“This is more like what I was expecting. A true shit-hole. Something dank and dripping. You’ve come back up in my eyes, Tyron. I knew you still had that filthy, cave-dwelling creep inside you.”

“Dove…”

“No, seriously. I’m fucking proud of you. You didn’t let the wealth or the luxury get to your head. You knew who you were, deep down, and created a stinking basement filled with bones and guts like the troglodyte you are. I’d applaud, but for obvious reasons, I won’t.”

Tyron sighed and placed the skull down on his table before he placed the grimoire next to Dove and slumped into his chair.

“How many skeletons do you have down here? You’ve been getting busy! Hope you aren’t killing them all yourself. I do have to say, it’s nice not to be stuck hanging off some dickhead’s… dick. I’ve seen some shit recently, Tyron. Some dark, dark shit.”

“Dove,” Tyron said, more insistently.

“What?” the skull replied, begrudgingly, his previous, familiar, lively and sarcastic tone vanished.

“We need to talk. Now that you’re here, we need to work out–”

“Work out what? Huh? Work out what?! What to do with me? Go on then, tell me what you’re thinking. What are we going to do here?”

The flip from normal Dove to this anger was so immediate the Necromancer didn’t know how to respond for a moment, but he pressed forward. Of course his friend was angry, who wouldn’t be in his circumstances?

“Yor is gone, it’s just you and me here right now. I can smash your skull and you can be free again. Go on to your… afterlife. Finally.”

“IT’S NOT THAT EASY, DIPSHIT!”

The voice of the spirit roared throughout the basement and Tyron winced, hoping his sound dampening enchantments were up to the task. Thankfully, his mentor restrained himself before he spoke again.

“If you tried to free my soul, what do you think would happen? Yor would just swoop in and bring me back again. She pretty much told me so on the way over here.”

As he spoke, some of the bitterness and despair that the former-summoner had kept locked deep inside began to leak out. His was a miserable existence, and had he been alive, he had no doubt madness would have claimed him by now.

“That doesn’t mean she would succeed,” Tyron insisted. “If we can find a way, we can move you on before they get hold of you. Or I can conceal the fact that you’re gone long enough that they lose their chance.”

“Kid… just… don’t. Fucking. Don’t. You’ve got no chance of winning when you go against the vampires and you fucking know it. They’ve been doing this shit for thousands of years. You’re smart, Selene’s tits, you’ve got the fucking gift, but we both know they can run circles around you when it comes to controlling the dead.”

It was true, of course it was. That was the entire reason why he’d been so desperate to get his hands on their secrets all this time. To his knowledge, they were the most knowledgeable and powerful masters of the Necromantic arts, not only in this realm, but in all of them.

Tyron slumped, defeated. He glanced across at the book sitting flat on his table.

“I’m willing to bet that book contains precisely the opposite spells to those I would need to set you free.”

“That’s a fool's bet. It’s basically a guarantee. In fact, I’d go further and say they’ve done everything they can to ensure what they gave you is of as little use as possible. Need to keep stringing you along, edging, but never letting you finish.”

“You didn’t need to say it in quite those terms….”

“Sorry, I’ve been unliving in a brothel for the last year.”

Suddenly sure that he was right, Tyron reached over and flicked open the cover of the volume, turning over the heavy black cover and looking at the first page.

“On the binding and domination of spirits and the dead,” he read aloud, then sighed. “Yep.”

He flicked a few more pages.

“And of course, all the sigils are written in some ancient vampiric bullshit.”

“She said the book had come from her Mistress’s collection, it’s probably a thousand fucking years old and certainly didn’t originate from this plane.”

“I don’t think this is just a case of using different symbols to represent each sigil,” Tyron muttered, flicking through a few more pages, frowning. “I think they’re using a different form of spell-structure entirely.”

“And you only get a month to try and decipher any of it,” Dove barked a laugh. “Pricks.”

Tyron grimaced. He could do it in that sort of time frame, though it would consume his every waking hour. And even then, he wouldn’t be able to decipher all of it. If there were sigils in the book that he didn’t know in his own system, then how was he supposed to interpret them? And even if he did, nothing he learned would help Dove, which was his primary concern at that moment.

He leaned forward and buried his face in his hands, trying to think.

“There has to be something we can do to help you die. I refuse to let you keep suffering like this.”

“Look… kid. I hate being like this, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve reached the point that I’ve kind of given up on being able to escape. This is the problem you run into when you get involved with Necromancers. Especially when you get on their bad side. You can’t fucking die! I’m guessing that prick Rufus is still hanging around somewhere, am I right?”

Without lifting his head, Tyron nodded slightly.

“Hah! I knew it. And the girl as well?”

He hesitated this time, but nodded again.

“Fuckers. They deserve it. For a while, anyway. Look, I’m pissed. I’m pissed at you for bringing me back the first time, I’m pissed at myself for being such an idiot around Yor, and I’m absolutely pissed at her for bringing me back again. We had a tearful goodbye and all that shit, it was perfect! Then she decided she couldn’t let my comments slide and had to fuck with me, and not in a good way! But… although I’m pissed, I’m kind of resigned to it. I’m stuck like this now, and will be for a long fucking time. At this point, I’m just hoping that she’ll remember to let me go eventually.”

A miserable way for a soul who’d done more for him than almost any other to end.

“So I won’t bother trying to kill you,” Tyron relented. “You’re almost certainly right, there’s likely no point in it. I’m sorry, Dove.”

“Tyron, I’ve heard your apologies way too many times. They don’t matter anymore. They don’t help. I’m just going to ignore how unrelentingly shit this all is as best as I can until I’m finally set free.”

It was a hard thing to hear, but he nodded, accepting it.

“I just wish… I could still do my magick,” the spirit trapped within the skull mused, wistfully. “I really loved it, you know? Not like, physically, but I enjoyed studying and expanding my knowledge. The Slayers I worked with would sternly deny it, but I was serious about that, at least.”

Yet another thing Dove endured because Tyron had taken it away from him. Yet another blow to his heart. The Necromancer’s chin dropped to his chest.

Then he lifted it again.

“Wasn’t Arihnan the Black dead?”

“Uh, yes? He’s been dead for a thousand fucking years! Took everything beyond the boundary mountains down with him, as I recall my history.”

“Wait, what? I thought Granin fell much later?”

“Well, yeah, but having half your fucking empire ravaged by Undead isn’t exactly great for your longevity. They hung in there for a while, but eventually fell to the kin. The paths through the mountains were lost shortly after, and nobody’s been back over there since.”

Tyron shook his head.

“That wasn’t what I was talking about. You’ve obviously read more than me, but as far as I know, descriptions of the Necromancer describe him as skeletal, like, actual bones.”

“Well, of course. He was a lich, an undead magick user. You know about this shit, kid. Some undead can still use magick, like the vampires.”

“But Arhinan started out as a person?”

“Yyyess? So?”

“Just like you.”

“Again, so?”

“So you can use it too!”

“No I fucking can’t. Oh no. Shit. No. Tyron, I know that look in your eye. Fucking STOP, right now.”

Tyron felt his heart quickening in his chest as his eyes began to flick from side to side rapidly, ideas cascading through his head.

“You can’t use magick because you don’t have a source. Of course you don’t, the source is a physical thing, a part of our body, which you don’t have, but what if we made one?”

“Kid, I am not your test dummy.”

But Tyron wasn’t listening. He sprang up from his chair and began to pace back and forth.

“Any lich must have an alternate way to collect and store magick. I know wild liches exist, but without studying one, I can’t work out how they do it. Arihnan, though… he had to create his own when he transitioned to unlife. He had to. I’ve been experimenting with repositories for exactly this purpose, funnelling energy into an undead vessel. Now your case is a little unique, but it should be possible. I can create a matrix that stores magick easily enough, that’s just basic, but finding a way to connect it to your spirit…. That’s harder.”

“This fucking kid….”

Dove knew what was going to happen next. The crazy was taking over, he could already see it.

“Fuck me.”

“If I can bind your spirit to a skull, then surely I can bind a repository of power to your spirit. I just… I just….”

The kid carried on mumbling to himself as he paced back and forth, his arms tracing vague lines in the air, his hands flashing through seemingly random sigils as he pondered what sequence might bring him the result he desired. This was exactly the look on his face Dove had awoken to when he’d first found himself locked inside his own skull. The same expression he’d had when he created his first revenant.

Can’t get any fucking worse, Dove thought to himself, resigned to his plight, but, shockingly, the kid turned to him, a hint of lucidity returning to his gaze.

“Do you want me to try this?” Tyron asked.

Dove was so shocked it took him a moment to reply.

“W-what?” he stuttered.

Tyron stormed to the table and stared directly into the glowing orbs within the hollow sockets of the carved skull.

“I won’t try this without your permission. I may succeed, I may not, but if I do, you’ll have access to magick again.”

“I really didn’t think you were going to ask me.”

“I like to think I’ve matured.”

“Nice to see.”

There was a long, drawn out pause.

“Dove?”

“I’m fucking thinking, damn you! Give me a second.”

“Look. I’m not sure if you’ll be able to use your Summoning magick anymore, and I have no idea if or how the Unseen will interact with you in this state. All of this is unknown, so yes, you would be the experimental case and that’s shit for you. But, I’m confident, Dove. If the two of us work together, we can figure it out.”

The trapped spirit thought a little longer.

“I’ll only agree if you promise to try and fix me up with a body as well. I want hands and legs, for fuck’s sake.”

“That’s… tricky. But sure. I’ll do my best.”

“And a dick.”

“No.”