SHE GETS A CHILD

I search through the dead human bodies strewn about the room, looking for what they would be best suited to once I revived them. I was collecting them up into loose piles; I’d already used magic to scrape the remains of the girl’s head off the walls. I was actually almost done, I’d collected up all the blood and put it into buckets, that I paced next to the piles. I stood over the man I dismembered, considering. Maybe he would take to being made into a skinner. I am not able to make skinners, only the necromancer has that power. Although, if I waited for her to crawl out of that coffin to revive the dead, his body would’ve likely rotted beyond the point where it could be used for anything other than a skeleton. I flicked a finger, and a ghoul was summoned. It would take the body to cold corpse storage, maybe I would learn to make skinners myself someday. Moving on, I looked at the big man. Hmm… zombie. I snapped my fingers, looking into him, I grabbed onto the two fundamental parts from which life is made. They hadn’t yet fully separated from the body. One was wispy, ever-changing, and infinitely complex, the other, sturdy and impenetrable. I pulled out the impenetrable core, and the wispy mist, tossing them away. They would fade from this place soon.

Once I was done, I grabbed some of the connection points, where the parts anchored to the body, with my magic and pulled them together. Tying them like I was jumpstarting a car. Hmm… where did that analogy come from? I should note that down for when I have more time. I return my focus to my task; I place a shard of mana into the intricate web of connections. Finally, I remove my focus from inside the man, then snap my fingers, he jerks up sharply to his feet with a blank gaze. I wave a finger and he wanders off to the zombie storage room two levels below. I move on to the girl who I splattered. Poltergeist. I reach into her, pull out the core, and separate several of the connectors to the mist but don’t fully detach it, I place a shard of mana in the connectors. I leave her there for the time being, I need a phantom body before I can finish her. I reach over for the other mist, the one from the last man I killed. I grind it up, battering it with my magic until it’s nothing but a fine ethereal powder, then I pour it over the girl’s body, where it’s absorbed. I will need at least two more before I can complete her. I finally turned my attention to the woman who died by stabbing herself. Ghoul? I smile, Ghouls are useful. These were spectacular humans, only one of them becoming a zombie, the rest becoming something… useful. Why is that feeling back? I have decided I don’t like that feeling. I reach into the girl I rip out the core and toss it aside, I pull out a specific part of the mist, grind it up and pour it back in. I use my magic to mold it, so it has a connection to the mana crystal that I insert promptly. I am about to snap my fingers, which is wholly unnecessary, but for some reason it just feels… right, when I consider something. I look back at the core.

When the necromancer taught me to perform necromancy, she’d told me to leave the core out, since it was essentially useless, but it didn’t seem useless. Perhaps it was just that we lacked the ability to properly utilize it. Like undead with healing potions, I’d tried feeding one to a zombie as an experiment but, it didn’t do anything. Why does my mind wander so much? I forgot I needed to analyze that. I took the mana crystal from the wispy slot and pressed it to the core. It sunk in smoothly. Interestingly, I tried to pull it out, but the crystal wouldn’t respond. Interesting. Suddenly the core lit up with energy, the same energy as the mana crystal, just much, much stronger. I tilted my head, then shoved the core into the mist in place of the mana crystal, I had to adjust the slot along with the connectors. It took a while but eventually, the core clicked into place smoothly, in a way that felt right. It was like connecting two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I could feel it was correct. I withdrew my magic from the human. What would she become? It’s a similar format as a ghoul, but… different. I stepped back, raised my hand and sn…. The human is poking at me. I lower my hand and look to her; she looks to my thighs. “Human,” I say. “I… I need to pee,” she said. What is pee? I scan my memories. Oh, oh... that’s… inconvenient. Technically she could do it anywhere, but I don’t really want her to do it… hmm…. “Follow me,” I say. I walk to the wall and press my hand into a particular brick with a chip in it at a specific place. It slides back smoothly into the wall, in and in… and in… I stop pushing back, then begin pushing to the right, the brick in the hole slides back, creating a right turn in the hole, I push back, a brick sliding out from the wall towards me, leaning into the wall, I push to the left, then, twisting my arm unnaturally, I then push another left, hook my fingers on a corner, pull and…. I feel my arm break with a loud crack. I continue pushing, deeper. I make a right, then go up and push a button.

I drag my broken, twisted, limb from the stone hole, letting it fall closed behind me. My arm making more sickening cracks as my radius and ulna crack back into proper place and form. I take a step to the right, and push a section of the wall in. It slides to the side automatically with a loud stone on stone grinding. I step into the dark hole in the wall, the human following behind me quietly. I reach to the right and flip a small plastic switch. The human flinches as suddenly the two of us are gilded in… warm LED light. “W-what the fuck?” she says. I don’t understand the reason behind the expression of confusion. “Remove your shoes,” I say. She does so, almost automatically. The room we are in is much different from any other room in the dungeon, the floor is made of wood planks, the walls are made of… actually I have no idea, but it isn’t stone bricks like most of the other walls. There are fluffy chairs, one of them is as long as three of the smallest, and it is facing a sleek black rectangle on the wall. There is a room with a large box that hums a lot. There is a sink, something I’m somewhat familiar with, but there are other things that I am not. The small box on the table under the black rectangle with the blinking lights and antenna being one of them. “What is this place?” the human asked. “This is the necromancer’s residence, though she hasn’t used it in a while,” I say. She just nods, she runs a finger over the counter with the sink, bringing it away covered in dust. I lead her to another room, “I believe you may pee in this room,” I say. The human gets a strange look on her face, before she walks into the peeing room.

I leave her, returning to my experiment. As I approach the bloody corpse. Maybe I should fix it? There are some undead where their corpses need to be repaired as much as possible before they can be revived, skinners for example. I pull out a needle made of bone, and some silver thread from the folds of my gown. It was made with thin strands of silver twisted in with spider silk. The wire was white and gleamed in the dim light with a feint glow. I quickly threaded the needle, then guided it with osteomancy, quicky sewing up her damaged organs followed by the hole in her stomach. I tied the line before I quickly snipped the wire, I coiled it and tucked it away in my gown before sinking the bone needle back into my flesh. I found that flesh was quite useful for storage of small sharp objects. I wondered what sort of small objects the human had stored in her flesh. I make a mental note to ask her later. I raise my hand and snap my fingers. With a pulse of mana my new… thing’s eyes fly open.

It takes a deep breath, before coughing. It lets out several heavy hacking coughs, before finally it hacks up a wad of clotted blood. It rolls over onto its stomach and pushes itself to its knees. I don’t exert my control over it, merely watching as it moves on its own, it suddenly looks down at itself, clutching at its bare stomach in, what appears to be, surprise. It pokes at the thread, gingerly. Then it begins rubbing at it. The expression on its face changes to a confused one. That’s odd, undead don’t have confusion. I merely continue observing as it reaches over to its other hand, and pinches it, confused it pinches harder until its sharp nails draw blood. When did its nails become so claw like? Seeing the dark congealed liquid slowly being squeezed out, it looks at it. Fascinating. It seems to have some measure of intelligence. I feel its undead consciousness reaching out into the void through which we communicate. I close my eyes. I see it’s a small spark of consciousness, reaching out little feelers into the void. I reach a tendril to one of its small feelers and gently… poke. I hear it let out a squeak of surprise, and the feeler immediately recoils. I freeze my tendrils, leaving them in place. I watch as the creature reaches out its small feeler, shakily, nervously. It pokes my tendril, hesitantly as if testing it for extreme temperature. It does a few cautionary quick pokes before it rests a feeler against me. I feel it shiver in excitement as it rests several more, thin, jellyfish tentacle, wires against my tendril. It rubs it gently, it tickles, in a way likely no human would be able to comprehend or, if they could, describe as tickling. I retract my tendril and it reaches for it, desperately trying to find me in the void. I approach its actual body. The expression on its face is… sorrowful, then fearful as it sees me towering over it. I lower myself and extend my arm, at the same time I extend a tendril in the void. Its physical body recoils, even as its little feelers extend towards me on the other side. I retract my arm and tendril in sync. It suddenly looks at me. It extends its tendrils to me, approaching cautiously with its physical form, before it reaches out an arm and a tendril then I extend myself, and… we touch. It smiles, looking up at me, with a gleam in its eyes. I finally knew what it was. It was a lich, like me. I didn’t know I could make a lich. The necromancer never told me I could do that. I laced my fingers into it, it looked down at itself then it shifted shape.

It now looked like a combination of me and the woman from who’s body it was made, except for its hair. My hair was black, and so was the woman’s. but my creation’s hair was the gleaming white-silver of the thread I had used to repair its old body. It was so… small. I leaned over and wrapped it in my arms, as I wrapped its core in my tendrils. lifting it up, as I pulled it close. It was smaller than any human I had ever seen, I scanned my memories for any humans of this size. Huh… apparently, they were rather common, they called them children. It reached its arms out to me, I pulled it closer, and it wrapped me in a small hug. This is a different feeling than the usual unpleasant one. It's making my face… twist oddly. Why? It’s not an unpleasant feeling. I wrap my arms around the small lich. I carry it back to the throne and sit down. It looks up at me, eyes glowing a bright green. The human walks back into the room. “Hey, what is that gross goo in the fridge….” The human trails. Off. “Where did you get that kid?” she asks. The small one looks at the human, and immediately recoils, leaping from the throne, falling to the ground, breaking three bones, healing them instinctively, and scampering off on all fours, I noticed it slightly altered its body, to make its locomotion more efficient with that method. “I greet you, human female. I made this children… this child,” I say. Correcting myself as my memories scream at me.

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I walk out of the fully stocked bathroom in a daze. There is a bathroom… an actual bathroom, and it isn’t some crappy 7-eleven bathroom either, it’s a nice bathroom. It has a shower, and a roomy one at that. When I turned the shower on, it had better water pressure than the shower I had at home. Not to mention that when I turned it on, the water came out warm, not room temperature from sitting in a pipe all day, but warm. Nothing said luxury shower more than on demand temperature. As I switched around the temperature, the water updated almost as fast as I changed the lever, and it wasn’t just the shower, the toilet. I was not familiar with luxury toilets, but I could tell… this was a luxury toilet. It was just something about it, about how comfortable it was, I had sat on couches that weren’t as comfortable as that toilet. I left the bathroom looking around at the expensive and spacy apartment that had been tucked away on the 12th floor of the god damn Lomari labyrinth, a place filled with undead, treasure, magic, dying adventurers, god damn skinners… and apparently a trendy, expensive apartment. It made me wonder who the necromancer was. Necromancers weren’t monsters, they were humans. They had a blessing from a god that gave them the ability to raise the dead. Specifically, Vora the undeath goddess. They were a reclusive sort, mostly because the church of Lumina would hunt them down and kill them, even though they were actually quite well respected among adventurers. I briefly wondered what would have happened to me if the Lich had brought me here and the necromancer were alive. As I considered everything around me, I felt like I got an inkling of what sort of person the necromancer was. She was courageous, surely, and clearly had something going on which she didn’t want disturbed. Why else would she make her home in the Lomari labyrinth? I wondered what she was doing here.

I looked at the refrigerator in the kitchen. Where did she get all this? I wondered to myself. As was the theme, it was expensive, I could tell by looking at it. I looked at the brand, kitchen aid. I looked around the room, the massive tv on the wall drew me in like a moth to a flame. How did she get all this stuff down here? We were a good mile beneath the surface, not to mention the eleven floors of monsters of escalating difficulty above us. Getting a god damn seventy-two-inch television down here without it breaking suddenly seemed completely infeasible, and the couch? Forget about it. I pulled the refrigerator open, cold blue-white light spilling out into the room. There was… was that… milk? How the hell did she get milk down here? Well… it was long expired, but presumably it wasn’t when she lived here. I switched my focus to the food containers filled with what looked like brown slime. What the hell was that? I watched it as… without any input from me, it slowly wiggled. Ugh… I closed the refrigerator and walked out of the apartment and into the dungeon… the sharp contrast making me do a double take. Trendy apartment, Bare stone brick walls, trendy apartment, monsters around any corner, trendy apartment, Lomari labyrinth. I walked into the labyrinth, I refused to acknowledge the apartment as part of the labyrinth and spoke. “Hey, what is that gross goo in the fridge….” I trailed off. I saw the Lich sitting on the throne looking down at a little girl with a warm smile. At the sound of my voice the little girl’s head snapped to me, glowing green eyes locking onto mine for a fraction of a second before she leapt from the throne, landing hard on the stone floor, before scampering off to the farthest corner of the room. “Where did you get that kid?” I ask. “I greet you, human female. I made this children… this child,” she says. What does she mean, she made her? Can liches reproduce? That’s… actually not that worrying, liches are dangerous sure, but most of that comes from their undead hoard, not really the lich itself, another one wasn’t exactly good, but not bad either. I look at her, crouched in the corner eyeing me warily, I look back to her…. Okay, this is getting ridiculous. It was fine when it was just me and her, damn it, the big lich, but now that there is another living creature in here, that of course is female, pronouns are suddenly inadequate.

We need the great ancient solution to this problem. A problem that surely confounded ancient civilizations long before us yet was vanquished in its entirety with one simple thing… names. “What is your name?” I ask, looking up at the lich… god damn it. I feel the moment her eyes lock on mine as my mind is compressed into a pebble. I keep making this mistake, the same stupid mistake. Maybe I should just carve my eyes from their sockets, I wonder if that would help? I lower my hand to the dagger at my belt, as the lich speaks. “The necromancer always called me Shinome, so I suppose that would be my name,” the lich said… well… Shinome said. I nodded, there that should help, my fingers wrapping around the handle of the blade. “My name is…” Shinome cut me off. “Actually, I should give her a name,” she said, looking to the little lich, breaking eye contact, letting me breathe, I swiftly took my hands form the knife on my belt… was I really about to… I switched my attention abruptly to the little lich. They had the same blueish skin tone, the same sense of… style, I.E., clothes that seemed a good ten or fifteen sizes too big, the same glowing eyes. The biggest difference, aside from the obvious, was the hair color. The little lich had bright silver-white hair that shimmered even in the low light. Shinome looked to the small lich, and after a few moments, she crossed from the corner, to Shinome, watching me warily for any signs of aggression. I held still while she approached… her mother? Was that how it worked? It’s odd to think like that, but they sure do look like a mother and her daughter. Everything I know about monsters paints them as creatures overcome with violence, an unending desire to kill and eat anything in sight, only reproducing on instinct, then abandoning their children to rip and tear their own life out of any living creature they can find. But… the smile on Shinome’s face as she looks down to her child… it’s something different, something that cannot be explained simply through the intelligence liches have, if only to make them more difficult to take down. Were liches… truly sentient? Why didn’t anyone else know about this?

“Human, what would you name this one?” Shinome asks, looking over to me. I arched an eyebrow. “You’re asking me?” She just looked at me until I felt stupid for asking. What would I name a lich child. I look to the small creature, gently nibbling on one of the liches fingers. Damn that was cute. Well, Shinome had a Japanese sounding name, so it made sense her daughter should to. But what would be good? I don’t actually know any Japanese; it should be something cute shouldn’t it. “How about Kami?” I ask. Shinome considers. “No, I think I’ll name her Dumpling the Despondylator,” Shinome said. “What does despondylate mean?” I asked, not wanting to address anything else about that statement. “To remove a spine,” she said wiggling her fingers at the small lich who was now batting at them like a kitten. I have no idea if that name is cute, or horrific… or… I feel like my brain just blew a fuse. “So… Dumpling?” “Incorrect human female. She is Dumpling the Despondylator.” “Yeah, but that’s eight syllables and three words, so can we just call her Dumpling?” The lich glared at me, and I glared at the floor. “No,” she said simply. “Okay why did you even ask me then?” I asked. “I felt it was polite.” I frowned. Glancing back up to make sure she wasn’t looking at me before I fixed my gaze back on Dumpling. She was now lying on Shinome’s lap with a look of pure contentment and joy as Shinome scratched her on the head. I need a nap. I walk back into the apartment, sit on the couch, and immediately realize this is the most… comfortable….

I awoke slowly. I slept on a couch, yet I feel like I’ve never been more well rested. I look down as I notice the weight on my lap. There is a lich sleeping there. I didn’t even know that they needed sleep or even could sleep for that matter. Dumpling was quietly snoring into my knees. It’s weird, this morning I woke up in the small bed in my apartment, knowing that I would be going into the labyrinth. Now, I’m waking up on an expensive couch in an apartment on the twelfth floor of the aforementioned labyrinth with a baby lich sleeping in my lap. This has to be some sort of weird fever dream, right? Reality isn’t this weird. I reach down hesitantly and lightly stroke the little lich’s hair…. No… this is real. Dreams aren’t this realistic, her hair is cold, and feels almost a little metallic, but at the same time it’s silky and smooth. As I run my hand through it, I can feel each individual strand against my fingers. Apparently, this is reality, and if it is…. My family’s going to be devastated, my Mom and Dad will think that me and my brother died down here. They’ll be only half right but still. Also, I promised to water my neighbor’s plant while he was away, damn. That plant’s going to die, I’m probably not getting out of here any time soon. I look back to Dumpling, she’s awake now, and gently cooing as I rub her. Okay, this is cute. No one would believe me if I told them I got to pet a baby lich. She’s so small. She looks up at me, interrupting my petting. Glowing green eyes fixing on mine. Aww… I just want to protect her from all the horrible things I’ve seen. She crawls from my lap and onto the floor before she walks over to the armchair. The lich… Shinome, is sitting there, she has her eyes closed, but I can tell she can still see us. Dumpling the Despondylator crawls up into her lap, and immediately begins nibbling at one of her fingers. I’m glad she didn’t do that to me. I can see the razor-sharp teeth in her mouth. Wait… why didn’t she? I look down to the hand I hadn’t stroked her with. All the fingers, gone. God damn it. I activate my blessing, watching as the fingers rapidly regrow. I flex my hand, new fingers cracking. I look back to the small lich nibbling the big lich’s fingers. Why can’t I have nibble-proof fingers?