Chapter 338: Lich Unleashed

Several centuries before the present day; a captain's account of the battle at Vilbar's capital: 

The dead, they set fire to our fields and trampled upon the wheat. Terrible plumes of smoke fouled the clear sky. A thousand of our best men marched atop the city's stone walls, like our forebears had done time and time again in centuries past. Our arrows rained down upon the enemy but it was all for naught.

We failed because we were weak. Human. We needed to sleep, eat, and drink, all while that thing incessantly breathed down our necks. Night and day it stood outside our archers' range, watching the city be eclipsed by dark forces. Our own men rose from the very stone which they had been slain upon, grumbling and moaning. They turned their blades upon me and my brethren as if to blame us for their untimely passage.

When the battle was done and through, what was left of us opened the gates and let them shamble into our fine city. We had desperately assumed in our shared idiocracy, bordering on madness, that the monster would discuss the terms of our surrender.

It rode past us.

A week of endless blood and the most horrid smells imaginable did not even amount to a passing glance. We followed like ducklings until the Lich entered the city's library, whereupon we were told to stay put. It emerged minutes later with a few battered books tucked under its right arm and with its left, the librarian.

The librarian's small skinny limbs thrashed about. Her desperate attempts were to reach the shrunken fairy head on the Lich's waist, the monster's final prize from within the library.

The Lich was very careful to bind her wrists and cut out her tongue, whereafter her enthusiasm vanished. "Interesting," was the only word the Lich spoke to her. It dragged her out of the city, never to return. The Undead army followed, slightly bigger than when it arrived.

…

The time for stalling was over. A sudden flash in the night illuminated both the dark cloud's occupants. Doevm halted, threw his hands forward, and bellowed: "Compound magic: Nails in the coffin." His meager amount of mana shrunk as he threw a heafy portion through a magic circle. The energy split into five sharp, metallic points that whistled through the air.

Brannath dodged with a single flap of her wings; however she hadn't been the target.

Doevm's steel spikes pinned each of Brannath's fallen bodyguards by the head. Grey matter gushed from their cracked skulls, what was left of them. Cold, dead hands and feet moved without a single thought to guide them. The Undead attempted, in a horrendously pathetic display, to pull their broken heads from under the nails.

Brannath reduced them to ribbons with a massive ethereal claw. The spell's cost barely dipped into her well of mana, and she wouldn't take any chances. She assumed a nasty grin and turned to taunt their crude creator.

He was gone.

Brannath inhaled deep through her nose. Traces of magic floated across the cloud as faint ribbons in the air. She locked onto the freshest 'scent' and smiled. There wasn't much left of his diminished mana. Repeated usage mandated decreasing returns. With her own blood she traced an oval on her forehead. A third eye, black as the void, opened.

A world without stars, sound, feeling, or smell opened. Her peripherals were clouded with mist from a realm which many could not see. There Doevm was, standing in the same spot where he had vanished. Emotion had ceased to exist on the boy's plain, perplexing face. He was still a Lich, just inhabiting human skin.

He pointed at her. Following his finger she found a hand, red and clawed, wrapped around her ankle. She couldn't even feel it, not while she was in the Whisper Realm. It was a threat. The severed hand could have instead been a trap. It was just a hand. It had to be just a hand, a fluke. No matter how many battles he had fought in his glory days, she was stronger than him at that moment. She kicked the hand off and stomped on it.

Doevm twitched. His mouth opened to let out a silent scream. His jaw fell to the ground, then his eyes, then his face, then his head. His body shifted, becoming one of the Undead she thought she had destroyed. The lacerated being had been pieced back together by black thread wound tightly around its sagging flesh. Four more headless Undead sprinted out of the mist.

She took to the air, recited ancient incantations, and a magic circle transferred a burst of mana into a pool of acid. Something went wrong. Instead of raining down acid, the magic circle turned around to face her. She pulled her wings in front of her face just as the acid reached out. She didn't feel the wings burning away nor the sensation of falling. In the Whisper Realm she could only notice her vision blur as she landed on the Undead cushions. She struggled away but they caught her by her broken wings. They wrestled her to the ground with the strength of six. Then they beat her.

A barrage of fists, claws, feet, and teeth broke her focus. Whenever she would try to incant, her jaw would be struck. Her hands and feet were struck the most, probably. Everything had gone blurry. Even though she couldn't feel any of the beating, she knew her consciousness was slipping away.

To die on the battlefield holding off the Forbidden One, that would be how she would be remembered. She would be a sad, sacrificial pawn that served his majesty. Beaten to a pulp. Would he even recognize her corpse? 'Wait,' she thought. 'If I die, Doevm will use me against Zolgon. The Forbidden One will turn me into one of those mindless fools and stab our leader in the back. Zolgon's death will result from my own hands. I can't accept that. I won't let it!'

Her towering source of mana condensed into a tiny ball that hovered just above her. There was no motion, incantation, or components needed. It was innate, an ability those with mana rarely used. Mana was pure energy after all, and it could act without a magic circle. When it condensed down to her limit of control, she let it expand. The shockwave blasted the six figures back into the mist. 'I will not fail his majesty...' she thought. 'No matter what I have to do. I have gone with this farce long enough.'

"Spider snare." Mana shot from her limbs as thin, white webs that rooted everything to the ground. Her third eye closed. The mist faded.

She was once again atop a black cloud. One of the six Undead trapped within the snare shimmered and blurred, becoming Doevm. Brannath discovered that she was also trapped, not by her own spell, by a spear protruding from her stomach.

"The plane of the Realm of Whispers as humans call it," Doevm explained. "You go there to see that which is hidden at the cost of all your other senses. Hearing, smell, taste, and touch don't carry over until you return. You didn't think I would take the time to beat you to death, did you?"

"Nah," Brannath groaned, pain flaring around her broken jaw. "You… cannot… [b]eat… [m]e that easy."

Doevm chuckled. He tried to struggle out of her web. She wouldn't keel over just yet. The web held. She pulled the spear out of her lungs and coughed up blood. "It's useless," he said. "Just let yourself die. Zolgon doesn't care if you suffer for him. No demon king does."

"Fucker," she spat as she grabbed one of three shrunken fairy heads at her waist. Doevm saw this and went quiet. His struggle became a little more frantic. All five of his Undead matched his actions. The web stretched thinner and thinner.

Brannath had to move her jaw with her hand. Blood slowly filled her lungs. The incantation had to be perfect. She only had one chance. "Indroha (in-dro-ha)." Her mana flashed with that single word.

Doevm tried to call upon his own mana, resulting in a fit of coughing. He was empty, and she knew it. The fairy head's mouth and eyes shout out beams of blue light, calling spirits like moths to a flame.

Doevm went limp and slowly, mana trickled into his undeveloped source.

"Convetri (con-veh-tri)." The head's mouth closed. Two pieces of glass-like material formed over the empty eye sockets. Blue turned red. The head shook violently. Many high-pitched voices cried out from inside.

Light filled Brannath's vision. She looked up but nothing had changed. Doevm's head lowered as if he had attempted something that failed. She inhaled through her nose and sure enough there was a ribbon of magic in the air. It was unfamiliar, a color she had never seen.

She shrugged and finished the incantation. "Exdroha (x-dro-ha)." The head shrunk to ash and blew away. Blood gushed out of Brannath's lungs as the hole in her chest closed up. The unbearable pain became bearable before vanishing. She smiled and wiped the blood from her mouth.

Thinking back to the flash a few moments ago, she wrapped Doevm and his Undead in a few more layers of web. They weren't going anywhere. They weren't going to do anything. To be safe, she picked up Doevm's spear and placed a seal on it.

"You cannot kill who you are not destined to kill," she said, taking joy in the fact that her jaw was fixed. "Foolish boy!"