Tenebroum

Chapter 5: The Birth of a Necromancer

Night after night the dreams eroded the mage's fixation on his own experiments, replacing it with the obsession about the rumors and the swamp. When he came to the swamp all he cared about was using its energy to cast his strange spells so that he might better understand the universe, one faltering step at a time. Now he had a new project.

He’d grown increasingly convinced that this myth and the treasure that it focused on was at the core of the power he’d drawn on so frequently. He focused on research now as much as dowsing and divination. He wasn’t just trying to find the treasure as much as he was trying to understand the truth behind the stories. Was there really a treasure, or was it just that gold fever was as easy to catch in this cursed place as the shivers were?

It wasn’t hard. For the first time in years the wraith didn’t try to hide the treasure. It wanted it to be found. It wanted Albrecht to dig deep into the soil and find the riches that hid in the very heart of darkness. It just didn’t want him to share them with anyone else, so it infected the mage with a subtle strain of paranoia. The treasure could only belong to one person after all - if an apprentice or a servant were to find it, or to help him dig for it, they would only steal the riches for themselves.

So, one day the mage made the decision to close off the whole tower to everyone else. His servants still cooked and brought firewood, but only ever to the door after that. From that day on no one saw what he was working on, though rumors began almost immediately.

For weeks the mage worked alone and in secret. Even after he chiseled the mortar from between the stones that made up the floor and pulled them aside, to reveal the dark earth, he didn’t make much progress. The soil beneath the tower wasn’t just long hidden - it was a thick clay that made any excavation a challenge. The treasure of the swamp had taken years to slowly sink down to the bedrock and it would take a great deal of effort to reach it, even though he now knew exactly where it was.

Maybe Albrecht could have done it by himself if he’d still been the ageless magician he’d been years ago when he entered the swamp, but now he was an old man - he was more frail than he’d ever been, and seemed to go a little grayer with each spell that he cast. In the last few months his cheeks had become sunken and his graying beard began to go wild. No matter how well paid his servants were, they were beginning to whisper that he hadn’t been the same since the accident and began to tell lurid stories at night about what dark bargains he must be striking with the devils of the pit.

Albrecht didn’t hear their stories, but he could see the way they looked at him whenever he actually came to the door. That was when he decided he needed help that wouldn’t betray him. The first servant he resurrected into dark servitude was one of the cook’s boys who was taken by malaria. Unlike last time, the mage didn’t use a complicated resurrection that attempted to preserve the soul.

This zombie was just a puppet on strings that could do only the most basic tasks. Its orders were simple: dig. Every day it filled a few wicker baskets with earth, and every night it emptied them into the waters of the swamp when everyone was sleeping. It was the first mindless servant, but it wouldn’t be the last. Soon the small graveyard behind the tower that had been built and filled over the last couple years by the people the swamp had taken was being robbed nightly. As the hole got wider and deeper more zombies were made to fill it.

In time it became impossible to hide the strange activity from everyone, and eventually some of his servants worked up the courage to ask questions. Albrecht bought their silence by doubling their wage instead of providing answers. He traded a few coppers to buy time for the gold that was getting a little closer every night. He didn’t stop there though.

He brought the boats inside of his tower so no one could easily leave the fen without his permission. He was out of viable corpses to make more servants from, but he was still not so far gone as to kill people just to make more zombies. Just because he thought it was wrong to kill them though, didn’t mean that he was going to let them escape in case he should need them later. After that, fear clung to the island as thickly as the mist did as rumors started to run rampant, and the mage only let his most trusted apprentice return to town to fetch supplies.

Slowly the tunnel under the tower wound its way in a loose spiral. Thanks to the graceless efforts of the zombies it meandered a little to the left or the right every day, but it was always going deeper. Every day his tireless servants dug a few more inches, closing in on his secret prize, until one day they were there. Albrecht had stopped eating by this point, fearing that his former servants would poison him, and was so thin he couldn’t make his hands stop shaking.

His paranoia was hardly misplaced; the living that were still on the island had long since girded themselves for battle with kitchen implements and the few bows that had been kept for hunting. Given the chance they would surely mutiny and try to kill him. They didn’t have the chance, because he never left the tower, which was just as well because there was nothing they could do to a man who wielded fire and lightning.

That night in the midst of a terrible storm he dug the last few inches himself to gaze on the pile of treasure embedded in the wall like a fossil from another age rather than a pile of blood money that a couple of thieves had fought over half a decade before. Albrecht never had the chance to enjoy more than the sight of that gold. He was never going to own even a single coin - how could he? He was just another piece of treasure being added to the pile.

For a long time Albrecht had pulled his power from the swamp to run his experiments and cast his spells. He was suffused by it. It had eaten of his flesh and corrupted his very soul, so tonight it was the swamp that pulled power from him instead. As the mage reached for one of the coins it started to vibrate, still embedded in the wall. Then suddenly it wasn’t. He felt the slight pull of fire as something else tapped into the elemental energies he was so talented with, but while he was attempting to figure out what was happening it was too late. The coin leapt into the air, melted into a spike, and embedded into his flesh in an instant.

The mage looked at his hand in surprise, and watched as his blood slowly dripped down the gold spike that impaled it. He started to back away, but it was too late - he could feel his energy being channeled away from him again in an even bigger surge than last time. Several more coins shot out from the wall, and each of them became a similar spike. Depending on which object was melted the projectiles were bigger or smaller, but each one of them found their way into Albrecht’s flesh before he could react. He turned and fled at the onslaught. Even with all of his arcane power, there was nothing for him to do. He couldn’t fight something that wasn’t there.

“Help me,” he yelled to the undead slaves that stood there waiting for their next order, silent and impassive. They began moving immediately, but they didn’t respond to him. Instead they moved to block his way even as several more pieces of gold lanced into his back, making him cry out in pain.

“Gods you’re stupid!” He yelled at the zombies, “If you aren’t going to do anything useful then get out of my way!” They didn’t though. Instead they started to walk towards him. At first they were just pushing, but after a moment they were grabbing and holding, and then carrying. The terrible servants he’d spent so much time creating weren’t even his anymore. They were answering to their true owner - the swamp. It was its darkness that brought them back from the dead and its darkness that made them move. Now they were doing just what it wanted and adding a crown jewel to its terrible collection.

“No! Stop!” He yelled as the fear leaked into his voice. This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. He’d finally gotten what he was obsessing over and now everything was spiraling out of control. “What are you doing!”

The zombies carried him to the wall, and though he tried to set them ablaze, nothing happened. Not only would his minions not respond to his orders, but he couldn’t properly channel his own essence to catalyze his spell. Instead something else siphoned it away, and as he was pressed hard against the wall. More and more coins and trinkets were melted into spikes, and each one of those found its way into a soft part of the mage's flesh.

He was slowly being devoured by an iron maiden made of gold. He gave up on words or spells then and just screamed instead. It was a terrible agony, and since each wound stayed filled and the blows avoided vital organs none of the punctures were fatal. He didn’t stop wailing until hundreds of the little daggers had impaled him, and both of his lungs were punctured. Even his death rattle, loud and inhuman as it was didn’t reach the building his servants lived in while they waited out the storm.

Nothing could save Albrecht as the treasure consumed him. Soon hundreds of spikes were embedded in his flesh, but death still didn’t come for him. After that the pain became even worse as all of the spikes that impaled him suddenly began to heat up and melted again, forming a sarcophagus that melted around him like a second skin of molten gold. Every step in the process was agonizing, but it was meant to be.

The swamp fed on his pain as it tormented the mage and brought him closer to his death as slowly as possible. The mage felt each wound. He felt the metal heat to liquid and swallow him whole, and it was only after another minute of suffering that he finally suffocated in his permanent shell. He was no longer a person now. He was a thing.

For so long all the swamp wanted was to make sure that no one ever took its treasure - but after years it had found an even greater treasure than gold: the mind of the mage. It coveted the terrible arcane secrets he possessed, and wanted them for itself. Now it had them in the form of a grisly sarcophagus. In time the suffering occupant of the phylactery would become as much a part of the wraith that was these swamps as Cutter or the murderer, but for now it was just a trophy - a repository of knowledge that should have died with its owner.