Book of The Dead
Chapter B5: Lessons and Homework

“This is… quite the piece of work.”

The spectre of what had once been Master Willhem, the greatest Arcanist of the Western Province, ran his bony hands along the sketches Tyron had created. Covered in dense layers of sigils bound tightly in interlocking arrays, it was the most complicated bit of sigil work the Necromancer had ever created.

He wasn’t even sure if it would work.

“The numbers I was dealing with were… challenging,” Tyron was forced to admit. “I’ve done the best I can, but I need to run your ruler over it, if you could, Master Willhem.”

The demi-lich turned his crystal-filled sockets toward his former student. It would have been nice, if there was some flicker of the person he had been before in there, a hint of his irascible nature, his greed, or his pride. However, there was nothing. A demi-lich was a skeleton filled with Arcane Marrow, a red crystal-like growth that bound itself to a soul. Remnants of the old Arcanist’s personality did persist, but they couldn’t be seen through his ‘eyes’.

“You want me to mark your assignment? I haven’t done that for a while.”

Tyron blinked, then coughed. He was tempted to remind his former Master that it was exceedingly rare for him to directly involve himself in the work of his students. While learning at his shop, Tyron had gotten more attention from the Master than most due to his dedication, but even then, Willhem would only give him direct guidance every few weeks.

“Well, I would be grateful. I’m not as familiar with dimensional magick as I should be to work on something like this.”

“Looks like you’ve got a fair handle on it to me,” the demi-lich mused, still running his finger along the sigils on the page. “Although, I may need to speak to another in regards to this matter. Is that acceptable?”

“Someone else? Who?” Tyron was confused. Who would Master Willhem possibly need to consult? The answer came to him the same moment the demi-lich confirmed it.

“Master Halfshard made a detailed study of the sigils related to dimensional magick while she was still a student. If she hadn’t allowed herself to get distracted in such esoteric fields, she would have graduated faster than you.”

Of course it was Master Halfshard. Having seen her work with his own eyes, Tyron knew she was an Arcanist close to the level of Willhem. He had nothing but respect for her skill.

“If you can convince her to look at it, then I would be grateful. She still isn’t my biggest fan.”

“That is putting it mildly,” Master Willhem confirmed. “However, I believe this thing will pique her interest. Where is this dimensional portal supposed to go?”

“The Realm of the Dead,” Tyron said, refusing to hide the truth. “It connects this realm to the Realm of the Dead.”

If a demi-lich were capable of blinking in surprise, Master Willhem would have done so in that moment.

“I… see,” he said finally. He turned his gaze back to the page and looked over the arrays one more time. “Yes, yes I suppose that does make sense. Is this… safe?”

“I don’t know,” Tyron replied, again with total honesty. “But we aren’t capable of holding out against the Empire as we are now. I need a method to get stronger, and this is the best one I can find right now.”

Master Willhem nodded slowly.

“Very well. I will speak to my former student. If she agrees, our work will proceed much faster. Even so, it will take time to create something of this magnitude.”

“It takes as long as it takes. I’ll help myself, as often as I can.”

With that, Tyron reached out a hand, and after a pause, his former Master extended his own. Shaking hands with a skeleton was a delicate process, but even so, there was something humanizing about it. Excusing himself from Willhem’s workshop, he stepped out into the street and thought for a moment.

As people recognised him, they stepped away, giving him space. From fear or respect, Tyron didn’t know, nor did he really care.

Trying to decipher the sigils that would allow travel to the Realm of the Dead had been much harder than he’d expected, even with the help of Dove and Yor. Not that Yor was much help. He’d bargained for her assistance, but if she feigned ignorance of a particular sigil, how was he to know? Despite the difficulties, he’d been able to piece together enough of the theory to finish the work himself.

Then, he’d had to take that theory and try to create a functional ritual that would enable him to make the journey. He’d quickly realised that a simple ritual would not be enough to contain the volume and complexity of magick required to perform this feat. As such, he’d been forced to design enchantments to help supplement the spell, which he wasn’t skilled enough to create himself.

It would take weeks for the work to be done. Even if they rushed, the complexity of the enchanting meant testing would be required and likely significant reworks, not to mention the sheer volume of magick required to complete the cast. The Realm of the Dead was not an easy place to reach, and Tyron honestly felt he was not ready to take on such a challenge, but he was out of options. At most, he could squeeze out another level by sending his skeletons to the plains and sweeping up kin before the Empire returned. He didn’t have enough time for anything more than that.

For now, though, he had things he needed to take care of. First of which, he had a class to teach.

It took a few hours to get his three apprentices free from their own obligations, in which Tyron refreshed himself and took a brief nap. He had promised them a lesson regarding Mysteries after he had awoken at the rift, and he had delayed a long time, distracted by more pressing matters.

Richard, Georg and Briss were busy little bees these days. There was a small army of undead-related workers beneath the ruined temple, experimenting, progressing, teaching and learning to advance the knowledge of their arts. Other than providing his own instructions in the form of his volume of notes, Tyron hadn’t done much direct teaching, rather leaving it to these three to deal with.

Somehow, his apprentices had proven themselves to be an effective team, working with the Necromancers, Bone Smiths, Corpse Weavers, and Spirit Speakers to try and develop a unified art of Necromancy. Tyron had advanced many of these fields himself, crafting with bones, creating undead, forging constructs, communing with spirits, but now he was happy to see how these more focused Classes handled some of these tasks.

In particular, he was keen to see if they disagreed with any of his conclusions. If he was on the wrong path, he would like to be corrected as soon as possible. For now, they were too low level for such a thing to be likely, but eventually it may come to pass.

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The bottleneck was always materials. They needed dead bodies and souls, a lot of them. When people living in the ruined city died, they had the option to donate their remains, and many did, out of gratitude or some other motivation, but that still wasn’t enough.

Briss’ eyes sparkled as she struggled to sit still in her seat. It was clear she was excited for this lesson. In fact, even Richard and Georg were looking unusually enthused. Richard with his pen and paper at the ready, looking at his teacher expectantly, Georg with a straighter posture than usual, eyes focused as if he were about to learn something profound. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t.

There wasn’t much light in Tyron’s sitting room. A relatively small space with a crackling fireplace and four chairs placed around a low table, it was… cozy, and comfortable, but not especially well appointed. Tyron sat himself in his own favourite chair and sighed. His body had become so hardened he almost couldn’t feel the softening of the cushions anymore. There were drawbacks to being too sturdy.

“Alright then,” he said, “Mysteries.”

All three of the students leaned forward eagerly. Tyron shrugged.

“What do you want to know?” he asked them.

The students slumped.

“What do you mean?” Briss demanded. “I thought you were going to teach us about them.”

“Ah, yes,” Richard stumbled. “I was hoping that you… would be… ah… forthcoming?”

What did that even mean?

Georg eyed him a little suspiciously.

“Are you intending to hide something from us? We don’t know anything about Mysteries, so we don’t know what questions to ask.”

Tyron held up his hands.

“No, I’m not trying to hide anything,” he said, raising a brow at Georg, who at least had the decency to look a little embarrassed, “but talking about Mysteries can be… not dangerous… but… unhelpful.”

He leaned back into his chair and looked at each of the three in turn.

“It was my father who first taught me about them,” he said.

Briss, Georg and Richard exchanged glances. Their teacher almost never mentioned his family. Hearing him discuss Magnin and Beory was so rare they could count the number of times he’d said their names where they could hear on the fingers of one hand.

“Magnin Steelarm was… an unfair human being,” Tyron said, thinking back to the days he had trained with his father. “Everything came so naturally to him. It was as if the Unseen loved him more than anyone else. He levelled his abilities so fast, it simply wasn’t fair. He’d go out for an adventure, say ‘I think I’ve figured something out’, then, after an afternoon of swinging his sword behind the house, he’d come in with a grin and announce he’d unlocked a new technique. I can only imagine how maddening it was for anyone who tried to keep up with him.”

He fell silent, lost in the memories. Each of the three students waited, almost not breathing as they listened intently. Tyron shook himself a little.

“Mysteries. Both of my parents had unlocked multiple Mysteries, Magnin more than Beory, which was a sore point with her, but it was proof of just how exceptional they were. I asked him about it when I was young, and his advice was unusually straightforward, so I’ll pass it on to you.”

Tyron folded his hands across the soft robe he was wearing.

“He told me: ‘Nobody can tell you how to get a Mystery, and nobody should try. The only thing anyone knows about them, is that they are linked to the inspiration and insight of the person who receives them’. It didn’t make much sense to me at the time, but now that I have Mysteries of my own, I realised how right he was.

“I can’t tell you how to unlock Mysteries, and if I try, I might do more harm than good. My words might get in the way of your own inspiration and insight, even steal it away from you.”

“So you won’t tell us anything?” Georg asked, eyes ever so slightly narrowed.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want. You just have to ask,” Tyron replied. He clapped his hands together. “So. What do you want to know?”

Then he leaned back again and waited.

His three students didn’t know how to take it at first, each considering. Unsurprisingly, it was Georg who spoke up first.

“What Mysteries do you have?” he asked, almost as a challenge.

“Spell Shaping. Words of Power. Essence of Death. Soul Magick. Magick,” Tyron replied promptly.

There was a stunned silence in the room.

“You have… five?” Briss said weakly.

“I caught up to my mother at the rift,” he said with a slight smile, “though I don’t know how advanced hers were.”

The students' eyes widened. That meant his father…

“Magnin was an unfair person,” Tyron stated again, shaking his head.

He was a lot older than you, Briss thought to herself. You’ve had a Class for less than a decade!

“What’s it like, to receive one?” Richard asked him after a moment of hesitation.

“Well… I wouldn’t say it’s pleasant. The Unseen bestows Mysteries as a reward, for grasping things you shouldn’t have been able to grasp, for pushing yourself beyond the limits it places on all of us. When it happens, it’s usually when you’re exhausted and drained, having just broken through in a meaningful way. Your consciousness will fade and the Unseen will… show you things.”

“Show us things? Like what?”

“Depends on what Mystery you receive. For example, I believe my last vision related to the nature of magick itself, though I haven’t been able to interpret much of what I saw. I imagine it's like seeing an aspect of reality through the eyes of the Unseen. We can’t possibly understand things on the same level, but if we try, we may be able to get close.”

Briss considered that, the spark in her eyes reigniting.

“Does that mean you think the Unseen is a sentient being?”

Tyron waved the question away.

“Don’t get distracted. Talking about the Unseen is pointless and not necessary for this discussion.”

That deflated her a little, but not much. After another moment, she was ready to fire with another question.

“So, without telling us directly what to do, what do you think is the best way for a person to try and receive a Mystery?”

“Good question. First, I believe that pushing yourself to your limit and working half to death on things you don’t fully understand is not a good idea. At all. Not only is it dangerous, I don’t believe working yourself to the bone is even necessary to receive a Mystery. The key ingredient, if I was to say one existed, would be ‘inspiration’. If an idea comes to you, and you cannot let it go, and pursue it to its conclusion, then you have a chance of receiving a Mystery.”

“And the idea has to come from us,” Richard nodded thoughtfully.

“Exactly,” Tyron said, pointing a finger at him. “If I tell you, or even give hints, then can that really be considered your own achievement? Could you really say that the inspiration came from you? I could sit here and give you all sorts of clues as to ways you can try to unlock abilities early, but I’m not convinced you would get them, let alone a Mystery. It’s something that has to come from within.”

They digested that, thinking it over in their own way. It was Georg who spoke next.

“What do they give you? I mean…” he shifted a little uncomfortably, “I’d never even really heard of them before leaving the farm, and I haven’t heard anyone actually describe what they do.”

“It’s a good question,” Tyron nodded. “Mysteries develop in stages, and each stage brings with it a boost in attributes. At the higher stages, these boosts can become quite significant, but that isn’t the real benefit of a Mystery. The real power comes from the granted insight, and the hand of the Unseen.

“By understanding your own breakthrough, and by studying the vision you were granted, it's possible to achieve insight and mastery that others simply cannot. A glimpse into the fundamental nature of a thing can change your entire approach toward that thing, or give you clues that help you walk forward in discovery. Secondly, the hand of the Unseen will weigh behind you, empowering and aiding what you do to an even greater extent than before.”

He looked at the three of them.

“Achieving a Mystery isn’t that hard. I received my first before I even had a Class. What matters is how much you trust your instincts, and how deeply you can reflect on yourself.”

He yawned.

“That’s it. Now go away. I think I need another nap, then I have work to do.”