Chapter 56: 56. Stolen Skull

Excerpt from Captain Zilian Yuka’s ‘Handbook for Self-Defense.’

“Beware the lies your body tells you as it courses with adrenaline. In a do-or-die situation, your instincts will tell you to do—once you’re out of that corner, the mind buckles under a certainty that you are invincible. Don’t let it be your downfall.”

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Yenna’s unusual battle-high faded by the time she reached the shimmering perimeter of Suee’s moonlit sanctuary. The skull in her hands radiated a dark aura that made the mage want to throw it away and never look at it again—the moment it was hit by the light, that feeling faded. Now it was just a regular skull, which didn’t do much to improve Yenna’s desire to keep it. The mage made a beeline for Suee.

“Priestess, how long will your spell last?” 

“For the rest of the night.” Suee gave a small nod. “The moon’s benevolence covers us for as long as it can reign in the sky. What new darkness do you bring before us, then?”

Yenna pulled a small folding table from her bag, activating the enchantment that allowed it to unfold. She set the skull on it as gently as she could and sat down to inspect it.

“The skeletons that attacked us were led by this sorcerer—though I wasn’t much help, I knocked it off balance for long enough for Narasanha to deal the final blow. Yet, it isn’t truly gone.” Yenna frowned, looking down at the skull. “I’m not terribly sure why I brought it back, though I feel we can learn something from it.”

“I’m pretty interested in it too.” Sergeant Myuu squatted down alongside Yenna, her magical detector in her hand. “This moonlight is playing merry hell on my detector, but I’d bet my week’s wages it’s the cult’s handiwork.”

Sure enough, the detector was glowing with a silvery light where the moonlight touched it—however, close to the skull its nearest nodules held a faint dark red hue. Myuu grinned a somewhat wicked grin at being proven correct.

Myuu turned to Yenna. “When you described it earlier, you said it had a staff. Did you retrieve it?”

The mage shook her head, and the sergeant sighed. “I’ll go retrieve it—you do what you can here.”

Yenna watched as Myuu walked away, and took a moment to peer around the campsite. Over to one side, Mayi helped a small group with minor injuries—to Yenna’s relief, no one had been seriously hurt. Others had taken it upon themselves to bury the skeletal remains, with Suee granting a small prayer to each of the impromptu graves. Amongst the group burying the dead was the surprising addition of Aroearoe, the stern head of House Deepstar standing to attention as she witnessed each burial.

Finally, the mage turned her attention back to the skull. The only thing tempering her normally unavoidable academic curiosity was the macabre nature of the object before her—Yenna was stuck, caught mentally between categorising the skull as a curious necromantic focus and the remains of a once-living person. With considerably more effort than usual, the mage managed to partition her thoughts—she could worry about the unpleasantness of handling the remains of the dead later, after she deciphered the magic engraved into the bone.

Visually, the symbols looked to be a clashing mess, flows of magic colliding and entangling as symbols cut each other off. With her magical sense, Yenna could tell that it was far more sophisticated than that—some symbols literally burrowed under discrete sections of bone, continuing in paper-thin gaps to create a three-dimensional enchantment that encompassed the entirety of the skull. Dark magic lingered within, pacing like a beast in a cage—the purifying moonlight kept it contained, but it could never soak in deep enough to destroy the presence.

A lot of the magical script and symbology on the skull was foreign to Yenna. Following the path of magical flow across its surface was utterly dizzying, tracing complex swirls that unfurled, recombined, and passed into passages too deep inside the bone for Yenna to track. The mage couldn’t even begin to guess at the purpose of some of the enchantments, complex as they were, but what she could read granted her enormous insights into the complexities of the cult.

The main thing that stood out to Yenna was that its spell didn’t need to be maintained by another spellcaster. The skeletal sorcerer was capable of drawing energy in from ambient magic, breathing it in like a living creature might breathe in air. As far as Yenna understood it, the main stumbling point of necromancy was the soul’s urge to be freed from its bindings—the spirit of the departed couldn’t be forced to draw in the power required to sustain its own bindings while also being intelligent enough to act, which usually meant necromancers had to maintain a proximity to their thralls. The only explanation Yenna could imagine was that the sorcerer’s soul was entirely willing—that it endured the torture of an undead existence of its own volition, and forcefully resisted the need to ‘move on’, as it were¹.

Also of note was that the skeleton was capable of telepathically transmitting its senses via magic. The way it achieved this was a marvel of covert magical communication—instead of leaving an obvious tether connected to whoever intended to receive the sensations, it bundled up the last minute of information within a swirling memory sigil, then sent it all to radiate outwards in every direction. The resulting emission was sent through a seal whose only purpose looked to be a predictable scrambling—whoever was on the other end would be looking for a wave of magical energy matching that pattern, and would decode it to see what the sorcerer saw.

Yenna gasped as she realised what this meant—it was almost certain that the cult, or whoever was receiving information from this sorcerer, would know of its defeat. It was also possible they knew the skeleton had been captured, and there was also the chance it had given the cult a lot of useful information about them. Numbers, capabilities—Yenna just hoped the timing of its transmission burst didn’t leave it with much information about her own capabilities.

Whoever had made this skeleton—for it was made, more than it was raised from the dead—was a consummate professional with access to extremely advanced techniques and tools. They were likely a specialist in crafting magically animated constructs before they were a necromancer, or perhaps the skills developed together. The metal additions to solidify the bone also looked to indicate that this skeleton was old, that it had been repaired many times rather than simply abandoning it and making another. That note comforted Yenna—it meant that they were unlikely to face many more of these. A legion of undead was a horrifying thought, while a legion of undead spellcasters was an apocalyptic threat.

Yenna shuddered at the idea, then blinked as she realised someone was nearby—the Sergeant had returned and was kneeling to one side, seemingly as engrossed in the inspection as Yenna had been. On the ground beside her was the skeleton’s long staff.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t notice you had returned.” 

Yenna attempted a jovial, ‘how silly of me’ laugh, but it felt a lot more forced than intended. Myuu shook her head, chainmail coif jingling.

“Quite alright. I thought I’d wait until you were done, as you seemed quite engrossed in your work. I know better than to interrupt an expert at work.”

“I… I hope I didn’t keep you waiting long.” Yenna looked away from the woman’s deep brown eyes, hiding herself in her hat. She didn’t need to think about it—Yenna had a pretty good idea of how long she had been focused.

“Ah, what’s the better part of an hour, when I’ve nothing to do but stand guard?” Myuu waved it off again. She had seemed so stiff and formal before—now with all the excitement, the sergeant had come to life. If Yenna didn’t feel bad for keeping her waiting, she might be more tempted to enjoy the sparkle of fascination in Myuu’s eyes².

“It’s– S-Sorry. I should have noticed. Still, I’ve discovered some things that may be of interest to you…”

Yenna explained her findings, her eyes fixed on the skull. Despite the fact that the mage was unwilling to meet her eye, Myuu was enthralled.

“A shame we can’t trace where its messages are going. Can it hear us?” Myuu picked up the skull, forcing Yenna to follow it with her eye.

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“It’s unlikely. The moonlight is keeping it in a dormant state right now, though it may very well come back to life the moment it is no longer obscured.” The mage gave a small shiver, mentally picturing the way the skeletons managed to pick themselves up with such ease.

“Well, if it can’t hear us, we can use it to our advantage.” The sergeant had a rather attractive smirk on her face—the smug grin of someone about to profess a bold and daring plan to a band of adventurers, revelling in the moment. “I’ve got something of an idea, though it falls to you to see it through.”

Yenna gave a nod, intrigued now.

“You said it just throws a signal into the air, and whoever is listening in just catches it, yes? Couldn’t you send a fake signal? Throw them off our trail, convince them we’re too risky to attack, something like that? If we could give them false information, it would make our ambush all the easier.”

“Ambush?” Yenna looked up at Myuu. “What do you mean?”

The sergeant winced slightly. “Ah. I shouldn’t have said, yet—probably shouldn’t say in front of the ominous skull, just in case. Tell me, would it be possible?”

Though she wanted to know more about this ambush, Yenna couldn’t deny such a puzzle. The mage closed her eyes, considering the shape and function of the skull’s ability to signal its allies. Yenna knew the function that would encipher the signal, and the function that would transmit it—the real problem lay in making a convincing fake situation, detailed enough that whoever received it wouldn’t be able to tell it from the real thing.

“I’m not sure I can.” Yenna played with the brim of her hat, once again unable to look up from the ground. “It’s– I’m not particularly adept at illusions, you see. I’d more convince them their sorcerer’s gone mad than anything else.”

“If the problem’s too big, break it down and make it smaller.” Myuu gave her knee a loud smack to punctuate her statement. “Something my mentor always said. Forget illusions for a moment—let’s say we just… let it overhear some juicy information, hmm? I mean, imagine we’re writing a play here.”

“A… A play?” Yenna’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “I’m not much for plays myself—though I have attended an illusionist’s theatre once³. I’m not sure I understand your meaning.”

“You’d be surprised, but a bit of theatre goes a long way to getting criminals to do all sorts of things—no need to threaten, nothing unethical, just a bit of theatre. I want you to picture this scenario with me, mage. We’ve defeated the skeletal sorcerer and taken its head to study, to keep as evidence.”

“Well, that is the truth of the matter.” Yenna couldn’t help but smirk along with Myuu—the woman was becoming quite animated.

“So, one of us stuffs it into a bag. We’ve done a bit of magic, stopped it from gathering up its limbs or casting any spells, but we’ve entirely overlooked its ability to send secret messages. With our prisoner in the dark but still able to overhear us, we start to talk—well, maybe not you specifically, I’m sure your captain would be more than happy to play along. Not to mention, she speaks very clearly.”

Myuu gave a small chuckle, and Yenna laughed. The idea that you could fail to overhear Eone was frankly preposterous. The mage nodded for Myuu to go on.

“We speak a little bit about our destination—we were going to go to the Deepstar estate, but we’ve decided not to risk our very precious cargo we’re keeping there by leading our attackers to it. Instead, we’re going to head towards the Stormsea estate—to confront them about how they’ve obviously attacked us.” 

Myuu made a gesture with her hands, a kind of ‘you see where I’m going with this’ expression on her face. Yenna still didn’t quite get it.

“But then they’ll attack the Stormsea estate, won’t they? They weren’t kind people, but we can hardly send those monsters hurtling towards them, can we?”

Myuu gave another laugh. “Aha, that might work on some backwoods thug, but these guys are smart, see? They’ll figure it out—we’re going to keep on with our destination, because this is all an obvious ruse. The real trick is what else they’ll overhear.”

Yenna liked a good story, but Myuu’s constant darting around the point was starting to annoy her. “What exactly is it they’ll overhear, then?”

“Troops. The jingle of chainmail and weapons. The sounds of warriors chatting—far greater numbers than we had before. We were spooked by this attack and called in hidden allies. They’ll see us rising to the challenge, ready to fight back whatever they throw at us. Or, they’ve got other eyes on us, and won’t be certain which source to trust. Or they’ll see right through us, and it’s all a waste of time.”

With a quiet sigh, Myuu shrugged off the possibility of failure.

“It’s certainly an interesting plan.” Yenna played idly with the end of her braid, twirling the end about the crook of her finger as she thought. “Yes. Yes, I suppose it could work. There are details to be cleared up, of course, but… yes!”

Myuu smiled brightly, her whole being lighting up. “Fantastic! Let’s get to work, shall we?”

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¹ - Yenna stops briefly at this point to clarify what she means, though her explanation is largely technical. Having no particular interest in the afterlife of a godly domain, Aulprean mages held the belief that the magical centre of a being—their soul—simply dissipated under normal conditions. Aetheric pseudomagnetism, Svelio’s law of post-life release, and any number of other theories contended that simple mechanics of magic itself made it so that the mass of magic inside a person either normalised into the air around its corpse or coalesced into a spirit under certain exceptional circumstances.

² - Yes, Yenna does spend a few paragraphs extolling Myuu’s visible virtues. In keeping with tradition, I have kept her breathless rambling to a minimum to avoid derailing the narrative. However, I will share that our mage does compare Myuu’s eyes to ‘sweet, dark kaffe, a stiff and bracing comfort that shakes away the morning cold and energises the body for the day, a constant temptation that one wishes to drink deeply of at all hours of the night.’ If Yenna didn’t have such a reaction to basically anything vaguely feminine within arm’s reach of her, I would be rather impressed.

³ - Similar to the cinemas of your world, an illusionist prepares a series of moving images far beyond the scope of what a play could present—the quality of the showing restricted only by the illusionist’s mastery of their craft. Popular at the time in the Aulprean capital as mostly a novelty, they required some suspension of disbelief—illusionists at the time were rather fond of spectacle over substance.