Book of The Dead

Chapter 9: Minions

Deep into night on the third day and Tyron Steelhand found himself once again shuffling through the gloom trying to look unobtrusive as he crept out of town to the graveyard. The damp was out early and his shoes were sopping wet by the time he arrived, dragging soft curses out of him as he squelched through the fields. He probably could have just taken the road, nobody would be using it, but he wanted to minimise risk, which meant he crossed through the Grady family's land and their knee high grass.

"Stupid," he muttered to himself, "probably left a track through the field a blind, noseless dog could follow. Why not just stick to the road?"

Even as he cursed himself, he knew why: the marshals were out and about. He'd seen them wandering through town as dusk fell, spotted a few on the roads on the outskirts of town. It spooked him enough that he'd been determined to take extra steps to try and cover his tracks, only to mess up. When he finally reached the Arryn mausoleum, he was half an hour behind schedule, dripping wet and freezing cold. A fantastic start to a night of difficult spell casting.

Hands shaking and teeth chattering, he slipped the chain from the entrance to the mausoleum and moved inside, muttering a light spell once he'd closed the door behind him. The now familiar sight of dust and webs greeted him once more and he sighed. At least it was private. Throwing off his bag, he started unpacking. He had a lot he wanted to get done tonight and not that much time to spare considering how much he'd wasted already. This was already the third night since the ceremony, he only had two more before he would be forced to report on his Class and relinquish it, crippling himself in the process.

If he was going to hold onto it and preserve his future, he needed to make as much progress as he possibly could. In his head, vague plans were beginning to take shape of running away into the wilderness, making his way to the border towns or the Slayer Keeps close to the rifts. It would be hard, but if he managed to become strong enough, anything was possible. He needed levels.

And to get those, he had to have minions. The Class description was clear: raising the dead and having them fight for him were the only ways he could progress. He had a suspicion that simply raising minions would only get him so far. If he wanted to reach level twenty and achieve the first Class evolution, he would need to have his minions fight.

Which was why tonight was so important. According to the admittedly limited research he'd been able to conduct, pouring through his parent’s archives to read descriptions of undead monsters, he'd quickly abandoned the idea of relying on zombies. Slow, filthy, able to be smelled a mile off, weak in small numbers, zombies didn't appeal to him at all. Their advantages, namely being easier to create and cheaper to maintain in terms of magick might have been appealing if he'd had an abundance of fresh corpses to work with, but that simply wasn't the case.

What he had were bones. Stronger, faster, capable of wielding weapons albeit clumsily, the skeleton was an all-round more appealing minion than a shambling pile of rotted flesh. More difficult to create, a more intensive drain on magic, there were certainly downsides, but he was going to do the best he could with the resources he had to hand.

Spreading light throughout the dim, narrow corridors of the mausoleum, he brought out the cloth he'd prepared and started to swat away the webs that blocked his path. The eight legged pests sent shadows flickering across the walls as they skittered away from his marauding muslin, the soft glow of his light magick catching them in the act. When he was done, he had a little more clear air and turned back to finish unpacking. He took a long draw from his water skin and munched on the jerked meat he'd packed as he consulted his notes, running through the spell forms one more time.

Reluctantly, he closed the book, rose and stretched.

"Alright then, time to check on Nolath and his blushing bride."

He moved around the corner to see the two caskets he'd opened the previous night. Eyes lighting up, he walked straight to the stone bed of Nolath, leaning forward to inspect the bones and the careful threading he'd performed. There had been some decay, the magick weave he'd so painstakingly created had begun to fray as the energy dissipated. He'd expected it to be worse than it was and quickly set to repairing the damage. He paid careful attention to the areas around the joints, this was where the finest weave was required and where loose threads were hardest to spot. It wouldn't do if he spent all this time raising his first skeleton only to find it couldn’t walk!

After an hour, more than half of which was spent needlessly fussing over every little detail, he finally rocked back on his heels and stretched out. He grasped the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders as he looked down on the two assembled skeletons, still lying in their open stone caskets in front of him.

"No point delaying any longer," he muttered, "might as well get on with it."

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It was frustrating, but he didn't have enough time, resources or know-how to do any more preparation. He knew that given a few more days he'd be able to make further improvements to his understanding of the remains and the intricacies of the Raise Dead spell, resulting in more powerful skeletons, but he was denied that luxury.

Fetching his notebook, he hunched over it for a few more minutes as he ensured he had committed everything he needed to memory. With a final nod, he snapped shut the book and moved to stand at the feet of Nolath's remains. Raising his hands, he began the incantation, feeling the magick begin to stir within him as it was summoned by the words of power.

For long minutes the words rolled sonorously from his mouth as the magick flowed and twisted through the air, leaching into the bones which began to glow with dark light as more and more arcane energy filled them. The fine weave of magick thread he'd laced around the bones ignited, drawing close and fusing into the remains as sweat began to drip down his brow halfway through the cast. Still, it wasn't done, and Tyron didn't let his focus slip for a second as he allowed the spell to take hold and consume his mind.

On and on it went until at last, after almost an hour, the final syllable was drawn from his lips and he collapsed, his throat raw and body drained. With shaking hands, his wiped the sweat from his forehead and watched as the final vestiges of energy flowed into the bones. For a moment, nothing happened and the only sound in the dusty tomb was Tyron's laboured breathing as he collected himself and waited.

Despite the massive complexity of the spell, he was confident in his ability. It worked. He knew it had worked.

A few seconds later, a soft light, so dark as to be almost black, but Tyron thought he detected hints of purple, appeared in the empty sockets of Nolath's skull. As excitement built in Tyron's eyes, he detected the almost imperceptible movement of the bones as they began to draw together, the femur pulling toward the tibia, the patella rising to its place atop the joint. They moved was almost as if a thread, loosely sewn through a cloth, was ever so slowly being pulled tight, drawing all the disparate parts together.

Which was exactly what was happening. The hours he spent threading were now coming to fruition, animating and pulling the skeleton together. It was a gradual process, one that the budding Necromancer watched with rising enthusiasm. As the skeleton grew more animated, Tyron could feel the drain on his remaining store of magick grow as his new minion drew on his reserves to, quite literally, pull itself together.

"Come on now, Nolath. Up you get," the young mage urged his creation like a child would speak to a new pet.

In many ways, it was. The Raise Dead spell formed a connection between the two of them, a master and servant bond that now flickered to life. Tyron had spent a great deal of time examining this portion of the spell matrix, since anything to do with the mind was well outside of his knowledge. As part of raising a collection of bones to life, there were many elements that were necessary, a way for the bones to move, a source of energy to power it, and a mind to control it. Part of the magick he had just performed, perhaps even the most significant part, was constructing a crude mental 'shell', he hesitated to call it a mind, it was far too crude for that, that would allow the skeleton to control its own body without him having to direct its every movement.

Little more than a set of directives his new servant would follow to the letter, the shell was useful, but only in a limited sense.

Fuelled by his arcane power, the skeleton climbed from its grave, climbing with surprising dexterity from the stone casket to stand on its own two feet, a servant, willing and waiting on his command. Now that he actually saw the fruit of his labours, Tyron couldn't help but feel a giddy wave of laughter bubble up from his belly. He'd done it! Not only had he successfully raised a skeleton, the second level of undead, on his first attempt, it was only his second attempt at casting Raise Dead in total!

He didn't have any base to compare his own ability to another necromancer, for obvious reasons, but he felt confident that his own progress was at least a little exceptional. He refused to believe that any newly Classed spellcaster would be able to handle as difficult a piece of magick as reanimating bones without extensive training and education.

He himself was lucky to have the intermittent instruction his own parents had been able to impart, but even with this advantage, he was rather proud of himself as he shakily rose to his feet.

"Dammit," he muttered as he reached for his bag, his hands fumbling with as his fingers refused to obey the demands of his brain.

With some effort, he was able to reach inside and wrap his fingers around the item he was searching for. When he drew it out, the soft blue light it emitted, was almost blinding in the darkness of the tomb, his own light globes having faded with his diminishing mana reserves.

"Mage candy," the voice of his mother sounded inside his head, a memory of her holding up a crystal just like this one in front of his younger eyes. "Very useful in small doses, extremely toxic in large ones. If you end up being a spellcaster, it's a good idea to start building up an immunity early, because if you're anything like me, you'll be chewing through these things," she grinned, "like candy."

Good thing she kept a small stash of the stuff in the house in case of an emergency. Good thing he'd found out where it was when he was eleven. Not that he'd ever needed them before now. Crystal in hand, he settled himself on the floor, sitting cross legged on the freezing cold stone as he brought his hands together in front of his chest before he placed the gem into his mouth and concentrated.

It was slow at first, so slow he almost couldn't notice the trickle of pure magickal energy leaking into his body, but as the minutes trickled past the flow increased in speed until he was receiving a steady stream of magick, lifting his reserves from their woefully low state. Gradually, his hands began to steady and his body regained its strength. Casting the spell to raise a skeleton had taken him to the edge of his reserves, even after his level up and the resultant surge of stats. To make matters worse, when he had been on the verge of running dry, the skeleton had stood up, using his magick to do so. All in all, it had been a close call.

Ten minutes later he spat out the crystal to find the glow that had emanated from the crystal had diminished considerably, but he felt much improved. He rose from his seated position to find his minion still standing at attention, the dull glow of ethereal energy flickering in its hollow sockets. He could feel it in his mind, an emotionless pocket in the corner of his awareness. He had to admit, it was a little unnerving being in the tomb with it. The skeleton stood with perfect stillness, and would do so forever, until he provided an order or the mana that sustained it exhausted itself.

He was specifically careful not to give it an order. Any movement it made would resume the drain on him, which was something he could not afford right now, he had plans for the magick that infused him now.

"Alright Nolath," Tyron muttered to himself, rubbing his hands together, "about time you and the Mrs were reunited I would say."

A second casting of Raise Dead in one night. It would be a risk, and if he hadn't brought a small collection of mage candy with him, he wouldn't have had enough energy to do it. The danger wasn't that his magick wouldn't be sufficient, but the toxic effect of the crystals on his body. When he'd made his plans for the evening, it had been something he had deemed would be worth hazarding. His time limit was just so short. In two more nights he would be completely cut off from society unless he renounced his Class.

As he stared into the faint flames that burned in the eyes of his skeleton, he simply couldn't imagine giving it up. This was the first step, the first hurdle. A Necromancer was capable of creating not just a few servants, but an army. This was merely the beginning of what he would be able to achieve if he pursued this Class.

Faced with a future in which he moved through the world as a powerful mage with a horde of fearsome undead at his side, or one in which he slunk through town as a cripple, no Primary Class to speak of, he couldn't imagine choosing the latter. He was a Steelarm, son of Magnin and Beory. He'd spent his entire life in their shadow, how could anyone think he would be content to remain there for the rest of his life?!

He didn't want to live beneath them! He wanted to be them!

And when he'd swept through the wilds and destroyed the rifts at the head of his legion of the dead, they would sing his praises in the streets and he would be celebrated alongside his parents as a great slayer of the age.

Eyes hardening in determination, Tyron withdrew another crystal from within his bag and popped it into his mouth, the cold surface of the gem freezing on his tongue even as he felt the trickle of power begin to flow from it.

This would be difficult. He rolled the candy in his mouth until he had it firmly pressed under his tongue against the back of his teeth. Gem secured, his hands began to move and the words of power began to roll from his tongue as the dead air within the mausoleum stirred once more as his power thrummed.

Outside, the wind rose and clouds began to creep over the horizon, heralding the storm to come.