Chapter B5: Many Places at Once
Within the Ossuary, a demi-lich stood over the altar, channeling dark magick into the meticulously prepared bones before it. What had once been the Grand Magister of the Red Tower, Tommat Baln, a gold ranked mage who had devoted his life to overseeing the work of his brothers and the management of the Slayer problem, was now a skeletal husk, serving at the command of another.
Indeed, it wasn’t even him casting this ritual.
Power surged through his bones as his hands danced in the air and words of power rocked the chamber, but he was not in control. His master used him like a puppet, controlling his every movement, even seizing his voice from him, leaving Tommat with no choice but to act as a spectator to his own body, what was left of it, as it cast magick well beyond what he was capable of on his own.
Power flooded into the bones before him, and through them into the numerous recesses carved into the walls around the chamber. The workings of the ritual were intricate and refined, but it was difficult for even a mage of Baln’s experience to try and unravel the sequences that made up its construction. Through him, Tyron blazed through the spell, gestures and words flowing thick and fast, shaping the magick at a dizzying pace.
A level of precision and mastery that Baln had never truly believed was possible.
When at last the ritual was completed, his hands lowered to his side and, after a moment, he felt Tyron’s will recede from him, leaving Tommat in control of himself once more. After over a year of this unliving existence, he thought he would feel tired, feel drained and exhausted, but he didn’t, he barely felt anything at all. He didn’t feel cold or warmth, didn’t feel the touch of the air on his skin or the breath in his lungs. His body was not capable of such things any longer.
A creature of bone and arcane marrow, he felt little connection to the mundane world at all. Instead, he was a creature of death and magick. Even his eyes no longer perceived as they once did, everything he saw now wreathed in ethereal mist. He reached out with his two hands, no longer flinching when he saw the bone digits, and grasped the staff that had been planted before the altar.
A work of incredible artistry, created by Master Willhem himself, the staff was something he couldn’t have hoped to afford in his life, as the precious materials that had been poured into it would have made even a noble lord balk. Carefully, he took it to the corner of the chamber and placed it on its stand before he returned to the altar.
The skeleton that had been lying there was now standing beside it. Along the walls, the other skeletons had emerged from their recesses and now stood, silent and waiting, their eyes burning with the same purple light that filled his own skull.