Yor couldn’t sense Tyron inside his little shop, which was usually a sure sign he was locked in his basement, fussing over bones and running experiments. It would have been amusing, watching him struggle to unlock even the most basic knowledge she had been taught in the first year of her apprenticeship, but it wasn’t; she knew what kind of mind was housed in that skull.

Still, it would be years before he could build his knowledge to the point where she couldn’t consider herself better in the Necromantic arts.

She was tempted, if only slightly, to enter the shop and make a show of herself, but decided against it. There was no need to antagonise him, especially when he’d been so testy lately. She sighed. That meant she would need to infiltrate his ‘study’. A trivial exercise, to someone with her talents, but it meant entering the sewers, which she was reluctant to do.

After a moment of concentration, Yor felt her senses expand, until every whisper became a shout, every glint of light a jagged beam in her eye, even the touch of the air on her dead skin felt oppressive. After a few seconds of searching, she relaxed, allowing everything to return to normal.

She walked around the corner and down the street until she came across what she had been searching for, a sewer grate, used by the maintenance crews to enter the tunnels. Through the small gaps in the metal plate, she could already smell the stench below, which caused her to grimace with distaste. She could go through the shop and break the protections on the hidden entrance….

Tyron would be incensed….

With a final sigh, Yor stepped into the gathering shadows between market stalls and melded with the shadows. A moment later, a thick trail of blood oozed across the ground with gathering speed, falling into the drain and out of sight.

When she arrived in the basement and began to reform her body, she’d hoped for a strong reaction to her dramatic reveal. Doubtless, the boy had been wrestling with the tome she had given him, a valuable text for someone of his level, if he could interpret it. She expected a weary and bedraggled Tyron to turn and exclaim at the mysterious pillar of blood that slowly resolved itself into her glorious form.

When her eyes were whole, what she saw was rather different than expectations.

Rather than weary and bedraggled, Tyron appeared like a madman, unshaven and filthy, wearing soiled clothing, his hair a mess of gnarled golden locks and eyes almost completely bloodshot. Instead of carefully translating the sigils of the vampires, he was engaged in a furious argument with… a hand. The Necromancer was throwing his arms around the place, pointing and yelling while the hand darted back and forth and made rude gestures at him.

Dove was positioned nearby, sitting on the table, apparently talking also? What were they doing?

Her ears were completed a few seconds later and she was treated to their… stimulating discourse.

“That’s not how it works, you donkey,” Tyron bellowed, throwing his arms in the air once more. “The transfer isn’t lossless, regardless of what you think you see. I can detect the residue through the lens and you fucking know it!”

“Would you just listen to me, you cockless wonder! I know it isn’t lossless, alright? I fucking know that. What I’m saying, is that we are talking a fraction of a percent! That much shouldn’t matter, it can be safely ignored!”

“We have to find efficiencies! YES, even here! Just because the loss is small doesn’t mean it can’t be reduced or eradicated!”

“You’re just a fucking perfectionist! Let it go!”

“Yes I am, and no I won’t!”

“Am I… interrupting, something?” Yor drawled once her vocal chords had reformed.

Tyron turned to see the still congealing mass of vaguely Yor-shaped blood in the corner of his study and blinked.

“Oh, hey Yor. Has it been a month already?” he began to fumble around on the table for the volume. “Where did I put that book?” he muttered, blinking owlishly.

That was it? She definitely felt her display deserved more of a reaction than that!

“Good to know your security is so lacking that any undead can simply materialise inside your private sanctum without you even noticing,” she observed acidly.

“What?” he replied absently, still shifting things on his desk, “oh. Security. I have wards in the sewers around here specifically for undead. I knew you were coming five minutes ago. Sorry I didn't greet you properly, I was… distracted.”

The oaf snickered and she glared at the carved skull on the table.

“I see our time apart has relaxed your manners. It won’t take long for that mistake to be corrected.”

“I’ve learned a couple of things over the last month, I think you'll be impressed with my progress. Like this: Death Bolt!”

A blast of magick flew from the hand on the table toward her, shocking the vampire to the point she almost didn’t react. Thankfully, her speed was more than a match to the task and she slapped the spell down with the flat of her hand.

“What was that?!” she demanded of Tyron, and infuriatingly, he turned back to face her and said: “what?”

“That cretin,” she declared, pointing imperiously at the skull, “just attacked me with a spell!”

Tyron pinched his brow and groaned.

“For fuck’s sake, Dove. You promised me you wouldn’t do that.”

“I was tempted beyond my means to resist!”

“No, none of your bullshit, I’m disconnecting the hand.”

“What! That’s bullshit.”

The Necromancer ignored his protests, at which point, the skeletal hand on the desk leapt up onto its fingertips and tried to skitter across the table, but Tyron dove on it and muttered a few words as he tinkered with something. Instantly, the hand fell motionless and he placed it back on the table.

“I’m really sorry about that, Yor, I warned him not to do anything stupid, but between you and me, I’m pretty sure he’s gone insane being locked in that skull.”

“Is he the only one who’s gone insane?” she asked him, pointedly looking him up and down.

The young mage followed her gaze, uncomprehending, before he gave an embarrassed cough and plucked at this filthy clothes.

“Oh, this. Yes, it’s been… busy… over the last month. I do have to thank you for the book, though, it’s been… exceptionally helpful. If only I could… ah! Aha! I knew I put it somewhere.”

He shuffled across the room and picked up Dove, who squawked in protest, to reveal the vampire text had been sitting under the skull, propping him up slightly. Tyron brandished the bound volume triumphantly.

“Here it is. Thank you very much for providing this, it was incredibly informative. If you get a chance, pass on my appreciation to Master Hikaari. Really insightful and clearly presented ideas.”

The words were distinguished, but they came from such a dishevelled and wild looking frame that she almost laughed at the incongruity.

“So you translated it, then?” she asked, a little surprised.

“Oh, a good chunk of it, I suppose. The useful bits. I copied a lot of it, I can figure the rest out later.”

“Oh? I thought you might struggle a little more with the vampiric runes.”

Tyron blinked. Blinked again.

“Ah, that’s right. That was the point, wasn’t it? I was supposed to have a hard time cracking it, extracting only a little information after painstaking effort and then giving it back.”

“We wouldn’t be that cruel,” Yor smirked.

“Yes you would.”

He didn’t even sound upset about it. The words were delivered flat and without emotion, stating the reality in concrete terms.

“That’s probably what would have happened if I didn’t find that script in Dove’s skull. Reverse engineering that gave me almost two dozen sigils that I could turn around and apply to the book. It’s like picking at a particularly gruesome knot,” he plucked at the air vaguely with his fingers, “once you manage to get a few threads, the rest unravels much more easily.”

She turned her eyes to Dove, placidly silent on the bench.

“You found what? What have you done?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I linked a power array to the matrix you put in the skull to feed him death magick. Then I used the information in the book to start binding his soul to a body. We managed to get the hand connected, but I’m trying to find a more efficient way to do it, since there’s a bit of energy loss and there isn’t really any reason why there should be.”

“It’s normal in magick to expect some energy loss,” Dove scoffed. “You just need to get over it.”

“I won’t accept loss I can’t explain,” Tyron shot back, red eyes glaring.

“I could have been dancing around with a full skeletal body by now if it weren’t for this dickhead,” Dove sighed. “Even having a hand to move was incredible.”

“And you did all this… in a month?” Yor asked.

Tyron looked abashed.

“Well, I had to manage my experiments and make sure the shop was stocked. That’s probably why I look like such a wildman. I haven’t slept in… Dove?”

“Five days.”

“Shit.”

The vampire looked at him sideways.

“You know… the undead do not need to sleep. If you shed the confines of your mortality, you could be so much more.”

“Oh, this again. Wait, don’t you sleep everytime the sun is up?”

“Not… technically.”

What the vampires experienced was closer to torpor than sleep.

“But there are other forms of undead, if you do not wish to be a vampire. You aren’t far away from transforming Dove into a lich. The same process could be undertaken for you. Only much more sophisticated.”

He grimaced.

“No thanks. And I wouldn’t consider Dove anything close to a proper lich. He has a trickle of power available to him, and no access to the Unseen. How do you manage that? Being dead? Well, I suppose you have access to blood, don’t you?”

The Necromancer rubbed at his eyes and sighed.

“I’m sure there’s a way to do it. There wouldn’t be any point to becoming a lich if you could no longer progress in the eyes of the Unseen. Any hints or clues, Yor?”

She smiled and shook her head, her raven black hair waving softly against her neck.

“I will only say that it is, in fact, possible. To give away such a powerful secret for free, however… I cannot allow it.”

“I figured. Well, here’s your book. And here’s Dove.”

“Hey!”

The spirit protested as Tyron plucked him from the bench and presented him to Yor along with the tome.

“I’d appreciate it if you could bring him back again sometime soon,” he said, “as difficult as it is to have him around, it’s very useful to have another Mage to talk to and help figure this stuff out.”

He hesitated.

“Besides, he’ll probably drive you nuts if you keep him around for too long. Having access to magick has made him a little bit… unbalanced.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said wryly, shaking her head.

Even when she thought she knew what he was capable of, he continued to surprise her. This was definitely someone worth keeping close to the Court.

“I’ve little doubt that Dove fully intends to make a nuisance of himself so that I feel compelled to be rid of him,” she said, talking to both of them, “so rather than squash his feeble efforts, I will instead offer to return him to you next month. As long as he behaves.”

Tyron looked pleased, but then glanced down at the skull and shrugged.

“Well, that’s up to him. I can’t make him behave.”

“I’m not a child,” Dove huffed.

Yor and Tyron looked down at him incredulously.

“I just act like one to annoy people,” the skull admitted. “It usually works.”

“You don’t fucking say. Thanks, Yor. I’ll see you in a month, then.”

“Weren’t you coming to our regular catchup in two weeks?” she asked, arching her brow.

He slumped.

“Can’t we just talk here and now? Or in a month?”

“Absolutely not. We have an arrangement. The conditions must be met.”

“Fine,” he relented, then stumped toward the stairs. “I suppose you can see yourself out, then? I’m going to bed.”