Tyron stood, looking down once again on the Broken Lands. The rift at Cragwhistle was much too small to produce such an intense reality-warping effect, but here, it was just as bad as he remembered. The realm itself seemed to twist and shudder as the rifts spewed a torrent of magickal energy forth in an endless stream of power. He was more sensitive to it now, the movement and flow of energy had been his study for the past several years during his Arcanist training, but here, standing so close, he almost couldn’t believe what his senses were telling him.
So much magick.
It was… obscene. Perhaps he hadn’t sensed it before because of just how vast it was. In this place, where the dimensional weave was a tattered, ragged thing, the rifts were like… plug holes in the bottom of a bath. Nagrythyn, an entire world fully polluted by arcane energy, was draining into this one at a staggering rate. There were eight rifts in the western province alone, and this wasn’t even the largest.
What hope did his world have? Just how much longer would it be before dangerous kin began to arise here? Already, there were beasts twisted by magick. Ro’klaw were used as messenger birds, but they hadn’t existed before the rifts. Exposure to magick had twisted an existing bird species into something tougher, hardier, more vicious. Across the empire, there were cattle species reared which had not existed before the rifts had opened.
Already, the magick was woven into every part of their lives, their existence. The Unseen itself was a thing of magick, a weapon to fight back against the poison, allowing people to turn the blight back against itself.
Yet as Tyron stood, looking down on the rift at Woodsedge, and feeling that torrent of power rising into the sky, he began to understand a little of what the Three had been hinting at.
This realm, the empire, was on the precipice. The corrupting influence of the rifts was reaching a tipping point, and soon there would be no road back. This realm would fall, becoming another endless source of monstrous rift-kin. Then, the power would reach out, punching through the weave to find other, new realms to poison.
He shook his head. This was a problem far too large for one Necromancer to handle. There was nothing he could do right now, except focus on himself and his immediate goals. He wasn’t focused on saving, but on destroying.
There were several teams patrolling the area around the rift. Indeed, there were several fighting right up close to it. Those who spotted him raised an arm, and he waved back, then retreated back into the woods.
After establishing a simple camp, he forced himself to sleep. Tackling Nagrythyn was a difficult task and not one he wanted to attempt without proper rest.
When he awoke, his mind felt refreshed. He rolled from his blankets, stretched, and washed himself with cold water from his canteen. There had been several attacks during the night, but his unsleeping guards had seen to it that he remained safe. Now, Tyron prepared himself with a cold breakfast and some exercises to stimulate his mind and loosen his fingers.
His last status ritual had proven to be unusually fruitful in terms of new spells and abilities, largely thanks to a rush of levels in his new Death Mage sub-class. Of course, he had performed some tests, done some examination, but putting them to use on the battlefield would soon reveal their true worth.
Preparations complete, he assembled the full might of his undead with a thought and proceeded to march toward the rift. With every step, the warping effect of the Broken Lands grew stronger, twisting his senses. Colours seemed to drip and run, his sense of time shifted and bent, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, varying from moment to moment. Even the light was affected. One moment he stood in perfect sunshine, the next he was plunged into deepest shadow, travelling from day to night in a single step.
It was bewildering, but if he focused, he could push it from his mind and focus on what really mattered. The kin. The closer he drew to the rift, the more his skeletons were engaged by the monsters. Swift, insectile beasts with lashing claws and blade-like arms, propped up by their many stabbing legs. Swarms of smaller creatures scuttling out from under the foliage to snap and bite at the feet of his undead.
His troops were more than a match for the challenge. A wall of bone shields stood between him and any foe. His archers and mages reached out to stab into the fast-moving kin before they could draw close. His longsword-wielding skeletons stepped forward in unison, their bodies flowing over the ground with light and easy strides, before they drew back with their blades, pulled on his power and struck home.
It was so effortless. Of course, he needed to concentrate, to direct his troops and sense the threats through the eyes of his ghosts before they could threaten his undead, but against these lesser kin of Nagrythyn, his skeletal horde was untouched.
He dismissed a twinge of bitterness that threatened to rise up within himself. This solo march to the rift proved exactly what he had hoped all along. A Necromancer could be a forceful weapon against the rifts. Using the bodies and bones of the fallen, useless materials otherwise, one such as himself could do the work of dozens of slayers. Were he to grow stronger, perhaps it would be possible for him to hold a rift as large as the one at Woodsedge by himself.
He’d been right. It was foolish in the extreme to make Necromancy an illegal Class, a tragic waste that he’d been hunted and spurned rather than welcomed and celebrated. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. In receiving the Class, he’d been nothing but a pawn in a larger game, gods above slapping down those who had dared to reach higher than their allotted station.
Yet perhaps, in the world after the empire had fallen, not all would be lost. Others, like his three students, could be raised up to hold the line against the monsters.
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When he came to the ridge that looked down upon the rift once more, he didn’t pause or hesitate, but continued on his march. Down he stepped, his skeletons marching alongside him as he gazed on the bridge between realms.
The rift at Woodsedge was well developed, to the point it wasn’t one single puncture anymore, but several, each of varying sizes. Like the tattering of a well-worn sock, the rift pulled at the threads in the dimensional weave, separating them, allowing more and more holes to appear. When the threads between those holes snapped completely, the individual openings would merge together, forming an ever larger, more destructive gap.
There were half a dozen such openings here at Woodsedge, individual rifts that allowed the kin to pass from their own corrupted realm into this one. The local slayers were hard at work, fighting the kin as they emerged, patrolling the surroundings to catch any who slipped through the net. Yet more teams would be on the other side, pushing back the tide, hunting the largest and most powerful beasts lest they come to the rift and try to force their way through, opening the way even wider.
“Ho there, slayers!” Tyron called.
“Ho there, scary as fuck Necromancer!” came the reply, causing Tyron to chuckle.
Adorned in his bone armour and surrounded by undead, he probably did look intimidating.
“I’ll take this side!” he called, pointing to the area he would defend, and the other teams acknowledged him with a wave, shifting their own positions, reducing the area they needed to cover and allowing him his own space.
For a single individual, he took a lot of space, covering almost a fifth of the circle around the rift by himself, but the others didn’t seem to mind. It made their jobs significantly easier, after all. With the rift itself in front of him, Tyron laid out his troops, putting his mages and archers in good positions to fire, his guard pulled tight around him, and his revenants held in reserve. Yet this time, he put himself further forward than he normally would, his fingers twitching with anticipation as he prepared to unleash his new magicks.
He didn’t have to wait long, since the flow of kin through the rift was basically constant. Sometimes only a few would come through, five or six over the course of a minute, sometimes there would be dozens. As the monsters crept through, they seemed to hesitate, but only for a moment. Once they realised there was something to kill, something they could corrupt, they charged forward, hissing and clicking, long, bladed limbs cutting into the ground with every step.
When some began to charge his way, Tyron raised his hands, eyes narrowing as he drew in a sharp breath. Words of power thundered into the air, hammering reality like the blows of a smith’s hammer. His hands flashed from one sigil to the next, so quickly the transitions between them could barely be seen. In moments, his spell was prepared and he let it fly.
The closest of the kin, a horse-sized, many-legged monstrosity, twitched and stumbled. A moment later, it screeched as its blood burst out of its body. In long streams, it flowed through the air towards Tyron until it reached a metre from his face. At that point, it flowed into a perfect sphere, widening the more blood was drained into it.
Tyron watched it take shape with interest. The blood of the kin wasn’t like his own. Rather, it was so dark it was barely red, and so thick he knew his own heart couldn’t hope to pump it. He found he could use simple gestures, flicks of his fingers, to shift the blood, preventing it from blocking his view. It was more responsive than he expected, quick enough that he could feasibly move it on reaction if he saw something coming his way. But how durable was it?
Under his orders, one of his closest guards withdrew their sword and slashed through the blood shield. Much to his chagrin, the blade slid directly through the blood, providing almost no resistance at all.
Did he not have enough blood? Or was there something else? He needled his own mind, probing the hints and fragments placed there by the Unseen. His eye twitched when he found what he was looking for. He ordered the skeleton to strike again, but this time, his fingers flicked out just so, and the blood hardened, congealing instantly into a solid mass. The blade clanged off as if it had struck a rock, and he felt the draw on his magick as the blood used his strength to ward off the blow.
His shield wasn’t completely unharmed; a portion of the blood had been sheared off by the blade, turning into a bubbling pool of ichor on the ground. Tyron nodded slowly. Each aspect of the ability made sense. It was quite magick-intensive, but another barrier between him and his foes was more than welcome. With practice, and greater acknowledgement by the Unseen, he would become more efficient with the spell, and increase the amount of protection the shield offered.
The spell itself hadn’t been enough to kill the kin he had cast it on, but the loss of so much blood had certainly hampered the creature. Once it had regained its balance, the creature had continued its charge against his skeletons, only to fall, punctured by arrows of bone and Death Bolts without reaching the front line.
It was a promising start.
When the next wave charged at his portion of the perimeter, he took part in the fighting more directly, hurling Greater Death Bolts from both hands. More concentrated and impactful than the lesser version, Tyron believed he possibly could have created the spell on his own, but acknowledged he would never have devoted the time to do so. As it was, he was pleased to have a superior weapon he could wield from a safe distance, and would soon impart it to his skeletal mages.
Drawing back his hands, he concentrated, and once again spoke the words of power. Death Magick congealed around him until he released the spell and sent the power undulating through the air, thicker and more potent than before.
As with the Death’s Grasp, the spell chased down his target, wrapping around it, burning it with death-aligned energy and holding it still. However, this upgraded version of the spell was more robust, more physical. Tyron clenched his fist, and the kin screamed in rage and pain as its shell slowly began to crack under the pressure. Before the spell exhausted its magick, the monster shattered, its guts exploding out over the battlefield.
“That’s disgusting!” one of the slayers from an adjacent team called. “But effective! Keep it up!”
Tyron nodded in reply, surprised at the power of the spell he’d unleashed. Death’s Fist had proven itself to be significantly better than the original version of the spell, and he was pleased with the result. It used a much greater amount of magick, however, which meant it may not be practical to teach it to his skeletons.
For several hours, he continued to hold his place in the perimeter, practising his new spells on the kin who charged toward his skeletons and directing the battle with his thoughts. When he was satisfied he understood these new abilities well enough, he called out to the surrounding slayers once again.
“In an hour, I’m going to go through the rift! You’ll need to cover this section for me!”
“By yourself?!”
Tyron swept an arm to the skeletal horde around him.
“Not really!” he called back.