“Am I dead?” he heard himself asking, as though from a great distance. He opened his eyes, and for the first time in his life he beheld Nethernum.
Black starless sky. Dozens of lavender moons wheeling at such speeds their motions were visibly measurable in real-time. An open expanse of flat, shattered stone, broken only by the withered spears of dead, dry trees. The wind cutting across the boundless courtyard was pink, a million tiny particles occluding his vision as the breeze whipped around him.
Purple shields, vast, stronger than a weave, spinning across the infinite space.
“No,” came a soft, urbane voice from at his side. “You’re merely here under my power.”
Alrior slowly became aware of the gentle but unbreakable bonds fixing his wrists and ankles together, the laces locking down his fingers.
“I had to save you. You’re different from the others. You’re like me.”
Fearing what he would find, Alrior rolled his head on the stone, looking to the side –
It was him – Redgate. The former champion wore his classic robe and mask, though it looked like they’d been damaged and then repaired by magical means, stitches of pure shadow binding the crimson fabrics back together, gluing one of the spider’s mandibles to the face-plate.
Redgate was sitting there on his backside like any man, his feet out in front of him, gloved hands clasped together with his elbows on his knees.
“Like… you?”
Redgate chuckled dryly. “Well… not yet. That’s really the point of all this, you know.”
“You – you want me to be an archlich?”
“That’s not something I can do for you, unfortunately; you’d have to do it for yourself. But to what avail, you might well ask. As you’re surely aware, I wouldn’t be able to formally bind your eternal archmage soul – merely condemn it to these lovely environs. Condemn it, keep it…” The black, reflective eyes centred on Alrior and Redgate’s voice had a hint of bitterness in it. “This is only one of several obstacles I must overcome, before I can be properly reunited with my brethren in Mund. Unseat and shrive my murderers.” He sighed. “We must run many experiments together, you and I. Might I ask your name?”
Be – reunited – Mund – experiments…!
Blood-red flames sprung up across the lich’s shoulders, heatless fire momentarily sitting along his neck and upper arms like a mantle – then a snake made from oily darkness appeared, coiled loosely about him. Its head, however, wasn’t serpentine – it looked rather like a tarantula’s, a white rune burning fiercely above the black mandibles, in the midst of the glossy crimson eye-nest.
The demon slowly wheeled about, the tarantula-head coming to rest on Redgate’s hand, staring across at Alrior in naked hunger.
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He stared back, knowing that, despite all their apparent insubstantiality, those mandibles could easily penetrate his skin. Whether a low-ranked shapeshifting demon could carry poison, he was uncertain, but he didn’t want to find out.
“I know. Mizelikon. I had to find a new one, but the others I recovered without too much trouble. Rhimbelkina… pedheliorph… wyvarlinact… thinfinaran… even the gaumgalamar… All those to whose company I’d become accustomed. Death comes with its little foibles.”
“Whuh…” He felt sick. “What do you want?”
The former champion didn’t answer immediately, but the unseen gaze never wavered.
“What do I want?” The urbane voice lost its keen edge, rusted with emotion. “It is never so simple a thing for those whose lives hold meaning, to determine which meaning to embody. I have spent much time in thought, puzzling over the same question. What do I want?”
Alrior wanted to close his eyes, stop looking, but he couldn’t, and he couldn’t blink, couldn’t even look away. Even here, the pain of it felt physical. The spirit-flesh of his cheeks was becoming sore. His jaw hurt.
“I never saw archmagery as a gift, as we so often speak of it. It is more… a reward. Call it the will of Vaahn -”
The purple shield surrounding them rejoiced, flaring in recognition of the dreadful name.
“– call it the will of some lesser entity, or some nameless force, or even the random card fallen from the dealer’s hand –“
Redgate chuckled again.
“– it is still a reward. You must roll the dice to win, do you see? You won. Who did you kill?”
“I – I didn’t –“
“It doesn’t matter. You know the power of what we possess, you and I. What were you before it? You know nothing else can compare to the freedom afforded by the magic. You know how it feels to have the eyes of others, their hidden thoughts, drawn to you like moths to the light-globes. But in order to excel, and stand above one’s peers, one must be prepared to go beyond one’s inheritance. One must strive, work towards one’s goals without fear of failure or recrimination from outside sources. Long have I toiled, and much have I earned; yet for every answer I uproot, five more questions hang like dirty tendrils beneath the bulb. Do not take me for some bumbling fool, some dilettante. It isn’t what I want. We’re simply doing what’s logical. In any case, I digress – your name, sir.”
My name?
“A-Alrior…”
“Alrior…?”
“Habermine. Alrior Habermine.”
“Well, Mr. Habermine – I’m afraid I must inform you that you’ve inadvertently volunteered to take part in a series of obscure rituals. On the receiving end, so to speak. We shall do our best to be lenient with you, and not subject you to an excess of agony unless it proves necessary.”
“B-b-but – Redgate –”
“Hush now, Mr. Habermine. You need not be afraid. I’ve located a number of vampires whose blood we shall use to sustain you through the… process. Oh, doubtless an elixir few would dare drink, concerned as most are with the conditions of their mortal souls… but those simple anxieties are beneath the likes of us, aren’t they? Let us begin.”
The gloved hands reached up, removing the mask, eight glowering glass eyes replaced by two burning amethyst ones. The face – handsome, almost human, but drawn, nearly gaunt. The lich’s eye-sockets were sunken, shadowy pits, unlit by the purple flames they hid.
As quickly as Alrior had moved from respecting Redgate to fearing him, it took a long time for the fear to harden into hatred – and even longer for hatred to die, the stiff corpse of his heart finally softening, releasing all its rancid gasses, putrefying into a lovelorn affection.
A long time, in Nethernum. Perhaps just weeks or even days, in the real world. No one would ever know the years of torture he endured – not even him. For afterwards he would always look back on it as a time of simple transformation, a memory he would often refer back to in self-reflection, a smile on what remained of his face.
His mind was lost in the song of the shadowland, and thus it was that, in the end, Alrior did indeed get the sound of the Winter Door out of his head.
But he also the left behind the name of his dead wife.
The names of his children.
Forever.