SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.

Once long ago, there had lived a mage named Mitch; he was a bit foggy on the details, after all, that had been a long, long, long (feel free to repeat long ad nauseum if so you wish) time ago. He had been part of the army that faced off against a demon lord, and he was proud to say he’d won; unfortunately for him, that particular lord wasn’t called Venger for nothing. Some people claimed their pound of flesh, not him; his MO was more to raise the entire battlefield and let them have that EACH.

Now, as you can imagine, an individual like that, well, they aren’t really the forgiving sort, but he did know his enemy was the reckless sort who charged into battle like a glorious death was not only a likely outcome but to be expected. Combine that with being rather sick of so-called “evil” creatures being hunted down (honestly, you raze then raise a kingdom or two, and suddenly you’re the bad guy, what was up with that? I mean, it wasn’t like they bloody well stayed dead, was it? It was prejudice; that’s what it was.) Which gave him an idea for the ultimate payback.

Undying curses to make a lich were fairly common, but usually, you used them on yourself, not this time. This time it was Mitch who got it in the neck. That revelation was about as well-received with his allies after the battle as you would expect. Dying a heroes death on the battlefield was one thing, but to be a hero, there was a certain expectation for you to stay that way; after all, what is a noble sacrifice if you’ve got extra lives? So Mitch became the problem rather than the solution. Eventually, his retirement plan was agreed upon (by everybody else, of course, not him; apparently, being dead meant he didn’t get to vote on such things anymore.)

He was presented with a beautiful retirement villa (OK, so the correct term is tomb) and a retirement plan which would be enacted by the instalment plan (meaning he would be entombed in pieces and the tomb trapped six ways to Sunday to ensure nobody would ever figure out what had happened.) He was even given a lovely holy sword as a retirement gift (through the ribcage, which somewhat put a strain on that now even more than previously eternal optimism of his.) Then sealed in; honestly, he thought as torpor took over that maybe some people had it in for him.

Then one day, Mitch woke up, some bugger had only gone and nicked his bloody sword (on the plus side, that meant he was conscious and ambulatory once again, on the negative side... well... that meant he was conscious and ambulatory again.) Which made Mitch the lich pissed that he was buried in bits; how did it even come to this? They were treating him like a bad guy. He didn’t get it; he was a good guy, he did his duty, all of it, even the bits he probably should have refused, but he was a hero; what else did heroes do but unquestioningly follow the orders of authority and the status quo? Heroes who did otherwise didn’t get called heroes; he gave his money to charity (that annoyed some of the nobles for some reason, it was almost like they were all profiting off the poverty of others, and his donations were undermining them or something.) He even said his prayers every night (true, they were a lot more burny these days and usually required him piecing himself back together after he was done, but his condition was hardly his fault, was it?)

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Now he was awake, he really had to pull himself together, and that might take a while. Feeling around for his bones, he really wished he still had lungs to sigh with (liches need a proper framework to remeatify.) This was like looking at a 206/213 piece jigsaw puzzle, with no picture and only a vague idea of where all the bits went (a biology student he was not, and when fighting skeletons taking note of where all the bits and bobs go is hardly your primary concern. A usual necromancer at least takes a few basic lessons and learns the difference between a tarsal and a metatarsal. Getting the bits in the wrong place and then trying to move is hardly humerus tibia, honest.

Because of that reassembling himself took far longer than he would have liked; after all, one tooth looks pretty much the same as another and going by feel and shape while trying to fit them all in? Not as easy as it sounds (and it doesn’t even sound particularly easy either.) Plus, it’s so easy to accidentally put your knees together backwards. (If he ever got to meet the gods, he swore he was going to request the next version of humanity have keyed or colour coded parts for easy assembly, or at the very least came prepackaged with a decently translated owners manual, so nobody else ever found themselves in this mess. Seriously could they not have at least colour coded the base of the vertebrae or numbered them or something? It didn’t seem to have occurred to him yet that maybe the gods didn’t like aftermarket modifications that went against their planned obsolescence.) Well, that was it; there would be no more mister nice Mitch. They worked him to the bone (literally and metaphorically,) then threw him away when they deemed he had outlived his usefulness (again literally and metaphorically.) Well, he wasn’t staying down, not this time. He had had enough of that, this retirement plan of theirs sucked, and he didn’t think a strongly worded letter of complaint would cut it in these particular circumstances. He reached out using the new magic he had learned, searching for the others who had been entombed with him. They wanted to call him a bad guy? Around him, the magic started to wake the vengeful dead; well, it was time to teach them just how bad he could be.