Tyron watched carefully as the magister struggled to resist the influence of his mind. It was a desperate battle, will against will as they fought for supremacy.
Over the years, Tyron had become unfortunately skilled at this practice. Yor had called on him numerous times, and Tyron had been forced to manipulate several individuals establishing his identity as Lukas Almsfield. However, this was a form of combat the Magisters were well versed in.
Grimacing, saliva running down his chin, his opponent glared at him with a frenzied glint in his eye, his hands frozen into claws that hovered in the air.
“Did you notice what it was that cut you?” Tyron said, keeping his voice low. “An undead. You know what that means? You’ve already lost, but it's better if you’re alive, right?”
Almost against his will, the magister flicked his eyes to where the skeleton stood, bloodied sword still in hand. In that moment, his concentration wavered, and Tyron ruthlessly tightened his grip.
Desperation crept into the fight as the wounded mage began to frantically thrash and claw at his mind. He knew the only way out was if he won this battle in an overwhelming victory, crushing his opponent before the skeleton could be ordered to injure him.
Tyron allowed the magisters' increasingly panicked Will to lash against him as he continued to squeeze. The anger blazed in him now, a roaring bonfire that crackled so loud as to drown out the rest of his thoughts. All he could see was the magister. All he could sense was his mind closing like a vice around his foes.
First, there was a slight chink, one brick in the wall cracking under the strain, but Tyron was upon it in an instant, driving his Will through like a spike. The magister tried to plug the gap, to rally what remained of his defence against the intrusion, but it was too late. Once the first chink had been opened, more soon followed as Tyron worked ruthlessly to widen them.
When there was no way left to hold him off, the Necromancer wrapped his Will around his opponent completely, blanketing his mind and suffocating it. He was now in total control.
When he came back to himself, he found his entire body ached. His fists and jaw were clenched tight, a rictus snarl on his face, every muscle tensed and sore. Emotion had gotten the better of him. It was hard, seeing someone dressed in the robes of a magister standing in front of him, but that didn’t excuse his lack of control.
“H-have you got him?” calm a hesitant voice from outside the door.
“Yes, I have him.”
The door opened and the broad-shouldered frame of Ortan ducked through. He really was too large for his own good. The Cragwhistle resident looked at the frozen form of the mage in wide-eyed shock, as if not believing the evidence of his own eyes.
“When you said you wanted to ‘handle’ the magister, I didn’t really believe you could do it. He’s actually under your control?”
“He is, but he can still hear you,” Tyron told him dryly.
“Shit! You should have warned me before I came in!”
“There’s nowhere for you to hide now, so don’t bother. I’m able to manipulate his thoughts and memories to a certain degree, so he won’t remember this has happened. Not exactly, anyway.”
Ortan blanched when he saw the severed digits on the floor.
“And how are you going to explain those with altered memories? Did he cut himself shaving or something?”
The Necromancer reached down to pick up the fingers and pulled the ring from each in turn before dropping them onto the desk. He held up a black ring between his thumb and forefinger, showing it to Ortan.
“Nasty piece of work this one. Helps protect them against mental intrusion and manipulation. Has a specially moulded core wound through the centre of it. Without removing it from his body, there’s no way I could have won.”
“That doesn’t help you explain how you’ll manage to prevent him from remembering it happening!”
“The best lies have an element of truth mixed into them,” Tyron said thoughtfully, tapping his chin as he considered the problem. “Perhaps I’ll suggest that it was a skeleton who cut his hand. A rogue undead from the plains, or someone recently deceased on the mountain. There’s sure to be a few bony boys—skeletons wandering around out there, considering all the death over the last few years.”
He looked over to Rufus, the revenant standing guard over the frozen form of the magister and smirked. He couldn’t help enjoying having him as a minion sometimes. Hopefully, he’d grow out of it.
“Now, we have a wonderful opportunity on our hands,” Tyron said as he found a chair and pulled it over to the desk. With a flex of his Will, he forced the magister to sit, then eased himself down on the opposite side. “We have a docile, controlled magister here to question to our hearts content. There are limits to what we can force out of him, but I think this is going to be very enlightening.”
~~~
“Six months,” Tyron muttered, “I’m not sure if it’s going to be enough.”
Ortan looked at him sideways as the two settled themselves around the table in the larger man’s home.
“You want to monopolise a rift for six months and it won’t be enough?” he said. “Just how many kin do you need to kill?”
Tyron flicked him a glance, a hint of irritation creeping through.
“I can’t be here all the time. I have a persona, connections, and businesses to maintain. Not to mention that most of the materials I use to create my minions have been sourced from the capital. Kenmor is home to millions of people, nobody is likely to miss a few skeletons there. Where am I going to find hundreds of remains out here, or the resources necessary to process them?”
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He indicated towards the village with one hand dismissively, but Ortan spoke to him seriously.
“If it’s bodies you need, there are thousands out here,” he said quietly, looking down at the table. “Entire villages were wiped off the map after the break at Woodsedge, and more have died since, to disease and starvation. There’s good reason why so many people have been prepared to up and risk everything to move out here.”
Tyron blinked, then nodded slowly.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t realise it was so bad out here. Elsbeth didn’t mention…”
Ortan frowned, then sighed.
“Well I suppose she wouldn’t. She’s got a good heart, doesn’t want to lay burdens on people they don’t belong to.”
He stood and walked to his humble cupboard, pulling down two mugs and a bottle of red wine that he poured into generously. With one large hand, he pushed one mug across the table to Tyron, then gathered his own and raised it in a salute before taking a long drink.
“Hits the spot,” he rasped. “Bit stronger than I remember. Heck. They bottle this north of Cluffton, near Dustwatch Keep. Thorn and Sons Vinyard. I swear you can clean blood off the streets with this stuff.”
He took another pull while Tyron raised the glance and imbibed a cautious amount. The fluid burned his tongue and throat on the way down, tickling his nose. It was definitely strong.
“I’m not surprised no one in the capital is talking about it, they don’t care, never have. Help came east, but not much further than Foxbridge. Rebuilding at the rifts up north is sucking up a lot of resources. The Keep is about halfway done, and Woodsedge is starting to spring up around it again. This close to the barrier mountains,” the big man shrugged, “nothing. I don’t like to say it, but it really is a miracle we survived, even prospered, as well as we have. Under normal conditions, we’d have starved to death long ago.”
When it was said so plainly, Tyron saw clearly that this had been predictable, knowable, perhaps inevitable. With a little thought, he would have been able to see just how people this far west would have fared in the aftermath of the break. He thought of the farmwives and their children he’d saved from their horrible circumstances, so long ago, perhaps his only significant, heroic deed. Had they all starved to death, along with the children? Or fallen sick and perished for lack of medicine?
It hadn’t mattered to him. He’d been grieving, and burning for revenge. Even now, he didn’t care, not really. His sympathy for these survivors had piqued, he wouldn’t fool himself and say it hadn’t, but he didn’t live to help people in need, not anymore. He lived to enact vengeance, and he couldn’t afford any distractions from that goal.
“Where would I find these bodies?” he said finally, leaning forward.
The big man scowled at him, then laughed bitterly.
“We can help you with that, I suppose. It depends on how open you want to be with your…activities. I can have someone hunt down the mass graves for you, but the more… dedicated people could probably be convinced to help you out, sort bones and the like. Of course, if you help us out, the folks here are more likely to chip in… and keep their mouths shut.”
It didn’t really matter if the people were willing to keep his secrets or not. Of course, it would take longer for word to spread if they were disciplined, but in the face of a noble, or a significant member of the clergy… they would be helpless before the Divine Right. They’d sell their newborn baby before the command had finished ringing in their ears.
Tyron leaned back in his chair as he thought. How greedy did he want to be? How much could he risk exposing himself? This far from Kenmor, it was tempting to simply drop the facade and finally be himself again, no mask. That impulse might be a trap.
Walking around town with his natural face was one thing, even confronting the magister without a facade was acceptable. After all, the number of people in the world who’d seen Tyron Steelarm at his current age and known who they were looking at could be counted on the fingers of one hand. According to everyone in the province, he was dead, a black mark on the family expunged by the sacrifice of Magnin and Beory, an event that occurred close to five years ago.
Still. When the magisters inevitably learned of a Necromancer on the loose, would they believe it was someone new who had managed to slip the net, or would they immediately think it was Tyron Steelarm, who had survived unexpectedly?
“I’m not sure what you want me to do,” Tyron eventually said, “my plan is to stay here and use the rift to gain experience and levels, though the process will likely be slow, now that I’ve reached silver rank.”
“So you have made it to silver. I guess you’d have to be, in order to knock out a magister the way you did.”
“But as I said, I can’t stay here permanently. I have a month before I need to go back to Kenmor, then I’ll make, hopefully, another two or three trips over the following six months.”
“Your minions don’t have to leave, though, right?” Ortan points out. “Can’t they stay and fight while you’re not here?”
Tyron frowned.
“Of course not. In order for them to move, I have to supply them with magick through a conduit. Moving such a vast amount of arcane energy over such a long distance would be… impossible. I… couldn’t afford to… have… I… think?”
The Necromancer trailed off and Ortan stared at him expectantly, then grew slightly concerned as the mage’s eyes began to glaze over and stare straight through him.
“Hey… Tyron? Hey!” he clapped his hands and the young man startled in his seat, his gaze focusing once more.
“What? Where?” he stuttered, looking around himself in confusion.
“You spaced out there, are you alright?” Ortan asked cautiously.
“Oh… yes. I had… an idea.”
He shook himself vigorously, trying to focus on the here and now, not allowing his mind to go racing down the thread he had discovered.
“Our main problem remains the magister, Poranus.”
“How is he an issue? Haven’t you…” Ortan made an odd, scissoring motion with one hand towards his own head, “fixed him up? So to speak?”
The big man was clearly uncomfortable with the idea.
“I haven’t ‘fixed him up’. I’ve suppressed his thoughts and implanted false ideas to replace them. I’ll have to check on him every now and again to ensure it doesn’t break, but if all goes according to plan, he’ll sit in that house for the next half year, filing paperwork and not setting foot outside, which means we can do whatever we like out on the rift. The issue will be when he goes back to Kenmor.”
Tyron folded his arms across his chest and stared Ortan in the eye.
“Poranus is supposed to be here for six months. When that time is up, he’ll return to the capital and go back to his regular duties, and someone else will be sent.”
“So… you can just bamboozle the next magister as well. Can’t you?”
“Probably. My main concern is if someone notices that Poranus’ memory has been tampered with. The Magisters are famously practitioners of mental magick. If they figure it out, we may all be in trouble.”
Ortan slapped the table.
“Then shouldn’t you have just left him alone? You’ve put the entire village at risk!”
“I have,” Tyron admitted, glaring across the table. “And I’ll do what I can to protect you and these people, but I won’t risk myself. I needed Poranus settled so I could access the rift, regardless of what that meant for you and yours.”
He leaned forward.
“I am here to gather the strength I need to enact my vengeance, Ortan. Anything that becomes an obstacle to that will be dealt with. Understood?”
The big man scowled.
“I get it.”