The night was calm and quiet, and the forests were still. It calmed my pacing heart, and made me think of grandma’s home, which made me reflect on my family and my life. I hated self-reflection, because I wasn’t the biggest fan of myself. I’d go to work, come home, hang out and play games with my younger brother, Isaac, then rinse and repeat. I had no friends of my own after my family moved, and had no desire to make new friends.

If I couldn’t make a single friend, not even at work, then I definitely couldn’t land a boyfriend. Man, was I that bad to look at? I couldn’t totally blame it on my looks. I mostly blamed my personality. I was introverted as fuck, and even when I had chances to go out, I’d always reject them because I feared the unknown. After a long, barren life of inactivity and boyfriend-less living, suddenly jumping into it was terrifying. I became nervous just thinking about making moves on anyone I even might have liked.

Perhaps seeing my mom down entire bottles of wine and decimate cigarettes as a way to cope scared me. Perhaps her lashing out at me and Isaac didn’t provide much faith and trust in my choices of lovers. All the trouble Dad put her through, she redirected to us.

Love scared me.

And a brute of a monster in the forests below certainly had someone scared when I heard an alarming shriek. My eyes went down, and a little clearing in the trees showed me the scene unfolding. I couldn’t recognize the creature from such a height, so I zoomed down to try and help the person who was under attack.

Dreadhoof landed and I raised my boney hand towards the monster, which looked like an orc by the features of its face. I cast Binding of Bones, an apprentice spell that formed chain links and immobilized an enemy by stopping their main medium of movement – feet and legs in this case. The orc tripped and landed pretty spectacularly, forming a perfect scorpion fall.

I locked eyes with the petrified woman and Dreadhoof encroached her. “Are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere?” I asked after hopping off of Dreadhoof.

She clearly wasn’t okay. Her body trembled; she was soaked in sweat and had a bit of blood here and there. Her armor was weathered, scratched, dented, and the clothing she had on underneath was home to a few tears. She looked even more afraid when I approached her.

For a second, I forgot I was now Lich God Deidre. “W-well, you’ll be safe now, so rest easy, okay?” I said to her and made a bit of distance between us. “Were there any others chasing you?”

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Her quavering lips tried to form words, but she couldn’t; her tongue was cemented down. Instead, she shook her head a little.

I see. Well, that’s good, but… I sighed. Deidre, do you really want to pass up this chance to finally make a proper friend? Come on! All those charisma books you read can’t be that useless! Firstly, she was much too worked up to listen to me properly, so I cast Pacify, a novice spell that forcibly calmed its target.

She breathed slower but didn’t fail to keep me within her eyes’ crosshairs. After calming down, she stepped back a bit more, nearly hitting a tree behind her. “T-thank you, for saving my life.”

“Of course. It’d leave a bad taste to just leave things like that.” Smile, smile. I tried. Shit, I’m a fucking skeleton! I can’t smile! I rubbed my neck. “Um, I’m Deidre. What’s your name?”

“Deidre…” She rubbed her elbow, still a tad nervous. “My name is Solina,” she clasped her hands together like a praying monk and bowed her head a little, “and you have my sincere thanks for saving my life.”

I copied her gesture and put my palms together. “Of course, it’s something anyone would do.” I turned my attention to the bound orc. “Are you in these forests alone, Solina?”

She took a while before she answered, and all I could hear were the grunts of the orc as he tried to escape my spell. “No,” she muttered. “Most of my party died on this quest, and a couple of them were taken as prisoners.”

Uh, that sounds really dangerous. Will I be okay? Is it weird to try and rescue her friends? I juggled several things in my mind. Even if my health was marked as ‘N/A’ because of my immortality, I was still a coward for 25 years. Suddenly jumping into the fray of life and death situations was not something I was mentally ready for, but I was certainly equipped for it according to my grimoire.

Solina’s sulking face was enough to give me the final push; I might’ve been a little desperate for a friend in a world where I was all alone. Don’t judge me. At least I had my younger brother before. “Can you take me there?”

“You want to go back there?! It’s impossible!” Solina began shaking again, just thinking of the horrors she probably bore witness to.

I hit her with another Pacify. “Your friends might still be alive, right?” Plus, orcs look like all brawn and no brain. “We can’t just leave them.” I mounted Dreadhoof again, rode next to her, and offered her my not-so-warm hand.

“What are you, Deidre?” she asked and finally took my hand.

I pulled her up and smiled internally. That wasn’t a question I was used to. I wasn’t sure how to deal with people who showed intrigue in me. “I’m just a normal gi—uh, well, guess I’m a Lich God now.”

“A what?!” she screamed next to me.

Even though I didn’t have ears, I was still affected by loudness. “Yeah. Which direction is it?”

Her hand quivered when she pointed a bit to the left of us. “That way.”