“It kind of looks like you're marinating them. Have you gone full canine? Your hunger for sweet bones can no longer be contained?”

“Didn’t I already explain this to you?”

“You did, but I’m bored.”

“I’m working on your fucking hands right now, and you’re distracting me?”

“I understand that you want me to feel bad, but I’m still pissed off. I had to sit here for two days before you started.”

“You’ve been undead for years at this point. Two days shouldn’t be a big deal. I told you I’d have time at this point in the process to focus on you, and here we are.”

“It looks weird, that’s all I’m saying.”

Tyron sighed and turned to look at his twenty skeletons. Currently, they were submerged in the bone strengthening solution. Each slab now had raised sides so he could cover each set of remains in the alchemical mixture. It would take a few days for the skeletons to fully saturate with Death Magick, so he was using this opportunity to test the efficacy of the solution at the same time.

“This seems like a lot of work for the most basic of the basic minions, Tyron,” Dove observed. “Not to mention, it looks fucking expensive. Are you really going to do this for each and every one of your skeletons? For Revenants, sure. Treat the bones nice and tender, power them up, enchantments, the works. But for these bony boys? No chance this is worth it.”

“In a sense, you aren’t wrong,” Tyron replied as he turned back to focusing on what he was doing, namely connecting Dove’s soul to a pair of skeletal hands. “Let’s imagine I reach a point similar to the only powerful Necromancer I’ve seen records of, Arihnan the Black. An army of undead, tens of thousands of minions. Would it be practical to go through all this trouble for each and every one of them? No, of course not. Zombies and Skeletons, the simplest undead minions, are meant to be disposable. Easy to make, easy to lose.”

“So what’s the point of all this, then? You’re going in the opposite direction.”

“First of all, I’ve always been determined to make the best possible minions I can. If my skeletons become twice as strong as they’re meant to be, then the effort will be worth it. Even without that consideration, this is all for the sake of experimentation. Right now, I’m doing everything I possibly can to improve the quality of the minions. It may turn out that some things don't have a significant effect, or aren’t worth the time and expense, or are impractical in battle.”

“So you’re employing the ‘throw everything at the wall’ approach.”

“For the love of whatever you consider holy, don’t reference your dick and walls.”

“Fine.”

“Basically, yes. I still have a couple of steps before I can raise them, but it should only take another day.”

“In the meantime, what about me? How’s it going?”

Tyron leaned back with a sigh.

“Give it a try,” he gestured toward the hands he’d been working on.

They were carved, just like the skull, each bone lovingly recreated. It had taken a huge amount of effort to ensure they articulated properly, were powered, and properly linked to the former Summoner. Despite all his careful work on his new minions, these hands might just be his greatest masterpiece so far. Not quite undead, they nevertheless were close, perhaps a cross between golem-making and Necromancy.

As he watched, the fingers twitched, then curled. Slowly, both hands flexed as Dove tested each finger in turn, until he lowered all of them on both hands, except the middle one, which he pointed proudly in Tyron’s direction.

“You’re welcome,” the Necromancer said sarcastically.

“This is amazing,” Dove breathed. “I’d almost forgotten what it was like to have a pair of hands. Look at this!”

One of the hands fell over, then propped itself up on its fingertips and skittered across the table to one of Tyron’s books, which he promptly pushed onto the floor.

“Yes. Amazing.”

“Not being able to interact with the world around me has been so maddening! Finally, I can impart my will onto reality.”

“You’re starting to sound like a villain.”

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“Tyron, I’m an undead mage trapped in a skull who fucking hates everyone. Of course I’m a villain. I’m pretty sure you're a terrorist who wants to burn down the empire, kill their gods and murder the nobles. So I wouldn’t exactly consider you a ‘good guy’.”

“Are you saying my revenge is unjustified?” Tyron clenched his jaw, turning a baleful stare on the skull.

“Whoa, don’t give me the stink eye. I’m just saying it's a matter of perspective.”

He grit his teeth but forced his anger down as best he could. Someone else would probably say it wouldn’t make sense to wreak so much havoc, cause so much upheaval and kill so many people, in order to avenge two, no matter how unjust their deaths. Destroy the Magisters? Kill the Nobles? Topple the Divines? Any normal person would probably call him a madman.

But he didn’t care.

Tyron no longer had it in him to spare a thought for what other people might think or feel about what he intended to do. Intellectually, he understood what would happen if he were to succeed. There would be chaos. Complete, and utter, chaos.

If the Magisters were destroyed, their tower knocked down and their control over the Slayers eliminated, society as a whole would collapse in an instant. Most of the Gold Slayers were decent people who just wanted to kill kin and try to preserve the realm, but there were many who were not. What would happen when the chains were taken off and the immoral, unbeatable warriors were set loose on the public?

Were the Nobles to die, then it would mean war, immediate, irrevocable war. The empire was founded to the east, and they would not sit idly by and allow a huge chunk of their land to fall to outside influence, nor let their distant relatives’ deaths go unpunished. There would be an invasion, a punitive force, followed by a great purge, as everyone and anyone the least bit suspicious was put to death. Blood would run in the streets of Kenmor for years on end.

And finally, if he succeeded in his ultimate, unreachable aim, and killed the Divines, then their followers, the clergy, and all the support the gods themselves offered to hold back the rifts would be gone overnight. An unthinkable, unmitigated disaster. More kin would roam free, more breaks would occur. How many innocents would die, torn to shreds by the mad beasts from beyond, before the situation became stable again, or the realm was finally lost? Thousands. Tens of thousands. Millions maybe.

He knew all of this. He just didn’t care.

No matter how long he thought on it, or considered the implications, his thoughts didn’t waver. Tyron could no longer imagine living in a world in which the people responsible for the deaths of Magnin and Beory continued to live. It was unthinkable, against the laws of reality as he viewed them. The light could be cold, the ground liquid, up and down could reverse themselves, but his parents would be avenged.

Ideas like good and evil never entered his mind.

“Now that you have hands, we need to work on the rest of the upper body,” he said, brushing the earlier conversation aside. “We need a spine, collar bone, shoulders, arms and ribs.”

He shook his arms out.

“That’s going to be a lot of work.”

It wasn’t as simple as just creating musculature and attaching the bones together, he needed to stitch them to Dove’s soul as well. Only then could the mage control them. That process was far more difficult and intricate than just creating skeletons.

Essentially, Tyron was creating a semi-lich. Rather than binding Dove to his own remains, he was binding him to a golem-like skeletal frame. It would probably have been easier to do it with his own remains, but there would have been added complications as well.

Managing the Repository, the well of power that Dove had access to via the enchanted array, was another factor that had to be taken into account. If they added too many ‘parts’ to Dove’s soul, and he didn’t have the magick required, who knew what kind of damage that could do to him?

“I do appreciate what you’re doing, kid,” Dove said, almost begrudgingly. “It’s just…”

Tyron shook his head.

“I get it. It’s difficult to be grateful to the person who put you in this mess in the first place. Don’t worry about it. I’ll do my best to get it together quickly, but this process is extremely difficult. I’m figuring it out as I go and any mistakes are going to blow back onto you.”

“It’s not like my existence can get any worse.”

“If you believe that, then you’re stupid,” Tyron said flatly. “Or maybe you want me to enslave you to my will? Or for Yor to do it? She could’ve. Easily.”

“Once upon a time, I’d make a lewd joke at this juncture.”

“Is this personal growth? Should I applaud?”

“Fuck you.”

“No thanks.”

“Very funny. I’m still hoping I can convince you to give me a dick. I might get laid again before you manage a first time.”

Tyron hesitated for a fraction of a second.

“Maybe,” he said.

A moment.

“You piece of shit! Who is she?!”

~~~

The last thing Tyron needed to do was use his new ability, which would ‘empower the ritual’, somehow. The sensible thing to do would be to vary the amount of arcane energy he fed into each skeleton so he could measure the result, but he wasn’t going to do that. Instead, he was going to pour in everything he could to each minion in order to produce the best result.

For that purpose, he had prepared plenty of Power cores and even a stash of mage candy if they proved insufficient.

He took a deep breath.

“Here we go,” he muttered to himself.

“You’ve got this, kid,” Dove gave him a double thumbs up.

He stepped to the first slab, raised his hands and began to push his power out through his palms. Words resonated throughout the dark cellar as the Arcane energy swirled in a dense cloud, hovering over the ribs.

When he’d poured out everything he could, he cut off the flow and collected himself. Then he raised his hands again, and enacted the Raise Dead ritual.

His words slammed into the air like hammers and his hands seemed to cut through reality itself as he used his magick to bend the world to his will.

Dull, purple light began to gather in the eyes of the skull.