18 That Lich

Bullshit. At no point did anybody see fit to inform me that the Crown was being guarded by a fucking godsbedamned undead sorcerer. I stood there, staring that the door Miratus had brought me too, wondering what in all the hells I thought I was doing here. Everyone knows you don't fuck with liches. Even the highest-ranked members of the Adventurers' Guild don't fuck with liches.

    I sighed and pushed the door open. Guess it was time for me to fuck with a lich. I didn't have much to live for anyway.

    The chamber beyond was massive. Darkness stretched out before me, far beyond the limits of my little sphere of light, each shred of shadow filled with malevolent foreboding. My eyes scanned the black, searching for any evidence of my impending demise.

    It felt like I stood in the doorway for hours, waiting for the inevitable doom that must come with trespassing in a lich's lair. When the doom did not come, I took a deep breath to try and calm my nerves and stepped inside.

    I took another step. And then yet another. And one more. Soon I was fully inside the chamber, and I finally let my breath out. It occured to me that I was still alive.

    Having established that I wasn't dead yet, I started to grow bolder, and took even more steps into the darkness. The chamber was so huge that all my light crystal illuminated was the floor beneath my feet, with no other features visible to me. Even the walls that surrounded me were too far away to see.

    My heart pounding in my chest and I fought futilely to get a handle on my nerves as I walked further and further into the chamber. This wasn't so bad. I saw no sign of a lich. Maybe Miratus had been mistaken and there was no undead monster in here. Maybe he was just messing with me. Yeah, that was it. He was trying to give me a scare.

    Well, I wasn't going to be scared. All there was here was darkness, and I could handle a bit of darkness. Hells, I sleep in darkness. Who was afraid of a bit of darkness? Certainly not me.

    I turned around to check behind me; not because I was afraid of the dark, you understand, but because I just wanted to check my progress. Apparently, I had walked far enough that I could no longer see the door I'd come through. Well, that wasn't a problem. I was fine with that. Just me and the dark.

    Sure, I may not have the muscles or skill of a real adventurer, and I couldn't recall a single point in my life in which I was anything even approaching useful in a fight, but I was a man, damn it, and I wasn't fucking scared.

    It was while I was looking back at where I thought the door was that I felt a bony finger tap me on the shoulder, while a raspy voice right next to my ear said: "Hello."

    I spun around, saw a skull looking back at me, and let out what I will insist was a very manly scream while stumbling backward, tripping over my own feet, and falling to the floor. This had the somewhat unfortunate effect of causing me to drop my light crystal, and so as I scrambled backward, I realized with a start that I was moving away from my only source of light.

    Worse, the light now only illuminated a tall skeletal figure, wrapped in old tattered brown robes, its skull looking down at me with that expressionless grin that skulls are so well-known for.

    "Why are you screaming?" the skeletal monstrosity asked.

    That wasn't exactly what I had been expecting to hear, so I floundered a bit, then pointed at the creature and uselessly exclaimed: "You're a lich!"

    "No I'm not," the lich said.

    I blinked. "Then what are you?"

    The lich stood there in silence for a long moment, before declaring: "I'm a skeletal minion."

    "To what?"

    "What?"

    "If you're a minion, then what are you a minion to?"

    Again, the lich stood there in silence, before offering up a new explanation. "I am a Skull Lord."

    "You only have one head!"

    "A flameskull."

    "You have a body and also your head's not on fire."

    "An innocent maiden lost in these catacombs and cursed by an evil wizard to look like a skeleton."

    "Bullshit!"

    The lich slumped her shoulders. "Alright, you got me. I'm a lich."

    Then the lich raised a skeletal hand above her head, and it became wreathed in green flames. "I suppose you're here to kill me, right? So we might as well get this over with." <Wish we could talk more.>

    "Um, wait!" I shouted, scrambling to my feet and holding out a hand as if that could do anything to stop her from setting me on fire. "Wait, wait! I'm not here to kill you!"

    The fire remained in her hand, but the lich didn't move to strike me down. "Really?" she asked.

    "Really."

    "Really?"

    "Yes! Really?"

    She cocked her skull to the side. "Then why are you here?"

    "I'm here for a Crown, actually."

    "Oh." She snapped her fingers, a motion that sounded weird and clacky without any flesh, and the fire went out. "Well, why didn't you say so?" With that said, she waved her hand and the entire chamber lit up.

    I could see no source for the light that now flooded the massive chamber, but I suppose that that's magic for you. I realized now that the chamber was perhaps better described as a great hall of some kind; it was massive and rectangular, with lines of pillars on either side, stretching out before me, leading to a raised platform upon which sat what appeared to be a great stone coffin.

    My eyes attempted to adjust to the sudden brightness, and before they could my vision was suddenly taken up completely by the lich's skull.

    I froze, terrified beyond all measure.

    "It's bue," the lich said.

    "Pardon?"

    "The Three-Headed Dragon has marked your soul," she said, "and the mark they have placed upon you is blue. Not like my brother's. His was red. Different head made the choosing."

    "Your brother?" I asked, but the lich sudden grabbed my face with her bony and unnervingly cold fingers.

    "Yes, you have been marked," she said softly. "A gift from Cyan. A gift of aid and unity, as the blue often gives. A gift of judgment. The question is whether you shall temper it with mercy, or with vengeance?"

    I didn't know how to respond, so I kept quiet as the lich continued to scrutinize me.

    "Both I should think," the lich mused. "No man can be fully one or the other. But which will you favor? We shall see, yes. We shall see."

    She let go of me, and suddenly she was no longer just inches from my face, but instead was a few feet away, gliding backwards toward the stone coffin in the center of the great hall.

    <Follow.>

    Well, at least it was nice to know that I could hear the voice even when people weren't speaking. I took a second to try and calm myself (it didn't work), and began following the lich.

    "That brother you mentioned," I said, "was he Arcturus?"

    "Arcturus, yes, that is the name he was called in life." The lich nodded. "I forget sometimes. It has been so long. And what remains of him in this world does not speak. Does not remind me of how we were before death claimed our forms."

    "Right…" I mentally searched through my knowledge of Arcturus and the Orc Wars. "You're… the Archmage, are you not?"

    "Yes, Archmage," the lich said. "Cordelia. They called me that, I think. Archmage Cordelia, sister of Arcturus Orcslayer. Accursed woman. Wandering spirit."

    I'll admit, I had never before thought about what the process of becoming an undead lich would do to a person's mind, much less centuries of unlife in solitude. I was starting to get a clear picture though.

    Cordelia came to a stop on the step before the coffin, where I presumed her brother had been lain to rest.

    "You wish to take my brother's crown," Cordelia said. "Yes. Magic artifact. Fate. Destiny. But you are young. You know little."

    She waved her hand again, and just like that, the lights in the chamber vanished, and I was plunged into darkness.

    I heard Cordelia's voice coming from a place that was far too close to my ear for comfort. "You are not ready for the Crown. Worthy of the Crown. No. Not yet."

    And then I felt something cold run down my back.

    "Let us see, however, if you could be."