Chapter B2 - Epilogue

Chapter B2 - Epilogue

Hours passed and still, the young Necromancer sat, unbelieving, as he stared at the rapidly cooling corpses of his parents. It didn’t seem real. It couldn’t be real.

Magnin and Beory Steelarm were invincible, immovable presences in his life. The thought that they might die had never even entered his head. To his mind, they were functionally immortal, regularly entering the most dangerous places imaginable and leaving with hardly a scratch.

The sight of their still and lifeless bodies refused to register and his brain froze. He was dimly aware of his skeletons coming to life around him as his magick slowly replenished. They may have even fought off some rift-kin as he sat unmoving, he couldn’t be sure.

Hours later, he gathered enough of himself to turn, muscles aching from lack of activity, and he grasped his mother's pack, fumbling it open with shaking hands to find the note she had left him.

He read it through five times.

Despite the evidence before his eyes, he still couldn’t make himself acknowledge what had happened. Despite the note, which he read over and over, it couldn’t force the knowledge that his parents had died to sink into his head.

He was still struggling with it when night fell.

“They knew from the beginning it was going to end like this,” Yor said from behind him.

Tyron turned his hollow stare onto the vampire, and she met his eyes evenly.

“You were working for them,” he rasped, his voice hoarse, as if he’d been screaming in his own throat for hours.

Her dark eyes softened imperceptibly.

“We were working with them. It was Magnin and Beory who arranged for me to accompany you, and they who paid the price for my assistance. My mistress had her own reasons for sending me, of course.”

Tyron nodded.

He still couldn’t feel anything, as if the emotions had been blasted out of him. Almost against his will, his eyes moved to flick back to the corpses on the ground. He stilled them. Looking at those lifeless bodies wouldn’t help. Nothing would help.

Yor gestured to the letter.

“Your mother has written of the arrangements, yes? The archer is already stumbling her way back down the mountain. She will testify to your death at the hands of your parents.”

So Magnin and Beory would go down in history as murdering their own son. Apparently, he was a wanted criminal and a threat to the empire, so they’d continue to be heroes in the eyes of the people.

Which... for some reason... ignited a slow-burning fury in Tyron’s gut.

The silence dragged out, and for a moment, even Yor looked discomfited. Tyron’s eyes were dead, his posture slumped, yet he radiated a cold anger that manifested as his fingers curled and uncurled into fists, the knuckles whitening as he clenched.

The arrangements.

They had planned everything out for him so well... given him as much time as they could manage, letting him gain power, so that he could stand on his own when they were gone. It was all there on the page. If he followed their instructions, he would live a quiet and anonymous life, free of the brand, free of control.

The freedom they had always been denied in their own life, they had bought for him.

He’d have to hide, of course, but they’d arranged that for him as well. Experts who could produce fake status documents, corrupt officials that would look the other way and let him settle.

You choose, they’d written, you get to choose.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do yet?”

Tyron ignored her. There was still so much to do.

In fact, he remained on the mountain for a week. He took his time, prepared his spells meticulously, took notes, raised his new minions with care.

On the third day, he went down to the village and spoke to Ortan, informed the man of what had happened and traded for supplies. The villager was shaken as Tyron told him of the Slayers dead on the mountain, and the mammoth rift-kin he had slain.

He begged Tyron to remain and protect them, refugees from the plains had arrived, and they needed help more than ever. The Necromancer refused, told him when he would leave and turned away.

Slayers would come to protect them eventually, he no longer felt compelled to be a shield for these people. He benefited from the experience the rift-kin fed him, but that was all.

For the remainder of the week, he worked, studied and rested.

In many ways, it was the idyllic existence he had always craved. Time to examine his Class, time to think on his spells and experiment. He learned a great deal in that time, putting the opportunity to good use, but he found no satisfaction in it.

The more time that passed, the more the cold anger in his belly burned brighter. The anger burned any pleasure he might have felt to ash, incinerated the joy he might have felt.

Magnin and Beory were dead. It was the divines that had killed them.

Oh, they had acted through their puppets, the nobility, and they through theirs, the Magisters, but it was clear where the fault truly lay. Tyron didn’t know how he could possibly seek revenge against the gods, he didn’t know how to reach them, or how to hurt them if he did. Even the nobles were beyond his reach, protected by layer after layer of law, privilege, soldiers and Slayers. The Magisters too were difficult to reach, able to control every person who fought against the kin using the brand.

But he would reach them. It would take time, a great deal of time, but he would reach them. What had happened on this mountain, what had happened to his family, wouldn’t be allowed to stand.

Tyron didn’t know how, but he was going to throw down everyone who had done this and grind them beneath a skeletal heel.

When the week was done, he met with Yor under the full moon.

“I’ve decided,” he said.

A smile split her face in half, revealing her fangs.

“And I take it you haven’t chosen to live a quiet and reserved life?”

“No,” he said shortly.

Her grin widened, which he hadn’t thought was possible.

“I’d hoped you’d say that. So, you want passage through the rift?”

“I do.”

“Well then.” She reached out a hand for him to take. “Shall we?”

That night, he performed the status ritual once more, confirmed his choices, and stepped into the rift, the vampire by his side.

In his hand, he held his bedraggled book of notes, a tome that would come to be known and feared across the realm as the Book of the Dead.New novel chapters are published on