Book Of The Dead

The next two weeks passed faster than Tyron had imagined they could. His days were filled with preparing and delivering lessons to the various Necromancy-related Classed that had Awakened in Cragwhistle. When he had a spare moment from that, he was directing his minions to fight kin or poking away at his own projects.

Filetta was growing frustrated with his lack of progress, but he assured her that his next status ritual would provide the levels and hopefully some clues as to how he could finally raise a Wight. Fortunately, she was relatively content to pass the time away sleeping within the stone he’d placed her spirit in. It was better than being a lost and wandering soul, apparently, so that worked out in his favour.

It hadn’t taken all that long for him to teach the Corpse Weavers and Bone Shapers what he’d been able to figure out on his own. How to identify the various qualities of a corpse, what could be done to improve the condition of the bones. They’d listened carefully to what he’d told them, gone through a few demonstrations and hands-on practice sessions, then gotten to work with surprisingly little fuss. A few had been reluctant to handle the dead, which was understandable, Tyron hadn’t been thrilled about it when starting out either, but it was surprising how quickly people could adapt.

Green faces and vomit turned into casual indifference pretty fast when handling corpses became a daily activity. What was becoming rapidly apparent was just how many corpses there were to handle. Teams were still venturing out into the still-ruined areas of the province to look for mass graves, and they were still finding more. The bodies had largely rotted, but the bones were fine, and collecting them for the Shapers and Weavers had become a small industry in Cragwhistle.

“Steady your breathing and practise the sequence in your heads,” Tyron told his Necromancer students.

The three of them were sat around the fire with their eyes closed, comfortably at rest, though their brows were furrowed as they concentrated.

“It’s a long sequence, and I don’t expect you to remember the whole thing. The key is to stop once you are no longer completely certain you have it right. There’s no such thing as blundering forward and hoping it works out when spellcasting. The odds of succeeding at random are millions to one, whereas the odds of your spell exploding in your own face are quite good. If you aren’t completely sure what comes next, stop, refer to your notes, practise that phrase, then start again. Constant repetition is the only way you will be able to squeeze this into your heads.”

Georg, Briss and Richard each nodded as they continued to run through the Ritual in their heads. Tyron had pulled out all the stops to create as bare bones and simple a version of Raise Dead as he possibly could. It wasn’t optimal by any means, the result would be a weak, barely functioning zombie that drew so little power it couldn’t move itself, but it would count as having raised an undead. If all went well, that would be enough to get the three of them to the second level, where they could start working with skeletons.

If they wanted to specialise in zombies, they were more than welcome, but he couldn’t help them much there. Quite deliberately, he had focused his build on the second form of basic undead, and he didn’t regret it for a second.

“The ritual should take around twenty minutes to cast. That’s twenty minutes of continuous, flawless casting,” he reminded his students. “Every phrase, perfect. Every gesture, perfect.”

They’d spent all of their previous sessions gradually building up their skill and comprehension of basic magick principles, but Tyron knew if he kept the lessons completely theory-based, the three youngsters would burn out eventually. His mother had done the same thing for him, giving him just enough knowledge to create some little effect, even if it wasn’t a complete spell, then introducing the next set.

So, he’d guided them towards this cut-down version of their primary Ritual. Specifically designed to use as few sigils as possible, it was possibly Tyron’s finest creation, even if it was complete rubbish. Getting the ritual to function in such a short time with such a limited number of words was a feat and a half.

Tyron watched his three students as they struggled to do as he’d asked them. Richard was a fast learner, with a good memory, but he could be overconfident. Several times, he’d declared himself proficient in certain phrases or gestures, only to be sharply corrected.

“Good enough isn’t good enough,” he’d warned the young man sternly, much as his own mother had done for him. “An imperfect phrase in the middle of battle will get you killed just like if you jumped on your own sword. If you can’t get it right sitting here without any danger, then you have no hope of doing it right under pressure.”

Briss was surprisingly adept, and a very dedicated student. She practised more than the other two, and it showed in how well her hand movements were coming along, but she was timid. She lacked the confidence to decide for herself when she was proficient, needing to check with Tyron if she was ‘doing it right’ over and over again until he refused to supervise her any more. He knew some people needed positive reinforcement to learn, but she didn’t have that much time. If she couldn’t move on to the next thing without being told a hundred times she’d learned the last, she’d never get anywhere before he left.

Georg… Georg was an interesting package. Softly spoken, even mumbly at times, with his thick and worn hands, he struggled with the spoken element of spellcasting just as much as did the hand gestures. The youth lacked the memory of Richard or the drive of Briss, but what he did have was a willing practicality and a better understanding of what it was he was trying to become.

“Things die,” the young farmhand had shrugged when Tyron had asked him about working with the dead, “even people. If anything, I think it’s nice we can get some use out of them.”

The lad had butchered cattle before, skinning the animal and cutting it up for meat. He’d cleaned bones, handled offal and generally seen and done all the dirty work that went into working with living creatures. Of the three, he had the best mindset when it came to Necromancy.

He left them to their preparations for a few hours while he focused on other things. Looking through the eyes of his minions, he could take a look at almost all of the mountain slope between the rift and the rapidly expanding town. The majority of his undead were positioned high up, close to the rift itself, ready to intercept the kin the moment they came through.

The fighting was extremely one-sided for the most part. His skeletal mages and archers pelted the monsters the moment they emerged, followed by a charge from his skeletons and revenants. Almost two hundred undead remained there, with small groups scattered across the mountain and a large force close by to defend himself.

Only the mammoths required his direct intervention, but they appeared rarely, and usually one at a time.

After he had left them to their internal reflection, he gathered his students’ attention with a clap of his hands. They opened their eyes and looked at him seriously. At least their willingness to meet his gaze and be around him had mellowed as time passed. It probably helped that he no longer wore his bone armour when they were present.

“Come with me,” he told them and directed them away from the cave a little ways into the woods. There, they came upon a corpse that had been prepared for their use. A young man, probably unawakened, dead to the cold and found by Tyron’s skeletons out on the mountain.

“Gather around,” he told his students. “Don’t be so far back, Briss, come closer.”

She looked a little green, but Richard was worse. Of the three, he’d clearly been the most sheltered. Georg barely changed expression.

“You have the Corpse Appraisal Skill, same as I have. What is your intuition telling you about these remains?”

There was silence for a moment as Richard and Briss considered, but Georg was the first to speak.

“Cold has kept him pretty fresh,” he said. “Body will be a bit stiff, though, I wager.”

“Every body you work with will be stiff, Georg,” Tyron told him. “It happens to a person when they die.”

“Ah, I seen that before.”

“You sure would have. The cold won’t be any impediment to our magick. After casting Raise Dead, the zombie will be able to move just fine.”

After another pause, Briss spoke up.

“I think some animals got to him, there appears to be… some damage… to the right leg.”

“The body is a little chewed on,” Tyron agreed, “which would limit his movement as a zombie. Remember, a zombie uses magick to fuel the muscles, but doesn’t replace them. This minion would have a definite limp. Anything else?”

Richard hesitated.

“Th-that’s a person, though,” he said.

Not an unreasonable response, but an unhelpful one.

“That’s a corpse,” Tyron corrected him. “Whatever it is that turns tissue and bone into a living person is long gone.”

In fact, the spirit was tucked away in a stone back in Tyron’s cave, but they didn’t need to know that.

“This is materials. This is a potential servant that you send to fight on your behalf. That’s it.” He gestured up towards the rift. “Would you rather send a dead body up there to fight the kin or a living, breathing person? Think of your neighbours and friends. Should they fight, or should this?” he declared the question pointing a finger down at the dead body. “To me, the answer is obvious. In fact, Necromancers like us could be the answer to the growing problem suffered by the empire. There aren’t enough slayers, but there are a lot of dead bodies. We are the only Class that can use one problem to solve the other.”

Richard nodded, somewhat reluctantly, but Tyron was satisfied he got his point across.

“Now, I am going to cast the modified version of Raise Dead that I have prepared for you. Pay close attention to my words, and to my hands. Keep in mind that this is easier for me due to my higher level Skills and Mysteries. Your result won’t be as good, and can’t be, so don’t expect it.”

“You have mysteries? Plural?” Briss blurted out.

Tyron frowned.

“Don’t worry about that,” he snapped. “Focus on what is happening here.” He glared at the three of them until he was satisfied they were focused. “Each of you is going to make an attempt after me. I’ll cut off your spellwork the moment you make a mistake, so don’t worry about killing yourselves.”

Richard gasped.

“I said don’t worry about it. This is a normal way to teach students Rituals. Now, I’m going to start.”

He raised his hands, glanced at the students one more time, then began to cast. He went slowly, not throwing the full force of his magick behind the Ritual, but even so, the words tolled like a bell, sending a ripple through the air that washed over the surroundings and through the three young apprentices. It took him twenty minutes to complete, and when it was done, the corpse on the ground opened its glassy eyes, and began to twitch.”

Lowering his hands, Tyron nodded with satisfaction. The Zombie was drawing a bare trickle of power, the conduit formed between the two of them totally insufficient to fuel its movement, even with the reduced cost compared to a skeleton.

“There you have it,” he said, brushing his hands together and flexing his fingers. “A successful cast of Raise Dead. As you can see, it worked, the modified ritual isn’t intended to create a useful undead, but to help you learn the spell.”

He cut off the flow of power between himself and the zombie. In moments, lacking the energy required to maintain its unlife, the corpse fell back into the snow.

“Georg, you first.”

The farmboy raised his brows in surprise before he stepped forward, the others shuffling around to make room for him. As he steadied himself, closing his eyes and mumbling words of power beneath his breath, Tyron focused. He would need to intervene the instant a mistake was made, before the arcane energy spiralled out of control.

“I’ll start now,” the young man declared, then raised his hands.

He spoke well, better than Tyron had anticipated, but his fingers continued to be an issue. He was forming the sigils correctly, but only barely. The fact he was this successful at all spoke to how hard he’d been practising.

He made it two and a half minutes in before his first major slip.

Tyron leapt forward and clamped down on his hands, shouldering the young man out of the way as he blasted away the warping Ritual energy with a burst of his own magick. After a few breaths, he was satisfied nothing further would happen. Georg lay on the ground gasping and Tyron extended him a hand.

“I hope I didn’t hit you too hard,” he said, “I forget sometimes that you don’t have any levels.”

Reforged by the Unseen, Tyron had thirty points of strength on him from advancements. He was far, far stronger than even the mightiest unawakened.

“I’m alright,” Georg wheezed. “I didn’t think you could hit that hard, sir.”

“Take a moment to get your breath. Briss, you’ll be up next. I promise I’ll be a bit more gentle,” he tried to reassure her, but she still looked nervous.

She shuffled forward, then took several deep breaths as she tried to focus. Then, she began.

Surprisingly, her diction was excellent, and her fingers were quite nimble. At a steady pace, she moved through the ritual until Tyron had to intervene almost five minutes in. Trying to restrain himself, he rushed forward, used his hands to push her out of the way before erasing the warping spell. This was another reason why he designed it to contain so little power. Failure wasn’t as catastrophic as it would have been otherwise.

“Well done, Briss. Now it’s your turn, Richard.”

The studious young man swallowed heavily before he stepped forward and readied himself. Georg helped pick up Briss and they moved to the side to watch.

After a moment, he raised his hands and began.

He made it barely past a minute before Tyron had to intervene. After dealing with the aftermath, he led the three young Mages back towards the cave and spoke to them there.

“Georg, you did well, especially with your diction and breath control.”

“Fingers tripped me up,” he nodded, staring down at his thick digits.

“There’s a Dextrous Fingers feat you can choose in the general feats list if you have a slot open. It may be worth considering. If you keep doing your exercises, it will get better, but it will take time, and you’ll never be quite as nimble as you would like to be.”

He turned to Briss.

“You did extremely well, but you need to maintain your focus. A normal version of this ritual can last up to an hour, and many spells last longer than that. Start practising the whole ritual at once, as well as working on your phrases. You need to get used to concentrating for extended periods at a time.”

Next was Richard, who hung his head, disappointed to have performed the worst.

“I know you’ve been working hard, but nerves got the best of you. I know it's difficult, but you can’t be nervous. You need to find a way to channel that energy into something helpful, or put it out of yourself.” He considered for a moment. “Have you ever performed publicly?”

Richard blinked.

“Uh, no?”

“Try heading to a tavern or inn and singing or something. Juggling. Whatever you can do. If you can get through a song in front of a crowd, performing a ritual in front of three people will seem like a breeze.

“Now, I’m going to be away for a few days, through the rift. I expect each of you to keep working on your drills and practising the ritual. When I get back, you’ll need to show me some improvement.”