CHAPTER B5: DEAD REALM

“We are so fucked,” Dove groaned, collapsing to his knees and planting his bony hands in the skulls beneath him. “Why did you have to bring us here? Do you have any idea what you’ve done? I’ve seen one-copper whores on festival day less fucked than we are!”

Tyron continued his inspection of the surroundings, only half listening as his horde continued to pour through the gate.

The ground around them seemed to undulate, with rises and falls much like the dunes he had seen in the southern deserts, except larger. Beneath the dust and broken rocks, there were always, always those skull formations staring back at him. Overhead, there didn’t appear to be any sky at all, only darkness. He conjured more globes of light, scattering them further to extend his vision. This place wasn’t made for the living; without a light source, his eyes were completely useless here.

“Are you listening to me, Tyron, you meddling moron?” Dove demanded, scuttling over to the Necromancer and punching him in the leg.

“I’m listening, Dove, I’m listening,” Tyron assured him, turning his eyes back towards his former mentor, who picked himself off the ground while inspecting his hand for damage. “It’s interesting to see that your contract is not quite as restrictive now that we’re here in the Realm of the Dead. I thought that might be the case.”

“Oh, you did, did you?” Dove growled sarcastically. “Amazing for you, I’m so glad you were proven correct. That must make you feel so fucking smart. And when a Death Lord comes over here and rips your head off before shoving it right up your ever so clever anus, will you be feeling nice and smart then?”

More skeletons and covered wagons laden with materials continued to flow through the gate while it remained active. Wights and revenants took their teams of undead and scattered around the perimeter, forming a defensive line and spreading wider to scout the surrounding area.

Information from all his minions poured into Tyron’s mind, and he sifted through it all, highly alert to any sign of danger. However, so far, there didn’t seem to be any; their immediate surroundings seemed… barren.

“I know there is danger here, Dove, great danger,” Tyron said frowning, “but what is it? And where?”

“You fucking idiot,” Dove said, straightening his own armour and re-wrapping the snake skeleton around his waist, ensuring it was in the correct position. “I thought you knew about this place! This is the Realm of the Dead, not some country village!”

“So talk. Let me know just how much of a fool I am.”

That, at least, seemed to penetrate Dove’s increasing exasperation and fear. He pointed a finger at Tyron, glowing eyes dancing with glee.

“Yes! Now that you put it that way, yes! I’ve been waiting for fucking years for this!”

He pointed imperiously at the ground in front of him.

“Sit at my feet and prepare to learn the wisdom of Dove and the idiocy of Tyron Steelarm!”

Tyron stared at him, head cocked slightly to the side, eyes cold. Dove withdrew his hand.

“Nevermind the first part. Let’s start with the basics, then. Realm of the Dead, big ol’ place, lots of souls and skulls… for some reason.”

“You don’t know why everything looks like a skull?” Tyron asked, genuinely surprised. He looked down between his feet to see hollow eyes formations of crumbling stone looking back up at him.

“I have theories,” Dove said, swinging the snake skeleton up over his shoulder and planting his hands on his bony hips. “Perhaps a skull is the natural form all things take when saturated with this

level of Death Magick, perhaps whoever created this realm just likes to keep things atmospheric. Perhaps there’s a team of undead worms going around reshaping the rock into skulls, like little sightless sculptors. I don’t fucking know. Is that really the most important thing right now?!”

“I suppose not,” Tyron muttered, unable to quite stop himself from theorising.

He didn’t see any little worm sculptors down there….

“Like every other realm in reality, this place is ruled by some bad, bad motherfuckers. Death Lords who command vast armies and control enormous territories. They fight amongst each other constantly, vying for resources, namely souls, forming alliances, betraying those alliances and generally stabbing everyone and everything they can find.”

“And it was one of those who put his contract on you.”

“Shut your stupid gods damned mouth…. Yes. Yes it was,” Dove conceded. “My new Class didn’t whisk my conciousness off to a lovely, wholesome and beautiful realm like the Astral Sea, but dumped my ignorant backside here. Before I could get my bearings and find a nice, native beastie to form a contract with, I was found and captured by a delightful prick named Malasin, Death Lord of Strix.”

Dove leaned back and looked up at the vast nothing overhead, sighing.

“I probably shouldn’t have been screaming and cursing quite so loudly, but I don’t think it was the sound that helped them track me, but rather the disturbance in the weave.”

He jerked his thumb back at the gate.

“By the by, the disturbance I made was like a tiny pebble being thrown into a pond compared to the fat mother-in-law divebomb you’ve punched into here.”

“So we have to move,” Tyron nodded and Dove merely laughed.

“You think you can… never mind. It’ll almost be worth it to see the smug look wiped off your stupid face. Sure, move, run if you think it will help. As far as I can see, you’ve already been incredibly, unbelievably lucky by landing in the middle of the ass-end of nowhere. That’s going to buy you a smidge of time to pretend an all powerful master of death isn’t going to swan in here and make you eat your own shit.”

“How powerful?” Tyron asked. “Are they gods of this realm? Powerful Mages? This place is rich in magick, which means the Unseen is here. Are they just extremely high level?”

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If it was a matter of levels, then as long as he could remain hidden and continue to progress, the only thing stopping Tyron from rising to match these Death Lords was time.

“All of those things,” Dove stated flatly. “Control over the Realm confers certain… advantages. The larger their territory, the more souls they amass, the stronger they get. It would take days to explain all the ways that you’re dead, but I’ll summarise it here for you: I’ve only met one of them, and he shits out minions as strong as Magnin and Beory on a daily basis. To them, you’re like a puff of wind. Even less than that, the fart of a sparrow with particularly clenched cheeks. The second they find you, you are fucked.”

“Then I should do everything I can not to be found,” Tyron nodded.

Dove slapped himself in the skull.

“You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said, have you? How in the fuck

are you going to hide when you’ve already lit a massive fucking bonfire announcing your arrival?! You literally created a break in the weave wide enough to drive a wyvern through! At least three of the fucking Lords have already sensed it and sent a hundred thousand strong army to rip out your balls and make you eat them.

“Malasin was a right prick to me and I was already dead. Only the goddess’ left tit knows how they’re going to treat someone who came here alive. My guess? It won’t be great.”

“I’m curious about that,” Tyron asked, still devoting most of his attention to sensing the surroundings via his minions. “After binding you with a contract, Malasin the Death Lord let you go, and let you form contracts with summons, didn’t they?”

“I wouldn’t be very useful if I couldn’t summon anything, now would I?” Dove grunted. “The prick wanted me to try and hijack a rift, create an opening that would allow them to send an army through.”

“To conquer our realm?”

“No, of course not,” Dove scoffed, “to kill everyone and harvest their souls. Death Lords don’t mind a bit of proactive collection if they can manage it.”

“So what do they need you for? These godlike creatures can create a gateway out of here, just like I can create a gateway in, can’t they?”

“You know very fucking well they can’t,” Dove said, now stroking the snake he’d flipped over his shoulder like it was a cat. “Death Magick is great for turning bones into walking puppets and forming souls into engines of pain and suffering, but it isn’t the best for dimensional work. In fact, it’s probably the worst. And guess what, there’s only one form of magick in this entire fucking realm! Even better, the Death Magick here is so fucking dense that converting it to anything else is next to impossible. So there’s another jot of good news. You’re completely stuck here forever. Congratulations.”

Tyron nodded thoughtfully. Dove was most likely correct, but there was probably more to it. If the Death Lords were as powerful as he said they were, those limitations, while very meaningful, shouldn’t have been enough to prevent them from getting out. It could have something to do with the manner in which magick arrived here in the first place. In Tyron’s realm, magick had arrived via the rifts, which had thinned the weave to the point where punching through to leave wasn’t nearly as hard as it should have been.

There were no rifts here, no thinning of the weave at all. Getting through from the outside had been extremely difficult, but getting through from the inside was an entirely different matter. Leaving would be ten times as hard as getting in had been.

“How does it feel to know just how ruined you are?” Dove said, almost gloating. He started to hop from foot to foot, gleefully poking at his former student and laughing at him. “Completely fucked, smart-alecky prick. The great Tyron Steelarm, finally backed himself into a corner, like a rat in a trap. Feeling good? Rat boy?”

Tyron rolled his eyes and waited. Soon, the gateway flickered and disappeared, all of the undead and supplies having made it through. Moments later, robed figures emerged from the darkness around them, ignored by the undead as they approached Tyron.

One threw back their hood to reveal the fautless features of Yor, pale and perfect in the dim light.

“We’ve done as the Mistress agreed and concealed your arrival as best we could,” she purred, but he could sense the underlying tension in her voice. Yor did not want to be here. “She will collect what she is owed.”

“Of course,” Tyron said, with a short bow. “I promised her I would return to render payment, and I shall. Have a little faith, we will leave here alive.”

He hesitated, then laughed.

“Well, I will leave alive, you will leave in the same state of death as you are now.”

Yor’s eyes flashed crimson as she beheld him.

“I hope so,” she murmured, then turned to leave.

Frozen mid-hop, Dove watched her leave, then turned back to Tyron.

“Why in the name of fuck would they agree to come here and conceal your arrival? There’s no way they would do that. It makes no sense,” he demanded.

Tyron scratched his cheek.

“Well, the agreement my parents made with the Scarlet Court is still in effect. They have to protect me, within limits. I had to offer a few things to tip the scales, but eventually Yor’s Mistress accepted the terms.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Dove insisted, “you’re still fucked. Just being here as a living creature is enough to draw them to you, and they sweep their territory constantly. You can’t remain hidden. And even if you did, you don’t have a source of magick to get out again. There’s no getting around it.”

Tyron sighed, stepped over to the nearest wagon and threw back the cover, revealing the contents. Neatly stacked shards of mage crystal rested within, padded to ensure they wouldn’t clatter against each other and shatter. In just the one cart, there were hundreds of shards, each the size of a grown man's forearm.

From the gloom, Master Willhem approached, staff in hand as he drifted over the ground.

“We must begin our work on the suppression arrays immediately,” the demi-lich rasped.

“We need to make them better than we initially thought,” Tyron warned him, gesturing towards Dove. “We have powerful foes here, perhaps beyond even The Five. The slightest leak of power will be enough to reveal us.”

The demi-lich groaned.

“I am not as good as I was,” Master Willhem warned. “What you ask may not be possible.”

“We will do what we can and hope it's enough,” Tyron shrugged. “We don’t need to be here for too long. If all goes well, no more than a week.”

The demi-lich nodded before drifting off, a gaggle of skeletons forming in his wake to help collect and move the stored materials they would need.

Dove stared hard at Tyron.

“I hate you, kid.”

The Necromancer could only sigh and nod.

“I know.”

“And what’s this shit about only being here for a week? You think you can get out that easily? If so, why the fuck would you even come here? What’s the point!?”

Tyron lifted a hand and began to tick off his fingers one by one.

“I need a base of operations where The Five can’t reach me and I’m safe from their armies. I need to remove myself from the rest of the rebellion in order to keep them safe. I need a place I can siphon away resources and gain my strength little by little, and finally, I can’t make a gate within our home realm to another place within our home realm. I could use a world beyond a rift for some of those things, but not all of them, so I chose to come here.”

Dove was silent for a moment, processing, then exploded.

“That’s fucking crazy! It was half a miracle you actually managed to get here, to the point I’m surprised you didn’t get a fucking Mystery for it, since you seem to trip over your dick and land on a Mystery all the fucking time anyway. But getting back? To a specific place in our home realm? Do you even know what you’re aiming for? How hard it’s going to be? Even contemplating it is… is… insane! You would have to be fucking Tel’anan… fucking… reborn… to try… and pull that… off.”

Dove slowly lost steam as he continued to speak, slowing down and slumping further and further the more he said. Tyron shrugged, a little self-consciously.

“It’s not that hard,” he said defensively.

Dove unleashed a groan filled with infinite pain.

“I really fucking hate you, Tyron.”