“You want… how many?”

Filetta raised her brows, looking mildly shocked, though he never knew if any show of emotion was genuine with her.

“Speaking honestly…”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” she flashed him a grin.

“... I’ll take as many as you are willing to give me, but I believe double our prior arrangement will be sufficient for my needs.”

That would be twenty full sets of remains every two weeks.

“And the additional loose bones as well,” he added.

Those were necessary for him to create the weapons and armour needed to outfit his minions.

“Just how many people do you think die in this city every week?” she asked him, a hint of exasperation creeping through her facade.

“That’s the wrong question. It doesn’t matter how many die, it only matters how many die, and leave accessible remains.”

No matter how many wealthy store owners, high-level traders or slayers died, none of their bones would wind up on a stone slab in Tyron’s study. They would be privately buried or cremated, without the opportunity for Filetta’s organisation to get their hands on them.

“Luckily for you, poor people die at a much faster rate than the rich. Even so, you’re asking us to vanish hundreds of corpses a year. Doing so is one thing, doing so without arousing suspicion is another.”

“I’m only interested in whether you will do it, or if you won’t. If the answer is yes, then we can discuss the price.”

“You’re willing to renegotiate?”

It was Tyron’s turn to frown.

“Isn’t that what you’ve been angling for this entire conversation? Let us be direct with each other. I will increase the price by twenty percent per delivery. Is that satisfactory?”

Filetta chewed her lip as she watched him carefully.

“That’s acceptable to us. However, there are… other concerns, which need to be addressed.”

This was news to Tyron. After their initial agreement had been reached, her side of the arrangement had been quiet, to say the least. After bringing him hundreds of dead bodies, now they had concerns?

“It seems somewhat late to be raising any issues,” he said.

“Better late than never. We don’t care what you do with the merchandise, only that they are disposed of in a manner that can’t be traced back to us.”

“The only way I can guarantee that, would be to show you what I do with them, which is completely unacceptable.”

Filetta appeared troubled.

“We are getting to the point where we have moved so many bodies that it's straining credulity to think that you are able to dispose of them as thoroughly as we would like.”

“There is risk, to you and to me, that is why I pay you so much. If the risk is unacceptable, then cancel the deal and I will make other arrangements.”

The Necromancer had no patience for this, he couldn’t even understand what they wanted from him. Guarantees? In an illegal trade?

“I can’t imagine most of your clients are required to demonstrate this level of compliance with most of the ‘goods’ you move.”

“You’d be surprised at what we demand of them, but you are correct, usually not this much. If it were just me, Elten, it would be fine, but the higher ups are getting a little nervous. There are some crimes that are more difficult to slip away from than others. If the marshals got word of what was happening here, they would hunt us to the end of the empire.”

“What do you think they would do to me?” Tyron asked, not expecting an answer.

Eventually, he had to raise the price another twenty percent per delivery, an absurdly high fee, though who was to say what the going rate for anonymous corpses was? The entire meeting, conducted in the sewers in the depths of night, was a warning that he couldn’t rely on Filetta or her criminal syndicate indefinitely. They were getting cold feet, and it was only a matter of time before they withdrew from the trade. With a little luck, they’d be happy to drop it there and wouldn’t attempt to find more permanent ways to ensure his silence.

Filetta had invited him to another tryst, but he had politely declined. There was too much to do and he couldn’t afford the time or the distractions. He’d like to flatter himself that she was genuinely disappointed at his refusal, but it was pointless to try and separate the truth from the facade with as practised a dissembler as her. Neither of them had seen the other's true face, and likely never would.

Still, the delivery had been made and now Tyron had twenty brand new sets of remains to work with.

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From the depths of the sewer waters around him, undead rose. Caked in filth, they looked like a terrible cross between a skeleton and a zombie. With their help, he was able to move each of the corpses back to his study before he set his minions back to waiting within the sludge. Then he got to work.

The rats were getting bigger, he was sure of it. Shovelling bucket loads of human offal into the tunnels wasn’t exactly Tyron’s idea of a good time, but it was a necessary part of the job. He had no use for the flesh he cut from the corpses that came into his possession, but apparently the local rodents had been making good use of the material he discarded.

If fat rats were the only thing that came from dumping so much flesh into the sewers, then that was a good thing as far as he was concerned. He wondered how they’d managed while he was away—well enough, from what he could see.

“Don’t overeat,” he warned them, then shook his head. “Don’t talk to the rats, you weirdo.”

Back in the study, things had changed slightly from how they’d been before. At present, the arch of bone with the heavy wooden door wedged in its centre was still there. In fact, Tyron hadn’t dismissed it at all after the first summoning. Careful and meticulous checks had revealed that not a drop of mana was leaking through his protections, so he felt safe maintaining the doorway.

Also, he no longer needed to create his undead in this space, only prepare them, which meant he had more room to work with.

Once prepared, the bones were cleansed, purged of wild mana, hardened, then brought within the Ossuary and stored safely within their own recess.

He was eager to experiment with the altar; the chance to speed up his process, creating as many as twenty undead at a time, was an exceptional boon. However, he needed to understand it in order to maximise its potential.

So, a long process of trial and error began. First, he confirmed how many skeletons the altar would replicate his work on at a time. The answer: all of them. So long as a complete and saturated set of bones sat within a recess, the altar would mimic his work upon it. Which meant he could work on twenty-one skeletons at a time, including the one on the altar.

However, he was also able to confirm some limitations. The altar did not contain unlimited power, able to mimic his magick endlessly. Instead, it drew power from his own reserves. When he attempted to work on ten skeletons at once, even just weaving, the draw on his arcane power was significant. Were he to engage in more demanding practices, he would need to be thoughtful about how many sets of remains he worked on at a time.

The other main issue with the altar was a little more fundamental to the bones themselves. Not all people are alike, and thus, their skeletons can differ. One thing Tyron had been shocked to learn after becoming a Necromancer was just how common it was for a person to have legs of different lengths. Usually, they didn’t differ by much, and he wondered if the people themselves had even realised that one leg was longer than the other.

Considering that he would never find skeletons exactly the same, the work he did to the bones on the altar would be perfectly adjusted to that set of remains, but be flawed on the others. Perhaps another practitioner of the dark arts would accept this compromise of less well-crafted minions, but made so much faster. Tyron, however, would not.

After trying several methods of approach, he eventually settled on a multi-stage process. First, a general pass would do the bulk of the basic stitching required, sorting out the muscles and sinews, which he could then go to each skeleton individually and adjust. Then, he would perform the more complex work around the joints, which required significantly more adjustment. The trick was in not trying to do a perfect job the first time. If he used the altar to lay down a solid basis from which he could then perfect, it went much faster than if he tried to complete the job, then went to each skeleton and unpicked half of what he’d done in order to fix it.

Then came time to attempt to raise the skeletons. With one lying on the altar, and one stored away in a recess, Tyron attempted to cast Raise Dead.

The moment he began, the first words dropping from his lips like thunder, he knew something was different. As anticipated, the altar took the magick he was applying to the bones in front of him, and then extended that same magick toward the skeleton he had stored in the recess. And, as expected, the altar drew on his power to fuel it. Raise Dead was a demanding and expensive ritual, particularly after the modifications he’d made to it, but Tyron was nothing if he wasn’t a magick battery.

The reservoir of power he had at his command continued to swell every time he progressed with the aid of the Unseen, and now it had become vast. A double cast of Raise Dead was not an issue. Twenty simultaneous casts would wring him dry in an instant.

In this instance, he was able to raise two skeletons flawlessly. Both minions climbed to their feet, one from the altar and one from a recess, ready and waiting to accept his commands. Tyron was satisfied. With this, he had managed to learn two of the ways in which the Ossuary could be useful to him. The altar would be a powerful force multiplier. If he were to work on ten skeletons at a time, it wouldn’t reduce the work to a tenth, more like a quarter, or a fifth, but that was plenty.

All he needed now was all the bones he could possibly get his hands on. Advances in his techniques and methods would come, he had ideas, avenues to explore, but most of all, he wasn’t close to hitting his capacity for minions. All the enchanting work he’d done had paid off, along with his own growing reserve of energy. He estimated he could manage as many as three hundred skeletons, along with his small coterie of revenants, and perhaps a few ghosts in the mix.

If he took such a force back to Cragwhistle, he’d be able to totally dominate the rift, even crush the kin on the other side of the gate, provided nothing scarier showed up.

With more time to develop his bone constructs, perhaps he could push that number even further. Although, he would need to balance the growth of his skeletal horde by mixing in more powerful minions. He was able to create crude skeletal mages now, as well as raise horses to create undead cavalry. Who knows how expensive it would prove to maintain such minions? Only more experimentation would provide an answer.

His questions answered, for the time being, at least, Tyron exited the Ossuary and moved to his desk. His book of notes now contained another dozen pages filled with scribbled sigilsand results regarding the altar. He sat down and flicked through the pages before he picked up his pen, dabbed it in ink and began to make a few corrections. This single volume contained the bulk of his writings since the moment he had purchased it in Woodsedge. From the first pages to the last, he had come on quite a journey. If he ever had time, it may be a good idea to create a more uncluttered collection of his lessons, but really, for whose benefit? He was unlikely to ever have an opportunity to pass his knowledge on, and his memory for magick was almost flawless.

Dismissing the thought, he closed the book and leaned back in his seat.

The next period of time would be difficult. He needed so many bones, had so much to work on, and he needed to achieve all of it while remaining hidden right beneath the magisters’ noses. His next trip to Cragwhistle almost couldn’t come soon enough. His need to improve his power had never felt more desperate than it was right now. The patrons who gave him aid had proven to be just as dangerous as he had always believed they were.

The thought of the vampires manipulation sunk deep inside his head sparked anger in his chest and his hands tightened into fists. What could he do against ancient, god-like, immortal blood mages? Right now, nothing, but his time would come. He would make sure of it.