Book of The Dead - Chapter B3C1 - Careful Faces

Against the jostling crowd, Tyron stood firm as he gazed upward, a pocket of stillness amidst the flowing current of people. He ignored them, and they ignored him, which was often the way of it in Kenmor, he’d come to learn.

Towering thirty metres tall in front of him, the faces of his mother and father looked down, stern yet kind. He had to give it to the sculptors the Baron had commissioned from the central province, they’d done well to capture the likeness of the famous pair.

Even going so far as to rename Kenmor square, the beating heart of the city, in tribute to the fallen, beloved heroes.

Such a tragic story. Taking their own lives after ending the shame of their murderous son, sacrificing themselves to remove the stain on their good name.

The sheer arrogance of it twisted in his guts like poison. He wanted to scream in rage, to lash out at the misty eyed passers by, gazing up at the mighty statues with wistful expressions. He wanted to kick and punch and stab until the city itself was reduced to a crumbling ruin.

But he did none of those things.

A slight smile curled the corner of his lips as he turned away. Letting out his anger wouldn’t bring this city down, so he sealed it away.

Just wait, Kenmor. I have so many things in mind for you.

_____

The bell rang overhead as Tyron stepped through the door and into his shop.

“Master Almsfield, welcome,” beamed Cerry from behind the counter.

He gave her a short nod. “Ms Tiln, how is the store this morning?”

The brown haired girl gave him a vigorous thumbs up.

“Everything’s flawless. Business is booming, as always! Rather, I’m shocked at how many people have been coming through lately.”

Tyron grunted.

A recommendation from the most well known Enchanter in the city will do that. Master Willhem was quite glowing in his praise.

“How’s our stock?”

“We are starting to run a little low on a few items. The water purification wheel has been a hit.”

“I want to see a full inventory at the end of the day. I’ll see if I can replenish our wares overnight. Where’s Flynn?”

“He’s upstairs, Master Almsfield.”

“Thank you. I’ll leave you to it then.”

With a nod to the girl, he stepped behind the counter, ignored the questioning looks from the dozen or so customers browsing the glass display cases throughout the shop floor, and entered the back rooms.

Once he was upstairs, he knocked twice on the workshop door before he pushed the door open and found his apprentice face down on the table, snoring loudly.

“This idiot,” he frowned.

Judging by the cores scattered across his table, and the pliance he still gripped in his hand, the man had fallen asleep working at his station again. He stepped up behind the dozing apprentice and shook his shoulder.

“Hah! I’m awake!” Flynn gasped, flailing his arms.

“Blood and bone, settle down!” Tyron scowled. “You fell asleep at your station again. Were you working all night?”

“Ah… Master Almsfield, good to see you. Why, yes, I was. I hope I didn’t disturb you….”

He hadn’t, since Tyron hadn’t been resting in his bedroom in the room next to this one, but down in the basement performing work of a different kind.

“If you’re having trouble meeting your quotas, then tell me. You won’t be fired for failing to meet deliveries I’ve set too high, but you will be fired if you waste materials and send faulty enchantments downstairs to be sold.”

The young man cringed away from his master and Tyron struggled to remind himself that he’d hired the apprentice himself after an extended screening process. Flynn Rivner was a skilled Arcanist, with quick hands, a knack for the art, and insufficient backing to get himself into a better apprenticeship.

Tyron himself had only gotten into Wilhem’s by expending a sizable chunk of the wealth his parents had left for him.

Seeing Flynn’s dazed and slightly fearful expression, the Necromancer forced down a flash of anger.

We’re almost the same age, Flynn…. Have a little pride, man.

“Go home, get some rest,” he said finally, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I don’t want to see you in the store until tomorrow morning. There is to be no more working overnight. We will work out the pace at which you produce your best work and we will stick to that. Have I made myself clear?”

“You have… Master Almsfield….”

With the hangdog expression of a beaten puppy, Flynn staggered from his workstation and downstairs. Not a moment too soon, as Tyron had almost succumbed to the irrational urge to put his foot up the young man’s backside.

“What is wrong with that boy?” he wondered out loud, then snorted when he realised how he sounded.

After running through his apprenticeship in record time and setting up his own business, Tyron had leaped past many of his contemporaries in the industry. In fact, many who were significantly older than he was were still toiling away doing bit-work in other people’s shops.

It was hard to remember, sometimes, that he was only twenty two.

With a critical eye, he looked over his workshop, making sure his components, tools and materials were in their proper places. His hands twitched, wanting to be busy, but he took a moment to calm himself.

The visit to the square had unsettled him, rattled his mentality and upset his emotions. The last thing Tyron could afford was to throw away everything he’d built over the last four years just as it was coming to fruition. The foundations of his vengeance had finally been laid, impatience and a lack of control would destroy everything in an instant.

After several long, steadying breaths, the young Mage took hold of himself, stepping out of the workshop and locking it behind him. He descended the steps, but rather than turning left and entering the shop floor, he turned right, into a storeroom.

With solid strides, he navigated his way past the various crates, sealed pots, and other containers of supplies needed for his trade, until he stopped, facing a shelf laden with jars and texts.

Carefully, he removed a vessel filled with a syrupy green mixture, then reached out with his Arcane senses, searching for his own handiwork. When he found it, he gestured once, twice, thrice in the air before snapping his hands back to his side.

An almost inaudible click reached his ear and he grasped the side of the shelf and pulled.

Despite its size and weight, it swung easily, revealing a staircase leading down into the dark. Tyron stepped through, carefully swung the shelf closed behind him, before he conjured a ball of light and made his way into the basement.

Even then, he had to open two more doors, similarly locked with enchanted sigils, and only when that was done did he finally step inside his private study.

Tyron insisted on thinking of it as a study, rather than a lair, or laboratory, or anything with such childishly sinister overtones. In his mind, this was a place of learning, a place for him to experiment and develop his skills. Therefore, a study.

Twenty corpses in various states of dismemberment still lay on the stone slabs placed evenly along one wall. With a practised eye, the Necromancer checked the various enchanted arrays he had placed around the room, to ensure they were functional.

Sound dampeners, for obvious reasons, heat exchangers to keep the temperature down, again for obvious reasons, along with a few magick-gathering arrays on his desk for powering or charging anything he was working on.

Despite doing most of the work himself, Tyron was pleased with the results. When he thought back to the times he’d been scribbling in his notebook in caves or on the back of a moving cart, his current arrangements seemed sinfully luxurious.

It hadn’t been easy to get to this point. He’d had to cash in several of the favours his mother and father had earned for him, as well as dip extremely deep into the finances he’d inherited.

But now everything was in place. He could finally return to improving his abilities as a Necromancer, and there was so much work to do.

“Alright, let’s get organised,” he said aloud as he sat at his desk and pulled his tattered old notebook open.

As an apprentice Arcanist, Tyron hadn’t allowed himself to even think of necromancy, let alone commit notes to paper. Living and working around so many people, with essentially no privacy, it would have been insane to take the risk.

Thus, his notes remained preserved from the last time he’d worked on them, on the Barrier Mountains near the rift.

Of course, Tyron had performed the status ritual dozens of times since then as he’d steadily improved his new sub-class, but Undead Weaver remained at thirty six, where he had left it.

And I have to leave it there for a while longer yet. Before I can upgrade my Class at level forty, I need to reach my Skill goals. Death Magick, Raise Dead, Corpse Appraisal, Corpse Preparation, Bone Threading, at the bare minimum, each of these needs to reach their maximum level before I can even consider reaching level forty.

Which meant he needed to conduct experiments and go through a huge amount of repetition without actually raising any Undead, or fighting with them.

Once he’d succeeded and upgraded his Class, though… then he would be fully off the leash.

Tyron wasn’t so naive as to think a level forty Necromancer could be strong enough to bring down the Magisters, the Nobles, or especially the Gods. He needed time and resources to lay the perfect foundation for his advancement, and then he would sprint toward level sixty, or eighty, or however high he needed to go until he felt confident enough to achieve his aims.

There was a huge amount of testing and experimentation to do with his newfound enchanting skills also. He’d chosen this profession carefully, as he saw possibilities to solve many of his problems as a Necromancer with it.

He already knew it was possible for undead to share magick with each other, and the more that were ‘bound’ before being risen, the greater this amount was. This could help with the drain a high number of minions placed on his magick, but not solve the issue.

After years of finicky, mind-numbing work, he had finally perfected the array he’d been working on as Master Willhem’s apprentice. He was confident it could gather magick and then channel it into an undead as needed, without his active involvement at all. Again, it wouldn’t solve the issue, but if he could cut the cost of each minion down by even ten percent, that would mean for every ten minions he raised, he could have another ‘for free’.

And perhaps, with a little luck, persistence and finger-breaking work, he might achieve an even better result. A twenty percent reduction in magick cost would be… very beneficial.

As his thoughts drifted to the possibilities, Tyron shook himself back to focus. There was no point chasing every rabbit down into the warren, he had to tackle one problem at a time.

First, Corpse Appraisal and Preparation, the foundational Skills of his profession. He needed to develop and master new ways to examine the raw materials used to create undead, and then ready them to be raised.

He stood up, and pulled down his butcher’s tools from where they hung on the wall.