AN: This chapter will be focusing on Liam the lich, who will likely play a major role in the following books as well. It's taking place at the same time as David's fight with the Unscarred, the albino reptilian.

***

He had come prepared.

However brash Ryan considered him to have become after undeath, he wasn't the type to rush into dangerous situations headfirst.

And this  was dangerous. Maybe not for him, maybe not even-not directly-for mankind, but it was scaring the world, and that never ended well.

This wasn't like refusing to join the Army. He was helping the world as a whole, not just Australia's interests.

And he didn't have a death wish, no matter what his husband often grumbled under his breath.

Liam felt something would go wrong before it happened. It wasn't precognition, not really; he was just close to death, and knew of things that could bring it.

The albino brute was the first to make a move, going for the Romanian showoff-Silva. At least he was smart enough not to give his full name to a mage. He might have been untouchable to non-holy powers, but it never hurt to be safe.

Liam knew their clash could bring death, and would definitely bring destruction. In the instant it took the big bastard to disappear and reappear, he focused his magic, grasped the others with aethereal hands, and whisked them away.

Most of them would have healed from the damage-anyone save the priests, really. But there was no point to sticking around.

As the two clashed, Liam went intangible, letting the shockwave pass through him. He flew away and upwards, knowing this wasn't his fight. Maybe he could draw another of the scaly bastards away-or even both- and kill it.

It was the grinning weirdo, the one shifting colours every moment, who came for him. Liam wasn't sure what it could do; it wasn't a mage, at least. He felt no active mana from it. But he knew it was unna-

Space shifted. One moment he was an immaterial whisp, floating in the sky, the next he was solid again, and in some sort of cave.

Liam glanced behind him. The cave's mouth was laughably tiny, like it had been carved by ants. He could go through the stone itself, but he had a feeling he wouldn't get away too soon.

Grinner was suddenly in the cave with him, shifting in and out of reality like a bad recording. It stared at him, eyes narrowed in amusement, but made no move to attack.

'Smart move, separating me and the strigoi,' he started, tilting his head to one side. 'I suppose one could see us as the heaviest hitters...though, one should also be careful not to bite off more than they can chew. What can you do?'

That shit only worked in manga, really. But maybe it was cocky enough to spill something about its powers, or at least what it and its buddies were planning.

'What can't I?' it replied in a scratchy voice. And suddenly, Liam's body was covered in wounds: joints broken open, stomach torn apart, neck hanging by a thread.

He wasn't hurt. He hadn't been able to feel pain in decades, and it only took a pulse of magic to heal his wounds.

But...what had it done?

'Familiar? Those were old wounds, Liam Marvin Lloyd, 'it rasped.

He shrugged off the shock at the fact it knew his full name, and tried to think. 'Interesting fantasy. But I've never gotten fucked up like that.'

'But you  could have,' it said, laughter bubbling under its words. 'Is every thinking being aware of your body's state? No. And isn't reality defined by what the majority thinks?'

Liam tried to reply, but realised he had no mouth to speak of...or with.

Or a body, for that matter.

It was gone, unmade on such a level he was only aware of its absence. His spirit was now fleshless, unbound, observing the physical realm from the shadowy expanse where life ended and death began.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

With a mental grunt of frustration, Liam wrought a new body for himself. This bastard wouldn't shut him out, whatever its powers were...

Its powers. It had dropped some stuff about possibility and consensus while it had been busy kissing its own arse. But it was not a mage...

Liam's magic was death. He could kill living beings, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. He could kill inanimate objects too, making them fall apart and crumble. He could kill communication, making people incomprehensible to each other.

He reached out to the reptilian, and stopped its heart, crushed its neck. It staggered for a moment, then faded out of reality.

And returned. Looking just as healthy as before, with an even wider grin. Liam's staff cracked and shuddered, then burst apart in a shower of enchanted stone and wood.

The focus of his will, gone. And-

And his body was gone, too. Again. Fucking cunt.

Liam reformed again-slower, this time, without a staff to shape his powers around. The reptilian was crouching casually, arms folded lazily, like it was watching a dumb animal try and fail to do a trick.

Snarling, Liam reached out for its mind-and gasped, despite himself.

He saw an existence chipped away at, until it could only be while observed by someone else. He saw that same existence cut open and displayed in front of endless eyes, eager to see what the strange experiment could evolve into.

It had become real. More than real, perhaps. Uncertainty, possibility itself, shaped into a scaled form and set loose to stride through the universe.

Liam tore away. He didn't give a damn for its sob story. It had forfeited any right to live when it had helped ruin the attempt to shape a new world for everyone.

Liam grasped its will to live, to exist. It was a cold, detached thing. Alien, in every sense of the world. The reptilian's body flickered, as if it wasn't sure what was happening, then faded.

And reappeared.

Liam grit his teeth as the thing grabbed the quantum strings of his being, and twisted. He wouldn't let himself be destroyed once more. Liam pitted his magic against the thing's will, and it was enough to exist for the time his gambit needed.

If this didn't work, either, he had little else to try. He...

Liam stretched his magic into realms he had rarely ever touched in his sixty years of life and unlife. He found the chance of this abomination of science existing-and killed it.

The death he commanded laughed joyously as it seized and tore at the core of the reptilian's existence. The experiment that had made it so powerful had also left it a wound in the meat of reality, a frayed thread in the fabric of the universe. A paradox.

And the universe abhorred mistakes.

Liam unmade the reptilian, on the most fundamental level. He made it impossible for the thing to manifest in reality again. In time, those with unprotected minds would forget it had ever existed, as well the fact that something like it could exist, in the first place.

The reptilian screamed as oblivion came for it-but there was a note of relief under the horror. Weary joy, at the end of a nightmarish mockery of life.

Liam snorted. Like he was one to talk...

The lich remained in the cave a little longer, to gather the remains of his staff and make sure his enemy was truly, finally gone.

And it was. That, or he'd scared it so badly it wouldn't show its face anymore. Same thing, as far as he was concerned.

Time to break out of the cave, rendezvous with the others, and take care of the remaining scaly douchebags and their stone soldiers.