The woman watched as hillock sized pieces of earth were torn from the ground around her and placed with surprising dexterity over a thin slit-like cave entrance. A short distance from the entrance of the cave you would find a paper-white door leading down into the undead’s lair. It was now sealed shut and by a peculiar trick the Scholar said he had learnt from the dwarves, it was made to look exactly like the cave wall surrounding it. Burial seemed a very crude method of hiding his lair when compared to his first countermeasure against detection.

“Hopefully some vegetation will cover the dirt soon, it’s very conspicuous as is.”, whispered the Scholar, his burial duty seemingly completed. The mound of earth seemed somewhat natural, excepting the lack of any vegetable matter. He stood, leaning on a wooden walking staff he had fetched from his lair, and waited for her to finish her burial duty.

Ealea stood under a wide oak tree, holding a shovel that the Scholar had lent her. The knight’s corpse lay next to her. Its mass caused it to sink a little into the moist, mushy soil. There had been some light rain just before first light.

The corpse seemed unnaturally clean and odourless considering it had been dead nearly half a day. The skin was a clear pink, smooth and unbroken. She had asked the Scholar if he had done anything to the corpse (besides use it to amputate her leg), he merely said that any corpse that was once animated becomes unpalatable to most life.

“It will take decades for his insides to start rotting and maybe a century or more before the first bones begin to show.”, is what he said. She couldn’t yet tell if that disturbed her or not.

Digging a grave was gruelling work. Displacing a human sized quantity of dirt was far more difficult than she thought it would be. Every now and then, the thought of asking the Scholar for help would surface in her mind and every single time, she crushed it. It would mar her friend’s names if she did that. Somehow, the physical work was therapeutic. Every time she stabbed her shovel into the earth and scooped up another pile of dirt, it felt like atonement, like an apology to her friends for being unable to save them, for being useless despite being a mage.

The sound of her shovelling continued on for hours, and the Scholar simply stood, just beyond the canopy of the tree, watching her the entire time. It was what he did best, watching.

At first, it creeped her out but before long she was too tired to bother if some skeleton was having a glance at her. Obviously, it was a silly notion. Why would a skeleton without any flesh have any interest in a human’s body? If dissection fell under the term ‘interest’, her notions might prove true but they held little water beyond that.

It was high noon when she finally finished. The gravesite she chose for him was perfect, if it wasn’t shaded, she might not have managed to finish. She sunk the shovel into the ground, intending it to act as a sort of nameless headstone.

She collapsed against the oak’s giant trunk. The bark was rough and the wood hard, the ground was too moist for her liking and soil stuck to her palms. But it felt luxurious. She was beyond exhausted, standing up would have been too much of an effort right then. Her blue robes were stained by the soil and her skin felt rough, sticky and generally gross from all the sweat. Her golden hair still remained relatively clean, for an adventurer at least. A bath would definitely be required, and as luck would have it, a small river flowed just East of the Scholar’s lair. But for now, she was content to simply rest on the cool soil.

The Scholar took a step forward, disturbing her peace. He had been standing so still for so long that her brain had nearly rendered him invisible. She sneezed as the skeleton walked towards her.

“You are finished, let us continue.”, he stated in what passed for monotony for his voice.

“Look, I don’t know how you undead fucks have it, but I cannot move at all right now. I dug a grave by myself! I’m a mage, I’m not made for this kind of work.”, simply replying to him tired her. She just wanted some rest, maybe some sleep if she could catch it with the reaper constantly staring at her.

“If you cannot move, I will carry you.”

“That’s not the point, I need some rest and a bloody bath. Just let me sit here for a few minutes.”, she said, nearly wheezing out the last bit. The Scholar said nothing.

She sat under the oak for near an hour. The Scholar stared at her as usual, but this time she returned his stare. She’d expected a reaction, some sort of uneasiness perhaps, but he stared at her with the same intensity as before. She wanted to win their staring contest but he was unyielding, eventually she took to looking at the sky, if only because she needed a change of scenery.

Boredom did not so much creep up on her as leap onto her. Now was the time for her bath.

“Let’s go to the stream.”, she suggested. Before the Scholar could say anything, she added, “Ellis will require water at some point, the stream is probably the best place to start looking.” She didn’t want him to think they were only going there because she wanted to bathe.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

A small bubble of confusion formed in her head, why did she care what this thing thought?

She struggled to her feet. Her right foot, the one made of dirt, groaned under the pressure but held. Together, they began the fifteen-minute walk towards the stream. They spoke as they walked. She was curious after all, what in the hell was he? Why was he a scholar? Was that an official title or one of those ‘self-proclaimed’ ones?

She decided to be upfront, to take the bold approach.

“What are you?”, Ealea asked, craning her neck to look the skeleton in the eye.

“I am the Scholar, the Scholar is me.”, he lilted.

“I know that, that’s just your name-

“No, it is not a name. It is a title, not one bestowed lightly.”, he replied curtly.

“Ok…but what are you really? I’ve never seen another creature like you. You seem like an undead but you have no flesh, and you seem pretty smart.”

“If you ask after the name of my species, it would be a Lich. I am surprised you have not met more of my kind, we were somewhat numerous…some time ago.”, that was strange, he couldn’t recall when exactly that was.

A Lich. They straddled the border between reality and myth. ‘Ask a Lich’ was a pretty common phrase people used when they faced a question to which they had no answer. The etymology of the phrase stemmed from folklore about the creatures. They were supposed to be extremely lustful…for knowledge. They would hoard it in great libraries built in deep caverns or the icy tops of mountains or some other such scenic location. It was said that a Lich would answer any one question you would ask of it, for a price of course. What the price was, nobody knew, but she could find out. She felt giddy as the weight of the discovery she was about to make hit her.

“Hey Scholar, can I ask you a question?”, she said.

“Yes, what is it?” answered the Lich without missing a beat.

She blinked. ‘Certainly! Put it to word and I shall answer it…if the price you can pay!’, something ominous and slightly silly like that was what she’d been expecting. This felt too mundane. All the books of lore she’d ever read were filled with drama and verbose prose, this was nothing like that. Was this guy really a Lich?

“How do I know you’re really a Lich and not just a smart skeleton?”

“You doubt my word?!” he said, loud enough to scare away the birds in the surrounding canopy. A wild flapping of wings and a shower of feathers topped off his statement.

Subtly taking a few steps away from him, Ealea said, “Um, just to be sure you know. I’m an academic so I’m all about proof…”, her voice slowly trailed off to nothingness.

“It is an answer you want. That is what you seek as proof, is it not?”, he asked icily.

“Yeah…yeah, that’s the reason.”

The skeleton remained silent for a few moments. He didn’t like using his powers for frivolous things like ‘evidence’, was his word not evidence enough? He conceded eventually. He had been holed up in his lair a long time, things had probably changed where the sun shines.

“Place thy offering in my palm mortal, and I shall answer.”, his voice was bursting at the seams with ominous overtones and dramatic overture. This was more familiar.

Ealea looked around her for a bit before finally spotting something. She brought it over and placed it in the Lich’s palm.

It was a maple leaf. Just the right colour, not too red nor too green. Somewhere in between orange and yellow, it really was perfect. It looked like autumn, when you ran your hand over it, it felt like autumn, when you smelt it, it smelt like autumn. The entire season condensed into a neat, pretty little package.

“Isn’t it perfect?”, she asked, a spring in her step. “Everything about it screams autumn, it might just be a leaf but the experience of beholding it must be worth much more.” She added.

“You will receive little for this.”, answered the Lich. Dejection clear on his absent face.

“Why? I know it’s only a leaf but the experience!”

“What experience?”

“Feel it, really feel it, take your time and run your bony fingertips over it. Smell it, taste it! It’s autumn, can’t you feel the magic of life?”, she said, sounding unduly distressed that he didn’t like the leaf.

“I cannot taste, smell or feel, magic of life or otherwise.”

“Oh…ah, that must kind of suck.”

“I do not mind. Question me.”, he said, seeming not to mind.

“What is the meaning of life?”, she burst out.

“…”

“Yeah, I thought it wouldn’t work.”, she said, not seeming very disappointed. “Hey, does this mean you can’t say anything unless you answer my question?”

“No, I just chose not to waste my breath.”, he said. The girl turned away at this, trying to hide her embarrassment.

“So, the payment can be anything as long as you consider it to be sufficient?”, she asked after a few moments of silence.

“It is more complicated than that. We Liches each are allotted a certain number of answers that we can hand out. We do not know how many, but when a Lich answers their last question…they die. Unable to answer any more questions, a Lich’s existence no longer carries purpose so it is extinguished. That is why we exact an appropriately high price for each question. As scholars, academics and pioneers at the frontier of knowledge, it is a life that we do not despise.”, a long sigh followed his explanation. This was tiring, so much talking, so much babbling. Being a mage, should she not know these things already? The entire existence of mages was built around the undead after all.

“How many questions have you answered then?”, she asked, once again.

He held up his palm, displaying the leaf, now wilted and black as tar. No trace of autumn remained.

“The leaf! Why did you burn it?”

“I burnt nothing. You asked a question and paid the price so I answered it.”, said he, very matter of fact-ly.

“Wow, is it ok for you to answer questions so nonchalantly? You might die…not that you don’t deserve it.”

“Do you ever really live if you never risk it all?”, something that passed for a chuckle emanated from the skeleton as he said this.

The Scholar raised his palm, allowing the breeze to pick up the wizened leaf. It spun as it flew a half dozen metres on wings of air and settled peacefully onto the surface of the slow moving river.

Finally, Ealea could take a bath.