he had in store. Who would have thought working with the Church of the Five Divines could have proven so profitable for a Necromancer?

Shields and swords equipped, his minions looked fierce indeed. Each would be a capable soldier in his growing legion.

“Are they ready to go now?” a hollow voice called from the entrance.

A slight frown came over Tyron’s face, but he smoothed it away.

“Yes, they are. I’ll bring them out.”

He directed the undead towards the door of the Ossuary and followed after them as they made their way out. Entering his humble study beneath the shop, Tyron took a deep breath of the air. It may have been stagnant, foul air, but somehow it was better than what was within the Ossuary itself. That place seemed to reek of death, even when there were no remains present.

“Where do you want these ones to go?”

Laurel’s voice was dull, flat and emotionless, and the wight carefully avoided looking at Tyron as he emerged from the Ossuary.

Even so, she managed to irritate him. It had probably been a mistake to bring her back, but she was at least someone he could tolerate and interact with. At least, he trusted her with the post of one of his wights. She would do anything to avoid going back to the silent drudgery of being a revenant. Even worse, he had threatened to turn her into a ghost, without even a physical form to interact with the world.

“When the next group is done, you can take all of them to Filetta. She knows what to do with them.”

There was a moment of silence before Laurel spoke again.

“Is there a reason I’m not being given the details of the undead deployment?” she asked softly.

Her words only served to spark Tyron’s anger, which he worked to tamp down. Yor had as much as confirmed that his anger was a result of the Court’s manipulations, and he was doing his best not to let it influence his decisions. Even if Laurel was particularly deserving of his ire, he shouldn’t let his emotions take control of his thoughts.

“Because there is no need for you to know at this point,” he replied, his tone curt. “You are acting as a go-between for me and the other wights. When I have something else for you to do, I will tell you.”

“I don’t like feeling purposeless,” she stated in that same, dead voice.

“Your purpose is whatever I damn well say it is,” he growled, before he managed to take hold of himself again. “I’m not interested in your complaints,” he said finally. “The moment you wish to return to a spectre without form or function, let me know. Until then, follow orders.”

Laurel’s form as a wight had changed significantly from when she was a revenant. Not only did she now possess the spirit flesh that housed her soul, but her armour and weaponry had been improved significantly. With her bow of moulded, black bone, its string formed of woven Death Magick, she looked fearsome indeed.

Her Class had changed upon her reawakening as a wight. She was now an Undead Ranger, her abilities infused with Death Magick and a greater emphasis on shadow and curses. So far, she had been loyal, doing as she was told, but the resentment Tyron felt toward her would never go away. Luckily for Laurel, she had proven to be useful, competent even, and he desperately needed his wights to perform, now more than ever.

For someone who had desired freedom almost to the same extent as his parents had, being an undead minion must have been unbearable to Laurel, but Tyron didn’t care. In truth, none of his wights were delighted to have become the generals in his growing legion, but such was their fate.

“You have a guest waiting for you,” Laurel said. “I believe one of the Vampires has come.”

Fantastic, someone else he had to work with that he couldn’t stand being around.

“Is it Yor or Valk?”

“Technically neither. It’s a rat.”

Valk, then.

“Fine. Can you bring in the rodent, then take these skeletons where they need to go?”

Weariness poked at Tyron, but no matter how his body protested, his mind refused to listen. Things were moving too quickly right now, and the work that needed to be done was endless. There would be a time for sleep, but not yet. Not quite yet.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

A few moments later, Laurel returned, a large, flesh-formed rat held in one ghostly palm. After depositing the creature on the table, she turned and left, taking the skeletons with her.

“What is it, Valk?” Tyron asked, flicking the rat on its nose. “More whining?”

“I look forward to ripping out your throat. Your soul will be so sweet as it slides down my throat.”

Even through the rodent, Tyron could hear the rage boiling within the undead. Valk seemed to struggle with being as cold and unfeeling as Yor; anger always simmered underneath the surface, much as with Tyron himself.

“Yes, the threats, always the threats. I’m busy, Valk, what do you want?”

There was a moment of silence, no doubt as the vampire struggled to maintain his temper so as to avoid yelling something truly regrettable through his puppet. While the vampires were still fearful for their safety, they would fall in line, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t push boundaries.

Both Yor and Valk had quickly learned that there were consequences for pushing boundaries. After he had dropped several breadcrumbs leading toward their respective lairs, both covens had yielded, and now lived under an even greater level of scrutiny than before.

“I’ve been told there are problems at the crematorium. Too much Death Magick is accumulating in the tunnels below the building. If it continues, your operation is going to get fucking rumbled for sure.”

This wasn’t what Tyron wanted to hear.

“I worked on the enchantments there myself. Any Death Magick should be passively dissipated.”

“I’m just the fucking messenger,” Valk snarled. “Message delivered, so fuck off.”

So saying, the rat turned and leapt off the table before it scurried off into the darkness. The Necromancer folded his hands together and pondered what might have gone wrong. Were the vampires sabotaging his efforts? Surely they wouldn’t be so foolish. Exposing his little bone harvesting operation would only put themselves in even greater danger.

There had to be something else… but what?

He would have to go and inspect the tunnels himself, which could open him up to an ambush in the sewers. Killing him quietly and efficiently was still a decent way out of the trap for the vampires, even if Tyron put measures in place to expose them if he died.

Frustrated at the wasted time this would cost, he used his mind to tug on one of the hundreds of threads that connected him to his minions. It would take time for them to arrive, so he busied himself with a few necessities. He washed, changed his clothes, ate and drank before he performed some perfunctory grooming.

Judging he’d done more than enough, he returned to the study and waited impatiently until Filetta arrived.

“What?” she demanded, emerging from the sewer entrance.

“I need an escort. We’re going to the tunnels under the crematorium.”

“Really…. If I knew I was going to spend my unlife crawling through the sewers even more than I did before I died…”

“You would have what, Filetta?”

“Complained about it more, I suppose.”

It was odd, hearing such flippant comments coming from such an obvious undead being. Much like Laurel, Filetta looked dangerous, her moulded black armour and helmet covering the spirit flesh protected within. On her hips sat two black knives, each as long as a forearm. What was interesting, though, was that Tyron felt he had detected a… deadening of her character, for want of a better term. Just as Laurel grew a little more wooden and emotionless as time went on, so too did Filetta.

Was there something about being a wight in particular that weakened someone’s personality or emotions over time? It was an interesting thought, but not one he had time to investigate.

“Let’s get going,” he said, pulling a cloak around his shoulders.

It was a long journey, from Shadetown outside the walls to the temporary crematorium Tyron had established in the north side of the city. Likely, the officials who saw to the administration of Kenmor and its sewer network didn’t even realise the network inside the walls had been extended to the market district of Shadetown at one point in history.

The way was labyrinthine, and several sections of the sewer had collapsed, requiring hundreds of hours of work by tireless skeletons to clear a path. Now there was unobstructed connection from outside the city wall to within, but it wasn’t exactly what Tyron would describe as smooth travel.

Patrols of Marshals and other officials did come into the sewer, in fact, with increasing regularity since the purge had begun. Dodging them was paramount, so it was necessary to be cautious at all times. The tunnels under Kenmor were so much better maintained than those under Shadetown, which meant frequent trips from workers as well. Too much noise risked attracting notice from the streets above, and Tyron could never rule out that he would be attacked by his unwilling allies while moving through the darkness.

All in all, it made for an uncomfortable journey.

It took three hours to get there in the end, and by the time they’d arrived, Tyron was regretting not going over the surface and taking a carriage. He was determined not to show his face around the crematorium, even under his various guises, to avoid risking exposure, but the commute from Almsfield Enchantments was hellish.

The warehouses he’d rented had their own sewer channel, a narrow walkway that branched off the main tunnel for about thirty metres. It was the entire reason he’d chosen these warehouses in the first place. Expanding the sewer by digging out an underground room without the city realising had been the real challenge. He’d spared no expense to ensure that no hint of vibration or whiff of construction would be found.

The result was a relatively cramped, ten by ten metre chamber in which the ‘work’ was performed.

In short, it was a charnel house where bodies were brought down from the warehouses above, stripped of their flesh and their bones removed. The meat and juice of the corpse, putting it crudely, were returned aboveground and fed into the furnace, along with a scattering of animal bones.

So far, it had worked well. The church was satisfied that excess corpses were being thoroughly processed, and Tyron ensured his people went out of their way to return the ashes to their loved ones.

As usual, the butchery room was a horrific sight. If his three students were to witness such a thing, they would undoubtedly puke up their guts for a week straight, but Tyron barely blinked. Four of his corpse preparation staff were in attendance, hard at work, their knives flashing in the well-lit chamber. These were newly Awakened individuals the Priests and Priestesses of The Three had tracked down for him. Each had a corpse preparation Class and were willing participants in the rebellion.

His foreman was also there, a Priest of Rot, who stood twisting his hands as he sweated nervously.

“Master Steelarm, I’m so pleased that you are here,” he said.

“Priest Inoss. What’s this I’ve been told about Death Magick accumulating? Such a thing shouldn’t be possible.”

“Well… as you can see…” the Priest gestured somewhat feebly behind him, not quite willing to turn and face the grisly scene. “We are… processing more… individuals… than we anticipated. I believe the measures you put in place may not be up to the task.”

Tyron took a moment to withdraw his enchanted glass from his robe and look around the room. Indeed, it was slight, but there was Death Magick accumulating. It would be extremely difficult to detect it right now, even from nearby, but over time, even just a few days, it would become significantly easier to sense.

“You asked me to let you know the moment something was found…” the Priest said, still visibly anxious.

How this man had lived as a heretic right under the nose of the Church was a mystery to the Necromancer. He seemed trapped in an almost constant state of anxiety. It was the last thing he would have expected from a follower of Rot, the most equanimous of The Three.

“I’ll have to work on the arrays built into the walls,” Tyron said, calculating as he scanned the rooms with his eyes. It wasn’t that difficult, but it had to be perfect. Making a cage wasn’t hard; making one that not even a hint of air could escape was harder.

This was going to take an entire day. Time he couldn’t afford to lose.

“There’s no choice,” he said, mostly to himself. “I’ll go back to the workshop and start preparing after I take a few measurements. I’ll be back here in…” he thought for a moment, “... twelve hours.”

“That’s cutting it a little close… isn’t it?” Inos fretted.

“I can’t afford mistakes. Rushing the work will only lead to more trouble down the line. In the meantime,” he reached into his cloak and withdrew several small devices, each with a solid core embedded in the middle. “Use these dampeners. They should absorb the ambient magick, but they won’t be able to process it. If they take in too much, they’ll act like a beacon to the mages, which isn’t what we want. Place one in the room and swap them over every two hours. Store them in the sewers at least thirty metres apart, you understand?”

“I understand.”

Tyron handed the small devices over to the Priest and turned on his heel without another word.

There was work to be done.

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