Book of The Dead

Tyron sucked in air as reinforcing skeletons finally poured into the corridor. Throwing themselves into the fight, he soon received burst after burst of vitality as his undead slaughtered the remaining Soldiers. The splits in his skin began to close, and he breathed a little more easily, the deaths of his enemies bringing him back from the brink.

Worthy looked down on his nephew, waiting and watching as he healed. He was significantly wounded himself, but he was patient, still steady on his feet, until a little colour had returned to the lad’s cheeks.

“Any chance you can turn off this spell that’s hurting me?” Worthy asked, pointing at the swirling mist around his feet.

“Oh, shit. Sorry,” Tyron mumbled, cutting off the magick.

Finally able to take a good look at his Uncle, Tyron noted the changes that had come over him. He hadn’t seen Worthy since he had fled from Foxbridge, all those years ago. His Uncle had been larger than life, a former Slayer who had retired at Silver rank, settled down and opened an Inn. With his broad smile, fierce beard and portly frame, he’d been every inch the celebrated hero and consummate Innkeeper.

That was the only way Tyron had ever known him.

Barely a shadow of that man remained now. Worthy had lost weight, but not muscle, looking leaner, but powerful, his arms and shoulders still massive within his armour. His face had lost its laughter and gained more scars. His eyes no longer twinkled with the joke he hadn’t told you yet, but held a deep sadness. As he looked into those sombre blue eyes, so much like his own, Tyron found he didn’t know what to say.

He’d dreaded this moment, he realised now. He had told himself so many reasons why he wasn’t able to go and see his Aunt and Uncle, that it would be better if he didn’t. They wouldn’t understand what he was trying to achieve. They wouldn’t approve. They’d try to talk him out of it. Tyron had always feared, deep down, that not only would they try to turn him from the path of vengeance, but that they would succeed.

They were the only people in the world who understood and shared his pain, who understood a fraction of what he had gone through. When he looked at Worthy, he had feared there would be condemnation, criticism, anger and rejection in his gaze, but what he saw was so much worse: understanding.

“Don’t, don’t look at me like that,” he said, turning his eyes to the floor between his legs.

“Like what?” Worthy rumbled. “Is there something about my face that upsets you?”

“You don’t know what I’ve done, Uncle Worthy,” Tyron said. “You wouldn’t look at me like that if you knew.”

“Oh, is that right?” Worthy said. He walked, heavily limping, over to Tyron, then slumped down to the floor. Worthy looked ahead and didn’t reach out to his nephew, but remained still by his side. “That’s a little better,” he groaned. “I’m too old for this. It was hard to get here without getting caught. Reminded me of being on the other side of a rift.”

Now that the last defenders had fallen, the corridor, indeed, the whole tower, was eerily quiet. Blood soaked the floor, pooling from the dozens of corpses while the Undead stood watch, unmoving and silent.

Worthy shifted to make himself more comfortable then turned to look at Tyron, who continued to stare down at the floor.

“Now, you were in the middle of telling me what I know, and how I’m allowed to feel about it. Continue.”

Tyron didn’t say anything. He couldn’t.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen you since you ran off in the middle of the night, boy. You don’t get to remain silent in front of me.”

The Necromancer took a deep breath and tried to steel himself. He’d been unwavering for six years; why was it so hard now? In the face of every atrocity, he hadn’t blinked, but his Uncle's face was enough to make him question himself? It was ridiculous. He couldn’t accept it.

“I’ve done terrible things, Uncle. I’ve killed many people. Women and children among them. Guilty and Innocent alike have suffered because of me. You can’t tell me you don’t care. That Aunt Meg would still be able to accept me. I’ve dragged the Steelarm name through the mud in pursuit of vengeance. I-I can’t say I’m sorry, because I’m not. If I had to do it again, I would. Gladly.”

Worthy scratched his cheek and sighed heavily.

“Tyron, take off your damned helmet and look at me.”

Slowly, Tyron raised his free hand and took the helmet from his head, placing it on the ground between his feet. Slowly, he lifted his head and faced his Uncle. Worthy looked at him openly, without judgement, but with a spark of anger in his eyes.

“You keep telling me that your Aunt and I can’t understand and can’t forgive. That’s bullshit. You think I don’t know who you are? I practically raised you, boy.”

There was real anger in the hammerman’s tone, along with hurt.

“You couldn’t walk the first time your parents left you with us. You spent more time under my roof than in your own damned house. I saw your first steps, I heard your first word, don’t you dare talk to me as if I don’t know who you are, or how you feel.”

Worthy stretched out his arm and wrapped it around Tyron’s shoulder and pulled him in roughly. As strong as he was, it was pointless for the Necromancer to resist, and he found himself crushed against his uncle's side.

He smelled of blood, sweat and oil, but something else, something familiar that reminded him of home, of falling asleep by the hearth as his Aunt cooked and Worthy told wild stories.

“I know what Magnin and Beory meant to you, boy,” Worthy said softly. “They were your whole world. My brother was an incredible man. No, incredible isn’t enough to describe him. More than one in a million, he was one of a kind. Even from a young age, we could all see that he was… different. Somehow, he managed to find someone on his level to marry. I couldn’t believe it, the first time I met your mother. The two of them together… were like something not of this world. You couldn’t help but want to try and be a part of it, to make them look your way, for just a moment. It was like being noticed by the sun.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The arm around Tyron’s shoulders tightened.

“And the only thing they truly cared about was you, boy. No one else really mattered to them, not even your Aunt and I. Other than you, they valued their freedom, but they gave that away for you in the end, didn’t they.”

Tyron hesitated and nodded.

“I don’t blame you for wanting vengeance, boy. I don’t blame you for the people you’ve killed and the chaos you’ve caused.”

Worthy extended a worn, scarred hand, then slowly clenched it into a fist.

“If I could have achieved what you have, I would have done the exact same thing.”

Unwilling to accept that statement, Tyron shook his head, causing Worthy to jab him in the gut with his other hand.

“What, you don’t think I’m up for it? I was slaughtering rift-kin and burying Slayers before you were born. You think my stomach would turn at the thought of burying a Noble family in the dirt? Bah!”

Still injured, Tyron doubled over with a gasp of pain and Worthy patted him on the back.

“Sorry about that, still haven’t fully grasped my strength. It’s easy to lose control sometimes.”

Even Tyron found it difficult at times, and he wasn’t even built around Strength. For his Uncle, who doubtlessly had a colossal amount of Strength, the problem would be massively exacerbated.

After he’d recovered, Tyron elbowed his Uncle, who pretended to be hurt, and for a brief second, he felt like he was ten years old again.

“Down the corridor somewhere,” he said, mainly to distract himself, “is the vault in which all the gold-ranked talismans are kept.”

“Seems like the sort of place they’d keep them,” Worthy shrugged.

“I’m going to destroy them, Uncle.”

“Aye. I suppose that’s why you came here.”

Tyron turned to watch his Uncle.

“What do you think is going to happen when I do that?” he asked slowly.

Again, Worthy scratched his cheek, looking unbothered as he contemplated the thought.

“Well,” he mused, “I suppose the Gold Slayers locked up in the city will go wild. There’ll be fighting in the streets and half the city will get burned down. The Duke will try to keep the peace, but he won’t be able to, so the Nobles will retreat into the castle until the worst of it dies down. After that, I suspect the Imperial Court will send a peacekeeping force, and they’ll burn the entire province down to the ground.”

The Necromancer nodded, his expression grave. This was what he’d expected as well.

“And… that’s fine? Hundreds of thousands of people will die, probably millions . All of those innocent people, just so I can get revenge for the killing of my parents?”

Worthy sighed.

“Anyone could tell you that the systems underpinning the Empire are rotten to the core. I’m a Slayer, my parents were Slayers, my grandparents were Slayers, every single one of us was branded. Resentment towards the powers that be was fed to me from my mother’s tit.”

He pointed toward the still seeping corpses nearby.

“These men and women were just doing their jobs, but they were working to protect the people who made things the way they are. If you want to get to the Nobles, you need to go through thousands of people like this; that’s how they’ve set it up. It isn’t wrong to try and get revenge, but when you try to attack the people who’ve made themselves the pillar of the empire, the whole thing is going to fall down on your head, no matter what.”

“Does that make it right?” Tyron muttered.

Worthy looked at him, frowning.

“You’re telling me you care about this stuff? You actually care about all the people you’ve trampled to get to this point? If so, why even start in the first place?!”

“But I don’t care!” Tyron burst out, eyes hardening. “I don’t care about any of them. Even before the vampires messed with my head, I didn’t care. No matter how many died, no matter how much suffering I caused. Ever since… ever since… it happened, I feel like I haven’t felt anything at all except anger and hate. I see how the ghosts act, how they scream and rage, filled with spite for the living, and I feel exactly the same way.

“Sometimes I wake up in the morning feeling completely numb, wondering if I’m already dead.”

He breathed out slowly as something deep within his chest slowly eased.

“I’m going to go through with it. I’ll destroy the talismans, set the Gold rank Slayers free, and then watch while Kenmor burns to the ground. All those people are going to die, and I know that I won’t care, because I’m not done. I won’t stop until the entire Empire has been burned to the ground and the Five Divines are pulled down from their perch and buried in the dirt.

“I’m going to cause… millions of people to die, and I just can’t bring myself to care.”

He turned to face his Uncle, who listened quietly.

“Worthy, am I a monster?”

His Uncle stared at him, unblinking, then threw back his head and laughed. With his arm still over Tyron’s shoulders, he crushed his nephew to his side and slapped him repeatedly on the back.

“I didn’t realise my question was so funny,” Tyron grumped.

Worthy wiped a tear from the corner of his eye as he continued to chuckle.

“Well… I’m just surprised that something like this was bothering you so much. Look, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. This is hidden Steelarm knowledge that hasn’t been shared with you before, or with anyone in the province, you understand?”

Unsure what his Uncle was getting at, Tyron just nodded.

“You are a monster, Tyron,” Worthy said with a broad smile, “just like your father and mother.”

“My parents were heroes,” the Necromancer said, dismissing his Uncle as he frowned in disapproval.

“Of course they were, lad. Who ever said you can’t be both at the same time? When I said Magnin and Beory didn’t care about anyone but you, I wasn’t joking, they really didn’t care. Couldn’t give a shit about anything or anyone. I’ve never met two people more completely self-obsessed and unfeeling. They loved you more than they did their own lives, and they still wandered off and left you by yourself for months on end. That’s not the sort of thing normal people do, boy.”

“That doesn’t make them monsters,” Tyron stated firmly.

“Oh, it does. The only reason they never fought against the Nobles and tried to cut them down is that they never cared enough to bother about it. As long as they got to fight and get stronger, nothing else mattered to them, not until you came along. If you’d been the one to die, what do you think those two would have done? Do you really think they would have gone back to life as it was before?”

Worthy snorted.

“No, they would have murdered everything and everyone who got in their way until they cut the head from the Emperor himself, no matter the cost.”

Tyron shook his head, still unwilling to accept it.

“They were loved across the province, had friends and comrades. They weren’t as cold-hearted as you say.”

Worthy reached up and ruffled his nephew’s hair.

“Because they knew it was easier to go through life as a hero than a villain. Like I said, there’s no reason you can’t be both.”

He pointed toward the wall.

“Out there are hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even millions, who hate this province, who hate the Nobles just as much as I do. People who want to see this place burned down to the ground so something better can be built in its place. Let’s not forget the Slayers out there. They’re on your side. You can be a hero to them, and a monster to everyone else. That’s what Magnin and Beory did.”

He nudged Tyron in the side, eyes twinkling with a hint of his old humour.

“Just a chip off the ol’ block, you are. Being a monster just runs in the family.”