B5 Chapter 10 – Departure

Gathering his horde wasn’t as simple a task as it had been in the past for Tyron. He already had minions put in the wasteland, but there were many more still roaming the city. Thankfully, he could push most of the work onto the wights. There was really only one conversation he really needed to have directly now that his students were making their own preparations.

He found Master Willhem in his own workshop, a space the demi-lich had created to continue pursuing his passion: enchanting. The transition to undead had robbed Willhem of much of the assistance he received from the Unseen. His Class had changed, some abilities had been lost, along with a significant loss of stats. On the other hand, he retained all of his knowledge, any mysteries that he had, which was likely to be a few, and he now had an infinite amount of time to perfect his craft.

Despite the setbacks, he was still a better Arcanist than everyone else in the Western Province. Even now, Tyron found it staggering the sheer amount of things that old man knew.

As he approached the workshop on foot, an honour guard of his best undead around him, he heard a living voice inside, chatting away, the murmured voice of the demi-lich replying as if from a great distance.

There was only one person who could get Master Willhem talking like that. Tyron hadn’t expected to run into her here, and, to be honest, he didn’t want to.

“It is what it is,” he muttered to himself.

He knocked on the doorframe, then walked inside without waiting for an answer. Inside, he found Willhem floating slightly over the ground as all the demi-liches did, working with a pliance at a waist-high bench. Sitting at a table in the middle of the space, his fellow graduate, Annita Halfshard.

She did not look pleased to see him.

“How dare you show your fucking face here,” she growled, glaring up at him.

“At least it’s my real face this time,” Tyron said, half-joking.

“Am I supposed to be grateful?” she growled. “Get the fuck out of here.”

Tyron shook his head.

“I’m going out to capture the closest rift, and I’m taking Master Willhem with me.”

Master Halfshard stood from the table, slamming her hands down on the surface. She was exceptionally short, but so fiery it was easy to overlook her size.

“Like hell you are. Haven’t you done enough to him?”

“I wasn’t the one who killed him,” Tyron replied. “It was the Nobles who did that.”

“You turned him into a monster.”

“I gave him life.”

“That isn’t life!”

“Enough.”

Master Willhem spoke, a hint of emotion breaking through into his normally flat voice. Slowly, the demi-lich turned to face his two former pupils, eyes burning with the purple light of the dead.

“Don’t speak of me as if I weren’t here.”

Master Halfshard hung her head.

“I’m sorry, Master Willhem.”

“I apologise, Master Willhem,” Tyron said.

“That’s better,” the lich scowled. “I’m trying to work.”

“What are you working on?” Tyron wondered, curious.

“We were trying to find a more efficient design for your magick storage,” Annita sniffed.

“I wouldn’t really call it mine. I did the conduit work, but the rest was all Master Willhem.”

“Yes, but he’s been weakened, he can’t do it as well as he wanted, so I’m helping.”

“Be quiet,” Willhem grumped at them, then waved Tyron to lean closer. “What do you think of this?”

The Necromancer looked down on the work they’d done, carefully scanning the hundreds of runes gathered into multiple arrays, their positioning and placement relative to each other, and the intricate lines of power that bound them together. This was no sketch or rough design, Willhem and Halfshard had been creating on the fly, engraving their still-forming ideas directly onto a core.

“It’s good,” he said finally, “better than what we have in place right now by a fair margin.”

“And the conduits?” Willhem said.

“Need a little work,” Tyron admitted.

“Blast it!” the Master swore, throwing his pliance down in frustration. He held up his skeletal hands and curled them into fists. “They don’t move the way they’re supposed to! How am I supposed to work when my hands don’t listen to my damn head?”

Annita glared at Tyron as Master Willhem let out his frustrations, and Tyron could only sigh, reaching out to grip the demi-lich by the forearm bones.

“It will get better,” he promised. “Your hands are the most sophisticated marriage of bone weaving and spirit flesh I’ve ever created. There’s no lich, revenant or wight who comes close to the fine motor control you have. You’ve lost Skills, but those can come back, in part. Right now, you expect your hands to move a certain way, but they can’t keep up, not yet.”

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The demi-lich dropped his arms and mastered himself, becoming cold and dispassionate once more. This was the attitude Tyron had become accustomed to seeing from his old Master since he had been raised, and he would be lying if he said it didn’t bother him.

“What is it you want from me?” Willhem asked. “I presume you haven’t come for no reason.”

Annita’s eyes glinted at this and her glare intensified further.

“That is the case,” Tyron admitted. “Right now, I’m gathering my horde for an all-out assault on the closest rift. The Slayers are going to support the push as well. We want to seize the rift and take control of it.”

“What does that have to do with me?” Willhem asked.

“Because I need your help implementing never-before-seen sigils into arrays that are designed to weaken the rift over time, draining away its power and destroying the magick coming through.”