Trapped inside Nastrond’s cathedral, Walter Tye applied a spell tattoo to a living black rat’s hide; in the background, his [Athanor] device distilled hydra’s blood and transferred the result to his new batch of elixir.

Nastrond had been protected from prying eyes by godlike magic, but even its wards paled before those shielding the cathedral. While Hel may have managed to detect Tye’s presence in the city once, the root of Yggdrasil itself was protected from divine scrutiny. Odin had made sure of it.

But Tye could not stay holed up forever. The longer the shop remained closed for no good reason, the more people would ask questions. Especially since his magical battle with the hags had burnt the local forest to the ground.

However, if he went out with the [Kiss of Hel] still active, then every inquisitor of that cursed goddess would track him down. Maybe they had already started investigating. He should condemn the tunnels to the shop, eliminate witnesses...

“She’s winning, chief.”

Words interrupted Tye’s work, as Hagen and Duke entered the cathedral for their daily report. “How?” the alchemist asked, before focusing back on the tattoo.

“Forcing you to second-guess everything,” Hagen explained. “Tormenting you without even being there.”

“I still do not understand why she let me go,” Tye replied, almost done with the design. “Hel is raving mad, but I do not comprehend what she could gain by letting me run around.”

“She is the mad goddess who torments the souls of the dead,” Duke said. “Cruelty and amusement are as good of reasons as any. She makes us ‘live’ in fear until she strikes.”

Did she find pleasure in letting Tye continue his work, before smiting him before he could complete it?

“I think she has a more mundane motive,” Hagen said. “You are a lure, chief.”

“A lure?” Tye frowned behind his mask.

“We now know that Medraut survived the purge, and hid his tracks so well that even you, chief, couldn't locate him. If the two of you survived, then there are probably more; each working against Hel, and tempted to look for other survivors.”

“That wicked…” Tye hated to admit it, but it was plausible. In her arrogance, Hel might even believe that she could pull the plug on his own activities anytime, now that she had marked him. “You believe she wants Medraut?”

“Or any undead that will be inevitably drawn to you, my lord,” Duke said with grim resignation. “Destroy the wasp nest when it is full.”

“Is there no way to remove that Perk?” Hagen asked. “As far as I know it cannot be done, but you are a genius chief. At least as far as magic is concerned.”

“Her Perk was directly engraved into my soul,” the necromancer explained. “This means that unless I alter my essence on a fundamental level, I cannot purge it of Hel’s touch. Thankfully… I may have found a less risky alternative.”

His work done, Tye released his rat familiar, the critter squealing while a symbol shone on its back. The tattoo of a white serpent eating its own tail.

“I had the idea by studying the hag coven's captured members,” Tye told his puzzled elites. “Souls possess a specific aura, which hags naturally align to tap into their coven magic. So I created a spell tattoo that replicates my own soul’s signature.”

“Decoys,” Hagen guessed. “Ah, that is why you wanted all these cultists and wild beasts drugged out of their mind, then brought underground.”

“I will mark hundreds with the tattoos, and then have Mockingbird smuggle them all over Avalon. Instead of trying to find one well-hidden target, Hel and her inquisitors will hunt countless mobile ones.” He already imagined their surprise when they caught a marked bird. “Eventually, they will figure out the trick, but they won’t be able to distinguish the innocent from the guilty.”

Duke looked at Hagen, who remained eerily silent. “You tell him,” the zombie spoke up.

“This is an interesting mechanism,” the dullahan chose his word carefully. “But a stupid idea, and overly complicated.”

“How so?” Walter asked, surprised by the negative feedback. “It should at least confuses the enemy and b—”

“Chief, while no one will deny your magical genius, your lack of foresight and common sense worries me sometimes,” Hagen said. “Hel simply has to tell her priests your name and how you look.”

Walter opened his mouth to provide a counter-argument, before realizing that his second-in-command had a point.

“Here’s what I suggest,” the headless warrior continued. “You tattoo all the male human cultists, but also reshape their flesh so they look like you. Then you spread them all over Avalon, while you remain safely in Nastrond. We secure a steady supply of sacrifices to keep you fed, and you complete your vision while the inquisitors chase decoys.”

“But that would mean abandoning my shop and civilian identity,” Tye replied.

“Is that so terrible, my lord?” Duke asked, not understanding his reticence. “You only maintained this facade to lure adventurers to their demise, no?”

“No, I maintained this facade because that would be my existence if there was no need for me to complete the Great Work,” Tye admitted. “A peaceful, quiet life. I refuse to relinquish it. Besides, this will not work. The princess only stopped looking into the dungeon because I convinced her the ‘necromancer’ and ‘Walter Tye’ were different people. If I publicly become an enemy of Hel’s church, she will put the two and two together and dig up the dungeon. We need to find another solution.”

“Walter,” The necromancer froze, as Hagen spoke to him seriously. “Your peaceful, quiet life became unsustainable the moment we killed that knight and made an enemy of the royal family. You were always going to get found, and truth be told, I am surprised it took so long. You were lured into a false sense of security by our success in Lyonesse, and it cost you.”

Walter Tye fell into a tense, heavy silence.

“Now, this is not the first time something similar happened,” Hagen said. “But we can no longer move to another place and begin again elsewhere. Nastrond is simply too precious to be abandoned. Your original plan has merit to distract Hel’s lackeys and allow you to operate outside the dungeon’s confines. But if you believe that your ‘human’ identity is salvageable, or that you can somehow infiltrate the Academy, then I am sorry my friend, but you are deluded.”

“I—”

“For Alberich’s sake, Walter, Hel has a church in Lyonesse!” the dark knight snarled, so loud that it startled the goblins working outside the cathedral. “The moment you show up above ground, the hounds will be at your throat!”

Duke cleared up his throat. “My lord, while I do not share Hagen’s bluntness… I agree with him. I have thought about it long and deep, but I see no way to preserve the status quo. At this point, the most cautious thing to do would be to cover our tracks, cut our losses, and call it a day.”

“You fought the cultists in a spellcaster battle that devastated the countryside,” Hagen added. “It is only a matter of time before someone smart figures out the necromancer isn’t as dead as he should be. Your plan brought us time, but secrecy is no longer an option.”

Neither undead received an answer from their master.

“Walter…”

“I will think about it,” the necromancer interrupted Hagen, although he hated saying every word. “Give me your report.”

“Mockingbird delivered as promised, although she wondered why you didn’t show up in person this time,” Hagen said. “She brought us captured trolls, beasts, and volunteers.”

Good news. “My master Asclepius believed that the substance of life was made of tiny magical scrolls, whose information determined everything about a body’s composition,” Walter explained, bringing the tattooed rat to his lap. “How many heads, the color of the skin, predisposition for magic or physical combat… he believed that this information could change depending on the environment or exposure to magic, explaining why some monsters adapt to certain environments. His insight was of course, correct.”

Without remorse, Walter crushed the rat’s head within his hand, blood dripping down his robes. His undead did not flinch at the violent display…

But they were taken aback, upon seeing the head grow back. The black rat squealed at his murderer as if he had simply been pinched.

“By studying the scrolls of life itself, I artificially duplicated the hydra’s regenerative process; although somewhat improperly,” Walter said, frustrated not to have removed the key weaknesses to fire, acid, and silver. “So far early results are encouraging, and I may even improve on the natural version.”

“Please make us dream, chief,” Hagen mused, having regained some of his laid-backness.

“Aging is caused by the effect of time on organs, causing a gradual degradation,” Walter explained. “Since normal regeneration duplicates organs after they decay, they do not prevent death by old age. However, by combining the rejuvenating effect of the elixir and the hydra regeneration, I can create a feedback loop.”

Hagen was the first to catch on. “So your charges would constantly regenerate back to the prime of their life, as it was their original state after the elixir took effect.”

“Eternal youth,” Duke whispered.

“Perhaps. I need further testing.” Thankfully, they hadn’t seen the prototypes. Regeneration wasn’t fun when you grew five more heads, or when it accelerated the spread of tumors tenfold. Even this rat was the lone survivor among an entire swarm.

It was amazing how much progress one could achieve by accepting heavy losses.

“Some trolls’ regeneration can only be countered with fire or specific conditions; often they differ from a hydra’s. By figuring out how, then in time, I will perfect the regenerative process, until nothing can stop it.”

For now, though, Tye would test the current elixir on the volunteers; see if they developed Perks, how the chemicals would react…

Hagen and Duke continued to give their report afterward but had little to tell. The cultists had grown quiet, the kingdom had sent people to investigate the forest fire, they had reinforced the frontiers… it was so routine that Walter’s mind wandered off.

“Lord Medraut sent you a message.”

Until Hagen spoke these words. “Where, when?” Tye asked, hungry for details.

“Mockingbird asked the Calamity Cults that she supplied in Logres to set up a meeting with the [Death Knight], and they gave her this.” Duke handed a scroll to his superior. “There is a message written on it, but it makes no sense to me.”

Walter opened the document, finding a map of the Logres region with words scribbled at the bottom. Coordinates written in the Pale Serpents’ secret, coded language, alongside precise instructions. The area the message pointed to...

‘The Tomb of the Fianna.’

Medraut had finally found it. And if Tye’s suspicions were correct then he intended to raise its inhabitants from the dead; the necromancer needed to talk him out of doing something stupid as soon as he could, Hel be damned.

“Anything else?” Walter asked.

“Many of the goblins complained about having visions and hearing voices,” Duke said. “Like Hagen’s.”

“I know why,” Tye replied. “Nastrond is, for a lack of better word, haunted.”

“Of course it is, chief,” Hagen chuckled. “We are all undead.”

The necromancer couldn’t help but grin at the terrible joke. “I do not mean occupied by a ghost, but truly haunted. The horrors that took place created so much anguish that the city is suffused with evil energy. It is not alive, but it has a will of its own.”

“So the voices I heard, and Spook’s behavior…”

“Nastrond feeds on suffering,” Tye confirmed. “The more it torments its occupants, the stronger it gets. It may be partly to prevent the evils of this city to escape that the Aesir put a second seal around it.”

Why the city hadn’t tormented Tye himself escaped him though. If anything, the place was starting to feel like home.

“So what do we do, exorcise Nastrond?” Hagen asked.

How? They did not have the sacred magic necessary for that. Tye had considered siphoning the malevolent energies of the city, but if even a divine seal hadn’t been enough to keep it fully contained, then what could?

…

His mind suddenly started working furiously, multiple elements falling into pieces.

Remaking a soul… divine connection to Hel… the power in the city… the philosopher’s stone… the Great Work… but the sheer quantity of blood required… transmutation and rebirth...

A flash of inspiration crossed the necromancer’s mind, as suddenly, everything became clear.

“Chief?” Hagen asked. “I know that look. You have an idea.”

“There is a way to get rid of the Perk, and perhaps even complete the Great Work all at once,” the necromancer said, “But it will involve transitioning into a stronger undead and reshaping my soul in the process.”

“Chief, if you could have gained more power at any time, why didn’t you yet?” Hagen asked.

“Because there is a risk,” Duke surmised.

“If the ritual goes wrong, my soul may end up torn apart.” Souls didn’t disappear, but they could get lost and permanently damaged. “And if it goes right…”

Then he and the city would pay a great cost.

In the middle of the night, long after Lyonesse had fallen asleep, Walter Tye wandered his shop.

The necromancer had often wondered why so many undead imitated the living, mimicking the same motions that they did in life. Death Knights holding parodies of court, vampires dressing like noblemen, ghosts remaining in denial of their undead state. Unlife was the missing step between life and death, a state of balance free from the shackles of fate and the cycle of souls. Even if being an Ankou had its shortcomings, Tye considered himself one step closer to true immortality than most.

Then why did so many of his undead kindred yearn to return to life?

In the end, perhaps the [Ankou] was no different, playing a strange masquerade so he could recapture the life this unjust world stole from him.

Even now he didn’t understand why he risked so much returning to his shop, smelling the perfume of potions and touching the dust gathering between his shelves. Tye had designed every inch of the building himself, although he had taken inspiration from his late father’s own establishment.

Tye couldn’t explain why he enjoyed this job. The routine? The lack of surprises? The feeling that he helped the few who deserved it? Lyonesse wasn’t the first place where he had set up shop, although it was the first where he spent more than a few months. He had no steady supply of lifeforce back then, being always forced to stay on the move. A serpent endlessly shedding his skin.

Come to think of it, this place was the only one he had fought tooth and nail to keep. Even after the dungeon’s condemnation, Tye no longer had any rational reason to keep it afloat. Yet he still did. He had spread his roots like a tree, formed lasting bonds. Lady Yseult, Annie...

Tye had murdered for this life.

But if the ritual worked, then all his years of struggle, all his Order’s efforts would finally come to fruition. The Great Work would be complete, and a world free from death would see the light of the day. Was he willing to sacrifice this perfect life for this goal?

Lights came through the windows, drawing him out of his reverie.

Lanterns.

Casting [Veil of Darkness] to mesh with the dark, the necromancer approached the window and looked through. He recognized Percy and a group of other watchmen, seemingly shielding his establishment from two figures.

Sinister ones.

They were not even subtle about it. Two tall, faceless brutes in heavy, black plate armor carrying deadly scythes and torches. The flames cast light on their cold eyes, the rest of their face hidden beneath capirote hoods.

Inquisitors of Hel. [Witch Hunters].

Tye focused, his sharp senses picking up most of the discussion.

“... you’re breaking the curfew,” Percy argued. “No one outside after dark. The streets aren’t safe.”

“They don’t look like they need protection, Percy,” one of his fellow guards pointed out.

“Apologies, watchmen,” the hooded figure said. “We detected the presence of an enemy of the faith in the area.”

“An enemy of the faith?” Percy asked, something in the inquisitor’s dress bothering him greatly. His eyes lingered on their pointed hoods in particular; perhaps because they reminded him of public executioners.

“After the fire, Her Dark Majesty warned us of an Unclean slithering among us, giving us hints in vision,” the inquisitor declared. “We were asked to prove our faith by ferreting out the wicked, and our prayers led us to this district. We believe the enemy is hiding under the guise of an honest citizen.”

“We must organize a search immediately,” his fellow added. “Open doors, starting with this one. The unclean may be preying on the innocent as we speak; we must pass the goddess’ judgment and cast him down to Helheim.”

“Maybe we come for the same man,” one of the watchmen said. “You should come with us. All help will be welcome, especially from [Witch Hunters].”

“You talk like he’s the culprit, while we still don’t have any proof,” Percy protested, “He hasn’t even been seen in days.”

“Since the day of the magical duel, you mean,” the watchman replied. “Which is pretty damning.”

Tye clenched his fists.

“Whom are you looking for?” the inquisitor asked.

“Trustworthy witnesses claim to have seen Walter Tye engaged in a high-level spellcasting battle with druids in the forest of Brocéliande,” the watchman replied, “According to the report, he was dressed exactly like the princess’ description of the necromancer below. We are here to investigate his house, and bring him to the city watch for interrogation.”

As the two groups debated the best way to get in - with only Percy protesting - Walter stepped away from the window with a wary gaze.

Hagen was right. He had barely stepped out, and the hounds were already at his throat.

It would never get better.

At this moment, Walter Tye realized that his peaceful, quiet life in Lyonesse was over. That he had lost the place and the people he had invested in for two years of his unlife. That all efforts to get rid of that royal brat had only delayed the inevitable.

At this moment, Walter Tye felt an anguish that he hadn’t felt since his parents’ death and his order’s decimation.

Hel had ruined his life. Again.

Perhaps it had been Her Divine Pettiness’ goal all long. Something more subtle, yet crueler, than dragging him straight to Helheim. It only fueled Tye’s determination to achieve immortality for all, and put that beast of a goddess down.

The Great Work would be completed. All those who stood in its way would die.

Even himself.

The necromancer turned his back on the shop’s closed sign and returned to the dark.