WORKING NIGHTS

Grave robbing was less exciting than Tyron had expected sneaking through the night and stealing into the cemetery would be difficult—he'd pictured dodging town guards and marshals before having to outwit the cemetery keeper and finally sneaking away with his rotting prize. Reality was somewhat different than his imagination. As night fell, the travelers and newly Awakened youths were out in the streets and inns of Foxbridge, drinking, celebrating, and making a general nuisance of themselves. The guards were therefore out in force inside the town, keeping a watchful eye on drunken behavior and trying to stop fistfights. The marshals sent from the province were nowhere to be seen and the cemetery keeper was passed out drunk in his house. All Tyron's preparations now looked somewhat foolish. He'd even smeared dirt across his face and bought the Sneak general skill for this outing. A complete waste of effort. So it was that Tyron Steelarm found himself standing in the grave of Myrrin Jessup, the elderly matron of a farming family on the outskirts of town who'd passed away three months ago, shovel in hand and a conflicted look on his face. He'd fobbed off his aunt and uncle when they pressed him for details on his Class, telling them he'd be happy to fill them in tomorrow but for now he just wanted to rest. He'd been up for several days in a row, after all. Uncle Worthy had reluctantly agreed, and Tyron had rushed back to the safety of his own home, trying to decide what he was going to do. In his panic that afternoon he hadn't even stopped to investigate his new Class through his own Appraisal, nor had he thought to ask any questions at all about his Sub-Class, Anathema. He cursed his stupidity, but ultimately he couldn't be too hard on himself. Lack of sleep, combined with the unique pressure of his current situation, meant his decision making was slightly impaired. He seriously considered just going to bed and casting Sleep on himself if he needed to just to get the rest he so desperately needed. He decided against it, but only narrowly. He had very limited time available to him, and he needed to make the most of it. He was in a race against time, and he couldn't afford to lose. With a sigh of exhaustion, he grounded his shovel and leaned on it heavily. Was it really necessary to bury them so far down? His shoulders were on fire and his lower back had a definite ache. Almost everyone his age was getting drunk in town, and here he was shoveling dirt dressed in his darkest clothing. The thought of Elsbeth drinking, dancing, and enjoying herself flashed through his mind, but he angrily shoved it away. She didn't matter right now and probably never would again. Their lives were on very different roads after today. After he caught his breath he gripped the shovel once again, cursing when his raw hands rubbed on the wood. Desperate times… once again he put his weight behind his hands and started to cut into the soft earth. After an hour of digging he was over three feet down and desperately wishing he didn't have much further to go. With every spadeful of dirt he moved his conscience whispered in the back of his mind, and every time he pushed it away. Living normally was not an option to him, not if he wanted to keep his Class. If he wanted to learn more about Necromancy, then he had no choice but to try and level up. The message had been loud and clear during his Awakening—to level up his Necromancer Class he had to raise the dead. So here he was. He'd performed an Appraisal on himself and found exactly what he'd expected to find. Neither his Necromancer Class, nor his Anathema Sub-Class, provided options for purchase at level one. Almost every Class was like this. A person received the basic abilities of the Class initially and then further options upon leveling up to the second level. After that, choices usually came every five levels to customize and tailor the Class to the individual's wishes. Since he had no idea what sort of things the "Dark Ones" wanted him to do to level up Anathema, something he was somewhat happy about, he focused all his attention on Necromancy. THUNK. The tip of the shovel bit through the dirt and struck something solid. Trepidation rising in his heart, the young Necromancer began scraping away the dirt and widening his hole, another thirty minutes' work, until he was looking down on the partially rotted casket of poor old Mrs. Jessup. Before proceeding further, Tyron climbed out of the grave and rummaged through his pack which he'd placed on the ground nearby. It wasn't easy in the dark, but he refused to cast Light. Even if everyone else was casual about security in the graveyard, he wouldn't be. After a moment he had what he wanted—a ball of wax he'd prepared for this part of the task. He cursed his raw and filthy hands but took the wax and softened it by rolling it between his palms before he broke it in half and used the two pieces to plug his nose. He'd never smelled a three-month-old body before, and he didn't want to start now. The stink had already begun rising when he'd finished digging, and he wasn't tempted to get a full dose once he opened up the casket. Job done, he pulled out a coil of rope which he used to tie around one end of the partially rotted wood. As quietly as he could, he began to haul the remains of the beloved farmer's wife and her wooden resting place out of the ground, but it was slow going. He really didn't have the physique for this. For a moment he was tempted to dump his free points into Strength, but he chased the thought away. That would be a stupid waste. Cursing under his breath, covered in sweat and grime, Tryon pulled, hauled, and heaved until he'd succeeded in his excavation. He collapsed onto his back and heaved a few deep breaths of the cool night air before he stood once again. His work wasn't done, not even close. Careful not to disturb the rest of the cemetery, he dragged the wooden box 130 feet to the Arryn Mausoleum. The Mayor's family had built the thing almost a hundred years ago and generations had been interred inside since then. It wasn't enormous, roughly the size of an average house in Foxbridge, but no other family could possibly afford the extravagance of a stone crypt in which to place their dead. Tyron carefully lowered the casket and wearily trudged back to his pack. He picked it up with one hand and felt around with the other as he walked back. Soon he arrived in front of the looming stone edifice, carved with likenesses of the Five Divines and "Arryn" written in flowing script across the entrance. It was locked, of course. A thick chain bolted shut ran through the iron-banded wooden doors, and Tyron knew he'd have no hope of forcing it open, certainly not quietly. Being the son of two prominent, perpetually absent Monster Slayers did have a few advantages, however. Moving with care in the darkness, Tyron unfolded the bundle of cloth and withdrew a clear glass container, a small amount of dark green liquid sloshing within. "Door Away," his mother had cheerfully described it. They'd purchased a supply of the stuff to complete a job requiring them to assault a crumbling ruin some madman had renovated to breed monsters. What Tyron held was all that remained after they'd finished with the place. Holding his breath, he carefully uncorked the bottle, nearly splashing the stuff on himself when his hands slipped. "Fuck," he swore. His hands were raw and numb and his arms and shoulders burned like fire. He was mentally and physically exhausted, but he couldn't stop now. He took a deep breath, then another before he brought the bottle to the lock. Holding the heavy steel lock in one hand, he dribbled a tiny amount of liquid on the metal threaded through the chain. The fluid immediately bubbled and steamed, and Tyron jerked back to avoid the fumes. In less than a minute the lock had been chewed through and he was able to slip the chain loose, the metal clinking with every movement, and pull open the door. Dust, darkness, and cobwebs greeted him on the other side. "Of course. Spiders," he muttered as he turned and dragged the casket inside. Once he had it past the threshold, he let it drop and slapped at his robes to dislodge the cobwebs and brush off half-imagined crawlers he thought he felt creeping on him. He grabbed his pack, brought it inside, and then shut the door, closing himself inside. "Light." His tired brain worked the magick with ease after his years of practice, and a small globe of light appeared in his palm. Concentrating briefly, he raised his hand and then opened his fingers with a jerk. The globe hung in the air as if suspended from an invisible string, illuminating Tyron and Myrrin's new abode. There were four rooms in the mausoleum arranged in a cross. This particular space appeared to be an entranceway, the floor clear to allow traffic deeper into the building. That suited Tyron just fine. His shadow flickered across the carved interior of the tomb as he got to work opening the box. In the end he had to use a few more drops of Door Away to get a purchase. The lid popped off after another heave, sending him stumbling backward until he hit his head on the arch around the door. More swearing, a few moments to gather himself, then he stepped toward the open casket. He wished he hadn't. He wished he hadn't cast Light. He wished he wasn't here at all. The corpse was a disgusting, fetid mass of rotting flesh, barely recognizable as a person. The smell was so overpowering that even his improvised nose plugs weren't enough to keep it away entirely, causing his stomach to heave. Acid burned the back of his throat as he gagged, but he forced it back down and spat on the floor. It's not as if he wanted this. He didn't want to be here, doing these things. If he'd had his way he'd be drinking with Elsbeth in town, admiring the sight of her golden hair and bright smile while he celebrated his Wizard Class. But he'd received Necromancer, and so here he was doing Necromancer work. He spat again, as if to hurl the self-pity out of his body. He had no use for it. Time to get to work. The base knowledge of the skills he'd received along with his Class were imprinted in his mind, but that didn't mean he was fully proficient with them. From what he'd read, it was akin to having instincts and impulses shoved into his brain, and only with application and practice would he be able to make that knowledge his own. Which was what he did. Corpse Preparation and Corpse Appraisal were the two skills he'd received from his Class at level one, and he relied on those instincts to guide him as he ran a critical eye over the body. He didn't feel like he needed to do much to prepare the remains for his spell; rather, there didn't seem to be much he could do in his current circumstances. His Appraisal skill was telling him this body would make a particularly poor undead. A frail old lady when she'd passed away, there wasn't a lot of meat on her bones when she'd been buried and there was precious little of that left. He did feel confident the spell would take. If all went well, Myrrin Jessup would rise as a zombie under his control. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves and immediately regretted it. Between the dust and stench of rot, the air tasted thick and foul. "Just get it done," he growled to himself and moved to his pack. He removed a small leather-bound book from the bag and flicked through it to his notes. Just like his skills, the spell he'd received was an outline—a sense, rather than a full and complete picture. As he practiced, leveled up the skill, and grew more experienced, he would be able to develop his understanding of the magick and cast it as easily as Light. A large part of his preparation for this task was spent preparing these notes. Using his knowledge of spellcraft theory, he'd teased out as much as he could in the limited time available. It was a complex magick, one that would take almost his entire pool to cast, by far the most potent spell he'd come across. From his limited understanding, the spell contained three main components. First, the construction of a magical animus, a crude bundle of instincts the zombie would use to control its body and make basic decisions. The mind and soul of the body's original inhabitant were long gone and thus would need to be replaced, which was the purpose the animus fulfilled. It was complex work, creating a structure out of arcane energy that would allow the risen dead to perceive and react to its environment, albeit in only the crudest possible ways. Following that, a conduit of magick would be established between himself and his servant, enabling it to draw on him for the magick needed to sustain its existence. It was obvious a body in such an advanced state of disrepair wouldn't be able to move under its own power —magick would be the engine that animated the creature, and he would be required to supply the fuel. Third came the binding, an invocation that would chain his newly created creature to his will. Each individual part of the spell was more complex than the Sleep spell he'd learned, and it was insane to even attempt it in his condition. In fact, this entire escapade was madness. But he felt desperate, as if an unseen eye were watching his every moment. As if hands were clawing around his ankles, desperate to drag him down into mediocrity. He refused to accept that. He snapped the book shut decisively and placed it back in his pack. He strode two steps to stand at the head of the corpse, spread his hands, and began the invocation. Magick was a science and an art form rolled into one, or so his mother had told him. A high-level Battlemage, she bridged the divide between rough and ready witch tricks that could be thrown out with a word and more powerful spells that demanded concentration, extended cast times, and often consumed material components. This spell was assuredly the latter. His hands drew arcane sigils in the air as the Words of Power rolled from his tongue and echoed off the dust-covered walls in this cramped hall of stone. His long hours of study and the power of his earned mysteries showed their effects now. Despite his exhaustion, despite the crippling lack of sleep, he enunciated each word clearly and shaped the magick smoothly, the arcane energy draining out of his body and pouring into the vessel before him. So much energy. The spell drew deeply on his reserves as sweat began to run in rivulets down his face. He wanted to grimace and clench his teeth, but he couldn't—the invocation couldn't be halted once it had begun, and slurring his words could prove disastrous. Moment by moment he battled with his own body and waged war on his own mind. His arms were as heavy as lead, his thoughts as sluggish as molasses, but he refused to yield. If he failed now, he may as well give up on every dream he'd ever had and resign himself to bookkeeping his entire life. For twenty minutes he fought tooth and nail, his voice growing hoarse and his body shaking from the exertion. The final words flew from his lips in a shout before he collapsed to his knees, completely spent. It had taken every drop of magick in him to complete the spell, but he'd done it. It had gone as perfectly as he could have hoped for, given his circumstances. He panted, head down as his vision swam before his eyes. "Might have… overdone it a little," he rasped. But he couldn't keep a lilted smile from his lips. He'd succeeded. Who else could have performed such a difficult feat of magick like this with as little preparation as he had? A laugh bubbled in his belly but only emerged from his shredded throat as a croak. "Hrrrrrrrrrrrrr," came a long, slow moan. Tyron raised his head to see the putrid, rotting remains of his new servant slowly push itself up until its sightless eyes were staring back at him. "Looking good there, friend," he wheezed. Then the last drop of magick left him and he knew no more.