“Are you sure about this?” he asked for the third time.

Yor glared at him, her fingers flexing into claws.

“Yes,” she said, her voice tight. “Yes, I am sure.”

“I knew they were letting the golds out, but why are they taking them to the Tower? And how did you learn about this?”

“Via the usual methods,” she said flatly.

The issue with using the vampires as a source of information wasn’t how well they were suited to the task. Yor and her coven were exceptional at getting into places they weren’t meant to go and extracting secrets they weren’t meant to know.

The issue was how far he was willing to trust what they chose to tell him. Naturally, they held things back, and it was almost impossible for him to realise it at the time, and difficult to prove what they’d done afterwards.

“And there isn’t more to tell? You aren’t engaging in more of your risk mitigation?”

Bare fangs were the only reply he got, so Tyron sank into thought. There weren’t enough Slayers to manage the rifts at the best of times, but now there were even fewer, after the disaster at Woodsedge wiped out so many. Magnin and Beory had been plugging gaps and pulling rifts back from the edge of disaster for years, but they were gone too. It stood to reason that the Duke would be forced to loosen his grip on the most powerful Slayers, letting a select few out to fight in the Keeps.

But sending them to the Tower was something else entirely. Tyron had worked with several of the golds, crafting equipment for them to take to the rifts, and none had mentioned being detained by the Magisters for any length of time. Yet now five golds had been taken in and not released for over a week.

“I don’t like it,” Tyron muttered to himself.

“Too bad,” Yor snapped, and Tyron turned a glare on her.

“Not you, the Magisters,” he said. “A change from their usual patterns means they’re up to something. Messing with Slayers is what they do professionally, but messing with golds is… risky.”

Those few who managed to achieve gold rank and retire into the luxury of the cage were highly regarded by the citizenry. They were heroes, valiant warriors who had triumphed against the kin and formed the last line of defence inside the capital.

“If people find out they’re abusing the golds…”

“The key word, as always, is if,” Yor drawled. “The Tower is one of the places my people and I cannot penetrate, and no, we won’t even try, no matter what you threaten me with.”

Tyron raised his brows. He hadn’t said anything of the sort. The vampire just glared daggers before continuing.

“If you think about it, there aren’t that many reasons for the Tower to take them in.”

“Which are?” Tyron prompted when she didn’t continue.

“I said if you think about it,” she replied.

Typical.

“You’re being a little too uncooperative, don’t you think? Are you sure there won’t be consequences if you get in the way of my purpose?”

Tyron gathered his magick to himself as he stared, eyes cold as ice, at the undead before him. Yor met his gaze with one just as frozen as his own.

“My coven has already drawn far too much attention in order to appease your demands,” she hissed. “I won’t die for your revenge.”

Silence hung heavy in the air between them for a long moment. Tyron was the one to break the stalemate.

“Very well,” he allowed.

It was a delicate balance, the push and pull between himself and the vampires. With the threat of exposure hanging over their heads, they were compliant, to a point. Were he to push them too far, then the calculation would flip against him. The moment Yor decided she would be safer with Tyron dead, he would come under immediate attack, likely ambushed in the sewer, or killed in his sleep.

Resolving not to push any further, he bid farewell to Yor and returned to his study. The sewers had become so familiar to Tyron at this point he was almost able to make his way in complete darkness. He’d never thought he would come to rely on the capital’s waste management so heavily, yet here he was.

Using them had become even easier recently. The staff charged with maintaining the subterranean tunnel network had become lax in their duties in recent weeks. To Tyron, it was another sign of the disintegrating conditions within the city.

Shadetown had lost so many people as a result of the purge. Only a fraction had been taken by the authorities, but that had been enough to spread fear through the populace like a wildfire. In a tight-knit community such as this, everyone knew someone who had been taken away and hadn’t come back. They’d fled in droves, seeking safety elsewhere in the province, further away from the seat of power.

If Shadetown had suffered, then Kenmor itself was significantly worse.

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Within the walls of the capital, the stench of fear was palpable. Traffic though the gates was heavily policed, so people couldn’t flee, even if they wanted to. Fanatical believers of The Five Divines had taken to roaming the streets in packs at night, seeking heretics they could hand over to the Marshals, or deal with themselves.

With so many of the Duke’s resources now outside of the capital, moving town by town, village by village through the countryside, order in the city had been stretched to breaking point.

Once the fighting broke out in earnest, tensions would ratchet even higher. How would the gold ranked Slayers feel, knowing that their comrades were locked in a battle to the death outside the city? Many of them would have family members who were active in the Keeps, especially since combat Classes often seemed to run in families.

Tyron stopped dead, one hand on the dank stone wall of the sewer as an awful thought struck him. The gold Slayers would have family members and friends fighting against the Duke. It was an enormous risk to have them sitting in the city, brand or no brand. After all, the curse only took effect after they did something they shouldn’t. How much damage could a gold ranked Slayer do in a single strike?

A great deal.

All of a sudden, he realised why the Slayers were being taken to the Tower. It was brutally elegant, in a sick sort of way. Why wouldn’t the Duke want to solve two problems at the same time? They were lacking manpower, already having to release retired Slayers out to the rifts, why not recruit a few more to fight? Naturally, they’d have to be ‘persuaded’, but the magisters were experts at that sort of work. They’d been doing it for thousands of years.

The Duke was planning to turn the gold ranked Slayers against their own comrades.

Disgusting, but also brilliant, in its own way.

Tyron resumed his journey as his thoughts raced. He had to be careful of his footing out here. The sewer tunnels beneath Shadetown were not only smaller than those beneath the city, but less well-maintained. In places, the grating that covered the sludge below had degraded, or fallen away completely. A slip on the slimy edge would put him in a very regrettable situation, but his mind was fully occupied with this new thought.

If there were golds in The Tower, being tortured at this very moment, what did that mean? Was there a way he could take advantage of them?

If he’d been cognisant of it, he might have felt a twinge of regret at the callousness of that thought. Magnin and Beory hadn’t just been exemplary Slayers, but had truly believed in the profession and the people who undertook it. They were so respected and beloved by their peers for exactly this reason.

Their son had once felt the same way, but circumstances had burned that sentiment from him. The only thing he cared about was his vengeance; everything else was just a means to that end.

If the people were to find out what was being done to their heroes, then they would be furious, so would it be possible to destabilise the Duke further by spreading this information around?

He considered it, but dismissed the idea. There was too much fear. The populace, especially within Kenmor itself, were completely cowed. If the Magisters, Priests, Marshalls and Soldiers hadn’t been enough, the gangs of fanatics had been the last nail in the coffin.

It would take something extraordinary to bring the people of the city to the point of open rebellion.

He could leak word to the other gold ranks within the birdcage. That would surely rattle a few feathers. But would they even believe it? Even if they did, would they be willing to do anything about it?

Although they were powerful, the golds were under the thumb of the Nobles. With their comfortable, indolent lifestyles, how many would risk that existence for rebellion and near certain death?

Probably not many. Even though the Duke had called for volunteers to head back out to the rifts, disappointingly few had taken up the call.

Well, what could he do with a handful of Slayers who, in the present moment, probably wished they were dead?

The answer was so obvious he almost smacked himself in the head.

If they’d rather be dead, then he could certainly do them a favour. In return, he would ask a little favour from them. His skeletal horde was growing very rapidly at present, and he needed capable commanders to take on the burden of leadership.

Getting to them would be impossible, at least for now. Doubtless they were being held deep in the heart of the Tower and under incredible levels of security. Being objective, there was almost no chance he would be able to access the Slayers being held right now, but when they were eventually sent out into the field, the Magisters would bring in more of them, and then another group after that. So long as he eventually managed to get inside The Tower, which he had to do, somehow, to achieve his goals, there would be golds waiting for him.

Still deep in thought, Tyron finally made it back to his study, pushed past the many constructs and projects scattered throughout the space and sat at his desk.

He pulled his book of notes towards him and began to flick through the pages.

Souls. That was the issue that arose to his mind. He’d learned so much about them, but there was still a great deal that remained a mystery. Some souls were stronger than others, that was just a fact. Dove’s soul had been totally unlike the farmers and brigands he turned into spirits.

Was it merely related to levels, or did something else contribute to the strength of a soul? The possibility existed that it was an inherent trait people were born with, but somehow he doubted it. He’d already proven that the Unseen, for better or worse, had wormed its way into the souls of everyone in the realm, Tyron’s included, so it made perfect sense that as it invested more and more strength into an individual, levelling them, ranking them up, the soul would receive more of its power as well.

Or perhaps… the Unseen was tied more closely to souls than even he had considered….

Yet another thing for him to ponder. More immediately, he had to think about turning gold ranked Slayers into minions. How powerful would their spirits be? Would he even be capable of binding such powerful individuals to his service? As far as he knew, there was no way for someone to resist the limitations he placed upon them when turning them into undead, but he was hardly an expert on all of the possibilities. After all, he was self-taught! Everything he knew about Necromancy had come directly from the Unseen, or he’d figured it out himself. He couldn’t say with any sort of certainty what would happen as he tried to create more and more powerful servants.

No matter how he tried to twist it, there was only one way for him to ensure any complications were minimised: he had to reach gold rank himself.

He’d been creating so many minions lately, and his efforts at hunting down patrols had been extremely fruitful, in experience as well as materials.

However, would it be enough? It had been some time since he’d last performed the status ritual. He was attempting to push himself as far forward with his current abilities as he could, and achieving his next advancement seemed so far away that he hadn’t felt the need to push for it.

Now… things might have changed.

To get that many levels… creating undead simply wasn’t going to be enough, and he didn’t have access to a rift. That left him with only one option. He would have to find people to kill.

A lot of people.