Book of The Dead

The lich hung silently in the air, unmoving, unblinking, unspeaking. To anyone else, it would appear as if it were simply unresponsive, but Tyron knew better. Through the connection they shared, he could feel the Lady Recilia Erryn furiously battering at the restrictions that bound her, trying to direct her thoughts as she willed. Her mind reached for vengeance, for hate and anger, but she was not allowed—the walls Tyron had built resided within her very soul.

Disloyal thoughts against her master were not permitted, and so, she hung silently in the air as she fought a futile battle.

It would end the same way it always did. This was far from the first time Tyron had witnessed this struggle, and it wouldn’t be the last. He doubted the former Noble would ever be reconciled to her enslavement. She had fallen too far to ever make peace with her new station. Not that he cared. All he needed from the demi-lich was its service, which he was guaranteed to receive. The suffering was merely a bonus.

“I am here,” Lady Erryn said eventually, when the internal battle had finally subsided.

“I can see that,” Tyron replied wryly.

When speaking to him, the demi-lich always spoke in simple terms. Too much thinking, being drawn into dialogue, would only result in the internal battle reigniting once more. It was remarkable she never seemed to grow tired of it.

“How is the camp? Enlighten me, Vizier.”

Anger surged across the mental connection once more, and Tyron waited, patiently, for it to sputter out once more.

With every wight and demi-lich Tyron had created thus far, they had been born with a new Class that somehow related to their old one. Soldiers had become Dread Knights, Undead Commanders, Skeletal Swordsmen and the like. Mages became Dark Mages, Sorcerers of Bone and Blood or similar. Filetta had gone from her thief Class to a stealthy undead variant, and Master Willhem had become an Undying Arcanist.

So far, it appeared as though his undead could only advance their Classes once, capping them at level forty. Even so, being able to tailor their abilities and feats, coupled with their already powerful base, made them far superior to the revenants who held onto a portion of their previous strength.

Which meant that the Lady Recillia Erryn was something of a special case. Her previous Class was Noble. The direct scion of an ancient house, her Class had been bestowed on her by the Divines themselves. This was not a Class just anyone could awaken, and much of its power came from the authority bestowed upon the Noble by the gods themselves.

The Divine Mandate was their particular innate gift, the ability to channel the power of The Five to force others to obey. He had questioned Recilia Erryn comprehensively on this subject, probing the nature, strengths and weaknesses of the ability, and had learned a great deal.

As he’d suspected, they weren’t able to use it however they liked, and were restricted in what, and how often, they could draw on the power of their gods.

Obviously, when raising her as a demi-lich, he hadn’t expected any of that power to carry across. As an undead servant bound to his will, being able to use the strength of The Five made no sense. If she retained a similar ability, it would be fuelled by him

and not The Divines. Since he possessed no godly power of his own, such a ‘Divine Mandate’ would be severely lacking in teeth.

Instead, she had been raised as an Unliving Vizier.

As it turned out, the Noble Class was focused on two things. Firstly, domination via the mandate and strength of will. The other, administration and management.

In her human form, Recilia had been unnaturally persuasive and insightful, able to distinguish lies from truth and sense underlying motivations. Combined with abilities related to decision-making, tabulation and memory, it made sense that the Nobles were so adept at maintaining their own domains. If any of that expertise had been applied to the Province as a whole, everyone would have been significantly better off.

Although it was disappointing he didn’t create a more powerful servant, having Recilia around had proven to be surprisingly useful. By far the most socially capable of his undead, with a mind for details and a memory like a steel trap, she had been given a managerial role at which she excelled. Thankfully, she still retained some of the magicks she had gained from her Sub-Classes, so she wasn’t entirely useless in a fight.

The only problem with the arrangement was the seething hatred, despair and rage she felt in Tyron’s presence.

“We have lost six-thousand arrows since forming the camp here. Stocks are running low.”

“Six thousand?” Tyron asked, surprised. “How have we lost so many?”

“Shattered on crystal hides,” came the short answer.

Formed from smaller bones, particularly fingers and toes that had been forged and lengthened, it wasn’t hard to supply a large quantity of arrows, especially now that Bone Smiths existed, but losing so many was a not-insignificant loss of raw material. Despite the sheer weight of corpses in the Western Province, Tyron hadn’t gone back there to claim any, and he certainly wasn’t going to draw on his cache of high-quality bones for arrows.

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“I’ll have to look for a solution. What else?”

In a monotone, unemotional voice, Recilia continued her report, as if she were fighting to keep any of the boiling emotions in her soul from reaching the surface. Which was exactly what she was doing.

“A hundred and thirty-two skeletons lost fighting in the camp, over five-hundred in need of minor repairs, two-hundred and eleven in need of major repairs.”

Not unexpected. The fighting had been fierce out here.

“The wight, Brigette, is approaching her Class advancement.”

“Already?”

“Her armour is likely in need of repair.”

She must have been fighting a great deal to gain levels so quickly. It had been a universal truth that his undead levelled more slowly than they had in life. He didn’t know why this was the case. Perhaps undead interacted with the Unseen in a different way? Or maybe the Unseen was less willing to invest pieces of itself into an undead. Whatever the reason, levelling his wights and demi-lich’s wasn’t an easy task.

He sent a mental command to Brigette to wait in the corner of the camp reserved for the heavily injured minions, since he would be visiting there first.

“What about the magick emanating from the rift?” he asked. “Do you have the records for me?”

“I do.”

Without another word, the former Noble handed him a sheaf of paper, each covered in meticulous tables and neatly arranged columns of figures. Accepting them, he ran his eyes over each page, taking in the numbers and performing some quick calculations.

“That’s a lot of magick,” he said finally.

If these numbers were correct, the rift they were approaching was outputting over ten times the amount of magick the rift at Woodsedge did, post break.

Untamed, uncontrolled, with the kin forcing it wider and wider, this rift was likely as large as it could grow, letting the wild energy of the fallen realm on the other side flow through in a vast torrent. With so much magick in the air, it was little wonder kin had begun to be born on this side as well. Taming this rift would be a huge step in reversing the damage, though there were likely dozens of rifts of equal size covering what had once been Granin.

“Are the materials ready for the taming process?” he asked, still flicking through the sheets.

“They are.”

He nodded to himself. There was still plenty of time before they needed to move from here if they were going to arrive at the rift alongside the Slayers, but it was good to know things were prepared.

“You’re dismissed,” he said finally, tucking the papers into his robe. He’d go through them in more detail later, but for now, he had what he needed.

Another surge of burning hatred, only for it to burn out without a target to latch onto. Despair and anger warred within the demi-lich, until both faded to a numb acceptance. Without another word, the Lady Recillia Erryn turned and left.

Tyron watched her go, wondering how she would change over time. Would those emotions eventually dull until only an echo remained? How long until she no longer recalled what it had been like to be human at all?

Pushing himself out of his seat, Tyron exited the tent again. There was a great deal of work to do, and he was determined to have it done before they broke camp.

All around him, the sounds of fighting, roars and grunts of kin, along with the clash of bone arms and armour filled the air. Through the conduits, he knew exactly what was happening, but he pushed the information aside. His minions would handle the work well enough without his intervention, and if he did need to step in, they could call on him.

Brigette waited amongst the ranks of severely injured skeletons, clearly wondering why she was there. He approached her first.

“I wanted to check your armour,” he explained without preamble. “You’ve been fighting hard from what I hear.”

She hesitated, then shrugged.

“There isn’t anything else to do,” she said by way of explanation.

That wasn’t the whole truth. He’d learned a little of her personality from before her death. Brigette was someone who had always loved battle, enjoyed fighting and levelling more than the usual Slayer, which was saying something. Some of that passion burned in her still.

A quick inspection was enough to reveal significant damage to most of the bone plating covering her ribs and shoulders. The helmet had several cracks, to the point it was somewhat hard to believe it was still in one piece. If it weren’t for the quality of workmanship, she likely would have suffered fairly severe damage to her bones as well.

Reforming the bone and moulding it back to shape was a difficult task, but one he was well versed at by this time. After an hour, he’d patched her up as best he could and sent her on her way. From there, he moved on to repair work on the skeletons themselves.

Many here were missing bones or had severely damaged weaves. When he was still a new Necromancer, repairs like this would be time-consuming and mentally taxing, but now he was able to work through the problems in rapid succession.

Focused on the task, he moved from one minion to the next, hands deftly picking up the threads and retying the damaged sections where needed, other times sending mental commands to fetch particular sized bones from the stockpile. Categorising femurs, tibia and fibula by length had been one of Richard’s best ideas.

Hours ticked by as he worked, but Tyron was unaware of their passage. One minion to the next, problem by problem, he brought the heavily damaged skeletons back to a renewed state. At some point, he finished all of them and had moved on to the minor repairs. Smaller weave damage or just cracked bones, simple fixes that took minutes each. By the time it was done, night had fallen and the minions he’d worked on were back on the walls.

Stretching his back and cracking his knuckles, Tyron considered the camp. It looked as if Richard and Briss were both on the walls with their undead, trying to pick up a little extra experience. Doubtless Georg was busy conducting repairs to his zombies, though he may have done some fighting already.

He briefly considered going up himself, but cast away the idea. As much as he hated to admit it, going to sleep was the best thing he could do.

The next two days would be hectic, to say the least. Resting while he could only made sense. A good night’s rest, then he could perform the status ritual in the morning. With that out of the way, he could ready the camp for the march on the rift itself.