B5 Chapter 73 - Pillar of Darkness

The first thing Tyron felt when he opened his eyes was a rush of anxiety. Had the Empire come as he slept? Was the horde intact?

After a few moments to gather himself, he was reassured. Not only was the horde intact, it was larger and more powerful than it had ever been.

It had been a mistake for the Empire to leave the western province abandoned like this after killing so many. If this was the number of skeletons Tyron could assemble in a relatively rural place like Foxbridge, then what would he find at Cluffton, Havercroft or Northwatch? If he managed to get all the way to Kenmor, just how many dead would he find?

As long as he won the upcoming battle, his horde would soon swell to tens of thousands, with revenants and wights from the Golden Legion to lead them. With such a force at his disposal, he would be able to march upon the other provinces openly, perhaps even the central province itself. With every victory, his enemies would grow that much weaker, and he would grow that much stronger.

For the first time since the fall of Kenmor, Tyron could feel his grip tightening around the necks of his foes. So much blood had been spilled already, but it wasn’t enough, not nearly. The Emperor still breathed. The noble houses still existed. The Five Divines still lived.

When everything those false gods had built was dead and buried, only then would Tyron’s vengeance be satisfied. Once again, he felt the heat of his rage burn brighter within him, an intoxicating heat that pushed away the all-consuming grief that never truly left him.

“Hey, you awake?”

It was Filetta, as usual. He looked up to see her offering him a plate.

“I think I’ve genuinely forgotten how to cook, but I think this meat should be fine to eat. We butchered a stray cow this morning.”

The Necromancer nodded with gratitude as he took the plate, then looked at the contents and grimaced. They’d cooked this? It looked so raw it could jump off the plate at any moment. 

“I’m not even sure I could use this in a zombie,” he muttered, poking at the hunk of meat on the plate.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

Alongside some wild carrots, beets and a mug of water from the river, it was an odd breakfast, but certainly a filling one. Seeing as his constitution had prevented him from getting sick even when consuming the disgusting sludge he’d eaten in the Realm of the Dead, Tyron swallowed his concerns along with the meat and choked it all down. He needed sustenance and he wasn’t in any position to be picky.

“Thanks,” he said, putting the plate down and resting a cautious hand on his stomach. Hopefully everything would be alright down there.

“Still no sign of the Empire,” Filetta said as Tyron slowly pushed himself up to his feet. “Are you sure they’re coming through here?”

“As sure as I can be.”

If they’d gone too wide around this area and already crossed the mountains, there was nothing he could do to prevent the slaughter that would take place. He could only hope that his aunt and uncle would be able to make it out alive.

There was no point changing plans now. He couldn’t afford to waste any time.

Tyron stretched, then picked up his mug of water, drinking the rest down in one gulp.

“How do you feel about being experimented on?” he asked his former associate.

Ghostly eyes turned towards him looking decidedly nonplussed.

“That almost sounds like something I would have said to you in the old days.”

The Necromancer frowned, wondering what she was talking about, then blinked. Oh, she was talking about that.

“I get enough of that sort of humour from Dove. I really don’t need it from you too,” he said, pinching his brow and shaking his head.

“What did you have in mind?” Filetta asked him, no longer joking.

“Well, I need to upgrade all of the wights, improving your bones, weaves, armour and weapons. We could leave it there, but I think there’s an opportunity to do something more.”

An idea had come to Tyron over the last few weeks, something he’d begun developing in the Realm of the Dead. The specific brand of Soul Magick he’d found there was utterly unique compared to anything he’d seen before. Since the Death Lords who ruled there coveted the souls that carried it to such a high degree, it stood to reason that it was both powerful and useful.

Tyron was always thinking about magick, he obsessed over it, dreamed about it. He thought in sigils and spoke in words of power. So when an incredibly powerful form of arcane energy drops into his lap and he has no idea what to do with it, his mind begins to turn, even if he didn’t want it to.

For a long time Tyron had wondered what he could do to make use of that energy, and the more he thought about it, the more he felt the wights were the most appropriate undead for him to work on first. He certainly wasn’t willing to risk his demi-lich’s just yet, he needed them for his work.

With such an extremely limited supply of Soul Magick, there wasn’t much he could do with it, but he was keen to try something, even if it was only on Filetta.

“Have you reached your maximum level? In your new Class, I mean.”

The former thief nodded. Upon being reawakened as a wight, she had, just like all of the others, received a new Class more fitting to her nature as an undead. In her case, an Undead Thief, that had been upgraded to a bronze rank Class and then a Silver rank one. Now her Class was less focused on thievery and more on agile, duel weapon fighting. With her two bone knives, Filetta was able to move with speed and grace, using her incredibly light frame to jump and spin through the battlefield. Utterly useless in the shield line, but on a flank with space to move, she was deadly.

For whatever reason though, wights weren’t able to progress any further than this, as if their souls no longer held the capacity for the Unseen to invest in them further. If he was right, he’d managed to cobble together a method that might work to reinforce the weakened souls of the wights, or at least provide enough support around them that they could accept more power from the Unseen.

“With a little luck, this might help make you stronger, and help promote you to gold rank,” he said, standing up and brandishing the orb in his right hand.

He held out the orb to her.

“Hold this for me, I need both hands.”

She looked at him askance.

“You’re going to help me become gold rank? Really? I didn’t think that was a weakness that could be overcome.”

A little hesitant, she reached out and took the orb into her spirit flesh fingers. Tyron frowned. As far as he was concerned, it was a fatal flaw in the wights that had infuriated him the moment he’d learned about it. All he could think was that his method for creating them was flawed in some way and he’d crippled them. Silver ranked undead warriors with their own souls were certainly nothing to sneeze at, able to act as the officers he needed, the wights were invaluable. But if they could be gold rank….

That would change everything.

A creature of black bone and green spirit flesh, a wight different from a revenant in the manner the soul was grafted to the undead. A revenant had its soul contained within the bones, fusing with the stored weave and allowing the spirit to control its remains. Able to draw on the abilities it possessed in life, and containing the same intelligence, a revenant was a massive upgrade over a regular skeletal minion, and cost much more as a consequence.

A wight on the other hand, did not have their soul fused to the bones, but rather into their spiritual flesh, a strange, ghostly material without physical form but nonetheless allowed the spirit to control its skeleton. Even more, the Unseen recognised a wight as an entity in its own right, replacing the ‘Human’ race with ‘Undead’ and giving them a new Class. More appropriate for an undead warrior, these Classes were often related to the person’s skills in life, but adjusted to make them better and more capable unliving warriors.

The wights were truly powerful, and required a monstrous cost of magick to maintain, but locking them at silver rank meant they would never be able to stand against the troops sent by the Empire.

Unless that changed, they would always be outmatched.

“I never even dreamed I would be able to become gold ranked,” Filetta said wistfully, looking down at the orb she held in her hands. “Nobody wanted that sort of heat on the docks, a rogue gold? Even if you got the levels, actually advancing was the same as committing suicide. Is it… really possible?”

“We’ll find out in a moment,” Tyron said, shaking his hands and loosening up his fingers. When he was ready to begin, he hesitated for a moment, then, for some reason, felt he should explain the process.

He was going to mess with her soul, so she surely deserved to know. 

“Right now, your soul is held within your spirit flesh. The two are bonded together. My theory is that the structure of the spirit flesh is much weaker than an actual physical body, limiting the amount of power the Unseen can grant you, causing the cap. What I intend to do is take an incredibly fine amount of soul magick and use it to create a support structure within the spirit flesh. If it goes well, it should stabilise your soul, make your flesh stronger, and allow you to reach gold.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Tyron grimaced.

“It could collapse your flesh and permanently damage your soul. Maybe.”

“I shouldn’t have asked,” Filetta scowled. She shook her head. “Fine, go ahead. I’m ready.”

“This might hurt,” he warned her.

“I can’t feel pain, Tyron.”

“Your soul can.”

“Oh.”

To extract magick from the orb, nothing short of perfect control was required. Even a slight error could disrupt the perfect balance contained within, ruining the artifact and wasting his effort. With absolute focus, Tyron seized hold of the magick, and with the delicacy of a butterfly caressing a flower, he drew out a tiny portion. Taking only Soul energy would destroy the balance as well, so he needed to take out an exactly equal amount of death magick, which he did. Enfolding the green soul magick within the black death, he held the two in equilibrium and released his hold on the artifact, which returned to its constance dance.

With the required energy in hand, Tyron took a deep breath to steady himself. He would only have one chance at this. If it failed, he was confident that Filetta’s soul would be permanently scarred, and further tampering would risk annihilating it completely.

If was confident in anything, it was his capacity to handle magick, Tyron didn’t hesitate and drove it into Filetta’s spirit flesh.

She reacted immediately, throwing her head back in a silent howl, but he paid it no mind, all his mind bent towards the task at hand.

Noctic bone had been the final piece in the puzzle Tyron had required. Learning from the delicate yet robust way death magick was used to create the inner structure, using magick to tame magick, he had immediately began to wonder if soul magick could do the same.

After all, there was no other form of arcane energy that could interact with a soul as well as soul magick, surely. 

Working magick in this way was a difficult process. It wasn’t a spell, not quite, but required implacable will and fine hand control to move and shape the energy in precise ways, forming an inner structure as delicate as a spider web and strong as steel.

As quickly as he could, Tyron spread the structure throughout her flesh, starting in her chest, then working his way outwards, towards the arms and legs. Incredibly thin and fine, the wires of soul magick burrowed through the spirit flesh like worms, splitting, dividing, coming back together, a pattern repeated and moulded around each and every bone.

Lost in his focus, Tyron couldn’t say if he worked for ten minutes, or ten hours, his mind was only occupied with the most minute of changes, the tiniest threads of magick. When he reached the final extremities, tying off the soul magick within Filetta’s toes, he blinked, breathed out and relaxed.

Filetta didn’t react for a long moment, her head still held back, her mouth open. He winced. He’d thought it could hurt, but apparently he’d misjudged by how much. While he gave her space to recover, the Necromancer turned his attention to her form.

Spirit flesh burned an ethereal green normally. Now, Filetta’s flesh was brighter, and that ghostly fire burned with more vigour. On the surface, it looked as if the process had been successful. Only Filetta would be able to confirm it.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“I-I… I’ve never felt pain like that before.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But… I think…”

As she went to speak, Tyron’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he was assailed by visions from the Unseen.