“Wow, I–” Azrael clenched her gauntleted hand contemplatively– “really hate it.”

My jaw dropped. Literally. I had to pick it up off the floor.

Azrael burst out laughing from my display of shock, and barely managed to restrain herself enough to get out, “I– I was kidding, Ambrose!”

She took another moment to get all of the giggles out, then continued, “It's very impressive. I have no clue how you managed to do this. Thank you.”

Her hand reached towards a boulder I'd molded out of the wall for this express purpose. Azrael's fingers pinched, and a ray of power linked her hand to the boulder, a lattice of energy– not dissimilar to the one that had covered the armor when I'd dropped it– spreading through it.

Suddenly, Azrael's hand flicked up, and the rock quickly followed behind it, smashing into the ceiling above.

Dust and pebbles trained from overhead, and I winced, but it was fine. I'd installed what amounted to Conflict Tungsten rebar into my tower– this bad boy wouldn't be falling to some rocks.

Now, a note about the telekinesis enchantment: while I'd placed a mass limiter on what it would target, there was no speed limit. This meant that the inscription would try to perfectly match her wrist’s change in angle, which meant that far-off objects could gain a lot of angular momentum when targeted by her

Honestly, the effects were making me consider carving some inscriptions into my next body, just for some added power.

“Ambrose!” Azrael yelled into my face, waving a hand in front of it.

“Oh, sorry, I got distracted. What is it?”

“We're going to go get some food for the girls. Has your influence extended past the Dead Belt yet?”

A moment of consideration revealed that yes, yes it had. I relayed this information to Azrael and was soon forming a portal for us.

Sacrificing a good chunk of my power with a soft sigh, I manipulated space across a huge area. The only reasons I could even manage the task was that the space was contained within my influence– and thus more pliable to my whims– and the fact that I was using a higher tier of energy than simple Spatium.

A shred appeared in the fabric of reality and we stepped through, arriving in a grassy, living plain.

“Wow,” breathed Azrael. “As much as it disgusts some part of me, I must admit that life is beautiful.”

I had to agree. After so long in a tower, surrounded by nothing but dead mountains… Well, the view was nice. Seeing it in person was much better than just understanding it with my domain.

Unexpectedly, Azrael linked arms with me and started pulling me forwards. “C'mon slowpoke! We've got a meal to catch!”

A few hours in, it had become clear that I was an active detriment to Azzy’s ability to sneak up on prey, so she'd sent me back to go look for some plants to grow.

Surprisingly, I actually found a good number of edible foods. From trueberries to kane apples, there was plenty of delicious food here, and a lot of it was even mostly similar to the stuff found back on Earth.

I was carefully pulling the seeds of a phoenixfruit into a seam that I'd linked to my right metacarpals– I didn't want to accidentally damage them, either through force or the intense magic of my body– when I spotted Azrael lugging back a huge… stag? It was furry, and had claws, but otherwise resembled a male deer. The thing would have been at least ten feet tall while alive.

“You think this will be enough?” Azrael grinned at me, and I just shook my head. “Yeah, yeah, you're the hero of the village. I think I've gathered most of the local edible plants that I think I'll be able to grow back up home. Want to head back now?”

Azrael's arm clasped mine again, her grin only growing wider. “Sure thing, handsome.”

I tried to distract her from my non-existent blush with a roll of my non-existent eyes.

I swear, the more time I spend as a Lich, the less Lichy I feel. Maybe all the Willpower upgrades made me emotionally closer to a human then I'd originally been? It was an interesting thought.

I reached a hand out to initiate the opening of a fold, then hesitated.

“Is everything alright?” Azrael worriedly commented on the distinct lack of portal.

I shook my head. “There's actually some potentially problematic locations I want to check out with you before heading back, if that's okay? There might be some monsters there, though, so I can drop you off back if you–”

“I'll come with,” she interjected. “Mind taking me somewhere to put this body so it doesn't rot?”

“I’ll just do this.” I shoved the corpse into a seam and closed it off, then started searching through my influence for one of the “problem areas.”

My domain was getting pretty huge, with the passive Wisp expansion, and I'd encountered a couple other domains that needed my personal attention. I hadn't really made any efforts to crush this opposition yet– it was entirely possible that I could simply overwhelm and crush this opposition with a thought, but I just hadn't really cared to at the time. Now, though, these holdouts could serve as test subjects for Azrael's new might.

The first disruption I teleported us to turned out to be a bit of a dud, though I did find something that might be fun later.

We teleported into the area– a rocky outcropping back in the Dead Belt– and found a small horde of zombies. One of them, leading their ponderous, seemingly random march, was slightly taller and had a Necrosis gem stuffed into its rotting skull. It looked like some kind of blow to the head had cut the human’s life short, and then the gem had… grown out of it? I'd have to do some research later.

I pointed out the particular undead to Azrael, and she'd dropped into her new stealth mode, which basically just made her completely vanish to all senses– my influence-related ones included. The only reason I could pinpoint her location was by recognizing the faint flux of my own magical signature in her armor.

Absiete was more complex than simply taking things away. It replaced. Light was replaced by dark, life with death, for example. It was the absence of a thing, and included what would take its place. In this case, Azrael was able to move around without affecting anything by convincing the world that she didn't exist, replacing herself with the air that was already in position.

If I could barely tell where Azyy was within my influence, even with all my knowledge and familiarity with her powers, then this braindead zombie stood no chance.

As I'd expected, the Wraith walked straight up to the domain-controlling zombie, pulled out her sword, and cut its head off.

The undead’s body slumped to the floor, but Azrael grabbed the head before disappearing once more and moving back to my side. The zombie horde looked confused, but not overly aggressive. It was likely that the domain-controller had been controlling them somehow, and now they were free.

My influence swept over the outcropping, pressing over the undead and terrain with its omnipotent power. I could squash the zombies with an offhand thought now, but refrained. After all, that would be like slaughtering an entire pack of deer. Bloodthirsty, life-hating corpses they may be, but they're still basically animals.

No need to be cruel.

Azrael and I hopped around between a few more of the disruptions, slaying a few undead who had been lucky enough to get their hands on both specializations and domain abilities. For the most part, they were pretty weak, though there had been one that concerned me.

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The opposing monster had been somewhat insect-like, compressed of a few bodies that had putrefied together enough to rise as a single unit. Much of its body was covered in a sleek, black chitin, formed primarily of viscera, rot, and Necrosis.

Azrael's blade cut through the horror with a single blow, just like all of the others.

Honestly, I'd been waiting for us to run into an opposing Lich, but there hasn't been any. Even once I started prodding at the other pockets of influence within the Dead Belt, I didn't find anything, which was rather concerning considering that my domain covered most of the Dead Belt.

Was I the only Lich alive? What had happened to the others? Something to research later, surely.

Eventually, Azrael and I were satisfied with the test results, so I swept all the gore and dirt off of her body and gear, then formed a portal back to the first floor of my dungeon. A Twin scale was startled by our sudden entrance, and scuttled off quickly.

“So,” I said, “definitely fix the sword so it stops pointlessly blasting undead with Necrosis?”

Azzy nodded. “I also want a higher weight tolerance for the telekinesis, and a way to control the distance it maintains.”

I agreed and quickly detached the gauntlet from the rest of her armor, taking the sword as well.

“Where do you want the, uh…” I examined the corpse she'd given me before and examined it with Encompassing Knowledge. “Bayloun?”

“I'd appreciate it if you could just drop it off at my place.”

I looked at her in confusion. “Your place?”

Azrael rolled her eyes beneath her helmet. “Yes, look for the door with the black skull on it.”

I quickly found her place in my influence and folded the bayloun body into it. I also stored the gear I'd gotten from her into a small seam and opened the one with the seeds, stepping out into the small city with Azrael.

She looked on with a small amount of wonder as I used my magic to spread the seeds I'd collected around my tower. They spread out in mid-air, and the earth tore itself open to accept them.

“Whelp, I’m gonna make some inscriptions, see you later!” I waved her off, and she left to skin her catch.

I spent a moment considering just how I should handle making these puppies grow, but it only made sense to start with the basics.

For some reason, the Necrosis in the Dead Belt seemed to fight against the sun, so I formed a rune to gather ambient light and reflect it towards the plants. I was actually able to use a Defense rune, telling it to protect everywhere except where the plants would grow from light, reflecting it with a mostly invisible and intangible pane of Forbodum.

The next was a ritual: an Observe rune would look for soil that wasn’t damp and a Process rune would send that location to an Ordinance, which would concentrate ambient moisture at the location at a slow, steady pace. Basically, it would make it rain.

I Referenced the runes and placed them all around the base of my tower before hooking them up to hidden energy cells.

The moment both sets of runes were active and hooked up to a Forbodum gem, the area immediately around my tower brightened and rain started falling from small, faint clouds that were a couple dozen feet off the ground. The effect was actually pretty cool, as the upper parts of my tower darkened, and fog seemed to form around it.

Once it stopped raining, I got to work on the next rune. Currently, it would take a pretty long time for the plants to grow, but I was pretty sure that I could speed that up. I remembered that plant growth was regulated by a hormone, gibber-something. If I could speed up the production of that…

I carved an Ordinance rune into the base of my tower, instructing it to increase nearby hormone production within plants. It was a good thing that I had a decent grasp on plant cells and inner workings from my biology class back in high school. Without it, I might not have been able to do this, which made me wonder how a normal inscriptionist would handle this problem.

Actually, Vitasis would probably do all of this stuff automatically, I just had to do it this way because of my Forbidden Knowledge affinity.

Oh well, nothing for it.

I examined the plants carefully and saw that the ones within the rune’s radius were growing noticeably faster than those without, so I copied it all around the tower and set up some more power cells for the energy-hungry enchantment.

I’d need to remember to refuel everything every couple days, but that was perfectly fine with me. With my massive quantity of Willpower, and the increased efficacy of Forbodum when compared with Spatium and Necrosis, I wasn’t very concerned about energy problems these days. When I was low on power, it regenerated faster, so there was very little chance of me running out unless I were in an extremely tense situation where I had to throw everything at the wall at once.

With the plants sorted, I moved on to trying to fix up the errors made in Azrael’s gear.

A normal inscriptionist would have to toss whatever they made if there were any mistakes, but I was able to contain the explosive force of magic getting expelled from a rune within a seam, reinforce the metal itself, and simultaneously reshape everything with my influence. With all that combined, I was able to keep the piece itself– as well as most of my work– while editing the faulty rune.

Because of this, I was able to keep Azrael’s sword intact while changing the inscription to make the runework check for being contained within living flesh, rather than just flesh in general. After all, wasting power on enemies that it wouldn’t affect or that were already dead was just stupid.

The next thing to do was to allow Azrael to alter the distance between herself and the objects she was manipulating with her enchantments. As for how to do that… well, it would take some thought. I needed to have it work around the current gesture system, but also have variations to it.

Eventually, I found a good solution. Instead of trying to do everything with a single new inscription, I kept the original, changing it only slightly to detect when the middle finger and thumb were pressed together in a circle, rather than the index finger and thumb.

Then, I added two new inscriptions. They were basically the same thing as before, with one checking for the original “OK” symbol, and the other looking for the ring finger and thumb to do the same. When the index trigger went off, the tethered object would slowly be pulled inwards, with the inverse being true for the ring finger.

With these two enchantments combined, Azrael would be able to manipulate objects with extreme precision. She wouldn’t be able to control the speed at which they moved in or out, but it was much better than what she’d had before.

I checked in on Azrael, but she was busy skinning the bayloun so I just teleported the gauntlet and sword into a nearby space. She was surprised at first, then grunted a thanks into mid-air, knowing I’d hear it.

With that done and dusted, I felt it was time to check in on my Scholars, as well as Fenrir himself. He’d mostly been left to his own devices, and he’d seemed to be doing well the last time I checked in on him, but I felt that it would be best to actually ask instead of assuming that he was alright with his circumstances.

Fenrir may have been “born” just a few days ago, but that didn’t mean he was stupid and had no needs or wants. He’d been infused with a respectable amount of my own memories, and that meant that he was pretty dang smart. If he needed something, he would surely be capable of voicing that.

A quick glance at the Scholars told me that they had finished the work I’d asked, having written up many dozens of talismans on Arachnomicon pages, then circled back on themselves and created copies. Sadly, some part of the process of scribing was intrinsically magical, and I wasn’t able to imbue runework with intent when I was creating it, so it all had to be done manually.

Luckily, I had slaves to do that for me.

Wait, that sounds wrong. I had my loyal, unpaid spawn who didn't require food, drink, sleep, or breaks.

…That’s still pretty awful, huh? Whatever.

Anyways, I took a look at each of the talismans in turn, then decided that they were of passable quality and drew them into the body of a pageless Arachnomicon, making them part of the unliving book. Of course, the fact that the book was alive would do little other than make it seem a bit extra creepy and allow it to self-destruct by activating all of its talismans at once if it was ever separated from Fenrir.

With a thought, I opened a tear in reality, manipulating the book into my skeletal hand, and then another, stepping through it to see Fenrir staring at a stone wall and slowly, carefully cutting into it with his right index claw.

Thinking he was working on some intricate inscription, I moved silently around him– stealth is pretty easy when everything, from the floor you walk on to the air around you, is entirely subject to your whims. Honestly, it’s a wonder I don’t have more of a god complex by now.

When I inspected his work, I almost dropped my mandible for the second time in a day.

Fenrir wasn’t doing runework. He was making propaganda!

“Fenrir, what in the Far Realm is that?”

The huge wolfman startled, looking back at me with an oddly sheepish expression.

“Uh, it’s… scripture? I was hoping you’d help me work out the details.”

I quickly read over the work. His Desecration’s great work had come to fruition, and the scourge was smote by the wrath of the Nails… And so, the Great Lord of Death brought the lowly mortals into his divine realm… The power and strength of Twice Gifted was spread across the land…

This time, I couldn’t help myself.

My jaw dropped.

“I mean, you weren’t keeping a journal, and I thought it would be a good idea to instill some respect into the sentients who come around here, so…” He rubbed the back of his neck.

For a moment, I thought of stopping him. Of putting an end to this madness, before it could go too far.

Then… I remembered something my mom told me, oh-so-long ago. She’d been helping me with a Lego set, and I could tell that she hadn’t really known what she was doing. When I’d asked her why she was helping me, I’d gotten a rather simple answer. “When you care about someone, you’ll want to spend time with them and share interests, even if that means doing things you’re not good at or might otherwise not be interested in.”

This… was definitely a case of that.

“Alright Fen, let’s do it. Tell me what you’ve got in mind, and I’ll help you work things out. Let’s write some lore.”