B3C57 - It Takes a Little Madness (Patreon)

“I think I need a drink,” Tyron rasped, then blinked.

His eyes felt raw as sandpaper, and blinking didn’t seem to help. Was he so lacking in fluid there was nothing left for his eyes?!

Blearily, he looked down at his hands and saw they were trembling, his individual digits resisting the commands of his mind to remain still. He tsked. He couldn’t cast magick like this!

“Dove?” he tried to call, but couldn’t raise his voice much. He coughed, tried to spit, but found he couldn’t, then called again. “Dove?”

“I’m over here.”

Tyron turned to see the onyx skull leaning against the cave wall, watching him.

“How… how long since I… since I slept?” he said.

By the end, his voice had faded to barely a whisper.

“Lo and behold, the sun has risen and fallen eight times since last you lay down your head, o great-balled moron.”

It took a few moments for Tyron to turn that over in his head.

“Eight days?”

That was… a lot. He looked down and saw he was seated at the table, pages filled with notes laid out before him. When he tried to read, his eyes blurred to the point he could barely see his hands anymore. He felt dirty, greasy, hungry and unbelievably thirsty.

“I sent you in here to sleep about ten hours ago,” Dove remarked, not moving from his position on the wall. “I see that you had a change of heart between the cave entrance and your bedroll.”

Turning in the chair seemed to take all of his energy, but Tyron did his best to fumble about until he managed to get his hand onto his pack and waterskin. Knowing from experience what a poor idea it was to gulp while being dehydrated as he was, he brought the skin to his lips and took a cautious sip. Lukewarm and on the brink of going foul, it wasn’t the best drink of his life, but even so, he welcomed it.

In response to that tiny trickle of fluid, his body seemed to wake up to just how much he needed to drink. His thirst became like a physical thing, thrashing and screaming in his chest, in his throat, in his veins. He brought the skin back to his lips and took another small sip. There was perhaps a litre of water left inside the leather skin. To be safe, he would need to consume it all over the better part of an hour.

From inside his pack, he pulled out some hardened bread and began to break it apart in his weak fingers. In small chunks, he could probably digest it. When he had a piece as small as a fingernail, he put it in his mouth and tried to chew. Swallowing felt like he’d eaten a stone and he felt it all the way down to his stomach.

“I must have had a thought,” Tyron replied before taking another small sip as his eyes wandered over the pages before him.

Slowly his thoughts were starting to settle in his head. The haze of fatigue lay thick over his mind, a suffocating blanket that was difficult to work through, but he was getting there, piece by piece. It’d been difficult, extremely difficult, to make any progress. The soul was a component of Necromancy he hadn’t explored sufficiently. Most of his effort had been bent toward creating stronger skeletons and revenants. A soul was a vital component of a revenant, to be sure, but he hadn’t needed to do anything special with them.

Each page on the table contained a furious scrawl of sigils and notes relating to spirits, ghosts and souls in general. He let his eyes trail over them, before he closed them and took another sip from the waterskin. He couldn’t read them properly anyway and the last thing he wanted was to be distracted.

“How much did we succeed?” he asked.

The ritual. He recalled the ritual. When was the last time he’d been this tired?

“Enough. Most of the way. Far enough that I think I can finish it myself,” Dove replied.

That prompted Tyron to crack an eye open. Dove remained where he’d been before, leaning against the wall, skeletal arms folded across his chest. He had his armour on.

“Oh really?” the Necromancer asked, coughing slightly as he held in a chuckle.

Damn that hurt.

“Just because I’m not a once in a hundred year genius doesn’t mean I’m bad at magick.”

“It does to a once in a hundred year genius.”

“Shut up, kid. You really should have gone to bed.”

Another piece of bread. His stomach threatened rebellion, tightening around the crumbs he was feeding it. He mustn’t have eaten for a few days at least. Why had he let his condition get this bad? After the last few times he’d pushed himself to the brink of collapse, he’d promised he wouldn’t do it to himself anymore. Yet here he was.

“How high is your constitution anyway? I can’t believe you’re still standing.”

“High enough,” Tyron leaned back and allowed himself a huge yawn, his jaw creaking as his face stretched out.

With every bit of sustenance, a little awareness returned. This was both a blessing and a curse. The more alert he became, the more he could interpret the screaming protests of his body. It had been pushed well beyond what it was comfortable with, and now it was letting him know.

“You can take an awful lot of punishment for a mage, is all I’m saying. Before you got by on sheer ball-size, but now you’ve got the Unseen lending you a helping hand. Things are getting unfair.”

“Just how much punishment have I taken? Not sleeping for eight days and a lack of food and water isn’t enough to kill a regular Classer, let alone someone of my level,” Tyron said.

“True. There’s a difference between just experiencing those conditions and working solidly through them. You’d agree with that, right?”

It was a fair point and Tyron nodded, his eyes slipping shut again.

“Then there’s the rest of it,” Dove added.

He pushed himself off the wall just as Tyron sighed, causing the skeleton to freeze.

“It’s almost time to go back,” he said. “I had a month, which is pretty much up. I suppose I need to make arrangements with Ortan and then travel back. I suppose you’ll be going back to Yor. Hopefully she lets you die. Or live, I suppose. Your preference.”

“I’ve been getting tired of doing what I’m allowed. I’m fucking sick of it, to be honest.”

There was real anger in Dove’s voice. A bubbling rage, barely suppressed. It was always there, Tyron knew. Some days he hid it better than others, but much like himself, Dove was always furious.

“That’s fair.”

Another sip of water. Everytime he drank, he watered another parched segment of his throat. The gradual improvement meant he no longer sounded like a teamster who smoked leaf ten times a day. He’d graduated to ‘evening fish-monger’. His voice was still as rough as cheese grater, but it was improving.

“I’ve done what I can for you,” Tyron said. “I know it's still terrible, but I've done the best I could by you.”

Dove didn’t move, but Tyron could see the power blazing in his eyes as he fought with his emotions.

“Maybe ‘your best’ isn’t good enough,” Dove said, his voice flat.

The Necromancer reached out and placed his hand flat on the table in front of him. The trembling was subsiding, but hadn’t faded completely.

His minions were fighting. The realisation struck him after threading its way through the fog, causing him to sit up straight. It was hard to focus, extremely hard. Mentally directing his minions to flood the opponents with numbers, he tried to keep track of their progress. What he received from the undead, the tiny thread of awareness from each one of them, snarled like a tangle of cotton strings in his hands. This wasn’t the right state of mind to direct a fight.

“Shit,” he cursed to himself.

Magick began to pour from him in a steady flow, drawn out by the increased activity of the minions.

“We both know you didn’t really do your best by me, Tyron,” Dove went on. “You did what was convenient. Or is it a coincidence that everything you did to help me, just so happened to help you at the same time?”

More water. Another piece of bread.

Tyron turned to glare at the skeletal frame which housed the soul of his friend.

“You’re right,” he growled, deep in his throat. With his voice as raw as it was, he sounded like a starved wolf. “I’m a selfish piece of shit. I’m focused on one goal, and that goal is not making up for the wrong I did to you.”

The skeleton watched him, silently chewing over the words, his bare jaw working up and down.

“At least you’re prepared to admit it.”

Tyron barked out a harsh laugh.

“I don’t care…”

He coughed, his stomach cramping around the tiny amount of food in his stomach, he hunched over the table and coughed again, pain erupting in his throat. When the fit finally passed, he caught his breath and wiped the sweat from his face. He was in worse shape than he thought.

“Do you really want to do this, Dove?” he asked.

The skeleton took another step toward the table.

“I hate this existence, Tyron. Every second is like having my fingernails ripped out.”

Another step.

“I. Fucking. Hate. It.”

Tyron took a deep breath, and another sip of water.

“And how do you feel about the person who caused it to happen?”

Another step.

“I’m not a fan.”

“Yeah. I thought so.”

Was he talking about Tyron? Or Yor? Or perhaps Dove himself? All three of them bore some responsibility. Tyron suspected the answer was the same for each of those names.

“What did you do to me, Dove?” he asked again, finally.

“Did I ever tell you my third sub-class was herbalist? Never levelled it all that far, but it was a good enough idea. Magickal healing isn’t always available to a slayer team, but areas thick with arcane energy produce all sorts of natural treasures, things that can be made into poultices and the like.”

More magick being pulled away. This attack must have been a big one. Tyron looked down at his hands. Still a hint of movement.

“So you poisoned me?”

“Sure. You ate whatever I put in front of you. It’s not like it was hard.”

Tyron breathed out slowly, then shook his head.

“I really didn’t think you hated me this much.”

Dove laughed, a hysterical edge creeping into his voice.

“At this point, kid, I think I hate everyone. People were never meant to endure what I went through. And why? Why did I go through all that? Because I helped you. I wish every day I’d let you walk into Woodsedge and kept my fucking mouth shut.”

Finally, Tyron noticed the gleaming knife in Dove’s grip.

“One of my butchering knives? Really?”

The skeleton only shrugged.

“You’re a hard fucking prick to kill. The Unseen isn’t lending me any assistance, yet. I’ve got to make do with what I can.”

His stomach roiled again. Whatever he’d been fed, it was a prick of a thing. With a body as tough as his own, it would take something strong to have any sort of effect.

“I suppose Yor is next?” he asked.

“Eventually,” Dove agreed. “It’s going to take a lot of time. Once I finish the status ritual, I’ll have to get a lot of levels. Unlike yourself, she doesn’t trust me at all.”

“And when she’s dead. What happens then?”

Another step. Dove was looming over him now. Tyron had to tilt his head back to look him in the eye.

“Who knows? Maybe I send my spirit into the beyond, with all the pricks who want to keep me here gone. Maybe I take up your mantle and try and kill as many magisters as I can. All I can say for sure is, I’m not going back to that fucking city. When I die, it won’t be because some twisted vampire decided that I could. I’ll go out on my out fucking terms, in my own fucking way. But first, I might indulge myself in a little of that vengeance you seem so caught up in.”

He brought the knife, pointed straight down at Tyron’s chest.

“I have to admit,” he breathed, “it feels pretty fucking good right now.”

The knife plunged down, gleaming in the dim light. Tyron’s hand flashed up to meet it. The blade sank into his palm and pinned it against his chest as the skeleton leaned down with all the strength he could muster.

Where were his revenants? Had they been sent away to fight with the others? What had Dove done?

Tyron’s heart began to thunder in his chest, fear and shock driving the fatigue away as he roared with anger, shoving at the skeletal construct and sending him stumbling away. He tried to push himself up from the chair, but a sharp pain made him realise the knife was still stuck in his palm. When he pulled it out, blood began to gush and his knees wobbled underneath him.

“Fucking. Hell.”

Dove picked himself up.

“I still can’t kill you? Tit’s of the mother, kid. You really are a Steelarm, aren’t you. I guess I’ll have to try again another time.”

“Dove, listen to me. You don’t have to go.”

As much as he wanted to, Tyron wasn’t sure he’d even be able to stand. He needed a bandage for his hand, he was in no condition to be losing blood.

“Oh, I definitely do. I’m not going back, kid. There’s no fucking chance.”

Dove drew himself to his full height.

“If I try to hit you with a spell, it won’t work will it?”

“Of course not,” Tyron shook his head.

“Fucking, prick,” Dove muttered. “If you thought I was going to betray you, why let me stay so close?”

“You deserved a chance,” Tyron said wearily. He’d given up trying to stand. He fumbled in his pack again. There was a roll of medical supplies in there somewhere.

“You’ll probably end up with some sort of dark magick Class. Maybe even Necromancer. You’re close enough to a lich in most of the ways that count,” Tyron said as he wrestled through items with his good hand.

“You’re going to give me advice? I know you’re a little awkward, but read the room.”

“Call it a parting gift.”

He turned back to face his former mentor, face hard as stone.

“No massacres. No slaughter. No wave of zombies across the province. You hear me? The empire will fall down on all of us like a ton of bricks if that starts happening.”

“You’re threatening me? With what?”

“I’ll feed your soul to the Abyss and let them chew on you for eternity. How’s that fucking sound?”

Dove considered a moment.

“That actually works pretty damn well actually. See you around, kid.”

After he was gone, Tyron bandaged up his hand, continued to slowly eat and drink as he recovered. When he finally felt well enough to stand, he staggered out of the cave and found all of his revenants and guards tied up with rope.

Without Tyron consciously ordering them to fight, they’d just let themselves be tied up. Of course. They wanted him dead. The Necromancer just grunted, turned around, and walked into the cave. Whatever he had to deal with, he would deal with after some sleep.

Note: I'm still in two minds about this one. I reserve the right to retcon this chapter next week. I'd planned for the Dove heel-turn, there have been plenty of hints along the way, but I'm still not sure about it.