Though he brushed aside their words with the promise of telling them more another time, the truth of the matter was less pleasant. ‘I wish I knew.’ Varus thought as his boney fingers scraped aside the faint remnants of stew stuck to the little brown bowls. They’d licked at the contents with great thoroughness, but even their hungry little tongues had missed a bit.

So as the elder lich stood holding one bowl in hand while his finger stirred the water around to clean it, he tried to think more of times he hadn’t thought of in more years than he knew. ‘Our Hero won. I know he did. But who among my people made it? Tari didn’t. But if anyone was only wounded, maybe?’ The red orbs which passed for eyes faded away as he no longer saw the present world, but only replayed the memories in his mind, searching his memory for any hint that his comrades may have made it.

‘You’re a selfish man, Varus.’ He told himself as he realized that, once awakened to his unlife, he had never bothered to find out the truth, who lived and who died, and what happened to people he’d called friends. He turned his head and as the red glow returned, he looked at the closed door of his little cottage home. ‘Can a selfish man like you really look after two little girls for any length of time?’ He asked himself, and knew the answer right away.

‘A few days out here is enough. Let them get their strength back, I can at least do that much. But they need ‘real’ parents. Living parents who can look after them, you know that. Besides,’ he paused and let out an audible huff, ‘they’ll interrupt your work.’ The latter thought was strangely comforting in a way he didn’t quite grasp.

But before he could properly explore the thought further, he felt a tap on his foot, and looked down at the bones of his toes. In his hand sat a fragment of the bowl he’d been cleaning, and down beside his foot lay a broken half, along with a wet spot where the water landed with it. As to the cause, the scrapes of his finger were evident in their path… ‘Idiot. You pressed too hard and broke it.’

He looked toward the door again and dropped the other half of the bowl he’d intended to clean, then held out his hand and cast his spell. [Create Undead][Skeleton] He said with a quiet voice and watched the black ball of mana hover in front of his outstretched hand. The ground beneath his palm began to rumble and stir, the grass began to part, and a skeletal hand thrust out as if it were waking from a grave and clawing its way free. It pushed against the ground, and as it did, a second arm emerged to do the same thing.

The white skull appeared, as free of earth and mud as if it had never been beneath the ground. Then the chest, legs, and feet, until it stood erect and motionless in front of its creator.

Varus put his hand to the faceless bones of the skull, and two little red orbs appeared in the eye sockets, giving it the gift of sight. “Skeleton,” he said in a deep, commanding tone as if he were leading knights again, “you are to follow that road until you find a town. If you are attacked by humans, elves, dwarves, or anything that is not a monster, you are to do nothing. If you are attacked by creatures such as wolves or other beasts, you may defend yourself, but your priority is to find a place where people live.”

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The skeleton did not acknowledge the order, and Varus stood still for a moment, then chuckled, “Oh, right… that is all, you may run.” He said, and pointed toward the road.

The skeleton spun, and it began to jog at roughly twice the pace of a human. Varus stood and watched it go, his eyes following his magical creation until it was out of sight. Then Varus’s red orbs vanished, and his ‘sight’ changed. The ground was bobbing up and down, and a whole new horizon came into view.

‘Good. It worked.’ Varus acknowledged and watched the expanding world as he saw through the eyes of his creation.

The trees were swaying in the breeze, branches and leaves had to be making their endless ‘whoosh’ sound and rustling, but Varus couldn’t hear it. ‘Right, I didn’t give the skeleton the ability to hear. Oh well, it’s fine. I just need to know how far civilization is from here. I can figure out how to get them there, later. For now, I should wash the other dish and then get back to work. I still need to finish writing that chapter.’ The thought of the story ahead brought a sudden cheer to his heartless body and he picked up the intact bowl to give it a quick scrub, and when finished, he returned to the door.

His unnatural senses caught the sound of snoring and heavy breathing within, and so he pushed the door open as gently as he could, stepped lightly across the floor, and shut it behind him with nary a sound to be heard.

True to his expectation, and yet also beyond it, there they lay on the couch, asleep and sprawled out, Tuesday’s leg hung half off the couch while Hannah’s open mouth leaked a little drool out of the corner, their tails curled in and their ears flicked about when touched by the brief stirring of the air brought by the opening and closing door.

Their faces were still stained sticky with bits of golden honey they hadn’t been able to quite clean away, and Tuesday’s snore would have raised an eyebrow, had Varus had any eyebrows to raise. ‘Noisy girl, that one.’ He mused and walked past them both to seat himself again at his writing desk.

The familiar feel of the quill touching his fingertips helped him settle in almost immediately, and the story he’d put on hold in his mind flooded back to him, calling out, demanding to be told. “What hope do we have against evil like that…?” He wrote the words of the protagonist’s companion, and a shiver went up and down his spine as he wrote the protagonist’s answer…

He held up his sword in front of his chest in a grim salute and said, “This hope. The hope in our swords and our strength of will, the hope that comes from knowing we never can and never will give up…that’s hope enough for me to fight, is it enough for you to come with me?”

Varus dabbed his quill in ink as he wrote out the chapter, pausing to close his eyes and check the progress of his summon, only to see nothing but darkness, road, and an endless horizon again, before going back to his writing. That aside, it felt as if his novel was finally progressing again, his flow was smooth and his quill only had to stop moving to make the shapes of letters to get more ink on the tip to make yet more letters…

Until he felt a tug on his robe and heard Tuesday’s little voice…

“What are you working on?”

He stopped. Looked down. Heard her rumbling belly…

And he found himself interrupted yet again.