It wasn’t that Char-Chil didn’t take his opponent seriously, nor that he held back his strength, nor even that he was caught off guard. When you rule a hundred and seventy-two years, your view of things simply warps somewhat. You begin forgetting certain concepts. Hunger, for one. The insufferable suffocation of kowtowing to a superior, for another. And, not last but certainly most important, you forget that you can lose. It’s as if the possibility sinks from your world… until someone comes along and delivers a rude reminder directly into your lap.

“Last words?” The young man — and he really was so young, no older than sixty — asked across a room warped with pillars of colored glass.

Char-Chil considered what to reply—what, not whether. Last words were important. After his work, a mage’s chief concern should be with history. Namely: imprinting his own name upon every inch of it that he is able.

Alas, it was idle contemplation. His ribcage, gilded with rubies and gold, was exposed to the room. Undead that he was, that wasn’t much of an impediment to speech, but the pillar of blue-glowing glass spearing through him, was. The physical damage was trivial, but the anti-magic field woven into the glass was an absolute horror for his spell-based body. In addition to pinning his soul in place and keeping it from fleeing to its Phylactery, it had rendered speech quite beyond him.

The bastard knew it as well. The slightest of smirks played across his smug lips.

“Cat got your tongue?” The younger still-human mage asked. “Oh well. Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Hah! Unluckily for the man, Char-Chil was far too wise to fall to such obvious taunting. It couldn’t affect him. A true mage knew better than to taunt their opponent, even a helpless one, for manners if nothing else. No, the uncouth, snivelling little man could not get under his skin, no matter how much he blubbered.

The man began a methodical walk across the room. Char-Chil’s internal diatribe stilled.

He’d known this was coming the moment the glass pierced him, mind. Come to terms with it even. Still, there was a line between theoreticals and reality. There was accepting a loss in one’s mind, and there was watching it play out before your eyes. There was— Confound it, keep your hands off my crown!

Predictably, the angry thought did nothing but shoot a lance of rage through his mind. There wasn’t even a way for the other man to have heard him…

The younger man was right in front now. He was handsome—much like Char-Chil had been before he shed his flesh, although this mage was clearly a touch uglier than that. The man’s long black hair was matted with blood from cuts. The burns coating one cheek didn’t touch his curated goatee. Blood dribbled from a nostril, falling from his top lip to drop to the floor below. Only one feature truly marked the man as abnormal— his pupils held no black, only irises on a backdrop of solid white. Against this, rotating slowly, seven small diamonds sat clustered around the middle of each eye, one for each color in the rainbow.

The man reached up, delicately lifting a crown of ornate, unnaturally preserved wood from Char-Chil’s skull. 

For a moment he merely held the crown in his hands, gazing on it with those unreadable, unnatural eyes.

“It is mine,” he said eventually. He looked up, meeting Char-Chil’s immobilized gaze. “Thank you. For keeping it warm for me.”

So the presumptuous mutt had manners. Or was that another parting shot? He couldn’t… he couldn’t tell. The world was beginning to slip away, and with it his ability to detect sarcasm.

Apparently his death was not a privately reached conclusion. The man’s gaze shifted. His mocking smile dropped.

“You were a worthy opponent,” he said, voice utterly serious. “Now, rest.”

With a casual flick of his hand, the glass around the room converged. Only the blue pillar spearing Char-Chil remained stationary. The six others formed a cage… or perhaps case was the better word, for there would be no gaps between these bars. Red glass formed the front of the prison, green the back, indigo and yellow the roof and floor, orange and Violet the sides. And they contracted, compacting his skeletal body as if at the center of a black hole.

His last view, tinted by colored glass, was of Inigo Trueza, his enemy and opponent, placing the pilfered crown atop his head. Char-Chil viewed the king, the new king, crown himself over his battered body, as the world winked from existence.

Though that wasn’t quite right. The world hadn’t gone anywhere, he knew that distantly, so it was something else that had winked out: it was him.

The Lich king had been dethroned the only way he ever would be, in death.

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Char-Chil knew what death felt like. Any Lich did— it was a necessary component of the transition, after all. Only then it was nothing more than a visit. An unpleasant sojourn. The soul was tethered to its new phylactery, bound tightly, and then expelled from the body. If done properly, with a properly prepared item, the phylactery would replace one’s flesh, the soul reeled into its new home. A fact often glossed over by budding liches was that for a handful of minutes, their mortal soul was ejected from the world of its birth. They were dead. Temporarily.

Those sensations were not something Char-chil had ever been able to explain to others, even over the centuries following the experience. Not that he tried all that often. He found cultivating an aura of effortless excellence easier when he didn’t go blabbing the down-and-dirty details of his feats.

The point was, death was uncapturable with words. You sank and sank, through boiling cold and frigid heat, perhaps moving toward something or somewhere, but his prior visit hadn’t been long enough to discover what, if anything, that was. 

And this, what was happening to him now? It was none of that.

It was not death.

His body was gone, certainly. He’d been reduced to his soul. Yet, it wasn’t moving. No sinking, no falling, no travel of any sort. Even the confusion of his last mortal moments had disappeared. He was simply himself, disembodied, floating alone within a void.

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The academic in him was fascinated. The rest was livid. Was Inigo not satisfied with tearing down his rule, dethroning him and ending his life? Had the man somehow gone further? Had he disrupted the very fate of Char-chil’s soul?

The ramifications for such an achievement were… mouthwatering. A shame Char-chil would be perpetually trapped in sanity-rending limbo rather than applying them for his own work.

Except, unchanging eternity lasted no longer than the thought passing his mind. He experienced light.

Before, the space had been pitch-black. Utter darkness, unmarred. Now it became the opposite: pure light. Slowly the glow faded, reaching an equilibrium between extremes.

From there, creation began. Pillars whiter than marble rose from nothing. A foundation appeared. Inscriptions and etchings expanded upward, a staircase forming step by step. It was not a building, rather a pavilion or monument, tall as some manors. Every feature acted to direct attention one place: a throne of shadows stark against the perfect white.

No one sat upon the throne.

Yet, a voice immediately added within Char-chil’s mind.

The voice was his own, yet it wasn’t. Perhaps that was incorrect. The voice, undoubtedly, was his. It was the words which were foreign. They had come from… somewhere. And they were not finished yet.

Rise! It urged. Claw! Grasp! Struggle! Pull yourself free from mediocrity. Rule!

“Rule?” Char-Chil said. “What you ask I’ve done. I ruled more than any man alive.”

Rule! roared the voice. Rule! Rule!

Char-Chil would’ve pressed his hands to his ears were he not a disembodied conscience. Not that it would’ve helped. The bellows were not something external to be blotted out; they rattled inside his very being.

This is your champion? Pathetic.

Tally another new experience for the day— somehow, despite coming in his own voice just as clearly as the earlier words, Char-Chil could sense a separate entity behind these words. They were delivered in an aggressive tenor, and he dubbed their speaker Tenor for the sake of convenience. Its opposite he decided to call Bellow, named for its near constant high volume. 

He is the one! Bellow, well, bellowed. His mind's thirst cannot be quenched! He will grow, ascend, protect!

Bah, said Tenor. What will he protect, when he cannot so much as save himself? 

It will light a fire within him. One who has tasted defeat will battle the hardest not to choke on it ever again.

A fire, inside of one of your frail mages? Tenor snorted. We’d be lucky if he doesn’t burn to a crisp on the spot.

“Excuse me,” Char-Chil said, “but if you are going to use my head as a venue, I ought to at least have a seat at the table. Who are you?”

They ignored him. He couldn’t help but shake his head in disbelief. How long had it been since he felt that feeling? Five-hundred-years?

You will see, Bellow insisted. When he proves me right and you look on in despair, I will cackle over your miserable existence!

Over me? drawled Tenor. Impossible. You’ve always had to look up to meet my eyes.

I won’t if I blast your legs off. Would you like that? You seem to be asking for it.

You couldn’t leave a cut on my form if I gave you a thousand free shots.

One day, when we no longer have to hide, I’ll call your bluffs for what they are. You’ll see. 

And when that day comes, I’ll cave in your skull, laughing the while. After all, you’re the one truly bluffing—

“Silence!” Char-Chil screamed.

His mind fell into tranquil quiet. A blissful sigh left his lips. 

It was only when air continued pouring out, long after his exhale should have stopped, that Char-Chil realized something was very wrong.

Perhaps dying had dulled his senses— now that he focused, the signs were clear. The air had changed. Far above the monument the blank sky had dimmed. Not so dark as shadows, not so light as clouds, it was a menacing shade. With a thunderous boom, the sky cracked.

A giant gap tore open, and it was widening. Flexible pillars of ice bent out of the edges, hastening the process.

No, not pillars. Fingers.

Char-Chil would’ve cursed — the perfect word was at the tip of his tongue — but air was continuing to rush out of him, sucked into the sundered sky at an alarming rate. Soon his very being would pulled along, he could feel it. Consciousness buckled.

Flee! Cried Tenor and Drawl, speaking in unison. Flee immediately!

He would have loved to. Shame no one had bothered telling him how.

Between the pillars something appeared. It was oblong and murky green, the size of some counties. A black slit ran through it like a canyon. It was a serpentine pupil, which made the rest of it an—

An eye. A single, gargantuan eye.

The eye flickered, darting rapidly, then locked on a single place— the exact spot Char-Chil was standing.

Return! Return! Return!

The fingers left the gap’s edges, reaching through. Coming closer.

Return! Return! Return!

There were shapes along the icy fingers, Char-Chil could see that now. The cold was growing worse. His mind was dimming. Vaguely, he recognized the shapes. Faces. Old, consumed souls.

Return! Return! RETURN!

Char-Chil jerked upright.

Breaths came in heaving uneven gasps. Hands — his own, blessedly — patted at his chest, at his body. He was somewhere different. He had a body!

It wasn’t in top shape. Far from it. His mouth tasted like overcooked Brigger Beans. Sharp pains pricked his gut as if he’d swallowed glass— which he had, considering the way Inigo killed him, but he didn’t see how an Archmagi’s Construct strong enough to withstand his deadliest spells would have started shedding shards now. Besides, there was a far more important change. His hands, the body they were touching, the tongue delivering the bitter taste in his mouth— all of it was flesh. He was flesh, again, somehow. Scrambling to his feet, Char-Chil found himself staring into a mirror. 

A pale boy no older than nineteen looked back. He blinked, and the reflection blinked. He shook his head, and the reflection shook its head. He smiled disbelievingly, and the reflection smiled right back.

“Who in Sahar’s name am I?!”

The reflection's lips moved in time, down to the minute detail, silently throwing the words back in his face.