Chapter B3C41 - Time Changes Everything Except Hatred


    “It feels so damn good to be out of that cold,” Tyron huffed as he shrugged his shoulders and wiggled his toes. His extremities tingled as the blood flow returned.


    “I’ve got no idea what you’reining about,” Dove replied. “I feel… nothing. I’m numb and dead on the inside.”


    “And the outside,” the Necromancer grunted. “I didn’t remember the other side of that rift being that freezing thest time I went through. Did Yor do something to keep me warm?”


    He waited for a few seconds, but Dove remained silent. Tyron turned to stare at him with wide eyes.


    “You’re going to let that go?” he asked, incredulous. “No sex joke, no mention of tits, nothing?”


    Dove lifted his skeletal head and gazed off to the horizon as he scratched at his jaw.


    “You know, Tyron,” he said wistfully, “people can change. It’s wonderful, and terrifying. The human condition, I suppose some call it. We can grow closer together, or further apart with the passage of time. What you knew to be true about me in the past may not be true for me now. I’ve undergone a metamorphosis, a fundamental alteration on a deep, spiritual level.”


    “She threatened you, or offered to free you. I refuse to believe anything else.”


    “Both, actually,” the former Summoner replied, chattering his teeth together foric effect. It was a new habit he’d picked up, Tyron hated it. “She said if I watched my words for a while, she’d let my spirit go when I decide to shuffle off, and said she would stuff my spirit into a urinal if I didn’t.”


    “I’m a little surprised she didn’t go for that in the first ce.”


    “So was I, after she’d mentioned it. I had to ask, of course. She said it would’ve irritated you too much.”


    “Huh.”


    The skeletal army, with its four yer captives, continued its march down the slope toward the burgeoning town of Cragwhistle. Thankfully, no kin had emerged from the rift and overtaken them as of yet, but it was only a matter of time, so the Necromancer was sure to keep himself surrounded with a protective wall of minions.


    “Almost a shame my new armour hasn’t been tested yet,” he said, poking at the greaves wrapped around one forearm. “I put a lot of work into this.”


    “You <em>want</em> to get hit? That’s an interesting position to take.”


    “I don’t actually want to, I’d just like to see how effective the armour is inbat. Testing it myself isn’t the same as fighting in it.”


    “My advice? Put it on someone else and let <em>them</em> take the hits. Not me.”


    Thest was added when Dove noticed the young mage ncing at him askance.


    “I could make you your own set of armour,” Tyron offered. “All you’d have to do is test it out for me.”


    “No thanks,” Dove rebuffed. “I’ve actually got something to live for at the moment, which is a feeling I’d almost forgotten, so fuck off.”


    Tyron grimaced. If Dove was feeling even a little more positive about his situation, that was probably a good thing. However, he couldn’t shake the sense that the man had changed. The heroic yer who’d died protecting him was long gone, twisted by the torment he’d been put through since the end of his natural life. Of course, that wasrgely Tyron’s fault, but his former friend and mentor also bore some of that me.


    “I’ll make you a set anyway. I can probably stash more enchantments for gathering magick on the bone, increase the pool you have to work with.”


    “That’s generous of you,” Dove replied, trying not to sound surprised. “I’d appreciate that.”


    The two continued to walk in silence. Two dozen metres ahead of them, the four yers staggered forward, hands tied behind their backs, fifty undead positioned around them. With time and resources to work with, the Necromancer ss was starting to show its true worth, and he’d ovee the group with rtive ease. Granted, he was above level forty and they were all low twenties, but it was four against one after all.


    He’d been lucky there was only this one team on the mountain. Such a small rift didn’t demand a full time presence of yers like the others, and there was the rather unique position it was situated in, which necessitated the kin take the only avable path down the mountain. The monsters could, of course, travel across country and hazard the cliffs, rock falls and avnches in the barrier mountains, but ny five out of a hundred were sure to take the obvious trail that led to Cragwhistle.


    To the rookie yers posted here, it must have been the easiest assignment they could imagine. Weak rift-kin that funnelled themselves down a narrow path? It was like they were being fed a buffet of experience. The only dangerous part of the assignment was having to climb up and check the rift itself every few days.


    “Apparently, there’s only five teams stationed in Cragwhistle,” Tyron told Dove, “and all of them are bronze, barely graduated.”


    The onyx-skeleton shook his bony head.


    “The yers are always stretched pretty thin, mainly because the strongest are ‘encouraged’ to live in that birdcage. If things get any worse, the magisters might be forced to relinquish their grip and let more golds go out to y. In the absence of a move like that, a remote location like this is always going to be a low priority.”


    “I’d always heard that the yer keeps closest to Kenmor were better staffed than ces like Woodsedge. Undermist, ckrift and Reynold, for the most part.”


    “I spent a summer in Undermist, not long after I was out of the academy. I thought every keep was like that. How naive.”


    When Cragwhistle came into view, Tyron had to stop for a second and take it in. Viewed from above, the town was barely recognizable from what it had been before. A stout wall of stone stood barring the mountain path, but it wasn’trge enough to conceal the new buildings behind. The small vige had grown to perhaps five times the size it had upied before, dozens and dozens, perhaps over a hundred chimneys peeking out of houses withzy trails of smoke rising where there had been perhaps two in the past. It beggared belief that this could happen in just a few years.


    Elsbeth had tried to tell him, but he hadn’t really believed her.


    “Holy shit,” he muttered under his breath.


    After he took in the sight, he undid the binding that held his armour to his frame and had his skeletons collect theponents before he stepped down the mountain to the four yers. Clearly, Trenan was the leader, so it was to him Tyron addressed himself.


    “I’m going to hold you here, away from the vige… town… until I’ve spoken to a few people. Don’t try anything stupid; just because I’m not here doesn’t mean I’m not watching.”


    Freed from his control, the swordswoman and battlemage looked up at him sullenly, but they were the least likely to act out. Having one’s mind dominated was not a pleasant feeling, and had he wished, Tyron could have imnted all sorts of suggestions. They did not want to experience that again.


    “You’ll get home safe and sound,” he promised them, “so long as you aren’t stupid. If you are…”


    With a thought, he summoned a revenant, his first, to stand watch over the four.


    “You wouldn’t be the first yer who was made to serve after death. Do you understand me?”


    “We get it,” Trenan said.


    Most of the bluster had gone out of him now. This was a young man doing his best to lead his team, only neen or twenty years old. It almost made Tyron feel old.


    When he turned to stride down the mountain, he found a skeleton jauntily walking beside him, bouncing on his bony heels.


    “Dove…”


    “Oh fuck off! You’re going to keep me out of town?”


    “Of course I am. You’re a skeleton. Hell, you aren’t even a skeleton, you’re a ghost clinging to a facsimile of a skeleton!”


    “And?”


    “And people will not respond well if I approach the wall with you traipsing along by my side. Sit tight and <em>wait</em>. Perhaps I’ll be able to get you inside the walls at some point, but by my bones and blood, it isn’t now!”


    The skeleton threw up his hands and petntly kicked a stone.


    “Fine! But I’m going to go annoy the shit out of the captives.”


    <em>Good. They’ll hate you more than they hate me.</em>


    “Whatever makes you happy.”


    So saying, he began his descent down the final few hundred metres. The wall was much better built than he’d initially supposed. Solid blocks of stone, each well-carved and evenlyid, with good, solid mortar in between. Whoever’d done the work clearly had levels and expertise in this sort of thing. Perhaps they were also the individual responsible, or at least one of them, for all the new construction.


    It didn''t take long before Tyron was spotted by people atop the wall. Not yers, at least, he didn’t think so. Vigers keeping watch, armed with simple bows called out to him when he was still a hundred metres away. Unperturbed, he held his hands above his head and kept walking until he stood before the solid gate, four faces peering down at him.


    “Greetings,” he called up to them.


    “How in the name of fuck did you get up the mountain?” a bewildered-looking older man called down to him. “I’ve been ‘ere all day and I aven’t seen hide nor hair of ya.”


    “I need to talk to Ortan. He’s expecting me. Can you send him out?”


    “Ortan?”


    The four consulted each other in hushed tones before the old man stuck his head over the edge of the wall again.


    “What do you need to talk to Ortan for?”


    “I’m a friend of Elsbeth Renner. She sent me with a message for him.”


    “The priestess? You know her?”


    “For a long time.”


    The man squinted.


    “‘Old tight. We’ll send a runner for ‘im.”


    “Much appreciated.”


    “Stay where I can see ya.”


    “I’ll just take a seat on this rock if you don’t mind.”


    “‘Aight.”


    It took twenty minutes before there was movement atop the wall and Tyron saw a familiar face poke over the edge.


    “Fuck!” Ortan half-shouted.


    “Nice to see you too.”


    Not long after, Tyron found himself seated in a well-appointed tavern, though not to his uncle’s standards, sipping on a mug of ale as his old acquaintance stared at him from across the table.


    “I told her you were alive, you know,” Ortan said atst, the big man looking slightly ridiculous hunched over the table, trying to speak quietly. “I’m not sure she ever really believed me.”


    “Elsbeth? She probably knew from the start, given who her sources are.”


    The townsman scowled and took a deep pull on the mug, casting a wary nce at the people on the tables around them. Compared to when he wasst in Cragwhistle, the mood was almost positive, with cheerful faces andughter echoing around the room. There was even a bard, or musician, more likely, plucking jaunty tunes on a lyre and singing. It was such a baffling difference it almost felt surreal.


    “I’m not as positive about those ‘sources’ as a lot of the people in town,” Ortan said. “Seems to me almost everyone who’se in over thest few years is a member of a group I didn’t know existed not that long ago.”


    “There doesn’t seem to be much point in fighting it,” Tyron said, “considering who you’re up against. <em>What</em> you’re up against. If they want people toe here, then people wille. And they have; I can’t believe what’s happened here since I left.”


    “Since you ‘died’, you mean,” the man said sarcastically before he brushed his hair back from his forehead and leaned back in his chair. “It’s been a shitload of work, I can tell you that much. Feels like we’ve been bnced on a wire the whole time, but somehow things have had a way of working out when we needed them to. Enough food to make do, enough materials to get the next house built, enough wood to get us through the winter, the right tradespeople wandering into town at the right moment.”


    “Sounds like you have friends in high ces,” Tyron smirked.


    Ortan slumped forward.


    “That’s what Elsbeth implied, but she would nevere out and say it quite so directly.”


    The Necromancer shrugged.


    “I don’t have her manners.”


    “You aren’t going to be able to hide your presence here, you know.”


    The huge man leaned forward to whisper again.


    “All these people, they’ve been waiting for a Ne—for someone like you toe. They’ve been expecting it, said that their friends upstairs told them you would keep them safe.”


    It was Tyron’s turn to scowl.


    “It’s not like I can stay here and protect them from the rift forever. Besides, they have yers for that already.”


    “I don’t think that’s the kind of protection they’re talking about.”


    He nced around and Tyron almost rolled his eyes at how obviously conspiratorial the man was being. Someone thisrge shouldn’t try and act so circumspect. He may as well have hung a side over the table saying ‘These men have secrets’.


    “There’s a magister in town,” Ortan breathed. “Came two months back, after Elsbeth left.”


    Hot, burning anger ignited in Tyron’s chest, scorching his throat. He clenched his teeth and found his fists had tightened into knots. Slowly, slowly, he eased the tension, tamped the fire down. It wasn’t yet time. He had to be cautious.


    “Just the one?” he confirmed, and Ortan nodded.


    “He’s beenmunicating by ro’w?” he asked, and again, the big man nodded.


    Tyron sat back, his chin on his chest, pondering. After a minute, he looked up again, smouldering rage in his eyes.


    “I’ll need to meet this magister,” he growled.