Chương 21: B6C20 - Beating Heart of the Dead

It was fascinating to Tyron that there had been a time he couldn't clearly sense the death rising from the Dust Folk. Now, having reached the heights that he had, the stench of Death Magick was as plain as the nose on his face. Seated on the sands upon a finely woven rug, he faced the robed figure before him without fear, though the same couldn't be said for those opposite. It was clear they hadn't encountered a platinum ranked individual before.

Wary and hesitant, they welcomed him according to their custom, which was best described as 'standoffish' at the best of times.

"It is good that you have come here with your face bare to the sands. I am pleased you would show respect to our ways." Controlling his expression, Tyron was careful not to blink in surprise. He hadn't even thought of protecting his face on this journey, given his incredibly high constitution. Winds whipping across the desert were more than capable of stripping the flesh from a person's bones under normal circumstances, but they had no chance of breaking through his skin.

Unlike in the past when he had ventured into the desert, this time he hadn't bothered covering himself against the heat or the wind. Apparently that was the right way to do it.

"Of course, these sands belong to the Dust Folk," he said.

"I am always prepared to show my respect for your people." Knowing that the Dust Folk were actually corpses infested with a form of intelligent beetle made it incredibly difficult to sit in front of them without being overcome by curiosity. How did they animate the corpse? Why had the Dust Folk taken to living in this way, puppeteering human remains? It was no mystery why they were so successful in living in such inhospitable conditions.

Any human members of their tribes benefited from the leadership of the scarabs, who needed almost no water or food and had developed great mastery over constructs.

"Chan'rela. What brings you to our sands, then, traveler?" the hooded figure before him asked.

"It is not often one of the soft-people come this deep into the Hallan'rassa, the Great Desert."

"I have come to barter for safe passage across the desert," Tyron said forthrightly. Sucking in a breath that it did not need, the Dust Folk leader, the Graal, shook his head.

"This is not something lightly granted. The living are not fit to pass through this place. It is al'hakash." Reaching behind him, Tyron rummaged through the leather satchel he had placed on the carpet behind him. From within, he withdrew a large, perfectly spherical gem. Holding it out in the light, it glittered brightly in the harsh desert sun. In the middle of the day, it must have been over fifty degrees where they sat, enough to bake the moisture out of a human in a matter of minutes.

Slowly, he placed it down right before his crossed legs.

"I would not dream of impeding upon your sacred rules," he said.

"There will be no living person crossing the sands, only the dead."

"The dead?" the Dust Folk asked him cautiously.

"We saw you approach with a small group of skeletons. Are they who you wish to attempt the crossing? It does not violate our law, but it will be difficult for so few to survive the dangerous pass. There are rifts and monsters aplenty amongst the dunes." Tyron, once again, reached into the satchel behind him and withdrew another core, identical to the first. In another life, he would never have been allowed to handle a core such as this while working for Master Willhem.

These were the highest grade, found only in the largest monsters which normally were trapped behind the rifts. Only the master himself had been allowed to work them, although they had almost exclusively been used for lavish vanity projects for overweening nobles. Placing it down before him, Tyron could tell, even though the body before him was undead, that the Graal was shocked.

"It will not be a small group of undead traversing the sands," he said by way of explanation.

"There will be many, many thousands. Skeletons, revenants, constructs. They will make their way to the Southern Province, and I will join them via another passage when they arrive."

"Many, many thousands? Are you making war, soft one?" There was no judgement in that dry, rasping voice, only a mild curiosity. As far as the Dust Folk were concerned, the Empire was a difficult neighbor and prejudiced trading partner. Major conflicts between the Dust Folk and the Empire were long in the past, after the Divines had abandoned any hope of conquering the desert.

"I am. The Western Province lies in ruins, millions are dead. In time, the rest of the Empire will share the same fate." No need to advertise that Tyron himself hadn't been responsible for that death and destruction.

"I see," the Dust Folk nodded slowly. He fell silent, hood pulled low and hands folded in his lap, most likely communing internally. How did it work? Tyron couldn't help but be curious. Were they a psychic collective of insects? Were the scarabs themselves undead? Who decided which of the beetles was in charge, or was any of them in charge? Perhaps inside each reanimated corpse, there was a council of scarabs who took turns piloting the host? Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent.

Report sightings.

"This is acceptable," the Graal finally announced, dragging Tyron from his thoughts.

"Excellent," he said, picking up both cores and passing them across.

"I accept your gifts, with gratitude." Carefully the Graal folded the gems into his cloak, then leaned forward and began to sweep nearby sand onto the rug. Unsure what was happening, Tyron simply waited and watched. After a few broad sweeps, the Graal began to draw a simple diagram into the sand.

"If this point is where we are, then to reach your destination the fastest, you should follow this path. Three days' travel directly to the south will allow you to avoid the rift of Deep Dunes. After this, eight days south-southwest will take you to the flats. When the sand is hard beneath your feet, you will know that you have arrived. Be careful here, the Wind Vipers are difficult to see and will kill many who are unaware. Perhaps your undead will not be vulnerable to their tricks."

"I will ensure they are not. Thank you for this information." Tyron's horde would traverse the desert far quicker than the times given by his informant suggested. Without need to rest, his horde would move day and night, regardless of the heat or cold.

"After this, head east. Ten days. The journey here is most perilous, with many rifts and monsters. If you survive, you will reach your destination on the eleventh day." A path to the Southern Province. Only a portion of the horde would pass through, but it would still be a sizeable force of up to twenty thousand. Once they arrived, his assault on the South would begin. He hoped he would arrive before the Empire managed to get its shit together and ready another assault.

If he weren't able to distract their attention, they would strike at Granin again, with enough force to flatten the ruined city into dust.

"Very well. I will endeavour not to stray from this path."

"See that you do not. We will alert the others to ensure they know you are coming, but if they find your undead where they should not be, then your guarantees of safety are void."

"More than fair." Their business conducted, Tyron stood, knowing better than to extend his hand, only for it to be refused. He turned and walked away confident that the Dust Folk would leave him be now that they had what they wanted. With such potent cores, they would be able to make incredibly strong constructs, and Tyron would dearly love to know what they intended to create, but he had enough to work on. Not that they were likely to tell him their secrets.

A kilometre away, a small gathering of undead awaited, uncaring of the scorching heat.

"What did they say?" Filetta demanded.

"We have secured safe passage and they even gave us directions," Tyron replied, making a soothing gesture.

"Directions? They should have carried the horde on their backs for two cores like that!"

"It's much better if they are friendly with us rather than hostile. There is still a great deal I can learn from the Dust Folk if I get a chance."

"It's against the thieves' code to overpay."

"Isn't it against the thieves' code to pay at all?"

"That's on the other thieves' code. The one we don't show people who aren't thieves."

"Makes sense." He could only shake his head. Light reflecting off the bright sand stabbed into his eyes, causing him to squint slightly. Conditions here really were monstrous. Eventually, he would offer to tame the local rifts for the Dust Folk, for a fair price, but right now he couldn't afford the time. It had already taken him too long to rebuild his horde. He needed to take the fight to the Empire. Two weeks to get his horde in position to strike the Southern Province.

Before then, he had a tremendous amount of work to do. After taking a few days to travel and make arrangements with the Dust Folk, it was time to check in on his most recent experiment. The crumbling remains of what had once been a lockup used by the local Marshals wasn't the most fortified position to stash a rare and expensive piece of magickal engineering, but it was the best he could find in the area.

It had three walls and a roof, which was more than could be said for a lot of buildings in the province, and sturdy ones at that. Rather than the stone, it was the thousands of undead that were most responsible for keeping it safe, but at least the roof kept the rain off. Late at night, inside the most intact of the rooms, Tyron sat upon a half-burned wooden chair, watching and waiting to see if he had been successful.

In front of him, one of the most complex pieces of enchanting he had ever conducted, an interlocking sphere of three layers, turned slowly, each ring segment drifting at a slightly different pace to the others. Every now and again, he caught a glimpse of the heart at the centre of the device, a glowing, pulsing orb of sickly green and purple, throbbing, as if in pain.

Hovering a few inches over the table, the device thrummed with power, sucking in a furious amount of magick from the surrounding area and from Tyron himself. Without the gathering arrays he'd put in place, it might pull out a significant chunk of his reserves and force him to stop producing new minions until it was done. Above the device, floating in mid-air, a grisly spectacle was taking shape.

A skeleton formed of spectral bones pulsed in sync with the device below, growing more substantial over time as it was strengthened by the magick pouring into it. Every bone, an ethereal green, possessed a red glow let off by the dense crystal marrow within, streaked with lines of Soul Magick. Gradually, a light was beginning to bloom in the empty sockets of the lich, an awakening mind that Tyron could feel through the conduit that bound it to him. After another hour had passed, the process was finally complete.

In control at last, the lich drifted down to the floor, hovering over the surface. With a thought, Tyron commanded his nearby minions to rush forward and pass the newly created undead a staff and mantle, prepared in advance.

"How do you feel?" he asked aloud. Master Willhem took a moment to answer, drifting silently in place.

"I do not think I would like to experience this a second time," he said softly. It was hard for Tyron not to wince. The process to produce a lich was... torturous. Binding the soul to the phylactery was one thing, but to actually make it work, it had been necessary to all but annihilate his old master, forcing his soul to flee to the device and then begin reforming its new housing from scratch.

"I'm sorry it had to be that way, Master Willhem," Tyron said.

"However, I hope it was worth it." Master Willhem held up a single hand, turning it over as he gazed at it through his hollow sockets.

"Oh, it was, boy," he assured the Necromancer.

"It most definitely was."