B5 Chapter 21 – Source of Magick

Worthy’s heroics had helped bring down the massive kin, but there was still a lot to do in order to secure the site.

Shaking his head at his uncle’s antics, Tyron mentally directed his horde forward. Although the majority of the kin had been dealt with, there would always be more, a constant flow, forever. If the rift could be closed, then perhaps there would be a future for this world, but that would also mean that magick would disappear, along with the Unseen.

He couldn’t even imagine what that world would look like. He couldn’t imagine wanting to live in it.

The cauldrons were shut off, and the dark clouds that billowed around the undead dissipated as Tyron lowered himself down from his platform. Before stepping off, he grasped his staff and removed it from the ritual circle, bringing the spell to an end. Instantly, he could feel his reserves begin to restore, which had been growing somewhat low. It was interesting to measure just how much he’d spent over the course of the fighting. Between all the power it took to fuel the ritual and all that his minions drew while engaged in such a battle, he’d needed to use an unfathomable amount of arcane energy.

At least, it had been unfathomable. Now his reserves were so vast that he’d been able to cast magick near constantly during a large-scale conflict. Everything he’d done to make his minions more efficient, to supply their own energy, all of it was compounding on itself to stretch his magick further and further. If he eventually made it to level eighty and ascended to platinum rank, he couldn’t imagine just how large the horde he could support would become.

He was still thinking on the battle and the performance of his army when his uncle wandered over, still limping a little from his fall.

“Tyron! Don’t you have work to do, lad?” he barked.

Snapped out of his thoughts, the Necromancer turned his gaze on his blood-spattered relative.

“Aren’t you getting too old for things like that, Uncle?” he said. “In case you forgot, you’ve retired from being a Slayer once already.”

“Bah!” Worthy scoffed, then winced. “I’m as fit as a fiddle.”

Tyron eyed him sceptically, causing Worthy’s expression to turn incredulous.

“I just killed that bloody big bastard, didn’t I? What were you doing? Throwing pins and needles at it? Don’t go looking down on me, lad. You’ve got a long way to go.”

“That’s true,” Tyron murmured, nodding to himself.

He lacked the kind of knock-out punch needed to put a serious dent in an enemy as strong as that beast had been. His horde probably would have been able to bring it down if given enough time, exhaust it, death by a thousand cuts, chipping away over an hour. How many skeletons would he lose in a fight like that? Too many.

Bone Mage had given him a range of offensive spells to use, but the Sub-Class was capped at Level forty, like all Sub-Classes. He could use the spells to do a lot of work. With his natural gift for magick, he was able to get a lot more out of the relatively basic spells than almost anyone else could, but for the real threats, that wouldn’t be enough.

Yet, he didn’t believe there wasn’t an answer. Necromancy had proven to be so much more powerful than even he’d been willing to believe. He had to trust in his main Class. It contained the answer he needed, something to help him fight at this level. He just had to find it.

“Alright,” he said, shaking off the still-developing thoughts in his head. There was no time to dwell on this now. “Time to go to work. Are the Slayers going to mind the rifts for me?”

“Aye. That’s why I came over. As long as you and your skulls can handle this quarter, we’ll take care of the rest.”

“I can do that easily enough.”

A few mental commands was enough to do it. His wights were capable of leading the skeletons to deal with the steady inflow of rift-kin. As long as no more major threats came through, he would have enough time to complete his work.

“Just… do you have any idea how long this is going to take, lad?” Worthy asked, scratching idly at his beard.

“Absolutely none,” Tyron answered honestly, already walking towards the centre of the rift.

“I was afraid of that,” Worthy muttered. “Ah well.”

Five demi-liches emerged from the throng of skeletons, trailing in Tyron’s wake as he took the time to study the rift more closely. Up close, it was even more impressive than it had been before. The size of it was overwhelming, easily the biggest he’d ever seen. When he tried to feel out the Dimensional Weave, he couldn’t believe how tattered and thin it felt. It was as if he was no longer standing in his home realm at all.

In a way, he wasn’t. This place was almost as close to whatever world the kin were coming from as it was to his own, the boundaries between the two blurred to nothing.

“How? Why?” he whispered to himself, mind churning.

He walked around the enormous rift, clockwise, thinking while his undead floated behind him, silent and watching.

Why did the magick do what it did? That question had never been answered. At least, if anyone had found the answer, they had been prevented from sharing it. Tyron didn’t doubt the Five Divines, at the very least, knew the answer. But he was never going to hear it from them.

Magick seeped into a world, saturated it, gave birth to unnatural creatures, monsters, who overtook that world, consuming and destroying everything they found. When the cycle was complete, the world was lost, filled with arcane energy, warped and mutilated from what it had once been. Overrun with kin, desperate to find something to destroy, a rift would begin to form. Was it the kin who created the rifts, or the magick itself? Regardless, they started to take shape, until eventually the kin, along with the magick, were able to break into a new realm, a new world to devour, and the cycle began again.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

As he pondered the issue, Tyron thought back to his meeting with The Three, and what they had told him. After performing the ritual to confer with them, he’d been brought to their… home… their little pocket of existence, and stood before them.

At that time, they’d conveyed to him several truths, wanting him to use them to serve their ends.

He could still hear it, the voices of the Old Gods, reverberating in his head. Not voices, not exactly. They didn’t speak, they merely willed, and it was so. They were intrinsically linked to the realm itself, had domain over it. If they wanted something to be, it simply was.

Within limits. Magick, the Unseen, even the Five, all of these things had eroded their authority to an extent. Even so, they remained exceptionally powerful. In their presence, Tyron had been barely able to stand.

MAGICK IS NOT OF THIS WORLD, CHILD, the Crone had told him, her thousand faces mocking him for his lack of knowledge. IT IS NOT OF ANY WORLD. UNNATURAL. A CORRUPTION. ABOMINATION.

A part of him had innately rejected those words. To Tyron, magick was… beautiful. He could shape and mould it into almost anything. It was power. It was possibility. It was the only thing that still brought him any sense of joy in this world. An abomination? Never.