Book of The Dead

“I told you I would find it.”

“But you didn’t; I found it.”

“It’s almost as if you’re suggesting my totem pole provided no value whatsoever.”

“I’m not suggesting it, Dove, I’m outright saying it.”

The skeletal form of the once-living Summonerturned its back in outrage, flicking the crumbling bones of the snake he’d attached around his waist over his shoulder.

“I’m telling you upfront, Tyron, this partnership isn’t going to last without mutual respect.”

“Respectfully, shut the fuck up. I’m working.”

Dove briefly considered unleashing his marrow hound on the Necromancer, but thought better of it. Even as a joke, attacking someone much stronger than himself with an undead entity conjured from the realm of death itself was probably a bad idea.

Instead, he watched as Tyron muttered to himself, cast magick and mucked about with runes for ten minutes before getting bored.

“This tomb has been sealed for hundreds of years. What are the odds any defences are still functional? You can probably crack the door open and stroll inside without a care.”

Tyron lowered his hands and turned his unfeeling gaze upon the oddly dressed skeleton.

Dove was still wearing the armour Tyron had crafted for him, along with a tattered robe that seemed to be for dramatic effect only, and the snake dangling between his legs, of course. Even for an animated construct of onyx bones, he looked utterly ridiculous. The Summoner had always been eccentric in life, and it seemed death had only driven him further in his pursuit of the absurd. Or it had simply driven him mad.

“Arihnan the Black was the most powerful and feared Necromancer on record before me,” he said, completely without ego. “If I had built it, the enchantments I built into a tomb to protect my secrets would grow stronger over time, not weaker.”

“Yes, but you’re weird,” Dove pointed out, “and we have no evidence to suggest that Mr Black was an enchanter of anything like your skill. Even if he was the best Necromancer around, he had to make these runes himself, or hire someone to do it for him.”

It wasn’t an unreasonable thing to say. Tyron considered for a moment. It was true he’d been having trouble finding any significant source of arcane energy that would indicate the presence of a trap, but he’d thought perhaps they were simply very well made. This was supposed to be the greatest Necromantic treasure trove in the realm, there was no way it wasn’t heavily defended… right?

“Fine,” Tyron said, giving up. “I’ll send in some minions.”

“Rude,” Filetta said from her spot against the wall.

“I mean regular skeletons,” Tyron defended himself. “I wasn’t going to send you in first.”

“Of course he wasn’t going to do that,” Dove stated, leaping to the wight’s side and swinging his snake suggestively. “He wouldn’t dare interrupt our special time.”

She grabbed him by the skull, jamming her fingers into his empty eye-sockets before she spun, whipping him off his feet and slamming him into the ground.

“You’re disgusting,” she told him as she rose and sauntered over to the Necromancer. “Besides, I’m spoken for.”

“What?” Dove gasped, horrified, from his mangled position on the floor, “Tyron, you betrayed me?!”

“Shut up, both of you,” Tyron rolled his eyes. “If you’re going to go in there, be careful. Take some minions with you, use them to feel out for traps.”

“I will,” she said, waving him off.

Several skeletons ran down from further back in the underground passage on Filleta’s command. She ordered them forward, and in short order, the undead had managed to haul the slabs that served as the seal for the tomb out of the way.

The tunnel filled with thick, stale air as the long-trapped atmosphere within was finally released. They were already deep underground. It was warm, but the air was still and cloying. Dove tilted his head as Filetta and the minions stepped into the darkness, looking at Tyron.

“Don’t you need air to breathe?” he asked. “I know your heart situation is… out of the ordinary, but you still breathe, right?”

“I do.”

Dove waited, but there didn’t seem to be more coming.

“So… how are you fine down here?” he pressed. “You don’t enjoy my particular advantage of being a spirit yearning for the void but mercilessly lashed to an attractive stone form.”

“Yearning for the void?” Tyron asked, brow raised. “I can set you free right now if you want.”

“No thanks,” Dove said quickly as he picked himself up from the floor. “I’ve become too familiar with the Realm of the Dead to be at all interested in an extended visit. That place is… cold.”

Tyron stared at his former mentor with hard eyes. He’d been asking Dove to share his knowledge of the Realm of the Dead ever since meeting up with him before crossing the mountains. However, Dove had proven to be less than willing to say anything about the place, dropping cryptic hints and avoiding the topic whenever possible. The search for the tomb of Arihnan was a worthwhile distraction, but the time he would need to be more forceful with his questions was soon approaching.

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Sound from within the tomb distracted him, and he turned to see the glowing light of ethereal flesh drawing closer. It soon resolved into the form of Filetta.

“You should probably come and see this,” she said.

He held out an open palm and conjured a globe of light to hover above it, casting shadows deep into the tomb and began to walk forward, but not before he summoned more of his undead to his side.

The bulk of his army remained at the settlement, helping to carve out a safe haven amidst the chaos that now filled what had once been the Empire of Granin. That didn’t mean he hadn’t brought enough to keep him safe.

Surrounded by heavily armoured wights and revenants, Tyron stepped over the threshold and into the tomb. The change in the air was immediate, the stink of rot and mould somehow clinging to the walls despite the long centuries that had passed.

The narrow pathway soon opened up to a larger chamber, with rows upon rows of stone slabs, each with a concave depression carved out of the surface. Tyron ran his hand along one. The stonework was starting to crumble, but it was clear there had been a channel running out one end. He frowned and stepped around to the head of the slab, poking with his foot until he found what he was looking for.

“What’s that?” Dove asked, wandering over to peer at the ground.

“They drained bodies of blood on these slabs,” Tyron said, pointing to the shallow bowl that formed the surface and the narrow opening that let the blood flow out. “You can see they let it fall here into this gutter, where it pooled and ran that way. There was probably a collection point for each row.”

“Wouldn’t it just thicken up and turn to mush?” Dove asked, perplexed. “Blood doesn’t flow like water, that’s just bullshit.”

“It doesn’t, unless you have some specific types of magick,” Tyron said, thinking to himself. He shook off his introspection. “Let’s keep going, I want to see more.”

This must have been where Arihnan had processed the raw materials that went into creating his army. After draining them of their blood, the remains were brought into the next chamber. It was dusty, filled with webs and littered with bones. There were some things Tyron couldn’t explain, like the massive cauldron that still sat on spikes above a fire pit, or the rusted hooks that hung from the ceiling, but the knives and saws, he recognised instantly. This was a butchery.

The deeper they went, the clearer a picture was formed of the massive effort that had gone into the ancient Necromancer’s rise. He hadn’t worked alone, far from it. The scale of the operation was a clear giveaway, but the rooms with crumbling timbers and rotted blankets were clear evidence of the help he had.

The iron bars and locked gates for doors indicated that labour may not have been voluntarily given.

Two skeletons were lost due to mundane, mechanical traps. The first was crushed by an iron ball that dropped from above, the second carved into eight pieces by a series of blades that emerged from the walls.

Both were salvageable with extensive repairs, so Tyron had other minions gather their remains and take them back to the base camp.

“This guy was old-school,” Dove noted appreciatively after the second trap had been triggered. “No arcane trickery or arrays, just old-fashioned mechanical traps. You don’t see this kind of craftsmanship any more. It’s a dying art.”

“This place is hundreds of years old,” Filetta noted dryly. “Obviously, it’s old-fashioned. It’s old.”

“You youngsters don’t appreciate great work when you see it,” Dove huffed.

“We’re both dead. Arguing about age is just depressing.”

“I’ve been dead longer than you!” Dove declared, pointing a bony finger. “That makes me double-older than you are.”

“You’re the only dead person I’ve met who I can’t stand,” Filetta said. “How do you even manage to be such a pain?”

“It’s one of my many talents,” Dove declared, swinging his snake skeleton suggestively.

“I’ll lock both of you in a rock and leave you down here if you don’t shut up,” Tyron warned them.

Dove thought for a moment.

“The same rock?” he asked.

“Separate rocks.”

“Well then, no, obviously.”

The skeleton mimed zipping his mouth shut and throwing away the key, a gesture made creepy and bizarre by his total absence of lips.

With Filetta at the lead, they crept deeper into the complex, finding more rooms and chambers with strange purposes. The tomb was larger than any of them had expected, and when they found the tunnels that had likely been where Arihnan had stored his army, they gained a new perspective on its size.

Carefully combing over each new chamber was exhausting, but after hours and hours of painstaking searching, they arrived at the deepest recesses of the tomb and found Arihnan’s study.

It was difficult for Tyron to suppress his excitement when the light over his palm played across the scrolls and bound volumes, many of them securely stored in cases or treated leather. It seems the lich had been particular about storing his knowledge, just as Tyron was.

There were several desks, or what was left of them, indicating Arihnan hadn’t worked alone, but no matter how they searched the room or the adjoining chambers, they didn’t find any beds, confirming the histories that claimed Arihnan had been a lich.

“Seems secure enough,” Filetta said, still scanning with her undead eyes. “You can grab some books if you want to, boss.”

“Come on,” Dove interjected, “the books are more likely to be trapped than anything else! Allow me.”

He sprang forward, seized a scroll case and lifted it dramatically from the shelf that held it. There was a pause as Dove stood, unmoving, waiting for something to drop, but nothing did.

Tyron stepped to his side and smoothly lifted the case from his hand.

“Thanks. I’ll take it from here.”

Eyes gleaming with excitement, he found a comfortable enough patch of rubble, opened the case and began extracting the document within with intricate care. The paper was of decent quality, but only by carefully preventing moisture contamination had it been able to survive this long. He unrolled it and held the light close, eyes rapidly scanning the page.

“I can read it at least,” he noted aloud. “The writing is terribly faded, but legible.”

“You speak Granese? Or whatever the language was here,” Dove asked.

“Yes,” Tyron replied shortly, still scanning.

“You learned it just in case we found this place, didn’t you?”

Tyron didn’t reply.

Instead, he put the first scroll away and resealed it, then held out his hand as a skeleton passed him another. Hours passed as Tyron meticulously went through document after document; even though he read through each in a matter of moments, Arihnan had left a lot of writing behind. Dove tried to engage him in conversation, but failed utterly. Then he tried to alleviate his boredom by reading himself, only to be forced away by Tyron’s minions.

Ultimately, he gave up and went to sleep.

Tyron was halfway through one of the volumes when he finally lowered it with a sigh.

“Let’s pack up as much as we can,” he said. “I can go through the rest when we get back to the settlement.”

“Anything useful?” Filetta asked as Dove stirred back to life.

“Useful?” the former Summoner mumbled. “These are the writings of the great Arihnan the Black! This is hot shit right here! Tell her, Tyron.”

The Necromancer grimaced, then hesitated, choosing his words.

“So far, it’s a bit…” he searched, “... basic.”

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