When the king of death dies

Yes, he was going to die. But that was a possibility that he, like any other self-respecting Necromancer, prepared for a long time ago.

His own body was slowly failing him for the past hundred years, and he had already made backup plans in case he truly did die, of natural causes of otherwise.

One of the contingency plans of course was a safe place in Hell; it wouldn't be his favorite outcome but he was well aware of his current karmic status, so the possibility he would end up in the underworld was more than likely. Which is why he prepared appropriately and made a bargain for his very own little slice of the underworld. And he paid quite a hefty price for it too, but it was all worth it. If there is one thing Henrick learned through the course of his long life, it was that real state was always a good investment.

Yes, Henrick understood well that in the case of his death he would definitely go to hell, but once there time would have very little meaning to him since the flow of time moved differently down there. After all, eternity had to be maintained somehow. One of the main problems of such an outcome would be that he would have little to no bargaining rights with the devils and demons of the underworld, and very little ways to improve his situation, which didn't really appeal to him.

Still, to attain some measure of safety even in Hell surely beat eternity of torment. Hell was after all real, in the way that a physical manifestation of all the horrible things creation can offer was real. And having a safe, malleable space in it was always a good thing, no matter how small the said space was.

Through careful planning and various favors, bargains and trades, he had managed to take for himself a relatively small piece of ash covered terrain and a small hill with a very, very shallow cave. Which was not much compared to entire demonic kingdoms and circles of hell that some demons and dark gods possessed. But in the worst-case scenario it would be enough for a fresh start, after all, home is where you make it.

What the demons and lost souls didn't know, was that he effectively screwed them over in some parts of their deals. And his deceptions made the Twin gods of night and darkness shake with laughter for a good two days when they found out. In their eyes that deed alone earned him two quite formidable favors, so they gave him dark tomes containing several spells. It was a trap of course, any gift from a dark god always was. Not that Henrick doubted the efficiency of spells contained within the tomes, but such things were always so destructive it was better to just let them be. On the plus side it was always good to have couple of extra tricks up your sleeve, if nothing else he could always trade the tomes to some fool or a kingdom he didn’t like and let them punish themselves.

One of the other backup plans involved having his soul transferred into lych body, buried deep underground in heavily warded safe that could only be opened from the inside.

That plan still didn't appeal to him due to the fact that he would be trapped in what was basically movable and controllable corpse, devoid of any kind of physical sensation. But even that was preferable to death.

He had a few other plans, all of them more or less the same, and all of them with the same weaknesses. When he looked at the long-term accomplishment, he was only postponing the inevitable.

Either some hero or priest would find him, weakened and bound to the undead construct, or warded into the walls of ancient crypt, or armies would be raised against him, or who knows what else could happen.

Point being was that if he died physically, he was going to end up in hell sooner or later. Either right away or years later when one of the kingdoms inevitably found out about his existence and mustered their armies to destroy him.

He was powerful, but not so much as to resist the entire world coming for his head. Even if he built his own kingdom of the dead, raised walls of bones and armies of frenzied corpses he would still fall eventually.

He knew that for a fact, because others before him have tried to do it. The end result was always ugly, cities burned, thousands of dead, and nothing to show for it. After the first few times he witnessed uncaring necromancers rise to power too quickly and recklessly he had decided to take out worst of them himself before they turned too much attention to him and others like him.

And it wasn’t about cleaning out the competition. There were older beings in existence than Henrick out there, some of them warlocks or other necromancers, lyches and even goblin kings. Hell, he even met a couple of them to discuss mage craft and trade artifacts. And one thing they all shared in common was that they were careful. Of course, having destroyed what was basically a kingdom himself, Henrick knew he didn’t have higher moral ground to assign blame on younger arrogant mages as he wished. But even when he did went about destroying his enemies, he still did it carefully. After all, his first mayor victim, the relatively small kingdom of Harilym fell in matter of weeks, and only due to years of careful preparation and well laid plans. Also, once he was done exacting his revenge Henrick vanished, laid a bunch of falls trails and conspiracies and he disappeared.

But young reckless wizards, throwing uncontrollable magics around and destroying villages tended to be the cause of nations and empires going to war, or even worse, establishing an order of inquisition. And nobody wanted one of those, not after what happened last time.

And so, to keep things nice and quiet, Henrick intervened here and there, whenever someone too destructive for his own good decided it was a good idea to summon an archdemon and rule the world, or spread self-replicating swarms of infectious roaches to scour the land clean, or release infectious flesh eating necrotic curse in main trade ports of the kingdom in order to raise armies and conquer the continent, or …. Well, basically anyone who interfered with peace on a scale larger than couple of cities tended to get a visit from Henrick, or sometimes some other hidden power-player.

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The thing was, causing too much attention was bad for health.

But he was getting sidetracked, the point was that in the end, hiding his soul inside an undead construct was practically impossible to pull off discreetly since it used enormous amounts of magic and was highly detectable.

All of that was concerning enough even without taking into account Kings who protected their lands rigorously, or in particular One King, Leonard the third, of the Holy Kingdom and the holy throne, who himself had the power and backing of the gods to battle even the worst abominations out there on even footing.

Leonard was a giant of a man in his middle age and approaching one hundredth, and going by the trend of other kings before him Henrick was sure that Leonard would live to at least until his one hundred and ninetieth if not his two hundredth. He was also absolutely confident that the man wouldn't lose an ounce of his strength as long as his heart kept on beating,

So transferring to a lych body and risking detection that would lead to him taking on the Old kingdom was out of the question.

However, there was one thing that he could do.

Since dying was unavoidable, there was only one thing he could.

He had to die, and then keep on living.

Ingenious he knew, he thought sarcastically, but as stupid as it sounded there was an ounce of genius to it.

Dying was mandatory here, there was no escaping it, he checked. But living on was something no one said anything about. And by living he didn’t mean carrying on as a ghost or apparition, but really living on, in his own flesh and blood.

And that was why the rat was here.

And no, he was not going to possess the dead, half dissected rat, why would anyone even think of that.

No, the rat was here as a catalyst for the spell.

And that was another thing so many were wrong about. Necromancy and soul magic didn't have to involve innocent sacrifices and human lives, at least not in most of the cases.

Usually all that was necessary was a little blood, some power and a whole lot of knowledge about what you were doing.

It was sad, really, how many necromancers and mages didn't know this, so they kept killing and destroying everything in their path just to gain some small measure of power.

Henrick too did the same mistake first couple of decades but he figured out rather quickly that sacrificing a human improperly is the same as killing a goat done right.

You could even make a soup afterwards, from the goat of course.

The rat in question had been gutted quite nicely, it was a female specimen and judging from its weight and fur it lived a very long life for its kind. It took Henrick months to find the right specimen, and even longer to infuse it with enough magic and prepare the ritual correctly. And now after months of preparations the dead, heavy rat lay in his hand.

Looking at it Henrick wondered, who could rightly know how many offspring it gave birth to during its lifetime, even better question was how much rats did her offspring spawned, how far could the bloodline go, was it hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of rats? Who could rightly know?

What was important was that there were a lot of them. Henrick knew there were, he could feel them all while massaging the rats dead beating heart.

Letting go of the dark energies under his fingertips he sent them into the dead flesh, words flowed softly from his lips while candles around him began to flicker violently.

Suddenly he could feel it, a huge mass of flesh twisting and turning, scattered around the city. From the top to the bottom of the bloodline he grabbed the darkness and sent it into every living specimen he could feel.

Being filthy creatures of darkness and carrions of plague, rats quickly succumbed to his will and he assumed direct control over the hive.

There was no need to hurry, he had a few more hours of life and it didn't really worry him anyway. Time was something he learned not to worry about, which was funny because it also took him quite a lot of time to learn how to not worry about it. Patience truly was a funny thing.

He laughed out loud, but was interrupted by a sudden coughing fit.

There was a knock from the doors on the top of the stairs that led into his room and a few seconds later a young healthy girl peeked out from behind the door, golden hair swinging from behind her ear.

"Henrick, are you all right?"

Still coughing he turned slightly to look at her from the corner of his eye and replied.

"Ahhh… ermm …coughh, yes…cough, erm yes, yes I'm quite all right Jenny, just the lungs again."

Of course, he knew that she wouldn't be fooled that easily, she was young and more interested in boys than books but that didn't mean she was stupid. She was already squinting at him suspiciously even before he finished his sentence.

"Henrick, are you playing with your rats again?"

"I'm old Jenny, not crazy, and there is nothing else to do here."

"I know Henry darling, but you would do better for yourself if you went upstairs and had a drink with the lads from time to time, you know they could use some of the wisdom you hide in that old skull of yours."

"I told you to stop calling me that Jenny, it's Henrick, with a "K", and those lads of yours are more interested in your ass than in my rugged old head, or any knowledge of anatomy that I hide in it, for that matter."

There was a faint smile playing on her lips as he talked, and she was twisting her locks haughtily as she replied.

"Not all of them Henry, not all of them, remember Sam, he was asking when you could give him another lesson just this morning. I swear, that boy is more interested in rats than you are. And such a shame too, for a lad as handsome as he is."

"Ahhh yes, that Sammy boy was it, yes, yes he's a good one, how is he anyway, i haven't seen much of him these days?"

"Ahh he is fine I guess, mostly hangs in that bloody college of his, skulking around libraries all day I bet, seen him just this morning I told you. Said he had important tests next week and was hoping for a few lessons if you had the time."

"Hmmm, a good lad that one, you would do well to grab him by the crotch while you still can, I tell you…"

This got a strong blush from her, and she practically burst out laughing.

"You silly old fool, I know you physicians are all crazy but it always surprises me again and again."

"Well don't laugh at me, I'm serious, that boy will do good in life and if you have any brains in your pretty head you'd do well to put a ring on him while you still can."

"You really are a fool, Henry."

"Ah, I'm not joking Jenny my child, you are young so you don't understand it yet, but it's wasting your life what you are doing with those poor fools upstairs. I'm old, little one, I had time to see it all before. You are young and smart, also pleasant on the eyes to round it all up, and boys fall on you like bees on the flowers, but time flies and as quickly as you can turn around it will pass you by and new girls will be luring old boys in your place while you find yourself on the street. So don't be stupid, Jenny darling. Listen to this old man and grab that boy while you still can."

Jenny stood there uncomfortably for a few seconds looking thoughtful, it was easy to notice that she wasn't smiling anymore and when she replied she sounded almost sad.

"I was just asking if you needed anything Henrick, I didn't ask for your opinion, but while we are at it you too would be better off upstairs than here. You said it yourself, you are old. And you know you don't have much more ahead of you anymore."

"I know Jenny, and it is exactly why I'm telling you this."

She definitely didn't look happy now, almost crestfallen she turned to leave.

"All right, if you need anything just call, I will bring you some soup and water to clean yourself later in the evening."

"That would be quite nice of you, little one."

Now standing in the doorway she turned to look at him again before she left.

"At least dress yourself warmly Henry, there is no need for you to catch a cold."

"I'll be fine Jenny, go on, you have guests upstairs."

"Good night, Henry."

"And to you too, little one."

With that she turned and left into the sounds of music and drunkards while he turned back to the rat on the table.

There was no need to rush.