B5 Chapter 3 - Endless Study

It was pleasant to exchange words with his students, who had grown into serviceable mages. Having someone to discuss the principles of Necromancy with, even at a surface level, was something he found enjoyable. 

The problem he had with these conversations was that the three students were far too willing to accept anything he said as the best solution, or the optimal method, without proper examination. Did he expect them to come up with better solutions than he did? No, obviously. That didn’t mean he wasn’t expecting them to try. 

He’d reworked his own techniques as spellforms dozens of times over at this point, and he would change them again in the future. Tyron considered himself far from infallible. 

“We can’t see what’s wrong, but if there is something, we assume you’ll fix it,” Briss had told him bluntly during one discussion. It was disappointing, but perhaps he was expecting too much from them. 

Tyron had been taught the principles of magick by one of the best Battle Mages the province had ever seen from a young age. On top of that, he’d been a Necromancer for far longer than they had. It was unlikely they’d be able to equal his knowledge of theory and principles any time soon.

With more students studying Necromancy, he hoped that at least some of them would come to challenge his ideas. Sitting in a room full of people who agreed with you was far less edifying than he might have expected.

Exposing them to the work of Ahrinan the Black would at least give them a chance to examine an alternative approach. From what Tyron had read from those volumes, there were significant differences between the Necromancy he himself had developed and that of the old lich. The magick he’d read had been powerful, to be sure, but lacked a certain… elegance. Still, he was certain there were valuable nuggets hiding in the writings that could be adapted to his own practices.

Tyron sighed as he finally stepped into his own chambers for the first time in months. Someone had been keeping it clean, which was a nice touch. He’d half expected to return to find the furnishings covered in dust. 

The room was simple, which was to be expected, given their situation. A crude bed had been pushed against the wall, the mattress stuffed with dried straw. For someone with his absurdly robust constitution, he could comfortably sleep on the floor, but others had insisted he be given something more.

Bookshelves filled half the remaining wall space, with desks taking the remainder. Three desks in total, each covered in scraps of paper, open books and half-furled scrolls. Idly, he picked up a volume, trying to work out what his train of thought had been when he’d put it down, then shook his head and shut the book before he could be drawn in too deep.

He needed to sleep. It had been too long since he’d gotten proper rest. Pushing aside his buzzing thoughts, Tyron undressed, peeling off the clothes he’d worn for almost a week straight at this point, before washing himself with the basin and soap a skeleton had brought in from the laundry. Pulling clean clothing from the chest under his bed, he rolled into the sheets and snuffed out the lights with a verbal command. 

Knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep without it, he cast Sleep on himself, quickly stealing his consciousness away. 

After a deep and dreamless sleep, Tyron awoke feeling lethargic and drained, almost as if he hadn’t slept at all. Grumbling to himself about the vagaries of rest and whether he should finally become a lich and leave the weaknesses of the flesh behind, he washed himself again before checking the array pumping his heart chest for irregularities.

Master Willhem had iterated on his earlier design and produced a far superior version, which wasn’t surprising, given who he was. With multiple fail-safes built in, the plate was relatively small and hooked directly into the flesh in the middle of his chest. When he found it to be working as intended, keeping his heart beating at a steady rhythm, he could only shrug. Perhaps he needed more rest than he expected. 

He conjured the lights once more and took a seat at his desk, clearing space as skeletons brought him breakfast and scrolls from the collection he had in a nearby room. No toast this morning, but a warm and filling broth with millet and carrots was more than sufficient.

With a clearer head and rising anticipation, he began to read through the scrolls provided by the Dust Folk one by one, making careful notes as he progressed. It didn’t take long for him to run into his first deadlock.

He’d thought the initial work he’d studied from the Dust Folk had been obtuse and strange, and he was convinced they’d only given it to him because they were confident he wouldn’t work it out, but these new documents were on an entirely new level. It made sense—he’d only been given basic texts in the past, and this time he’d made sure they’d provided him with something that had more meat on the bone.

The problem was, the magick of the Dust Folk was based on a completely different foundation than that of the Empire. As insects who possessed undead puppets, they weren’t as familiar working with hands as a human would be, which was why they specialised in ritual magick and constructs as opposed to casting spells. Everything was designed in a way to be placed in a spell array, not to be spoken or used as a gesture. 

In short, translating their magick into something he was more familiar with was difficult. Halfway through the first scroll, and already he couldn’t proceed any further because he wasn’t familiar with the patterns of symbols used and thus could only speculate as to what the intended function of the array was.

He leaned back with a sigh and folded his arms across his chest, pressing against the metal plate warmed by his body heat. 

Despite the Dust Folk being careful not to let him see any examples of their famed constructs, he knew they existed. There was a reason the Empire had never bothered to drive them out of the southern deserts, and it wasn’t just the low value of the land. Not to mention, the Dust Folk managed to keep the numerous rifts that fell within their territory under control somehow, and he doubted it was with a trained army of bugs the size of his palm.

They made use of every resource they could get their reanimated corpse hands on down there, including the bodies and souls of the dead. Which was precisely why he wanted to crack the mysteries of their arts.

However, he could already see what a difficult and laborious task it was going to be. Despite handing over a number of scrolls in trade, Tyron felt they were unwilling to let outsiders uncover their hard won secrets. He had some texts to work with, but no actual demonstration or example of their methods. The terminology they used was, naturally, written in their own language, which was yet another layer of difficulty in front of him.

Not only was he reverse engineering new magick from an obscure and difficult source, he only had a passable knowledge of the language it was written in.

Pushing the first scroll aside, Tyron took up the others and went through them one by one, taking meticulous notes on each until he ran into dead end after dead end. In everything the Dust Folk had given him, there came a point he was forced to put it down due to unknown sigils, unfamiliar language or bizarre structure.

It wouldn’t be the first time Tyron had been forced to piece together magick from pieces, but it wasn’t exactly a process he enjoyed. 

“Nothing else for it,” he muttered to himself, rolling up his sleeves, gathering loose sheets of paper and a fresh pot of ink. 

Six hours later, Georg knocked on the door and waited. When he didn’t hear a response, he knocked again, a little louder, but still heard nothing. 

“Master Steelarm?” he asked, pushing open the door slowly.

His teacher sat at his desk, pouring over a scroll, while the walls were covered in sheets of paper, each with various sigils, phrases or arcane arrays scrawled over them. None of it made any sense to Georg, even vaguely. He let his eyes roam over the wall, trying to get some sense of what it might relate to, but other than a few isolated sigils, he couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“Master Steelarm?” he said. “I wanted to talk to you about something I found in the notes.”

It wasn’t easy to get through to Tyron when he was working, the man had an inhuman level of concentration and focus when he was absorbed in magick. Normally, Georg wouldn’t bother trying, but he did think his teacher would want to see what he found.

“What is it, Georg?” Tyron asked, irritated, not looking up from the scroll in front of him.

“Do you want to read it for yourself?” Georg asked, holding out the book in question.

“Just tell me what you found.”

He was assuming that Georg was good enough to know what he’d found. Luckily, this time, he did.

“I think I found the version of Raise Dead that Ahrinan used. Or at least, one of them.”

Still, his teacher didn’t look up.

“And? Anything interesting?”

“There are some sigils that I’m not familiar with, so I thought it might be of interest. Looks like there’s at least a few differences between your version and theirs.”

“Let me see.”

Tyron held out his hand and Georg gave him the book, making sure to leave it open on the correct page. Tyron finally looked up from the scroll and turned his gaze over to the volume Georg had given him. His burning eyes tore into the page as if it owed him money and only moments later he was passing it back to Georg. 

“Using the Rin and Uln couplet to infuse magick was an idea I considered and discarded a long time ago, however there’s interesting use of Nolr, Cillir and Pel when forming the artificial mind. Take it to the others and see what you can figure out.”

So saying, he turned his attention back to his work.

Richard and Briss wouldn’t dare disturb their teacher while he was working, but Georg was a little more adventurous than them. 

“Can you explain a little about what you’re working on?” he asked, turning his gaze to the walls once again. “I can’t make out any part of this.”

Tyron grunted.

“I’d be shocked if you could,” he said without judgment. “The artistry of the Dust Folk in making constructs is far greater than what I’d thought. If I’m not mistaken, they’ve been able to blend souls with constructs, even ones made of stone. How they manage to bind a human soul into a non-human form… it doesn’t make sense. As far as I understand, a soul shouldn’t be able to move something that doesn’t match its original form.”

“That’s… crazy,” Georg blinked. “But what about all these notes on the wall?”

“Translation,” came the short reply. “Every page is a word, sigil or array that needs to be translated into a form more compatible with our own spell structure.”

Georg nodded slowly, trying to think how it was possible to do something like that. Wasn’t that just… making up new magick on the spot?

“Good luck,” he said, turning and heading to the exit.