The Magical Girls who just slew Turlock’s corporeal form were so vulnerable. Like dumb beasts of the field, ignorant of the hunter’s gun pointed at them, yet the Prince did not come down on them with a flurry of spells that would have rent the flesh from their bones or boiled their eyes from their sockets. A flight of fancy caught him and he laughed and applauded their effort.

They probably thought they had won some great victory, slain an evil foe, and saved the day. Arrogance, such arrogance. They would see that the day had yet to come, when the precious web of lies they had spun around themselves would come crashing down and the weight of their sins would drag them to the darkest pit of the abyss.

No, they would live, if only so he could see their faces as his boot came crashing down on everything they held dear.

The Lich’s applause caught their attention, though by the time the sword wielding paladin came nosing around his dark corner, he was already long gone.

There are spaces just out of the corner of a man’s eye. Where if he turns his head too quickly he won’t see the shifting snap in reality that was just at the right angle to take advantage of, but the green robed man, the Prince of the Sorcerer Kingdom himself, knew the angles well and traversed their dark corridors like an old friend.

He was not alone in the darkness. Greater powers and beings called the place home, and the Prince’s only safety lay in not being noticed. A great eye appeared and stared at him, a familiar and sympathetic authority. This one would probably not try and rip his soul apart, but as a dust mote is cast to and fro by the movements of larger bodies in its own cosmic wind, so too was the Prince almost annihilated by the attention he was given. With a final effort against the void itself trying to pull him into a lost maze of eternal darkness, the Prince found his destination and went through.

His crawling madness deposited him into the bowels of his current base of operations and the loud thunk of his combat boots hitting the floor surprised one of the two other occupants.

“Must you travel that way!? It’s so creepy and quiet, how you just slink from nothing. Why not just use a portal like the rest of us?”

The Prince stood up, dusted his robes , and straightened his pointed obsidian crown before speaking to the complainer. It was a golden faced youth, a bright contrast to the ancient decay and corruption of the vessel around them, and he could have been called a model of arrogant perfection were it not for a right arm that peeled and leaked with rotten putrefaction.

“You forget yourself, my Lord Helfaust, speak respectfully to our liege.” The second figure bowed to the Prince and clicked with the snapping of a thousand mouths at once. Lek’Tor’s body trembled under the black sheet that covered it, barely kept in check by runic golden chains wrapped around the exterior. His serene golden mask betrayed none of the fear he felt when the youthful appearing Helfaust fixed him with a baleful gaze.

“Perhaps I’m not the only one to speak out of turn, worm tongue. Speak thus to me again and I’ll end you where you stand.”

“My friends, my friends! Please, this is a joyous day! Yet more of the blood of our enemies flows in the streets and their confidence has been shaken. Even now, they move into the places which we have foreordained for their slaughter.”

“Turlock has failed, my Prince,” Lek’Tor lurched and scuttled over a millennia’s worth of dust to quiver by the green robed man’s side. “Surely he must be punished.”

The Prince laid a hand on Lek’Tor’s quivering mass and gave him his best smile, though this only made the other lich pull back somewhat.

“Ah, Turlock, yes! Thank you for reminding me!” From one of his voluminous sleeves, the Prince produced a purple, veiny crystal. He started chanting and what little light in the room dimmed as his voice swelled with power and the beseeching prayer of a man struggling to find meaning in the unhallowed dark. The result was a grotesque pile of stringy flesh, organs, and bones that sprang from the crystal and accumulated on the floor in a rough human shape. The longer the Prince spoke the more human it became until bones fully hardened and flesh knit together to finalize the rebirth of a naked man on the floor.

No gasps of air preceded this fourth member’s arrival, for no lungs swelled in that already dead chest. General Turlock just sat up and grimaced at the council assembled around him, though the flesh of his face hardly moved given how fresh it was.

“I had them within my grasp.”

“They chopped off your head, hard to grasp something with that handicap.” Helfaust laughed in the other Lich’s face and knew he would do nothing about it.

Lek’Tor also lectured the fallen lich with a golden clawed finger to the face, “Your arrogance has cost us much tribute. Were it up to me, I’d cast your phylactery into the deepest part of the void and let you rot there for eternity!”

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“Now, obviously, that won’t be happening,” the Prince got between his generals and held his hands out. Playing the mediator was something he was good at given his long life in the court. “I’m the one who approved Turlock’s little side quest, so if you want to be angry at anyone, be mad at me.”

Lek’Tor bowed once again and backed away. “Of course not, my liege. Even this one’s bumbling may prove to be a boon to our efforts.”

“Oh no! Don’t get me wrong, it was an absolute travesty what happened, a disgrace to our people’s name,” The Prince took some of the flabby and cold flesh of Turlock’s face between his fingers and asked, “Do you agree Turlock?”

The lich tried answering with fingers shoved in his mouth like so far, but whatever he would have said was cut off when the Prince bodily threw the lich against the bulkhead with a wet sound of tearing. When the tall ruler of their group looked down at his hand again, apparently the lips and nose of the other lich’s face did not travel with him.

Turlock stood up from his bone cracking crash and squared his shoulders, a now eternal grin ground teeth as he stared back at the Prince, almost defiant, but not to the point that it had to be corrected.

“Looks good on you, but a little bit ridiculous without any clothes,” Helfaust snickered and waved a hand. Light materialized and formed a solid rainbow around Turlock, swirling and solidifying until he was adorned in the same plain uniform that he usually admired.

The throughly embarrassed lich did not give thanks and he hardly bowed to the Prince. Flames burst from his eyes, annihilating the last vestige of the useless appendages until only hollow pits of a fleshless death’s mask remained to look back at the others.

“My thanks for the revivification, I promise you, I will not fail again.”

“Oh, I know,” the Prince took Turlock’s phylactery and twirled it a few times in his fingers before tossing it to Lek’Tor. Turlock would have choked if he had lungs to gasp, but it was Lek’Tor who spoke first.

“My thanks, Great One, does this mean that I may snuff the wretch’s life whenever I wish?”

“It most certainly does not. It means you’re in charge of reviving him if he goes down again.”

“Ah.” Lek’Tor literally deflated, his body folded in a on itself, but he did not complain further as he shoved Turlock’s phylactery under his mask and swallowed it with a chorus of greedy clicking.

He waved away the argument that Turlock was about to bring up and the Prince asked,“Now that we’re all here, I have assignments for you. Lek’Tor, is the chimera complete?”

“Yes my prince, those bodies you supplied were quite useful.”

“Good! I was a little worried the condition might have affected their usability. Return then to the homeworld, we need more void beasts. Build me an army that will cover the stars in blood.”

Lek’Tor bowed and the Prince pointed at Turlock. “Make your way back to the Chimera and supply it with the necessary mana it needs to grow.”

“Sire, would not this task be more suited to another? I must continue my campaign against the slayers!”

“No, it is not. Had you not so abjectly failed, then we would have no need of the Chimera. But since you did, you will continue the good fight, in the back lines where I need you.”

Lek’Tor started to wheeze, a sound like a thousand locust wings fluttering at once. Turlock recognized it as his hideous laugh and turned to snarl at him, but the Prince held up a hand. His voice lost its levity.

“Enough. You both have your commands, leave and do not harm one another without my permission.”

The two ancient lich lords bowed and opened separate portals. Turlock descended into the bowels of a hideously converted ship and Lek’Tor onto the shifting sands of a nuclear wasteland, both worlds apart from one another, which was good given how easily their tempers flared when together. With them gone, there was only Helfaust left, who lounged on an out of place couch while he waited for the Prince to address him.

“Helfaust, your tongue is less sharp than it usually is. Have you finally attained the maturity that is forever denied your physical form?”

“Har dee har, Prince, an amusing question from one is who the youngest of us all by far, but honestly though, letting those two bicker is more amusing than any wit I could conjure.”

“And humility too? Do you bring bad news you’re softening with these sweet words?” The shadows lengthened around the golden faced Helfaust, but he pretended not to notice them and replied.

“On the contrary, the people eat my words up and the cult is well along the way to solidifying all the major players either in loyalty or blackmail.”

“Then you have an estimate?”

“A year, maybe less.”

“Excellent, have your little friends be ready for,” the Prince stopped mid sentence and looked off in the distance at a star that was now trillions of miles away, but in that gaze he felt the link to the Kort he had summoned snap like a fine thread. He had expected it to die, but not so soon. Perhaps the defeat of Turlock and now this, should have him be more cautious when dealing with the Slayers in the future.

Helfaust noticed the Prince’s transfixed gaze and dropped the smile he had been wearing. Without a word the youthful wizard started creating magical barriers and an aegis around himself. Formidable shields that would prevent his death from most mortal weapons, but almost paltry defenses that would last less than half a second against the full might of the mad man in front of him. Yet in a potential death battle between lich lords, every second and advantage mattered.

Choosing his words very carefully and dropping his arrogant tone, Helfaust asked,“Is everything alright?”

The Prince did not answer right away and this made Helfaust nervous enough to fiddle with the silver ring on his right hand. Unlike Turlock, he did not have a phylactery that could revive him and Helfaust had absolutely no desire to reacquaint himself with the eternal torment of flames that were on the other side.

With a whiplike motion that made Helfaust’s neck hurt just watching, the Prince looked at him again with one of those deranged grins. Perhaps it was the voices again, but the Prince would never admit it to him.

“Yes, everything is just fine. As I was saying, have your friends be ready for the incursion….I’ve been looking forward to visiting Crestline again.”