Book of The Dead

When Tyron awoke, he knew immediately that something was different. Identifying the exact change took a little more time. Was it something to do with the ambient magick in the air? Perhaps the ritual was working and it had begun to thin out, but no, he didn’t think so. Stretching out a hand, he tried to feel the arcane energy in the air and found it was much the same as before.

That made sense. Even if his ritual was working, it would only consume a small portion of the energy flowing through the rift. Magick was still belching out of the tear in reality at a ferocious rate, poisoning the realm and bringing forth native-born kin. Perhaps the rift itself had begun to shrink, stabilising reality and reducing the warping effect of the Broken Lands?

No, that wasn’t it either.

Idly, he tilted his head and frowned, trying to think what it could be. Wriggling his toes, he wondered if his body had changed in some way, but no, everything seemed to be in the right place. At least he hadn’t lost a limb while he was knocked out.

The realisation of his collapse flipped a switch in his brain and it all came flooding back. The obsessive, manic churn in his mind as he’d worked on the ritual circle, the ideas that had burned so bright it felt as if they’d been seared into his head. Then he’d finished, and the vision had come.

The vision!

Remembering it was enough to set his eyes rolling back in his head, the world blurring and swimming before him as his mind seemed to tilt on its axis. He’d seen… he’d seen… what had he seen?

Even lying on a cot, he felt as if the world were unstable, and he clutched at the sides as if he might fall out at any moment. The Unseen had shown him something, granted him a vision of… something fundamental… something so foundational it didn’t make any sense, as if he were perceiving things in a way that was normally impossible.

Thoughts still swimming, he tried to piece together the nature of the vision, but it was so difficult. It was magick, he could see that, but not as he knew it.

The Unseen had shoved the sights and sensations of the ocean’s floor into his head.

He didn’t have a frame of reference for it, couldn’t even comprehend how that world was connected to the one he knew. Yet they were. They had to be.

Feeling as if he might be sick, Tyron turned his thoughts away from puzzling on the mystery that the Unseen had shown him. He would tease out the meaning in time, of that he was sure.

As soon as he stopped thinking about it, he realised what had changed. His ability to sense magick had been growing steadily as he’d risen in power, and some of his ability selections had helped develop that growing capacity.

His senses hadn’t expanded, but he could feel it in a more granular, more detailed way. The nature of the energy itself was more accessible, its density and movement. After a moment, he wondered if he even needed to enhance his vision to study magickal effects anymore. If he was close enough, he could determine everything he needed without any help.

Yet he hadn’t even performed the status ritual yet. Something had changed inside his mind, his perception itself had shifted.

With a sigh, he pushed himself upright and swung his feet over the side of the cot. Someone had removed his armour, cloak and shoes before tucking him in. Probably his uncle. Finding everything tucked in a neat pile at the foot of the cot, he pulled on his boots and donned his armour, performing the spell almost absentmindedly. The movement of the magick around him was so distracting, like a light flickering in the corner of his eye.

“This is going to take some getting used to,” he muttered.

Somehow, Worthy had also found his pack, or perhaps his students had brought it to him, but that too was inside the largely bare tent, leaning against the canvas. Tyron rummaged inside until he found some paper, cut his thumb and quickly performed the status ritual.

Everything was largely the same, he hadn’t gained a level, despite the number of kin his army had destroyed. These requirements were becoming insane, how had his parents managed to reach platinum rank? Well, they were ankles deep in rift-kin basically all of the time, barely slowing down to help raise their own child. Over decades, that sort of effort was always going to accumulate.

It was when he looked at the mysteries he found the expected changes.

Mysteries:

Spell Shaping (Sage): INT +120 WIS +120

Words of Power (Sage): WIS +120 CHA +120

Essence of Death (Advanced): INT +20 WILL +20

Soul Magick (Advanced): WIS+20 CHA +20

Greater Mystery of Magick (Initial): Int +30 WIS +30 WIL +30

Greater mystery? That was a thing? And the benefits it granted… A normal mystery at the Initial stage grated plus three to two different attributes. Plus thirty to three? That was more than ten times as strong!

What sort of effect would it have when he started casting magick? What sort of effect would it have if he managed to advance it to Sage, as he had with Spell Shaping and Words of Power?

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What sort of effect would that have on his spellwork? The gentle hand of the Unseen on his back suddenly felt like a forceful shove, driving him forward at a faster and faster pace. It didn’t make sense. Here he was, actively trying to reduce the influence of the Unseen on the world, limit its access by squeezing shut the rifts and destroying magick itself, yet he was being rewarded?

Either the Unseen didn’t know, or didn’t care. Perhaps it wasn’t sophisticated enough to tell what he was trying to do, or perhaps it really was a weapon designed to help fight against the rift-kin, and he done as it wished all along.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter. The status sheet was destroyed in short order, and Tyron stepped out to find his three students sitting outside the tent. Richard was reading, Briss was poking at their small fire with a stick while Georg seemed to be dozing, his back resting against a small log.

“Is it safe for you to be here?” Tyron asked, causing them all to jump. “If you take in too much magick, you’ll get sick.”

“We haven’t been here long,” Briss assured him, jumping to her feet. “Your uncle said we could stay for a few hours.”

“Master Tyron, you’re awake!” Richard stammered, nearly dropping his book. He hurriedly stood, then remained in place awkwardly, not sure what to do or say next.

“I haven’t been asleep that long, have I?” Tyron asked, genuinely concerned.

He didn’t have time to lose. Every day mattered at the moment.

“Ten hours, give or take,” Georg told him, slowly rising and brushing himself down. “How are you feeling?”

Tyron considered the question.

“Different,” he answered. “Definitely… different.”

He could tell all three of them would like him to elaborate, to give them some insight into the vision he had obviously been granted, but he said nothing. If he wasn’t able to grasp the meaning of it, there was no point burdening his students with it. Any time they spent trying to puzzle it out would be wasted; they had much more low-hanging fruit they could grasp.

“I’m awake and well. Go back to the rear camp and study. Keep an eye on your own pupils,” he instructed them.

All three looked crestfallen at his dismissal, causing him to roll his eyes.

“I’ll give you a lesson on mysteries and what might be the best way to try and obtain them when we return to the city. Now go.”

Briss grinned, clapping her hands together, while the two men both exchanged excited glances. The three of them bowed to him before walking away swiftly. It wasn’t long before they were chattering amongst themselves as they went, leaving Tyron shaking his head.

Next, he walked down to the ritual site, right in the centre of the Broken Lands, greeting the Slayers he met on his way. The bulk of his Undead occupied a quarter of the rift, managing several rents through the weave on their own, while the rest were handled by the Slayers, including this large one.

To his relief, the ritual was still active, a team of demi-liches tending to it, including Master Willhem. Before speaking to them, he inspected the circle, stepping carefully to ensure he didn’t disturb anything. His undead had diligently tended to it, he could see, using the setting powder he’d provided to harden the ground and freeze the sigils in place. A heavy enough kin would still be able to flatten them, but the smaller ones wouldn’t leave a dent in the shaped earth.

It seemed to be working much as he’d envisaged, each component feeding the energy to the next, shaping it, manipulating it, until eventually it was primed and turned against itself. Magick to destroy magick. Not change it, or cancel it, or dissolve it, but destroy it. The radiant destruction being turned against the rift itself.

Six of the demi-liches tended to the ritual, and he approached Master Willhem, who seemed to be waiting for him nearby.

“It works,” his former master remarked without preamble.

“It does,” Tyron said, looking into the rift itself. “I’ll need to refine it, and make copies for a few of the other tears, but it works.”

He’d already made adjustments to the initial design numerous times yesterday as he was creating it. Now, he had a few more ideas on how to streamline the process. Nothing dramatic, but he should be able to take in more mana if he cleaned up a few of the sigil chains, accelerating the process.

“How does it feel? You are the first to ever make this discovery.”

The Necromancer shrugged.

“I had help,” he said. “Without the aid of the Dark Ones, I never would have been able to figure this out. I wasn’t even trying, to be honest.”

“I think you are underestimating yourself.”

Tyron considered. If he’d devoted himself, it was possible he’d figure it out on his own, but unlikely. He didn’t feel like this was his achievement at all. He was an agent of old gods hoping to hold onto life in a dying world.

“Can you keep an eye on things here for me, Master Willhem?” he asked. “I have something to take care of before I start working on this ritual again.”

The demi-lich wordlessly assented, turning back to his tasks as Tyron walked away from the rift. The Broken Lands were still a dangerous and unpredictable place. Even with an army of gold-ranked Slayers and undead, the fighting was constant and no one could ever predict when something large and dangerous might burst out of a rift. With his honour guard forming around him, Tyron felt much safer as he walked to the corner occupied by his own undead horde.

Disciplined ranks of skeletons were entrenched around several rents in the weave, slamming everything that emerged with spells, arrows and charges from spear-wielding undead. Anything more challenging was taken on by the wights, revenants and bone constructs, sparing the rank and file from near-certain destruction. Everything appeared under control; the overwhelming advantage of numbers was in his favour after all.

The skeletons parted as he moved through the horde. There, in the midst of the reserves, a small gap had opened. It wasn’t easy to see from a distance, but on the far side of the clearing, where the Slayers were unlikely to see, he had several of his best minions standing guard over a figure who had been staked to the ground. Literally.

Not that it caused him any pain, the stakes squeezed through the paired bones of his arms and legs, holding him down despite his rather energetic writhing.

“Tyron, you fucking piece of shit!” Dove howled in outrage.

“Dove. How are you?”

“They took my fucking snake! I know you ordered them to do it. Why else would the fucking skeletons bother taking it, you pale-faced prick?!”

The Necromancer cocked his head to the side, thinking. He hadn’t ordered them to do anything with Dove’s snake skeleton, his attention had been on more important matters. He could think of several wights who might have done the deed in order to get back at the irritating bone construct in their midst.

“Well, let’s put that to one side for a moment,” he said, crouching down beside the writhing skeleton.

“No! I refuse to answer any questions until my snake is returned to its rightful place.”

“Well… I suppose I could just have it destroyed if you refuse to talk.”

Dove grew still.

“No!” he cried. “Anything but that!”

This is stupid, Tyron thought to himself, shaking his head.

“Forget about the snake. I’d rather talk about the little ritual you were trying to set up over here. Sneaking off to do a little magick while the fighting was going on, that’s not like you, Dove.”

For all his many, many, many faults, the former Summoner was a good and dedicated Slayer. There were remnants of that person still inside the bone construct pinned to the floor, somewhere. This behaviour was out of character.

“You know I can’t talk about it, Tyron,” Dove told him. “I can’t.”

“Well… let’s test the limits of your contract a little more thoroughly, shall we?”