Book of The Dead

It was no exaggeration to say a new rift could do the same amount of damage as the break that occurred at Woodsedge. Magick would flood through the rift, bringing with it a greater risk of instability to every other rift in the province.

Slayers needed to be dispatched, and soon. They could manage the flow of monsters through the rift, culling their numbers, keeping the people safe. They could also, with enough mages, regulate the flow of magick, reduce the likelihood of disruptions.

Every break drew the entire realm closer to the brink of collapse, widening the rifts, increasing the rate of magick incursion and bringing them ever closer to becoming that which they fought.

A fallen realm, punching rifts into those still stable worlds that were not touched by the Arcane and flooding them with maddened beasts.

Tyron had wondered, in his more morose moments in his early teenage years, what the rift-kin would look like that came from the empire. Would they be humanoid at all? Or would his people be completely wiped out in the cataclysm that would come, replaced by another dominant form that drew in the magick and formed the cores that denoted a rift-kin?

I can’t allow this rift to go unnoticed. This is bigger than me.

He didn’t want to die, and would avoid it if he could, but Tyron knew that he had to do what he could to help the people of Cragwhistle, and all the others who made their homes in the empire.

The graveyard was still coated in a thin layer of mist that hugged the ground, curling around the stone graves both new and crumbling.

“Are you sure about this, kid?” Dove asked.

Clutched in the Necromancer’s hand, the skull peered out into the cemetery with his glowing, purple eyes disdainfully.

“The village needs slayers. I happen to have one tied up, and she can probably go and get more. I’ll explain the situation and set her free. Any slayer knows how serious this situation could be. They’ll do the right thing.”

Dove sighed.

“It also means she could go back to hunting your overly forgiving ass. Or stick other slayers on you. Regardless, it means your shit will be twisting in the breeze again.”

“It’s the right thing to do.”

The skull sighed again.

“It hurts me, and I mean really hurts me, with a deep, spiritual pain, to agree with your goodie-two-shoes bullshit.”

“But you do.”

“Goddess help me, I do.”

Friend in hand, Tyron continued to walk back to the place he had left the archer bound and guarded.

“Hello there!” he called as he approached. “I’m back, got some good news and bad news for you….”

He trailed off as he drew close. The archer was gone. Rope, cleanly cut, lay in a tangled mess on the ground, along with his skeletons.

“Look at these arseholes,” Dove scoffed. “On the job, but they went and got completely legless.”

He was right, though not in the sense his undead had gotten drunk. Somehow, the archer had managed to free herself, and destroy the skeletons’ legs. In the chaos up at the village, he hadn’t noticed his minions here fighting.

If they’d been destroyed, he definitely would have realised something had happened, so the Slayer had cleverly disabled his servants rather than destroy them. Very smart.

“Well, fuck.”

“Kid?”

“What?”

“Duck.”

Oh shit.

The Necromancer threw himself to the ground, summoning his minions to his side. He raised his arms to protect his head and tried to roll into some cover.

“Did you see her?” he breathed to Dove, peeking around him for any sign of the archer.

“What? No! I can’t see shit! It’s common sense to get your fucking head down if there might be a Ranger out there trying to put an arrow through it.”

Tyron slumped on the ground, relief welling up inside him.

“By the Goddess and her plump posterior, if you’re waiting for me to spot the danger coming, you are truly in the shit.”

Soon enough, Tyron was covered by his shield-bearing minions and felt comfortable standing.

“What am I supposed to do now?” he cursed. “I told the villagers I could get a Slayer to get help for them. Now she’s pissed off to goodness knows where.”

“We know they aren’t far away. Yor told us that much.”

“Yes, but where? They could be anywhere out there.”

Tyron gestured helplessly in the direction of the plains. He didn’t need to say more. Between the mountains and the plains lay an almost infinite number of crevasses, outcroppings and ravines. If the slayers were hunkered down in a camp somewhere, he might never find them. There were plenty of places they could fit where he and his band of merry… skeletons… could not.

“Well, it’s not all bad. You know they’re out there hunting you, so as long as you stick around the village, a Slayer will surely turn up and try to put a blade through your guts.”

The Necromancer grimaced. That might actually be his best course of action, but it left him with quite literally no way out. If he stayed in the village, and ten slayers turned up, even weak ones, what was he supposed to do?

Die. He was supposed to die.

“To hell with it,” he growled.

He turned back and started stomping his way toward Cragwhistle. They needed a Slayer to protect them, and he was going to have to step up to the plate.

Ortan was disappointed when he heard the news. He hadn’t known exactly what Tyron had been planning to do, on account of the young Mage being unwilling to share the exact status of the Slayer he could contact, but he’d been hopeful there might be a light at the end of the tunnel at last.

“It’s fine,” the big man shrugged half-heartedly. “We’re basically back to our original plan, rustle up some volunteers and see if we can make contact with someone who can get us some help.”

“At least I can tell you there are definitely some Slayers out there, somewhere nearby.”

“Friends of yours?” Ortan asked, looking uncertain.

“Not exactly,” Tyron hedged.

The stone mason looked him up and down before he nodded reluctantly.

“Fine, I get the picture. What are you going to do?”

“I want to help, but I also want to avoid getting my head cut off. I think I might head up into the mountains a bit. I can help thin out the kin, at least a little bit, and try and hide. Surely, I can find a cave or something up there.”

“That’s the barrier mountains. You’ll find a lot more than a cave. I’m just hoping that nothing finds you.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Marshal Langdon held up a hand to block the dying light from his eyes. Despite being late in the day, piercing rays still lanced out whenever the sun poked out from behind the mountains. It could be quite painful when it caught him unawares.

“Marshal. A message has arrived by Ro’klaw. High priority, for you.”

“Thank you, Wallir,” Langdon said in his normal, dispassionate tone.

He took the note, unfurled it and began to read. When he was finished, he re-rolled the paper before carefully stowing it in his pouch. Official correspondence always needed to be kept, unless specifically noted otherwise.

“And? Has there been any word?” Wallir asked.

Normally, his friend and fellow Marshal would be more patient, but the times had scraped everyone's nerves raw.

“There’s been word of our prey. Someone spotted a Mage matching Tyron Steelarm’s description, accompanied by a force of skeletons in Cragwhistle.”

“Cragwhistle?” Wallir frowned. “Where the heck is that?”

“Apparently, it’s a village hard up against the edge of the barrier mountains.”

“Any idea who got word to us?”

“The note doesn’t say who the informant was. Does it matter?”

“No… I suppose not.”

Langdon stood and brushed down his pants, adjusted his uniform before he turned and strode back to the camp. There were four of them altogether, each a Marshal who had worked in Woodsedge. Each of them was lucky to be alive.

“We have a lead,” he announced.

Closest to him, seated on a log and warming her feet by the fire, Riza turned to face him.

“Better than the last one, I hope?”

“I would say so.”

“Fuck, I hope so.”

“Riza….”

“Oh fuck off, Langdon you stiff. I’ll watch my language in front of the public, don’t worry your pretty little head.”

Considering everything they’d been through, he was willing to overlook this lapse in professionalism.

“Where are we headed?” Brom said, his deep voice thrumming in his chest as he stretched out a thick hand to douse the flames.

“Cragwhistle. Right up against the barrier mountains.”

“Any chance the Slayers are already onto him? Or Magnin and Beory?”

Langdon grit his teeth. He hoped not. None of them did. The Necromancer had made this their business when he decided to murder two of their own.

“Most of the slayers have pulled out,” Wallir noted. “I spoke to a few at that tavern in Waycross. Every silver is headed up to Woodsedge, settling the land and preparing the keep to be rebuilt. Most of the free bronze slayers have been sent back out to bolster the numbers in the keeps around the province, just to keep things steady.”

“Which means there won’t be many still here looking for the murderous little prick,” Riza said with satisfaction.

“Check yourself, Riza,” Langdon warned her. “He’s more dangerous than you give him credit for.”

“He’s a pup,” she scoffed.

“He isn’t a drunk farmer that you can knock down with a harsh glare, Riza,” he snapped. “This is an outlawed Mage class for a reason and he’s already put two of our people in the ground.”

“We hope so, anyway,” Brom rumbled as he continued to pack up the camp.

That took the wind out of the gathered officers of the Empire’s law. They hated to think of it, but it was true. Their fellow officers would be lucky if all they were was dead.

Langdon drew a deep breath to steady his anger.

“We can’t underestimate him,” he said. “We aren’t proper combat personnel. Keep that in mind. Our only chance of success is if we work together to bring him down.”

“I know that much,” Riza scowled down at her hands.

“You going to help me pack?” Brom said and the group stirred to motion at his words.

Tents were taken down, bedrolls packed away and the coals doused. In short order, the group was ready to move. Despite the fading light, the quartet of officers set out at a brisk pace, trusting their abilities to see them traverse safely over the terrain.

As they walked, Langdon tried not to dwell on the events of recent history, but it was difficult. He couldn’t have imagined that a simple case of a runaway child would turn out like this. Strange rituals in Woodsedge, disturbing the dimensional weave. A seemingly stable rift going haywire so shortly afterwards, leading to a break and unspeakable devastation.

The terror he’d felt the moment the rift had cracked would never leave him. Even now, he could hear it ringing in his ears. That shattering sound, as if the world itself had broken, haunted his sleep.

In the face of such a calamity, what was the advent of one, solitary Necromancer? It was nothing. A blip. A speck of dust. Tyron Steelarm would have to work very hard, for a very long time, to come even close to causing the amount of death that break had caused.

But he was a problem that Langdon could do something about. In the face of forces he couldn’t hope to influence, all that remained was to focus on what was within his reach.

The Necromancer was an illegal Class. A rogue, unbranded, defying the Magisters, the Aristocracy and the law of the land. Worse than that, he was a murderer. A Marshal killer.

As a rule, the officers of the law didn’t take too kindly to those who killed their comrades. Tyron had to be put down before he became something worse, and before others began to think the Western Province had become so lawless that Marshals could be murdered without reprisal.

“How far until we reach this village?” Wallir asked after they’d been on the road for ten minutes.

“At this pace, we should get there in two days,” Langdon replied.

And then we can put this criminal in the ground where he belongs.

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