“Morning!” I called cheerily, pointing a dangerous finger, wagging it at them. “Or, my, is it evening? I seem to have gotten quite turned around.”
The liches were no different to the ones I’d seen before, really. Walking cadavers in decorated, dark-coloured robes, their flesh drawn and shrunken where it remained at all. There was a pair of women and one man; two were bald, their skulls bereft of scalp, while one of the females had a few strands of long white hair hanging from a tiny patch on the back of her head.
The fleshy eyes were long-gone, of course, replaced with the typical purple fire.
“Stop trying to raise your eyebrows, guys. That’s a battle you’re never going to win. This?” I spread my hands theatrically, continuing to meddle, manipulate forces with every motion. “This you might have a shot at, if things go your way.”
Two of them looked terrified to see me – hardly what I’d expected – but the hairless woman laughed.
“I shall take my shot, Mundian!”
I saw the magenta lines she tried to draw across the air, and decided I’d done enough. No need to be risky.
I snapped shut the diamond-configuration hanging off the circle-shield I’d placed behind them, bringing both ends of the two L-shapes together and binding them in a single pincer movement.
I felt the seal. The barrier was secure.
She formed her pinkish blades of force, tried to break free. The others did the same, with increasingly-panicked motions.
“No, no,” I chided the most-inept one, “you’ll get the attack-vectors all messed up if you tangle them like that. Do it like this.”
I sent a blue sorcerous dagger out from the inner-face of the diamond imprisoning them; when the male lich recoiled from it I transformed it into a spear, sending it unerringly through his own barrier and into his shoulder before dismissing it.
He put a fibrous hand to the wound, gritted his lipless teeth – but I could tell my strike had hardly caused any damage.
I’d have to tear them to pieces to be rid of them. Or…
I turned, letting the light of the sphere fall on my face.
I could put them in there.
I started fixing the ribbons of runes even as I mulled things over; the trio just watched me work, as motionless as, well, corpses.
No. Again, it was risky. Timesnatcher might’ve known something about the sphere I didn’t, for instance, and might’ve wanted them out of here as quickly as possible so as to avoid just that circumstance. After all, while I understood how the sphere operated, how it might be fixed, I had absolutely no notion of what was going on beneath its blindingly-bright surface. I had no idea as to its composition, its construction; the materials and the force-shapes that had bound them together in this way were alien to me.
“Might I not have them?” Gilaela asked archly. “They are such ugly little things. Please, may I not transform them?”
‘Transform’ them?
“Into light! How can there be anything –“
“We cannot bow to you,” the white-haired lich said at last, and her voice wasn’t just defeated – it was broken, completely deflated. “Not in such a way that it binds us.”
I looked at her curiously between tying force-knots:
She cannot mean she’s an archmage, surely?
But she answered that concern by indicating the sphere with a bony hand. “Not here. But we would bow rather than die, sorcerer. We would bow to you.”
I pointed at my masked upper face. “Now it’s my turn to raise my eyebrow.”
“Strike such thoughts from your mind!” she cried, stepping towards me only to feel the invisible wall of pressure holding her back. “What reason have we to lie? We are here, and at your mercy. May we… may we not go elsewhere, to better swear to you?”
The bitterness was plain to hear in her tone.
I pointed at the hairless woman. “And you say the same?”
She’d lowered her face, and she looked up at me with eyes gleaming from a dimensionless void of blackness.
“I say the same… master.”
I wanted to test her word, find answers to my questions; Direcrown’s response to my report of intelligent undead told me that an opportunity like this didn’t come around very often. But I couldn’t do that – not properly, at any rate – without doing as she suggested, taking her away from the sphere and binding her. Surely what they really wanted was for me to leave the relative-safety of this chamber behind, and abandon the sphere long-enough that her fellow liches out there would get a chance to fry me alive.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Zel? I called into my inner space.
”She is still at a remove,” Avaelar said.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Zelurra! There was that strange word again. Bondswoman!
I’d been staring-out the three trapped liches for about ten seconds before I felt the fairy’s presence.
“I’m here, Feychilde.”
Forget what happened earlier. I just need an assessment from you.
“What am I assessing? This… thing? You seem to have done alright for yourself since… you know.”
Since you tried to kill yourself.
For all my admonishments about forgetting why she’d exiled herself from my head, I couldn’t stop the thought before it’d run through my mind. I caught the sound of Gilaela tutting, a particularly horsey sound, though which of us was its target I was unsure.
“I shan’t answer that,” the unicorn snickered.
Zel made no protest, and, after a brief awkward silence, I pressed on:
I just want your opinion on the answers I get out of these liches. Can you do that much for me, Zel?
“Of course… It’ll be easier if you get her to speak Mundic though.”
“You.” I indicated the hairless woman, the ringleader. “Tell me, then, in place of service – how many lich-lords are in Zadhal? Respond in kind.”
She grimaced as only a revenant might, then replied in the human tongue, her rasp soft but her accent almost broguish, made foreign by its ancient quality:
“Two.”
“Looks good to me,” Zel supplied.
“Two…” I mulled it over, checking runes and resealing them once more. “And other lords? Vampires, wights, whatever… How many are there?”
“King Keltoros, lord of deathknights… his kin, the Diphraneas family… wights… eight, I believe. The twin vampires of House Isromalle… The liches, of whom you have already enquired… Thirteen, all told.”
An unfortunate tally, I thought, remembering Starsight’s annoyance during the Incursion when Killstop had arrived to join us.
“Some are already dead,” Zel pointed out.
For now…
“Why are you here?” the lich asked, her tone not quite one of demand but edging close to it.
“Why do you think? To free you from undeath.”
She rasped harsh laughter. “Yet you arrive in my home, you bind me and mine within a minute. We are free. What you bring with you is bondage.”
“You worship the Prince of Chains!”
“Into whose arms you drove us! You came here to carry out the sentence, did you not, Mundian?” There was no ice in an elemental plane colder than her tone when she spoke the last word. “What will you do now? Drag me back to your filthy city? Is that not what you intended when you slunk in like a common thief –“
My focus had slipped, and I released the ribbons I was holding; I realised what she meant when she said ‘you arrive in my home’.
The liches had been spread out around the Green Tower when we arrived, sending fire up at us from the ring of buildings surrounding it.
It could’ve been that they’d chosen those positions strategically, or it might’ve just been that they found it convenient –
They lived in the Green Tower.
Of course they did. The sphere wasn’t just easy to fix, it was regenerating. They were living on the lower levels, outside the strongest effects of its pull, beyond my ability to sense last time I was here.
They were coming up to damage it, perhaps nightly, keep its magic at bay…
The ‘she’ down there… They hadn’t been talking about another lich down in the city – they were talking about one beneath my feet…
And ‘she’ had killed the one of their number who best understood the sphere…
If the lich-lord (lich-lady?) had robbed herself of her sole chance to destroy it for good, that could only be a sign of Belestae’s fortune working in our favour.
“I don’t quite follow everything you’re thinking, but this lich is building to something – she’s noticed you’re distracted –“
The hairless one was talking about the war, and I’d heard enough now from several sources to know that Mund’s aggressions were to blame for whatever they’d done that’d made them this way. I remembered the words of the Diphraneas matriarch: ‘We wanted no part in the war; for years we argued against such dreadful actions, seeking only peace with thy people.’
“– if only you Mundians got what you deserved…” the hairless one said in a musing tone, then barked in Netheric: “Kiva!”
‘Now!’
I was quick enough to steal the purple energy she drew across the air, pluck it right out of her hands – while the other two struck simultaneously at the diamond, wedging their blades in deep.
They’d pinned it, but the blow she should’ve landed between the other two never made it, never smashed the barrier.
“Good teamwork,” I congratulated them, extinguishing the stolen energies by clapping my hands together, letting the pieces drift towards the sphere. “I’m not alone either, though.” I went over what she’d been saying to me – the shadows of the words were still there in my memory, coming back to me now as I focussed on them. “Back up thirty seconds, will you? You were saying that this is my fault. Your… condition. That we got what we deserved…”
“In making us!”
Even I could tell this outburst was the truth.
In retrospect it should’ve been obvious – the key that unlocked the whole mystery.
No wonder she thought we had driven them into the arms of Vaahn.
“I mentioned that it was ugly,” Zel said solemnly.
We… we did this? We cursed them? How?
“That I don’t know. But from what I’ve gleaned, yes. The Magisterium did this to Zadhal. Come on, Feychilde… Do you think the Magisterium would care as much about keeping the war secret, if it weren’t for how they chose to end it?”
I felt the anger, the ache to sear flesh until it evaporated, welling up once more, pushing its way into my horn – I saw the liches look up at the golden light that was suddenly brightening the area, vying with the sphere in its incandescence –
They had no idea it wasn’t made for them, and reacted with appropriate horror, backing away to the limits of my diamond.
The horn had no idea it wasn’t made for them either, and reacted with excessive judgement, unleashing a rippling cone of golden power.
I screamed, my head feeling like it was about to rip in two – by the time I could open my eyes, the liches were gone and the sphere was flickering, gobbling up what magical essence it could from their remnants.
What – in – Twelve – Hells – Gilaela?
“What?” The unicorn managed to sound a trifle offended. “I cannot be held responsible for your failure to restrain my…”
Sanctimoniousness?
“Devotion! You were going to kill them anyway, were you not? I simply… expedited the procedure.”
I sighed, taking up a green-glowing cord once more. Answers had been put beyond my reach yet again.
Time to go to sleep, Gilaela, Avaelar.
“Pray tell, what sin did I commit?”
Avvie. Please.
“… As you command, M- Feychilde…”
They were both gone.
Is that how that works? Gilaela’s in charge of her powers while she’s awake in here?
“To a degree,” Zel replied. “It’s not like I surrender my danger-sense to you, is it?”
I’m getting better at it, though, you know.
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
I wanted to chuckle, but too much of what had happened earlier was on my mind for me to take amusement in her words.
“I know. I – Kas, no, don’t –“
We’re going to have a talk, Zel. I found the partner of the energy-ribbon in my hands, created the sigil and sent them on their way. I’ve got a bit to do here to, you know, fix this whole mess – and there’s very likely an ancient arch–lich on her way – but, drop on it all, I’ve got to take five minutes here. You’re going to tell me everything, Zel…
Zelurra…?