Chapter B5: Dead Progress

Visions swam through Tyron’s mind, a dizzying kaleidoscope of images and impressions that seemed to stab deep into his brain, leaving behind tiny shards of knowledge he couldn’t interpret. He saw magick, folding and twisting, meshing and weaving with creatures who lived and died. He saw the transition from life to death, and the reverse. He saw rebirth, he saw annihilation, and he saw the immutable material that connected them.

Again and again the visions flashed, a disorienting and violent storm that wracked his mind and lashed his spirit. When it was finally over, Tyron awoke feeling drained, his head throbbing with pain.

What had just happened?

It took him a moment to realise he was lying on his back on the floor of his tent, the rough carpet scratching at his back through the robe he wore. When had he taken off his armour? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember a lot of things. When he tried to rise, pain wracked him and weakness clung to his limbs, causing him to fall back, wheezing. What was happening to him? He hadn’t felt this weak since his Awakening.

His mind raced, fear sparking a burst of energy that cleared away the worst of the fog.

He knew this feeling—it was familiar territory. If he was calm and thought about it rationally, he could discern what had happened. His throat was parched, his eyes as dry as sand, his head a mess of twisting thoughts and theories. His stomach was a hollow shell, chewing on itself, and there was precious little energy left in him.

How long since he’d eaten anything? Days at least, possibly as much as a week. Maybe two.

After a few deep breaths, he pulled himself up to a seated position, rolled over, then started crawling towards his pack. It looked as if he’d collapsed out of his chair when the vision had taken him, so at least he didn’t have to go far to reach his bag at the end of the table.

On his hands and knees, he reached inside and rummaged for the waterskin.The mighty gold ranked Necromancer who brought down the Western Province and spilled the Divine Blood of the Five, crawling on all fours like a dog. He would have laughed if he had the energy. At least Dove wasn’t there to see it.

Seized by panic, he froze and turned to look around the tent. No, he was sure of it, Dove wasn’t here. Blood and bone, he would never have lived it down.

Waterskin in hand, he collapsed to his backside and brought it up to his lips, drinking deeply. An instant later he nearly spat it out again. The water was truly foul. Thicker than it should be, almost as if it were turning to some sort of sludge, it tasted like rainwater running off an open grave. He forced himself to swallow and nearly retched. After several deep breaths, he drank more, forcing the disgusting liquid down his throat. When the waterskin was empty, he threw it to the side and groaned as his stomach roiled. Acid burned the back of his throat, and he feared for a moment it wouldn’t stay down. As the seconds ticked past, he became more confident, and reached for his pack once more.

The stored rations, mostly dried meat and hard bread, weren’t looking much better than the water. Crumbling and blackened, it was clear the suffocating atmosphere of death had done its work, yet he didn’t have a choice.

Another deep breath, then he forced himself to eat, shoving the food into his mouth and choking it down with the bare minimum of chewing. He was forced to immediately clench his neck and try to hold on as his stomach protested even more vigorously. If he were ever to try and eat a week-old corpse, he imagined this was what it would taste like.

It took a few minutes for things to settle, and he finally felt ready to pull himself up to his feet. The world swayed for a few moments before it finally stabilised and he was comfortable walking the two steps it took for him to reach his seat.

Even just that was enough to make his head spin.

Honestly, he could never remember feeling this weak, not after any of his work binges. The Realm of the Dead was having a stronger effect on him than he’d thought possible. Even the protection of the Three wasn’t enough to stop the overwhelming Death Magick from infecting his flesh. The food had gone foul, the water was undrinkable, it would be worse than useless from this point forward.

Without eating or drinking, with his own strength being sapped away, how much longer could he possibly stay here? Not long. If he waited too much, he wouldn’t even have the strength to get back to his home realm.

What had he even been doing that was enough for the Unseen to force a vision onto him? Which of his mysteries had he triggered, or was it a new one?

Blearily, he looked down at his desk, trying to piece together his jumbled thoughts.

What he saw was a sphere. It looked as if it were made of glass, with two coloured energies swirling within like smoke. They intermingled and coiled around each other before separating, swirling around the edges of the sphere and then repeating the cycle, coming back together in the centre. Tyron stared at it for a moment, genuinely unsure just what he was looking at.

His eyes flicked to the pages on the table, hoping they might provide some insight, but if anything, they made things worse. Rather than neat, legible notes and theories, what he found were borderline insane ramblings and statements. The more he read, the more confused he became. Every page he looked at seemed to contradict the last. The few things he could read that actually made sense were utterly disconnected from each other.

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Had he actually gone mad?

It took almost thirty minutes of carefully piecing together the trail of his own thoughts before he began to grasp just what it was he had been trying to do. Studying souls had been his purpose. If he dug into the older notes and scribblings in his books, he’d been running every kind of test and experiment he could remember, and then inventing new ones, pushing as fast and as far as he could as he desperately sought to understand the Realm of the Dead and the souls within it.

He’d sent out his minions to collect more several times, a desperate hunt for materials to fuel his experimentation.

After that, things started to get… strange. Looking at his own writing, Tyron struggled to understand what had possessed him. He’d been investigating the mixture of energies, the process by which a soul was transformed into this new state.

He shuffled through a few pages, eyes widening at what he saw.

At some point, he’d even gone so far as to start ripping souls out of revenants so he could study them. He hastily rummaged through the pages and was relieved to see the damage had stopped at ten.

Ten revenants wasn’t something he was happy to lose, but he supposed he should have been grateful it wasn’t more. No one knew better than Tyron how obsessive he could get when he was focused.

Still… ten souls, and just what had he done with them?

Scanning through the scribbled notes and ravings, he was able to piece together what had happened. Five of them had been… destroyed in the course of his experiments, the other five had been successfully transformed to the state of the souls he’d found in this realm.

Tyron took a moment to think. How did he feel about annihilating the souls of the dead? It wasn’t natural, he knew that much. This place was the destination of every soul, as far as he knew, but that didn’t mean they stayed here forever. No, he suspected there was another fate in store for them, if they weren’t captured and twisted to other purposes.

And yet, in his desperate need to learn, he had destroyed five souls. He remembered how horrified he had felt when he’d seen Yor drink the soul of a person, how sickening it had been. In what way was he any better?

And how terrible was it, that he wasn’t upset? As long as he was able to take a step closer to achieving his goal, wasn’t the price worth it? Or was that even fair to think, since he ultimately wasn’t the one to pay?

Regardless, those souls were gone. All he could hope was that something worthwhile was created from their destruction.

Which brought him back to the orb. Picking it up, he weighed it in his hand. It was sizable, but still sat comfortably on his palm, though it was heavier than he’d first thought. Frowning, he tilted it left and right, wondering what the sphere itself was formed of. As he did so, it caught the light, and he realised there was incredibly fine script engraved on the surface.

With his fingers, he traced along the sphere and found the script covered almost every square inch, he could even feel the faint hum of power flowing through each one. Even more baffled, he brought it up to eye level.

What in the name of the soon-to-be-dead gods had he made?!

Back to the notes. There were numerous references to a ‘blending of energies’, ‘equilibrium’ and ‘the balanced mesh’, but he hadn’t bothered to write an actual definition for any of the terms he was using. Clearly his mind was far less stable than he thought it was.

Only by tracing the sequence of his tests and half-abandoned projects was he able to piece together the theory he had been constructing.

By following the line of inquiry and reconstructing his own, nearly insane and disconnected thoughts, he came to understand that he had been investigating the blend of Soul Magick and Death Magick. After all, the two energies were very different, and held unique properties. Even on the surface they differed, since Death Magick tended to be purple and black, while Soul Magick appeared to be more green and yellow.

Perhaps this was the reason spirit flesh had a greenish colour to it? Was it possible that–

He shook his head. No, don’t get distracted. Focus on the sphere.

Within, the two energies continued to swirl, mix and separate, a harmonious balance between death and soul. It was lovely to look at, and he could feel a certain… resonance between the two energies, but had he really received a mystery for creating a decorative paperweight?

No, there was a purpose to this thing he had made, and he had to find out what it was.

Right now, he could sense there were only trace amounts of the energy within, which made sense. Every soul only held a speck of Soul Magick, even the amount inside the sphere would require… perhaps as many as a dozen souls to acquire. He’d invested that precious resource into making this thing.

Unfortunately, the more he delved into his more recent scribblings, the more unhinged they became. He was aghast at the words that had been written by his own hand. In the grip of inspiration, he’d been making intuitive leaps that defied logic, creating sigils on the fly and writing whole new sequences without properly testing to ensure they were stable.

It was as if he’d crafted wings out of whatever he’d had lying about and then flung himself off a cliff without bothering to see if they could hold his weight!

Somehow, almost miraculously, they had.

After another half hour of studying, he pushed the papers away, thoroughly shaken by the experience. The risks he’d taken were… absurd, but perhaps necessary, given how little time he really had left in the Realm of the Dead.

He needed to clear his head. He’d made more than one breakthrough in his frenzied state, and it would take days to go through and replicate all of his results, organise them and create something reliable and stable from it all.

In the meantime, he may as well see what the Unseen had done for him.

Ripping a clean sheet of paper from a nearby notebook, he placed it flat on the table and enacted the status ritual.

His blood flowed onto the page, forming words and numbers that spoke of the strength he possessed and the power of the Unseen within him.

When it was done, Tyron rapidly took in what was said, his eyebrows climbing with surprise.

He had gained two levels, which was shocking in and of itself. His minions had continued to lure and fight any beasts they came across. Was killing a few dozen of them really worth more in the eyes of the Unseen than literally thousands of kin?

Perhaps it was….

Even more shocking was what he saw when he turned his gaze to the bottom of the page. He had suspected his Soul Magick mystery would advance, and it had, moving from advanced to profound.

Yet another had also been added.

Spirit Forging (Initial).

He’d achieved another mystery. He was really starting to collect them. Perhaps he had a chance to catch up to his father after all.