Liam Grenouiller Faex was a proud man. Seeing as he was born as the sole heir to the House of Faex, which was counted among the most trusted advisors of the Emperor of Merdelum, serving every generation of the royal family since its founding days, many would say he had many a reason to be. He received the highest form of education, as he was to succeed his father, Ludovic Tilgivende Faex, once he was no longer capable to remain in his position himself and managed to pass every exam with flying colours. Even during military training, he showed himself capable of holding his ground in mock-battles and quickly rose to the top of the academy. However, the more he pushed himself into the limelight, the more eyes started to take a closer look at his achievements.
At first, he had waved the voices of his critics off as being envious, thus making up baseless assumptions, but eventually, it all came falling down upon him. Bribes, threats, even incapacitating duellists before he faced off against them, there seemed to be no under-handed tactic he shied away from. As all of this became public, he was not only expelled, but also lost his inheritance. Even his so-called friends, who had supported him in his deeds wherever they could, turned away from him and added more fuel to the fire, incriminating him further to wash their hands clean from what had happened.
He pleaded to be shown forgiveness, as all he did, he did to fulfil the expectations his family had set for him, but his father knew that he only made up excuses, as the only reason Liam acted the way he did was because he felt entitled to a position at the top, even without showing any real effort. Despite all this, his father was not a heartless man, and decided to give his son a chance on redemption.
He was given enough money to be able to make a name for himself, and if he managed to show that he had changed his ways in three years' time, he would not only be allowed back into the family, but also receive his father's position as royal advisor.
Many would have killed for such an opportunity, but Liam just saw this as the ultimate humiliation, having to live for three years like a commoner for the slightest chance at recovering his former status. Therefore, he decided to use the money for revenge instead. He would frequent the bars and red-light districts within the Empire, where he tried to come into contact with the infamous 7-Headed-Hydra, a criminal organisation which was said to control the criminal underworld of Merdelum in its entirety. However, seeing as he was of noble birth and lacked any connections to the criminal underworld, the only thing he came into contact with were small-time gangsters, who barely deserved the effort the guardsmen put into arresting them.
As he was about to give up his search, he got what he wanted, though not the way he wanted it, having his heart pierced by a dagger wielded by one of the very assassins he had tried so hard to find, as he had become a nuisance due to his constant attempts at coming into contact with them. The figure vanished as quickly as it had appeared before him and left him lying in the gutter to die. As he bled out in the streets, he was approached by the most beautiful girl he had ever laid eyes on. Completely entranced by her appearance, he almost missed the offer she made him, which was to prolong his life as long as he would prove himself useful to her. Of course, he accepted without second thought, and thus became the apprentice of the Lich-Queen.
However, as he was elevated into undeath by someone else instead of reaching this highest of stages of necromancy on his own, he not only lacked essential information about his new form, but also the right aptitude for such magic, as he had been trained in the ways of a knight, not those of a spellcaster. Therefore, he was denied his request of taking revenge on his family and put through harsh training to reach a level befitting the servant of the one who wanted to reign over death itself.
To Liam's chagrin, his mistress was a cold and impatient teacher, and punished every error of his with immense cruelty, causing him to regret his decision almost immediately. However, he had now become her prisoner, due to his phylactery and thus his soul being in possession of his mistress. Nevertheless, his teacher knew that pain alone would only cause her new servant to grow to hate her, and, fearing that history would repeat itself and she would end as nothing more as a magic tool, she rewarded Liam accordingly upon him finally showing some growth, which, much like a beaten dog who is given a treat, broke his will and made him addicted to her praise.
After Liam had reached a point where his mistress was satisfied with his abilities, she decided to further strengthen the mental chains which bound his loyalty to her by arranging the fulfillment of his greatest wish. The Lich-Queen kidnapped Ludovic on the day the deadline reached its end and brought him before her apprentice.
At first, Liam did not know what to do. Three years had passed since he was humiliated by him, years in which he had almost forgotten his revenge due to his training in becoming a proper necromancer, but now that he saw the man he had resented for all this time, bound and broken, cowering in fear of what had become of his son, a feeling of regret started to grow in his now undead heart.
However, his mistress had already anticipated someone as weak and pathetic as Liam to have a change of heart, which caused her to plan ahead. She had hypnotised Ludovic, which would now berate Liam angrily upon being freed from his magical shackles. He would not only insult him for his misdeeds and for colluding with a necromancer, but even go as far as to promise him that he would personally ask the emperor to publicly execute him to wash the family name clean from the disgrace his son had become.
At first, she had intended Ludovic to do all of this on his own, even promising that she would free his son from undeath if he played along, even though she knew that this was impossible. However, Ludovic was adamant in not cooperating with her, not because he was not certain if she even spoke the truth, but because he could never tell such lies to his own flesh and blood, as he had never once resented his son for his actions. Ludovic had blamed himself for the actions of his son and had spent the last three years to find Liam so he could help him in secret, however, to no avail.
So, when the time came, when Liam requested his father to be freed of the spells that bound him, so he could have one last conversation with Ludovic, Emily all too happily complied with the demand of her apprentice, snapping her fingers to undo the magical gag and leaning back to enjoy the show, smiling maliciously through it all.
What happened next was like a blur for Liam. The only thing he remembered was his father yelling at him, and before he knew it, Ludovic Faex's lifeless body was lying in front of him, choked to death by his own son.
Pleased at her plan having come together so splendidly, the Lich-Queen clapped slowly, snapping Liam out of his stupor. She praised him for finally having exacted his revenge, and offered him his phylactery, telling him to finish the job. Liam knew what she meant, and hastily grabbed the fist-sized gemstone, which reminded him of a round, uncut garnet. As soon as he touched the stone, a warmth started to fill his entire body, a feeling he had not felt since the day he had become undead. However, time was of the essence so he could not relish the feeling for what it was, and instead pointed the stone towards the corpse of his father.
Reciting the ancient words taught to him by his mistress, a spell-circle formed beneath the corpse, which started to glow in a faint blue light. The glow grew stronger before it started to flow away from the corpse, collecting into a small glowing ball above the body. After having formed completely, the ball of light slowly flew towards the phylactery, which it entered. Upon the soul entering the phylactery, the warmth Liam felt turned into a blazing inferno.
A pain as if burnt alive was now emitted by the gemstone in his hands, and slowly made its way throughout his entire body. Despite the pain becoming almost unbearable, Liam fought off the urge to drop the gem, and instead embraced the pain, allowing the heat to travel even faster through his veins. Black flames now started to burst through his undead flesh, and soon he was consumed by them.
Minutes later, nothing but bones in a pile of ashes remained where once the undead Liam Faex stood. However, the red gem, which was still tightly grasped by his skeletal hand, suddenly began to shine in a blood-red colour, and the skeletal remains of Liam rose from the ashes, reforming the skeleton to stand as if it was still alive.
Its eye-sockets, which had been empty and devoid of eyes, now contained a bright blood-red light, which quickly turned into the purple glow all undead creatures possessed. He looked at the blood-red gemstone, which seemed to pulsate in his skeletal hand, before facing his mistress and kneeling before her.
"Thy will be done, oh Queen of Undeath!", he proclaimed, offering his phylactery to her to show his eternal subservience to her. He had realised, that all the agony he suffered during his training was all meant to prepare him for this moment, the Rite of Lichdom, where one would consume their first soul to fully ascend to a true ruler of death.
The Queen of Undeath began to smile as she was handed the gem, as it meant that her plan to further strengthen his loyalty had worked without flaw. She took his phylactery and placed it in his chest cavity in place of his heart, as he would not be able to do her bidding otherwise, due to the phylacteries limited reach.
"Rise to your feet, my servant, you are no longer a mere apprentice, but my personal aid. Show your worth to me, and you shall be given more and more freedoms. Though, shall you show any sign of misplacing my trust, the rite to lichdom will seem like eternal bliss to you. Have I made myself clear?", she commanded, and Liam quickly complied.
"Of course, mistress."
Shortly after he had become his queen's personal aid, the Edenian War broke out, the perfect opportunity for him to show-off his knowledge. However, the Lich-Queen decided to put her plans on hold, as the war could spell an end to her operations before they even started to take shape.
6 years after the first blood was spilled on the battlefield, the liontári brothers Castor and Pollux, former war-heroes of Domitor feared under the name Fog of Death, were killed by the hero of Chóratonippotón, the Beastly Dragon. Liam managed to retrieve their corpses shortly after their demise, and brought them as gifts before his mistress, who gladly accepted them. Many more such 'gifts' would be sent her way, and he quickly rose from being just another underling who was part of her collection of undead to the rank of her right hand.
After the war, he received the task to contact members of certain cults which worshipped the Archons, the Gaolithe, which pledged allegiance to Aleraz, the Archon of Depravity and Cannibalism, the All-Seeing, who abided by the will of Neffan, the Archon of Madness, and the Evolved, who gained powers by ingesting the fragments of Varoth, the amalgamation created from the bodies of the dead Archons known as Rwo and Giam, which was imprisoned in the green moon Viridis during the Great Cataclysm at the end of the Dark Ages. Together with Liam's mistress, they would form the Council of Archons, as her master was the follower of the Archon of Deceit. Centrepiece for the plan to release the two Archons from their prison was the page of the Tome of Sacrileges, which Rainier de Léones was guarding in his mausoleum, as it contained the instructions for the summoning ritual which could summon even the highest of celestials from wherever they may be if the conditions to call them are met.
Together with the three cults, Liam employed help from the organisation known as Sword of Truth to resurrect the leader of the Forsaken, the long-forgotten 7th race of the Divine Tribes, which had been erased from history due to them having rebelled against their creators. The reason for this was that they believed only a member of the Forsaken would not only be willing to aid them in their mission, but also be powerful enough to bring an end to the undead Rainier, who was once regarded as the strongest human to ever live.
Although he diligently followed his mistress's orders, his efforts were thwarted through the incompetence of said organisation, as they had, against his mistress's direct orders to not draw any attention to their operations, kidnapped the current luminary of the Ardent Path. This put them into the sights of not just any archmage, but the one known as the Golden Phoenix, the legendary archmage who had defeated the Anathema of Life and ended the Edenian War by his own hands.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The aftermath of this encounter gravely injured his mistress, who, in an attempt to prevent the disruption of the ritual, decided to personally fight the archmage, who had destroyed decades worth of preparations in the process, a fight during which she managed to incapacitate him with the spell she had found in Rainier's tomb. Liam took full responsibility for what had happened and was severely punished. Years passed, and now there was no more need for any of that, as his mistress had grown beyond even the Yellow Seer's expectations. And yet, once more, a single person disrupted the plans of the Queen of Undeath, threatening the collapse of the entire operation once more.
So why was it, that when he had proposed to hunt the one who now threatened to crush their schemes for good, he was paired with sacks of flesh so far below him that they might as well have been insects? Had he not regained his mistress favour during the thirty years he arduously tried to rebuild what was lost? Ultimately, it did not matter, as he would fulfill his task without fail and prove himself worthy to stand by her side again.
Thus, he lured one of the dwarves and two lykan guards out of the small mining town to use as bait, turned him into an undead servant, and laid in wait at the path most likely traveled by his target, while sending the imbeciles his mistress had paired him up with down the other paths. To his chagrin, the path was traveled by other dwarves, and not his target, as he had hoped. He contemplated where he could have gone wrong, seeing as he had anticipated the dwarves heading to the neighbouring town to ask their fellow dwarves for help, and the werewolves heading towards the watchtower, where they would have hopefully killed the cult members sent to aid his mistress while becoming gravely wounded in the process and thus easy to dispose of by Liam on his way back to the tower.
His thought process was interrupted by the two dwarves yelling at one another, which could be heard from miles away.
'Tch, disgusting creatures filled with rage and idiocy. Let us make short process of these cretins and see where that damned wizard was headed.', he thought, before commanding his undead puppets to intercept the bickering dwarves.
Immediately, the undead dwarf leaped towards the two with a loud crackling noise, as the force of him propelling himself forward had shattered the ground beneath him.
Silently disapproving of this undignified approach, Liam cast flying magic on himself and followed him together with the undead lykan guards.
"My, my, my. Is that any way to greet old friends?", he chuckled in a sinister tone, removing the hood from his skull to have a better field of view.
He wore robes of the finest materials, handcrafted by the servants of the Queen of Undeath, and fit for royalty. In stark contrast to him were the the two dwarves in front of him, who wore dirty, almost derelict looking armour, no doubt about both of them being of common birth.
"The hell are ye doing Illdan! Snap outta it!", the dwarf wielding a, for dwarven war-hammer, coughed from the dust caused by the attack of Liam's undead puppet.
"I don't think that's the Illdan we know...", the other one, which armed with a walking stick which ended in a bulbous knot, exclaimed.
Liam would laugh, but his annoyance over the ignorance of the dwarf was beyond him.
"Finish those imbeciles!", he commanded, and his puppets started their assault, with all three of them focusing on the dwarf wielding the hammer.
"No, ya won't!", Noin yelled out, channelling his anima in his shillelagh, which caused rock fragments to materialize in the air before shooting towards the heads of the two undead guards.
The impact caused their heads to snap back with a loud cracking sound, indicating their necks breaking, causing them to sink motionless to the ground.
'Tch, I knew these low-level mongrels would not last for long compared to that dwarf, but this is just embarrassing.', the lich sighed deeply and rubbed the bridge of his brow in annoyance.
"Damn it all Illdan, why'd ya have ta run outta here!", Zaín lamented in the meanwhile, as he blocked the attacks of his former comrade with his hammer.
"Noín, I'll keep him busy, grind that corpse to dust!", he shouted, earning himself an affirmative grunt from his brother, who advanced towards the lich.
"If I were you, I would not underestimate my creation, you dirt-dwellers.", Liam stated with a mischievous grin, and with the snap of his fingers, the undead dwarf quickly dodged the hammer of Zaín and stormed towards Noín.
"As if I'd let ya!", Zaín retorted, and, with quick spin, flung his hammer towards the undead Illdan.
With a sickening cracking noise, the war-hammer connected with the undead's head and dislocated it from its spine, causing it to face-plant into the ground mere inches away from Noín, who, as he completely trusted his brother to keep Illdan away from him, had already charged his first attack. Several small spheres made of earth manifested itself in front of his shillelagh, and formed into arrow heads, all of which were pointed at the lich.
"Eat shite ye bonehead!", Noín roared, as he released his magic and the projectiles now sped towards the lich.
"Tch, pathetic. Even if it was just a dwarf, I expected more...", the lich lamented, before swinging his staff in a lazy motion from left to right, causing a shield made of solid arcanum to form before him and block off the earth-projectiles.
"I ain't done yet!", Noín proclaimed, and swung his shillelagh like a bat, a motion which paired with his anima ripped a large stone fragment from the ground and towards the lich.
"Is that all that sorcery has to offer? Slow and unrefined, much like your kind.", Liam yawned in a histrionic manner, before evading the massive rock with a quick sidestep, which was enhanced by the floating spell from earlier, which was still in effect.
What the overly confident lich had not noticed, however, was the angry brother of the dwarven magic-caster, who had used the distraction of the second magic attack to advance towards him with his war-hammer.
"Peekaboo, ye basterd!", Zaín cried out, before swinging his war-hammer with all his might towards the floating skeleton before him.
Startled by the scream, Liam quickly whipped around and deflected the hammers trajectory with his staff, causing it to crash loudly into the floor next to him.
"HAH! Next time you try to sneak up on someone, try to not scream like an idiot!", the undead spellcaster uttered triumphantly, before reaching out to the dwarf, intending to grab him by the head.
"Not so fast!", Noín retorted, and with one quick motion of his shillelagh, the rock he had flung earlier burst into shrapnel aimed at the back of the skeleton's head.
Liam, who had suspected something like this to happen, just crouched in response to the noise behind him, causing the fragments to miss their target, as they were purposefully aimed higher as to not hit Zaín. However, this put the spellcaster into an unfavourable position, as he was now on eye level with the dwarf next to him, who grabbed his skull and forcefully bashed his own against it, causing the skeleton to stagger backwards.
"Why, you...", Liam yelped as he tried to escape the short man, but was interrupted by the other, who stomped on the floor and sent his anima into the ground, causing a large crack to form, which now quickly made its way towards him.
The lich tried to evade the fast-approaching fissure with another sidestep, but the crack followed him, causing him to trip and fall. Before the undead necromancer could react, Zaín was already following up with another swing of his hammer, which connected with the head of Liam and shattered it, causing the bones of the Lich to clatter to the floor beneath its robe.
"...well, that was easy!", Zaín stated, as he removed his hammer from the ground.
"...he still moving?", Noín asked, provoking his brother to poke the pile of bones with his foot.
"Nope.", came the answer, but just as Zaín turned his back towards the undead remains to walk back to his brother, a skeletal hand clawed at his right foot, causing him to fall forward.
"Oomph! By Gideon's beard, what's going on?", he asked and looked back to the remains of the lich.
The bones started to clatter loudly, before slowly reforming into the skeletal body of the undead necromancer, with even the skull returning to its former state. With a jerk that caused him to drop his hammer, Zaín was lifted into the air by the hand of the skeleton, his body hanging from it upside down. The other hand of the lich grabbed the hammer and threw it far away.
"YOU ARE EVEN MORE FOOLISH THAN I HAD ANTICIPATED! WHAT A JOKE!", Liam bellowed out in maniacal laughter, shaking the dwarf in his hand in the process.
"Eugh, imma hurl...", Zaín mumbled, but was ignored by the lich, who opened up his garments to show of the sparkling garnet in his chest cavity in all its glory.
"BEHOLD! As long as my soul remains unscathed, I shall be reformed eternally! Now cower in fear mere mortals, for I-", he started to monologue, but Noín interrupted him with another earth-projectile, which staggered the lich, causing him to drop Zaín.
The dwarf, who had anticipated this, quickly jumped up and ripped the gem out of the undead's chest, before making a run for it.
"Thanks fer revealing yer weakness, ya twat!", the fleeing dwarf expressed his gratitude, as the lich looked after him in horror.
"NO!", he yelled out as he tried to go after him, but the dwarf had already reached his destination, his warhammer. With one last malicious grin of the dwarf, he threw the phylactery to the ground, and shattered it with a long-winded swing of his hammer.
Time seemed to crawl to a halt, as the hammer drew closer to the precious stone which held Liam Faex's entire existence within it.
"Not like this! Please! It can't end here! It mustn't!", he cried out as he tried to come up with a way to make it in time, but even the simplest solution slipped his panicked mind, and all he could do was watch as his doom approached.
"Forgive me, my mistress...", he whispered, as the glow of his eyes started to dim.
With one loud shattering noise, the gemstone burst, and the energy within it escaped upwards in a loud explosion of black fire, causing the skeleton to turn to dust in an instant.
"YAARGH!", Zaín screamed out in pain, as the hammer was ripped out of his hands from the force of the explosion, and his hands and beard caught fire.
"ZAÍN!", Noín shouted and made his way towards the writhing dwarf, who desperately tried to put out the flames in the snow, to no avail.
"USE THE ANIMA IN YER HANDS AND EXPAND IT OUTWARDS! FAST!", Noín instructed him, as he quickly cut off his brother's beard and threw the burning hair away from them.
Zaín did as he was tasked, and, with considerable effort, managed to push the flames off of his hands, though not before they did considerable damage to them. The dwarf whimpered, as he inspected his shaking, scorched hands, but burst into tears of grief as he saw what had happened to his beard, the ashes of which were now slowly blown away by the wind. Noín embraced his brother to console him, who now cried rivers of tears and snot into his brother's beard.
"Sh, sh, sh... It's all good. Ye did damn well out there, even tho ya should know this happens when ya burst a lich-gem, ye idiot. I kno' it's been a while since the war against these bastards, but fokin 'ell, mate...Don't worry, we'll get that hammer fixed up in no time!", he tried to assure him, but Zaín just pushed him away.
"I don care bout no fokin hammer! Look what happened to me glorious beard! How am I supposed to find me a cute lass now?", he shouted, before starting to bawl even louder.
"Oh quit yer whinging, once we get ya back to the town we can ask the others for help. I'm sure they can make yer beard grow back like nothing."
"Y-Y-Ye really think?", Zaín sniffled.
"Of course! And while we're at it, we'll make sure ya get yer hands and the hammer fixed as well.", Noín answered reassuringly.
"Y-Yeah...that sounds nice.", Zaín replied meekly, before he blew his nose into his brother's beard.
A few minutes later, Zaín had calmed down enough for the two of them to move the body of Illdan away from the road.
"Don't ye worry, Illdan. We ain't forgotten yis. Just ye wait, we'll come back with the others and give ye a proper burial.", Noín assured him, and the two brothers spoke a small prayer on his behalf, so his spirit may find its way into the next life.
Their return to Apomónosi was filled with solemn silence, until halfway back, as Noín started to snicker.
"What's so funny, eh?", Zaín asked annoyed.
"...heh, looks like I ain't the bald one of us no more, eh? BWAHAHAHA!", Noín bellowed in laughter, causing his brother to gnash his teeth into a half-angry, half-amused grin.
"Just yer wait until I got my hands fixed, ya nail-head!", he grumbled, before starting to join his brother in laughter, as they both approached the gates of Apomónosi.