Book of The Dead

Tyron froze under the cool stare of the mage and the others turned to him with differing levels of confusion on their faces. Monica went to say something but Rogil cut in first.

"Keep it short. We'll wait for you inside the gate."

"No need for that," Dove smiled, "I'll catch up with you guys at the keep tonight. I've got a little business with a few ladies in town, if you know what I mean. Do you know what I mean?"

Aryll rolled her eyes.

"Yes, Dove, we know what you mean."

The Summoner looked around the group with a smirk on his face.

"I mean sex," he clarified.

"Shut up, Dove," Monica threw her hands up and turned to walk toward the gate. "Just don't do anything weird to Lukas, he's been very helpful."

"Nobody's worried about me doing anything weird to the kid, Monica."

"You're insufferable," she declared without turning around as she continued to stalk towards the gate.

Dove chuckled and caught Tyron's eye before giving him a wink.

"By 'something weird', I mean sex," he said and nodded solemnly.

Rogil fished around in his pack for a moment before he approached his young hireling and held out his hand, a small stack of silver in his palm.

"Pay for the trip, with a nice bonus thrown in. We don't usually hire rats, but if you're available, we might consider you for another trip. You weren't complete garbage."

"High praise," Aryll drawled, then reflected for a second. "Actually, from Rogil, that is high praise."

"Yes, yes, yes. All very nice, now will you lot piss off? I have some important words to share with this young man."

Rogil reached out and shook Tyron's hand.

"Don't let him talk you into doing anything illegal," he said seriously before he clapped him on the shoulder, causing Tyron to stagger and then walked away.

"See you around kid," Aryll waved before she too turned and headed for the gate.

In no time at all, the two of them stood alone, the Summoner and the Necromancer. Dove looked calm, a slight smile on his face as he kept his gaze lazily focused on the youth, whereas Tyron was a nervous, sweating wreck. He battled to keep his hands from shaking and the nausea from overwhelming him but a deep rooted sense of despair had taken hold of him. This was it, he'd already failed, his parents had suffered for nothing. He'd escaped for nothing. He wouldn't get even a chance to explore his own potential, to help people, to make his name heard. His world was crashing down around him and all he could do was stand and stare.

Dove held up his hands.

"Just relax, kid. Nothing's been decided yet, okay?"

He was so overwhelmed, it took Tyron several long seconds to process what he'd heard.

"W-what?"

Dove continued to stand in place, his hands held loosely up by his shoulders.

"I'm saying that it isn't all over for you, so there's no need to get emotional on me, I don't do well with that. I'm not going to kill you and I'm not going to hand you over to the marshals right now, okay?"

"Why would you hand me over to the marshals?" Tyron felt compelled to try, but his heart wasn't in it.

Dove looked at him with pity.

"That's a sad attempt, kid. I mean, I've seen some sad shit, Monica's love life, for example, but holy hell, that takes the cake."

"Fine," Tyron growled, "I'm the Necromancer. I'm Beory and Magnin's son, Tyron, is that what you wanted to hear?"

The Summoner rolled his eyes and hung his head.

"Now that's just dumb. What if I was bluffing, huh? You just spilled every bean in the tin!"

Tyron stared at him.

"You weren't bluffing," he said.

"No. No, I wasn't. But I fucking could have been!"

Silence fell between the two figures. They stood almost ten metres apart and for a brief moment, Tyron considered running. The mage was older, though not visibly stronger. Dove appeared to be a thinnish man in his thirties, without much in the way of muscle definition showing through his loose mage robes. How fast could he be? Except it didn't matter how fast he was, it only mattered how quick his summons were. Without any minions, there was no hope for him to fight back against the contracted creatures that could be put on his trail in moments.

Eventually Dove sighed and rubbed a hand through his thin blonde hair.

"Look, I don't usually deal with this kind of thing, I'm a fairly straight forward person. See rift-kin? Kill rift-kin. Get paid. Repeat from the top. I get to live comfortably, raise my level, polish my skills and get all of my homicidal urges out in a nice, legal manner."

He crouched down.

"Now, the reason I spoke about your situation with the others was twofold. I wanted to see how you would react, and I wanted to let you see how they responded."

"… what do you mean?" Tyron asked cautiously.

"Did you see how pissed off they were? How unsatisfied? The truth is, the people might worship slayers like fucking gods, but we are slaves to the magisters, each and every one of us, and we hate it. You know about the brand?"

"… a little."

"Then you know it's a bitch. I'm only silver rank, and it's already a piece of shit. Point is, most slayers aren't happy with the management, and that's putting it lightly. As for me? I fucking hate them with every bone in my body. That's the main reason I'm not going to turn you in."

Tyron's mind spun. From the depths of despair, hope was once again kindled in his chest, but he just couldn't trust that it was real. Was this wiry mage telling the truth? Was he really just going to walk away after being caught? It seemed like madness, the direct opposite of everything he'd expected to happen.

Dove watched the young man try to think through the situation and gave him some time to process. He could remember himself at that age, just a few weeks after receiving his class, basically a newborn. He'd been one of the lucky ones, with a powerful starting class and the resources to put himself straight into a reputable slayer academy. Trying to imagine himself in the kid's shoes was painful due to just how easy it was. A Summoner and a Necromancer weren't that different, fundamentally, except that one had been outlawed by the agents of the five divines and the other hadn't.

The practice of Necromancy wasn't inherently evil. Shit, being able to put the dead to good use might be just the thing they needed to help fight the rifts. If the magisters got out of the way, maybe the slayers would be winning the war, rather than slowly and painfully losing it.

"What's the catch?" Tyron eventually asked, his eyes steady. Dove hid his smile. This kid reminded him too much of himself. Good head on his shoulders, liked to think his way through problems and was up front when he didn't have the answers.

He spread his hands.

"No catch. I don't want anything from you, I'm not going to ask you to do anything for me, other than keep my name out of it if you happen to get caught. In fact, the opposite is fucking true, I'm going to help you. I warned you about the status check on the gate, didn't I? Isn't that a tad helpful?"

"That could be a lie."

Dove snorted.

"That's the easiest thing in the world for you to confirm, just watch me go through the gate and you'll have all the confirmation you need. You're locked out of town for the time being, kid, which means you're going to need some assistance if you want to survive."

Without elaborating, the mage stepped back and brought his hands together in front of his chest before he inhaled slowly, then snapped his eyes wide open as they flashed with magick. Sonorous words of power rolled from Dove's mouth as his hands flowed from one movement to another with the ease of a true practitioner. Tryon could recognise a few phrases here and there, but the bulk of the spell construction wasn't familiar to him, exposing how little he knew of dimensional magic, which was the heart of Summoning.

In a relatively short time, just over a minute, Dove completed his spell and thrust his hands down to the ground in front of him. A portal took shape in seconds, a swirling vortex of blue energy that connected this world to another realm, and from it rose a huge clawed paw that smashed into the dirt before it flexed, enormous muscles bunching as the creature pulled itself through.

Tyron's heart was hammering in his chest as a massive wolf head appeared, followed by the rest of its body. Easily the size of a horse, this creature would be able to rip him to shreds in seconds, no matter what he tried.

"A star wolf," he murmured.

"You recognise it?" Dove sounded pleased as he raised a hand and ran it through the beasts fur. "Was an absolute fucking nightmare trying to contract this bastard, but I managed it in the end. Currently my best and strongest summon for combat. He's going to follow you around for the next two days."

The young man stared at the intimidating creature for a long moment.

"You want it to protect me?"

"Bingo. Two days should be enough for you to get some minions ready to go, enough to protect yourself at least. I'll meet you back here then, make sure you hide the fucking zombies, obviously, and I'll hit you up with some supplies to keep you going. I'm doing a lot for you here, kid, so don't go psycho and burn down the kingdom or whatever, alright? Do some good, help some people, level up, piss off the magisters, it's all good. Try not to die and do your folks proud."

Dove threw out a quick thumbs up.

"Now fuck off, I wasn't joking about that brothel."

He moved to turn around and then froze and turned back.

"One other thing. I don't want to know how, or why, or any of that shit. I just want to know, was it you who cast the ritual in town? The Abyssal summoning?"

There was a short pause before Tyron nodded. Dove stared at him for a moment.

"Fucking hell," he swore and turned around, shaking his head as he went. "That's just… fucking… great."

Tyron watched him go, scarce believing he was safe, then turned to look at the wolf, who stared back at him with barely concealed impatience and a hint of hunger. If it was going to eat him, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it, so he disregarded the creature and tailed the Summoner from a distance, confirming for himself the ritual he was required to perform just inside the gate.

It was a massive blow. Perhaps the measure would be lifted in a week? It would be difficult for him to survive outside the walls much longer than that, even with the support of someone inside. This wasn't just any wild country, he was on the edges of the broken lands, there were monsters everywhere. The star wolf had padded along behind him and now sat on its haunches, it's tongue hanging as it breathed, that same contempt in its eyes. He would have to depend on it for the next two days, as long as Dove kept his word, then the creature would protect him until he had the ability to protect himself.

He was tired, sore, hungry and in desperate need of a bath, but he wouldn't be getting rest any time soon. He stood with a sigh, there wasn't any point complaining about it, his parents had suffered through far worse on their rise. Determined, he turned and began to stride back toward the rift. He had a variety of locations marked where he could find remains. He'd originally planned on coming back out to retrieve them anyway, this just pushed his timetable forward.

"Come on then, Tyron," he muttered to himself, "time to do some magick."

Though he wasn't aware of it, the light in his eyes burned bright as he strode back toward danger.

Any reservations Tyron had about the star wolf Dove had lent him faded after the first hour. In that time he was found by roving packs of rift-kin not once, but twice, and each time the vicious summon had ripped them apart in short order. He wasn't keen to get close enough to check, but judging by eye alone he'd come to the conclusion that the wolf's fangs were longer than this leg was thick, even at the thigh. He'd managed to recover a few cores at least, putting his butchery skills to good use. If he were ever allowed back into Woodsedge, they'd sell for a good price. Perhaps he could get Dove to sell them for him? He dismissed the thought. The Summoner had been true to his word so far, but that doesn’t mean Tyron was about to hand over his money.

The frequency of the attacks had shocked him at first. When he reflected on it, he felt that he'd been underestimating just how much work Aryll and Rogil had done for the team while they were out, avoiding groups they didn't want to fight and keeping the group safe. He had no such protection and would have to blunder through as best he could.

I'll leave the heavy lifting to my undead army, he wryly thought to himself.

Dreams of a legion of undead servants felt a long way off when he didn't have so much as a single minion to his name, nor even a finger bone to work on. Soon, he would fix that. After another hour, he came to the first location he had marked on his map with only one more stop along the way. This was the furthest site from the rifts he'd found and hopefully it would provide enough for him to raise a minion, or at least get close.

It took longer than he'd wanted to get the exact location, his map wasn't nearly as precise as he would have liked, but eventually he found it. The dried brush crunched under his shoes as he approached the tree, looking down on the two skeletons huddled together at the base, vines and moss creeping through the gaps between bones. He didn't know the story behind these two, couldn't guess why or how they'd come to be here, together at the time of their death, but it didn't matter to him and he pushed such concerns from his mind. He had a limited amount of time to work with and he couldn't afford to waste it.

"Study, document, gather and move on," he told himself as he squatted down beside the bones. "Keep an eye out, please?" he asked the wolf, who studiously ignored him as it prowled impatiently amongst the trees.

No harm in trying to be polite, he shrugged. Alright then, better try this.

As he had the night he'd been on watch, he extended a tendril of magick toward the remains and began to attempt to saturate them, letting his own energy seep in. It was slow and taxing, but eventually he felt the same response as before, the dark tinged force that pushed back at him. In fact, it felt stronger here, and he leaned closer to see if he could find out why.

Not that getting closer did anything to help, since he was sensing through his magick, but he did it anyway. He frowned. The more he concentrated, the more he felt the energy within the bones was … active. As if it were moving, or resonating, but on such a small scale as to be almost impossible to detect. He withdrew his probe and instead pushed it toward the other set of remains. After five minutes of careful application of energy, he found the same phenomenon, but the movement seemed to be in a different direction.

He puzzled over it in his head before realisation came and he palmed his face in exasperation. The two sets of remains were sharing energy with each other, of course the movement would feel different, it was going in opposite directions. The amount was so minute that he never would have felt it if not for his Unseen granted affinity for death magick, which this energy had to be.

This most likely explained how natural undead occurred. In a place with enough death, enough remains and sufficient magick, the energy would be shared amongst the corpses, magnifying over time until it became sufficiently saturated that the bodies rose of their own accord, fuelled by the death energy they contained. Such creatures were almost always bound to the location in which they were created, since they had no other source of magick to draw on, unlike his own minions, who he sustained with his own reserves.

But that also posed certain questions. Since it was possible for undead to share magick between each other, would it be possible for him to create the same feedback loop in his own minions? Or perhaps devise a way for them to draw on energy in the environment when it was available? Come to think of it, if he were to simply provide a set of bones sufficient death magick, would he be able to then perform a much simpler version of Raise Dead, since he would only need to create the conduit and mind construct, rather than fuel the process from the get go?

Too many questions for which he didn't have answers and didn't have time to learn. He shook his head in frustration. Having to use shortcuts and half-baked methods rubbed him the wrong way, but he had no choice at the moment. He bit back his negative feelings and started to go over both skeletons. He needed to know which bones were here and which were missing before he could pack them away. By the time he set up camp for the night he wanted at least one full set he could raise for the second day.